Dan Martell - November 30, 2015


How To Make Big Life Decisions

Hosted by
Dan Martell
Mentioned
Ken Nickerson Spheric
5 Ways to Create Your Own “Personal” Startup Accelerator 5 Pro Strategies For Getting The Most Out Of An Event

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

224.71

Word count

1,227

Sentence count

48


Summary

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

In this episode, I share a story about one of the most important decisions I've ever made in my life, and how to make tough life decisions to make in order to be around the world's best. It's a tough decision, but it's a necessary one.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 How to make tough life decisions.
00:00:02.160 That's what I'm going to share with you guys in this video.
00:00:04.880 But before I get going, I want to share with you guys a quick story.
00:00:07.440 You know, I was 28 years old.
00:00:09.420 I just sold my company, Spheric, and I was taking some time off,
00:00:13.040 as you should after you sell a company and work your butt off for about four years.
00:00:16.940 And I remember I had this ambition inside where I was asking myself,
00:00:21.360 should I make the move?
00:00:22.620 Should I move to San Francisco and really challenge myself as an entrepreneur?
00:00:26.320 Because up to that point in my life,
00:00:27.980 I had essentially been a big fish in a really small pond.
00:00:30.820 You know, I grew up in a small town in eastern Canada,
00:00:33.960 and I wasn't sure if that was the right move.
00:00:37.300 You know, I was really, honestly, the biggest thing was
00:00:39.120 I didn't want to turn my back on the province.
00:00:41.880 If you know me, I'm a pretty proud Canadian,
00:00:43.820 and I wanted to kind of show people that you can do it anywhere.
00:00:46.760 But at the same time, I just kept rethinking about this opportunity
00:00:50.720 to build something on a world stage and really challenge myself and be,
00:00:55.020 you know, if you're an actor, you go to L.A.,
00:00:56.700 And if you're in finance, you go to New York.
00:00:58.660 And I just thought, I wanna be around the world's best.
00:01:01.840 And I reached out to one of my mentors,
00:01:04.300 a guy named Ken Nickerson.
00:01:06.140 And I was talking with Ken and I was,
00:01:08.080 I still remember where I was sitting in my office
00:01:10.520 in the stair hallway and I was telling him
00:01:12.940 about kind of my vision and what I wanted to do
00:01:14.920 and why I was struggling and you know, I was saying like,
00:01:17.480 the biggest thing is I don't wanna turn my back
00:01:19.760 on this province, for you maybe it's a state.
00:01:22.960 I didn't wanna turn my back on the people
00:01:24.960 that has supported me to this point in my life.
00:01:26.700 and he said some of the most life-changing words to me.
00:01:29.160 He said, the best thing you can do
00:01:31.240 for this province in New Brunswick is go out there,
00:01:34.200 learn, and bring it back.
00:01:36.260 And not only, I feel so grateful and blessed
00:01:39.260 that I was able to do this, I mean, I built Flowtown,
00:01:41.640 grew it, raised venture capital, sold that,
00:01:43.940 and then my next company, Clarity,
00:01:45.660 ended up starting that, raised venture capital,
00:01:47.800 and the money that I raised got wired
00:01:50.260 to a bank account in New Brunswick.
00:01:52.840 I not only brought back all the knowledge I had learned,
00:01:55.740 but even started my fifth company in my province
00:01:59.240 and started hiring people locally.
00:02:00.640 And I tell you that story because that was a huge,
00:02:03.100 when I think of life-changing moments in my life,
00:02:05.340 that was one of the toughest decisions I ever made.
00:02:07.380 But there's a framework,
00:02:08.340 there's these four steps I wanna share with you.
00:02:10.080 The number one is asking yourself,
00:02:11.420 does it align with your life mission?
00:02:13.760 Where you're at today in that really tough decision
00:02:16.080 you wanna make of should you do this,
00:02:18.020 should you go left or should you go right,
00:02:19.520 does it align with that?
00:02:20.980 And if the answer is yes, then you gotta make it.
00:02:23.100 That's number one.
00:02:23.940 ask people, well, tell me about your life mission. Most people don't have one. So that's step one.
00:02:28.540 But once you have it, you can ask yourself, will this decision get me closer and align with that
00:02:34.140 outcome? Number two is, is this outcome part of your magic zone, right? Some people talk about
00:02:42.320 comfort zone. But what I like to talk about is your magic zone. There's this place that you feel
00:02:47.700 like you're in flow when you're doing that kind of work, when you're surrounded with certain people
00:02:52.320 and creating where you're truly in your magic zone.
00:02:55.940 So for you, if you ask yourself that tough decision,
00:02:58.400 will that get me closer or allow me
00:03:00.500 to spend more time in my magic zone?
00:03:02.620 And if the answer is yes,
00:03:03.900 then that seems like a really strong indication
00:03:05.620 you gotta make that decision.
00:03:07.120 Number three is what do your mentors say?
00:03:08.840 As I shared with you guys when I started this video,
00:03:10.800 Ken, one of my mentors, I asked him for his advice
00:03:14.540 and I asked many other mentors
00:03:16.160 and all the feedback and advice I was getting back
00:03:19.100 was resounding yes, make the move.
00:03:21.900 And had they said, well, you know what,
00:03:23.780 maybe you should consider this X, Y, and Z,
00:03:26.000 I would have took that into consideration.
00:03:27.440 But I really think that in life,
00:03:29.260 when you're having tough decisions to make,
00:03:31.400 you gotta ask yourself, and maybe you don't have a mentor.
00:03:33.740 And that's cool.
00:03:34.180 I'm gonna link up a video that I did
00:03:36.320 on how to find a mentor.
00:03:37.300 But if you don't have a mentor,
00:03:38.780 then just think of people you admire
00:03:40.180 and ask yourself, how would they rate that decision?
00:03:44.500 How would they view that decision
00:03:45.960 of going in that direction?
00:03:48.220 You know, people you admire,
00:03:49.320 not people that are part of your life today
00:03:50.900 because maybe they haven't accomplished things
00:03:52.900 that you look to and say,
00:03:53.900 oh, I really admire what my high school drinking buddies
00:03:56.900 did with their lives.
00:03:57.900 That's maybe not your point of view.
00:04:00.000 So always ask yourself, what would your mentor say
00:04:02.500 or how would somebody that you admire
00:04:04.500 look at making that decision?
00:04:05.700 So that's number three.
00:04:06.700 Number four, this one to me is the most important.
00:04:10.200 Just ask yourself, is this an F yeah decision?
00:04:13.800 Is this something that gets me pumped up, excited?
00:04:17.000 It's an F yeah, I gotta do it decision.
00:04:19.300 because if it's mediocre and there's no emotion attached to it,
00:04:22.260 if you're not super excited about the potential
00:04:25.300 of making that decision, going to that next level,
00:04:27.600 then I would advise to go find a new tough challenge
00:04:30.360 to decide on, because that one isn't it.
00:04:33.200 If it's a mediocre or a no, then just say no right away.
00:04:36.660 I mean, 95% of my decisions I make on a daily basis,
00:04:40.440 I just quick filter, is this an FDI decision?
00:04:42.600 Nope, thanks for the opportunity,
00:04:44.200 I'm gonna have to pass, really easy.
00:04:46.000 So again, I want to recap how to make tough decisions.
00:04:49.300 Number one, you know, really ask yourself,
00:04:51.840 is this aligned with my life purpose?
00:04:53.540 Number two, is this going to allow me to spend more time
00:04:56.340 in my magic zone where I create, where I get in flow,
00:04:58.600 where I absolutely love to spend time?
00:05:00.560 Number three, if you have mentors or you admire people,
00:05:03.600 how would they look at that decision?
00:05:05.100 What would they say in regards to which path you should take?
00:05:08.860 And number four, is this an F yeah decision for you?
00:05:13.240 I want to ask you guys to subscribe to my channel
00:05:15.600 and share this video.
00:05:16.540 If you know somebody that needs to hear this message
00:05:18.380 that you know is going through a really tough time,
00:05:20.160 maybe they could gain some insight from this,
00:05:22.360 share the video with them.
00:05:23.240 I wanna challenge you guys, as always,
00:05:24.860 to live a bigger life and a bigger business,
00:05:26.840 and I'll see you next Monday.