Dan Martell - March 21, 2022


Why I Shut Down A $1.8M Coaching Business & Started Over

Hosted by
Dan Martell
Mentioned
Todd Herman Christopher Bolin Richard
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Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

193.95

Word count

2,179

Sentence count

138


Summary

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

If you ve ever felt like you re stuck in something that wasn t broken, but it just isn t working for you, or you re holding yourself back because you re scared of what other people are going to think, or losing momentum you ve built, this episode is for you!

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 There's things that I know you have moments where your soul lights on fire and just feels so good
00:00:04.960 and you get energized and then you let your life happen to you. You let your mind beat it down.
00:00:10.780 You talk to your family and they shut it down and you talk to your
00:00:14.560 your unsupportive friends and they beat it out of you.
00:00:30.000 what is up everybody dan here today i want to talk about something that's on my heart i need
00:00:34.800 to share it with you and it's the idea of giving up the good to pursue the great if you've ever
00:00:39.200 felt like you were stuck in something that wasn't broken but it isn't awesome and you want to make
00:00:44.160 a big decision you consider a big decision but you're holding back because you're scared of what
00:00:49.040 other people are going to think or losing the momentum you've built or whatever it is i want
00:00:53.600 to share a story with you that might give you some perspective and then also share some principles
00:00:57.760 that have helped me make big decisions.
00:00:59.820 In my life, I've done everything from, you know,
00:01:02.560 sell companies, move cities several times,
00:01:07.660 you know, left relationships that weren't supporting me,
00:01:10.840 et cetera, et cetera.
00:01:12.180 If you've gone through it, I've definitely been there.
00:01:14.700 And I have some philosophies, I think,
00:01:16.660 that might give you some perspective,
00:01:18.660 some points of view to help you make those decisions.
00:01:21.140 But my favorite one that I like to share
00:01:23.560 is when I had a $1.8 million a year coaching practice
00:01:28.720 called the Lead Entrepreneur,
00:01:30.160 and I decided to leave that
00:01:32.920 to go pursue a new thing called SaaS Academy.
00:01:36.180 And the challenge was is here I was,
00:01:38.120 I spent two years, about a year and a half,
00:01:40.440 two years building up this group of incredible entrepreneurs
00:01:44.960 that I had the privileges of working with
00:01:47.180 to help them scale their companies.
00:01:49.980 And the challenge was is that they were all over the place.
00:01:52.740 They weren't just software.
00:01:54.420 They were, you know, everything from manufacturing companies
00:01:57.500 to consumer products to agencies, et cetera.
00:01:59.980 I just love business.
00:02:01.240 So I wanted to really support them and grow them.
00:02:03.520 And I was doing that.
00:02:04.580 I would do, at first I did a six-month cohort.
00:02:07.300 Then I did another six-month cohort.
00:02:09.120 Then I did a year program.
00:02:10.900 And I just realized there was a bunch of stuff
00:02:12.560 that I wasn't in love with, okay?
00:02:16.320 And then I had a conversation,
00:02:17.680 which I'll tell you about in a sec,
00:02:19.120 with somebody that really gave me permission,
00:02:21.840 and I'm hoping this video does this for you,
00:02:23.960 gave me permission to make the decision
00:02:26.880 to go all in on what could be great.
00:02:30.160 A lean entrepreneur was good.
00:02:31.640 And honestly, in a lot of people's eyes, it was great.
00:02:34.220 Most coaches never crack six figures,
00:02:36.820 let alone a million dollars,
00:02:37.900 let alone kind of the growth that we'd created
00:02:39.520 in that short period of time.
00:02:41.140 But for me was asking myself the question of like,
00:02:44.840 fast forward 10 years, is this what I wanna be doing?
00:02:47.960 Is this aligned with my vision for my life?
00:02:50.140 And does this light me up?
00:02:51.980 Does this create the most value for my customers
00:02:53.940 than anybody else in the world?
00:02:55.000 Which is a question I ask myself often.
00:02:57.220 Am I creating more value for my customers
00:02:59.340 than anybody else in the world?
00:03:00.640 If you haven't asked yourself that question, do that.
00:03:02.800 And that's what caused me to come to the realization
00:03:05.660 that I needed to shut down the program.
00:03:08.380 Like literally shut it down and start from scratch
00:03:11.780 to build SaaS Academy, which today,
00:03:14.820 four and a half, five years later,
00:03:16.340 has become the number one largest coaching programs
00:03:19.320 in the world.
00:03:20.440 I have a team of, I think we're at like 45 people,
00:03:23.460 clients all over the world, 1,000 coaching clients.
00:03:27.140 And none of that would have happened
00:03:28.720 if I stayed on the previous path.
00:03:31.080 And I share that because I wanna unpack
00:03:32.980 some of the beliefs that allowed me
00:03:35.600 to get clarity around that decision.
00:03:38.180 Pun intended, because that's one of my previous companies
00:03:40.220 called Clarity.
00:03:41.520 The first belief, it was surround yourself
00:03:44.820 with great people.
00:03:46.160 See, oftentimes, even like this morning,
00:03:48.360 I was, I do a founder's hike every Tuesday and,
00:03:51.940 but I hike all the time.
00:03:53.940 So I was hiking this morning and I was talking
00:03:57.340 to an entrepreneur about confidence.
00:04:00.600 And she was asking like, you know,
00:04:01.980 one time you said something about like confidence
00:04:04.600 is the commitments you make to yourselves that you keep.
00:04:07.580 And when you break them, you don't keep them.
00:04:09.920 And they said, well, how do you hold yourself accountable
00:04:12.220 to keeping the commitments you make to yourself?
00:04:14.880 Like, what is, what's the process for that?
00:04:17.620 And the truth was, as I said, two things.
00:04:19.520 One, I speak my decisions into the future.
00:04:23.560 I make a claim on my shot.
00:04:27.060 I call my shot, okay, to the world.
00:04:28.960 Here's what I'm gonna go do.
00:04:30.460 And then anytime I'm gonna make a deviation from that,
00:04:34.100 I always reach out to people that I admire.
00:04:36.680 This is where like surround yourself
00:04:38.040 with great people comes from.
00:04:39.300 People that have been there and done that.
00:04:41.120 My peer group, my mentors,
00:04:43.340 and I use them as a sanity check and a litmus test of like,
00:04:47.180 hey, am I being distracted by doing this thing
00:04:50.320 or pursuing this idea?
00:04:51.500 Or is this aligned with what I'm trying to do?
00:04:54.540 And having people in your court
00:04:56.760 to allow you to evaluate the current,
00:05:00.660 which is technically the good,
00:05:02.560 to do the great is how you do it.
00:05:04.340 When I was deciding to make that decision,
00:05:06.020 the conversation that shifted it all for me
00:05:07.700 is one of my best friends, Todd Herman.
00:05:10.140 And I was talking to Todd and he said something like,
00:05:12.980 why are you stepping over dollars to pick up nickels?
00:05:16.860 And I said, what do you mean?
00:05:17.780 He goes, you're the only person in the world
00:05:20.600 that I know that is qualified as a reputation
00:05:22.920 to actually teach software entrepreneurs how to scale.
00:05:26.700 You've done it yourself.
00:05:27.640 You've exited your companies.
00:05:28.960 You've invested in a bunch of software companies.
00:05:31.160 You teach this stuff.
00:05:32.900 You've been doing it for a decade.
00:05:34.120 You've been blogging.
00:05:35.180 Why are you teaching general business advice?
00:05:38.360 And I was like, man, you're right.
00:05:41.600 I think it's because I didn't want to say no.
00:05:43.340 I didn't want to focus, right?
00:05:45.220 And what Todd gave me permission to do,
00:05:48.740 because I admire him so much,
00:05:50.940 was he gave me permission to make that tough decision.
00:05:53.680 And it was like, I remember I was pacing in the backyard
00:05:56.100 at my place in San Diego,
00:05:57.780 and I didn't wanna make the decision.
00:05:59.760 I ran in the house and I made the,
00:06:01.520 and I'll talk more about how to do that.
00:06:03.960 But that was a big thing.
00:06:05.140 Surround yourself with people
00:06:06.260 that you feel are great at their thing to get feedback.
00:06:10.320 The number two is aligned with the future.
00:06:11.700 I mentioned this earlier that to me,
00:06:13.840 I'm always trying to make decisions.
00:06:15.200 Here's where I wanna go.
00:06:16.400 This is the future, way over here.
00:06:18.640 And today is a sequencing activity of,
00:06:22.840 is this the right order and at least the right direction
00:06:25.960 of the things I wanna do so that I can achieve the outcome?
00:06:29.960 Because there's nothing worse
00:06:31.980 than leaning the ladder of success against the wrong wall
00:06:35.960 only to climb it to get to the top
00:06:38.080 to find out it's leaning against the wrong wall, okay?
00:06:41.180 I don't doubt you'll be successful.
00:06:43.580 But honestly, when I look back at like the decision
00:06:46.720 to do general business coaching,
00:06:49.100 if I would have just given myself a little bit more time
00:06:52.000 to think further ahead and say, okay, I'm successful.
00:06:55.220 I have a thousand clients.
00:06:57.600 What's gonna light me up inside?
00:06:59.640 Is it gonna light me up inside that I'm answering
00:07:01.440 a bunch of different questions from left fields
00:07:03.240 and from people that I can't help
00:07:04.700 because I have no experience in their industry
00:07:06.380 like HVAC and whatever?
00:07:08.740 Or do I want to be surrounded with innovators
00:07:13.020 and people that are pushing the envelope
00:07:14.860 in regards to the possibilities of how to scale
