Dan Martell - If you’re ambitious but can’t stay consistent, watch this video

00:00:00.000 Being consistent and doing hard things

00:00:01.600 is actually pretty f***ing easy.

00:00:03.500 And I'm not gonna tell you to just be more disciplined.

00:00:06.220 That actually doesn't work.

00:00:07.880 It's about following a simple formula

00:00:09.900 that makes you more consistent.

00:00:11.940 I've built and sold three companies,

00:00:13.340 scaled past 100 million in revenue,

00:00:14.940 and completed a half dozen Ironman races.

00:00:17.380 None of that happens without being super freaking consistent.

00:00:20.500 And the first step to do that is deciding who you are.

00:00:23.860 You don't have a consistency problem.

00:00:25.920 You have an identity problem.

00:00:27.700 Ask yourself this question,

00:00:28.840 Who do I need to become to achieve that body weight?

00:00:31.860 Who do I need to become to be successful?

00:00:33.960 Who do I need to be?

00:00:36.140 See, once you've identified that,

00:00:37.720 then you'll know what to do and what to avoid.

00:00:40.300 Most people would say, I wanna lose weight

00:00:41.980 versus who do I need to become to lose 50 pounds?

00:00:45.200 Or in my world, I would say release 50 pounds.

00:00:47.560 When I decided to get visible abs,

00:00:49.740 I had to ask myself that question, who is that?

00:00:51.980 How do they act?

00:00:52.600 How do they show up?

00:00:53.260 How consistent are they?

00:00:54.160 What are their habits?

00:00:54.980 How do they eat when they go to a restaurant,

00:00:56.860 when they travel?

00:00:57.620 So you almost have to act like the person

00:00:59.860 who's got the results before the results ever show up.

00:01:02.660 I used to go to the gym, cool,

00:01:04.700 but I wasn't working out the right way

00:01:06.640 because I didn't have the identity

00:01:08.080 of the kind of person that would do that.

00:01:09.900 And it's more than that, it's the self-belief.

00:01:13.160 It's the feeling worthy.

00:01:14.760 And until you flip the identity of the kind of person

00:01:17.440 who would feel like they deserve,

00:01:19.480 who would feel like they're worth,

00:01:20.760 who would feel almost entitled to that goal,

00:01:23.460 it's hard to achieve it.

00:01:24.660 And I use the 300% rule.

00:01:26.180 essentially is have 100% clarity of the identity

00:01:29.140 of what you want,

00:01:30.300 have 100% belief that you can do it, right?

00:01:32.900 Because you have to believe it.

00:01:33.940 And then 100% of the time,

00:01:35.420 you got to hold that belief with that clarity.

00:01:37.300 If you can do that, you will become that person.

00:01:40.100 So never forget this.

00:01:41.120 You don't get what you want.

00:01:42.500 You get who you are.

00:01:43.960 If who you are isn't getting the results,

00:01:46.460 it's time for an upgrade.

00:01:47.580 Now, once you decide your identity,

00:01:49.800 we need to build on that.

00:01:51.380 Because telling yourself, I am this, I am that,

00:01:54.200 won't get you anywhere if you don't make some real changes to your life.

00:01:58.440 And to do that, we need to design our environment.

00:02:01.580 Your environment is either working for you or against you.

00:02:05.620 It's either supporting your dreams or making it really hard to win.

00:02:09.120 We want to design things to make it easy for us to do the right thing

00:02:13.840 and make it feel absolutely inconvenient and hard to do the wrong thing.

00:02:18.500 So for example, putting your clothes out to go to the gym the night before,

00:02:22.460 next to your bed with everything ready to go

00:02:25.080 with the car and the alarm and everything set up

00:02:27.820 where you just like stumble out of your bed

00:02:29.540 and end up in the gym is a good move.

00:02:32.120 Taking all the snacks that you would normally eat

00:02:35.160 when you're just feeling tired or you wanna relax

00:02:37.600 and putting them in the basement.

00:02:39.580 So you have to like go into some weird little crawl space

00:02:42.460 to grab those snacks that are in your house.

00:02:44.440 That makes it hard.

00:02:45.620 Better yet, how about you don't buy them?

00:02:47.380 At one point I wanted to read more.

00:02:49.420 I knew that the problem was

00:02:50.460 is that sometimes I didn't have a book

00:02:51.620 that was interesting, or I had the book that I bought

00:02:53.720 and it wasn't with me.

00:02:54.520 So I made a simple decision.

00:02:55.840 I made an investment to make it wildly easy.

00:02:58.620 I bought three Kindles.

00:02:59.860 And now I know, some of you guys are thinking,

00:03:01.280 that's a bit much.

