- Hey there, Dan Martell here, serial entrepreneur,
investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.
In this episode, I'm gonna talk to you about how to deal
with the entrepreneurial roller coasters,
the ups and the downs, and be sure to stay to the end
because I'm gonna actually give you access
to a private masterclass that I put together that talked
about the four stages of the entrepreneurial roller coaster,
but more specifically, in this episode I'm gonna talk
to you about the five ways you can overcome those highs
and lows today, especially if you're having a hard time.
I mean, it speaks to my heart.
I know it can be hard to build a business, and if you're
in a dark spot where you just need some encouragement
and some strategies, that's what I got for you.
Let's dig in.
(upbeat music)
I want to start off by sharing a story of somebody
that I know pretty well that had their business
completely decimated by COVID.
Essentially 70% loss in their business,
and this is a brick-and-mortar business that has staff
and infrastructure and leases and equipment and inventory.
So it's not like these digital companies
that are gonna scale up and scale down.
They literally were dealing with the worst-case scenario,
and for weeks they went into work trying to figure it out
and fix it and it was just demoralising
and just felt like the world on their shoulders,
and I remember seeing him and asking him like, how's things?
And I could just feel in his voice
that he was just feeling beat down, okay?
And what happened was over the next hour, we talked
'cause I took the time to sit back and think about
what they're going through and how can I support this person
and what would I want to hear in that case?
And essentially what I went through was just asking a series
of questions, and these questions were specifically designed
to help them rebuild their confidence,
rebuild their excitement for their business,
look at the opportunity, shift the meaning they were giving
to the pain, to the frustration they were dealing with,
and leave that conversation, their words, reignited,
reinvigorated, and excited about the future.
So I want to break down specifically the five strategies
that I used in that hour conversation
to help you get through this roller coaster you're dealing
with to get back to the highs and away from the lows.
Number one, success filters.
So here's the deal, I gotta explain the simple concept
that I shared with him was at each stage of growth,
of business success, of revenue, of team size,
there's these filters that you can call resistance.
You know, some people call it resistance,
you can call it frustration, and essentially they're there
and designed in our lives to make it hard
for people to achieve that next level, okay?
So just so you know, if 1,000 people started a race, okay?
And you said, I want to see who can run the farthest
for the longest, there's gonna be these natural break points
amongst the 1,000 people along that journey.
These are the filters.
As you get higher, business size, growth, challenges,
et cetera, you're gonna naturally hit these filters,
and what I explained to him was
that this is just another one of those filters.
Now, you might look at the world and say, well,
this isn't fair and why is this happening
and this is not normal and this is a black swan event.
I would argue that it doesn't matter if it's COVID,
your bank pulling your line of credit, a key team member,
like an exec team member embezzling in your business,
like we're gonna deal with challenges.
Those are these filters, these obstacles,
as Ryan Holiday talks about in Obstacle Is the Way,
and I share with him that business is supposed to be hard.
Now, this is a tough thing for somebody that's going
through challenges to hear, but I really want to make sure
that you understand this that at each stage of your desire
of success, I guarantee it's gonna be hard
and you will be challenged, and I want you to know
that it's absolutely normal, you should expect it,
there's no way avoiding it because what's happening
in that moment of challenge is you're being forced
to either step up and become the person who can deal
with that or resign to accept the level of success,
and that's just a fact.
If you're okay and you're happy with the level you're at
and you don't want to break through
and grow through that change, then just understand
that that's normal, and these are filters that are placed.
It's almost like universal laws of the world
that you can't move up without dealing with the friction
and challenges at that level to be able to become the person
who has the permission to deal with the next big challenge,
and the truth is it doesn't get easier, you get better.
Number two, accomplishment list.
So even though you know there's these filters
and these challenges, one of the ways to kind
of work through and think through this challenge is
to remind yourself how incredible you are, okay?
I say this to entrepreneurs all the time.
Everyday you wake up to make the world a better place
for everybody else to benefit from, and that only happens
because you decided to build a business, okay?
It doesn't matter if it's a lawn care company,
a car wash company, a house cleaning company,
or a high tech software company, every business exists
to solve a problem and add value, meaning that
whoever your customer is, they have a better quality
of resources and support and they're able to do more.
That's all money is.
That's all entrepreneurship is.
It's an exchange of value, and I just think that's amazing.
