- Hey there, Dan Martell here.
serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.
In this episode I'm gonna share with you
how to restructure, design, cut people out of your life
that you feel might be toxic without feeling horrible.
Trust me, you're not a bad person
if you've had this thought.
And be sure to stay to the end where I'm gonna tell you
how to get access to my Dream 100 training.
It's a specific framework to help you rebuild your network
of positive people, to help support your dreams
and your goals.
(upbeat music)
Now I know I have a lot of teenagers
on my social media accounts, et cetera,
that follow and listen to my content.
And some of them,
even the startup founders are early in their career.
And what you discover is the more you grow,
the more you will realise that people in your life
are not supporting that growth.
It kind of feels they're jealous.
It kinda feels they're uncomfortable with your growth.
It kind of feels they think you're better than them.
It's just this weird feeling.
And it usually ends up being that you gotta ask yourself,
are these the right people
for me to be spending a lot of time with?
Recently I had a client Chris
that reached out because, he went from about 60 K a month
in revenue to almost a million dollars a month.
And he messaged me on Voxer and he said,
"Hey."
"I really don't feel like
"I have a whole lot in common with my old friends.
"And I loved them and they're great people."
"But how do I deal with this feeling of just not wanting?"
He would rather spend,
instead of going to somebody's barbecue
or a birthday party,
he would rather spend it doing something else,
being active, being with his family, building his building,
building his empire.
Like I totally get it.
And I shared with him some of these perspectives,
because I think there's a risk of us feeling guilty
for feeling this.
And honestly,
it's just slowing us down.
And I'm gonna walk you through exactly
how to think through it, the strategies,
and also make sure that you can walk away
just like Chris did feeling confident
about his next moves and kind of the direction
his network with him and his wife and his family
we're gonna head.
Number one, toxic people spectrum.
So here's what I've discovered.
There are people out there, that are just negative Nancies.
They're always, every time they talk
and I know there's somebody in my life like this,
and they're a friend,
they're a family member of a friend.
And they mean no harm, this is the crazy part,
they mean no harm but honestly,
every time somebody says anything positive,
they're just, yeah but, yeah but,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
negative, negative, negative.
And honestly, I love my friends.
So I'm there because they're my friend.
And I just accepted that as that person's perspective.
Maybe in the past, when I was a little immature,
I might've engaged with it.
I might've chirped back,
now I don't.
But the way I think about it is just,
there could be people in your life that you can't get away,
they're family members et cetera.
And I just want you to understand there's a spectrum,
there's people that are obviously negative Nancies
and then there's some people that are not, but they still,
they're still a bit of an energy sucker okay.
There's still an energy vampire, okay.
So I teach this framework called the friendventory.
How to do a friendventory.
Here's my rules just right off the bat,
social media, if I see you at the mall
and I don't want to approach you and say,
"Hi, how's it going?
"What's new?"
I'm not friends with you on Facebook,
just saying, to me Facebook is for friends.
You can follow me.
I share all my stuff publicly,
but in regards to the people that I am friends with,
I am a big fan of curating that
because I don't want your default reaction, content share
whatever blurb you write on Facebook to show up
into my world.
Because I believe I'm responsible for the energy
I allow into my space and I want positive thoughts.
Okay, so understand a friendventory
sometimes can be definitely a social media curation process.
That's what I think birthday notifications
are a beautiful thing.
I'm always like, yup, nope, nope.
Fun, follow this.
And it evolves just like,
think about this,
just because you were born in a specific city,
ended up in a school system,
and you made friends with the people
that sat around your desk
does not mean that you need
to be friends with them for the rest of your life like that.
I don't know where that belief comes from,
but at the end of the day,
I'm gonna choose my friends.
I'm gonna choose the people that lift me up
that brighten my day,
that support me when I'm down,
not by default.
So I call it design by default.
So you need to understand there's a spectrum of toxicity.
And then there's also a friendventory process to do that.
Number two, love from a distance.
So I was sharing this with my coach,
a client Chris about ,
look just because you spend less time with somebody
does not mean that you don't love them.
I have a lot of people that are on their own journey,
their own process, they're dealing with things.
I'll be there.
If they ever need me,
I'm there.
But what changes is the commitments that I make to them.
When they invite me to the barbecue,
I just say I already have something going on,
which is true.
I don't have a lack of things I could be doing.
And I just would rather not spend three hours
engaging with these people.
So maybe you say yes to the Christmas party
and not to the barbecue.
Maybe you say yes to this and less of that.
And you just kind of think about okay,
last year, maybe I spent a hundred hours with this person.
Maybe this year,
you spent 15 hours.
And you just start loving from a distance.
You can be their family member, you can love them,
but you can start to pull yourself back.
Because my whole thing is, how deep do you cut?