00:03:02.200 What happened is I put one next to my bed,

00:03:04.280 one downstairs in my morning chair,

00:03:06.160 and then I put one in my travel bag.

00:03:07.680 That way I always had a digital Kindle that was synced up

00:03:11.120 that I could never forget

00:03:12.220 so that I was always one step away.

00:03:14.320 My environment made it easy for me to read more.

00:03:17.200 A long time ago, my friend Scott said this to me.

00:03:18.980 He said, it's easier to avoid the dragon than to slay it.

00:03:21.620 A lot of decisions I don't wanna make.

00:03:23.480 Blue shirts, guess what?

00:03:24.680 Never have to make that decision.

00:03:25.760 Let's not make the requirement

00:03:27.300 that we're in a good headspace to make a good decision.

00:03:30.520 Let's just avoid the dragon.

00:03:32.020 So here's how you design your environment

00:03:33.660 in three quick steps.

00:03:35.240 First, go grab your phone,

00:03:37.080 open your notes app, really simple,

00:03:38.920 and just write down the last habit

00:03:40.540 that you were trying to build

00:03:42.060 and why you stopped, just one sentence.

00:03:44.760 Two, look at what you wrote and ask yourself,

00:03:47.820 what made it hard?

00:03:48.940 Now, remove that friction to make it easy.

00:03:51.620 Maybe you want to go to gym more, so get your clothes ready.

00:03:53.980 Maybe you want to commit to somebody else, so you have somebody that's there waiting for you.

00:03:57.100 If you're spending too much time on your phone, maybe you put your phone in a different room,

00:04:00.480 so it makes it hard to go grab in the morning.

00:04:01.900 Or you install an app that blocks you off of your social apps in the first place.

00:04:05.180 That'll make it really hard.

00:04:06.160 Maybe you want to eat better, so you decide to get meal prep.

00:04:08.940 So you invest in having somebody cook for you.

00:04:11.020 Pay, you're going to pay attention.

00:04:12.280 Maybe you take your snacks and you put them in another room, or you give it to your neighbor. 0.98

00:04:15.540 You know, and now you got to go to your neighbor's house and ask them for your freaking snack. 0.94

00:04:18.200 Eight o'clock at night when you shouldn't be eating anymore. 0.95

00:04:19.740 Make it hard.

00:04:20.680 Make it embarrassing.

00:04:21.620 make it tough on you. Essentially, you want to make it so easy, it's hard not to, and so hard

00:04:26.680 you feel stupid for doing it. And then number three, open your calendar and block the exact

00:04:31.880 time you're going to do this tomorrow. What are you going to do? What are the decisions? Put it

00:04:35.740 in your calendar and just show up and commit to it. That's it. When there's nothing to decide

00:04:41.220 anymore, there's nothing to quit. You just commit to it. Now you know it's in your calendar and you

00:04:45.940 make it happen. And look, if you really want to level up and learn not only how to design your

00:04:50.260 environment, but how to design your whole week, I've got to fill in the blank template on how you

00:04:54.280 could do that to make you even more consistent. Just find me on Instagram and DM me the word

00:04:58.420 YouTube week, and I'll send it right over. All right, so we got your identity defined.

00:05:03.360 You've set up your environment to work for you, not against you. Now, how do you actually stick

00:05:08.880 to it? Now, it might feel a little scary, but you have to make it public. The truth is nobody would

00:05:15.220 notice if you just quit tomorrow, if you didn't tell anybody. Once real people are in the picture,

00:05:20.260 and you tell them, everything changes.

00:05:22.900 There's nothing that people want to avoid more

00:05:25.600 than being seen to fail in other people's eyes.

00:05:28.680 A public commitment turns a wish into a debt.

00:05:32.280 You owe somebody something else.

00:05:33.840 This story's kind of crazy, but it happened.

00:05:35.920 So I've got Jen on my team who decides 0.74

00:05:38.080 she doesn't like the way she looks, okay?

00:05:39.680 Her words, not mine.

00:05:40.820 So she comes to the team and she says,

00:05:42.700 I wanna change my life, I want some accountability.

00:05:45.460 So my goal is to lose 20% body fat within five months.

00:05:48.620 Now, if I do it, I'm going to give myself the gift of going to Bali.

00:05:52.680 It's a country I've always wanted to go for.

00:05:54.180 If I don't, I need you guys to hold me accountable and I have to get fired. 0.76

00:05:58.720 She put her job on the line.

00:06:01.420 Real stakes. 1.00

00:06:02.620 Do you think she missed a workout? 0.98

00:06:03.820 No.