00:07:17.400 and grow fast, et cetera?
00:07:18.920 And man, that was the unlock for me
00:07:22.200 was the alignment of my future.
00:07:25.480 So that kind of, that would,
00:07:27.620 if I would have took more time to think through
00:07:29.300 what could that look like,
00:07:30.480 I probably would have made that decision
00:07:32.060 on my own a lot sooner.
00:07:33.420 So that's a big one.
00:07:34.120 And then the third is JFDI.
00:07:35.600 If you don't know what it stands for, Google it.
00:07:37.020 it's part of my manifesto actually check this out so it's i have this all over my house this is just
00:07:43.480 my manifesto if you go to danmartell.com forward slash manifesto they're all written out there
00:07:48.280 and the google jfdi is the bottom corner right there google it but essentially is if it speaks
00:07:54.020 to your soul if this just if it speaks to your soul take action go for it do something to move
00:08:02.600 it forward. You know, me and my wife talk about, you know, F yeah decisions. Is this an F yeah
00:08:07.440 decision? If it is, go. When I decided to move to Kelowna, okay, there was no good reason to move
00:08:14.780 from East Coast Canada, 3,000 kilometers or miles away, other side of the world. But
00:08:21.120 I just had to ask myself one question. Is this the right decision? Does this speak to my soul?
00:08:26.940 Is this an F yeah? And I looked at my wife and she said yes. And I said yes. And I said, boom,
00:08:31.540 As soon as I made the decision, I called Richard, my real estate agent.
00:08:34.860 I said, find us a house.
00:08:36.100 Here's what I want.
00:08:36.820 Find us a house.
00:08:37.640 And it took a while.
00:08:38.600 And then I started working through the process.
00:08:40.940 But I wanted to make the commitment.
00:08:42.520 I wanted to JFDI it, even though it took, it wasn't until probably six months later that we finally made the final transition, which is fairly fast.
00:08:49.780 I mean, I'm pretty quick on doing stuff.
00:08:52.300 But I just think, like, there's things that I know you have moments where your soul lights on fire.
00:08:57.960 It just feels so good.
00:08:58.980 And you get energized.
00:08:59.700 and then you let your life happen to you.
00:09:02.600 You let your mind beat it down.
00:09:04.740 You talk to your family and they shut it down
00:09:07.540 and you talk to your unsupportive friends
00:09:10.220 and they beat it out of you, right?
00:09:11.820 Your left brain logic overtakes the emotional drive
00:09:15.900 and desire that you know you could possibly do it
00:09:17.940 and you don't do it.
00:09:19.140 That is, to me, the philosophy of like giving up the good
00:09:23.600 to focus on the great
00:09:24.780 because honestly, the riches are in the niches.
00:09:26.900 Like being able to go deeper,
00:09:28.360 to go say, well, I don't have to be everything to everybody,
00:09:31.680 but I can be the best at this for those types of people.
00:09:35.020 That is the decision you gotta make.
00:09:36.440 A lot of people, if you're watching this,
00:09:38.380 you might be stuck on the fact
00:09:40.120 that you haven't made that decision
00:09:41.580 around who you serve and who you don't serve
00:09:43.060 or the product you serve or even starting the business.
00:09:46.100 But you might have a good job making 150 grand a year,
00:09:49.600 but that's stopping you from becoming the person
00:09:51.580 who could produce 10 million or 100 million a year,
00:09:54.060 which sounds crazy if you're thinking
00:09:56.320 in the next two or three years.
00:09:57.560 but you give yourself enough time horizon,
00:09:59.760 you say 25 years, could I, just for fun,
00:10:03.500 what's the harm, let's imagine,
00:10:05.340 could I in the next 10 years?
00:10:08.920 I don't know, 5 million a year?
00:10:12.080 If you gave yourself 25 years, 15 million, 25 million?
00:10:18.120 You'd be surprised.
00:10:19.540 It would blow your mind what's possible for you
00:10:21.900 if you focus and attack and focus and attack
00:10:24.380 and focus and attack.
00:10:25.160 and that is why oftentimes you may have something that's working that is good but it's not great
00:10:32.120 and we got to turn off the good to give ourselves some space for the great and I just want to leave
00:10:37.260 you with a great quote by Christopher Paolini and he says that without fear there is no courage.
00:10:47.200 Think about that. It's going to require some courage for you to make this decision
00:10:51.960 And I wanna tell you, it's a good thing.
00:10:53.700 It's needed, it's required.
00:10:55.380 If it wasn't there, then it wouldn't make sense.
00:10:58.740 It would be an easy decision we made a long time ago.
00:11:00.640 So if the fear is there,
00:11:01.800 know that it's required to have courage and be courageous.
00:11:05.560 And that's what I hope you take away from this message.
00:11:08.480 So with that, I hope this video finds you incredibly well
00:11:10.640 and we'll be talking soon.
00:11:12.880 Peace.
00:11:13.660 Later, everybody.