Hey, there.
Dan Martell here, a serial entrepreneur, investor,
and creator of SaaS Academy.
In this video, I'm going to share with you how
to create a 10X vision map for your life,
and be sure to stay at the end where we're
going to tell you how to get access to my top book
recommendations.
If you've been watching my stuff,
you've probably asked me, what books have shaped my life?
I'll tell you how to get access to that at the end.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So if you ever wake up and you're
feeling frustrated in your business
or you don't have that motivation,
or maybe you're even asking yourself,
why am I building this in the first place?
Like at the end of the day, I'm successful,
but what does having this business mean
in the grand scheme of things, you know?
What I want to teach you is how to come to a place
where everyday you're driven, you're motivated,
you're excited to go to work because the pieces you're
building today, you know how those stack and create
that bigger vision for your life.
You know, recently I had a coaching client, Mark, that
was you know doing really well.
From everybody else's perspective,
he was extremely successful.
Over a million a month in reoccurring revenue
from the software business, but one
of the challenges he brought up to me was like,
I'm just not feeling as connected and driven
to my business and I don't know how to fix that.
Like, I understand we have all these things we've
got to build to create more value for my customers,
but how do I fix the feeling I have inside where I don't know
why I'm doing this anymore?
So I walked him through the 10X vision map process, a process
that I've used my whole life now for probably 15
years of understanding clearly what I'm trying to create
and how that's going to come together,
and it's the backbone of all the success I've ever
had in my life, and it's the byproduct of some really
smart people.
You know, I can't take credit for all these different ideas,
there's two people I want to shout out.
One is Dan Sullivan who I think--
I've never met Dan, although he's Canadian, he's amazing,
he's been doing coaching for 40-plus years.
He is one of the OGs in this space,
and I saw a video where he talked about 10X thinking
and kind of the impact that will have on your business,
that inspired this conversation.
And then also the Vivid Vision book by Cameron Herold,
a good friend of mine from COO Alliance,
and talked about the power of visualizing.
Now I've always known this because I've
read a lot of personal development
in the early days of my journey, but just really crystallizing
it in the right sequence of what you need to look at
and also making sure that you understand
how it's supposed to look.
So in this session, I'm going to walk you
through exactly how to create that for you
and why it's going to have an incredible impact on your life.
Number 1, vision map.
So one of the most important things
to really get clear on what we want
to have accomplished in our lives
is to understand what that looks like.
Most people when I ask them, OK, fast forward 25 years
and tell me what your life, if you achieve all the goals
and things that you're after, what does that look like?
Walk me through your day.
Explain it in detail.
Tell me what you've accomplished so that you
know that you've arrived at that destination,
and a lot of entrepreneurs can't do that.
So what I always walk them through
is kind of these four quadrants of a vision map,
of these four areas in your life that you want to focus on
to make sure that you're making the right decisions
and you're moving in that direction.
The first one is your team.
Like I don't care who you are, you're
only going to accomplish or produce results
based on the quality of your team.
If you don't think strategically and deliberately
about the kind of caliber of people
that you want as business partners,
as executive leadership teams, as investors, et cetera,
if you don't understand what your team looks like,
then you're going to have a really hard time producing
output, right?
Because at the end of the day, it's
the leader that grows their team the faster grows the fastest,
and that's from my buddy Brad Pederson.
So number 1 is team.
Second is your product, your business
if you're a software entrepreneur, for me,
it's the product.
What category do you want to own in the world?
What problem do you want to solve?
What do you want to be known for?
What is the purpose of building your product,
and to what standard of quality do you want to go after?
So if you don't have a vision for that,
it's going to be really tough for you
to connect the work that has to be
done on a daily, weekly basis to a larger
vision for the product.
The third is your empire.
I really believe if you're an entrepreneur,
you're probably going to build other companies.
I don't care if you're Bill Gates or Michael Dell
or you name the person, they-- they
yes have their primary business, but they also
have other things that they're involved in.
Other non-profits, other business endeavors,
maybe they create a fund, maybe they're investing, et cetera,
but you've got to ask yourself like, I'm building an empire--
I think even just saying that word, empire,
that's more than just this one little business.
Even you're starting off in this day one, think to yourself,
what kind of empire do you want to build for your life?
What does that look like?
How does your role fit inside of that mechanism?
And if and if you're having a hard time
coming up with that, just dream a little bit,
have some fun with it.
There's no limits, just design what
would your perfect business environment look like?
So that's 3, and then 4 is lifestyle.
I truly believe that most entrepreneurs
go after success--
they climb that ladder of success
only to get to the top to find out that it's leaning
against the wrong wall, OK?
And the cool part is that starting today,
at the first ring on that ladder, you can actually
decide which direction, which wall
do you want to lean that life on,
and choosing today to have a very clear picture of what you
want your day, your week, your month,
your year to look like from a lifestyle point of view,
who do you want to spend time with,
how do you want your family incorporated in this,
how do you want your day and your work
to look, how do you want your health
to show up into that lifestyle vision, that's super important.
Because I have no doubt that you could be successful,
it's just are you going to choose
to focus on the right things or are you going to make some
sacrifices not knowing that you had a better
vision for that lifestyle?
And the cool part is is you can have it all if you decide,
if you focus on that vision.
So those are the four parts.
The team that you want to build, the product,
the empire-creating, and the lifestyle you
want to have part of that.
It's kind of the glue of the whole vision.
Number 2, thinking.
What I've learned is when we start thinking 10X, right?
Whatever your goals are, 10X.
It's not about like trying to create--
this is not to be a big, hairy, audacious goal.
I think a lot of you--
I've talk to some of my clients and I'm
like, where do you want to be in 12 months?
And they're like, well, I want to be 15X growth.
It's like, all right, that's cool,
but are you doing that because you
have a history of doing that or you think you can do it,
or you just feel like you want to set a big vision?
So my whole thing is have a vision for 10X
and kind of keep that as your own like this
is what I think I can do, this is what I want to drive to,
but with your team, make sure that you're actually performing
and you're winning, because nobody
wants to teach their team that it's OK to lose.
But to do that, it's going to impact your thinking.
So that's what's great about having a 10X
vision for your life, for your business, for your empire,
for your team, for your product, is it's going
to allow you to make better--
it's going to allow you to think more creatively of the problems
you have to solve.
And I think that too often if we're in the trees,
if we're not seeing the forest, it's
too easy to get lost in that.
We want to focus on 10X so it impacts our thinking.
Number 3, innovation.
So the cool part about having this vision, this 10X
focus on our life is now all of a sudden,
we're going to make different decisions about how
we solve problems, how we innovate,
because we know what we want to accomplish in the market,
we know what kind of product we want to create,
we know what kind of category we want to create in the world.
And for me, that ends up showing up
as innovation in our product, and that, to me,
is where I've seen so many companies fall back
because they didn't pay down code debt,
or they didn't add the features that their customers were
asking, or for whatever reason, just lost
the love of innovating in their product
and just started doing me too copy features.
But what I love is that when we start thinking 10X,
it's like, huh, we need to get somewhere somewheres faster,
so there's no way we can do this in a linear way,
we need to start thinking about being innovative
and adding exponential growth or solving problems that
are really hard and not being shy to do
that so that we create something that's
meaningful and foundational to the market we're in.
Number 4, decision-making.
One of the most powerful things that
changes when you have that new vision
is that you're going to make different decisions about how
you solve problems with your team, how you solve product
innovation challenges, and even more importantly, how
do you go to market, how do you improve your sales
and marketing.
Recently I was talking to one of my clients,
and they were having an issue with their VP of marketing
who was really good at generating leads, OK?
They were efficient, they were running the playbook,
and they were making it work.
But what was frustrating him was,
he didn't feel like that person had any vision
for the marketing function.
There was no testing going on, there was no R&D,
there was no, like, hey, let's go test a new channel, let's go
and invest ahead of our growth to make sure that we can find
some new channels of growth.
And what I suggested to him was, hey, why don't you
sit down and find out, one, that person
might have a fixed mindset.
See, what happens is, if we're really
good at hitting our numbers, that tells me that we're
able to follow the playbook.
But if we're not given permission,
if we're not challenged to go outside of our comfort zone
and start thinking about, hey, I'm going to go invest ahead,
I'm going to go run some R&D, I'm
going to ask for budget to go test some new channels,
then that just might not be native to their thinking.
And having you share with them the 10X
vision for the marketing function
and what does this look like at the end of the day
and how does our marketing our customers and our prospects
see our business from their perspective based
on the marketing we're doing, if they don't understand that,
then they won't go outside of the realm they've created.
They could be incredible at hitting return on ad spend
and hitting the cost for leads and all these different metrics
for your marketing, but they won't have the vision
that you have to push the boundaries, which is
what was frustrating my client.
So the cool part is when you start
doing this, your decision-making not only for yourself, but also
for your team starts to change and morph and allow
you to get more output.
Number 5, communication.
So this one to me is the most powerful.
When you see somebody that's connected to their vision,
connected to their future, and understands clearly where
they're going, you feel it, you see it,
they have a presence about it, they
have a confidence about it, they have
a certainty about the way they talk and communicate.
And to me, that is probably the most powerful thing.
If you're trying to recruit somebody that's
at one of your competitors or is a high performer
at another company, you're trying
to bring them in your world, you need
to communicate your vision, your excitement, your certainty
about the future in your business
so that they go, man, this is going to be a done deal.
This is going to be a wild ride, but I trust this person,
I want to follow this person into battle,
and communication is going to have a huge impact.
The way-- and it's subtle.
It's the email responses, it's the Slack messages,
it's the conversations, the one-on-ones
in the hallway in passing.
When you walk around with that excitement where you know, hey,
this is where we're going.
Now maybe they only see the next 12 months
because that's all that they really
need to see to kind of get the work done,
but you will transfer your enthusiasm and excitement
for that vision once you know internally what
that looks like.
So be sure to not only have that vision for yourself,
but also ask yourself, how would I
feel if this was accomplished?
And start acting like that today.
So real quick, recap--
five things that you need to do to create a 10X vision map.
Number 1, create a vision map, your team, your product,
empire, and lifestyle.
Number 2, change the way you're thinking because of that 10X
vision.
Number 3, the innovation needs to map to that vision as well.
Number 4, decision-making; and number 5, communication.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I
want to share with you an exclusive resource called
My Top Books for Transforming the Entrepreneur's Life.
Recently I was asked by my cousin--
his son one to start a business and he was like,
hey, Dan, my son Ben wants to start a business, what books
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And it was such an interesting question.
It's like, I've read over a thousand business books,
but if I had to kind of put together a list of top books
that he as a first-time entrepreneur
hadn't read a business book ever, where should he start
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So what I did is I created essentially categories
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So click the link below to grab a copy of the top books
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As per usual, I want to challenge
you to live a bigger life and a bigger business,
and I'll see you next Monday.
Live on set!