I Asked Codie Sanchez How to Make Your First $1,000,000

Welcome to the Growth Stacking Podcast. This is Dan Martell.

Most people have read like Tim Ferriss Four Hour Workweek. And I feel like this is that book now on steroids. When you went and wrote this, what was the one piece of this book that you thought, why doesn't anybody do it this way?

It's not what everybody would want to learn. It's kind of the chocolate broccoli. Like people. I wrote that book that way because I knew it would get people to start the book. But the broccoli is actually like towards the back part of it. And it's transformational leadership. So like most people that run companies don't realize that they are actually a little insane, right, Cody?

No, not at all. Not over here.

We are nutty and I mean, we have to be. Cause we're deciding to do stuff that very few people do, right? Which is start companies, buy companies, which is if everybody did it, it wouldn't be abnormal or extra so. Transformational leadership is a simple concept that when you have people that report to you, okay, there's two ways to do it. You can do transactional leadership or transformational. Most people, if you've never been taught any different, it sounds super logical that you do transactional leadership, which is you hire somebody, you tell them what to do, you check that they got done, and you tell them what to do next. Most of us have experienced this in our work capacity. This is how we've always done it. And it sounds super normal. The problem with that is that as you hire more people, and it usually happens around a dozen folks on your team direct reports where you'll wake up in the morning with all the motivation to get a bunch of stuff done. And then you check your inbox and then you realize this person's working on the wrong thing. And then, oh, what about this new person we just hired? Are they being trained? And you literally spend the whole day doing a tell check next loop to only find out that after you had dinner and you put the kids to bed, that none of the projects you touched ever got done. So then you work from 7 o' clock to 11 o' clock at night trying to actually get your own work done. And that's where you hit essentially what I call the pain line, where anything more that you want to do in your life becomes really painful. So you might be sitting with an opportunity, sitting there like, I could go do this, but I can't do anything more because I'm stuck in this transactional leadership style versus transformational, which is number One, it's outcome, focus. So I don't tell anybody on my team what to do. I. I tell them what it looks like. When it is done at the highest level and my team's here, you can talk to them. This is just how I am. And sometimes they'll pull me into that. Like, what do you think I should do? And I literally act like a 6 year old. I go, I don't know. Anne's laughing. Cause I do it a lot. But literally it's like, I was like, what do you want to do? And they're like, but I'm asking you. I know, but I don't know. Of course you know, pretend like I don't. If I wasn't here, what would you do? Well, I'd probably hit the Internet or I'd probably call this person. I said, that sounds like a great idea. So I focus on outcome. Then I go to measure, which is what is the numbers that we're gonna agree upon? Means you're making progress. So if I say we're gonna take that mountain, I might say, well, let's measure the daily elevation gain per day, right? And every day, if you text me how many feet of elevation you made, then as long as you're moving upwards, we're good. But if all of a sudden you report back a negative, I'd be like, did you fall off a cliff or did you take a wrong turn? And then they'd be like, yeah, I got lost. And it's like, cool. What could you do not to be lost? I don't know. You tell me. I don't know. You know what I mean? Get it? Outcome. So we're going to the mountaintop. That's the outcome. Measure every day. And they might come back with ideas like, I should probably get a map. That sounds like a great idea. Where could you get a map? I don't know. Map store. Maybe somebody else has been up this mountain. Okay, good, good. Go find that out. And then what I do. The third part is coach, right? And coach is what's funny. For a lot of us that have communities like we do, we actually do this naturally. Or maybe you've been a coach, like a real, like, you know, athletic coach. You use those same principles. So I don't tell people what to do. I talk about principles, right? Sorry, guys. I talk about the principle that is missing. So if I see somebody do something they shouldn't have done, I'll just write it down. And then in our one on ones, I'll be like, they'll Be like, what's on your list? Cause that's one of the prompts. And then I go to my list and I say, ooh, last Tuesday, I saw you post this in Slack, and I just want to ask you, like, did you feel that was clear or a little unclear? Well, it was clearly unclear because 17 people were very confused, and I caused this whole thread of people going left, right, and all over the place. Okay, cool. I would agree. Let me tell you about this principle about clear communication. That's probably my wife calling me back because I did this to her earlier. It is. And she'll call me again. She's in my VIP list. That always rings through.

It's a smart, happy wife, happy life.

I know, but I did it to her earlier, and she kept hanging up like I'm doing. And then I kept calling her so she might do it again. I know. And she was probably recording a podcast, and she was loving me at the time.

That's amazing.

So then we do the coaching. So it's always principle, not activity. So I never attack the activity. I talk about the. So the principle is clear communication. Here's the way I learned this. One time, I remember I jumped into a meeting, I didn't have context, and I said something I wasn't clear. Next thing, I turned around, and it was a $26,000 mistake. So I've learned in the future, sometimes it's better to slow down and measure twice, cut once, see? And then at the end, this is the third part of the coaching is you ask them, based on the story I just shared with you, what did you take away from that? So notice I didn't tell them anything. I created a methodology for evolving my people and my whole philosophy and big thing in the book. And that's why it's a productivity book, but it's also a leadership book, is you build the people, the people build the business.

Define clear communication. I think everybody thinks they're clear, and then everyone else does not.

Very simple, these three words. DOD definition of done. Definition of done. Right. You buy a piece of real estate, you have a vision for what that looks like to the degree that you can describe exactly what that looks like. Completed, done. Like, really go there. See, most people, we never taught how to do this. What is the definition of done? If I buy an old house and I hire somebody to manage renovating it, what does that look like? Well, one, there's a date, there's an experience. See, I'm not talking about the colors of the wall. I'm talking about like on this date, I will drive into this yard and I will open the door and all my stuff's gonna be here and I'm moving into this house with my family and we're gonna have a party the day after and everything's gonn like I'm describing the outcome and the experience and I think that most people never ask themselves, like, what is the definition of done? I'm a software guy, so it actually comes from agile programming. It's a software concept. And I think every time I'm trying to ask somebody to support me in anything, I'd always go to definition of done, which is the outcome concept. Right. But I think DoD is kind of what I would tell people to think about.

I really, really like it. We use the Braun method. So basically just who, what, when, where, how and why, and we leave the how to them. And I think a lot of the reason that that helps is the other day we were talking about it and we're like, well, if you don't know who this is for, then a financial projection sheet that is for you or I, who run a bunch of holding companies is going to look a lot different than financial projection that my admin needs to see a budget for an event. Those are two very different things. And so I think I stole it from journalism because the Braun method is what you use in journalism. You can't really write a story unless you have who, what, how, when, where and why. And it's really the same thing when you define communication and scope projects. So I really, I liked that from your book. The other thing that I really liked from your book is you talk about focus versus ADHD a little bit in your content and in your book. Can you talk a little bit about, like, do we really have this ADHD epidemic or is a lot of this just our focus?

You're going to get me in trouble. So a few things. I think I have a problem with labels of anybody up for anything. I think we're all beautiful expressions of our unique experience, souls, all that stuff I'm zero label for. If doctors need it to describe a person to each other, then keep it for yourselves. Like anytime anybody's tried to label me or my kids or my friends anyway, I'm like, hey, it's a weird thing because there's nothing wrong with you, right? You have a default. So like a lot of people that have ADD or ADHD, I was diagnosed when I was 11. Diagnosed, right? Put on Ritalin, told I was special and broken all this. Turns out they just didn't know where to point me. Right. If this was 300 years ago, we'd call me an evolutionary hunter. That's what I am. Like, if this was 300 years ago, you'd want one of me in your tribe because I'm the guy that's going to go out in the woods and I'm going to bring back the food and then you guys can all eat. See, we went to this, like, agricultural farming society, where now we all have to sit in these chairs and learn and study and show up and everybody do the same thing in the right order or you're an issue. So, anyways, I think is this in regards to the chaos side of things, of just, like, how you show up at your work. So what happens is, because a lot of us, I can only speak from my experience because I grew up in, like, chaos and adhd, and just, like, that's where I thrive. Unfortunately, when things go good in your business, if you have this problem, you will throw hand grenades and create problems. In your business, when things are actually starting and you're creating durable revenue and it's predictable and it's like, okay, yay. You'll be like, we're changing the website, adding a new product. I just hired. I bought a new company. There's 14 other people there. They're gonna. And the team's like, what are you doing? Why? Because that chaos is actually incredibly normal for us. And what we've learned to do, and it's our superpower, is deal with large amounts of uncertainty and still move forward. So when things are certain, it feels awkward and we all have an emotional home that we want to get back to. Even if it doesn't look positive, it's still familiar. So for me, I always think about, like, is this strategically the right decision, or am I throwing a massive hand grenade in my business to give me ground cover to then go have a problem to solve? Because that feels good.

I'm sure nobody in here can relate to any of this. One thing that I like about you, too, we talk a lot about power of place and how it really can be beneficial or can be detrimental what you surround your work environment with. You're very particular about your work environment.

Very intentional.

Can you talk a little bit about what's on the walls, how you structure things and why? And I like also how you do it in a way that it's not that it's expensive or fancy, although you can afford that. It's just very intentional.

Yeah. I think it's evolved. And I continue to evolve it. Like, we just got a new studio, started a company called Martell Media. Very inspired by Cody and our friends. Like, at the end of the day, it occurred to me that everything that I want to achieve in life accelerates on the other side of reach and reputation. So we got this new studio space and I started building a team. And I would say, because that's probably the most recent company that I've kind of like, like, kind of built out. First off, it's the people. Like, I have a zero space for anybody that I don't vibe with. It doesn't mean that we have to share the same preferences and watch the same shows or any of that, or even look the same. None of that. If you don't hold a high standard, if you don't have a desire to create something magical, if you don't want to go on a journey of building something that may have never been built before, this is not the room for you. And I'm not upset about it. I get mad at myself when they accidentally get in. We had one recently. This is so funny. I feel bad for Ann. It was Anne's assistant and she resigned. And we're like, whoa, that's weird. Because if you read my book, six chapter test versus hire method, very structured. I mean, to get on the team is a gauntlet. And she resigned. And I was like, that's weird. So I reached out to her and I did a clearing conversation with her. And she goes, I'll be honest with you, Dan, she was from South Africa. She goes, I've never been on a team where somebody swore. Oh, that's what I told her. I said, oh. And she's like. And I'm like, oh, how did this. How did this happen? Like, where did we mess up when we were recruiting where you were not aware? I thought you didn't. Did you watch my content? Like, did you think of googling me or something? I think that to the degree that you can be just really honest with yourself. And this is the thing, it comes down to you giving yourself permission to deciding what is a 10 out of 10 and not coming down to a 6 or a 7, because that's what happens, you know. If I ask you, like, what would it look like to have to enjoy going to work, to own a business, to really appreciate it, you would say, well, I want to surround myself with these kind of people. So it's always people first. So I start with the people. That's first and foremost. Then I look at, like, the flow and the structure. So I don't believe we manage time. I believe we manage energy. That's a big concept in my book. Okay. Because I don't know about you, but when I went to math class, it felt like three hours. When I went to art class, it felt like seven minutes. See what I'm saying? So we manage the energy that we experience in that space, that time. So everything I do, and it's very intentional in regards to just even transition points. When I travel here. I've got the team, and it's just like, we're very intentional about, like, what's Dan's energy level going to be at different parts of the day? So some people are like, how do you do so much and keep the energy going? It's like, oh, well, I. I do this kind of work in the morning, this kind of work after lunch, this kind of work towards the end of the day. And I save these things for these. And they're like, oh, oh, that makes sense. And I'm like, yeah. Even the space of, like, how the studio is designed, and you come in and there's, like, these. Literally where we put. We have a gym in the studio. We have, like, a play area. Has anybody played the new Spider man on a PS5? Anybody? Am I the only one with kids? Okay, good. It's so good. It is so good. It's like playing a movie. You're, like, playing this thing. So anyways, even where we put that and then had the studio set up in my office, it's just, you know, the words we put on the wall, everything is, you know, it says prioritize the pump. It says sweat every day. So, like, I'm very intentional about the words. Like, if you talk with me and I hear you say a word that is disempowering, I will invite you to consider a different one. Right.

How would that conversation go?

Oh, let's talk about.

So let's say, like, I go, well, it's just like, we didn't have enough time to do it the way that I wanted to do it.

Really, Cody, you decided not to make enough time?

Maybe.

There we go.

Yeah.

So playful, fun. Sam will say, that would be cool when that happens. It will be cool if there's no.

Yeah. So it's just words mean things to you.

Words mean things matter. Set, intention. At the end of the day, we don't get what we want. We get what we expect. Think about that. You will never get a penny more than you expect to earn. You think you deserve. Never. I don't care Bhags and big hair, like $10 million, I don't care. Do you believe that that's you? Because the problem is you'll just act differently if you expect it. Here's how I know. Like just check this out. Tomorrow morning you go into your bank accounts, whatever banks you use. I'm Canadian, so like Chase or whatever it is in the US and you log in and the number you thought to see is half. Do you change the rest of your day? The energy you bring to the rest of your day? Yes. Why don't you act like that today? Think about that. Why don't you act like that today? When you stand on the scale and you look down and it's like, well, that's cool. No, no. Are you really in the best? Like, are you where you want to be? What would that number should be? Act as if you put on 20 pounds. Act as if the bank account dropped 50%. Because like, I think that that expectation is actually what drives the right behavior. Because too often that identity of what we think we're worth is actually the issue.

It's really good. So you run Ironmans and marathons and I think you were skiing this weekend with a bunch of people. Yeah. Hello, skiing entrepreneurs. Yeah, exactly. So obviously you're playing a lot while you're working too.

Yeah.

Talk about how you started to prioritize correctly. Because for a lot of people who are new at this, what I hear most often is I don't have time for X. I feel overwhelmed by why. Yeah, I never hear those words from you. Why and how do you prioritize properly?