00:06:04.180 Do you think she didn't do meal prep, went and got a DEXA scan, like really went all in? 0.93

00:06:08.920 No, because she knew if she didn't hit it, she wouldn't be able to work at the place 0.99

00:06:12.940 she loved.

00:06:13.380 And if you look at the gen that came to us with that idea back then to how she looks

00:06:18.040 now she's a completely different person that enjoyed her time in bali another way to think

00:06:22.520 about it is the more you share your goals the more you enroll other people to see them happen

00:06:27.800 so it's yes it's about public accountability but it's also that you communicate your future

00:06:31.960 everybody knows that gary v wants to buy the new york jets will he do it he actually doesn't care

00:06:37.000 he just wants to hold that as a potential truth and i guarantee every day he gets asked 17 times

00:06:42.920 a day how close are you how close are you how close are you that level of accountability is

00:06:47.160 key see the truth is most people aren't consistent because the only person who would care if they

00:06:52.040 stopped is themselves we'll always do more for other people if we make commitments to them to

00:06:56.840 stay consistent than we'll ever do for ourselves so telling people actually makes it really powerful

00:07:01.800 so here's how to keep yourself accountable in three steps don't run away we're gonna do this

00:07:06.040 together one pick a big reward i'm talking a trip a purchase something you've always wanted but you

00:07:12.920 would not give yourself permission to get okay something real if you hit your goal you get it

00:07:18.600 no guilt and you're allowed to dream big number two now pick a big just as big consequence just

00:07:25.400 like jen saying i can't work here and i really don't want to get fired she put it on the line

00:07:29.880 for me when i decided to get visible abs i decided to make the consequence that i had to enter in a

00:07:35.080 fitness competition as is on the date if i didn't hit my goal i'm talking speedo

00:07:40.520 on stage to have those photos captured for the rest of my life nobody wants to visualize that

00:07:46.080 a simpler example is maybe you give 500 bucks to a friend or a thousand dollars to a friend or

00:07:50.280 five thousand whatever would be meaningful to you and if you quit they get to keep it maybe you give

00:07:55.180 it to a person you don't even like that would probably sting more and number three tell someone

00:07:59.960 today like right now if you have a decision to make a goal text one person right now and say

00:08:05.120 i'm doing this thing for this long if you want to level it up post it on your socials post it

00:08:10.260 on Facebook, tell your community, any story, any video, whatever it is. Once people know,

00:08:16.120 then quitting actually costs you something. But don't just tell them the goal, tell them the

00:08:19.900 reward and the consequence because then they'll get enrolled with you. You might inspire other

00:08:24.260 people to do the same thing. That's been my experience. Now look, you can do everything

00:08:27.940 we talked about. Define who you are, design your environment, tell everyone in the world about your

00:08:32.260 goals and still give up because most people forget about this last concept and it's to let time do

00:08:38.940 the work. Let me explain. It's not about doing more. It's about doing it for longer periods of

00:08:45.160 time. See, most often we compare ourselves to other people. We compare our chapter one to

00:08:49.660 their chapter 13. They've just been doing it longer. The people crushing it aren't doing 10x

00:08:54.360 more. They're maybe doing 10% more. For example, you might be 80% consistent with your meals.

00:09:00.040 If you get to 90%, all of a sudden now you get results. Another example is 1% better every day.

00:09:05.200 Now, it doesn't sound like much, just 1% better every day,

00:09:09.200 but that's a 37X growth in a year.

00:09:12.980 The question isn't, can I do this?

00:09:15.540 It's, can I do this long enough?

00:09:17.560 One of the guys I look up to, Naval Ravikant,

00:09:19.340 has this incredible quote, and he just says,

00:09:20.980 be patient with results and impatient with actions.

00:09:24.720 Move with a sense of urgency,

00:09:26.420 but at the same time, allow yourself to breathe

00:09:28.820 that things are just gonna take time.

00:09:30.700 When I started shooting YouTube videos,

00:09:32.460 I made a commitment to myself to do it for 10 years.

00:09:36.620 When people heard that, they're like, that's wild.

00:09:38.560 And guess what?

00:09:39.440 I have never missed a week.

00:09:41.120 Now it's on year 11.

00:09:42.960 I found some steam.

00:09:44.280 I found some momentum.

00:09:45.380 So when people see my numbers and they're like,

00:09:46.880 oh my gosh, two and a half million followers, that's crazy.

00:09:49.300 You didn't see what I did.

00:09:50.920 You just see what I've got.

00:09:52.400 Some ideas need time to work,

00:09:55.200 but you need to be doing the work in the time.

00:09:58.000 It's like when people meet me and they're like,

00:09:59.360 oh my gosh, where do I find a Sam, my creative director?

00:10:01.760 so he might seem young he's 24 now but he started when he was 14 editing videos showing up every day

00:10:08.500 getting a little bit better learning iterating exposing himself getting around other people

00:10:13.440 that are going to share big ideas with him some people think it's a linear thing but it's not

00:10:17.940 over time if you're consistent and you show up it eventually goes exponential one time i was

00:10:22.840 talking to one of my friends john maxwell the leadership goat and i was asking him about his

00:10:27.040 best-selling book he wrote 21 irrefutable laws of leadership it was his 13th book he's 73 now

00:10:34.000 he's written 92 books and i'm thinking oh my gosh what a legacy and he's like i just did

00:10:40.240 one thing for 52 years it's actually not that special he's just a guy that picked a thing

00:10:46.240 and showed up and never stopped when you see these people and you hear my story or other people and

00:10:51.120 you think they they must have a special gift or they must be a genius no they're not i mean for

00:10:56.400 For me, when I heard that, that's when I realized

00:10:58.120 the people I admire most aren't more talented.

00:11:01.260 They just didn't quit before compounding did the work.

00:11:03.960 So there's four things you need to do

00:11:05.640 to make sure you never quit again.

00:11:07.400 Number one, write that one thing

00:11:09.560 that if you did it every single day

00:11:11.420 would make everything else in your life easier.

00:11:13.920 Is it waking up early?

00:11:15.320 Is it working out consistently?

00:11:16.840 Is it being on time?

00:11:18.080 Is it writing down your tasks for the day?

00:11:20.000 Just decide a habit that you can commit to

00:11:23.040 for the rest of your life.

00:11:24.500 I know it sounds like a big question.

00:11:25.580 you can do it.

00:11:26.840 Two, underneath it, write today's date,

00:11:29.540 that's day one, because you're gonna do it today.

00:11:31.860 The third step is just one simple rule.

00:11:34.440 Never miss two days in a row.

00:11:36.480 You can miss one day, look, we're all human, that's fine.

00:11:39.320 Miss two days, now that's a bad streak.

00:11:42.080 That's my only rule.

00:11:43.500 I've never missed more than two days in a row

00:11:45.960 of not going to the gym, two days of not eating clean,

00:11:48.620 two days of not being grateful, sharing ideas.

00:11:51.220 The things and the habits that have stacked in my life,

00:11:53.640 I've just made a commitment that I'm allowed to miss something, but to do it too, I start a

00:11:58.540 downward spiral. Most people, when they realize they put on 30 pounds, it's not like they woke

00:12:02.500 up and they just put on 30 pounds. That spiral started a long time ago. They just didn't have

00:12:06.620 a rule in their life that stopped them from starting the downward spiral. And number four,

00:12:11.240 break it into chapters. So for me, day one to 90, that's milestone number one. And that's just

00:12:16.140 survival. We're going to do it ugly. We're going to do it hard. We're going to just do it draft.

00:12:19.800 We're just going to get it done. Okay. It doesn't have to be pretty. Just show up in the gym. If

00:12:22.680 walk in the door and walk back out i'm still giving you a high five day 91 to 365 that's

00:12:28.520 milestone number two that's about building momentum now we've been consistent for a year

00:12:32.600 and now we're going now we're feeling this right day 365 to a thousand i call that milestone number

00:12:38.120 three which is compounding that's where you start to get the exponential growth out of that habit

00:12:43.640 and the trick is celebrate each milestone like it's a big moment like i need you to be like i

00:12:49.800 I did it for 90 days.

00:12:50.900 I did it for 365.

00:12:52.180 I did it for a thousand.

00:12:53.740 Like if you don't post it and tag me in that

00:12:55.920 and let me know, I'll be very upset.

00:12:57.880 I want to celebrate you.

00:12:59.480 So now you have the formula.

00:13:00.800 You know who you are.

00:13:01.840 You know your environment does the work for you.

00:13:03.820 You have people watching you

00:13:05.060 and you've got the mindset to stick with it.

00:13:07.100 The only question left is, will you actually do it?

00:13:11.040 Like there's only four things.

00:13:13.000 And I know most people will just watch this and do nothing,

00:13:15.400 but let's not be most people.

00:13:17.600 So leave a comment below and let me know

00:13:19.680 what's that one thing that you're committed to today the thing you wrote down with today's date

00:13:24.300 post it below and remember if you want to take this a step further just go find me on instagram

00:13:29.340 and dm me the word youtube week and i'll send you over my perfect week template to make this

00:13:33.980 even easier and if you want to learn how i built habits that made me rich click here and i'll see

00:13:38.820 on the other side

Dan Martell - May 04, 2026

If you’re ambitious but can’t stay consistent, watch this video

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