I don't think you should cut people out of your life
that's a misnomer.
I think that that's a really bad attitude
you just like, block, block.
That's not what I'm talking about.
That's not human, I just don't do that.
But in regards to,
I have a best friend that I had in high school
and then kind of into my 20s.
And then one day I seen him attack somebody on Facebook
and I just totally didn't agree with it.
And not only that, I realised that
every time I hang with this person,
it didn't feel good.
I always felt they were trying to
share all this stuff that they were up to
to try to prove to me something.
And I just wanna hang out with people that are easygoing,
positive, not talking about other people.
And it's just,
it didn't feel good.
And I just, I didn't say,
"Hey man, we're no longer friends."
I just decided to not call them anymore,
to not respond to text messages fast
or even respond honestly,
if it was like a group text.
And just start to create some spaces, some distance.
Now when I see him at the coffee shop,
which I do once in a while,
we politely do this.
"How's it going?"
"Good."
"kids are good?"
"Yeah."
"Awesome, it's good to see you."
That's fine.
I always believe there's people
that come into your life for a reason,
a season and a lifetime.
And if it's not for a lifetime,
don't force it.
Just accept it what it is and move on
because trust me and I'm gonna get into,
how do you find new people?
There are some incredible folks out there
that are gonna make your life so much more fulfilled.
They're gonna bring joy.
You're gonna be, wow.
I still remember there was a time
when my friends made me feel X
and now I feel Y
and Y feels incredible.
Why did I take so long
to just make some different set of decisions?
Number three, get busy with others.
This is to me, the idea of
where to look,
how do you find other positive people?
What are kind of the activities
that you can think about?
Well, here's a whole bunch of ideas
I'm just gonna throw out there.
Number one, there's a tonne of industry groups
in your city.
It doesn't matter how small the city is
there's the Kings.
There's like little,
I'm not even gonna list them
because I want you to search them
business groups in, enter your city name.
So there's that there's nonprofits,
if you have an interest in an area of your business,
people who volunteer for nonprofits,
surprise, surprise.
They're ridiculously good people,
good hearts, passionate, positive, et cetera.
So I'm a big fan of nonprofits,
maybe even sitting on a board,
joining other sports leagues.
So what happens with a lot of folks
and my client Chris, he's an introvert.
So he's I'm not somebody that's outgoing
and wanna make new friends.
And I said look, if you just put yourself on a team sport,
even if it's like
and just, this is a crazy thing Chris
you might have to say hello, okay.
Because he was in there hunting.
I'm, if you go to the gun range and you look over
and somebody makes eye contact,
you're gonna have to say the words,
"How's it going?"
All right so mr introvert,
I'm gonna have to give you some cues to just stand out,
because look at the end of the day, nobody's gonna,
if you want to make new friends,
you gotta have a conversation.
I mean it's kind of part of the dealio.
So just think about like the groups, the sports groups,
the activities, Facebook events page
has a tonne of stuff that you could be using
to find people that shared similar passion
and interest.
And in within those groups,
you'll just be exposed to some new people
and say I really like that person.
And decide to,
"Hey, are you free Saturday morning?
"I'm putting together this thing."
I mean, I literally like to do Rads
and Founder Dinners and all stuff.
You can be inspired,
I've done episodes on Founder Dinners
and building networks.
But get busy with other people,
because if you're busy with other positive people,
you can't help but say,
"Hey, I'd love to have come to
"that birthday party on Saturday
"but I already got one
"that I already committed to."
Et cetera and it's just the way it is,
is you wanna upgrade your point of view.
You wanna upgrade the five people
you spend the most time with
because you are definitely influenced by those five people.
And if those five,
if you're trying to go on health dirtyfor example.
You're trying to get your fit on,
try to sweat every day,
trying to run an iron man.
And you're hanging out with people
that like to go to the pub, eat wings, nachos,
and drink every night
between like 6:00 PM and 11:00 PM
and sleeping in the morning all that stuff.
Good luck, mental will and all that fun stuff.
If you think you can do it, go for it,
but I'll tell you, if you wanna get healthy
and you're not healthy.
And you're one of those people that might,
have dessert with every meal et cetera.
Go hang out with some fit people
that do like Ironmans or CrossFit et cetera
and trust me, you will feel awkward.
Ordering dinner when they all order chicken salad
and you order the nachos and the wings,
and then they have dessert and they all say,
"No thanks."
And you go,
"Yeah, I'd love the cheesecake."
It's that same concept applied to your life
and I think it's just smart.
If you're here to live the most Epic
and achieve goals and dreams
and support other people in your life
and I'm gonna talk about why this is important a sec,
then you have a responsibility to make those corrections.
Number four, shine your light.
So this is the big thing for me.