So for you to have gotten to a point
where you have a business where you're dealing
with challenges, you've probably done some really impressive
things, things that if you look back on,
you'd be really proud of yourself if you recognise them,
if you just acknowledge them.
So the way I do this is I keep a list, okay?
I keep a list on my phone that is all of the accomplishments
I've ever achieved since I was born that I took a moment
to stop and say, I'm really proud of that accomplishment.
You know, not too long ago I finished my second marathon,
and that was a new accomplishment
that I get to write on the list.
The reason why it's my second marathon is
'cause when I did my first in 2009, it took me 5.5 hours
and I swore I would never do another one.
It was so painful.
The last three miles, I was walking,
like my muscles seized up, I was limping, it was horrible.
I said, why would I do that?
I'm 230, back then I was 230 pounds, I'm 6'3",
and people like me shouldn't run, and that was the story
and the narrative I told myself.
Now, fast forward to last summer,
I ended up doing a half ironman, so 70.3.
That was crazy, and then I decided to retest
and do a marathon, and everything in my body said,
this is gonna be tough, and I decided to push through,
start with my friends, we did it,
and I finished in four hours and 12 minutes.
So an hour and 18 minutes faster than my previous best,
and that's now on my accomplishment list.
Why is that important?
It's because no matter what big meeting I'm getting into,
what challenge I'm facing with, I can literally go
through all of the times that I've been tested,
all the times that I've put myself in a hard situation,
that I've decided personally to push through
and do a hard thing, and overcame it and just reliving
that moment, reliving those emotions,
reliving that excitement, that's what's gonna allow you
to reenergize and reset when you're dealing
with your tough time.
Number three, reconnect your future.
So one of the reasons my friend was having such a hard time
is because his future vision for the company, their goals
for the year, their goals for the next three years,
their goals for the next 10 years
literally came crumbling down, okay?
Everything that they planned to do got cut by 2/3 that year.
Everything they planned on doing the year after,
literally it's a full wipeout, like blank slate.
What's even possible?
What's the world gonna look like?
And what happens is when people run out of future,
when people don't have a vision for what's possible,
it makes it really tough to connect the hard work
we do today towards the potential outcome into the future.
So what I did is I just asked them, take a 10-year vision.
Take a 10-year projection into the future.
Describe to me what your life could look like.
What could your business look like
in 10 years, in a decade, right?
'Cause maybe you've heard the great quote that says,
we overestimate what we can get done in a year
and we underestimate what we can get done in 10.
So 10 years out, describe to me what you could create
with your business, and he went off and he says, well,
in 10 years, man, we could do this,
we could change locations, we could rebuild our office,
we could redesign our thing, we could have all
these partners, we could work with higher calibre customers,
we could do more creative work, and it got,
I could just feel the excitement, and I said,
tell me how you feel about that vision, and it was just
in having him anchor the language, anchor the emotion,
anchor the vision and visually see it and describe it
that allowed him to get reconnected with the potential
of a future even if he doesn't have the plan, okay?
I always say, focus on the where disconnect from the how.
Focus on what you want to get,
don't worry about the how, okay?
Some people I was like, well, I can't think
of that if I don't know how to do it.
Don't worry about it 'cause trust me the world is incredible
and what you plan on accomplishing and how you plan
on doing it probably won't happen seven out of 10 times,
but you'll still get it done if you focus on it.
So that's a big idea is reconnect with your future.
Number four, get around positivity, okay?
Now, I just happened by happenstance to run
into this person, ask them how they're doing,
and kind of be the kind of person they felt comfortable
sharing their situation with.
Now, what I do when I'm in this challenge
or this frustration or what's going on when I'm on a low
is I'll personally write down three names
of people that always pull me up, okay?
When I write that list, I think of my buddy Todd Herman,
I think of Clay Iberra, I think of my buddy Keith Yakki.
These are people that for me,
when I talk to them, they light me up, okay?
Yes, they're incredible entrepreneurs,
yes, they're incredibly talented in their domain,
et cetera, but even if they weren't,
I just want to be around positivity.
I want to be around folks
that see opportunity, not constraints.
I want to be around people that think expansively,
not contraction, right?
Like I want people to talk about the future, not the past,
and to me that's what positivity is about.
It's the possibility of what we can do
and it's understanding how do we find the lessons
in the challenge that we're facing?
