Dan Martell - May 09, 2022


Don't Listen to Your Parents if You Want to Be Successful


Episode Stats

Length

13 minutes

Words per Minute

196.65147

Word Count

2,631

Sentence Count

62

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 If you're the type of person that does a little bit of adventure, like you decide to go travel
00:00:04.200 some country by yourself, you'll notice that it just allows you to see the world in a different
00:00:09.200 light. Hey everybody, Dan here. Today I want to talk about the biggest decision I ever made in
00:00:26.800 my life. The one thing that I did at a young age that I think had the biggest impact long-term,
00:00:34.200 one of those exponential decisions, and that is my decision to move out west as a 20-year-old.
00:00:40.220 And I'll share with you the funny story because I was living in my hometown of Moncton, New
00:00:46.120 Brunswick, Canada, a small town on the east coast of New Brunswick up in Canada. And there was always
00:00:52.080 this desire to do more, to see more. And I just never felt like I was going to accomplish this
00:00:58.640 living in that town, even though like I've now come to realize there's multi-billion dollar
00:01:03.200 companies that have been built out of my little province in Canada. For whatever reason,
00:01:08.160 I always had a desire to move. And I ended up working at this one company. The only job I've
00:01:14.480 ever had, True Job, J-O-B, was working for this company, which at the time they were considered
00:01:20.720 the best company to work for. They're called OAO Technologies. And I was making $60,000 a year as a
00:01:27.360 20-year-old, which was a ton of money back then. I'm not that old, but it was a lot of money. It
00:01:32.240 was my first job. And literally, my dad thought like, wow, my son went from getting in trouble
00:01:39.360 with the law, drug addict, rehab, to teaching himself to code, getting a job, making 60 grand
00:01:46.080 a year and working at one of the top companies in town. And after nine months, I remember I decided
00:01:53.520 I got to get going. I got to move. And I quit my job. And I called my dad and I said, hey, dad,
00:01:59.040 I just got to let you know that I quit my job. And the phone just went silent.
00:02:06.560 And he just says, it's probably the worst decision you've ever made. Now, you got to remember,
00:02:13.200 like i came from getting in trouble going to jail all these things and i'm thinking really dad like
00:02:18.640 this is the thing out of all the stuff i've ever done growing up you're telling me you know lighting
00:02:23.360 off fireworks inside of the house all that you're saying this is the worst decision i ever made i
00:02:28.080 was like okay dad's just upset i'm still going i'm gonna make the move and it was scary because like
00:02:34.000 i really wanted my family support i really wanted people to support me and and even in spite of all
00:02:39.280 that quitting my job almost getting fired the next day that's for another day um i decided to pack up
00:02:45.280 my 1987 volkswagen jetta with all my belongings literally i i didn't have a whole lot so i packed
00:02:51.840 up my car and i left and what happened for me is there was a bunch of opportunities okay i was
00:02:56.800 moving out west i didn't even know what city i was going to land in but i had a bunch of different
00:03:00.560 job offers some in calgary some in vancouver but i just wanted to go to the big city i wanted to
00:03:05.440 move i wanted to be in the mountains and along the way you know i left new brunswick september 7 2001
00:03:13.120 and along the way september 11th happened and all of a sudden all the opportunities i'd ever had
00:03:19.440 just dried up and when i look back at that journey the struggles i went through i closed my line of
00:03:28.400 credit back home so that i was being financially prudent i'd saved you know five thousand dollars
00:03:34.800 none of that lasted very long and it was it was tough i literally was running out of money month
00:03:40.480 over month over month all the opportunities were gone there was no contract work there
00:03:45.440 was no employment opportunities there was nothing and there was one of the biggest blessings that
00:03:52.160 came out of the time that followed that that allowed me to capitalize and fund my company
00:03:58.800 spheric technologies. None of that would have happened if I didn't go through that process.
00:04:05.760 And I want to share with you the lessons that I learned that allowed that time of my life to be
00:04:12.160 one of the biggest blessings. The first one is the belief that the world rewards courageous decisions.
00:04:18.080 I truly believe that. I look at my life moving out west to all these things that have happened,
00:04:25.120 walking away from an earn-out when I was building my company, Flowtown, we exited that company,
00:04:28.880 and I eventually still got the earn-out. All these crazy things that I wanted to go build
00:04:32.960 this other company, Clarity, all happened because I was willing to make a courageous decision in