Yeah, I mean, it's easy to look at my life and look at Cody and I and go, yeah, but you guys are rich. Like, I'm not an idiot. I was at one point in a room just like this, listening to two rich people on stage talk about their fucking lane. You're like, shut up. Like, I'm very self aware. But I think that, you know, there's two parts to your question. The one is when I do this, I feel overwhelmed. I totally agree. And it's your experience. The cool part is you decide. So guess what? You can be overwhelmed and you may be overwhelmed and I don't discredit. I'm not going to take away that that's exactly how you feel. But if you actually stayed in that feeling and you were willing to explore it a little bit, you could, if you were open to it, get to a place where in that same activity you're no longer overwhelmed. Overwhelmed is kind of It's a funny thing because it's all about the meaning that we associate to the activity. So here's a cool idea. I'm gonna really. You guys are like, who is this guy? You don't control your first thought. You don't control it. It's given to you from wherever. Call it the universal mind, God, consciousness, it's just there. But you do control your second thought. And the second thought in that space between the first one, that is a gift, and the second one, how you respond, that's the feeling. So if you're overwhelmed. Yes, you are. Do you have to be? No, you don't. And if you just even think of the frame, Alex Hormozi taught me this. This like, thousand expert frame. So, like, whatever's overwhelming you, imagine you did this thing a thousand times. Honestly, by the hundredth time, 500th time, the thousand, it's just. You just do it. You don't even think about it. So when people see my life today and they go, how do you do all that? I go, oh, but this is. Capacity expanded at the extremities. And the first time I might have felt overwhelmed, but then I got easier and easier and easier, and now it's just. I don't even think about it. So that's on the feeling side in regards to the time side. What I do and I teach in the book Preloaded Year, the Perfect Week, these two frameworks is. I'm very intentional about reflecting. So every, like, quarter. And then, you know, every year I look back at what I did because everything's in my calendar and it's kind of color coded, but not really, but we can just evaluate it. And I just ask myself simple questions, like, was that the right use of my quarter, Right use of my year? When I look at the stuff I said yes to, was that like Charleston? For me, that was a. Hell, yeah, that was a great time. So, yes, maybe I do that again. Or the ski trip, do I want to do that again? And then when I look at it and I look at it over a year, I have this one page template because. And my wife and I do this. We each individually look at, like, what, work wise? And then our family, and we just go, like, was that too much or too little? Okay, I'll give you a simple example. I used to go on vacation before my events. Now as I say this out loud, all of you probably go, that's dumb. Why would you go on vacation the week before you have a major event? I don't know if you Guys have ever run an event the seven days prior. There's zero on your brain other than did this, like, da, da, da, da, da. Like, so I would go on vacation with the family, and they'd be talking to me, and it's like, I'm not there, and I'm, like, checking my phone. Did you guys remember to get the badges, change the color? You know what I mean? So now all we did when we looked at the year, I said, okay, instead of doing the vacation here right after. Oh, wow, what a change. All of a sudden, now I deliver for my clients, and then I go on vacation. Everybody's cup's full, and I can disconnect without guilt, et cetera. So it's just. I'm really good at that. Retro and being intentional about my time and then also just evaluating the different aspects of my life that I feel I need to feel, like, fulfilled. I don't even believe in the word happiness per se. I think it's a moment in fleets, but fulfilled. Have I designed my life in a way where I have, like, all aspects of, like, my relationship and my friendships? And, like, the ski trip you mentioned, I've been doing that for 10 years, and it is three days. It's a magical three days 48 of, like, three. Some of my favorite entrepreneurial friends in the back country, going down steep and deep powder. We'll probably do it. Until we don't. We're just. It's just the best thing. So, like, again, every year, we just. We're very intentional. So the way I think about it is anytime I have a conversation with somebody, I'm trying to do two things. One, I'm genuinely curious about their situation. See, some people that are nervous about talking to other people, the problem is, is they think they gotta talk. Shut the up, don't say anything. It's so funny. They're, like, so nervous that they say nothing. When I'm like, you don't have to talk. You just have to ask a question. They're like, literally, this guy came to my house one day, and he was nervous, and I was like, dude, I can feel your. He's like, well, I've been following you for five years, and I don't know what to say. I go, you don't have to say anything. Just ask me a question. He's like, what? Anything. So here's the deal. When you meet somebody new and you can just write them down, have some canned questions, like, I'm just curious, how did you get into that business? How long have you Been doing it. What do you like best, Cody? What do you like best about running this, this incredible empire building? And let them talk. And then so what happens is I look for two things. I look for one, something that they're doing that could be helpful to me, and two, something that they're gonna do or struggling with that is actually my genius. So. And I didn't even know I was doing this until somebody asked me about three weeks ago this exact same question. And I was like, oh, actually I'd probably do this. So here's what I do. I ask the questions, but I'm generally curious. Like, I do love people, so I'm like, how long you do this? You know? Well, how did you solve that problem? Oh, we're doing this, like the media stuff, the YouTube, like, do you guys monetize that? Oh, geez, we don't do that. Okay, so there's my thing. How do you guys monetize? I need to know that. Oh, we gotta turn that thing on. I don't know how to do that. Okay, so I got the thing I need. Then I try to figure out, okay, what are they building into the future? See, most people discount their value. They literally go, why would this person want to talk to me? I have nothing to add to their life. That is the silliest thing ever. Every person has something. And guess what? Your thing could be that you listen with a kind heart. And that is awesome because I will tell you, as Cody knows, in this world of business, sometimes that person ain't a kind person. So if all you do is listen with kind heart, that is actually valuable. And you can offer that. But let's say it's a real thing. Like you're good at marketing or whatever and you're like, oh, how are you guys marketing your business? And they're like, well, we're thinking of starting Facebook ads. And you're like, I'm a Facebook ad expert. Then I go to the next part, which is I offer to be helpful and I might say something like, well, that's cool. The thing you're doing with your sales motion there, we've been thinking of doing. We haven't done it. And you know, like the Facebook ads or the SaaS stuff, I think I probably did, I was like, you know, anytime you need me, love to do that. But if you want, let's schedule a 30 minute call. And on that call we can do the first 15 minutes where I help you and I'll show you. And this is the kicker again, I don't Remember, I do this, but like, this is how it's a 10 out of 10. Show them everything. Show them. Like, literally show them. Here's our P and L, here's our dashboard. Here's my ad sets. Here's my thing. Like, whatever you can help them, show them. Here's why. Because if you do that for them, guess what happens when it's now your turn to receive the information from them? They're gonna be like, well, let me just show you our CRM. It's so funny when I'm lit, people are like, I could help you. And then I get on call and they're like, what are you dealing with? And I tell them, they're like, oh, you could do this, this and this. I go, no, what are you doing? Show me. Or they ask for advice from a mentor and then they get on a call with the mentor and. And they don't even tell them what their business is doing, how much profit they have, their team size. I literally tell friends of mine that want a mentor, when they get on that call, you have to disclose everything because in that moment you separated yourself from everybody else because you're honest and truthful and they can feel that, that I'm just here to like, try to win and it doesn't matter. I'm not ashamed of where I'm at. I'm starting here. But I have an aspiration to go more. And those 30 minute phone calls, I probably. Ann knows we probably do two or three a week. And that's just my way as I meet people that I want to be helpful to and learn from that. It's really cool. They're short meetings, super valuable, and then we can figure out what's next.

