Dan Martell - Brutal Life Lessons I Wish I Knew in My 20s

00:00:00.080 Everyone's always giving you advice on how to live your life.

00:00:03.140 And even though I know they mean well, 0.99

00:00:05.080 a lot of that advice can actually fuck you over. 0.96

00:00:07.800 I went to rehab and jail twice before turning 17, 0.96

00:00:10.900 and people had been giving me advice my whole life.

00:00:13.920 Since then, though,

00:00:14.760 I've built several multimillion-dollar companies,

00:00:17.180 a beautiful family,

00:00:18.440 and honestly, a life I didn't think was possible.

00:00:21.120 And some of the biggest lessons

00:00:22.520 came from questioning the advice

00:00:24.320 I'd also been told to follow.

00:00:26.280 These are nine popular pieces of advice

00:00:28.540 that I say are worth questioning and what to do instead,

00:00:31.740 starting with one that sounds pretty harmless.

00:00:34.280 Advice number one, follow your passion.

00:00:37.220 It sounds like a great way to choose a business.

00:00:39.500 So why should we ignore this advice?

00:00:41.700 I learned this the hard way.

00:00:42.960 I started two businesses,

00:00:44.520 a vacation rental site and a hosting company,

00:00:47.640 and both failed because I was focused on my passion

00:00:50.560 for being in a server room and configuring software.

00:00:52.800 I literally spent $10,000, I borrowed it from the bank,

00:00:55.860 me and my brother, to go sit in a server room

00:00:57.960 because I was nerding out on the kind of server I could buy

00:01:00.440 and the software I would run.

00:01:02.040 And then when I realized

00:01:03.120 that if I actually wanted to make money,

00:01:05.960 I couldn't focus on what I want to do.

00:01:07.880 I had to find a problem that people were already paying for

00:01:10.400 that was actually something they wanted.

00:01:12.540 Passion without market demand, that's just a hobby.

00:01:15.920 You know those people that get those train sets at home?

00:01:18.300 They ain't making any money off that train set.

00:01:20.700 The person sold them the trains.

00:01:22.340 They're the ones that got rich.

00:01:23.340 That person hopefully took a passion plus market demand

00:01:27.080 and sold people the trains.

00:01:29.180 So here's some warning signs

00:01:30.440 that you might be falling for this advice.

00:01:32.660 You talk more about the product than the pain

00:01:34.680 it actually helps solve.

00:01:36.360 You keep building without anyone paying for the results.

00:01:40.120 You just love to do it, I'll do it for free.

00:01:42.280 You don't have to pay me, I'm still learning,

00:01:44.300 I'm trying to build referrals, I'm building case studies.

00:01:46.940 When I see that, it's somebody

00:01:48.600 that doesn't wanna be challenged.

00:01:50.720 So when a young person comes to me and says,

00:01:52.580 I'm trying to figure out what I should do with my life,

00:01:54.760 I always say, these are the four questions you should ask.

00:01:57.600 One, what are you good at?

00:01:59.520 What do you feel naturally,

00:02:01.080 just inherently other people struggle with

00:02:02.760 that you're just good at?

00:02:03.900 Two, what do you love to do?

00:02:06.180 When you can allow yourself to fall in love with the work,

00:02:10.760 that's a really cool place.

00:02:12.560 Three, what does the world need?

00:02:15.160 What is the world saying?

00:02:16.900 Here's what I need.

00:02:17.860 Here are my problems.

00:02:18.900 Go on YouTube, go on social media.

00:02:20.780 People are pretty vocal about what they're pissed off about.

00:02:23.360 And then fourth, what do people already pay for?

00:02:25.940 Most people just focus on like, what do I love doing?

00:02:28.860 What is my passion?

00:02:29.940 And they ignore all the rest.

00:02:31.980 That's where the advice is worth questioning.

00:02:34.440 It's not that it's bad advice, it's just incomplete.

00:02:37.460 You've got to ask all four questions.

00:02:39.380 Now, the good news is you don't have to give up

00:02:41.280 on what you love.

00:02:42.100 You just got to find enough people

00:02:43.680 that we're willing to pay for it.

00:02:46.060 Advice number two, never give up.

00:02:48.720 But Dan, you're telling me I should give up?

00:02:51.180 Sometimes yes, let me explain.

00:02:53.040 never give up can make us feel like we should keep an approach long after it stops working

00:02:58.800 staying with something that's hurting you just to say you never quit makes no sense it's like one

00:03:05.540 time i saw this guy pitch on american inventor a board game he made and they ask him how much

00:03:10.040 money have you put into this board game he's like all my life savings how long have you been doing

00:03:13.680 it for he goes 27 years the one guy's like i'm gonna have to say no i'm sorry the other guy goes

00:03:19.080 i'm sorry i have to say no and he goes why bro you clearly did not see the writing on the wall

00:03:25.960 nobody's bought your game i'm telling you bullet ball is going to be a success the other challenge

00:03:32.200 is this philosophy of like sunk costs oftentimes when we put real time and money behind something

00:03:37.160 we have a desire to have it generate a return and we'll stay with it because we're 500 in or

00:03:42.440 $1,500 in or $50,000 in when the truth is sometimes we just have to cut our loss, do less

00:03:49.420 so that we can move. Here's some warning signs that I would encourage you to consider. If our

00:03:54.280 main reason for continuing is based on how much we've already spent, we keep getting the same

00:03:59.880 results, but refuse to change our approach. That's a warning sign. And then proving that we're right

00:04:05.820 to other people starts to matter way more than reaching the goal. Red flag. Here's what to do

00:04:11.260 instead. Just start with basics. Let's write down our goals so we have a clear understanding of

00:04:16.080 what we're doing. Then, knowing everything I know now, if I started over from scratch using first

00:04:20.700 principles, would I do it over again? Is there anything I would tweak? Then I look at my current

00:04:26.600 approach and ask myself, if I keep doing this versus this other thing, which one has the highest

00:04:31.700 possibility of succeeding? If this one isn't going to get me there, then I got to give up.

00:04:36.540 but again it's not giving up it's learning and choosing a different path to the goal that from

00:04:44.280 people giving you that advice they missed that part you're allowed to give something a real shot

00:04:49.780 and still decide to stop advice number three when you're stuck go harder dude i have a great story

00:04:57.820 for this one my brother pierre started a construction company when i asked him what he was

00:05:02.940 going to do in that world? He's like, Oh, we're going to do land development. We're going to build

00:05:07.140 houses. We're going to do leases. We're going to do renovations, multi-unit projects, all of it

00:05:11.860 to him. That was all construction. But then I told him, I was like, Hey man, you actually have like

00:05:17.380 four or five different businesses and you're just pretending that they're one. And what's crazy is

00:05:22.760 each one of them could be, if you focus a 10 million a year business, but running all four

00:05:28.660 or five will mean you will not have time to do any one great so my advice pick one go all in

00:05:36.260 give it all the focus you have today he's crushing it largest home builder in eastern canada nine

00:05:43.080 figure entrepreneur zero chance he gets there coming out of the gate trying to do everything

00:05:48.140 in a different way i see this other behavior that's similar happen all the time with people

00:05:52.740 when things get tough and they start missing numbers or things aren't working out they just

00:05:56.720 add more meetings and more to their calendar and they just add more. But what happens is your

00:06:01.600 attention gets split. That shower time, for me, the gym time, maybe driving to work, where you're

00:06:06.760 solving problems, instead of being like maniacally focused on one problem, you're scatterbrained.

00:06:13.180 A hose that's just pouring out water without direction, kind of just squirting all over the

00:06:17.780 place, doesn't have much power. That same water focused through a very small pin like a laser

00:06:25.120 can cut steel. That's the difference I'm talking about. So the point isn't when you're stuck to go

00:06:31.280 harder, it's actually to take a step back and cut things. Here's some warning signs that you can use

00:06:37.280 to self-evaluate. For example, do you keep starting projects, but the important ones never get

00:06:42.240 finished? The other one is, does your team have so many priorities, but nobody really knows what

00:06:47.060 comes first? Sequencing equals success. And if your team doesn't have priorities, then they don't have

00:06:52.120 direction or are you spending more time keeping track of the work than actually doing it that

00:06:57.320 one's a funny one i see more people take time to track something tend to just do it how about no

00:07:03.480 more to do just do so here's the thing i want you to take away from this it's called the commitment

00:07:08.200 cut you have to look at all your commitments okay and i'm talking everything that's coming up over

00:07:12.760 the next 90 days then circle the three that will have the most impact on your life to actually

00:07:18.920 achieve what you're trying to do. Now, look at that list of commitments. And I want you to circle

00:07:23.040 just one to stop. Easy. The thing that has the least impact. Now, give all the time from canceling

00:07:28.840 that commitment to the top three priorities. So now when you're stuck, it's not that you don't

00:07:33.720 go harder. You just do less to go harder on. And I get it. There's probably a lot of stuff that

00:07:39.220 you're like, but I got a team and departments and I have to keep things going. I'm worried that

00:07:43.060 things are going to fall apart if I stop. I get that you want to cut stuff. Here's what I want

00:07:46.860 offer you. I've built a whole scale your business workbook that helps you identify what's broken,

00:07:51.980 where you're still spending time, how to get your time back, and even how to delegate it to your

00:07:56.120 team. It's what I use to scale all my AI companies and my businesses, and I've been doing it for

00:08:01.040 years. So if you want it, just scan the QR code on the screen. It's absolutely free or click the

00:08:05.640 link in description and I'll send it over. Advice number four, listen to your loved ones. This one

00:08:10.380 breaks my heart. And you know what's crazy is I've done it to my own kids. The other day, one of my

00:08:15.220 sons came to my wife and I with a business plan now not his first business plan and what we've

00:08:20.760 seen is a bunch of other failed attempts over the last couple years so obviously we're like hey we

00:08:27.300 want to support you but you're also like not finishing what you start okay we're not talking

00:08:32.320 about the don't finish what you start I said earlier it's just literally you know shiny object

00:08:37.080 syndrome and we started being hypercritical around the idea not that the idea was bad but that we

00:08:42.440 didn't trust him. And after we had our conversation and he pitched his idea, my wife and I sat down

00:08:47.060 and talked about it together. I said, are we doing that thing that parents do where we don't want to

00:08:52.800 see them fail? So we are critical about the idea and put constraints around it. Any parent that's

00:08:58.640 had a kid, when you taught them to ride a bike, it is such a wild concept to eventually let go,

00:09:05.580 especially after you take the training wheels off. Cause you know, a hundred percent chance

00:09:09.520 they're going to fall you really want to give them good advice but at the same time you're scared

00:09:15.160 that they're going to hurt themselves so you keep them safe and it was interesting for me to catch

00:09:19.360 myself with my son because I went back to him and I said hey I don't want to discourage you from

00:09:24.180 doing this the reason I said these things is because of what I've seen in the past and I don't

00:09:28.660 know if you're going to win or not and I don't want you to stop that as long as you go into this

00:09:32.920 eyes wide open. The financial risk, the marketing risk, the effort. Bro, I'm here to support you.

00:09:39.920 Next morning, he comes back and he goes, I did more research. I decided not to do it. I didn't

00:09:44.360 tell him not to do it. I absolutely supported him. I wish every parent had that level of self

00:09:48.960 awareness because like even I almost did it. All that to say, it came from a place of deep love

00:09:54.700 for my kids. So listening to your parents and people that you love could be a completely failed

00:10:00.100 strategy, especially if the life you want for yourself is bigger than the one you've experienced

00:10:05.140 with them. Because if you listen to them, you'll get the exact same life they had. So if you want

00:10:10.580 something different and bigger, by definition, you can't ask the people that you love unless

00:10:16.100 they've achieved the thing you want. Which look, maybe in my son's case, in the business he wants

00:10:20.860 to start right now, that makes sense to come to me. But he might have aspirations that are way

00:10:25.160 bigger than mine. And in that moment, I would be a flawed person to come ask for advice. And

00:10:30.500 honestly, I probably will always be a flawed person because I've got skin in the game. I care

00:10:35.940 too much about his well-being to give him the YOLO advice I give strangers. So here's some

00:10:41.480 warning signs that you might be falling for this advice. You have a burning desire to play a big

00:10:47.060 game, but you're afraid that the people that are closest to you, what they'll think about it. And

00:10:52.100 the other one is that you keep hearing from people that you care about why it won't work

00:10:56.460 instead of why it could. So if that's what you're hearing, do this instead. Number one,

00:11:02.760 create your Mount Rushmore of advisors. Okay. I call this the power of opinion. Whose opinion

00:11:08.980 am I giving power to? I pick five people whose life I admire for different reasons too. It might

00:11:14.860 be business. It might be family. It might be risk-taking. It might be problem solving. The

00:11:18.680 key here is to make sure that those people have the receipts of doing the thing you want to do.

00:11:23.800 And it's kind of like asking myself the question, like, what would this person do? It's like, you

00:11:26.920 know, what would Jesus do? It's like, what would Jesse do? What would Elon do? What would Warren

00:11:31.660 do? Those are examples of people that I have on my advisory board. Some of them I know in person,

00:11:37.500 some of them I don't. Some of them I will eventually be good friends with. So here's the key

00:11:41.800 though. When you get that feedback, listen with affection because remind yourself they're saying

00:11:47.920 this because they don't want to see you hurt. They don't want to see you skin your knee.

00:11:52.320 But then go get advice from someone who's done it. Advice number five, always have a plan. This is

00:11:58.880 one that can be terrible advice. When I was 23, I decided to start a company and I had already

00:12:06.180 failed twice and I was on to my third company and I'm sitting there in a small basement apartment

00:12:11.260 and I had to buy software. It was called Business Plan Pro. And I sat down, I went through all the

00:12:16.600 prompts and did the answers. And I did all the work for it to create a plan, a business plan,

00:12:21.940 which I effectively have called now a guest plan. Because let me tell you, not only did it have a

00:12:27.800 perfect pro forma, a perfect marketing strategy, a perfect recruiting program, a perfect offer,

00:12:33.480 everything was in there. None of it ended up coming true. All the time that I took that 25

00:12:38.600 hours to write the business plan, to guess about the future, I might as well have just spent it

00:12:44.180 getting my first customer, hiring my first employee, doing work that I could have got paid for.

00:12:48.420 Instead, I just sat there because it felt safe. It felt right. One of my favorite quotes is by

00:12:53.240 Mike Tyson because he said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. You could

00:12:58.420 have the best plan, the perfect plan, and none of it matters until you talk to a customer. The

00:13:03.160 challenge is that most people that struggle with this, they think they have to make the perfect

00:13:07.020 decision. Instead of trying to make the right decision, how about make the decision, then make

00:13:12.780 right i actually start businesses with the assumption that i don't know what i'm doing

00:13:17.420 i don't know what's going to work i trust it will work i don't know what part's going to work

00:13:21.020 but what i believe to be true is anything to get feedback to learn to try is better than thinking

00:13:27.740 here's some warning signs that you might be falling for this advice the launch date keeps

00:13:31.900 changing not yet not yet not yet i've been following some founders that have been supposedly

00:13:37.340 launching for the last nine months haven't seen the product yet you go down a research rabbit hole

00:13:42.060 that ends up at nothing.

00:13:43.380 Like, oh, before I do this,

00:13:44.720 I have to study my competitors.

00:13:46.180 I gotta study the market.

00:13:47.220 And then you end up spending months with what?

00:13:50.700 No learning.

00:13:51.800 You've talked about your idea to everyone you know,

00:13:54.940 but no one has seen it.

00:13:56.380 You haven't asked them to be a customer.

00:13:58.100 You haven't gotten any money.

00:13:59.180 You're getting excited by talking about the idea,

00:14:02.120 but not them using the actual product.

00:14:04.480 So now that you understand the warning signs,

00:14:06.200 here's what we wanna do.

00:14:07.220 First off, we have to make it a non-negotiable.

00:14:09.860 non-negotiable to go and do something not think about something not build guest plans actually go

00:14:15.500 sell do create that is your next step two we have to give ourselves a deadline goals are just dreams

00:14:21.340 without a deadline third is we have to make sure that we have a reward for accomplishing something

00:14:25.900 and then stakes what are we trying to avoid if we don't you'll do 10 times more to avoid pain than

00:14:30.820 you will to gain pleasure and that is a powerful tool and for what it's worth stakes have to be

00:14:35.740 real stakes have to be painful the vacation you choose not to go on is not stakes the i can't work

00:14:42.300 at this company anymore i'm speaking to jen you guys might have seen that story before that's real

00:14:46.860 pressure those are stakes not going on a trip to bali that you weren't going on in the first place

00:14:52.300 whatever realizing you have to go find another job whoo that one's scary and then to really activate

00:14:58.300 it share the rewards and those stakes with other people so you have public accountability or what

00:15:03.500 like to call positive peer pressure if you post that on your facebook here's what i'm going to do

00:15:08.140 by this date and if you see me you should ask me about it and if i don't do it i'm committing to x

00:15:13.820 that is accountability and then my favorite thing which is written on top of my office door

00:15:19.660 is default action take a single action anything right now in this moment to move it forward

00:15:26.220 don't overthink it don't stop yourself just do something you don't need every answer before you

00:15:32.540 start you just have to take a small step that helps you find that next one advice number six

00:15:37.980 if you want it done right do it yourself i see this one almost all the time founders that think

00:15:44.300 that they need to do everything themselves they get involved they get involved in the marketing

00:15:48.380 and the sales they do everything and then they're complaining they're burning themselves out they

00:15:52.060 don't have enough time to do anything and they never stop to ask themselves hmm could i ask for

00:15:56.700 some help and this is the trap thinking that if i want it done right i have to do it as the author

00:16:03.340 of the book buy back your time i can promise you this isn't the right way to do things the idea of

00:16:09.260 do it yourself can turn you into the person where your whole team has to wait because you're stuck

00:16:14.620 you are the choke point in the process that is why it's called the bottleneck i believe that you add

00:16:20.300 value but there is a very specific way to do that and it's called standards because people don't buy

00:16:25.660 your presence they buy your standards when you're selling something even if it's you you're a coach

00:16:30.300 you're a consultant you're an expert and you think well i just sold them me no you sold them your

00:16:35.900 expertise you sold them your methodology you sold them the process the way you do it what you sold

00:16:41.100 them was your standard not your presence if you have a business you're gonna have to charge people

00:16:46.460 enough money to pay somebody else to do the work you're gonna have to train them they're gonna have

00:16:50.140 to follow your process empower them like give them the information give them the system give them the

00:16:55.100 process give them the dashboard say here's how we do this watch me do it you do it all of a sudden

00:16:59.660 now we've empowered we showed somebody and then they can go work with other people you have to

00:17:04.460 be the person that creates the standard creates the system trains against it but definitely not

00:17:09.420 the person that does it let me give you an example if i have a workflow that requires a sales call

00:17:14.780 to an onboarding conversation to working with somebody to follow up to billing to whatever it

00:17:20.380 is i break down that workflow there might only be the middle part that actually requires me which is

00:17:24.460 doing the work with the person the sales call somebody else the onboarding call somebody else

00:17:29.580 post follow-up somebody else the billing somebody else it really requires you to let go of the other

00:17:36.300 things to grow but to do it in a way where you've given them a checklist you've given them training

00:17:42.380 you've shown them how it's done right not so they can do it right so that they can't do it wrong

00:17:46.700 so give them the ownership empower them to take those steps on and then coach them to win and

00:17:52.140 And look, if you're someone who struggles with this, I got something huge.

00:17:56.020 I've been working on for two and a half years.

00:17:57.740 It's going to be the biggest thing that I've ever done in my career, specifically to support

00:18:02.960 those.

00:18:03.840 They know they have more to give, but they can't get rid of the work.

00:18:07.360 They can't let go to be able to grow their life, their business, their outcomes bigger.

00:18:11.940 Mark your calendars and come back November 2nd, because I'm going to be talking more

00:18:16.340 about it in a massive way.

00:18:18.120 So these are the warning signs I want you to look for that might be telling you that

00:18:21.820 you're falling prey to this advice. You're doing work that you're already paying somebody else

00:18:26.580 to own. Your team needs approval for every little decision because you can't let go. You say, hey,

00:18:32.660 next time you work on that, I need to approve this. And then the last one is you're constantly

00:18:36.160 covering out for your team, meaning you see somebody fall short and instead of working with

00:18:40.820 them, you do the work for them. And indirectly, what you're doing in that moment is you're teaching

00:18:44.740 them how to treat you, meaning that they learn if they just leave it there, you'll jump in and fix

00:18:49.020 it. So this is what I would encourage you to do instead. First off, there's a framework called

00:18:53.400 the camcorder method that is so powerful. I talked about it in my first book, but it continues to

00:18:58.540 come up because in the world of AI, you can literally do this, give it to your AI and it'll

00:19:03.660 do it for you. And essentially it's record yourself doing the work. Just pick one task that you

00:19:08.760 continuously do. It could be responding to questions in your email. It could be following

00:19:13.400 up to support tickets. It could be doing your financials. It could be doing marketing. It could

00:19:17.120 to be posting on social media. Record yourself doing the thing. I like to use Zoom, share your

00:19:21.560 screen, record it to the cloud, go through the actions of doing the work, talk out loud, talk

00:19:26.640 through it, make sure you're being very descriptive, and then give that recording to somebody else on

00:19:31.240 your team, or if that team is now virtual using AI agents, give it to an agent and say, hey, go

00:19:37.120 through this video step by step and turn it into a playbook. And guess what? If there's anything I

00:19:41.740 is? Could you also add that for me? The key is to talk in steps, principles, and frameworks. That way

00:19:48.000 the person gets to learn how you think, not just how you do. And that is a big distinction. Your

00:19:54.040 team isn't the problem. You just haven't been able to give them the tools that take things off your

00:19:59.120 plate in the proper way. Advice number seven, hustle harder. For the obsessed, for the people

00:20:04.920 that love the work, the people that are just like so into their craft, this one might be the hardest.

00:20:10.960 When I built my first company,

00:20:12.660 most people don't realize this,

00:20:13.780 but I was coming off two failures.

00:20:16.000 I was so worried that I was gonna fail again

00:20:18.100 that I just did the only thing I could do, which is work.

00:20:20.760 I was talking to customers on Sundays.

00:20:22.620 I was prepping interviews at six in the morning.

00:20:25.360 I was working with clients full-time.

00:20:27.180 For three years, I actually went on site

00:20:29.180 and deployed software and helped clients,

00:20:31.440 like actually did eight hours a day of real work.