If you decide to go on a path of betterment,
of curating a different group of people,
my wife and I do this every year,
we started off in December.
We plan the next year and we ask ourselves,
what are other families and couples that we want to spend
more time with?
Because we just don't,
we need to lock it into our calendar
and not make it by default,
but make it by design.
Because there are people that share our parenting style
or the people that we just love to talk to,
but for some reason have never figured out
how to spend more time.
So we'll like schedule some vacations, et cetera.
I share that because you improving your situation
will inspire other people.
Trust me, because I've been there
when I went from, and if you don't know my story,
of going from 17 in jail,
drug addict to rehab
to the person I am today, financially,
wealthy and millions of followers online,
that I get to impact.
I'm privileged to support in,
dozens of companies that I've been lucky enough
to invest in et cetera.
And just the world I live in today.
I just feel it's your responsibility
to shine your light and share it with other people.
And here's why it's powerful in regards to
the creating a different network is because as you grow
and you go on this journey of personal development
and success,
you're inherently want to share
with the people you care about the most.
But this is what I've realised
is everybody's on their own journey.
And unless they ask you,
it's actually rude and gives them a hundred percent reason
to think you're a dink to always being
every time I was hanging out with Dan
I always talking about his workout stuff.
He's always talking about his business.
He's never asking me any questions about me.
He's always telling me all the things
I gotta change in my life.
It's don't be that guy, okay,
Let's call that person.
I don't wanna give a name
because I have so many friends with names.
Don't be that guy.
Don't be the person that is always criticising other people
because now you got to,
I remember my buddy, okay.
He lost like 35 pounds.
And all of a sudden he was the fitness expert
talking about this person that's overweight
and this person that's not doing anything.
And I was laughing because six months ago
you were that person.
And all of a sudden now six months later,
Because he lost some weight.
You're feeling confident to just criticise all these people.
And it's just, don't be that person
shine your life, be the example.
I got this from my buddy Jesse Elder,
Jesse Elder shared this
its the tugboat versus lighthouse.
And the lighthouse,
functions the same function as a tugboat.
Tugboat goes out,
if the chip is off track, your friend's off tracking,
and you're bumping into it, trying to realign it
and get back on track in your life.
And you're the preacher, okay
You could do that, but guess what?
They don't want it, it sucks.
You're banging in the side of them.
It's it takes a lot of energy and it's frustrating.
What I encourage you to do, which is how I live my life is
be the lighthouse.
Be the example,
shine your light as bright as possible.
And guess what?
It'll help other people see where there's pitfalls.
Okay, they'll avoid the big rocks of life.
They'll also be inspired
Because they'll see what you're accomplishing
and they'll know where you came from.
And they'll be inspired by the fact,
if that person who I wrote off in high school,
trust me I'm speaking from experience.
Literally I have people that message me
every day on Facebook.
That I haven't talked to in 20 some years
and they're I can't even believe the person
that was in my class is,
I don't get it.
What did you learn?
What happened to you?
Because it's just they're not even the same thing.
And I jokingly say it to a lot of people
like my growth game is strong.
If I haven't seen you in a while,
let me reintroduce myself.
My name is Dan Martell.
And I don't say that arrogantly
I say it because I'm proud of the work
that I put into myself.
And if you have the ability and the privilege
to go after your dreams
and get to a point where you're trying
to like restructure your friend group to support you,
be loud and shout out loud,
share on social media,
what you're doing to improve your life.
Don't do it one on one with people that don't ask for it.
However, when they finally send you that message
and say, "Hey."
John, Brad, Chris, whatever your name is.
Lisa, Megan, Lauren,
"How did you do that?"
I want you to take the time to explain to them
because it's very few and far between actually
that people will do that.
And that is the idea of shining your light.
So how do you cut people out of your life
without feeling horrible?
Number one, toxic people spectrum, assess.
Number two, love them from a distance.
Number three, get busy with others.
And you don't have any time for them anyway.
And number four, shine your light as bright as possible.
So, as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,
I wanna share with you an exclusive resource
called the Dream 100.
It's a training I created for my coaching clients
to help them understand the a 100 people
that you should identify
that will literally transform your life.
And it's the 10 mentors, the 30 advisors and the 60 peers.
And don't worry, I'm gonna teach you how to find those peers
and advisors in your neighbourhood.
You can click the link below
to download that specific training,
get access to that.
That is my gift to you.
And if you liked this video,
be sure to subscribe to my channel,
click the notification bell.
So when I upload, I upload every week,
every week, I want you to get notified
so you don't miss out on that.
And as for usual, I really, really, really today,
I wanna challenge you to live a bigger life
and a bigger business,
and I'll see you next Monday.
Test, test, test.
Yo, what's up everybody I blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah.