Dan Martell - Why being FAST makes you more successful (just copy me)

00:00:00.000 What separates successful people from those who try

00:00:03.160 for years and never really get anywhere?

00:00:05.840 Most people think it's IQ, talent,

00:00:08.140 or some mix of strategy and luck.

00:00:10.160 But after studying people like Elon Musk,

00:00:12.520 Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson,

00:00:14.040 the only thing that actually makes them different is speed.

00:00:17.920 See, I believe that most people are on a path

00:00:21.000 to be really freaking rich.

00:00:23.260 The challenge is, is that most of them are going so slow

00:00:27.040 that they'll never get there in their lifetime.

00:00:29.680 And the most successful people have learned how to make that same progress way faster.

00:00:35.660 The good news is all the millionaires and billionaires I know follow the same seven

00:00:39.620 steps to make progress faster. It's how I made my first million by 27 and how I do over a hundred

00:00:45.020 million dollars in revenue in my forties. But don't worry, speed doesn't mean working harder

00:00:50.000 and it doesn't require you to already have money either. So if you want to progress faster than

00:00:53.860 anyone, these are the seven steps to do it. Starting with step number one, burn the boats.

00:00:59.680 Most people struggle with making the right decisions

00:01:02.760 because they don't have enough pressure.

00:01:04.380 Anytime I'm working with entrepreneurs,

00:01:06.040 we always build a five-year plan.

00:01:07.580 And I just ask them, what would need to be true

00:01:10.240 for you to get that done in one year?

00:01:12.080 And most people are like, well, it's impossible.

00:01:13.720 I say, well, what's your confidence score

00:01:15.080 that you could get it done if you had to get it done?

00:01:16.860 And usually it's like two, three.

00:01:19.080 I mean, this is a five-year plan

00:01:20.300 you're asking me to get done in one.

00:01:21.600 Then I invite them to consider this.

00:01:23.440 What if you knew at the end of the year

00:01:25.320 that if you didn't hit the five-year goal

00:01:27.360 that you had to not only sell the business,

00:01:29.320 you lose all your money and you would only be able to work for somebody else for the rest of

00:01:32.440 your life, how likely are you to hit that goal? All of a sudden, their confidence level goes to

00:01:36.660 10. Most people don't create a scenario where they have to make it a must. They give themselves an

00:01:43.000 out. They don't burn the boats. The best entrepreneurs go all in. My philosophy is I

00:01:48.480 don't trick myself into liking to do things. I create a scenario where I have to do things.

00:01:54.600 So I've discovered there's only three ways to burn the boats. Number one, force a deadline.

00:01:58.700 I don't care if it's signing up for an Ironman,

00:02:01.060 selling a product before you ever build it.

00:02:03.020 You have to have a timeline and a date.

00:02:05.740 The second is you gotta put money on the line.

00:02:07.980 My to-do list is always prioritized

00:02:10.000 based on where my money is.

00:02:11.540 Putting my money on the line

00:02:13.060 is a great forcing function of focus.

00:02:15.880 Even if you don't have money,

00:02:17.100 just make a bet to somebody else

00:02:18.420 that if you don't achieve that goal

00:02:19.840 that you set out for yourself,

00:02:20.860 you'd have a big IOU.

00:02:22.600 Create the financial pressure, it's okay.

00:02:25.040 And then the third is have a commitment

00:02:26.820 that you make externally,

00:02:28.080 a public commitment to your friends,

00:02:30.780 to your coworkers, to your investors.

00:02:32.900 The truth is you'll do more for yourself

00:02:35.580 if you're emotionally connected to the stakes

00:02:38.080 to avoid the pain than you ever will

00:02:40.580 to have a gain in your life.

00:02:42.720 So now that you have no way out, it's time to move forward.

00:02:45.620 Which brings us to step two,

00:02:47.500 default to action, not preparation.

00:02:50.300 See, most people make the mistake of preparing for action

00:02:53.260 instead of taking action.

00:02:54.760 One of my favorite recent stories about Elon Musk,

00:02:56.920 that came from his book by Walter Isaacson

00:02:58.640 is that after buying Twitter that he renamed to X,

00:03:02.220 he asked the team that was in charge of the data centers

00:03:04.580 how long it would take them to consolidate

00:03:06.760 and shut down some of these data centers.

00:03:09.280 And somebody on the team said six months.

00:03:11.220 And he's like, it doesn't take six months.

00:03:12.940 He says, it's gonna take six months.

00:03:14.280 He goes, I don't think it should take six months.

00:03:15.780 And the guy says, it's gonna take six months.

00:03:17.460 So Elon, after he visited the headquarters

00:03:19.700 and he's flying back home, he's flying over Sacramento,

00:03:23.180 realizes the data centers are there, lands the plane,

00:03:25.880 and then goes and rents a u-haul and starts cutting and starts pulling out these server racks

00:03:30.680 and throwing them in the u-haul what everybody else told him it takes six months he got it done

00:03:35.000 in three days see most people don't take action because they're worried that they don't make the

00:03:38.620 right decision what i've learned is the richest people make a decision and then make it right

00:03:43.460 that's why jfdi is my motto just do it it's on my license plate it's part of my life it's

00:03:49.840 essentially how i operate so these are the four ways to default to action instead of sitting

00:03:54.260 around hoping you make the right decision. The first one is the buy when rule. I can't tell you

00:03:58.200 the amount of times I talk to people and I'm like, hey, when am I going to get this? They're like,

00:04:01.280 oh yeah, later this week or at the end of the month. I'm like, no, buy when. Like, give me a

00:04:04.900 date. Give me a time. If you say Friday, I'm going to say, why not Tuesday? Well, I won't have time.

00:04:09.440 What about Wednesday? Well, that's a little aggressive. How about Thursday? I'll have it

00:04:12.820 to you by Thursday, 2 p.m. That's what I'm talking about. If you allow people to just give you these

00:04:17.720 arbitrary numbers, they'll just take that amount of time and you slow down your progress. The other

00:04:22.580 one is the two minute rule. This one is hilarious. I see most people spend more time documenting the

00:04:29.080 steps to do than it would take to just do the thing. If it takes less than two minutes to get

00:04:34.180 it done right away, just do it. The other one is the 70% rule. And it's all about making decisions.

00:04:39.120 See, the definition of entrepreneurship is making decisions with imperfect data. As long as I have

00:04:43.900 70% of the data, I make a decision. It doesn't have to be complete. It doesn't have to be certain.

00:04:49.780 I can always reverse the decision,

00:04:51.480 but 70% is good enough for me.

00:04:53.280 The last one is the difference between type one decisions

00:04:56.340 and type two decisions.

00:04:57.620 Type one is like a one-way door.

00:04:59.500 When I make that decision, it's one way.

00:05:01.860 Type two decision is like a revolving door.

00:05:04.320 It's a decision in and I can stay in

00:05:06.340 and come right back out.

00:05:07.520 That's like hiring somebody.

00:05:09.040 I can always move on if I make the wrong hire.

00:05:11.080 See, most people don't hire folks

00:05:12.580 because they're scared to make a commitment

00:05:13.840 to somebody long-term because like,

00:05:15.480 oh, that's an extra 50 grand a year, 100 grand a year.

00:05:18.060 No, it's not.

00:05:18.660 It's whatever they cost per month.

00:05:20.640 And if you make a bad decision,

00:05:21.840 you can transition them off the team

00:05:23.440 and call it a lesson learned.

00:05:24.840 Type one, like buying a company

00:05:26.580 or raising money from an investor,

00:05:29.240 that's a one-way street.

00:05:30.400 You wanna slow down for those ones.

00:05:31.800 And that's what the most successful people understand

00:05:33.860 is how to make a decision even without the right data

00:05:36.800 or without the confidence they can separate it and decide.

00:05:40.100 But after you start taking action,

00:05:41.560 you need to find ways to improve quickly.

00:05:43.500 Which brings us to step number three, model, then modify.

00:05:47.560 If you wanna get on my bad side, ask me for advice.

00:05:50.680 I hand you the blueprint

00:05:52.040 and then you take pieces that you like to do,

00:05:54.900 you ignore the rest and then it doesn't work for you

00:05:57.040 and then you blame me.

00:05:58.000 I don't second guess.

00:05:59.160 When somebody gives me their blueprint,

00:06:00.760 I go, I'm gonna go execute this line by line

00:06:03.740 to figure out if it works or it doesn't.

00:06:06.300 Tony Robbins has this great quote

00:06:07.560 that says, success leaves clues.

00:06:09.680 If you want to move fast,

00:06:11.580 you have to model people that are successful.

00:06:14.260 If you're smart about it,

00:06:15.240 you'll be able to integrate their lessons learned as fast as possible to move quickly.

00:06:19.960 This is the way I think about it, is that great artists know how to steal like an artist. It

00:06:25.180 doesn't mean you copy. It means you take the essence of what they're doing, the principles,

00:06:29.900 and then you make it your own. So you want to copy the container, not the content. By making

00:06:35.300 it your own, it means understanding what's different about your market, the product,

00:06:39.600 your own story, or the personalities in the business. Each part is going to impact how

00:06:44.300 you model what you see. This is my philosophy. I think it's very simple. Every time I start

00:06:48.900 something new, I ask myself, who do I know that's already done this? Who out there has already been

00:06:53.040 successful? When I started coaching, I literally said, who are the coaches that have made over

00:06:57.460 eight figures a year doing it in an ethical way that I can admire their brand? I was very clear

00:07:03.400 about who I wanted to learn from. And because of that, I only found those people. I got their

00:07:08.340 playbooks. I understood their models. I made them my own, but then I was able to execute faster

00:07:13.100 than anybody in the industry.

00:07:14.440 And the truth is, is if you're really stuck

00:07:16.340 and you don't feel comfortable reaching out to people,

00:07:18.100 which I get, then you should just ask ChatGPT.

00:07:20.600 Think about it.

00:07:21.640 The AI has indexed the whole world's information

00:07:24.440 and it'll give it all to you for free without feelings.

00:07:28.520 So the blueprints exist.

00:07:29.760 I always love to ask people,

00:07:30.780 what are you pretending not to know?

00:07:32.320 But the truth is, is the AI will give you the answer.

00:07:34.420 Then you have to take that and execute.

00:07:36.120 And the cool part, with the right model and traction,

00:07:38.900 this next step will multiply your speed.

00:07:40.700 which brings us step number four fire bullets then cannons most people think the fastest way

00:07:48.540 is to go for the biggest win as soon as possible but the reality is most people aren't ready if i

00:07:54.300 showed up to your door right now and i said here's a hundred million dollar purchase order for

00:07:57.660 whatever you're selling you would probably crumble under the weight of that new opportunity so i

00:08:03.740 learned this strategy from an incredible book great by choice the author jim collins has a

00:08:07.980 the whole chapter on this section,

00:08:09.940 where his philosophy is shoot, shoot, shoot, calibrate.

00:08:14.160 Once you get shots on goal,

00:08:15.800 then load up the cannon and put more resources behind it.

00:08:19.300 If you don't, you might come out way too fast, too strong,

00:08:22.300 and then run out of time

00:08:23.660 to actually figure out the business.

00:08:25.200 One of my buddies, Matt,

00:08:26.100 who has this incredible product called Precision.

00:08:28.020 It's like a AI-powered dashboard for business and insights.

00:08:31.560 Most people, when they have these ideas, they're like,

00:08:33.540 I'm gonna go hire a bunch of engineers

00:08:35.300 and spend $10 million and build this new innovation.

00:08:37.820 and not learn fast enough.

00:08:39.380 Matt said, no, I'm going to build

00:08:41.060 one very specific use case, pre-sell it,

00:08:43.700 go get 50 customers validated, get them using it,

00:08:46.940 learning to love it, and then I'm gonna invest more money

00:08:49.640 in the engineering to expand what the product does.

00:08:52.280 That is the definition of pew, pew, boom.

00:08:57.260 What's funny is most people won't do this approach

00:08:59.420 because they're worried about losing,

00:09:00.900 but what's true is winners lose more than losers ever will.

00:09:04.340 When I'm building a business, I always assume I'm wrong

00:09:06.740 about some aspect of the business.

00:09:08.560 There's something about the business model that's wrong.

00:09:10.360 So what I do is I create my riskiest assumptions list.

00:09:13.360 A list of all the things around the business

00:09:15.720 of how it's gonna work and how I'm gonna build it

00:09:17.740 that I then prioritize based on the riskiest assumption.

00:09:20.860 If the first assumption is wrong,

00:09:22.800 then the second and third don't really matter.

00:09:24.620 And then I attack the first one.

00:09:26.140 I've tried to validate it.

00:09:27.440 So taking those little shots

00:09:29.020 is how you eventually load up the cannon

00:09:30.960 to make big progress.

00:09:32.060 But if you're not careful,

00:09:33.100 you'll end up complicating things too much.

00:09:35.400 Which brings us to step five, simplify your business.

00:09:38.500 See, the easiest thing to do is make things complex.

00:09:41.760 Every person on your team has a good idea,

00:09:44.120 a suggestion, some feedback

00:09:46.280 on how you can make things better.

00:09:47.900 The problem is if you say yes

00:09:49.260 to every one of those suggestions,

00:09:51.140 you'll wake up one day with SOPs out the yin yang,

00:09:54.060 quality issues, people confused,

00:09:56.180 nobody getting any work done.

00:09:57.400 They're gonna be buried under the load of complexity.

00:10:01.160 You cannot scale chaos.

00:10:03.160 I believe right time, right action,

00:10:05.600 appropriate response to challenges.

00:10:07.840 So to really land the plane on this,

00:10:09.980 I wanna share some complexity killers

00:10:11.860 that keep things super simple.

00:10:13.480 The first one is simplify your goals.

00:10:15.380 Most people have too many things they wanna do

00:10:17.540 instead of picking the one thing, the leading domino,

00:10:20.200 that if they got it done,

00:10:21.400 everything else takes care of itself.

00:10:23.080 The second is simplify your decisions.

00:10:25.040 I wear the same colored shirt every time, why?

00:10:27.400 I don't wanna burn brain cells making decisions

00:10:30.440 around things I've already made the decision around.

00:10:32.080 The third is simplify your workflows.

00:10:34.420 If you do something once

00:10:36.080 and you will be doing it again every week,

00:10:38.080 create some automation

00:10:39.360 so you never have to do the same thing twice.

00:10:41.240 Simplify your commitments.

00:10:42.600 Design your calendar where you have a rhythm of success

00:10:46.420 that you don't have to revisit every time.

00:10:48.580 If that's date night every Thursday like it is for me,

00:10:50.940 then that's when you do date night.

00:10:52.300 Lock and load and don't make those decisions every week.

00:10:54.900 The other one is regular pruning.

00:10:56.440 Understand that things will evolve and become complex

00:10:59.540 and you have to deliberately prune the complexity

00:11:02.460 in your calendar, just like you take care of a garden.

00:11:05.040 You gotta get rid of those weeds.

00:11:06.700 Which brings us to step number six,

00:11:08.520 get obsessed with your progress.

00:11:11.260 I've got a confession to make.

00:11:12.620 My wife is about to kick me out of bed. 1.00

00:11:15.120 She's annoyed with me that every night,

00:11:17.400 all I do is watch YouTube videos

00:11:19.140 on AI language models and robotics.

00:11:21.660 Why?

00:11:22.500 Because it's the thing I'm all in on.

00:11:24.140 And most people don't realize for you to win

00:11:27.020 and do things that very few other people have done,

00:11:29.600 it requires focus, it requires intensity.

00:11:32.960 And the funny part is that if you're doing it right,

00:11:35.360 listen to this, other people will be telling you,

00:11:38.620 you're way too much.

00:11:41.300 I get it, you can't be a world-class friend,

00:11:44.220 a world-class husband, a world-class entrepreneur,

00:11:46.880 a world-class dad, a world-class everything,

00:11:48.980 and actually be as successful as you like to be in life.

00:11:51.040 You're literally gonna have to decide

00:11:52.680 this is a season of no, this is a season of obsession,

00:11:56.060 This is a season of focus, and you're going all in on you.

00:11:59.920 This is my invitation for you to embrace obsession.

00:12:03.320 Number one is immerse yourself.

00:12:04.780 I think of it like standing in a waterfall.

00:12:06.780 Whatever you want to accomplish,

00:12:07.980 you want to be drinking from the fire hose

00:12:10.500 as if you were sitting at the bottom of a waterfall, 0.96

00:12:12.900 smashing you in the face, 0.99

00:12:13.960 and you're trying to drink as much water as you can. 1.00

00:12:15.780 Probably gonna kill you,

00:12:16.980 but on the other side of that, you will learn a lot. 0.99

00:12:20.060 Hang around with other people that are obsessed.

00:12:22.300 I have a weekly AI expert roundtable

00:12:24.700 that I curate with all the top people in the world

00:12:27.280 to learn as fast as I can

00:12:28.960 because I can't possibly consume, read, understand,

00:12:32.420 process what's going on,

00:12:33.680 so I use them as a way to get more feedback.

00:12:36.460 The other one is don't learn tactics.

00:12:38.920 Learn how they think.

00:12:40.260 Understand the principles behind their decisions.

00:12:42.820 That, for me, is my favorite thing.

00:12:44.160 When I go for dinner, I'm always asking people,

00:12:46.180 what made you decide to make that decision?

00:12:48.620 How did you see that market

00:12:49.980 that caused you to think about that strategy?

00:12:52.280 Learning how people think will help you think better.

00:12:55.520 Learning a tactic will teach you something short-term

00:12:57.780 that would be obsolete in a month.

00:12:59.840 The way you should think about it is going all in.

00:13:03.540 And check this out.

00:13:04.420 The word calling,

00:13:05.820 the thing that everybody's trying to figure out,

00:13:07.240 what is their calling in life,

00:13:08.400 in the center of that word is the word all in.

00:13:11.800 It's required.

00:13:12.960 It's an ingredient.

00:13:14.280 Which brings us to step seven,

00:13:15.740 go find bigger problems.

00:13:17.560 If you wanna compress decades into years,

00:13:20.500 then you're gonna have to learn to be comfortable

00:13:22.360 being uncomfortable.

00:13:23.780 You see, life is just like a video game.

00:13:25.440 Every time you go to a new level, 0.79

00:13:26.860 you have to be okay sucking again to get better. 0.94

00:13:30.040 So what got you here will not get you there. 0.63

00:13:32.620 And you should calibrate based on the size of problems

00:13:34.620 you have.

00:13:35.160 If you have small problems, you probably live a small life.

00:13:37.260 If you have big problems, you're living a bigger life.

00:13:39.880 Do you want like oil change problems

00:13:41.700 or do you want jet fuel problems?

00:13:43.640 I think you should always be on the pursuit

00:13:46.020 to find bigger problems.

00:13:47.480 It's kind of like in math,

00:13:48.540 there's this concept called the local maxima.

00:13:50.500 which is essentially this equation

00:13:52.380 to try to figure out where's the top of the mountain.

00:13:54.260 The challenge is that once you get

00:13:55.360 to the top of the mountain,

00:13:56.360 if you don't realize there's a bigger mountain,

00:13:58.380 but to get to that bigger mountain,

00:13:59.700 you have to go down through the valley

00:14:01.060 and up to the next one,

00:14:02.460 you might actually be at the peak of the current stage

00:14:05.500 of where you're at in life,

00:14:06.320 but definitely not where you could possibly be,

00:14:08.840 but you gotta be willing to go back to go up.

00:14:11.020 So wanting to find bigger challenges, bigger problems,

00:14:13.900 just saying, please, bring them, thank you,

00:14:16.120 be grateful for your problems,

00:14:17.600 is how you continue that journey.

00:14:18.900 The other thing I encourage you to consider

00:14:20.640 is to reset your vision, go bigger.

00:14:23.560 I don't care what your vision is,

00:14:24.980 add a zero and ask yourself, why not me?

00:14:28.740 Why not you?

00:14:30.180 Like over the next 10 years, 25 years,

00:14:32.840 I'm gonna wake up either way and build something and create.

00:14:36.380 And the only difference on the size of the thing I build

00:14:39.080 is my decision today on what I wanna build.

00:14:42.180 Because if it's a million dollar business in 10 years,

00:14:44.580 guess what, I'll hit it.

00:14:45.900 If it's a 10 million year business in 10 years,

00:14:47.880 you'll make a different series of decisions every time you wake up to hit that. So why not you?

00:14:53.520 So those seven steps is how you achieve your goals even faster. But the reality of it is

00:14:58.680 it's more than just achieving your goals. It's about learning how to enjoy the journey. My

00:15:04.100 philosophy, if you ever have the chance to get to the top, it's your responsibility to send the

00:15:08.040 elevator back down. So if you want to learn how I taught a hundred kids to make more money than

00:15:13.020 their parents, click the link and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - June 03, 2025

Why being FAST makes you more successful (just copy me)

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript