Dan Martell - How to Overcome the Fear of Failure

00:00:00.000 Are you making decisions based on hope or based on fear? Are you making decisions about how you

00:00:07.580 grow your business out of hope for possibility and creation and prosperity, or are you doing

00:00:12.920 it out of fear of failure, fear of being embarrassed, fear of losing?

00:00:30.000 Today, I wanna talk about the ceiling of complexity.

00:00:37.540 And here's the concept is that your ability to grow

00:00:40.880 is only ever gonna get to the level

00:00:43.560 of your ability to deal with complexity.

00:00:45.780 If you're trying to attack a problem

00:00:47.980 and it's too complicated for you to get around,

00:00:49.820 then you're not gonna be able to break through that.

00:00:51.940 And it doesn't matter if it's revenue growth

00:00:54.620 or team size or process complexity,

00:00:58.380 like whatever your ceiling of complexity is,

00:01:00.800 that might be the thing that's holding you back

00:01:03.240 from getting to the next level.

00:01:04.780 If you figure out how to do this,

00:01:06.540 then you get to a place where no matter

00:01:08.980 how big the problem is,

00:01:10.380 you'll have a process for understanding how to get through it.

00:01:14.680 Recently, I was trying to hang out

00:01:16.160 with one of my good buddies, he owns a bike shop,

00:01:18.280 and I texted him at like six in the morning

00:01:20.320 to coordinate for that afternoon.

00:01:22.200 And he got upset with me because I texted him

00:01:25.180 at six in the morning, which I thought was funny

00:01:26.800 because, you know, like he was mad

00:01:28.920 because the notifications woke him up.

00:01:31.460 I said, well, why don't you have your phone on silence?

00:01:34.200 And he goes, I can't do that because if I do that,

00:01:37.420 I won't get notified of the alarm on my shop

00:01:40.740 because he has this retail shop.

00:01:42.780 Which made me ask myself,

00:01:45.240 because, you know, one of my philosophies

00:01:46.640 is shine your light, don't criticize people,

00:01:49.400 just be the example, was why doesn't he have a service

00:01:52.940 or why doesn't he have somebody else?

00:01:54.100 Or why does he have a process for the alarm

00:01:55.540 if it goes off that, or he can like take his phone

00:01:58.280 and set it to the VIP setting in the phone contact thing.

00:02:00.920 And it'll only call if you, you know

00:02:03.780 if it's from a certain phone number, et cetera, et cetera.

00:02:06.640 Essentially what I've been doing this

00:02:09.340 for a really long time,

00:02:10.180 I coach incredibly high performing entrepreneurs

00:02:12.520 and a lot of them get to the point

00:02:14.700 where their ceiling of complexity is the thing

00:02:16.680 that's stopping them from getting through

00:02:19.440 their ability to grow.

00:02:21.100 And that's what I saw in this case.

00:02:22.600 Essentially, the problem was debilitating enough

00:02:30.260 that it's never going to allow this person

00:02:32.740 to get free from their business,

00:02:34.400 because if you can't figure out

00:02:35.620 how to get your alarm managed by somebody else

00:02:38.780 in case somebody's breaking in,

00:02:40.320 then you're gonna have a hard time figuring out

00:02:42.300 how to hire, compensate, motivate team members,

00:02:45.600 deal with suppliers, and really scale up the operation.

00:02:48.420 So wherever they're at,

00:02:50.200 if they don't learn the stuff I'm gonna teach you today,

00:02:52.100 then they're not gonna be able

00:02:52.940 to get to that to the next level.

00:02:54.120 So for me, the word ceiling of complexity

00:02:58.520 came from my buddy, Brad.

00:02:59.540 Brad's a genius dude and an operator.

00:03:01.980 And I owe a lot of the inspiration

00:03:04.280 for my conversations with all of you from Brad.

00:03:06.800 Just an amazing dude,

00:03:08.020 ran a like 150 million a year toy company.

00:03:13.260 But to help all of you,

00:03:14.940 I'm gonna link below the playbooks.