It's huge. The other thing that I've found too, on the same vein is I really think that there's some sort of magical. There's some sort of magical action you can take when you meet somebody who you might have a slight different power differential with. So let's say, for instance, I met one of the presidential candidates, Vivek Ramaswamy, and he's a presidential candidate. Plus I think he's worth a couple billion bucks. I'm neither of those things yet. And so when I met him, what's the normal thing that you do? You kind of ask some questions. You ask if they're curious, you know, you pretend to be curious or you are curious with the person, and then, you know, you maybe say, well, if I can ever help you, I'd love to. That's actually really annoying to somebody who's really successful because I don't know, it's not my homework to help you help me in some way. Annoying. What's not annoying is you doing a little bit of research, which we did in the moment, we didn't even know the guy was going to be there and realized, oh, this guy's social media is really terrible. And because his social media is really terrible, I bet in 30 seconds we could tell him a few things to change. In fact, we'll tell his number two because he doesn't even have time to listen to that. And because we told his number two that we said, just give me your email or your assistant's email. So you play it down, right, because they might not want to give me their contact information. Give me your assistant's email. I'm going to send you a social media breakdown of what we would you do for and oh, by the way, I don't even sell this. This isn't what I do for a living. I just think you're amazing. I want to see you be successful. This is some small way I could potentially help. And if it's not, just throw it in the trash. And of course, you know, we sent that out, we did this breakdown, sent it to them, and then, you know, we became consultants on their social media strategy. Again, not paid. But now if I want to call Vivek, I can. If I want to make a phone call, I can. And so I think, you know, anytime there might be some sort of power differential between you and somebody else that you want something from in the future, that the best way to fill that gap is meet an unexpected need with your zone of genius, and you have it in some way, shape or form. But so few people will actually deliver you something that you would find valuable. And that is not that hard to do. In fact, you could probably pay somebody on upwork to do a social media strategy for somebody that you met that's better than what they're doing. And so it always surprises me if you want to buy back your time. The best way to buy back your time sometimes is to give your time up front to the right people doing the right things. So I really like how you do that. Okay, I want to open it up. But before that, is there anything else you want to end with?

I want to ask you a question. So, Cody, here is my question. You're starting from scratch at zero. How do you make your first million?

Here's the problem. You have a recency bias and a confirmation bias, right? So What I did in the past, Would I do it again if I was today going to make my first.

Million bucks and let's remove the relationship and the social and all the distribution?

Yeah, I would go and become really valuable to the most valuable person I could find. I wouldn't. A lot of people would say, I'd go build my own social media. I wouldn't do that from scratch, actually. I would go and immediately probably try to glom onto somebody I could find in any sort of industry, and I would deliver that thing. I just told you. I'd deliver the most valuable thing that I. Because I have inherent knowledge, know. And I deliver that to probably 10 people because nine of them are gonna say no, and one of them is gonna think that that's really useful. And I'm probably not gonna ask for much money, so I'm probably gonna, like, bartend, do something on the side and say, like, pay me whatever you think this is worth, or let me take a cut of whatever you think this is worth. And then I would go and work for somebody else who already has X. Because there's a weird thing about money, which is when somebody has money already and you can accelerate their money, you can make money faster. If I had to go start from zero dollars again, yes, I could go start from zero, get my first couple thousand dollars, and work my way up. Or I could leverage Dan's money much more intelligently. And as long as I took $0 from him and said, I only want upside, only pay me if this wins and succeeds and it's just net to you and then some net to me on top, that's what I would do. And I also think it's ridiculous. Somebody else asked me this question the other day, and their answer was like, I would go become a YouTube star. Like, you know, I don't know. If you guys saw the ad revenue on YouTube, you'd be like, no, you wouldn't. And also, everything's really expensive. These cameras are like, 70, $80,000. So the best thing that you can do is get in proximity to people who already have power and figure out a way to become more valuable to them than anybody else.

It is such a great answer. You have no idea how frigging awesome that answer is. And honestly, I've asked that question a lot of people, and nobody's giving me that answer.

Interesting.

Yeah. But in hindsight, when I think about it, all the people in my life that are my business partners is because they did what Cody just said. When you can come to somebody and Say, hey, I'm gonna take nothing, I'll do all this work, I'm gonna bet on me. And I just, I'll take 10% of the upside. Then they have unlimited leverage because I have whatever amount of capital. It's like, how many times would, you know, you give me a dollar or like you trade a dollar for 10. It's like how many times you want to do that trade? So that's actually a brilliant idea.

Yeah, it's true. I mean, Lloyd basically was hugely valuable in our membership and did it for nothing and was incredible at it for like three years basically. And then finally when we had this new position, I was like, wait a second. I feel like Lloyd is the perfect guy for this position and we want to do some deals together. And so that's happened sort of again and again and again. So I totally agree. Okay, let's open it up to you guys. Who has the first question for Dan? Athena.

So you talked about, you know, getting time with people that would be, you know, you derive some value from that conversation. But a place I find myself in very often is people asking to pick my brains.

Right.

And also like asking for things is actually proprietary to my business. So you mentioning opening the kimono and taking time, I'm curious because I know both of you probably get these pick my brain requests all the time and asking to see how your business runs. So how do you respond to those in a way that's still warm hearted and. Or some of these people potentially could be clients. So what's the pivot there?

