- The pressure produces the diamonds, not through dollars
but through who you get to become.
(upbeat music)
What's up everybody? Dan here.
Today, I want to talk about this mindset,
this philosophy called no pressure, no diamonds.
I got it from my buddy, Jason Gaynard.
It's one of the philosophies
that for me really represents the entrepreneurial journey.
So if you're struggling right now
and you feel like giving up
and it's been really tough,
maybe you've gotten COVID
maybe you're struggling with a breakup,
maybe you just feel like you're not getting
to where you want to be right now.
And it's just feels like you're kind of fighting a headwind.
I wanna share with you my thoughts on making it work.
'Cause you know even though I've been super blessed
and lucky to build and exited
the last three companies that I've started,
I've invested in 40 plus companies or now 50 companies,
as an angel investor
and run literally, two multimillion dollar companies.
today as CEO, through High Speed and SaaS Academy
there's these kind of benefits
of going through the struggle
that I think a people miss.
So it's really easy to like take that depression
take that feeling of like wandering
and not making progress
and use that to reframe the story
that you're telling yourself.
And the first one is learning to learn.
One of the things that I think is the most beautiful aspect
about the challenge of building a company
or really just being successful in life
is learning to learn.
Most people stop learning once they go to high school
and for me that was like, where I didn't learn at all.
I literally was like an F student, an E and an F.
I mean, got worse grades ever.
And what I discovered afterwards,
even though I started when I was 17,
it wasn't until I was 21 or 23
that I read my first business book.
The thing that continues today
is the idea of reading, not only for myself,
but for my market, for my community
for my customers, for my family, for everybody.
I mean, I've read over 1,200 business books to this point,
by following a simple process
which is 10 pages every day, every day for years, right?
Ever since I started my company's Fair Technologies
when I was 24,
that was when I like understood
that if I wanna learn how to do anything
I'm gonna have to read the books
and the books, it's the practise, right?
It's Bruce Lee's comment of like
"I fear not the person that's got a thousand kicks.
I fear the person that's practised one kick a thousand times
or 10,000 times."
To me, that's what the learning habit does for us, right?
It's the learning to learn, so that's that's number one.
So like building a business,
if all you did was use it as a learning tool,
then to me, that is like the ultimate like gift, right,
that most people don't realise.
The other strategy and kind of mindset
is to play nice with others.
In business to be successful,
like it took me really learning this,
my first two companies
that you can't build a business without other people.
And I have friends that I love
but it seems like every time they get into business
they get in a lawsuit.
Every time they start a new partnership,
they get in a fight.
Every time they start a business with a co-founder,
eight months later they fall out of the business
like didn't work out with this person or whatever.
This is not something I think that's natural
especially when money's involved.
I know I went through this with my brother,
building a company together
and like there's real dollars and stuff at play.
And then at some point you have to figure out,
like how are we gonna move forward?
When it's tens of millions of dollars
that you're talking about
it's harder to walk away from that.
And when I think of the journey with Flowtown
which to me was when I was 28, 29
and trying to understand how to play nice
with my co-founder Ethan
because I technically started the business with him
for him to be the CEO, right.
I wanted him to run the business.
I wanted to be able to have the freedom.
I had just sold my company Sphere, I had a lot of money
and I didn't want to jump into something and be the CEO
but I had to learn how to do that.
How do I become the person
that that person wants to be in business with?
And how do I show up and add value on a daily basis
in a way that is interesting
and attractive to them,
for us to continue building the company?
Same thing with Clarity.
It's easy for people
to see successful folks in business,
but not realise that one of the habits, beliefs,
traits, skills, that you need to develop
is to collaborate with other people.
Some people are so angry and frustrated with the world
and cynical and narcissist and all these things.
They don't realise that that is the thing
stopping them from building the business.
So yes, no pressure, no diamonds
but it shouldn't be harder than it has to be.
Okay, so playing nice with others is a big idea.
And then finally, the other thing
that you need to be successful in business
is to have a high income skill, okay?
So yeah, you could be super smart
at the technical side,
you could write code,
but sales and marketing is really where I focus my time.
I learned how to write code initially
and then that allowed me to build software.
But I quickly realised once I built the software,
that if I don't learn the skill.
That was building NB Host,
or not even NBHost, MaritimeVacation
which is a company I started when 17
then I needed to learn how to get people
in front of the product,
that was the marketing side.
That was the high income skill
that you see people talking about all the time,
and asking myself if I go down this path
what new skill am I gonna learn?
What am I gonna develop,
maybe through reading
maybe through going to seminars,
maybe through watching YouTube videos,
maybe from finding a coach and a mentor
to teach me to fast track that?
And like every company taught me
from learning to code would be MaritimeVacation,
NBHost was a bit of marketing.
Spheric was definitely marketing and sales.
And then even more recently with SaaS academy,
deciding that I wanted to take everything I'd learned
and put it on the internet
for all of you guys to learn and study
and the skill that I wanted to learn there
was communication.
Could I learn to shoot a video in one take
just like this one here
and be able to at any moment hit a stage
and share some philosophies and some ideas
and some stories without preparation
and to the ability that I could communicate a vision
and communicate my passion
and communicate a path forward to my team,
to my partners, to my market
that skill was something that I knew
was gonna produce a lot of value in the world,
but I didn't know how to do it.
I mean, I used to go to the studio for three months
just practising and practising and practising .
Like hundreds of hours spent in a studio
in front of a camera,
trying to figure out how do I communicate my story?
How do I communicate my message?
But doing it because I knew
that even if I failed
that I would've built this new skill,
this new high income skill, this new valuable skill
that would be transferable to every other business.
So sometimes when you're building,
don't lose sight that not only,
yes, it would be great for the business you're after
to be successful.
But more importantly, it's even if it wasn't successful,
am I learning and am I growing?
Am I developing, right?
Am I reading the right books?
Am I playing nice with others
and learning how to do that at scale?
Am I adding some high income skills
or adding some valuable skills that I don't really have
that I know can be transferrable
and sometimes that is the value.
The pressure produces the diamonds, not through dollars
but through who you get to become
which I think is the really big idea.
I wanna end this on a metaphor.
If you think about going to the gym
like the whole idea of developing your muscles, right?.
I go to the gym, I know I don't really look at it.
I'm not like a bodybuilder,
but I train for triathlons
and I've done Iron Man full distance.
And anytime I'm doing a training
I ask myself like, did I rip the muscle?
Did I go past the point of exertion?
Did I get the intended benefit of the design programme?
I work with a fitness coach, a triathlon coach.
I literally have three coaches
that just relate to my personal health, right?
Swim coach, triathlon coach
and then a health coach, an energy coach.
And when they design these trainings
they're designing it to go past my capabilities
to essentially, no different than if you go to the gym,
you tear the muscle
and the reason why we wanna tear the muscle
or go past a certain heart rate zone
is to develop into a higher capacity.
And that to me is the same analogy and metaphor
that we look at in business,
which is, our job is to put ourselves in a position
to challenge ourselves
so that we push past our comfort zone.
We go outside the comfort zone.
We go past our skill set, our limits,
to then discover and become
who we might have the ability to become.
To become the athlete
that can finish a full distance Iron Man,
who can swim four kilometres
who three years prior, I couldn't even swim, right?
And all of that came because of this belief
that the effort is worth the results
the outcome of who you get to become
and that's the big idea.
So I don't know who needs to hear this today
but if you're struggling right now
you're going through a dark time.
You've got this depression settling in
maybe it's anxiety, maybe it's self-doubt
maybe it's imposter syndrome.
I don't know what it is for you
but I wanna encourage you to keep going.
I want you to think about doing the reps.
I want you to think about tearing the muscle
the no pressure, no diamonds,
because it's in that space
that you get to become the person
who can deal with a higher level of challenges
to rise and be prepared
to receive the thing you've been asking for,
for the last decade, right?
Whatever you wanna become, successful,
you might have to go through this challenge
so that you can be ready to become the person
who can receive that request
and that's the big idea.
So hope this finds you incredibly well
and have an amazing day.
(upbeat music)