The #1 Skill You Need to Succeed in Business

About this video

Martell presents ‘hustle to help’ as the skill behind business success, attributing — as his own claims — outcomes such as raising venture capital from Mark Cuban, spending a week with Richard Branson, and involvement in many companies to relationships built by helping first. He tells how offering to introduce FreshBooks founder Michael McDermott to a contact at an event in Halifax led to an invitation to speak in Toronto, where he met his wife Renee, and how sharing activation research with a founder named Alex later led, in his telling, to a positive referral when Mark Cuban inquired about Clarity. From these stories he draws three beliefs. First, make the offer: routinely ask how you can help and what challenges someone faces. Second, think who not how: value often lies in knowing the right person to introduce, not solving the problem yourself, and you can build that value by consuming books and training for your target market — he cites Tim Sanders’ Love Is a Killer App and the idea that your network is your net worth. Third, follow up: send the introduction, update the person you helped, and stay available as a trusted resource. He closes with a line he says he learned in rehab at 17: you can only keep what you give away.

Key takeaways

• Make the offer habitually — ask what people are working on and how you can help.
• Use ‘who not how’: create value by connecting people to the right solver, even when you cannot solve it yourself.
• Build a useful network by learning for your market and tracking other people’s challenges for future introductions.
• Follow up after introductions and let people know you helped, to become a trusted resource.
• Give relationships and help away generously; Martell frames this as how opportunities and referrals compound.

Episode details: published February 14, 2022 · 14:18 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dan Martell’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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