00:04:39.600 other people's minds. Even the fact when I moved out west, the first job I ended up getting was
00:04:44.880 company working as a contractor at Syncrude. Two things from that job that most people don't realize
00:04:50.800 is one, they weren't hiring full-time, so I had to become a contractor. So I started my
00:04:55.040 first nine, what was it? 987739 Alberta Limited. I forget what the corporate number was, but that
00:05:01.760 was the first company incorporation, even though I had Maritime Vacation and MB Host prior to that,
00:05:08.320 I never incorporated those businesses, right? I just like started them with my brother. I never,
00:05:13.440 you know, but this one 969735 Alberta Limited, right? Started. I don't like that. That made it
00:05:20.400 official. I had gotten an accountant. I started a business and I learned enterprise portals. I
00:05:25.840 learned plum tree software. I learned the technology, even though I had been taught it
00:05:30.480 prior. I got two years of experience working with some incredible people deploying at one of the top
00:05:35.360 oil companies in the world. And that experience laid the foundation for the business that became
00:05:42.080 Sphere Technologies, you know, three years later. And I would have never learned those things if I
00:05:47.520 didn't take that decision to try to find the courage to go against what my dad believed in
00:05:54.320 and everybody else and my friends to move out there with no expectations, no understanding
00:05:59.440 what my life was going to look like. And it was such an important lesson that's continued to play
00:06:03.760 out in my life. The other one is ask for help. I see every day people struggle in their lives,
00:06:10.160 and many of them, 95%, forget to ask for help. And I learned a lesson as a 20-year-old when I
00:06:16.400 moved out west when i ran out of money and i couldn't afford to pay rent anymore and i needed
00:06:21.280 a place to live i would reached out my buddy dan hansen let me sleep on his couch for weeks he let
00:06:26.000 me sleep on his couch i felt so embarrassed i had a great job i had money saved up i thought i was
00:06:32.400 making all the right financial decisions and here i was at a point where if i didn't have a place to
00:06:38.640 sleep you know and it kind of one of those things where you like hey man i'm in town can i stay at
00:06:42.560 your place yeah no problem i think he knew like i think he knew it was more than just a thursday
00:06:47.680 night place to sleep friday night it's the weekend now let's hang out he never kicked me out on monday
00:06:53.520 it turned into a few weeks like i'll never forget how generous he was to allow me the space to try
00:07:01.040 to like find opportunities and and that i think that's a big reason why today i've i've always
00:07:06.480 opened up my doors for everybody it's just part of who we are as a family it's what i do because
00:07:10.800 I always remember like I was that person back in the day and I just needed somebody to give me a
00:07:15.600 chance to give me more time to see if any of these crazy ideas would work out and and I just think
00:07:21.760 like the idea of asking for help a lot of people are scared too they're worried that the person's
00:07:27.120 going to say no they're worried that you know they're going to come off as a as a mooch or
00:07:31.920 you're going to come off as somebody that's taking advantage of the situation and what I've discovered
00:07:36.320 is that if you're a good person people want to help you I know that's true for me I mean a lot
00:07:40.480 of incredible people and i want to go out of my way to help them because i know that in their if
00:07:46.080 the roles were reversed they would do the same and those are the kind of people you want to support
00:07:49.600 so make sure you ask for help if you're struggling right now you're going through a tough time
00:07:53.840 and and you haven't leaned into some of your friends because you don't want to be a burden of
00:07:58.000 them or be troublesome i'm telling you you got to ask for help and then the last thing is that
00:08:04.320 adventure is rewarded here's what i mean by that it's one of our core values as a family okay
00:08:09.600 okay? Our core values, there's five of them, but one of them is adventure. And what I've realized
00:08:14.360 is that the more adventure I go on, the more adventure shows up. It's rewarded. It's almost
00:08:20.100 like an investment that compounds, right? And if you're the type of person that does a little bit
00:08:24.960 of adventure, like you decide to go travel some country by yourself, you'll notice that it just
00:08:30.580 allows you to see the world in a different light. And when I think of like moving out West and
00:08:35.780 building that knowledge then i went to australia and i spent almost a year by myself in australia
00:08:41.860 and then i decided to start a company and that was a crazy adventure and i built that and and
00:08:47.620 had an incredible outcome third time it took me three tries to finally be successful in business
