Dan Martell - you can build your dream life in 12 months, here’s how…

00:00:00.000 Your dream life is less than 12 months away, and it begins with principles of success.

00:00:05.020 And it's these principles that help me go from a broke 24-year-old to running my own business

00:00:09.460 that generates over $100 million in revenue a year. They help me find my dream life,

00:00:14.120 build amazing businesses, and love the work I do every day. And you can apply these today

00:00:18.620 without having a rich family, getting lucky, or being early. So I've distilled all these

00:00:23.320 into nine principles to build your dream life. Starting with principle number one,

00:00:27.260 be willing to be misunderstood most people hold back because they're scared of being too much

00:00:32.380 but the truth is if you want to be extraordinary you have to be okay with extra it's in the word

00:00:37.880 extraordinary the other day i was talking to one of my clients and he said to me my wife doesn't

00:00:43.420 support my growth i feel like she's scared that our paths are going to divert and we'll be too

00:00:48.760 far apart or we're going to be different and what i said to him is you have to be willing to go

00:00:53.540 support your wife but also understand she may not understand what you're about to do and that's okay.

00:00:59.540 Oftentimes your family are just too close to you to see your greatness and be okay with that. Don't

00:01:05.320 fight them for it. Just understand they've seen you grow up. They've seen you at your worst. I

00:01:09.440 don't expect them to understand. I know that if I want to be the best at what I do and other people

00:01:14.820 don't that my weird dreams means a dream life. That for other people they can't comprehend why

00:01:21.280 anybody would want to get up and be that driven to create if they've never touched it. When you're

00:01:26.540 living your truth, you're also showing them where they've been living a lie. And it's not their

00:01:30.980 fault. Nobody's ever done that for them. They need to see you the way they see you because it allows

00:01:36.220 them to tell themselves a story for themselves that makes you the villain and their opinion on

00:01:41.160 you is not your business. Nobody needs a change for me to achieve my dreams. Nobody has to be

00:01:46.340 different. Nobody has to give me approval. You need to have everybody in your life. Understand

00:01:51.380 every decision you make is what's going to slow you down. If you want to be extraordinary, you

00:01:56.380 need to be extra. But you can't achieve your dream life without defining it. Which brings us to

00:02:01.720 principle number two, visualize your dreams. Napoleon Hill, who wrote the book Think and Grow

00:02:06.720 Rich, talks about this all the time. The concept is to have a primary aim. If you don't have a

00:02:12.960 target? How are you supposed to hit it? Most people say, I just want to be richer. I want to

00:02:17.220 be happier. I want to have more love. But when you say, what does that mean? They go, I don't know,

00:02:21.260 just more. More is not a strategy. Everything you see around you was first imagined in someone's

00:02:27.220 mind. They couldn't create this chair, this mic, the camera I'm using right now, if they didn't

00:02:32.820 clearly see it in their mind. I call it the rule of 300%. You want to have 100% clarity towards

00:02:39.200 your target. I'm talking specifics. I want you to tell me colors, tell me amounts, tell me where,

00:02:44.580 be 100% clear. The second part is 100% belief. Can you have 100% belief that you can achieve it?

00:02:51.320 Because if you're thinking about something you want, but then immediately tell yourself you

00:02:54.340 can't do it, that's not going to work. Then the last part of the 300% rule is 100% of the time.

00:03:00.000 Can you have 100% clarity, 100% belief, 100% of the time? To your ability to have those three,

00:03:06.300 you will attract into your life the thing you're after.

00:03:09.920 Just having the rule of 300 isn't enough.

00:03:12.400 You also have to trigger your goals.

00:03:14.940 I do this by sitting down three times a day

00:03:17.440 and looking at the things I want to achieve this year.

00:03:20.180 I visualize them, I get in the energy of achieving them,

00:03:23.120 and I ask myself, is my calendar reflecting the priority

00:03:26.440 of getting these things done?

00:03:28.000 If not, I make a change.

00:03:29.620 To really have this concept settle in,

00:03:32.160 I want you to think about this idea.

00:03:34.120 If I put $10 million into your bank account, but you couldn't touch it for 10 business days,

00:03:40.160 how would you feel tomorrow walking around the world knowing in 10 days you're going to receive

00:03:46.200 $10 million tax-free? Would you walk around slowly or fast? Would you be upset or happy?