That's like. Yeah, I mean there's, there's a lot of filters. I'll give you some tactical stuff. So first off, I love everybody and if I had all the time and unlimited resources, I would spend one on one time with each and every one of you. But I can't because I have kids and anytime I say yes to something, this is a big idea. Every time you say yes to somebody else, you're saying no to your dreams and goals. And every time you say no to something, you're saying yes to what you've already decided you want to go achieve. So understand a no is yes and yes is a no. So knowing that what I do because I do want to make myself available for anybody, and I'm one of the few people that probably do this kind of nutty, anybody can fly to where I live. And on Tuesday morning there is a hike. It's called the Founders hike. It's at 6:30 in the morning and you're Invited. And people fly in from all over the fricking world. There's a guy from New Zealand, two guys from New Zealand, Dubai, we almost killed a guy from Louisiana. It's a real hike. All right, people, I live in Canada. Like this guy, we had to put his apple watch on his heart rate because I was like, if it stays above 165 for too long, I'm going to stop the hike and you'll wait for us on the way down. It's not that crazy. Like it's a 45 minute hike, but in that time there's a bunch of us that do it and that, and I'll tell you why I do that is I had a mentor once and I reached out to him and I mean cold email, but you know, local person knew my name. I had a small business and I asked him for time and he said, meet me at in Canada. Do you guys know Tim Hortons? Anybody Canadian? All right, cool. He said, meet me at Tim Hortons, right? It's like the Dunkin Donuts of Canada. But it was 7am on Sunday morning and I was like, why does this guy want to meet at 7am? Back then I was 23, 24, right? 7am was early. I was like, this is weird. So anyways, I went there, suit and tie, all dressed for success, you know, and he shows up in like normal T shirt and stuff and. But this guy was the owner of the number one software company in our town. And at the end of it I said, steve, his name is Steve Palmer. I said, Steve, I'm just curious man, why did you want to meet at 7am at Tim Hortons on a Sunday morning? Don't you have like your family and stuff? He goes, it's a filter. And if you would have barked at that, it would have been a no. And the fact that you showed up dressed like that, by the way, crazy. I was like, okay. I don't know. It shows me you're serious. So that's how I do it. So for 99% of the people that I do not know, that cold email that want to pick my brain, buy me coffee, buy me a meal. I don't need coffee or meals. You can come to the founder site and, and literally Ann has an auto reply for everybody else. The way I decide is a, here's where I want to go. Because again, every yes to somebody else is no to my kids. If you guys put that into context, your family members or your health, then you would be a lot more discriminate with your Time. See, I just think a lot of people step one of buying back your time is value your time. Some of you do not value your time and it's probably cause of a self worth thing. So I definitely, I will do 15 minute meetings if it's one on one. I like doing dinners, so I like to, I mean we did a dinner with eight people. And the cool part about that is oftentimes, you know, I can help them, but really maybe they need to meet somebody else. There's eight people there. I can deepen relationship with other folks. So it's a really high leverage activity. So I do those all the time. I've got one tonight. I've done one almost every night I've been here. And then I'm just really good at saying no. I'm okay with saying no. And sometimes you'll have a false positive or whatever is called false negative where you said no to somebody you shouldn't have and that's a feedback loop and that's okay. And I live in abundance and if that hurts their feelings, that's on them. It's not on me.

It's really good. Yeah. The only thing I'd add to what do you do when somebody's trying to steal your time and the numerous pick your brain requests. I use a filter for even responding to emails because of just the amount of stuff that comes at you. And I always ask them to do, they're asking me for work, I ask them for work fast.

So good.

So immediate response would be something like, hey, you know what I think is helpful to most everybody because all the questions are the same thing. How do you buy a business? How do you run a business like you do? How do you become successful, whatever the case may be. And I always give them a book. So I just say in the thing, hey, this is a link to a book that I think's really useful to you. Go ahead and read this and if you have any questions afterwards, let me know. Do you know how many people follow up with me on that? Negative 12. And so I think if people want you to do the work for them, kind of immediate red flag. And this is like normalized, but you could say it'd be a perfect example. You'd go, hey, you want to learn about how to buy businesses? Go read these five articles on Contrarian Thinking's free business buying newsletter. Come back to me with your specific questions. Then you know, they're a player, they're willing to do some of the work first. And if, if you feel weird, deferring them to something like that. I always go, oh, man, I hate giving any version of a shortened, non contextualized response. There's nothing worse than offhand advice that somebody gives you without really understanding your situation. So before I give you any advice, I want you to go do this thing over here. Because then we at least have context. We have set definitional understanding. And so that's one thing that's been helpful to me. And then I set a lot of rules around how people can get to me. And so you used something before that was like what I would term, like, strategically incompetent. Oh, yeah, strategically, you know, like, you.

Know, like strategically incompetent.

How would I do that? I don't know. How would you do that? Which is. I need to do that more. You're really good at that.

Yeah. Really good at playing stupid.

I should. I gotta save your complex. Like you wouldn't believe. But the second thing that I found is just being strategically. What do we say? We say we're easy to find, hard to reach. I'm easy to find. I'm all over the Internet. Anybody can find me. I'm impossible to reach. I never respond to text messages. I barely do emails. I have rules around voice notes. I don't fucking do them.

I do not want to have you whisper in my ear like, it's so creepy. A stranger, right? Hey, I'm just, I saw your video. I'm like, no, no, yeah, opt out.

I want that apple.

You are creepy.

What about when this person could be a potential client? Maybe they don't understand.

Ask them what they're looking for. I mean, to Cody's point, you know, like, I just, I'm always like, my response is always positive, exciting. Again, I don't do it. Ann does it or team does it. But it's like, oh, thanks for reaching out. Super appreciate it. Would love to meet up. But before I do that, could you give me a bit more context? What do you. What specifically do you need? Because I mean, again, strategically incompetent. I actually might be the wrong person to chat with. And then you put homework on them again, half of those people will never reply.

Yeah.

So that just told you they probably sent that email to 14 people. Right? And they were just looking for anybody to go like, yeah, let's meet copy. Because they want to sell you insurance.

But you know what you actually have there? You don't have an outreach issue in this case. If they're going to be a client, you have a business model issue. You have a Business that is a service, not a productized service that you can standardize that people actually can fall into. You have both of our least favorite types of businesses. He's the SaaS king because he wants to build once, sell continuously. And I bet his advice to you would be something like create a productized service that allows somebody to buy some component as opposed to RFP for their time, which is what you're doing. When they're like, can we talk first? You're having to apply for an rfp and that's not the type of business model you actually want to run long term. You're pretty big on productized models.

Yeah, I don't do custom job shop anything. It always.

It's hard. I try. I mean, it's so funny though, because it's the easiest business to start and it's where everybody goes to immediately. Even, you know, like my husband, we have a couple businesses and he'll be like, we have this huge opportunity to do an RFP for them. I'm like, nope, shut it down. No. You either press the button and buy or you don't. Okay, let's do another question here. Yes, Robert?

Can you talk about the value of failure and how getting through that enables you to buy back your time? Yeah. I mean, John Maxwell wrote a great book. Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. And that's just the way I think about it. So I just start with the premise. Anytime I start any company, this might be a little weird for you guys. I just assume I'm wrong. What a crazy frame. If I start a new business, the first thing I believe is I am wrong. Now I'm on a journey to validate that I'm right. So my conversations, my approach are completely different. So when I fail, I actually get excited because I'm like, that doesn't work. Let's not do that again. Perfect. How fast can I move through an experiment to get to a place where I learn? And that I would say that's actually like, when we think of like poor mindset, rich mindset. That's the difference between the people that are wealthy is that they don't call it failure. Like, I can't remember last time I was like, I failed. Nope. I learned I got to a place of experience.

Yeah, I think I have the same take on that. The only thing that I might add there is the other thing that I've noticed really successful people don't do is there's not a lot of blame. Like I've noticed on my team, sometimes somebody will go oh, well, that's my fault because I did X or Y or Z or, like, I should take the blame for that. I'm like, why would we ever use that word blame? Like, the only reason that you should blame yourself for something or you should accept quote, unquote, fault is if you did something on purpose, repetitively. Otherwise, it's not that. It's, oh, wow, this happened. Hmm, we should have done this. What did we learn differently about that? I did take that part. Next time I'd like actually to do this. I hate that blame work. And I think that, like, lines up directly with failure. And if you start blaming yourself for failures, you really get into trouble.

You used the word rich earlier, and then now you're using wealthy. Could you kind of provide some context.

On the difference of the two?

I'm just gonna tell you what I think. Well, wealthy is. I think wealthy is realizing you've already arrived, the place you're trying to get to, to become the person that you can be today.

I like that.

I'll just, like, leave that little nugget for you to. I love that I just said.

Okay, who's got another question?

Can you elaborate a little bit on the manage energy, not time? Because some of the books that I read, usually they say eat the frog first. Like, you know, you start with the most complex, then you have the energy, and then go down to a smaller task that you can digest later. Is that something that you subscribe to? It is 100% part of it, but it's also more like in the book, I have this thing called the buyback loop, which is how I have done everything I've ever done in my life. It's how I execute and grow and scale, and every year my life gets better and better and better. Bigger, but better. It just is. And if you look at the formula, like, well, of course it would have to, because one of the concepts is doing a two week time and energy audit. Depending on how big my life is growing this year, I might have to do it three times a year, once a year, twice a year. But part of that is evaluating what things in my calendar give me energy versus take my energy. Does that make sense? So what's funny, though, is one of the big ideas that people have to remind themselves is something can start off as a bright green. I love this. And immediately turn into a yellow and then a red. But you forget to reassess. So, for example, I was a board member on a company, and at first it was awesome, and then it was like, oh, this is boring. Well, I don't want to be. But I forgot to renegotiate with the people to resign from the board to create the space. And it sounds so subtle because it's like it's only a 90 minute call. Maybe once every six weeks. It's still 90 minutes. I want my 90 minutes back. Right. Or the other day I was doing. I do one on ones with my direct reports. I don't have a lot, but I still have them. And I noticed they were 60 minutes in the calendar because they've always been 60 minutes and we're always finishing early. So guess what? I did shrink them down 45. So now all my one on ones are 45 times 5. I get back a couple hours. So like my whole thing is yes, start the morning. So if you follow, I have a whole video on my morning routine. First thing I do in the morning is work on the thing that needs to get done. The frog for sure. Because that's where your mind's the freshest. You're connected, you know, it's awesome. But I also look at the work I do. And that's why I buy back your time. Is really about buying back the time from not doing the stuff to take your energy. That costs very little to have somebody else support you on. And that's the thing. And it doesn't. There's a whole chapter called the Time assassins because it costs $0 to buy back your time. You just got to stop doing the five Time Assassins. So people think I don't have the money. I've got a job. I can't buy my time back. No, you can by not doing the five Time Assassins.

What are the five Time Assassins?

That's always good. When you wrote. Are you writing your book right? Little tip. Memorize the things you know. People are gonna. I knew as soon as I said that someone's gonna ask me. But it's a. I know. Okay. Please, if you don't mind reading my book.

Okay. Yeah. That part always stresses me out too.

There's five S's.

The Staller.

Yes. Okay. That. Yes.

Do you want to talk about each other?

I will. I'll do it real quick. The Staller is the person that takes more time to make a decision. To make the decision and the potential downside, which is probably not going to be there. And they just delay it. Just make a decision. That is what Cody does beautifully. I do the top people, they what information do I need? They know I'm going to make an imperfect. I have imperfect data to Make a decision. It's not about making the right decision. It's about making a decision and making it right. So don't be a staller.

Love it. The speed demon.

Speed demon is the opposite. It's a person that's moving fast and like I got to go and da da da watch this movie. Da da la la. And then all of a sudden they're cleaning up because of the frickin wake of stupid hiring their cousins because they had a pulse. Like just dumb moving too fast.

Done it literally. Sorry. The other part that I thought was really good about the speed demon that you talk about is how to offset your speed demon nature by. I forget what you used in the book, but basically what I took away from it is if I know I'm a speed demon, which I am, that means that I need callers. I basically need a caller around me. So if I know I want to hire fast, that means I need a great recruiter because I'm going to move and they have the experience to move it fast. Yeah. Okay. The supervisor.

