Dan Martell - March 14, 2016


How to Know if You Should Take on a New Project ｜ Dan Martell


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

223.89929

Word count

1,251

Sentence count

65

Harmful content

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, I talk about how to decide if you should take on a new project and what to look for when evaluating new opportunities and projects. I also talk about the lessons I learned from taking on a major project and how to know if it's a good idea.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
00:00:00.000 How to decide if you should take on a new project.
00:00:02.640 I don't know if you're like me,
00:00:03.680 but you probably have so many new opportunities
00:00:05.840 or things you want to do.
00:00:07.440 And the challenge is really deciding,
00:00:09.000 well, which ones do I take on?
00:00:11.280 And if it's midway through the year
00:00:12.600 and I've already planned my year
00:00:14.240 and there's this great opportunity,
00:00:15.800 how's this gonna impact the rest of my goals
00:00:17.640 and commitments and all these other aspects?
00:00:19.800 And that's what I wanna share with you guys in this video.
00:00:21.760 You know, I remember there was a time
00:00:23.200 when I was building Spheric Technologies' company,
00:00:25.640 it was like two companies ago.
00:00:27.200 I was 24 when I started that company.
00:00:28.880 Midway through the company, I had an opportunity
00:00:31.320 to partner with one of the world's largest companies,
00:00:34.120 and we were gonna co-create this new technology,
00:00:36.880 and it was a huge, huge opportunity.
00:00:38.560 The time of the company was maybe 16 employees,
00:00:41.260 and I wanted to figure out how to do it right.
00:00:44.400 I wanted to give it on my all,
00:00:46.000 and I essentially thought,
00:00:47.000 okay, I'm just gonna overwork myself.
00:00:48.460 I'm gonna decide, I'm gonna work 100 hours a week,
00:00:50.960 I'm just gonna make it happen, and I gave my all.
00:00:53.300 And I'll tell you at the end of it,
00:00:54.600 yes, it had a huge impact on our business,
00:00:56.940 but I put on 15 pounds. 0.99
00:00:58.620 my health was shit, my relationship with my family 0.99
00:01:01.300 and my friends were non-existent. 0.99
00:01:03.240 I mean, it was like the business overwhelmed me,
00:01:06.180 it consumed me, and I wanted to share with you guys
00:01:08.980 the lessons I learned from that experience,
00:01:10.580 because here's what happened.
00:01:11.800 When the company got sold, I realized that even though
00:01:15.500 financially I could do anything in the world,
00:01:18.960 I wasn't healthy, I wasn't happy,
00:01:21.160 I didn't, in parallel, build my relationship.
00:01:24.060 So I've come up with a new framework,
00:01:25.380 and there's three things that I want to teach you guys
00:01:27.400 that you need to consider before you take on a major project.
00:01:30.060 The number one is the business fundamentals.
00:01:31.960 In your company, you're probably doing things
00:01:34.720 that are allowing you to have success.
00:01:36.780 They're the business fundamentals.
00:01:38.180 This could be your yearly planning meetings.
00:01:41.020 This could be your weekly product meetings.
00:01:43.440 Whatever schedule or fundamentals that you do
00:01:46.400 from your marketing reporting,
00:01:47.980 that you know are kind of like the baseline,
00:01:50.240 those have to continue.
00:01:52.060 So when you're evaluating new projects,
00:01:53.640 ask yourself, would these things sacrifice
00:01:56.580 the business fundamentals.
00:01:58.060 And you know what they are.
00:01:59.060 And if you don't, you should figure them out
00:02:00.700 because they're the reasons why you've had any success.
00:02:03.440 And that's a really good strategy
00:02:06.040 to just understand what they are
00:02:07.200 so that you don't kind of cause them to go away
00:02:09.980 because then you'll go on to this new project,
00:02:12.020 you might have success there,
00:02:13.460 but then other parts of the business go down.
00:02:15.620 Maybe you've experienced this
00:02:16.820 where you're trying to juggle too many balls in the air
00:02:20.120 and it feels like you had this one going,
00:02:21.500 the other one got dropped,
00:02:22.320 and then you focus on this one,
00:02:23.300 the other one got dropped.
00:02:24.260 It's because you haven't focused
00:02:25.700 on your business fundamentals.
00:02:26.940 Number two that I wanna share with you guys
00:02:28.900 is success habits.
00:02:30.100 I don't know about you, but there are some habits
00:02:31.960 that I do on a daily, a weekly basis
00:02:34.320 that contribute to my success.
00:02:36.260 It's just the way it is.
00:02:37.120 So everything from my morning ritual,
00:02:39.280 for how I plan my week,
00:02:40.740 to the time I spend with my friends,
00:02:42.540 these are things that I feel,
00:02:44.000 for whatever definition of the word success you have,
00:02:47.540 these are the activities that I do
00:02:50.280 that allow me to feel that.
00:02:51.580 So when you're looking at new opportunities,
00:02:55.080 new projects, new initiatives.
00:02:57.040 Ask yourself, would these sacrifice my success habits?
00:03:00.220 Because I would argue with you,
00:03:01.700 the end of the day, it's not about achieving,
00:03:03.420 it's about fulfillment.
00:03:04.500 It's about feeling successful.
00:03:06.440 You know what those are.
00:03:07.760 Those habits, those rituals will achieve that.
00:03:10.040 You don't want to sacrifice those to get this new outcome.
00:03:13.060 Trust me on this one.
00:03:14.100 From experience, just baseline these.
00:03:16.300 It's not about being rigid,
00:03:17.340 it's about having a filter and understanding.
00:03:19.700 So the third one I want to share with you guys
00:03:21.520 is responsibility to others.
00:03:23.000 And I don't know about you, but I have two little boys.
00:03:25.000 I have a beautiful wife, I have a family,
00:03:26.840 I have other employees,
00:03:27.880 I have people that I've made commitments to.
00:03:30.620 And just because there's this new shiny object
00:03:32.840 that promises this new potential
00:03:35.020 that seems like is gonna really unlock
00:03:37.540 a lot of growth for me,
00:03:39.200 I gotta ask myself, is it gonna sacrifice
00:03:41.320 my responsibilities and commitments
00:03:42.740 that I've made to other people in my life?
00:03:44.520 You know, and for me, it's taking my kids
00:03:46.880 to daycare every day,
00:03:47.760 and it's making sure that I'm present as a father.
00:03:49.880 It's making sure that I'm not away
00:03:51.580 for any more than seven to 10 days a month.
00:03:54.020 And that might sound like a lot,
00:03:55.140 but I mean, this is broken up over time
00:03:56.780 because I'm on a mission, I have goals for myself,
00:03:59.880 but when I'm with my kids, I'm there.
00:04:01.900 And I would never sacrifice,
00:04:02.940 I can't tell you how many entrepreneurs I've talked to.
00:04:05.200 They get up at 5 a.m.,
00:04:07.160 they don't see their kids in the morning,
00:04:08.640 they work at the office till 8 p.m.,
00:04:10.220 they get home, their kids are already in bed.
00:04:11.760 And they're okay doing this for weeks,
00:04:14.180 if not months on time.
00:04:15.220 And I wanna challenge you that that is not the way
00:04:17.920 to build your business, it's not the way to be successful.
00:04:20.200 Responsibility to others needs to be evaluated
00:04:23.000 before you just jump in head first into a new project.
00:04:26.240 So those are the three major areas.
00:04:27.880 I want to recap them real quick.
00:04:28.980 One, business fundamentals.
00:04:30.400 What do you do in your business
00:04:31.540 that have allowed you to achieve success so far?
00:04:33.440 Those are the fundamentals.
00:04:34.480 Success habits, what do you do on a daily basis,
00:04:36.480 a weekly basis, a monthly, maybe a yearly,
00:04:38.540 that allow you to have success?
00:04:40.120 Those habits, you've got to make sure
00:04:41.420 that those are maintained and continue.
00:04:43.420 And then the third is responsibility to others.
00:04:45.480 People that you have in your life
00:04:46.820 that you've made commitments to,
00:04:48.060 and maybe they're unspoken,
00:04:49.620 but you and they know about them, they feel them,
00:04:52.160 you do not want to sacrifice that
00:04:53.620 for that next big opportunity or shiny object.
00:04:57.300 You want to evaluate those and figure out
00:04:58.680 how can you make it all work together.
00:05:00.200 So this video is for those people out there
00:05:02.860 that feel like they're sacrificing everything
00:05:05.140 for their family and I'm gonna just really challenge you
00:05:07.760 that those three key areas that I just shared with you
00:05:10.120 need to be evaluated, especially if you're halfway
00:05:12.640 through the year and somebody comes with this huge opportunity
00:05:14.640 that's gonna throw all of the other stuff into chaos,
00:05:18.680 Stop, take a moment, watch this video,
00:05:21.320 re-question your assumptions and share this video
00:05:24.840 with anybody that you know is going through this
00:05:26.860 or has felt this in the past to help them move forward.
00:05:29.340 I wanna invite you to subscribe to my video.
00:05:30.620 I wanna challenge you guys to live a bigger life
00:05:32.960 and a bigger business and I'll see you next Monday.