Dan Martell - December 23, 2019


How To Make Big Decisions In Your Business


Episode Stats

Length

10 minutes

Words per Minute

196.31038

Word Count

1,997

Sentence Count

96


Summary

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

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Hey there, Dan Martell here, serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.
00:00:03.940 In this video, I'm going to teach you how to make big decisions, even if you have no prior
00:00:09.380 experience in making those decisions. And be sure to stay to the end. We're going to tell you how
00:00:13.500 to get access to my precision scorecard, because the key is measuring so that when you make these
00:00:19.580 decisions, you know if it had an impact. Let's get into it.
00:00:30.000 So recently I was working with one of my JFDI clients,
00:00:38.560 which are 10 million plus in ARR.
00:00:41.060 And one of the questions they asked me was,
00:00:43.040 Dan, look, I love having you as a coach,
00:00:45.460 but when I've got to make decisions with my team
00:00:47.880 and I've never done them before,
00:00:49.680 I've never been in that area of the business,
00:00:51.580 how do I make them fast?
00:00:53.340 How do I educate myself?
00:00:54.600 How do I move fast?
00:00:55.700 So I want to share with you guys how to think through that.
00:00:57.980 Even my personal journey,
00:00:59.240 There's been some huge decisions like, should I move to San Francisco?
00:01:03.540 Should I bring on a business partner?
00:01:05.640 Should I raise venture capital for my startups?
00:01:08.540 Should I pivot my business or stay the course?
00:01:12.160 These are the kind of decisions that have the ability to shape your destiny.
00:01:17.320 And if you've never done them before, it can feel scary.
00:01:21.040 Literally, you can stay up at night, not sleep, anxiety.
00:01:24.300 I mean, I've even had clients break out in like hives
00:01:28.320 because of the pressure of making these decisions.
00:01:31.980 So what I wanna share with you guys
00:01:33.140 are the specific steps that I use
00:01:35.700 whenever I get into a new area
00:01:37.520 and I've gotta make decisions fast
00:01:38.960 because if you don't,
00:01:41.980 the backlash of not making a decision
00:01:45.040 could be even worse than making the wrong decision.
00:01:47.340 So let's get into it.
00:01:48.480 Step one, define the problem.
00:01:50.720 So Charles Keterin has a quote that says,
00:01:52.720 a problem well-defined is a problem half-solved or something like that. And I honestly thought
00:01:57.940 it was Einstein that said it. But the way I think about it is too often people come to me for advice,
00:02:02.880 for coaching, and they're like, hey, Dan, how do I run Facebook ads? And the real challenge is that
00:02:10.160 the problem they're trying to solve is not how to be good at Facebook, is that they're trying to
00:02:15.640 increase traffic to their website or they're trying to increase lead generation for their
00:02:20.420 or demo request funnel, or whatever it is.
00:02:22.760 So for me, it's being really intentional,
00:02:25.420 really clear around the specific problem
00:02:28.420 you're trying to solve, and then figure out
00:02:30.900 the optionality for doing that.
00:02:32.760 Because if you can't get clear around what it is specifically
00:02:37.100 that's stopping you, and that is the problem,
00:02:40.040 then all the other feedback you can get from people
00:02:43.820 will be around the wrong thing, right?
00:02:46.080 Because I can tell them, hey, here's
00:02:47.320 how you run Facebook ads, here's the four different stages
00:02:49.900 of your funnel.
00:02:50.740 Here's the way you set up your remarketing pickles.
00:02:52.060 I can tell them all of that, but that won't serve them
00:02:54.760 if the underlying problem is actually not more traffic,
00:02:58.300 but a better offer or a better funnel.
00:03:00.620 So number one is we need to define the problem.
00:03:03.980 Number two, research the solution space.
00:03:06.580 So no matter what problem you're trying to solve,
00:03:08.660 there are people that are way smarter than us
00:03:11.300 that have written books, talked about it on podcasts,
00:03:15.220 written blog posts around the specific solutions
00:03:18.840 to that problem.
00:03:19.780 So what I like to do is deep dive.
00:03:22.320 You might only decide to say,
00:03:23.460 look, I'm gonna block an hour of my time
00:03:25.060 and I'm gonna get into it.
00:03:26.380 I'm gonna research the top books,
00:03:28.080 buy those on my Kindle.
00:03:29.140 I'm gonna subscribe to some podcasts,
00:03:30.700 search some titles,
00:03:31.420 maybe just get right into the episodes.
00:03:33.500 I'm gonna research some blog posts,
00:03:35.480 research my tip for all of you guys,
00:03:37.180 if you don't know this,
00:03:37.800 I like to use Google Images.
00:03:39.420 So Google Images,
00:03:40.460 what you can do is find frameworks.
00:03:42.000 I'm a very visual thinker and I like to draw.
00:03:44.660 If anybody's ever been in one of my trainings,
00:03:46.440 I love to design models to help people think clearly about the problem.
00:03:51.720 And Google Images will show you the blog posts that have images
00:03:55.920 to help give you some patterns to understand the specific problem.
00:03:59.680 So to me, I want to really understand and research the solution space
00:04:04.620 for all my different options around that specific problem.
00:04:07.900 Number three, connect with mentors.
00:04:10.640 Now, if you don't have a mentor, you're still unclear what a mentor is,
00:04:14.000 I'm going to link up a bunch of videos I've done in the past around identifying the mentor,
00:04:18.900 connecting with the mentor, five questions you shouldn't ask your mentor, because I think it's
00:04:23.340 really important. But the way I define a mentor is somebody who's already been to the place you're
00:04:27.920 going and can kind of look back and give you guidance into the steps, okay? So assuming you
00:04:33.500 have the mentor, I know when I was deciding if I should move to San Francisco or not from Canada,
00:04:38.760 it was a really tough decision for me. And I turned to one of my mentors, Ken Nickerson,
00:04:43.160 because I wanted to make sure that I
00:04:48.020 didn't make the wrong decision.
00:04:49.700 I didn't turn my back on the city that I grew up in,
00:04:52.820 that I was, I had a lot of pride in being Canadian.
00:04:56.440 But I also knew that my dreams and my aspirations
00:04:59.960 were very much pulling me towards Silicon Valley
00:05:03.080 to see if all my crazy ideas could actually
00:05:06.040 work among some of the best entrepreneurs in the world
00:05:08.940 in the software space.
00:05:10.560 And it was Ken's advice where he said to me,
00:05:14.180 he said, look, the biggest thing you could do
00:05:15.880 for your province, for Canada, is to go there,
00:05:19.420 learn as much as you can, and teach everybody back home.
00:05:22.080 And I feel super privileged to have had people like Ken
00:05:25.680 and others mentor me along the way
00:05:27.340 so that I was able to do that,
00:05:28.980 specifically when I started my company, Clarity,
00:05:31.360 because not only did I learn and I took a bunch of stuff
00:05:33.980 and I taught it back to everybody,
00:05:35.340 I knew my entrepreneurial friends,
00:05:36.500 but I even got investors to wire money in my company.
00:05:40.320 I raised $1.6 million in funding for Clarity,
00:05:42.760 and the coolest part is it was investors in San Francisco
00:05:45.480 that wired the money to a Canadian bank,
00:05:48.540 and that was a really proud moment for me.
00:05:50.640 So all that to say is connect with mentors
00:05:53.140 because they're gonna be able to give you insights
00:05:56.860 into the future to help you prioritize
00:05:58.800 your decision-making and give it context
00:06:00.900 because sometimes we just don't know
00:06:02.560 how big of a decision is it
00:06:03.820 and what are the factors I should be considering
00:06:05.540 around that specific problem.
00:06:08.620 Number four, verify with peers.
00:06:10.740 So here's one of the frustrating parts.
00:06:12.440 If you have a mentor, you have a bunch of advisors,
00:06:14.800 is sometimes you will get conflicting advice, right?
00:06:17.660 So the suggestion I give my coaching clients
00:06:20.120 is that you want to get as much insights,
00:06:23.020 as much data, as much information
00:06:24.880 around the decision you're making.
00:06:27.900 And then try to have a peer group, okay,
00:06:30.760 of people that you trust that are on the same journey.
00:06:33.240 Maybe they're one or two years ahead of you
00:06:34.780 that you can use to essentially calibrate your decision.
00:06:37.620 because here's the reality.
00:06:38.800 Your mentors might have done what you want to do
00:06:41.300 15 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, right?
00:06:44.540 Your advisors may have never done this.
00:06:46.340 They've never been the founder.
00:06:47.240 They're just really great experts in whatever field.
00:06:49.880 So what you want to do is find people
00:06:51.520 that are on that same journey.
00:06:53.220 So for example, in the sales space in my life,
00:06:56.020 I have a guy named Keith.
00:06:56.840 He's one of my best buds.
00:06:57.980 And what we do often is when it comes
00:07:00.440 to anything sales specific, the process,
00:07:03.220 the funnel, the conversation, et cetera,
00:07:04.980 I'm always asking him like, hey man,
00:07:07.060 I'm thinking of changing the offer, changing it to a two-step
00:07:10.300 close, or I'm thinking of adding this funnel in front of it
00:07:13.040 to kind of pre-frame the rest of the conversation.
00:07:15.540 Whatever it is, having somebody, I can go do my research.
00:07:18.940 I can talk to my coach.
00:07:20.080 I can talk to my mentors.
00:07:21.440 But having somebody that is a peer
00:07:23.140 to be able to give it a final check, to me,
00:07:26.040 is one of the most powerful things.
00:07:27.920 So make sure you verify with your peers.
00:07:30.180 Number five, decide and adjust.
00:07:32.480 OK, here's the deal, JFDI.
00:07:35.360 It's my license plate.
00:07:36.360 it's on my wall in my garage, it's in my house,
00:07:38.320 it's in my office, JFDI, you can Google it
00:07:40.860 to figure out what it stands for.
00:07:42.640 But here's what I've discovered, is for many of you,
00:07:45.860 the biggest challenge you're having is making no decision.
00:07:49.040 It's actually not the making the wrong decision,
00:07:52.120 it's you haven't made the decision.
00:07:53.640 Your team is waiting on you.
00:07:55.060 They're waiting to be led,
00:07:56.820 and what you haven't done is decide and move forward.
00:08:00.880 Here's the coolest part.
00:08:02.240 There is very few decisions that you could make
00:08:04.940 that you can't unwind if in two months,
00:08:07.600 three months, six months,
00:08:08.580 you realize you made the wrong decision.
00:08:10.300 But not making that decision over two, three, four,
00:08:13.760 five, six months will just bring the morale
00:08:16.120 of your team down, will slow you down
00:08:18.380 from being crystal clear on strategy and execution
00:08:21.360 and will be bigger as an issue,
00:08:25.700 will cause a bigger impact on your business
00:08:27.620 than if you would have just decided,
00:08:29.740 move forward and learn from that feedback loop.
00:08:32.260 So quick recap, how to make big decisions
00:08:34.300 with no prior experience.
00:08:35.940 Number one, you want to define the problem clearly.
00:08:39.320 Two, you want to research the solution space
00:08:41.800 and the opportunity.
00:08:42.680 Three, you want to connect with mentors
00:08:44.760 who've been there before.
00:08:46.020 Four, verify the feedback and strategy
00:08:48.540 and decision with peers.
00:08:49.940 And number five, decision and adjust.
00:08:53.040 Commit JFDI style.
00:08:55.320 As I mentioned at the beginning of this video,
00:08:56.580 I want to share with you guys an exclusive resource
00:08:58.440 called the Precision Scorecard.
00:09:00.300 Now, if you're not currently measuring the activity,
00:09:03.620 the results that your team is producing in your company,
00:09:06.860 you need to create a scorecard.
00:09:08.600 And if you click the link below to download my Precision Scorecard,
00:09:11.100 I will teach you how I do it in all of my companies.
00:09:14.220 It's very different than most.
00:09:16.120 For example, one of the things that we do is we measure weekly
00:09:19.380 and we set a projection and figure out what our actuals are on a monthly basis
00:09:24.300 so we know within the month, the first week, the second week,
00:09:27.160 are we trending to goal?
00:09:29.060 And they stack up to the quarter to the year
00:09:31.280 so that we know we're going to hit our numbers.
00:09:33.280 because in the software space, in SaaS subscription,
00:09:36.540 if you don't hit your number this month for new customers,
00:09:40.040 it is really hard to catch up in the second month
00:09:42.580 and third month, and you get way off your projections.
00:09:44.400 So you can click the link below
00:09:45.860 to download my specific approach to scorecard
00:09:48.600 called the Precision Scorecard.
00:09:50.420 And if you like this video,
00:09:51.640 I would ask you to subscribe to my channel.
00:09:54.540 Smash that like button.
00:09:55.920 If there's anybody that you care about
00:09:57.440 that you think this could serve,
00:09:58.740 feel free to share with them directly.
00:10:00.820 I appreciate you guys being here.
00:10:02.000 And as for usual, I want to challenge you to live a bigger life and a bigger business.
00:10:05.080 And I'll see you next Monday.
00:10:07.200 Scorecard.
00:10:09.120 Get the scorecard.