00:03:18.180 Essentially what I have,

00:03:19.380 because I'm gonna teach you how to think

00:03:20.600 through the complexity and get through it

00:03:22.260 is a business playbook, SOP, standard operating procedures.

00:03:26.200 And I'm gonna give you 100% my templates

00:03:28.200 that I use with all my companies, okay?

00:03:29.780 So you can click the link below in the comments,

00:03:31.800 I'll put that there.

00:03:33.740 But the question I have is how many artificial rules

00:03:39.380 have you created similar to my buddy

00:03:42.500 that had a rule that he needs to get the text messages

00:03:45.240 when the alarm goes off, have you created

00:03:47.720 that's stopping you from getting to the next level?

00:03:49.840 because these are artificial.

00:03:51.820 How many of these things have you introduced to your life

00:03:54.640 that's stopping you from growing?

00:03:56.740 You know, so the areas that I think

00:03:58.440 are really important to understand is one,

00:04:00.320 is most of your complexity is based on fear,

00:04:04.660 meaning the fear of the unknown,

00:04:07.600 the fear that if something happened,

00:04:09.560 this other thing might happen.

00:04:11.680 And what's interesting is if you look at the probability

00:04:14.900 of that happening, it's very low.

00:04:16.900 Like, you know, people literally watch the news

00:04:20.340 and get fear-based information

00:04:22.020 and choose to not go, you know, do something.

00:04:25.280 Like it'd be as simple as the weather.

00:04:26.700 You know, like my wife is always like,

00:04:28.320 oh, we can't do that thing tomorrow, it's gonna rain.

00:04:31.460 I don't know about you,

00:04:32.620 but I have seen the weather change on a day by day basis.

00:04:36.040 So that may not be true, right?

00:04:38.380 And the way I like to think about this is,

00:04:40.420 and I wanna ask you,

00:04:41.260 are you making decisions based on hope or based on fear?

00:04:46.260 Are you making decisions about how you grow your business

00:04:49.560 out of hope for possibility and creation and prosperity,

00:04:53.260 or are you doing it out of fear of failure,

00:04:56.380 fear of being embarrassed, fear of losing, right?

00:05:01.600 Maybe you invest in hiring somebody and they don't perform

00:05:04.220 and then you lost all that salary.

00:05:05.500 So essentially the complexity ceiling sometimes

00:05:09.500 is really just a projection of our fear.

00:05:11.960 And if we don't have a way to think through that

00:05:14.300 and logically evaluate it for the potential upside

00:05:17.540 versus the potential downside.

00:05:19.240 Like, and we mitigate it.

00:05:21.120 I'm gonna show you how to mitigate it.

00:05:22.220 Then that'll be one of the reasons

00:05:24.080 why we don't get to the next level.

00:05:27.200 The other thing that I wanna talk about is process mapping.

00:05:29.260 I think it's one of the reasons

00:05:31.200 that I'm so successful in business

00:05:35.100 is because I'm able to process map.

00:05:37.680 And I got this as a software developer.

00:05:39.400 One of the things about writing code

00:05:41.360 and building software applications

00:05:43.720 is that you need to think about the data store,

00:05:46.280 you need to think about the application logic

00:05:47.940 and you need to think about the workflow,

00:05:49.300 the user flows.

00:05:50.640 And those are kind of the three different core components

00:05:53.120 of writing software.

00:05:54.440 So when I run into business issues,

00:05:56.820 the things that I do to respond to those is to map it out.

00:06:00.660 Because if a problem, you know,

00:06:02.680 and there's this great saying,

00:06:03.520 a problem well stated is half solved, right?

00:06:06.340 I think it was Charles Kettering that came up with that,

00:06:09.200 the GM genius, business genius.

00:06:11.980 So a problem well stated is half solved,

00:06:15.180 meaning that if I can't state the problem,

00:06:17.340 if I can't define the process, if I can't look at it,

00:06:21.320 then it's gonna be hard for me

00:06:23.220 to get my head wrapped around it to work on it.

