there's things that i know you have moments where
your soul lights on fire it just feels so good and you get energized and then
you let your life happen to you you let your mind beat it down you talk to your your family
and they shut it down and you talk to your your unsupported friends and they beat it out of you
what is up everybody dan here today i want to talk about something that's on my heart
i need to share it with you and it's the idea of giving up the good to pursue the great if you've
ever felt like you were stuck in something that wasn't broken but it isn't awesome and you want
to make a big decision you consider a big decision but you're holding back because you're scared of
what other people are going to think or losing the momentum you've built or whatever it is i want to
share a story with you that might give you some perspective and then also share some principles
that have helped me make big decisions in my life i've done everything from you know sell
companies move cities several times you know left relationships that weren't supporting me etc etc
if you've gone through it i've definitely been there and i have some philosophies i think that
might give you some perspective some points of view to help you make those decisions but
my my favorite one that i like to share is when i had a 1.8 million a year coaching practice called
the lead entrepreneur and i decided to leave that to go pursue a new thing called sas academy and
the challenge was is here i was i spent two years about a year and a half two years building up this
this group of incredible entrepreneurs that i had the privileges of working with to help them scale
their companies and the challenge was is that they were all over the place they weren't just software
they were you know everything from manufacturing companies to consumer products to agencies et
cetera i just love business so i wanted to really support them and grow them and i was doing that i
would do at first i did a six-month cohort then i did another six-month cohort then i did a year
program and i just realized there's a bunch of stuff that i wasn't following i wasn't in love
with okay and then i had a conversation which i'll tell you about in a sec with somebody that
that really gave me permission and i'm hoping this video does this for you gave me permission to make
the decision to go all in on what could be great a lead entrepreneur was good for and honestly in a
lot of people's eyes it was great most coaches never crack you know six figures let alone a
million dollars let alone kind of the growth that we'd created in that short period of time
but for me was asking myself the question of like fast forward 10 years is this what i want to be
doing is this aligned with my vision for my life and does this light me up does this create the
most value for my customers than anybody else in the world which is a question i ask myself often
am i creating more value for my customers than anybody else in the world if you haven't asked
yourself that question do that and that's what caused me to come to the realization that i needed
to shut down the program like literally shut it down and start from scratch to build sas academy
which today four and a half five years later has become the number one largest coaching programs
in the world i have a team of i think we're at like 45 people clients all over the world a
thousand coaching clients and none of that would have happened if i stayed on the previous path
and i share that because i want to unpack some of the beliefs that allowed me to get clarity around
that decision pun intended because that's one of my previous companies called clarity um the first
the first belief it was surround yourself with great people see oftentimes even like this morning
i was i do a founder's hike every tuesday and but i hike all the time so i was hiking this morning
and uh i was talking to an entrepreneur about confidence and she was asking like you know one
time you said something about like confidence is the commitments you make to yourselves that
you keep and when you break them you don't keep them and they say well how do you hold yourself
accountable to keeping the commitments you make to yourself like what is what's the process for that
and the truth was is i said two things one i speak the my my decisions into the future i
i sh i make i make a claim on my shot i call my shot okay to the world here's what i'm gonna go do
and then anytime i'm gonna make a deviation from that i always reach out to people that i admire
this is where like surround yourself with great people comes from people that have been there and
done that my peer group my mentors and i use them as a sanity check and a litmus test of like hey
am i being distracted by doing this thing or pursuing this idea or is this aligned
with what i'm trying to do and having people in your court to allow you to evaluate the current
which is technically the good to do the great is how you do it when i was deciding to make
that decision the conversation that shifted off for me is my one of my best friends todd herman
and i was talking to todd and he said something like why are you stepping over dollars to pick up
nickels and i said what do you mean he goes you're the only person in the world that i
know that is qualified as a reputation to actually teach software entrepreneurs how
to scale you've done it yourself you've exited your companies you've invested in a bunch of
software companies you you teach this stuff you've been doing it for a decade you've been blogging