You know, and I think that's the biggest gift.
If you get around people that are not only positive,
they're gonna help you to see a different perspective.
So your issue's here in the palm of your hands
and you're looking at it through a certain lens
and it's not supporting you, it's not energising you,
and what great positive people will do
will just give a different perspective to look
at that specific problem to see the opportunity in it.
Number five, audit habits.
Now, I'm here to give you some tough love.
I'm not here to cajole you and tell you it's all
about rainbows and butterflies and soft blankets
and all that fun stuff.
I'm here to say to you, you're in this position
because you made a certain sequence of decisions
in the past about your business, some assumptions,
some growth, and you need
to ask yourself, what did I miss, okay?
What did I miss?
What did I miss on my financial optics?
What did I miss on the market?
What did I miss in the way I reacted?
What did I miss about the fact that I'm feeling this way
and not feeling energised?
What's my strategy?
What's my daily habits?
Because here's the deal, at the end of the day,
there's things you can control and there's things
you can't control, and if you focus on the things
you can't control, I guarantee you it's gonna be a spiral
down further and further and further and further
and maybe you never come back and that's just the truth.
Some people do not come back from these pits of despair,
from these crazy trials and tribulations.
They don't make it.
We love the story of the person that overcomes it.
That's not the norm.
So instead of focusing on what you can't control,
you have to be honest with yourself and say, hey,
here's my habits, here's my weekly success habits,
my business fundamentals, my principles.
What did I not do?
What did I stop doing?
Am I still waking up at the same time I know?
Am I working out everyday?
Am I getting around people?
Am I planning?
Am I being strategic?
Are all the things I used to do that made me feel alive
and feel confident and feel like I had an exciting thing
to create together, have I stopped doing those things?
'Cause if the answer is yes, then go back to doing them.
One of my favourite questions to ask coaching clients
is tell me a time when you felt absolutely in alignment
and had conviction and certainty
about your success and your future.
Tell me about that time.
What did your life look like?
What were you doing?
How did you wake up?
What did your day, how did it unfold?
And when I ask them that question, they can go to that point
in their life and they can describe it,
and then I ask them, how different is your day-to-day?
And they usually smile and they go, you know what?
I don't do this, this, and this anymore.
Perfect, that's the opportunity.
Those things.
You already know what you need to do,
you just need somebody like me to hold a mirror up
and say, hey, this is the guy that used to do these things
or the girl, why aren't you doing them anymore?
And that's, for me, you gotta audit your habits
because if you're in this roller coaster,
you need to get a feedback loop to see
for the opportunities to learn and grow
so next time you can deal with the bigger problem.
See, most people it's factors of zero, okay?
So like a $10 problem, a $100 problem, a $1,000 problem,
$10,000 problem, $100,000 problem, $1 million problems,
you guys get the picture.
You're essentially saying everyday when you wake up is,
can I deal with a $10 problem?
Or maybe you're at a $1,000 problem level.
You need to get to the $10,000 problem level.
You need to get to the $100,000.
Trust me, you'll get to the point
where you're like a Richard Branson or an Oprah,
a Mark Cuban where they're dealing with $1 million dollar,
$10 million problems and they're dealing it
like the same way you deal with a $10 problem.
Maybe if somebody, like you lost $10 in some kind of thing,
it was like a scam, you would let it ruin your afternoon.
That's crazy.
You gotta up your level, your psychology,
and it really comes down to your habits
'cause the habits kick in when the motivation goes away.
So quick recap, number one, success filters,
number two, accomplishment list,
number three, reconnect your future, number four,
get around positivity, and number five, audit habits.
Now, I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,
I want to share with you an exclusive training.
It's a masterclass I gave at the Founder's Summit
a while ago and it's specifically
around the entrepreneur roller coaster and the four stages
of that roller coaster and what you as an entrepreneur
can do to actually protect your team from yourself
and when you're feeling like you're
in this informed optimism stage, how to leverage that
to actually go do the right types of activities
that are gonna drive the business and when you're not
in that stage and you're in this informed pessimism stage
and there's four stages, how do you protect yourself,
your team from that mindset?
So click the link below to get access to that,
and as per usual, I want to challenge you
to live a bigger life and a bigger business,
and I'll see you next Monday.
I've gotta anonymize better.
I got in shit the other day for talking about somebody.