00:06:26.460 And a lot of us, we just keep these problems in our head.

00:06:28.360 We actually don't take them from our mind

00:06:29.860 and stick them out on paper.

00:06:31.580 And I would encourage you to do that.

00:06:33.600 Take what you're scared about and just write it down

00:06:37.100 and say, okay, what are the steps?

00:06:38.960 If I were to solve this, what would it look like?

00:06:41.420 And there's an incredible book around this.

00:06:43.460 It's one of the three books that Jeff Bezos from Amazon

00:06:47.860 asks every one of his senior leadership team members to read.

00:06:51.420 And it's called The Goal by Aliyah M. Goldratt,

00:06:55.880 I believe, yeah, Goldratt. 0.80

00:06:57.440 And The Goal is this really great story

00:07:01.940 about a guy that takes over

00:07:04.660 kind of a manufacturing fabrication shop

00:07:07.180 and how he gets mentored around thinking

00:07:10.280 but retooling the shop for productivity and throughput.

00:07:13.480 And it's a great story for people

00:07:16.100 that have this complexity ceiling challenge

00:07:18.920 because it's gonna show you how to think through

00:07:22.300 those kinds of problems,

00:07:23.420 how to map them out in a process

00:07:26.400 and then how to be creative about restructuring

00:07:29.640 and redesigning things to be able to unlock them.

00:07:33.000 And I think that's a big idea.

00:07:34.980 And then finally, I wanna share with this real quick

00:07:37.340 is whatever level you wanna get to,

00:07:40.900 the reality of it is, is you need to become the person

00:07:43.600 who can deal with that level of complexity.

00:07:45.860 So people think as I grow and be successful,

00:07:49.500 life gets easier.

00:07:50.900 And what I would say is life doesn't get easier,

00:07:53.140 you got better.

00:07:55.220 The way to think about this visually

00:07:56.960 is think of a timeline between one to 10 of things, right?

00:08:00.500 So, you know, a level five problem,

00:08:03.780 if you're a level three person is gonna seem hard, right?

00:08:07.720 Because it's a level five problem.

00:08:09.460 But if you're a level seven person,

00:08:11.940 somebody that's grown and become the person

00:08:13.660 who can deal with level five problems,

00:08:15.100 the level five problem seems insignificant.

00:08:17.300 If you keep growing and you're a level 10 person

00:08:20.160 and you're dealing with a level five problem,

00:08:22.020 it seems even less significant.

00:08:24.780 Not that the problem isn't as big as it always was,

00:08:27.280 it's just who you are, how you interpret that,

00:08:29.420 how you react, the team you've built around you,

00:08:31.240 the support network,

00:08:32.160 the beliefs you have around those problems

00:08:34.800 is gonna allow you to deal with more complexity.

00:08:37.240 So don't wish that things were easier.

00:08:40.560 Wish that you were better.

00:08:42.600 Become the person who can deal.

00:08:44.960 And the way I like to think about this is,

00:08:50.000 oh, I learned this from a guy

00:08:51.960 and he was talking about like levels of 10 size problems.

00:08:55.700 So $10 problems, $100 problems, $1,000 problems.

00:08:58.600 Some of you are stuck at $10 problems.

00:09:01.000 $10 problems will throw you off.

00:09:02.620 You get upset, you scream at people, $10 mistake,

00:09:05.120 $10 waste, $10 decision, right?

00:09:07.740 You need to keep leveling up Roger Hamilton.

00:09:11.220 Roger Hamilton, I believe is his name, yeah.

00:09:13.420 You gotta keep leveling up your ability

00:09:16.360 to deal with higher dollar problems.

00:09:19.700 So thousand, $10,000 problems, $100,000 problems.

00:09:22.560 If you're stuck at the $1,000 problems,

00:09:24.520 you're never gonna increase.

00:09:25.620 That's another way to think through

00:09:26.840 this levels of complexity, right?

