Dan Martell - December 05, 2016


How To Get Up When You’ve Been Kicked Down


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

208.64662

Word count

1,665

Sentence count

68


Summary

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

How do you deal with major, major challenges in your business? In this episode, I talk about how I dealt with a major setback in my business and how I was able to bounce back and pivot around it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Do you want me to record that again?
00:00:01.820 Yeah, you didn't hit record?
00:00:05.340 How do you deal with major, I'm talking major,
00:00:15.700 huge challenges in your business?
00:00:17.860 You know, as an entrepreneur, if you can overcome
00:00:20.160 those what seem like insurmountable challenges,
00:00:23.340 if you can always have that confidence,
00:00:25.280 and if you can be the leader that people turn to
00:00:28.100 when things go bad and they're not scared
00:00:30.280 to share that with you, it can create
00:00:31.860 an incredible opportunity for you and your company.
00:00:34.460 Most people shy away.
00:00:36.340 Most people fail because they didn't decide
00:00:38.600 to step up to the plate.
00:00:40.060 And I get it, man, it's tough.
00:00:41.480 Sometimes you just feel like, man,
00:00:43.160 you'd rather sit at home, go into your bedroom,
00:00:46.160 hide under the covers, and watch three days of Netflix.
00:00:48.580 I get it, it happens sometimes.
00:00:50.300 But what I wanna share with you guys is
00:00:51.520 when those moments come up, and for me,
00:00:54.060 it was really when I was building Flowtown
00:00:56.120 and we were meeting with VCs
00:00:57.620 and we're having these conversations
00:00:59.160 and one day we show up to an investor meeting
00:01:01.380 and on the cover of the New York Times
00:01:03.120 there was an article about Facebook privacy issues
00:01:06.280 and somebody did this whole expose
00:01:08.760 around really nefarious companies, gaming companies,
00:01:12.420 using Facebook data to do privacy hacks on customers.
00:01:17.300 Now we were not doing that but our product,
00:01:19.460 Flowtout at the time, was tied to the Facebook API
00:01:23.240 and essentially this article was arguing
00:01:25.240 that Facebook's need to change their API
00:01:26.920 to make it compliant and fix this privacy issue.
00:01:30.360 And we go into the meeting with the investor
00:01:31.900 and as soon as we talk about our product and what we do,
00:01:34.460 the investor goes, hey, that Facebook article
00:01:36.900 in the New York Times, does that affect you guys?
00:01:38.560 And we were like, no, no, it doesn't affect us at all.
00:01:41.040 Little did we know, that afternoon we got an email
00:01:43.360 from Facebook directly saying that the API calls
00:01:45.980 that we were using within two months
00:01:47.540 were gonna be discontinued,
00:01:48.680 which essentially made our whole product go to zero.
00:01:50.780 It was one of the biggest blows I've ever had in my business.
00:01:55.740 and what I wanna share with you guys today
00:01:57.760 is how in really a six week period,
00:02:01.100 we re-transformed the whole company,
00:02:03.500 built a new product, tested it with the market,
00:02:05.620 leveraged our assets, grew out of it,
00:02:07.620 and eventually got acquired 11 months later
00:02:10.300 in a completely different market
00:02:12.620 because we understood how to deal with adversity,
00:02:15.680 deal with challenges in your business
00:02:17.080 and not just be fearful.
00:02:19.440 Now here's the truth, is from day one
00:02:21.380 when these moments happen,
00:02:22.580 you gotta give yourself permission to feel that.
00:02:24.900 but you have to set a time in the near future.
00:02:27.160 Maybe it's the next day at 6 p.m.,
00:02:29.040 maybe it's that afternoon at 2 p.m.
00:02:31.000 You need to set a time and a day
00:02:32.680 where you're gonna execute on the strategy
00:02:34.340 I'm gonna share with you first.
00:02:35.380 Number one is you need to own it, okay?
00:02:37.520 You can't pretend like this isn't happening.
00:02:39.840 When we saw that, we could have said,
00:02:41.420 well, maybe it won't affect us.
00:02:42.720 Maybe Facebook won't change their terms of service as quick.
00:02:45.980 Maybe we can figure out a way to get around it.
00:02:49.360 And the truth was is we knew better and we just owned it
00:02:52.460 and we were smart enough to talk to people
00:02:54.420 that had been in our position before
00:02:55.920 and we didn't mess around.
00:02:56.920 Number one is you gotta own it.
00:02:58.420 Number two is you gotta really stop
00:03:00.620 and assess where you're at.
00:03:01.800 Too many entrepreneurs are like,
00:03:02.920 challenge, move forward, overcome it, solution, boom.
00:03:06.260 But they don't ever just take a moment
00:03:07.660 to stop and breathe and say,
00:03:09.460 what does this really mean for the company?
00:03:11.300 What are our options at the moment?
00:03:13.040 How could we go down these different paths
00:03:15.040 and kind of evaluate how they could turn out?
00:03:17.880 And I think that moment is really critical.
00:03:20.520 As much as I love people that JFDI, I get it.
00:03:23.080 We wanna take action.
00:03:24.020 we wanna execute, you really need to stop and really assess.
00:03:27.520 Number three is to reach out to people that have been there,
00:03:31.100 mentors, advisors, folks that could help you get through
00:03:35.260 those challenging moments because getting that perspective
00:03:38.260 is critical.
00:03:39.040 Having advisors, mentors, peers that you can turn to
00:03:42.800 when really you get kicked in the stomach
00:03:46.040 and be able to say, you know what,
00:03:47.380 here's what I did in those moments and here is the first,
00:03:50.180 second, and third priority that we looked at
00:03:52.480 and here's how it ended up for our company.
00:03:54.520 Having those people to guide you is just invaluable.
