Dan Martell - 6 Things That Are No Longer Worth Your Time

00:00:00.000 There are a few things that you need to unlearn if you really want to make 0.88

00:00:03.400 f*** you kind of money. I'm talking about core ideas that used to work but just don't anymore.

00:00:09.260 Advice everyone's following that keeps them stuck. I've coached thousands of business owners and the

00:00:14.820 ones who do the best are the ones who totally reframe how they think about making money.

00:00:20.120 So we're going to cover the six things that you need to unlearn. And let me tell you,

00:00:24.340 the last one ruins most people without them even knowing it. Starting with point number six,

00:00:29.500 you need a good plan. Most people think I need a solid plan before I start. They sit down and

00:00:35.600 they talk to people and they research and they get ready. It's kind of like the person that

00:00:41.200 cleans the house before the cleaning lady comes. The point is for you to just take action. No

00:00:46.900 business plan has ever survived first contact with the customer. Never. I still remember the

00:00:52.380 first time I wrote a business plan. Not only did I follow none of it because those were all just

00:00:57.240 guesses, but I later found it on my hard drive years later. And when I opened it, I laughed at

00:01:02.840 how different my life was than what I wrote down there. That's usually what happens in business

00:01:07.400 plans. Instead, you should realize the only plan is to do anything that gets feedback from the

00:01:12.660 customer. Everybody wants to start perfect. That's a wrong strategy. The plan is to start messy. When

00:01:18.480 you're creating content, post 80% good enough. Post anything. An imperfect action beats perfect

00:01:24.640 inaction every single time. So now you're taking action. But if you're doing it the old way,

00:01:30.860 you're still going to burn yourself out. Because the next thing you need to unlearn is point

00:01:34.860 number five, you need to work hard. Everyone says work hard, grind harder, put in the hours.

00:01:43.240 Work scared. That's the answer. Work hard. That's for people that never move forward.

00:01:48.320 What they mean to say that most people don't hear is do the thing that you're avoiding.

00:01:53.060 I believe our fear is a perfect compass

00:01:56.360 for where we should be focusing our time.

00:01:58.700 Because fear stands for false evidence appearing real,

00:02:01.220 which means on the other side of that

00:02:03.440 is everything you've wanted.

00:02:05.060 Just because you can grind for 18 hours

00:02:07.360 doesn't mean you're making any progress.

00:02:09.260 Don't confuse movement with progress.

00:02:12.600 Stanford actually came out with some research

00:02:14.840 that said that if people work more than 50 hours,

00:02:17.400 there's a massive decline in productivity anyway.

00:02:20.540 Someone working 70 hours

00:02:22.140 usually gets the same amount of work done

00:02:23.800 as someone working 55 hours.

00:02:25.760 It's just the person that sits down

00:02:27.600 and does the thing that moves the business forward,

00:02:29.800 moves their life forward in those 50 hours

00:02:32.020 are gonna get better results.

00:02:33.520 The brain tattoo I want you to put on your brain

00:02:36.420 is that the stuff that scares you

00:02:38.180 is the stuff that shapes you.

00:02:39.720 So here's how you can find and tackle the scary work.

00:02:43.200 I want you to look at the next week of your calendar

00:02:45.120 and I want you to circle the things

00:02:46.720 that you've written down that you wanna do,

00:02:48.780 that you know scare you a little bit,

00:02:50.440 that make you uncomfortable.

00:02:51.440 Maybe it's creating content. Maybe it's making sales calls. Maybe it's trying to recruit somebody.

00:02:56.400 Be honest with yourself. Now, front load your day with those tasks. You want to start with the scary

00:03:01.760 stuff. Number three, tell somebody. Tell somebody you're scared. Tell somebody that that's what

00:03:07.080 you're starting with. Tell somebody to create accountability within yourself so that you

00:03:11.200 deliver on it. Oftentimes, we'll do more for other people that we've committed to than we'll do for

00:03:15.360 ourselves. So this keeps you from hiding. The last one is you've got to celebrate the attempt,

00:03:19.560 not just the outcome if it doesn't work you got feedback but at least you did it and i would

00:03:25.200 celebrate that you got to honor the fact that you tried even if it didn't get the result you either

00:03:30.080 win or you learn and you have to celebrate the learning moments too i know there's a lot of

00:03:34.380 scary stuff when you're trying to grow your business and maybe you're trying to cross seven

00:03:37.540 figures but if you want my cheat sheet i put together a full workbook of everything i do in

00:03:42.860 all my companies to get it to seven figures and way beyond to make it easy and less scary in it

00:03:48.280 i teach you everything you actually should learn to go from zero to million step by step if you

00:03:53.480 want my copy just find me on instagram and dm me the word youtube scale and i'll send you a copy

00:03:58.440 right over so now you've learned how to tackle the scary stuff not just the stuff that keeps you

00:04:03.320 busy but the next mistake is when people look around at who's winning and just blindly copy

00:04:08.440 them which brings us to the next thing you need to unlearn point number four learning from the best

00:04:14.040 see i know you hear model model model learn from the best who's doing it who's winning

00:04:19.880 learn from them the challenge that most people run into is that they come from a big company

00:04:25.000 they come from a fortune 500 company they come from a winning team and when they start at zero

00:04:30.520 they try to copy the playbooks of a fortune 500 a winning team when they have a fraction of the

00:04:37.160 market a fraction of the team a fraction of the customers you're copying the wrong playbook for

00:04:42.200 the stage you're at and if you act that way when you're small you will kill your company and there's

00:04:47.800 data to support this i think it was the startup genome that said that like 74 of small businesses

00:04:52.920 fail because they try to act too big way too early because they're copying the expensive strategies

00:04:58.120 of giant corporations and they're just out of sequence like i said they have the resources

00:05:02.600 at the brand recognition they have the customers they get the money and you got none of that so

00:05:06.600 stop copying their playbooks i remember when i was building my company clarity there was a company

00:05:10.520 that got bought by at&t 10 years prior that did something similar to what i was doing so i thought

00:05:16.200 hey i'll just r d rub and duplicate i'll go in there i'll look at all their sequences their

00:05:20.840 emails their conversion funnels everything i'll just borrow that inspiration and replicate it

00:05:25.480 using my product it turned out the money they were making and all the funnels they designed

00:05:30.440 was to optimize for people to call psychics i know nobody told me that i couldn't figure it out

00:05:35.880 the way i turned it around is i realized i had to start from scratch look at who i was selling

00:05:41.080 how i was selling it who is paying me and then figure out who at my stage in the early days

00:05:46.280 was similar and go borrow their playbooks borrow their positioning borrow their ideas for creativity

00:05:52.680 because we're at the same level people don't realize when facebook launched it launched at

00:05:57.320 harvard if you're launching a social network and you're trying to compete against facebook today

00:06:01.320 the same way they built today, you're gonna fail.

00:06:04.700 Don't copy Tesla when you're just trying

00:06:06.960 to build an electric go-kart.

00:06:08.620 So if you can't copy big companies, who do you learn from?

00:06:11.720 Well, here's my filter.

00:06:12.900 First, find three companies that are similar to you

00:06:16.140 and your stage that are just maybe six

00:06:18.740 or 12 months ahead of you.

00:06:19.920 Number two is then you're gonna use

00:06:21.320 these really cool tools, SimilarWeb, MetaAdLibrary,

00:06:25.560 BuiltWith, Ahrefs. 0.99

00:06:27.820 These are all incredible tools

00:06:29.340 to essentially reverse engineer

00:06:31.140 how these businesses were built.

00:06:33.400 Their funnels, their traffic, their strategies.

00:06:35.660 You can figure out who is their number one partner

00:06:38.260 that's generating 80% of the traffic.

00:06:40.620 Maybe you can reach out to them

00:06:41.880 and get them to send the traffic to you.

00:06:43.540 Once you do that, copy the structure.

00:06:46.260 Take their frameworks, their best practices,

00:06:48.400 but swap in your own offer.

00:06:50.280 This isn't copy-paste.

00:06:51.760 This is understanding the methodology

00:06:54.360 for how they've built the revenue so far

00:06:56.280 so that you can start with the right blueprint.

00:06:58.380 it. And finally, run it for 90 days minimum. I can't tell you how often people said, I tried

00:07:03.800 that. It didn't work. Well, you tried it once. How about you try it for 90 days? You put it in

00:07:08.880 place. You let the offer get eyeballs. Don't get creative yet. Just do the one thing that you see

00:07:14.780 in work and see if it could work for you. So now you're taking action and working smart. But here's

00:07:19.480 one area where old advice will absolutely wreck you if you follow it. And that's when you hear

00:07:25.100 people say. Point number three, take your time with hiring. The old advice was hire slow, fire

00:07:31.500 slow. This is where you had people work for companies for 25 years. Today, that advice is

00:07:35.760 completely wrong. In the new world, it's all about moving faster. You need to hire fast, you need to

00:07:42.220 test fast, and you need to fire fast. Because if you wait too long to bring someone on, you miss

00:07:47.740 the window. Top talent is only available in certain times in their life where they're frustrated at a

00:07:53.040 boss or they got pissed off that somebody did something. And if you just happen to be the

00:07:56.720 person that calls, give them an opportunity, they're going to jump ship. You need to be quicker

00:08:01.440 on your ability to hire people. And even worse, if you bring somebody on and they're totally not

00:08:06.860 a right fit and they don't add any value, don't prolong the decision to move them on from your 0.71

00:08:12.140 team because that'll drag down your whole freaking team. I remember back in the day, I hired this tech

00:08:16.780 genius at my company and I was paying him six figures. Four months in, I'm paying this guy

00:08:22.380 and I get a call one day from Procter & Gamble,

00:08:25.220 number one company in the world.

00:08:26.480 The CTO wanted to personally call me to let me know

00:08:28.760 the guy on site was causing issues with their team.

00:08:32.440 And I'm sitting there going,

00:08:33.620 here's a guy that I hired that's supposed to be the expert,

00:08:35.640 supposed to be the genius, and he's the one messing up.

00:08:38.840 But I feel like I can't let him go

00:08:40.780 because he clearly knows more than me.

00:08:42.380 He's technically a genius.

00:08:44.240 Me waiting too long to fire him

00:08:46.480 almost cost me that contract, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

00:08:49.780 Every week that you have the wrong person

00:08:52.440 costs you twice their salary.

00:08:54.480 So let me teach you how I hire across all my companies

00:08:57.020 and we use this five step process every time.

00:09:00.700 The first thing is you gotta run ads

00:09:03.260 to find a lot of candidates.

00:09:04.800 Most people when they recruit,

00:09:05.980 they just don't have a lot of people applying

00:09:07.420 so they just take the first person that looks decent.

00:09:10.220 We spend about 5% of their annual compensation,

00:09:13.420 the total comp, on ads.

00:09:15.420 I'm talking LinkedIn, Indeed, local if it's a local job.

00:09:18.860 If the role pays 100 grand, I spend 5,000 on ads.

00:09:22.580 Most people spend no money on recruiting.

00:09:25.280 Number two is have them complete a one-minute video

00:09:28.220 explaining why they wanna join your team

00:09:30.100 and answer some other questions

00:09:31.960 because that'll help you sort way quicker.

00:09:34.560 I can tell in a video,

00:09:35.840 based on how somebody's communicating,

00:09:37.560 what books they like to read,

00:09:39.080 they tell me about why they wanna work there,

00:09:40.800 if they're even in the realm of potential.

00:09:43.260 Because I always hire the soul, train for the role,

00:09:45.860 I can see in the video if I got the right soul.

00:09:47.760 If they pass that, then the next step is have them do a cognitive test or some kind of behavioral

00:09:52.880 test. I use predictive index. You can use whatever you want. There's tons of them.

00:09:57.020 And it's not a no-go decision, like if they don't pass a certain level, but it just gives me more

00:10:01.740 data to inform myself and the teams when they're making the hiring decision. It understands their

00:10:06.740 default, who they are as a person. At some levels, their IQ or their ability to process information,

00:10:11.840 which is going to tell me how they're going to work on my team. I can even compare them to other

00:10:15.420 people on my team to see who they're most like. Number four is you pick the three best candidates

00:10:20.000 and give them a paid test project. My whole rule is I can't work with you until I work with you,

00:10:25.180 which means I got to give them a simulation of how it's going to work on our team that they got

00:10:30.560 to do before they even join our team. Usually it's about a 10 hour project and I'll pay them for that

00:10:35.120 if they want. But the idea is for them to get to know us and us to know them and all three candidates

00:10:39.800 do the same project so I can evaluate their output against each other. The last one is let

00:10:45.240 your team make the final decision i give everybody on a hiring team the veto power to choose who they

00:10:51.660 work with why that allows them to have ownership on hiring i mean when they start they want to see

00:10:57.920 them win because they were involved in it they don't feel like you're pushing people on them

00:11:01.800 and it's just the right way to hire the trick is to move fast at every stage and honestly if it's

00:11:07.620 not a hell yeah it's a heck no like just honor your gut so now we got you moving fast and you're

00:11:13.840 building your team. Awesome. Next, we need to unlearn something that you've probably heard not

00:11:19.060 only just in business, but also in life. Point number two, you got to be well-rounded. Everybody's

00:11:24.100 going to say, you got to be well-rounded. You got to be the jack of all trades. You got to know a

00:11:28.880 little bit about everything, but being good at everything means you're not great at anything.

00:11:34.260 The world's best people are tip of the spear, great at something. They've decided to master

00:11:41.080 a skill. People making real money got really good at one thing. Everything else, they outsource or

00:11:47.080 they ignore. In many ways, you have to almost like be willingly ignorant to not learn other stuff 0.80

00:11:52.080 because you could so that you have the time to become masterful at one thing. It's like an OCD

00:11:57.380 focus level of attention. You have to have people go like, oh my God, you're so intense. It's like,

00:12:02.160 I'm trying to be the best at something. And if they give you a hard time, remind them,

00:12:06.960 If I was going for Olympic gold as a skier,

00:12:09.520 you wouldn't give me a hard time for training.

00:12:11.160 You wouldn't give me a hard time for hiring a coach.

00:12:12.660 You wouldn't give me a hard time for studying other people.

00:12:14.860 That's what I'm trying to do in my career.

00:12:17.060 It's like my buddy Tom, brilliant marketer.

00:12:19.380 And because he could do a lot of stuff, he did everything.

00:12:21.760 He was spending 70 hours a week running his company,

00:12:23.920 but he was stuck at 30K because he was doing everything.

00:12:27.260 And I was like, bro, you're really good at marketing.

00:12:29.580 I dare you to just do marketing, to focus on it.

00:12:32.760 He changed his one focus and revenue doubled 200% in 60 days.

00:12:37.920 His work week dropped down to 38 hours a week.

00:12:41.180 He was making way more money working less because he decided not to be well-rounded

00:12:45.700 and instead to go all in.

00:12:47.760 The highest performers I know know exactly what to be bad at.

00:12:51.660 So how can you figure out exactly what you need to focus on

00:12:54.520 so that you can be world-class at?

00:12:56.080 Here's how to do it.

00:12:57.080 First, you got to list everything that you do in your business.

00:12:59.680 do a full dump in audit every single task that's taking your time then circle the ones that give

00:13:07.340 you energy that you enjoy doing them i love selling i love persuading i love enrolling people

00:13:11.980 into my world that's the hardest one to let go but the good news is when you're starting off

00:13:15.220 keep that one if that's your thing whatever gives you energy and makes you money keep those and then

00:13:22.240 number three everything else to create like a big bucket of that stuff get somebody else to do it

00:13:27.520 for you. And I know you're like, I have no money. Find an intern. Stop doing it. Ask for help. Maybe

00:13:33.100 block time it so it's just way more efficient if you actually have to do it. But I really want you

00:13:37.220 to give yourself the space to do the thing that makes you money, that lights you up. The goal is

00:13:41.540 to spend 80% of your time doing the things that light you up and make you money so that you have

00:13:46.160 20% of your time to keep learning and growing to find out other ways you can make yourself better.

00:13:50.980 So stop trying to be decent at everything and be great at one thing. And if you want to go deeper

00:13:55.980 on this. It's a whole chapter in my book, Buy Back Your Time. But if you just start with what I share

00:14:00.680 with you, it's going to give you massive results. So now your focus, awesome. You're getting really

00:14:05.200 good at one thing, but none of that matters if you're going in the wrong direction, which is why

00:14:10.500 the last thing you need to unlearn is point number one, follow your passion. Everybody says follow

00:14:16.380 your passion. But here's what I discovered. You could be passionate about something and still be

00:14:20.800 a failure. You could say, I want to do this because I'm more passionate about that and still

00:14:24.640 never win. Because you always just defaulting to your passion and avoiding the work and avoiding

00:14:30.020 the monotonous and avoiding the being consistent, that doesn't work either. Passion without a market

00:14:35.280 is just an expensive hobby. You know, and the data shows this. 42% of businesses fail because

00:14:40.780 they built a product nobody actually needed because the entrepreneur was passionate about

00:14:46.360 the product. They fell in love with the product. They didn't fall in love with the problem. See,

00:14:50.940 if you fall in love with the problem, you don't care about the solution, then you'll go find the

00:14:53.920 right solution for the problem. That's what you should be passionate about. You should be passionate

00:14:56.780 about solving a problem for somebody. The real answer isn't just being passionate or doing things

00:15:03.060 just for the money. It's finding the sweet spot. It's like my buddy, Matt. He was super into fitness

00:15:08.060 and he thought, I need to build an app. And then he built the app. He spent like a hundred grand

00:15:12.200 to build the app and launch the app. Nobody wanted the app. When he talked to the people that said

00:15:16.380 you should build the app, he realized their number one problem was being consistent. He didn't need

00:15:20.620 an app for that. It's funny how people, they get passionate about a tool instead of working

00:15:25.280 backwards from the customer. When you talk to the customer and you say, what is actually hard about

00:15:29.600 getting this result? And you build a solution for that problem. That's how you get rich. So all he

00:15:34.660 did was he pivoted away from the app and he said, okay, I know I spent a lot of money. I'm going to

00:15:39.200 leave that there. And I'm going to go get passionate about creating accountability. So he created a

00:15:44.140 coaching program where he created accountability as a core cornerstone. That same passion with a

00:15:49.460 different approach was making them 12 grand a month in 90 days follow problems not passions the money

00:15:55.520 follows problems so here's how you can find something that yes you have passion around but

00:16:00.960 that you can actually monetize the framework is called icky guide essentially you draw four

00:16:06.440 big circles each one representing a different question and what we want to find out is what's

00:16:11.360 in the middle so the first question is what do you love doing you know what i love doing i love

00:16:16.560 talking to people i love creating content that i know could be seen by millions of people because

00:16:20.120 it feels efficient i'm a nerd when it comes to effective second question you want to ask yourself

00:16:25.240 the other circle is what are you good at what do you feel that other people tell you like hey man

00:16:30.380 you're really good at that that's where you want to go looking what are things that you do naturally

00:16:33.820 you're just like i don't know why do people keep saying i'm good at this that's the answer to that

00:16:37.640 question the third circle is what does the world need as much as you have a need to print paper

00:16:44.880 the world doesn't want printed paper anymore.

00:16:47.340 And then the fourth big circle is what can you get paid for?

00:16:50.600 And that one's easy to answer

00:16:51.820 because you can figure out

00:16:52.760 what people are already spending money on.

00:16:54.620 If they're spending money on it, you can get paid to do it.

00:16:58.000 If you look at those four questions

00:17:00.160 and think about what fits in the middle,

00:17:02.300 that's your sweet spot.

00:17:03.920 That's what you should be building your business around.

00:17:06.060 But you need all four.

00:17:07.180 So I encourage you to scroll back, hit pause,

00:17:09.960 watch it, fill it out,

00:17:11.360 and then come back to find the overlap.

00:17:13.620 That's your direction.

00:17:14.420 You see, none of the other stuff matters

00:17:16.600 if you're building in the wrong direction.

00:17:18.760 This is the filter for everyone.

00:17:20.900 It gets you alignment.

00:17:22.620 So all of that will hopefully get you recentered 0.96

00:17:25.620 because most of what you've been taught

00:17:27.720 just doesn't work anymore.

00:17:29.180 The world has completely changed

00:17:30.720 and it changes almost monthly right now

00:17:32.260 and the rules change with it.

00:17:34.040 But you can still win if you unlearn the old game

00:17:36.800 and play this new one using these new principles.

00:17:39.820 All you need to do is just pick one from this video

00:17:42.800 and unlearn it this week.

00:17:45.180 Maybe it's taking action.

00:17:46.660 Maybe it's not trying to copy somebody's playbook

00:17:48.640 that's way bigger than you.

00:17:49.680 Maybe it's deciding to really double down

00:17:52.060 on what you're passionate about,

00:17:53.380 the world needs and they're willing to pay for it.

00:17:55.120 Maybe today is the day you start.

00:17:57.200 Whatever it is, leave me a comment below and let me know.

00:17:59.740 What one of these philosophies did you need to hear today

00:18:03.060 to unlearn, to get yourself set up for the future?

00:18:05.860 And remember, if you're serious about scaling your business

00:18:08.320 past seven figures, just find me on Instagram,

00:18:11.100 DM me the word YouTube scale,

00:18:12.800 And I'll send you my full workbook on how to scale your business and buy back your time.

00:18:16.780 And if you want to learn how AI change business forever, click here and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - March 02, 2026

6 Things That Are No Longer Worth Your Time

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