00:20:33.920 Then outside of that, have to operate and scale a company.

00:20:37.340 And I was literally mapping in between meetings

00:20:39.780 because I was so exhausted.

00:20:41.940 I couldn't keep relationships.

00:20:43.400 I put on weight.

00:20:44.740 I was pushing so hard that I later got shingles. 1.00

00:20:48.000 My body essentially said, fuck you. 1.00

00:20:50.820 You think you're working hard like this 1.00

00:20:52.420 and I don't notice?

00:20:53.560 No, I notice.

00:20:54.780 What I learned later is that I needed to understand

00:20:57.180 how to protect my time

00:20:58.420 so that I had the time to take care of myself,

00:21:01.360 to have hobbies, to build relationships

00:21:03.440 so that I didn't keep creating problems

00:21:06.000 that I then got distracted about trying to resolve

00:21:08.620 in my personal life

00:21:09.680 because I was thinking I was doing the right thing

00:21:11.800 by working all the time.

00:21:12.800 And it turns out I'm happier after I take time for myself,

00:21:16.940 which means I'm a better person for my team,

00:21:19.040 which means I'm a better person throughout my day,

00:21:21.120 which means I can still work hard.

00:21:23.280 I just work more effectively

00:21:25.000 because I'm not trying to fix things

00:21:26.880 that have slid off and cracked.

00:21:28.340 I get that there are seasons where you hustle harder,

00:21:31.720 but we also need time to recover.

00:21:33.700 No different than after I did a full distance Ironman,

00:21:36.300 I wasn't waking up two days later to go do another one.

00:21:39.200 I had to take weeks, literally took me six, seven weeks

00:21:42.220 to recover my body, to not feel the fatigue

00:21:44.880 from that level of stress.

00:21:46.380 Works no different.

00:21:47.740 And when people say, hustle harder, hustle harder,

00:21:50.340 it can feel intoxicating.

00:21:52.060 But then I never stopped to ask myself,

00:21:54.100 when is the date where I'm going to pull back?

00:21:57.040 When am I gonna find a better way to work?

00:21:58.880 Because they exist, I just didn't force myself

00:22:01.280 to confront it.

00:22:02.120 So these are a few warning signs

00:22:03.340 that you might be doing this advice wrong.

00:22:05.780 First off, you check your messages

00:22:07.480 every time you're supposed to be out of the office.

00:22:09.400 The other one is you keep postponing sleep or exercise

00:22:12.200 or time with people you love.

00:22:14.020 And then I always look at, are you always in a bad mood?

00:22:16.560 Are you easily irritated?

00:22:18.180 Most times we lash out at people,

00:22:20.020 not because of the person, because we're mad at ourselves.

00:22:22.580 So here's how we fix this

00:22:23.820 so the bad advice doesn't impact you.

00:22:25.980 First off, block out time for your hobbies in your calendar.

00:22:28.960 On an annual basis, I have this rhythm of experiences

00:22:32.280 that I do every year.

00:22:33.540 A lot of these are rituals now

00:22:35.040 because I know going to do them lights me up.

00:22:37.880 These are activities that recharge my internal batteries.

00:22:40.360 I call them the three Fs.

00:22:41.420 They're fun, they're frequent, and they're with friends.

00:22:44.280 And at the end of the day,

00:22:45.120 you can have all the success in the world,

00:22:46.620 all the money in the world, all the cars in the world,

00:22:48.080 all of it, if you have nobody to share it with,

00:22:50.740 you'll be sad.

00:22:51.920 And then we gotta add them to our calendar.

00:22:54.100 Some people see my snowbiking trips

00:22:56.440 or my snowboard trips or my mountain biking trips

00:22:58.520 or my wake surf trips, and they go,

00:22:59.680 hey, I wanna come on that.

00:23:01.160 And I go, look, go create it for yourself.

00:23:03.060 Go grab two people, invite them to a thing

00:23:05.160 and start a ritual.

00:23:06.260 Something that you can do every year.

00:23:07.900 You and another person come together to do something

00:23:10.180 is considered a win.

00:23:11.780 Work hard when you need to,

00:23:13.000 just don't build a life where there's never time to recover.

00:23:15.780 Advice number eight, be yourself.

00:23:17.880 Could be the most dangerous thing ever,

00:23:20.460 especially if who you are isn't enough.

00:23:23.320 When I was 19, I didn't know what I needed to do.

00:23:25.660 And if I would have just kept being myself,

00:23:28.060 I can tell you what my life would look like today.

00:23:30.140 I would still be drinking.

00:23:31.440 I would still be smoking.

