Dan Martell - Become the ＂Ironman＂ of Business

00:00:00.080 Hey there, I'm Dan Martell,

00:00:01.080 serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.

00:00:03.360 In this episode, I'm gonna share with you

00:00:05.680 a story and philosophy,

00:00:07.760 and that is how Ironman, doing Ironman races,

00:00:12.080 made me a better business person.

00:00:13.600 And the truth is, is over the last few years,

00:00:16.080 triathlon and specifically Ironman distance races

00:00:20.240 have literally pushed me to a level.

00:00:22.560 And so many of you guys have asked me to share that journey

00:00:25.480 and my takeaways and kind of what are the new philosophies

00:00:29.600 and beliefs that I've adopted through that training process.

00:00:31.840 So that's what I would share with you.

00:00:33.160 Be sure to stay with the end

00:00:34.140 because the other question I get asked all the time

00:00:35.620 is what are my favorite business books?

00:00:37.640 I'm gonna tell you how to get access to the complete list

00:00:40.780 that I shared with my cousin

00:00:42.360 who was just starting off in business.

00:00:44.220 And I sat down and did the work

00:00:45.500 to write out all the different books

00:00:46.960 and why they were so important.

00:00:47.960 I wanna give you that as a gift, but let's get into it.

00:00:59.600 So my journey to Ironman wasn't like I woke up one day

00:01:06.740 or I put it on my vision board and I was like,

00:01:08.720 I wanna do an Ironman.

00:01:09.780 It was literally a reluctant journey.

00:01:12.940 You know, for me, I always judged people

00:01:16.220 wearing spandex on road bikes.

00:01:17.960 Don't get mad at me.

00:01:19.340 I apologize.

00:01:20.580 I'm one of those people now,

00:01:21.860 but there was just something about me growing up

00:01:23.820 as a skateboarder and a snowboarder

00:01:25.260 that anytime I saw grown men riding around

00:01:28.620 in in spandex I just thought that's weird I'm not that's that's not me I don't I okay maybe

00:01:34.140 they're having fun um and and so much so that I didn't even want a road bike until I was in my

00:01:40.320 30s like I literally was I'd ran I always ran I was like you know I ran marathons and you know

00:01:46.280 I'd run 5k 10k with friends and it was kind of my thing if I go to New City I'd ask you know who's

00:01:50.860 interested in going for a run it was a great way to see the city but I wasn't into biking and I

00:01:55.020 couldn't swim okay so like none of those things even my best friend nick always had it on his

00:02:00.040 vision board someday he just wrote kona iron man like you gotta understand we are not fit we we

00:02:05.560 never done anything long distance this is like such a crazy thing for even him to say i remember

00:02:10.980 hearing him saying that going like that's nuts like does he realize how much work would be

00:02:16.000 required and i mean i'm looking at this guy he's not the healthiest looking dude at the time and

00:02:20.360 but yeah he just kept saying like that's my you know maybe when i have more time maybe when

00:02:24.540 you know, the business gets to a certain level,

00:02:26.340 maybe when the kids are a little older,

00:02:27.640 like this will be a thing.

00:02:28.940 And what happened was is we ended up going for a run one day.

00:02:33.760 And one of my buddies, Jarrett says, you know,

00:02:35.280 you should really get a road bike.

00:02:36.280 I just bought a bike, Nick's got a bike.

00:02:38.340 And I was like, oh man.

00:02:40.080 And his neighbor, Tim was selling his bike.

00:02:42.640 So I said, well, whatever Tim wants, I'll just,

00:02:45.280 is Tim's bike good enough?

00:02:46.380 He's like, yeah.

00:02:47.220 I was like, cool, I'll just buy Tim's bike.

00:02:49.220 Literally the first time I ever showed up,

00:02:51.080 I'm wearing like workout shorts and a t-shirt helmet

00:02:55.320 on a road bike, you know, position.

00:02:59.080 And they're all like in their shorts and whatever outfits.

00:03:02.340 And we go for a 20K bike ride.

00:03:04.260 And it was actually a lot of fun.

00:03:05.960 It was just sunny outside, early morning,

00:03:08.500 cool roly poly type of hills.

00:03:10.600 And then after the bike ride, we ended up doing a 5K run.

