You Already Know What You Need To Know

About this video

Dan Martell argues most people do not need to be taught new things — they need to be reminded of fundamentals they already know and stopped doing. He illustrates this with coaching client Joe, whose business had grown by doubling every month for three months in a row, then declined; Joe had stopped running the partner webinars that drove the growth because he got distracted by Facebook ads and other work. Martell calls constant learning without execution ‘shelf help’ and cites the principle ’to know and not to do is not to know.’ Inspired by a Tim Ferriss podcast commitment to read nothing new for a year, Martell says he decided to reread only old books that year, naming ‘Think and Grow Rich,’ ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ and Viktor Frankl’s ‘Man’s Search for Meaning,’ and uses the river quote — a man never steps in the same river twice — to argue you are a different person when you reread a book years later, giving his own rereading of ‘Seven Habits,’ including sharpening the saw and the golden egg versus the goose, as an example. He adds that success leaves clues: study the activities, beliefs and habits behind people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett, and audit your own past successful behaviours. Finally, he prescribes ‘model not modify’: across the roughly 400 growth playbooks he teaches under the ACES pillars (attract, convert, expand, scale), clients who freestyle and modify templates before modelling them verbatim do not get results; copy exactly first, get traction, understand why each component works, then adapt. He closes by referencing John Assaraf’s ‘Law of GOYA’ about execution.

Key takeaways

• Audit what you stopped doing before learning something new: client Joe’s growth reversed after he abandoned the partner webinars that had driven doubling growth for three months, simply because he got distracted.
• To know and not to do is not to know — ‘shelf help’ (endless consuming of books, quotes and podcasts without executing fundamentals) is the trap to avoid.
• Reread foundational books instead of chasing new ones: Martell says he spent a year rereading only old books, arguing you are a different person on rereading, so the same book teaches differently.
• Success leaves clues: study successful people’s activities, beliefs, mindsets and habits — and your own past winning behaviours — rather than assuming their methods are new.
• Model before you modify: execute a proven playbook or template verbatim first (‘rob and duplicate’), get early wins and understand why it works, and only then customize it to your audience or industry.

Episode details: published August 9, 2021 · 12:11 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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