Are you letting convenience and the fear of failure guide your choices in life? In this special edition, I'm going to share the story of why I refused to quit after COVID-19 cancelled a 113km triathlon I was training for.
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In January, I started training for an Ironman 70.3 event.
I had never done anything like this before in my life… and I knew it was going to be f-ing hard.
I’m 6’3” and weighed 235lbs... I looked more like a linebacker than a skinny triathlete.
An Ironman 70.3 (aka: Half Ironman) consists of a 1900m swim, 90km bike ride and 21km run.
This is how I broke down my goals::
1. Good: I wanted to finish the race - I didn’t care if that meant crawling across the finish line.
2. Better: I wanted to get under 6 hours 30 minutes - that meant my swimming & running improved.
3. Best: I wanted to beat 6 hours - a good time even for athletes half my age.
After 2 months of intense training with some buddies, we were hit with tough news. The outbreak of COVID-19 meant our Ironman event was cancelled.
We had every excuse to quit training.
100% free pass.
There was no event and no-one would have called us a failure if we threw in the towel.
But we didn’t.
Down to just 5 friends, we decided we were going to finish our Ironman challenge... even if we had to make our own event.
And that’s exactly what we did.
This video is the story of why I refuse to give up even when it’s ok to.
I never want to be someone that says: “It’s too hard, quitting is more convenient”.
If I let convenience and a fear of failure guide my choices in life, there is no chance in hell I’d be where I am today.
Everything that I’m proud of was difficult to achieve. But I did it anyway.
You just have to keep working.
Keep pushing.
Keep fighting.
And if this micro-doc struck a chord with you, I would love to hear from you in the comments.
Dan “doing hard things” Martell
Don't forget to share this entrepreneurial advice with your friends, so they can learn too: how to scale, grow and exit with Dan Martell and some of the top SaaS Founders in the business on the Escape Velocity show: DAN MARTELL
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“You can only keep what you give away.” That’s the mantra that’s shaped Dan Martell from a struggling 20-something business owner in the Canadian Maritimes (which is waaay out east) to a successful startup founder who’s raised more than $3 million in venture funding and exited not one... not two... but three tech businesses: Clarity.fm, Spheric and Flowtown.
You can only keep what you give away. That philosophy has led Dan to invest in 33+ early stage startups such as Udemy, Intercom, Unbounce and Foodspotting. It’s also helped him shape the future of Hootsuite as an advisor to the social media tour de force.
An activator, a tech geek, an adrenaline junkie and, yes, a romantic (ask his wife Renee), Dan has recently turned his attention to teaching startups a fundamental, little-discussed lesson that directly impacts their growth: how to scale. You’ll find not only incredible insights in every moment of every talk Dan gives - but also highly actionable takeaways that will propel your business forward. Because Dan gives freely of all that he knows. After all, you can only keep what you give away.
Recommended Reading >> bit.ly/32kRpzw
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