00:03:52.820 Could other people make you upset or it would be impossible? Would you be excited about the future

00:03:57.200 or pessimistic about it? My gut tells me you would have this energy of excitement and confidence and

00:04:03.040 you'd be looking forward to the end of those 10 days. Now, here's the gotcha. You have to act like

00:04:07.900 that without that $10 million there. If you act as if it's there, that energy will attract it into

00:04:13.500 your life. Having the belief and being in that energy will create the opportunities around you

00:04:18.880 for you to plug in and get those results. But you can't get your dream life just thinking about it.

00:04:24.120 Which brings us to principle number three, ask better questions. As a coach, I realized the way

00:04:29.620 I program my clients' minds is through my questions. Asking better questions gets them

00:04:35.320 to reflect. Then they come up with the answers and they build the plan. See, if they build the

00:04:40.080 plan, they won't fight the plan. If they tell me what they're going to do because I give them

00:04:43.520 clarity through my questions, then they create the strategy they got to go execute. And it's

00:04:48.140 not my fault if it doesn't work out. It's their inability to do the work. So one of my favorite

00:04:52.940 questions, for example, is if somebody bought your business tomorrow, what's the first thing

00:04:56.720 it would change? Why haven't you made that decision yet? What's coming up for you? Questions I truly

00:05:01.240 believe are the programming language of the mind. Last year, I went to Date with Destiny, a Tony

00:05:05.520 Robbins event with my wife, and there he teaches the idea of a primary question. And for me, the

00:05:10.340 one I came up with that I use three, four, five times a day is how can I appreciate even more

00:05:15.840 God's grace and guidance in this moment? And when I ask myself that question, everything gets better.

00:05:21.480 There's just something really powerful a question delivers when you asked it properly that reset

00:05:26.640 That's our focus on our existence

00:05:28.280 to bring ourselves to the present.

00:05:30.480 As Tony often says, ask a better question, live a better life.

00:05:34.180 You're allowed to ask yourself a question like,

00:05:36.020 what would need to be true

00:05:36.940 for this experience to be even better?

00:05:38.720 What would need to be true

00:05:39.700 for me not to be fearful of making that decision?

00:05:41.980 What would need to be true for me to be excited

00:05:44.000 to go out and meet new people?

00:05:46.000 The answer to those questions will give you the strategies

00:05:48.640 that will get you those results.

00:05:50.120 But if you just sit back

00:05:51.220 and hope that somebody else does it for you,

00:05:52.880 you will never move forward.

00:05:54.380 Albert Einstein said it best a long time ago.

00:05:56.640 A problem well-defined is a problem half-solved.

00:05:59.380 If you don't learn how to define your situation

00:06:01.800 so that you can get it to a question that's clear,

00:06:04.360 then you can't solve the problem.

00:06:05.840 But your dream life won't materialize without movement.

00:06:08.860 Which brings us to principle number four, default to action.

00:06:12.040 I get young men asking me every day on social media,

00:06:14.720 how do I start a company?

00:06:16.080 My answer is the same.

00:06:17.500 Sell something to a stranger.

00:06:19.260 Well, what should I sell, Dan?

00:06:20.420 It doesn't matter what you sell.

00:06:22.380 It is doing something versus thinking about it.

00:06:25.280 The wealthiest people default to action. They don't overthink things. They literally say,

00:06:30.120 I'm going to make a decision, then make the decision right. I don't wait until I make the

00:06:34.620 right decision. As Wayne Gretzky famously said, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't

00:06:38.940 take. If today you overthink your situation and do nothing versus actually take a shot on goal,

00:06:44.580 then by definition, it's like you didn't even try to take a shot. What changed for me in my life

00:06:49.620 is when I realized that the only thing I needed to learn is shorten the distance between knowing

00:06:54.240 and doing. That's why I came up with this mantra, JFDI. It's a license plate on my cars. It's my

00:06:59.840 life philosophy. The end of the day, if my soul says yes, then I have to take action. I was

00:07:04.760 literally sitting on a book deal, a million dollar book deal that I almost didn't do, but I decided

00:07:09.480 yes. Why? Because I already had all the information I need to make the decision. I just was putting

00:07:14.540 it off. There's no need for that. Just say yes, or it's a no. Whatever it is, don't sit on it.

00:07:19.380 Success is making decisions with imperfect data.

00:07:22.360 That's what the best people do.

00:07:24.100 So, JFDI, you've got to close the gap between knowing and doing.