00:03:13.920 And on the run, Jared says to me,

00:03:15.380 hey, if we did a, I think it was like a 650 meter swim,

00:03:20.380 right not far you know now it's crazy i say that today incredibly far for me at the time

00:03:27.280 i shouldn't even said that this is this is the whole philosophy of this this content is you know

00:03:32.160 sometimes things you do just seem so small at the time but anyway 650 felt like forever i was like

00:03:36.860 that's almost a kilometer i haven't even swam 10 meters how would i do that and um and there was a

00:03:42.560 race coming up a sprint triathlon and uh we committed to it and i remember we went a few

00:03:48.060 two days later, we went into the pool

00:03:49.820 and Nick swam to the other end.

00:03:51.520 He had to stop, hold himself on the ledge,

00:03:53.360 then swam back, we're talking 50 meters.

00:03:55.640 I swam, I think four times.

00:03:57.140 I was like, how many times do we need to swim

00:03:59.400 to equivalent to sprint triathlons?

00:04:00.700 And it was like, I don't know, 16 or something like that.

00:04:03.780 And I was like, holy moly, we're gonna drown.

00:04:06.320 This was an open water ocean swim, okay?

00:04:08.920 It wasn't a pool swim.

00:04:11.040 But we had, I think, five weeks to figure it out.

00:04:13.520 We bought the books, we watched the YouTube videos,

00:04:15.360 and that started the journey.

00:04:16.620 We did that race, then we did a second sprint.

00:04:19.560 And then it was the year later,

00:04:20.680 we decided to do our first half distance Ironman.

00:04:23.960 COVID happens, all the races get canceled

00:04:27.240 and we decided to keep doing it.

00:04:28.580 We hire a crew, we hired a race team.

00:04:31.160 We told Ironman we were doing this.

00:04:32.580 They actually were like super supportive.

00:04:33.940 They sent us a whole bag of swag and we did the race.

00:04:37.080 There was five of us.

00:04:38.000 We did our own unsupported, unofficial,

00:04:40.940 we called it Corona man race.

00:04:43.380 And then as soon as we were done,

00:04:45.240 couldn't even enjoy it for 10 seconds.

00:04:48.520 Our coach says, next year we're doing a full distance.

00:04:50.920 So we did a 70.3, next year we're doing a 140.6.

00:04:54.420 Just so y'all know, a 140.6 is 3,800 meter swim,

00:04:59.260 3.8 kilometers, 180 kilometer bike ride,

00:05:02.300 and then a full marathon, 42.2 kilometer marathon,

00:05:08.480 back to back.

00:05:09.980 And it was crazy, just training and training and training.

00:05:14.220 And then I crashed on my bike, I got hit by a car,

00:05:18.220 I cut my wheel, my heel open.

00:05:20.260 I'm actually gonna slice in the video of that whole journey

00:05:22.760 just so you guys can get a sense of what I went through

00:05:24.820 last year and that whole journey.

00:05:26.080 Cause it's gonna share,

00:05:27.240 these are the lessons I took from that moment.

00:05:29.740 And we ended up doing the race 0.99

00:05:31.900 and I finished 12 hours, 12 minutes.

00:05:34.700 It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

00:05:37.900 And I'm doing it again this year.

00:05:39.620 And there's just something about it

00:05:41.640 that I wanna share with all of you guys

00:05:43.400 to hopefully inspire you.

00:05:44.240 It doesn't matter if you're just getting off your couch,

00:05:46.920 trying to do your first 5K,

00:05:48.200 or you're just trying to get back to the gym,

00:05:49.520 or you're rehabbing an injury, or whatever it is.

00:05:51.800 Wherever you're at, I wanna encourage you to do something.

00:05:54.860 Sweat a little bit every day.

00:05:57.760 Every day that will build momentum.

00:05:59.520 But here's some of the big takeaways for me.

00:06:02.240 Number one is work ahead of the big moment.

00:06:04.860 So what do I mean by that?

00:06:06.300 The thing that I found most fascinating

00:06:08.120 with triathlon racing and racing in general

00:06:10.720 is by the time the race comes,

00:06:13.460 all of the hard work was already done.

00:06:16.320 There's nothing left to do other than race. 0.92

00:06:20.140 So a lot of people think like,

00:06:21.640 okay, I gotta get ready for this moment

00:06:23.480 and in that moment, I'm gonna like,

00:06:25.120 and that's gonna be the thing.

00:06:26.480 But the truth is, is if you train properly,

00:06:28.840 all the hard work, the heavy lifting,

00:06:31.160 that'll happen before the training camps,

00:06:33.400 the big weekends, literally like,

00:06:35.740 I pretty much did equivalent in a four day weekend,

00:06:39.680 double the amount of volume for the race, right?

00:06:43.100 Just like, but not all at the same time, right?

00:06:45.860 Let your body recover, do some more volume,

00:06:48.800 you know, push your muscles, push your endurance,

00:06:50.740 work different parts of your energy systems.

00:06:53.460 And it's so cool to know that you prep for the moment.

00:06:59.460 And I think in business,

00:07:00.920 this is what I have to remind my team,

00:07:02.840 this is what I remind all my coaching clients,

00:07:04.480 is the work you're doing today is getting you ready

00:07:08.340 to be the person who can deal

00:07:09.880 with the next set of challenges.

00:07:11.640 You don't realize it, whatever's going on today,

00:07:14.520 it's the sharpening the saw, it's designing the process,

00:07:17.160 it's hiring the right people,

00:07:18.400 it's being fiscally responsible,

00:07:20.320 it's crafting your campaigns,

00:07:22.020 it's all the things you're doing today.

00:07:23.820 All of that is getting you ready

00:07:26.380 to be able to take advantage of the opportunity

00:07:29.280 when it shows up.

00:07:30.380 When race day happens, all the work was done, 1.00

00:07:34.020 I've got one job today and that's to race. 0.99

00:07:36.180 It's just to focus and smile.

00:07:38.500 That is one of my favorite things my coach said to me.

00:07:40.320 He said, smile, smile, smile.

00:07:42.420 He says, I don't have the data to prove it,

00:07:43.720 but I'm pretty sure it's gonna make you faster.

00:07:45.420 And he's right.

00:07:46.660 At minimum, I get everybody else smiling.

00:07:49.020 I smile at every person I'm going by

00:07:51.020 and we're gonna have some fun.

00:07:52.660 Race day's here, don't have to stress.

00:07:55.040 All the heavy work was done.

00:07:56.180 It's gonna be what it's gonna be.

00:07:57.240 And in business, it's the exact same thing.

00:07:59.340 So when you're going through stuff,

00:08:00.580 when you're doing the work,

00:08:01.500 when you're putting in the reps in your business,

00:08:03.560 just know it's because you're getting ready for the moment

00:08:05.920 when you're gonna be needed.

00:08:07.600 Number two, 360 review.

00:08:10.120 So one of the things that's unique I think to triathlon

00:08:12.620 and maybe there's like decathlons and other stuff

00:08:14.720 is the multiple disciplines.

00:08:16.860 And what I love about the multiple disciplines,

00:08:18.700 it's not even the bike swimming and running.

00:08:20.640 And for me swimming, learning to swim,

00:08:22.880 I just recently did a cross lake swim

00:08:26.320 and it was 4,200 meters, the longest swim I've ever done

00:08:29.680 lake, like across the lake that I live on.

00:08:31.840 I just like kept looking at it and go someday

00:08:33.440 I'm gonna cross this lake and I did it.

00:08:35.720 So not only is it the disciplines,

00:08:38.060 but it's also the other parts of it.

00:08:39.840 It's the recovery, it's the hydration, it's the fueling.

00:08:42.920 And when you start doing these longer distance triathlon,

00:08:46.720 you realize it's not just that one discipline,

00:08:49.080 it's everything around it, it's the 360 review.

00:08:51.880 It's where do you have a deficit

00:08:53.800 because your ability to perform

00:08:55.580 is gonna be directly correlated to your weakest deficit.

00:08:59.400 So if you wanna have a great Ironman time,

00:09:01.440 but you can't swim very strong, you gotta work on your swim.

00:09:03.800 If you can't run very good, you gotta work on your run.

00:09:05.620 If you have a weak bike, you gotta work on your bike.

00:09:07.660 That's gonna have such an impact.

00:09:08.840 Some people, it's transition time.

00:09:10.720 Some people is they don't know to hydrate properly.

00:09:13.380 You know, a lot of people see these, you know, finishes

00:09:16.320 where you have an athlete at the end of the race

00:09:18.180 and they're just wobbling and breaking down

00:09:20.000 and some of them fall to the ground.

00:09:21.100 Some of them fall to the ground

00:09:22.020 right before the finish line and they don't finish

00:09:24.440 and then they get passed by everybody.

00:09:26.060 And people go, oh my gosh, that must have been so hard.

00:09:28.680 He like suffered so much.

00:09:30.860 But the truth is, is it could have just been

00:09:32.820 a fuel or hydration problem.

00:09:34.100 meaning that back when he started, he felt so good,

00:09:38.120 he didn't consume enough calories,

00:09:40.160 he didn't drink enough water,

00:09:41.560 he didn't bring in enough electrolytes.

00:09:43.600 And what happens is the human body

00:09:45.540 can't replenish those things.

00:09:47.540 You burn, for me, 800 calories an hour,

00:09:50.940 my body can only consume 400.

00:09:53.620 So if I forget to fuel,

00:09:56.100 if I forget to take in the electrolytes,

00:09:57.900 it's very hard for my GI system,

00:10:00.660 my digestive system to make up for it,

00:10:03.340 and then it compounds, especially when you start looking

00:10:05.620 at these 10, 12, 13, 14 hour races,

00:10:08.860 you can't make it up and that's what happens.

00:10:10.880 Just like in business, if you neglect the code base,

00:10:14.460 if you neglect your marketing, if you neglect the culture,

00:10:17.060 if you neglect the marketing system, all these things,

00:10:21.360 your sales culture, your sales training,

00:10:23.580 if you neglect these 360 area of your business,

00:10:27.600 then you're gonna wake up one day and have a major fault,

00:10:30.340 a major problem in that area of the business,

00:10:32.760 And it's gonna hurt.

00:10:34.520 It's gonna cause you a setback.

00:10:36.140 Hopefully it doesn't take you out of the race,

00:10:38.400 but it's gonna require you to stop, reassess, regroup,

00:10:41.920 fix the problem, fix the weakness

00:10:43.820 so that you can keep driving forward.

00:10:46.040 And that's what I love about triathlon, the 360 review.

00:10:50.420 Number three, mental toughness.

00:10:52.460 I think anybody that even just considers

00:10:55.200 or attempts to do anything like an Ironman,

00:10:58.380 and honestly, any physical endurance,

00:11:00.940 they'll quickly realize that the work is up here.

00:11:04.480 It's the real estate in between the ears

00:11:06.060 that's the most valuable.

00:11:07.700 I've known friends that are incredibly talented athletes,

00:11:11.520 but the mental game gets to them.

00:11:13.700 Their ability to push themselves past

00:11:16.340 what they believe their body can do

00:11:19.100 is what stops them from performing

00:11:20.720 and getting beat by other people

00:11:22.160 that have a stronger mental fortitude.

00:11:24.780 One of the quotes amongst many that I look to

00:11:28.100 is that we wanna do hard things

00:11:30.500 until hard things become easy, right?

00:11:33.040 That's why I said earlier, and I kind of stopped myself

00:11:35.040 because 650 meter swim at the time

00:11:37.560 felt like forever distance, like that's crazy.

00:11:40.740 Now, that's like not even,

00:11:42.840 that's kind of a warmup when I go to the pool, right?

00:11:45.140 And it's just, again, do hard things

00:11:47.080 until hard things become easy.

00:11:49.320 But more importantly, especially as it comes to business,

00:11:53.100 is in business, we want to create challenges on ourselves,

00:11:58.260 not through the business.

00:11:59.160 The business will do that automatically

00:12:00.900 because we wanna become stronger, right?

00:12:03.260 And there's this great philosophy that hard times

00:12:07.320 create strong men, strong men create good times,

00:12:10.380 good times create weak men, weak men create hard times.

00:12:14.340 And if you want to push yourself,

00:12:16.980 you wanna create something special in the world,

00:12:19.900 you wanna build this empire, okay?

00:12:22.280 You wanna shine your light as bright as possible.

00:12:25.900 You're gonna have to do hard things

00:12:28.480 because doing those hard things will make you stronger.

00:12:31.640 Steel sharpens steel.

00:12:33.560 You know, no pressure, no diamonds.

00:12:35.880 And when I was doing that race,

00:12:38.360 the full distance Ironman, okay?

00:12:40.780 And I'm on the marathon portion of this

00:12:42.900 and it's 100 Fahrenheit outside, okay?

00:12:45.280 30 something Celsius.

00:12:47.500 And we're literally going aid station to aid stations,

00:12:50.600 putting ice on us, making sure we don't dehydrate,

00:12:52.440 making sure we don't pass out from the heat.

00:12:54.520 And it's like the last 13 kilometers,

00:12:57.240 I mean, it was crazy.

00:13:00.960 And what I had to go to,

00:13:02.840 where I learned there was another gear for me

00:13:04.560 that I've used in my business since then,

00:13:06.940 is the big bag of whys.

00:13:09.540 The big bag of whys, 0.99

00:13:10.980 and I just kept thinking this to myself,

00:13:12.420 because I knew if I had to go to that dark place

00:13:15.660 where it got that tough, the pain cave,

00:13:18.320 that I needed a why that was gonna pull me forward.

00:13:22.080 And what I did is I made a list of every person

00:13:26.000 that ever passed away in my life.

00:13:29.280 From my friend Mandy, to my buddy Kevin,

00:13:31.300 to my uncle Daniel, to Scott, to all these people

00:13:37.080 that I knew regardless of how much pain I was in

00:13:41.200 in that moment, that their family or themselves

00:13:43.500 would trade spaces with me without a question.

00:13:46.720 and I just ran for them I kept lifting my feet for them

00:13:51.400 I just kept going I literally would cycle through the big bag of wise

00:13:56.740 I just go I'm doing this for you I'm doing this for you

00:14:00.520 I'm doing this for you I'm not gonna walk I'm not gonna walk I'm just gonna

00:14:03.580 keep going

00:14:04.300 and that pulled me through and I've used this so many times in my business

00:14:10.260 you know I have a whole list I have a note file that's got all these reasons

00:14:14.260 why I do what I do so that when it gets tough,

00:14:16.500 when it gets challenging, I go to that list

00:14:18.960 and I remind myself the why.

00:14:21.640 Because if you're so focused and you're in the forest

00:14:24.360 and you don't step back to look,

00:14:26.000 or you're in the trees and you don't step back

00:14:27.380 to look at the forest,

00:14:28.420 you might forget why you started in the first place.

00:14:31.240 And then you make it all about yourself

00:14:32.520 and you get super self-centered and you spiral down.

00:14:34.500 I wanna encourage you to make it about other people.

00:14:37.060 Look externally to you.

00:14:38.880 And when your business life gets tough,

00:14:41.240 go to your big bag of whys.

00:14:44.000 That's what I wanna invite you to do

00:14:45.400 and that to me will be a game changer for you.

00:14:48.740 So quick recap, three big lessons

00:14:51.100 on how Ironman made me a better entrepreneur.

00:14:54.180 Number one is work ahead of the big moment.

00:14:56.480 When the race happens, all the heavy lifting is done.

00:14:58.760 Number two, 360 review, look for your weak spot and fix them.

00:15:02.360 Number three, your mental toughness side of it,

00:15:05.180 look for your big bag of whys.

00:15:06.840 As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,

00:15:08.400 I wanna share with you my number one resource,

00:15:11.020 my top 25 entrepreneurial books, hand-picked, selected.

00:15:14.860 I actually originally designed this for my cousin.

00:15:17.860 He was a young entrepreneur, 17 years old,

00:15:19.860 starting a business, he asked me what book should I read?

00:15:22.600 And I was like, one book?

00:15:24.000 There's so many.

00:15:25.300 So I literally sat there on a flight,

00:15:26.900 two hours of just like collecting all my thoughts

00:15:29.080 and putting down why I think this book

00:15:31.000 in this order, in this sequence,

00:15:32.180 and I put it in my category and it's my gift to you.

00:15:34.640 So click the link below to download your copy

00:15:37.240 of my top entrepreneurial books.

00:15:39.320 And as per usual, I want to challenge you to live a bigger life and a bigger business.

00:15:43.800 And I'll see you next week.

Dan Martell - August 15, 2022

Become the ＂Ironman＂ of Business

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