why are you teaching general business advice and i was like man you're right i think it's because i
didn't want to say no i didn't want to focus right and what todd gave me permission to do because i
admire him so much was he gave me permission to make that tough decision and it was like i
remember i was pacing in the backyard at my place in san diego and i i didn't want to make decisions
i ran in the house and i i made it and i'll talk more about how to do that but that was a big
thing you surround yourself with people that you feel are great at their thing to get feedback the
number two is align with the future i mentioned this earlier that to me i'm always trying to make
decisions here's where i want to go this is the future way over here and today is a sequencing
activity of is this the right order and at least the right direction of the the things i want to do
so that i can achieve the outcome because there's nothing worse than leaning the ladder of success
against the wrong wall only to climb it to get to the top to find out it's leaning against the wrong
wall okay i don't doubt you'll be successful but honestly when i look back at like the decision to
do general business coaching if i would have just given myself a little bit more time to
think further ahead and say okay i'm successful i have a thousand clients what's gonna light me
up inside is it gonna light me up inside that i'm answering a bunch of different questions from left
fields and from people that i can't help because i have no experience in their industry like hvac and
whatever or do i want to be surrounded with innovators and people that are pushing the
envelope in regards to the possibilities of how to scale and grow fast etcetera and
man that was that was the the unlock for me was the alignment of my future so that kind of
that would if i would have took more time to think through what could that look like i probably would
have made that decision on my own a lot sooner so that's a big one and then the third is jfdi
if you don't know what it stands for google it it's part of my manifesto actually check this out
so it's i have this all over my house this is just my manifesto if you go to danmartel.com forward
slash manifesto they're all written out there and the google jfdi is the bottom corner right there
google it but essentially is if it speaks to your soul if this just if it speaks to your soul
take action go for it do something to move it forward you know me and my wife talk about you
know f yeah decisions is this an fbi decision if it is go when i decided to move to kelowna okay
there was no good reason to move from east coast canada 3 000 kilometers or miles away other side
of the world but i just had to ask myself one question is this the right decision does it speak
to my soul is this an f yet i looked to my wife and she said yes and i said yes and i said boom
as soon as i made the decision i called richard my real estate agent said find us a house here's
what i want find us a house and it took a while and then started working through the process but
i wanted to make the commitment 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 i mean i'm pretty
pretty quick on on doing stuff but i just think like there's things that i know you have moments
where your soul lights on fire it just feels so good and you get energized and then you let your
life happen to you you let your mind beat it down you talk to your your family and they shut it down
and you talk to your your unsupportive friends and they beat it out of you right your left brain
logic overtakes the emotional drive and desire that you know you could possibly do it and you
don't do it that is to me the philosophy of like giving up the good to focus on the great because
honestly the riches are in the niches like being able to go deeper to go say well i don't have to
be everything to everybody but i can be the best at this for those types of people that is the
decision you gotta make a lot of people if you're watching this you might be stuck on the fact that
you haven't made that decision around who you serve and who you don't serve or the product
you serve or even starting the business but you might have a good job making 150 grand a year
but that's stopping you from becoming the person who could produce 10 million or 100 million a year
which sounds crazy if you're thinking in the next two or three years but you give yourself enough
time horizon you say 25 years could i just for fun what what's the harm let's imagine could i
in the next 10 years i don't know 5 million a year if you gave yourself 25 years
15 million 25 million you you'd be surprised it would blow your mind what's possible for you
if you focus and attack and focus and attack and focus and attack and that is why oftentimes
you may have something that's working that is good but it's not great and we got to turn off the good
to give ourselves some space for the great and i just want to leave you with a great quote by
christopher pal paolini christopher paolini and he says that without fear there is no courage think
about that it's going to require some courage for you to make this decision and i want to tell you
it's a good thing it's needed it's required if it wasn't there then then it wouldn't make sense it
would be an easy decision we made a long time ago so if the fear is there know that it's required to
have courage and be courageous and that's what i hope you take away from this message so with
that i hope this video finds you incredibly well and we'll be talking soon peace later everybody