8 Business Lessons Learned From DirtFish (Rally Racing)
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Summary
In this episode, Dan Martell shares the 8 business lessons he learned from his time at Dirtfish Rally School, a rally car racing school just outside of Seattle. In this video, he talks about the business lessons learned from hucking and hoping into corners, racing around the trees, and almost killing ourselves.
Transcript
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Hey there, Dan Martell here, serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator of SaaS Academy. In this
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video, we have a special edition coming from just outside Seattle here at Dirtfish Rally School.
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I'm going to share with you the eight business lessons learned, hucking and hoping into corners,
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racing around the trees, almost killing ourselves. And this is a two-part video. So in this video,
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I'll share the business lessons. And in the second video, I'm going to share a little something
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different but be sure to watch next week because at the end i'm going to include a snippet of our
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time and journey here at dirt fish so a few years ago i got an email from my buddy jason who runs a
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group called mastermind talks or mmt asking if i wanted to join him in a group to come rally car
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racing at Dirtfish and when I click the play button on the YouTube video to see
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what this place is about my brain exploded because I was like I can't
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believe this exists we're literally on acres of open terrains we've got
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buildings we've got tight turns into the trees and I'm here with a group of
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incredible entrepreneurs learning not only how to rally but in between
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sessions also talking about our business and and you know having fun and talking
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about opportunities and what I've learned the most what I want to share
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with you guys is in listening to the instructors
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and to keep the lines and to actually be smooth.
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And what I wanna share in this video are the eight things
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that I've taken away from racing that you can apply
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When it comes to racing and you're taking a turn, you're going to attack that turn.
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It's better to come in, get rid of some speed, and come in slow so that once you get lined up for your exit,
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you can power on, gas on, and just take off like a rocket ship out of that corner.
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And I think too often in business, there's a lot of opportunities where we see these things that could be huge,
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and we go all in. We charge hard. We're like committed, JFDI style.
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But what I think is a better approach that I've really learned on this track is the idea that I first got from Jim Collins who talks about, you know, shoot bullets, then a cannonball, right?
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If we're trying to aim towards a target, we want to take some shots with bullets and bullets, and we want to try to figure out where that bullet hits on the target.
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with the opportunity, we wanna fill up that cannonball
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And I feel like that, when I heard that saying,
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I was like, all right, this applies to business hardcore.
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And what you wanna do is kind of let the car get settled,
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then you can take that opportunity to build the speed.
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these opportunities to grow, you know, 30, 40, 50%.
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You know, one of my coaching clients, ClickFunnels,
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they went from zero to 100 million in five years.
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But in doing that, you have to measure the state of the business, the stability of the business.
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And one of the metrics that I teach my clients to measure is this thing called LER.
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And I got it from Greg Crabtree, the author of Simple Numbers.
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And it's this concept of the labor efficiency rate.
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Now, I'm not going to get into the math and the financial side of this.
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But the concept is that ratio will let you know how taxed your team is.
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In regards to new customers, new sales, you have so much amount of money that you put
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into labor. If that ratio gets out of whack, you're running too hot. The way I think about it, it's
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just like these cars, they're banging off the rev limiter and you need to slow it down, get the
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stability so that you can get that speed. Number three, model then modify. You know, one of my
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favorite conversations with was with one of the instructors, Nate, and asking him just about like,
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you know, people come to Dirtfish and I'm sure there's a lot of egos, very wealthy people come
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here that have huge car collections and feel like they're professional racers and have track
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experience but i'll tell you if you've been on asphalt going into that stuff into the trees
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completely different approach and what happens is people want to drive the way they want to drive
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they don't want to hear the input and what i really love about the instruction here at dirt
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fish is they say look just you know it's a progression do this try that do this try this
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i've been here this is my second time and the first time was very structured they walked us
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through kind of a learning path to get ourselves comfortable with the car in different terrains and
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different techniques now we are in the advanced group where we're cruising
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getting up to 80 miles an hour on these back straights and then taking these
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sharp turns into with some real serious consequence but what's awesome is that
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in this this time we've come now they said hey I want you guys to to be a
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little freer with the course I want you to experiment with the course I want you
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to maybe take a different line like feel get a feel for the vibe so a lot of
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times when we're building businesses we're learning from a coach where we've
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bought a course and you know they tell us to do something it's a recipe and we
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start mucking with it we start saying well that won't work in my industry so
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I'm gonna do a little different and what I've learned if you want to get the
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biggest results in your business you need to first commit to the strategy
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that you've been taught once you've gotten results and you've perfected that
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you've understood the science then you got the permission to modify to add a
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little artistic approach to make it your own but that's only after you've modeled
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the successful behavior. Number four, don't commit to chaos, lift to vision. This one here, I've been
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bitten so many times out there on the track. And it's really this concept that when you're driving
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and you do something wrong and you take a turn too fast or you're too late or whatever, and you just
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get really handsy, right? My instructor, Michelle said, hey, Dan, you know, calming down on the
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hands. That what you need to do is actually take a second to just breathe and reset. And how often
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if you found yourself and you're like something bad happens to you you know you wake up on in the
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morning you feel like you're gonna take over the world and by noon you find out that a key employee
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quits or a big deal just you know got lost or you know the hire you're trying to make decides to go
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to a different firm and you you feel this chaos in your business and what you need to do in those
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moments because people like well dan how do you deal with that how do you deal with i mean check
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this out like just the chaotic aspect of driving when you feel out of control and the answer is
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And that's what they taught us here at Dirtfish,
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that when we feel like the car in the moment is crazy,
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have a feel, like look to the next turn, get settled in.
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and then punch it hard to get that momentum going.
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you actually nail the turn, nail the follow-up turn.
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It's not making the money that's impressive to me,
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They had that success, they had the gas pedal down,
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And what I've learned to do is adapt at that new higher pace.
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okay, what are the things that I need around me
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How am I going to approach this turn if we're talking, you know, hucking ourselves around,
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praying, you know, pitching and praying ourselves into the corner here at Dirtfish, or we're
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getting to a new level of revenue and team size, what do we need to adapt to ensure that
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we continue that level of success and momentum?
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And maybe some of you guys are in that state, that position today where you've got success.
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I want you to take a second to step back and really ask yourself, what do you need to change
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that's different from before because you've got more momentum going into that next deal,
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those more hires. Maybe it's a cash flow thing that you've never had to worry about. All of a
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sudden now it becomes an issue. Adapt for success. Number six, be patient, set it, and wait. I will
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tell you this is my number one culprit out there when I'm taking turns. Sometimes you need to get
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the car into position, hit the gas, and make your turn and let the car do its job. And instead what
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I do sometimes is I get back on the gas too hard or I turn the wheel because I don't feel like I'm
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quite going to make the turn. And my instructors are always saying, Dan, set it and be patient,
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right? How often have you been working in your business and you've got maybe a new webinar
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funnel or some Facebook ads or a content marketing strategy or partnership process,
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and you just don't feel like it's getting the kind of momentum. And all of a sudden you go
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to an event or you hear from a friend, they have this other silver bullet, this shiny object,
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and you're going shallow and moving to the next thing.
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to not only know that you've got the right strategy,
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execute on it, and be patient with the strategy
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so that you go deep enough so that it generates the return.
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That's why this show is called the Growth Stacking Show,
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being patient, getting those returns and then adding the next stack of growth to your business
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and rinse and repeat as you build that velocity. Number seven, you can't look ahead if you are
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patting yourself on the back. Think about it. You just crushed it. You're like, yay, I'm so good.
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Yay. And then all of a sudden this next turn comes up. I mean, this is, this is, I see this
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all the time. You can see people as a spectator. We're watching them take the turn. They'll crush.
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I may have done this just now they'll crush the turn and then they'll be so excited that it worked
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out that they don't set themselves up for the next turn and then they give it all back they
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literally lose it I almost plowed into those tires right there and I was so disappointed because it
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took so much energy and flow just to get to that level and then you give it all back and I think
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too often we do that we celebrate somebody raises a round of funding yay congratulations yay I mean
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it's really hard to look ahead if you're you're too busy giving yourself a huge
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pat on the back I'm not saying don't celebrate I'm just saying celebrate
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recognize for what it is and get back to the play because you're still in the
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race you know many times I think of businesses running a marathon with
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sprints within you're not done running the marathon just because you had a good
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section so get back in the game stay focused get ready for that next
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obstacle and commit number eight you got to be chill to kill this is probably
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one of my favorite there's an instructor here named mitch and they call them mitch isms here
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at dirt fish and uh one of his one of the ones i like the most is he got to be chill to kill you
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know and the idea is that smooth is fast i think too often if we're thinking racing it's all about
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like aggressive and being full on and like you know being you know way outside of our comfort
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zone but really being tenacious regardless of you know how scared we are and what i've learned the
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fastest people around this track right now we're running like a eight minute lap and the way to do
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those times is to actually be chill to breathe and then if you do that if you chill and you commit
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that's how you kill and in your business there's moments where you just need to breathe and reset
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maybe this is going on for you right now where you're just struggling with some you know some
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team issues or some financial cash flow issues or you just don't really feel energized by the work
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you're doing, take a step back. Chill, chill. Take a chill pill. Relax. And through that, you're going
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to kill it in your business. You're going to stay in the game. You're going to push forward, build
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that momentum, and crush your business race. I just want to do a quick recap. One, in like a lamb,
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out like a lion. Number two, sacrifice speed for stability. Number three, model then modify.
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Number four, don't commit to chaos, lift to vision.
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