00:08:52.660 and i exited that company and it transformed my life but then i moved to san francisco and i think
00:08:59.300 of like even the idea of like going from canada you know that canada to out west same country
00:09:05.860 pretty straightforward you know it sounds like a little thing today but like even moving from
00:09:11.700 new brunswick to san francisco i didn't know a soul i didn't have a friend i wasn't going anywhere
00:09:17.220 i i luckily had some money but it was it was lonely it was tough it was scary but again a
00:09:22.340 venture is rewarded and and i can and like to me when i look again my line this through line of my
00:09:28.260 life it continued to the point where like even in the last year deciding to take the family and
00:09:35.140 move our whole lives to the other part of the world right and just that decision to go on
00:09:41.460 adventure and see all of the incredible things that have come into my life from the businesses
00:09:46.740 i've started to the businesses i've invested in to the people i've met literally one of my good
00:09:52.980 buddies nico new friend in the last year asked me the other day he said who's who's one of the most
00:09:58.660 impactful people you met in the last year because he sees the group of people i've built in this
00:10:02.820 this new city in kelowna bc and i thought of it and like he's on that list nico's on that list
00:10:09.620 and there's a handful of others betty who who takes care of our house is on that list she's
00:10:14.980 an incredible soul and like literally i'm like reflecting back the people that had the biggest
00:10:19.940 impact on my life in the last 12 months people i didn't know 12 months prior and to me i just feel
00:10:25.300 like they've been part of my life forever but the only reason they showed up in my life is because
00:10:30.260 i was called to adventure and adventure is rewarded so anytime you know somebody asked me
00:10:36.100 to do something that feels a little kind of like outside of the norm i always have to give myself
00:10:39.540 a second kind of glance to my answer and ask like am i being adventurous it's again why it's one of
00:10:45.300 our core values as a family so i just want to share those because the philosophy i have around
00:10:52.580 making courageous decisions and asking for help and and that adventure is reward is the idea of
00:10:57.700 not listening to your parents and that might sound crazy maybe your parent i apologize if
00:11:01.700 this comes off the wrong way but the truth is is your love for your child will never give them the
00:11:09.700 freedom to make the decision that they probably should make because you don't want to see them
00:11:16.020 hurt. You don't want to see them stumble. You don't want to see them make a bad decision.
00:11:20.820 But what I believe in is we got to allow our children to take risk in a safe environment.
00:11:29.060 And what I've discovered for myself and for my kids is there's so many times where they're
00:11:35.220 behaving risky in a safe way that it's easy for me to want to stop it but i know i gotta let them
00:11:43.540 do it and if you have one of your kids come to you and and ask you if they should make a decision
00:11:52.180 that sounds on the surface kind of crazy for you because you didn't do it but i want you to ask
00:11:58.740 yourself like if the roles were reversed would i have wish i've done that in my life is that an
00:12:04.820 area of potential regret you know i know my family's from this town but like would wish
00:12:11.140 would i have wished that i at least tried or gone to explore more or whatever it is and make sure
00:12:16.980 that you give that guidance to your child because the truth is the reason i say don't listen to your
00:12:21.620 parents is because your parents don't want to see you hurt so you have to find mentors people have
00:12:25.140 done things in life to give you a completely different perspective because if you don't then
00:12:30.580 don't be surprised in 25 years if you wake up and you're living the same life your parents lived
00:12:34.660 because all the big decisions on where you should live what school you should go to etc were based
00:12:39.300 on their filter and they're giving you the advice that got them their outcomes and that's
00:12:45.060 that's the big idea not listening to your parents even though i love my dad and i love my mom and
00:12:49.700 And my dad is my hero and my mom is my best friend.
00:12:53.700 I also realized that one of the biggest moves I ever did in life
00:12:57.300 was not listening to them and following the call to adventure.
00:13:01.220 So I want to share that with you.
00:13:02.340 It's a big, important part of my life and the story and some big lessons
00:13:05.540 I've taken away from that.
00:13:06.380 I hope it might serve you in making those courageous decisions
00:13:10.700 because the world will reward you for it.
00:13:13.260 So I hope this finds you incredibly well.
00:13:15.940 And as per usual, I want to challenge you to live a bigger life
00:13:18.420 and a bigger business.
00:13:20.100 Both of those in parallel.
00:13:21.940 I'll see you next Monday.