Yeah. You over manage people. You're a micromanager. This is funny. You hire people and then tell them what to do?

Yep.

Anybody hire people and have them tell you what to do?

Really? Actually hard to do.

Super hard.

Really hard to do. The saver.

Yeah. You literally walk over dollars to save pennies. It's hilarious. Like I had a buddy I talk about in the book. He had I think it was like a 3 million a year mastermind and he was hating it, he was going to shut it down, but he saw what I was doing and he's like, how did you create all the systems? I feel like there's a framework. I said, oh, it's my buddy Simon. He like this is his genius. He's like oh, how much is he? And I'm like, I don't know. Like honestly, I maybe got a bro deal. I don't know what it is, maybe five grand, maybe 10. But you're about to shut down a 3 million mastermind. What are we talking? He goes, does he have a book? Dude, I don't know if he has a book. I'm gonna introduce you to the guy that's gonna solve the problem. So you don't shut down your business, it's my making you 6, 700 grand a year. He's that guy.

Oh, painful. And the self medicator.

The vices. The vices. Some people end of the year rolls around and depending honestly if it's a good year, they drink to celebrate and if it's a bad year, they drink to numb it, right? I used to be that person. I quit drinking 12 years ago. But I've always had that issue. And it's not even about alcohol or drug, drugs or video games or it's, you know, you just got to check in with yourself. So somebody asked me one time, they're like, how do I know what I need to stop doing, right? Because it's not what I'm doing that I'm winning. It's what I don't do. Like, that's the biggest idea we should all consider. When people stop me and they see me drive my fancy car and they go, what do you do? I'm like, it's what I don't do, dude. Right? I don't go to the buffet and try to get my money's worth. I don't go gambling. I don't fucking vape. I don't do a ton of stuff that I know you do. So figure that out.

One other thing that both you and maybe the most successful people that I know, overall, it's the name of your book, but literally, where to buy back your time. So, for instance, every time I go and meet with one of my mentors, Bill Perkins, he says to me, he asked me if I put my own gas in my own car. Which originally I thought, God, that's so pretentious. I can't even fill up my own car. Like, what kind of asshole doesn't do that? And then he explained to me what my time is worth in order for me to go fill up my own car every single time. And so each time he'll come up with something new. He'll be like, did you schedule your own doctor's appointments? Have you been doing landscaping? And the mission is basically just. You are basically a representation of the tasks you do every single day. And so if the tasks that you do every single day are low level, what are you? You're actually kind of low level. And you can't level up unless you change your tasks. What odd things do you do? Like, the weirder, the better to buy back your time.

I'm the word buy back. I'll give you the. My new test. This is like. Cause I have a lot of friends that are like, I have an assistant. I'm like, Ann and I have been playing this game of like, she's gonna do a video of all the assistants evaluation. Cause she deals with them all. And some of them are like, they're like, do they talk to each other? It's Like. Cause she's trying to coordinate stuff, and some people are dialed in. Some people or not. So what are the weird things that I do to buy back my time? Here's one. This is. The test is, do you pack your own bags for your travel? I know that that'll probably be. That'll be like the. The final boss in the levels. Right? Like, I know. Could you imagine how crazy that would be to just pick up a bag and go straight to the airport and trust that your passport's there for going international to everything you need and all your pills and everything? It's like, do you do that now? I don't pack my bags.

Ann.

No, Ann doesn't do it. Betty does it. But she reports Ann.

That's incredible.

Yeah, so I do a lot of stuff. So, yeah, I don't wash my car, put gas in my car. The weirder stuff, I have this thing about a certain type of gum and these toothpicks that I like to keep my teeth clean. And they're always in the right places. In my car, in my office, everywhere. We have this cool thing, like all the repurchasing in every home, all the stuff. There's like a little spot that we put stuff. If it's almost finished and you just put it there. It's like a magic little square. I know, men, you guys are going to love this magic little square. Guess what happens when you put something back? It gets reordered. More shows up. It is awesome. So I do a lot of stuff. I don't shop. I have a shopper, and she just sends me a bunch of stuff. I put it on, I create two piles, I walk away, and all of a sudden, I get the right stuff. It's kind of awesome the way I think about it. For me, I only do two things. I create in my unique genius, or I hug and I hang out with people I love. Think about it. That's literally all I do. That's all I want to do the part.

And one of the reason why I want to hit on this is because the world is crazy. And if you guys. If we were to post this segment on either of our Instagrams, what would happen? Massive shame.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, you rich tax the rich, right? Like, that's the world we live in. And here's the problem with that. This is why we have to have rooms like this. Because guess how the wealthy get wealthier. It's the small things, the things that they never share out loud because they would get lambasted for it. And so because of that, more people stay poor and we don't actually give the hand up to the next generation. How did we all I started as an assistant back in high school. I had a rich family that I worked for. I drove their cars. Sometimes I ran into things I didn't always tell them about it. And I did a bunch of awful work when I was young. And I'm sure somebody could say that woman couldn't have washed her car. Well, those first 20 bucks let me make my very first investments. And so shame on every single one of us if we think that it's pretentious to allow somebody else to do a lower level task for ourselves. That is how we stay poor.

If you like this week's episode, be sure to visit itunes, leave a review that'll help us get in front of other founders just like you. And if you're looking for more resources and video trainings, be sure to check out dan martell2lsdemartell.com to subscribe keep up the hustle, keep stacking your growth and I'll see you in next Monday's episode.

Peace. Grow Peace.

Bye Bye.