00:23:32.500 I would still be hanging out with people I shouldn't.

00:23:35.660 I would still be obnoxious.

00:23:37.520 The best parts of you, be that person.

00:23:40.040 The part that holds you back, that gets agitated,

00:23:42.660 that screams at people, that makes bad decisions, 1.00

00:23:44.840 that version of you has to die. 0.58

00:23:47.020 The reason why people have a hard time with change 0.99

00:23:49.000 is because they put labels on themselves.

00:23:51.960 I'm a night owl.

00:23:53.200 I am an extremist.

00:23:54.500 I am an introvert.

00:23:56.020 All of these things create an identity

00:23:58.320 that you have to live into, right?

00:23:59.860 You have a consistency bias.

00:24:01.240 because i've said this about myself i have to be consistent with it well what if the thing you want

00:24:07.080 exists on the other side of you becoming somebody more and you got to be honest with yourself that

00:24:12.280 right now if you wanted that and it's not in your life it's because you're not good enough yet even

00:24:18.120 in the idea of wanting more everybody i grew up with they were like why you want more why don't

00:24:23.160 you just settle i'm like that's just not for me and my gut tells me that's not for you so here's

00:24:27.960 are some warning signs that you might be falling to this advice you might be just saying things like

00:24:32.920 but that's just me and that ends pretty much every conversation when it's time for you to step up or

00:24:38.760 you keep slipping into the same situation reaction anytime you're tired you feel the pressure in the

00:24:43.960 noise and instead of stepping up to overcome it you go it's too much or you keep falling short on

00:24:49.720 your commitments other people or even to yourself confidence comes from keeping the commitments you

00:24:54.440 you can make to yourself in private.

00:24:55.800 And those are the most dangerous ones to break

00:24:58.040 because when you do that,

00:24:58.880 you break your belief in what's possible.

00:25:01.040 To fix this, we have to start with our habits.

00:25:03.480 And the best way to do that is either add or remove friction.

00:25:06.900 Essentially, we wanna make it easy to do the hard thing

00:25:10.340 and hard to do the easy thing.

00:25:12.460 So think about something, a habit that you'd like to change.

00:25:15.140 Maybe it's just wanting to go to the gym.

00:25:17.040 What is a way to make the hard thing

00:25:18.520 going to the gym really easy?

00:25:19.860 What I do, I put my clothes out the night before.

00:25:22.240 I commit to showing up there with a friend.

00:25:24.620 I pay a lot of money to train with somebody or for the gym.

00:25:28.520 I take a picture and post it online after I work out.

00:25:31.860 I made it easy for me to do the hard thing.

00:25:34.140 Whereas if you don't do that,

00:25:35.240 it's really easy to just lay in bed.

00:25:37.740 Nobody's gonna know.

00:25:38.980 It's so comfortable and warm, I get it.

00:25:40.860 I wanna stay in bed too some mornings.

00:25:42.560 But when I get up and I know that somebody's waiting for me

00:25:45.180 and they're gonna call me out if I don't show up,

00:25:47.340 that friction is enough to get me out of bed.

00:25:50.540 And on the other hand, if you wanna stop doing something,

00:25:52.600 you have to add friction.

00:25:53.920 So if you're like into playing a lot of video games,

00:25:55.980 how about you sell your console

00:25:57.520 and you can only play if you go to your friend's house?

00:25:59.340 Now that takes discipline.

00:26:00.640 And again, you're gonna have to go back

00:26:01.660 to make commitments in public to other people

00:26:03.260 so you have some positive peer pressure,

00:26:04.800 but that process works.

00:26:06.660 So the key is you gotta know your weak spots

00:26:08.540 and then plan for them so they don't take you out.

00:26:10.800 Advice number nine.

00:26:11.920 This one, I personally have the struggle with the most,

00:26:15.280 to never show weakness.

00:26:16.500 For 15 years after rehab,

00:26:19.260 after getting clean, after transforming my life,

00:26:22.880 I didn't share any of those challenges with anybody.

00:26:26.440 I didn't share them with my friends.

00:26:27.820 I didn't share them with my girlfriend at the time.

00:26:29.560 They eventually became my wife.

00:26:30.820 And then one day I was asked to give a talk

00:26:33.600 and informed that whoever gave the best talk

00:26:36.340 would get $25,000 to donate to the charity of their choice.

00:26:39.940 And that charity was Portage,

00:26:42.180 the rehab center that saved my life as a teenager.

00:26:44.440 And I knew that for me to win

00:26:47.140 or even having a chance to win,

00:26:48.540 I was going to have to share my personal story because talking about marketing or growth hacking

00:26:53.700 at that time was not going to cut it. And about an hour before I got on stage, I informed my

00:26:59.560 incredible wife that I needed her to stick around, that I was going to share something I'd never

00:27:04.300 shared before. And she'll probably have questions for me. And then she goes, OK, yeah, no, that works. 1.00

00:27:09.800 But I just want you to know that my parents are going to come watch you.

00:27:12.720 oh okay can you make sure they stick around too yeah why you'll see i went up there for 15 minutes

00:27:22.580 and broke down it was hard it was painful it was things i'd never shared before what shifted for

00:27:28.620 me was when i got off stage and not only did i have my mother-in-law who i always butted head

00:27:34.540 with come up to me and give me the biggest hug and finally says to me i understand you now and

00:27:41.700 tim ferris for our work week tim come up to me and say to me wow i had no idea after that moment i

00:27:49.460 realized personally i don't want to live a life where people don't know that about me i am who i

00:27:54.500 am because of what i went through and i'm really grateful for everything that i have so for you not

00:27:58.740 to know that part would feel dishonest for me showing that weakness or being vulnerable like

00:28:04.500 that for a lot of people they wouldn't realize that everything i have from my best-selling book

00:28:09.380 60 million followers on social media,

00:28:12.060 keynotes where I get paid six figures

00:28:13.920 to come and share my message.

00:28:15.160 All of those stem on the backside

00:28:17.860 of me being honest and vulnerable with my story.

00:28:21.080 The more personal the story,

00:28:22.820 the more universal the message.

00:28:24.380 And that's why I think it's resonated with so many people.

00:28:26.860 When you only share your wins,

00:28:29.220 people can't connect with that

00:28:31.740 because the struggles are what's relatable.

00:28:33.800 What you want is somebody that's gonna be honest with you

00:28:36.080 And then you feel to yourself, well, this person did it.

00:28:39.400 I should be able to do it.

00:28:40.680 Here's some warning signs that you might be falling prey to this bad advice.

00:28:43.620 You share the wins, but you hide everything hard that it took to get you here.

00:28:48.320 People don't actually know your biggest struggles that you've been through because you're ashamed of them.

00:28:53.460 Someone shares a struggle that you know well, but you act like you've never been there before.

00:28:58.060 And I get it.

00:28:58.780 It could require a lot to feel safe, to let another person that whatever they're going through, that you've been there.

00:29:06.080 Because you're worried they're going to weaponize it.

00:29:07.480 I get it.

00:29:07.960 It's scary.

00:29:08.900 But here's the deal.

00:29:09.920 This is what we got to do.

00:29:11.360 Just got to start with one person.

00:29:13.400 Pick one thing and just try it out.

00:29:16.120 Hey, man, can I share something with you?

00:29:18.000 Yeah, what's up?

00:29:18.820 A couple of weeks ago, man, I really struggled with something.

00:29:21.180 Here's what I went through and here's what I learned.

00:29:22.940 And this is where I'm at now.

00:29:23.900 I'm really good, but it still bugs me.

00:29:25.680 Can you just share that and watch them transform?

00:29:29.120 Because what happens is when you share something like those kind of stories or vulnerabilities publicly,

00:29:33.860 they feel like they know a secret and when people feel like they know a secret they feel like they

00:29:38.320 can trust you and then what you'll experience which has been the most beautiful thing it happens

00:29:42.380 to me dozens of times a day people come up to me and share things they've never shared with another

00:29:47.040 person because they believe it's safe when you go first and you're willing to share yourself with

00:29:53.440 the world don't be surprised if the whole world comes to see you win and look as someone who has

00:29:59.840 a lot of haters online still don't know why consider them confused fans the people who matter

00:30:04.900 most won't judge you and the ones who judge the most don't matter so remember there's a lot of

00:30:11.480 advice out there but most people giving us the advice they just mean well they just don't have

00:30:16.680 the full context and nor do you and it can literally be harmful advice so appreciate it

00:30:21.860 say thank you understand that it comes from a place hopefully of caring about you but then also

00:30:27.500 question the advice. Use it if it's helpful, but don't hear it blindly. So I want you to leave a

00:30:32.880 comment below and let me know what out of everything I shared with you do you feel is a piece of advice

00:30:38.860 that you thought this is how it is that you now realize maybe I got to question it more. And

00:30:44.100 remember, if you own a business and you want my free scale your business workbook, just scan the

00:30:48.280 QR code on screen or click the link below in the description and download it for free. Now next up,

00:30:53.300 if you want to learn the seven things that you need to upgrade once you make money,

00:30:57.080 Click here and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - October 07, 2026

Brutal Life Lessons I Wish I Knew in My 20s

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