00:09:29.760 And when I coach people,

00:09:33.000 one of the things that I tell them often

00:09:34.940 is I'm not interested per se in your limiting beliefs

00:09:38.980 because a lot of people have that.

00:09:40.620 So what I'm interested is in your unlimited beliefs, right?

00:09:47.420 Not the limiting beliefs,

00:09:48.560 but what is your beliefs around limitless beliefs?

00:09:51.760 What do you believe is possible for yourself?

00:09:54.480 Because to me, that is a strong enough why.

00:09:58.320 If you tell me today, if you dedicated your life

00:10:01.280 for the next 25 years to become a master

00:10:03.100 at the thing that we're talking about today, your business,

00:10:05.760 what do you think's possible?

00:10:07.260 Limitless thinking, what do you think's possible?

00:10:09.720 That is 100% available to you.

00:10:12.680 And the only reason you don't get that

00:10:14.500 is because you have set these artificial ceilings

00:10:18.840 of complexity that won't allow you to solve the problems

00:10:22.440 you need to solve at those new levels.

00:10:24.480 It's the same reason why somebody that wins the lottery

00:10:27.120 within a three-year period is even worse financially

00:10:30.040 than where they were at

00:10:30.880 because they didn't have the knowledge

00:10:32.840 or the skillset to deal with that level.

00:10:35.660 And they started making bigger decisions

00:10:37.400 with bigger dollar amounts,

00:10:38.400 which means they end up in a deficit

00:10:40.340 after they've given it all back.

00:10:41.740 It's kind of a crazy idea,

00:10:43.060 but if you literally get distributed all the world's wealth

00:10:46.500 to everybody evenly, 7 billion people,

00:10:50.260 and you waited three years,

00:10:52.500 most of that wealth would be back in the hands

00:10:54.760 of the same people it's in today.

00:10:56.720 Why is that?

00:10:57.800 Because of this.

00:10:59.080 Because you need to develop the skills

00:11:02.520 and you need to be able to be somebody

00:11:04.540 that makes decisions out of hope, not fear.

00:11:06.980 You need to be able to map process

00:11:09.240 to solve really meaningful problems.

00:11:10.980 And you have to become the person internally in your mind

00:11:14.380 and also through your actions

00:11:16.340 that can deal with higher level problems.

00:11:19.200 If you do that,

00:11:20.340 you're going to create an incredible business for yourself.

00:11:23.300 So with that,

00:11:25.360 If you're interested in downloading the playbooks,

00:11:27.620 just click the link below.

00:11:29.160 I'm gonna leave that there.

00:11:30.340 Those are the exact same templates that I use.

00:11:32.600 Every time I start a new company,

00:11:33.560 I start with these templates.

00:11:34.680 They're all there for each core function of the business.

00:11:37.400 And the action I wanna ask you to take

00:11:40.160 is just dump whatever one thing you're doing today,

00:11:43.760 somebody else on your team could do.

00:11:45.120 Take everything you're doing, document the steps.

00:11:47.940 Even if you don't have to be detailed,

00:11:49.500 like screenshots, click into the software, whatever,

00:11:52.000 and give it to somebody else on your team.

00:11:53.900 I really want you to get a win from today's conversation.

00:11:57.200 I want you to document one small step process

00:12:01.640 and give it to somebody else on your team

00:12:03.660 and just start learning how to delegate.

00:12:06.660 Build that muscle.

00:12:07.820 It is a muscle.

00:12:08.900 You do it once, it'll get easier the second, third,

00:12:11.340 and literally at one point in the future,

00:12:13.700 you'll realize that that is the role of a CEO,

00:12:16.880 a founder, a leader,

00:12:18.160 is to learn how to work through their team

00:12:20.440 to build their business.

00:12:21.400 So with that, I hope this video finds you incredibly well.

00:12:23.880 We'll talk soon.

00:12:24.820 Peace.

00:12:25.460 Later, everybody.

Dan Martell - July 12, 2021

How to Overcome the Fear of Failure

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