00:03:57.980 So really reaching out is number three.
00:03:59.980 Four is to make sure that you make a list.
00:04:02.080 This list includes both things you can control
00:04:05.480 and things you can't.
00:04:06.780 Because it is very tough for you to kind of
00:04:09.580 action, set actions and priorities for your team
00:04:12.760 and really forget that, you know what,
00:04:14.320 there's a list of things you can't control.
00:04:16.160 There's a list of things that are in your control
00:04:17.820 that you can be accountable for.
00:04:19.280 And having that clear distinction between those two lists
00:04:21.880 will allow you to actually take action
00:04:23.940 as fast as possible to fix the situation.
00:04:26.660 Number five is to clear your schedule.
00:04:28.660 I can't tell you how important this is.
00:04:30.720 If you have a wife, kids, commitments, family,
00:04:34.100 other activities you do outside of your work,
00:04:36.160 and you don't realize that when these moments
00:04:38.220 in your business happen, things that are just
00:04:40.360 way bigger than you that you've never thought
00:04:42.400 would possibly happen, right?
00:04:44.060 I mean, I was talking to a restaurateur recently.
00:04:46.040 He opened a new restaurant.
00:04:47.300 He had several, but he opened this new restaurant,
00:04:49.340 and outside the city decided to rip up the street
00:04:53.540 and reroute traffic.
00:04:54.680 Can you imagine you just spent a million dollars
00:04:57.180 opening up a restaurant and all of a sudden
00:04:59.120 the street gets ripped up and you have no traffic anymore?
00:05:02.460 That's the kind of challenges I'm talking about.
00:05:04.620 You need to really clear your schedule
00:05:06.720 to give you the time to execute and focus
00:05:09.120 and really look at that list of things you can control
00:05:11.100 and start just knocking those out.
00:05:12.660 So that might mean booking a hotel room for the next week
00:05:15.760 to really build a war room.
00:05:17.200 could be doing that kind of concept inside your office
00:05:19.500 in a conference room, but clearing your schedule
00:05:22.080 from other commitments, other priorities,
00:05:23.580 pushing things off, giving yourself that time to focus
00:05:26.860 is gonna be critical.
00:05:28.260 Now, six to me is execute.
00:05:30.280 It's about executing like crazy, it's about taking action.
00:05:33.700 Once you know, you've talked to the people
00:05:35.700 you've reached out to, you've given yourself the time
00:05:37.780 to think about it, you've built that list of things
00:05:40.080 that are in your control, you've scheduled that time
00:05:42.460 or opened that time in your schedule to actually work,
00:05:44.640 It's all about execution,
00:05:46.240 making sure that you get things done
00:05:48.680 and really that have impact.
00:05:50.220 Don't get confused with activity versus producing outcomes.
00:05:54.380 You wanna solve the problem, you wanna move forward,
00:05:56.680 you wanna overcome that hurdle.
00:05:58.360 Seven to me is all about taking a moment to debrief, right?
00:06:02.020 Because there's a reason why you ran into this issue.
00:06:04.960 There was a series of decisions that you made
00:06:07.000 that caused you to go down that path
00:06:08.660 to be in that situation.
00:06:10.140 If you don't take the time to stop and ask yourself,
00:06:13.260 What could I have done differently?
00:06:14.920 What new structures or processes or information
00:06:17.840 could I have had to make better decision
00:06:19.900 to not end up in that situation?
00:06:22.360 And I think that's just a really important place
00:06:24.780 to get to once you've solved the problem.
00:06:27.280 After, it's kind of like after the fact,
00:06:29.140 you know, once the wound is healed a little bit,
00:06:31.020 take that moment to debrief,
00:06:33.080 fix it so that you don't find yourself
00:06:34.840 back in this situation in nine months,
00:06:36.380 because I see entrepreneurs run into this all the time,
00:06:38.980 and really find a solution so that you can up level
00:06:41.920 to the next set of challenges.
00:06:44.020 You know, I really think, this is my suggestion to you,
00:06:47.260 that when you get into these moments,
00:06:49.460 when you have a major customer that's upset with you,
00:06:51.520 when you have your servers go down, when you get hacked,
00:06:54.480 whatever the major challenge is,
00:06:56.920 that's your opportunity in that moment
00:06:59.540 to show people truly how good you are, right?
00:07:02.640 And I never let entrepreneurs that I coach forget that,
00:07:05.500 that when they've got issues with a customer,
00:07:08.340 that it's in those moments that they get to prove
00:07:10.780 and demonstrate and show to their customers
00:07:13.460 how truly great they are as a business and as a leader.
00:07:16.280 So I want to leave you with that.
00:07:17.900 I want to hear from you below in the comments.
00:07:19.520 Have you ever ran into adversity
00:07:20.940 and how did you overcome it?
00:07:22.740 How did you deal with that challenge?
00:07:24.040 I know it could be a sensitive area to ask you about
00:07:26.400 but I'd love to hear your story below in the comments
00:07:28.400 and I'll share a few others of mine
00:07:29.900 because trust me, there's been dozens.
00:07:32.020 As per usual, I hope this video finds you well
00:07:34.080 and I want to challenge you to live a bigger life
00:07:36.980 and a bigger business and I'll see you next week.
00:07:38.580 Cheers.
00:07:39.420 If you like this video, be sure to subscribe to my channel
00:07:41.720 to get other tips on how to start and grow your business.
00:07:44.220 I'd also encourage you to join my newsletter
00:07:46.900 where I share exclusive community contests,
00:07:50.000 invites to events, and other free training videos.
00:07:52.660 And if you wanna watch some more videos,
00:07:54.200 I got a couple queued up, ready to go.
00:07:55.900 Hope this video finds you well, and I'll see you next week.