00:07:28.080 But action on its own won't create your dream life.

00:07:30.760 Which brings us to principle number five, measure what matters.

00:07:33.560 Most people struggle getting a result in their life because they don't measure.

00:07:37.500 I remember one time I was on a call with one of my friends,

00:07:40.220 and I could see in his face he had put on some weight.

00:07:42.240 And I just asked him, when's the last time you got on a scale?

00:07:44.720 Now, I know that may not sound nice, but I loved him too much not to ask.

00:07:48.340 And his response was, it's been a while. And that day, he will tell you that he went on a journey

00:07:53.580 to transform his life. His name is Matt Verlach. He is one of my best buds and business partners.

00:07:58.820 And if you saw the 60 pound heavier version of Matt on that Zoom call to who he is today,

00:08:04.000 running ultra marathons and triathlons and hitting the gym, he will tell you it was on the back end

00:08:09.100 of that question and changing the fact that he measures not every week, but every day. And not

00:08:14.360 only his weight but also his food and his workout routines. And I just learned a long time ago what

00:08:19.020 you focus on expands. If you want to get rich, measure more. If you want to lose weight, measure

00:08:24.780 more. Every day you have a chance to improve your situation. If you can't measure it, you can improve

00:08:30.240 it. Most people just hope. Hope is not a strategy. Without measuring, you're just guessing. Increase

00:08:36.200 the specificity and increase the frequency of what you measure and watch it grow, including your bank

00:08:42.100 account measuring every day brings positive expectancy around the outcome that you want

00:08:47.860 and that energy is what makes it happen but you can't create your dream life without focusing on

00:08:52.680 this which brings us to principle number six focus follow one course until successful every day i ask

00:08:59.680 entrepreneurs what do you do and the ones that are small say i do a few things i have several

00:09:05.060 businesses what they really want to say is i have one business that makes profit and six others that

00:09:10.040 suck that profit dry. The thing that you will notice between people that are successful and

00:09:14.740 wealthy versus ones that are still struggling is the wealthy person did one thing really well.

00:09:20.060 He pushed that boulder up the mountain. He put all of his resources behind that one arrow to

00:09:25.620 hit the target. Once he had product market fit, once he had a repeatable scalable model,

00:09:31.260 then he diversified. Too often people hear diversification is how you create wealth.

00:09:36.460 No, wealth creation requires concentration, and diversification is diversification.

00:09:42.680 The truth is, when you're starting, multiple streams of income will not make you rich.

00:09:47.100 You gotta go all in on one opportunity.

00:09:49.520 Be obsessed with mastery.

00:09:51.580 Deciding that one thing to do the 10,000 hours, or better said, dedicate 10 years.

00:09:57.240 Dedicate a decade, or what I call a dedicate.

00:10:00.080 If you show up every day to dedicate yourself to mastery around one business,

00:10:04.220 it would be inevitable, impossible for you not to achieve your goal. And what you then learn is how

00:10:09.640 to say no. And a no is a yes to your dream. And a yes today without properly understanding what it

00:10:15.140 is, is a no to your future. Which brings us to principle number seven, play to win. I have

00:10:20.180 conversations with people every day that are talking about ways to save on taxes or things

00:10:25.680 they can do to save their expenses or how they have this idea. They do this, this and this,

00:10:29.800 and they spend 10 hours to save $10.

00:10:31.920 And I'm like, what are you doing?

00:10:33.420 I have friends that have moved countries to save taxes.

00:10:36.720 To me, that is trying to play not to lose

00:10:39.160 and not trying to play to win.

00:10:40.920 The big issue with that is that they don't realize

00:10:43.400 they're telling themselves that they can't create more

00:10:46.180 and instead they're trying to save what they have.

00:10:48.640 Instead of trying to fear and minimize the downside,

00:10:52.080 do enough to protect yourself, do enough to buy insurance,

00:10:54.900 but any time spent above and beyond that

00:10:57.340 versus going and creating more

00:10:59.400 is actually negative energy.

00:11:01.660 If you focus on trying not to lose, guess what?

00:11:04.240 You will lose.

00:11:05.360 Just learn from the mistake and move on.

00:11:07.540 Learn how to create more value.

00:11:09.300 Focus on abundance.

00:11:10.720 Be more valuable to other people

00:11:12.700 and you will see more resource come into your life.

00:11:15.240 Instead of moving to save taxes,

00:11:17.320 ask yourself, how can I create more money

00:11:19.480 to stay where I want to live?

00:11:21.340 That's true freedom.

00:11:22.360 But you'll never achieve your real dream

00:11:24.240 without accepting this next thing.

00:11:25.780 Which brings us to principle number eight,

00:11:27.840 you're already enough.

00:11:28.940 A while ago, I was coaching this woman, and I asked her what her five-year goals were,

00:11:32.960 and she told me to make $100 million.

00:11:35.360 And I said, cool, easy, but why?

00:11:37.580 And she goes, so then I could tell everybody, F you.

00:11:41.000 I was like, to who?

00:11:41.900 She's like, to every person that didn't believe in me.

00:11:44.260 I said, interesting.

00:11:45.180 What's your revenue at now?

00:11:46.360 She's like, $7 million. 0.91

00:11:47.520 I said, okay.

00:11:48.420 You should Google what percent of women-founded companies get to $7 million in revenue. 1.00

00:11:53.100 She's like, well, I don't know.

00:11:54.380 It's like probably 5%, 6%.

00:11:55.680 I'm like, nope, it's way less.

00:11:57.560 it's like 0.01%. So in many ways, you have already been able to tell them F you. Why do you need

00:12:04.980 a hundred million dollars to feel the way you want to feel at that level? And she got silent

00:12:09.000 and she started to cry. Because what she realized in that moment was all of the goals that you set

00:12:14.540 for yourself are just a criteria to give yourself permission to feel enough. And you actually have

00:12:20.520 everything you need right now to feel that way. And I would argue being in that energy, truly

00:12:26.360 believing that today would actually bring that future into your life even faster. Your dream

00:12:32.320 life doesn't need anyone's signature of approval. Just the fact that you're watching this tells me

00:12:37.820 you're already enough, that you're here wanting to be better. And that's the process. My coach

00:12:42.300 says it this way. He says, you have to be blissfully dissatisfied. In this moment, you're

00:12:46.560 allowed to be blissfully happy for everything you have and also realize that you have more to give

00:12:51.880 the world. And that is why we're here. We're here to create. It's finding the happiness in the

00:12:57.000 pursuit, not the pursuit of happiness. Now that you know the how, this last one will make sure

00:13:02.340 you don't give up. Which brings us to principle number nine, define your why. The reason I love

00:13:07.400 to do the work I do is because I love helping people find their why. The challenge is that

00:13:12.860 most people don't want to go look for it because I learned a long time ago that every person's

00:13:18.540 purpose, the reason for being alive, what they're meant to do. Some people call it a divine

00:13:23.300 assignment sits right next to the worst thing that's ever happened to them. And it's because

00:13:27.800 of that pain that they went through that actually shaped them uniquely to help another person

00:13:33.260 overcome or avoid that in their life. And they might think, well, I'm here to do this art or

00:13:38.360 I'm here to create this or I've got this business I'm building. And all those things can still be

00:13:42.540 true. But until you understand your big Y, capital Y, all caps, bolded, highlighted Y,

00:13:49.180 and use that to be your North Star as you build, you'll always feel like you're not on the right

00:13:54.600 journey. You'll always feel like you're missing something. You'll always see other people that

00:13:58.900 are following that and be a little jealous or be frustrated. Why do they have that pep in their

00:14:03.740 step? Why do they show up that way? How do they have that level of excitement in their life?

00:14:08.240 A why is like the fuel of your success.

00:14:11.020 And for me, I have to reconnect the work I'm doing on a daily basis to a higher purpose.

00:14:16.880 It's my why.

00:14:17.820 Without that, the energy that I use to create won't be felt by my audience.

00:14:22.760 If I'm just going through the motions, you're not going to listen to this and take action.

00:14:26.680 You're going to be like, man, he's just reading from a script.

00:14:28.740 There's no heart in that.

00:14:29.960 It's because I understand my purpose.

00:14:32.160 A strong why will overcome any how.

00:14:34.660 And the truth is, is you don't have to save the world, but you can save your world.

00:14:40.280 Imagine in 12 months, you just designed your dream life, but there are still fundamental

00:14:45.200 truths that you don't want to miss out on.

00:14:47.280 If you want to learn the 40 brutal truths I wish I knew in my 20s, click the video and

00:14:51.520 I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - February 17, 2025

you can build your dream life in 12 months, here’s how…

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