Entrepreneurial Excellence: Lessons from the Trenches with Dan Martell

Most people are focused on marketing and sales and some level of fulfillment. But for me, I actually start the opposite where I start with the fulfillment, I start with the infrastructure of the coaching and the team and then I build out the marketing, the sales. Because then we have a business that has high retention. When you start pushing, resolving problems financial kind of unlock the financial constraints of doing that, you will see your business transform because people will feel empowered. Speed right. Will just get unlocked foreign.

So I am so excited one to always connect with you, always meaningful and interesting conversations, learning about, you know, the next evolution of what you're up to. But you know what, for some of the audience, and I think, you know, for the most part our audience knows who you are at this point you're getting, your status is continuing to elevate. And I love to see it maybe share a little bit about some of the background of how you got started into the entrepreneurial space and how maybe that's evolved into where you're at today.

Yeah, I mean, I'll jump right into it. 17 I almost took my life in a high speed chase. I grew up in addiction and pretty challenging environment and found myself high and drunk in a stolen car. And before I took the car, I kind of made a commitment to myself that I would pull the gun and let the cops do their job and take my life. And for whatever reason, I ended up smashing the side of a house and I went for the gun and I was pulling on it and it got stuck and I kept. I remember the moment I was sitting there just like yanking and yanking and yanking. I could hear the police coming up on the car and eventually the doors opened and they grabbed me and like my feet didn't even touch the ground. They kind of dragged me across the front lawn and threw me in the back of the cop car. And I woke up sober the next day. Kind of people in a daze and wondering why I was still alive. Honestly, like Bob, I made a commitment that I wasn't gonna go back to jail. And looking back, I mean, I just believe that God had a different plan for my life. And in that moment I kind of realized that I didn't have any grand ambition. I just essentially asked for help. And I said, if you help me get through this, I'm willing to change my ways and just show up as a productive member of society. And it's been a crazy ride since. I mean, I ended up in prison for a bit and then got released to a rehab center and did 11 months of therapy where I literally rebuilt the relationship with my parents, that it was, you know, just totally chaotic. And my brothers and sisters, where I'd lost a lot of their trust and understanding myself, like, what made me tick, I had, like, the. Essentially, I had the best personal development program a kid could ever ask for. Didn't know it at the time, but at the end of that, I was helping.

Don't recommend it, right? We don't recommend.

Maybe start with the books. You don't. Yeah, there's a rock bottom and then there's a freaking crater that you got to find yourself digging out of. But that's what it was, man. And then I was helping Rick the maintenance guy clean out one of the old cabins. It was on this place, this. This facility, because it was built on an old church camp. And in one of the rooms is a yellow book on Java programming and a computer. And I'd never touched a computer at that point in my life. But I just followed this booklet in chapter one, and 20 minutes later, I got it to say, hello, world. And maybe I was like, maybe I'm a genius. It's so stupid, some of the stuff you think about. But it honestly didn't matter, Bob. What happened is it made me fall in love with a completely different thing. And it became my new addiction. It kind of replaced the old one. I think often in habits stacking, if you want to replace a bad habit, you got to find a good habit. And then I got out, this is 1998, and discovered this little thing called the Internet. And couldn't have been better timing. And that's been my journey since then. Just a couple failures, definitely right out of the gate, two back to back, almost gave up. And I had the blessing of not having anybody expect anything from me, which is actually a huge gift. And I just kept pushing, I just kept showing up, and I just kept trying. And finally, by the third one, I hired a business coach named Bob. He's actually out of Toronto. And Bob showed me a completely different way to think about business and software and technology. And that's the first thing that made me a multimillionaire. It took me four years to do it, a hundred hours a week. Almost killed myself. Wrecked. Wrecked my relationship in all facets. But, yeah, I put in the time, and just a lot of people look at me today and kind of the life I live and, you know, flying around private and supercars and all that stuff, and they're like, oh, you're so young. And I'm like, I've been doing this since I was 17. I got 25 years. My entrepreneurial age is 25. Right, Bob? Most people, they try to compare themselves. I'm like, your entrepreneurial age is 3. Some kid was asking me for advice, this kid Josh, and he's like, you know, I'm not sure if I should do this or that. And I'm like, dude, do you realize at 16 I was in prison? Like you're asking me. I like, you're good. Like, just don't implode on yourself. Keep showing up, working like, and, and you're good. So that's, that's been my journey. I just, I, I feel super lucky and blessed. But yeah, I run a ,undred million dollar plus portfolio of software companies. I run the largest software CEO group in the world. SAS Academy, bestselling author, Wall Street Journal. Buy back your time, which I know and I appreciate the support you've given the book. And the book continues to sell more copies week over week over week. And I'm dedicating my life to helping entrepreneurs not build businesses they grow to hate. And that's a movement I'm after.

Yeah. Which is so meaningful. You know, you talk about the maturity level of being a 25 year entrepreneur and I'm 16, so I, I feel it too, the evolution of growth and continuing to push boundaries and continuing to grow. And when you continue to grow and you get to a certain level, there's not that many people left with you. Right, Dan? Like you've, you've become very successful along that 25 years. And it's definitely an inspiration to watch and always love hearing the story about how everything began for you. Tell me, and maybe our group here a little bit more about SaaS Academy because, you know, what you guys have in your community is pretty incredible. So share a little bit about that.

Yeah, I mean, I started coaching as a byproduct of wanting to document my philosophy on life for my kids. I mean, seven, eight years ago I started a YouTube channel. And it was really just from the, you know, I had a conversation with a friend and you know, just talking about, like, what if something happened to us tomorrow? And we never had anything written down. Like at that point in my life I had given a few talks on like marketing, but I haven't actually like said what are my life principles and philosophies? And I just got really inspired. You know, I'd sold my company Clarity and I was kind of semi retired again in San Diego. And you know, in the, it's like if you're an actor, you go to Hollywood, if You're in finance, you go to New York, and if you're online, coach, guru, you go to San Diego. So I'm like, in the thick of it, meeting all these really famous people, authors, you know, shamans, etc, and one guy says, he goes, you should. Like, he actually knew my career. And he goes, you should, you should do video. And I'm like, I don't want to do video. That's stupid. Like, why would I do that? I'm not a YouTuber. And there was something about that angst of, of like just immediately deflecting, like, no, I would never do that, that I had to ask myself, like, because in my life, anytime I felt that where, like, I wanted to make a decision, but it like, scared me a little bit or it like, I, I immediately was like, I had a strong opinion about it. Usually for me, I've, I've learned over the years that, like, anything I have a strong opinion around is usually an area of my life I probably have to lean into because I'm probably scared of potential, something, right? Ridicule, you know, my investors think I'm, you know, or my peer group or whatever. Anyways, I started a YouTube channel. And it was slow but mighty. I mean, I essentially created the number one YouTube channel for software entrepreneurs. And the, you know, the requests and the, you know, messages started coming about coaching and advising, consulting. And I kept saying, no, no, no, no, probably for two years. And then SaaS Academy I started six years ago, and it ended up just being something that I did for fun, for a passion that I don't know how to do. Things that don't scale, like, Bob, that's the thing. I gotta watch myself from saying yes, because what I've learned is a no is a yes and a yes is a no, right? Any yes is a no to anything else you could have done. And every no is saying yes to your dream. So indirectly, once I said yes, I'm saying no to a bunch of other stuff. And. But at that point in my life, you know, I was really going from, you know, what other people call success to significance, right? Just, like, how do I help other people through my journey and my ideas and really just put myself in a dojo of trying to learn how to communicate these frameworks. Like, that's what I love more than anything. If anybody follows my content and you've read my book, you've seen, like, I've really put a lot of time and thought into how I unpack and communicate ideas. And that was not the case prior to starting SaaS Academy. And you know, we just honestly kept doubling every year for the last six years. And you know, we're, and we're still going. I mean, it's, it's. And I think there's a, there's a market trend. Obviously, SaaS has become sexy, whereas before, like, nobody cared about software, like everybody was focused on anything else. Right. And just out of nowhere is the whole software trend and saaspreneur. And you know, people, anybody's doing subscription think they're a SaaS and they're not. But that's, you know, I'll leave that for them to figure it out. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's become, you know, we have over a thousand active clients, largest in the world. And now I have the privilege of coaching many of the top coaches that have their own groups, helping them understand how to crack eight figures and how to build customer success and product design and all these things that are not normally considered right. When we're building coaching organizations, most people are focused on marketing and sales and some level of fulfillment. But for me, I actually start the opposite where I start with the fulfillment. I start with the infrastructure of the coaching and the team and then I build out the marketing and the sales. Because then we have a business that has high retention and that's actually the best businesses to build.

Totally. Yeah. We talk about, you know, the J. Abraham three ways to grow and I've, I say four. Retention. If the bucket is getting filled up and there's holes in the bucket, then you're never going to fill it, regardless of how good your marketing is. So, yeah, no, can. I completely appreciate the retention component of it. Where's your business at now? How many members on your team? Like, it's a. I know five years ago we were chatting about this and I curious to know where you're at now.

Yeah, I honestly, I don't know. And the reason why is because I bought back my time. I'm essentially CEO and title, probably more president in action. So I'd be guessing on team size. Cause I literally have two incredible executives that run the company. One on the revenue side, one on the operation side. They're both past clients that have built and exited their own companies. And, you know, they were kind enough to come join me in this crazy movement and dream. But Yeah, I mean, 60, 70 people on the team maybe. You know, we have a great. We have a head of coaching, we have a ton of coaches, we have, you know, a bunch of clients. We're working on a New book that's coming out next year that's going to be. It's called the Equity Equation, essentially how to unlock unlimited subscription revenue without giving up control. And it's going to be like the book in the space. And, yeah, we just have a lot of fun, a lot of creative projects. Our next event's happening. It's going to be a record event in regards to attendance and size. So that's happened in Arizona in two weeks. So, yeah, things are. Things are going great.

Now, you were telling me about your. Your new studio. 4,000 square feet. Is that going to be any sort of event space or is that just a recording production facility?

Yeah. So the way to think about my life is probably six months ago when the book came out, it occurred to me it took a while. So the book came out in January, but probably about, you know, may. After about two or three months of the book being out there, this is the realization I had. Is that the. More so if we think about, like, what is success? Success is people wanting to collaborate with you. Collaborate as business partners, as investors, as whatever, as customers. Right? And the best way to do that is to have a good reputation, Right? Bob, you know this. It's like you. You evaluate somebody you want to work with. As a freelancer, I'm pretty sure you do what I do, which is you back channel. You find people they work with, you ask them if they're legit. If you find out somebody says no, you just pass. Right? So reputation is number one. Two is reach, right? Which is you have a reputation that's positive. Hopefully you've shaped that and you've got that. Then it's how many people know of your reputation. And when the book came out, that's when I was like, oh. Because I said no. For writing a book for years, I mean, I had publishers, like, anybody that's got an audience online, you know, you get people coming out of the woodworks. And eventually my friend Ron called me up and he's like, you need a book. And I said, only if you're the CEO of the book project. Right? Because hence, you know, it's the who, not how. That's how. That's how I do everything in my life. And like, that book launch showed me the power of it to reach people, to transform their lives and to build a deep relationship with them. Right? Because they're reading your words through their. They're hearing their voice, your words, but they're creating a picture and I'm teaching stuff. And then I get these messages from people like the other day, I'm at my friend's house and he's like, hey, five months ago I gave your book to my neighbor. And it, it absolutely transformed his life. Like, prior to that, he was working all the time, not spending time with his kids. Since then, he's hired an executive assistant, he has a house manager now he hired his first team member. He, his business has doubled in six months and he has twice as much free time. And I don't want to put you on the spot, but when he heard you were coming, he asked if there was any chance he could meet you. I'm like, go get him. What are you talking about? And this guy comes in with the biggest smile, nervous, like, even shake. It was fascinating because, like, but I had to remind myself, like, oh, I remember. And, oh, and by the way, it was the first book he had ever read. So it was just that ability and impact made me realize everything in my business life. All the charity stuff I do, all the SaaS, academy coaching stuff, all the companies I have, big band software, a hundred million dollar, essentially capital. It's not even a fund. We buy software companies. Like, everything behind what I'm doing would be supported by increasing my reach and increasing my reputation. So that's what we did. I sat down and I said, what's the best in the world? Doing what's true about the top 10 in the world. And I decided to put some serious resources behind it. Built out a team, hired the who's. The who's said, hey, we should probably build a studio space, make it fun, got the space, building three sets, brought in a guy from Vegas who's built this, you know, three, four times before for other people. He's been living here in Kelowna, building out the studio. We're doing, documenting the whole process. And yeah, anybody follows along, we'll just start to see like a completely different level of content game that is 100% a byproduct of the book and the realization that the bigger our reach with the better our reputation. Being in the market means every dream and goal and project in our life gets easier to accomplish. Yeah.

Let me ask you this, and this is maybe outside of the context of where we wanted to go today, but thinking of that continuous growth and thinking of it as the snowball, Right? The snowball is continuing to get bigger and your reach and your influence and your power is starting to get greater, which means your impact is getting greater. How does that make you feel as an individual, as an entrepreneur continuing to push that snowball Is it pressure that you have to continue to make that snowball as big as possible? Is that how you feel with impact?

So it's a great question, and I'm going to stay focused on the concept that you asked, which is the pressure to perform, the pressure to achieve. The reason why I love this question is I think when we see people doing stuff, when people watch me from outside, it would make total sense for them to assume that that is my desire. However, if you sit down with me and we talk and we spend time in my house, you will actually see that everything that people think that I'm trying to go do to be happy, it's already here. There's no external achievements that I need to accomplish to be enough. And I want everybody to hear this because I actually think it's one of the most powerful things that I've done in my life. To allow me to achieve more is to realize there's no destination, there is no place I need to get to. There's no external possession that I need to achieve that's gonna make me any happier. And I can prove it to you. If I gave you $10 million, put it in your bank account and didn't give you access to that for 10 days, would you act differently, Bob, over the next 10 days, knowing that you're gonna get that money?

Yeah, I think it'd have to be bigger for me to say, yes, perfect.

Maybe a hundred million, right? But, you know, you got a hundred million coming in 10 days. Okay. For most people, 10 would be life changing, right? Put it in something simple. 10% a year, you're good to go. And what I would encourage people to consider is that the reason why that opportunity will never come to those people is because they got to start acting today as if they've already got that in their bank account. It just hasn't shown up yet. So I've been acting this way for decades because I learned at 17 that I had a second chance. And that God said, hey, I've got big plans for your life. And all I ask is that you wake up every day, try to do something honorable, try to help other people, try to become more. Not because you aren't enough, but because from a place of contribution, think about this. What if I said, I'll give you $10 million, but you can't wake up tomorrow? Would you take it?

No. That's a hard no.

Exactly. Why aren't you acting like it today then? Why aren't you acting like today's worth $10 million? Because it is so that's why I like, I love when people ask me that question because they see somebody that's incredibly productive, they read my book and they go, holy, this guy's so disciplined and intentional and scheduled and man, does he have any fun. And I'm like laughing that I have the most fun because there's nothing for me to be. There's nowhere for me to go, there's nothing for me to do. I'm doing it every second of every day. I am crazy present with the people I'm with. I get into flow when I create. I create from a place of abundance, in service and, and I literally just want to show up as the best version of me every day. And I believe by doing that I'm honoring my creator. So yeah, there, there's. But at the same time, because I know what I'm here to do, there's this sense of excitement in everything I do, where I move with, with purpose.

Yeah. And we. Before we hit record, right? The hit record. When you. Before you start. Yep, got your note. But before we, before we hit record today, we were talking about a conversation with your dad today because I was saying, you know, it's amazing watching you on social. I do watch you live your life and probably live, you know, maybe the most fulfilled I see anyone online. And it's. And that's genuine. Like I'm so happy for you when I watch how you document and how you live and what did your dad say to you today?

He goes, and he says this often because like parents always want to tell you, especially if you're like a type a high achiever, you know, they want to say things like, you know, don't forget to slow down and don't forget to, you know, to take care of yourself and all this stuff. But like he watches me and he just laughed. He goes like, I want to tell you to slow down, but I feel like that would be not smart because like didn't you just get back for helly heli biking downhill mountain bike? And I was like, yeah. He goes, well then. But then I would tell you to work harder, but I can't tell you that cuz like I, I hear what you're doing and all this stuff. And he goes, I don't get how you do it. And I said. And then it was funny because I did, I didn't say this earlier, Bob, but he goes. Because he. I always invite him to my events. Right? It's one of my favorite things to do. Me and my dad, obviously I grew up and we had, there was some puzzles to figure out. And my dad was the exact person I needed at that time. Like, I have zero regrets. And so one of the beautiful things that have, has happened on the byproduct of starting SaaS Academy is I have these events all the time. And Victor, my dad, is invited and he's got like whatever he wants. He wants to come and go whenever we get him. The cool hotel room with his wife and they. He comes to the sessions, he doesn't, but he's always invited, he's always there, so he can't make the one coming up. But it's like, for him, it's like a big thing, right? And he keeps asking me, every time I talk to him, he's like, hey, when's your event? Like four weeks, five weeks. And I, and I laugh. I go, dad, I don't know. And he goes, how do you not know? I go, because I don't, I don't literally look at my life through that lens because I have other people that support me, that do it for me, which is a crazy idea. Like Bob. I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow. All I know is that the way I've designed my life, it's going to be awesome, it's going to be productive, and it's going to be exactly what I want to do. Because I review the week before what I'm doing, my assistant, and then I just forget it. It's the whole set it and forget it, right? And he's thinking, my event in two weeks. And I'm thinking on Monday I get to go do this other cool thing. And he just, he just laughs. And I go, but dad, because I do that, then I can be a hundred percent present with you right now. See, most people are so focused on fears of forgetting, concerns about the future, et cetera, that they're not able to be here now because I've bought back my time and all that loose end scheduling is now a process that just happens by great people. When I'm here, I am here. When I'm writing, when I'm creating, there's no thinking. And if I do, I just write it down and send it to somebody and it's just such a really fun place to live. Has it always been like that? Heck no, dude. I was the opposite. Like somebody said, once they go, you can only go as high as you've gone. Low. And my low has been low health, productivity, balance, all that crap. It was the lowest of the lows. And, and I Think that's why today I've learned from those moments. I honor them, I'm grateful for them, and I push forward to try to be an example of the opposite.

Love that. And truthfully, you know, and here's guys, here's Dan's book, buy back your time. Incredible. By the way, we've made sure our entire community has got access to this. One of the greatest books. And I can tell, you know one, you live it right, so you're essentially telling your story, which I love about this too. And you can feel the passion and the just the experience through this. And I want to ask you in a second what your favorite sort of component and teaching in there is, but I want to share mine first replacement ladder concept. You know, it's funny, we've known each other for quite a few years. Dan and I remember a few years back, we're at, we're at a team of 90ish now. And I remember back at the team of 15, you and I had had a conversation about building out a sales team. And, and I was like, yeah, I gotta build up my sales team. Gotta build out my sales team. You know, I hired my executive, my leadership team. And as I was reading, you know, buy back your time, I'm looking at the replacement ladder going, holy shit, I need an executive assistant. I did not do this the right way. So loved actually seeing this and having it laid out to say, okay, hey dummy, you need to start here so that you buy back your time enough to fulfill training and teaching and supporting and mentoring those people at the top. So love that concept. What's your favorite concept in the book, Dan?

Yeah, I mean, it's like picking my favorite kid. I mean like every, the, the book was almost double the size and I edited it down into those 38,000 words that I felt kind of were required and really punched above the weight in regards to like, kind of unique perspectives. I mean, the one that I don't think gets a lot of consideration, it's, it's further in the book, but it's this concept of 50 to fix it. So 50 to fix it is like, because a lot of productivity time management comes down, especially if you have a team to how you collaborate and communicate with your team. And most people, most owners, okay, they are the bottleneck. And the reason why you call it a bottleneck is because the, the constraint is at the top. So what 50 to fix it encourages, you know, entrepreneurs to consider is pick a number. For me, it's $50. Any frontline person, any customer Support literally any person. Even my freelancers. I honestly don't care if they see something that's broken or there's an issue or there's something that's subpar and they think they can resolve it by spending or investing $50. I empower them. I encourage it. I tell them, now the only rule to that is that after the fact, they tell their leader, okay, so you can spend it. You just have to then in the weekly meeting say, hey, I just want, you know, I spent $50 hiring a freelancer to create these thumbnails on YouTube because the designer wasn't available for us or whatever it is, right? And now that concept, you know, in the book, as I wrote for a very specific entrepreneur, it applies to people further along too. So 50 to fix it. Is anybody that's an individual contributor in my companies, right? Then 500 is any leader in my companies. 5,000 is anybody that's a senior leader, director, etc. And then 50,000 is for my executive, my C level people within their context. And when you start pushing, resolving problems, financial, kind of you unlock the financial constraints of doing that, you will see your business transform because people will feel empowered. The speed, right, will just get unlocked. And you'll also create these learning moments. See, what happens is I think oftentimes team members have good ideas to fix things, but they don't even bother because it's more time to tell somebody to wait to see if it gets fixed. If they don't. But if they can just get it done themselves and they're empowered to do that, even if they do the wrong thing, then what I love about is that becomes an opportunity for me to coach them up. So if one of my executives spends 50 grand and they buy this software, and in hindsight, I'm looking at the decision and I, I'm, you know, I have a strong opinion against it. I'll just walk them through. I said, be like, you know, Bob, is it okay if I kind of walk you through my process of thinking on how to make that decision in the future? So maybe you can take other things in consideration. They'd be like, for sure. And I go, well, here's what I heard the problem was, and here's what, you know, we were dealing with. And here are the option sets I would have considered. And it sounded like maybe these things weren't evaluated. And I would have just evaluated those things because maybe it would have gave you a different set of options to decide to move forward. And to me, that's worth so much, especially for people that run companies for me. But it's true even for the $50 frontline people. So 50 to fix. It's one of my favorite concepts that you got. People got to read the whole book. I get it. I'm the same way. First two, three chapters. Got it. This is awesome. It's all I need actually. The whole thing is packed with really tactical, transformative concepts that I think could help leaders unlock their productivity.

Totally. And guys, we're going to make sure that all the links are available to make sure you get access to Dan's book and highly recommend for sure. This should be on the top of your list if the moment you have listen, what you should do is you should read this book so that you can buy back your time to read the next book as well. Right. And to find yourself more time and space to be able to live life of fulfillment. And it's so awesome watching people go through this process and actually get time back in their lives and be able to live with their family and enjoy it to their fullest like I watched and do as well. It's so cool. Definitely something everybody needs to invest in this. You know, spending the time listening to the audiobook, which I did as well. I actually listened to the audiobook while I had the physical copy. Yeah man. Right here. Listening to this while reading it. I actually did it on the beach. So I had found a little bit of time. But listening to it and reading it on the beach found me more time and definitely made life just feel better, you know, as an entrepreneur and it was a bit more of a guide than I. And this is what I love about you, Dan too. You've lived it. But you do put your heart and soul into this and I can feel that through. Through this book. So kudos to you, my man. Of course it's a Wall street bestseller. I'm not shocked. Thrilled to hear about your next one as well. And we'll. We'll have to make sure that we share that out once that comes to want to talk. And I'm going to change. Change lanes here a little bit. But I am going to come back to your book at the end. I want to talk to you about financial. Financial insights. And one of the things that I've always respected about you is from day one was I know your time and attention that not just for you but that you teach to those entrepreneurs you work with the importance of finances in a business and being aware of what's going on. How do you approach finances and maybe even teaching new Entrepreneurs, what's important and how should they approach it?

I mean, that's a big question. What's important pertains. But, but I'll tell you why it's always been front and centers. Because when I was starting off at, you know, 24, within the first six months, I almost had to shut down the doors of my third company. The first two failed, the third one almost went down because I didn't understand cash flow, right? I had sales, had income, and turned out that, you know, when, when a client sends a check in the mail from the US and your new business in Canada, the bank decides to freeze it because it, you know, blah, blah, blah, 20 business days to clear all this stuff and I almost can't make payroll and people are going to quit on me. And I thought I was crushing it. So that was just the beginning of the desire to have financial literacy. And today when I coach, you know, I coach some very successful entrepreneurs, I always have to remind them that the role of the CEO is always number one vision. Like, are your dreams big enough for everybody else in your team's goals and dreams to sit inside of people? Do you have the right people? Do you have the ability to talent acquire? So talent acquisition, talent development, talent retention. Right. So the people, the culture side of thing, and then the third is money. And it's not only money from a, you know, P and L or you know, a balance sheet or, you know, whatever. It's. It's also like the reporting, the business intelligence side of things, understanding how to do proper projections and like, how accurate is your team in regards to calling their shot and looking at the gross margins per product and holding standards for what those are across different product lines so that people can provide ideas and make things better. But not in lieu of denigrating your financial position because anybody can come up with an expensive solution to solve a problem. What's impressive to me is a great solution to a problem that cost me very little. So constraints are where creativity is born. And with the financial understanding, that's how your team can actually thrive. So we run open book concept in all of our companies. We provide, you know, department level P and ls, we provide product level P and ls, we teach people how to read financials, we teach them about accrual versus cash accounting. I was literally just off a finance meeting today with a new company, trying to get my finance team to schedule time to teach the new team so they can understand. And I just think it's one of those things that people think is scary but there's so many great resources. And I know you put out a lot of stuff, Bob, where if you just decide to understand the high level stuff, it will just make you such a better entrepreneur. And it's not complicated. I mean, it's just literally understanding like what's, what's. Cogs, right. And what, what. And then break it down by different things. And what you'll discover is the real innovation in a business is going to come from that. Right. One of my favorite questions to ask entrepreneurs is what do you have as an expense that you could turn into a revenue line item? And they're like, what are you talking about? I go, what are you spending money on today? Like, let's break it down. Biggest categories, highest spend, and is there a way for us to turn that into an income center? And they're like, what? And I go, I remember a client I was working with and one of their business expense was their events. Right? You know, this in our space, events is a big thing. And I go, okay, so this is. But they're like, that's a delivery event. This is what, you know, people pay a lot of money, they come to this, we got expenses, like that's normal. I said, great, how could you turn that into an income? And they go, I don't know. I said, well, do you have sponsors? No. Okay, well you should. Well, I don't think it would be cool for clients paying to come to have sponsors being pitched to them. I agree. If you position it like that, what if you find people that they would want to connect with and they eventually call them solution partners. And then those solution partners who are aligned with you, who actually complement what you do, which means they get, they can serve the customer at a deeper level for you to have the results for them. They, they pay to get access to that highly curated event and within literally three weeks, that expense line item that was pure cost turned into income and profit. And that to me is understanding your financials through that lens creates a lot of innovation from a business model point of view.

Absolutely. And I think even know paying attention is like the first basic step is we can't ignore it. You know, like so many entrepreneurs just hide. They put their head in the sand. One, we can't ignore it because it's really telling us all the information about how the business is operating and performing and where there's potential for improvement. Looking at those expense lines and saying, how do we make them profit lines? Love that, by the way. Yeah, yeah, it's, you know, I've always Again, admired that about your approach to it. And I know you guys teach that fairly heavily in the SaaS Academy as well. Certainly respect that. Okay. Want to talk about your strategies for content creation? I know you've jumped into a more elaborate one and I've watched that evolution over the last 10 years. Don't necessarily. I don't know if I was watching your YouTube channel when you created it, but I definitely get all of your videos in my feed first thing in the morning when I wake up. What is your approach? What is your strategy for content creation? And then walk us through what the future of content creation looks like for you.

Yeah, I mean, the truth is it's in flux. Right. We're in this very creative headspace with my media team to really define the future for us. Right. But what I've given them as an outcome goal is very clear and it's very focused and we need to be willing to do what few people are willing to do. I mean, yesterday I was on a call with a friend of mine, very notable, built a $60 million company in five years, super successful. And he saw what I was doing and he goes, I don't get it, Dan. Like, why are you, why are you doing all this stuff? Like, it sounds like a lot of work. And it was funny because I was on Zoom. And then my, my head of media, my creative director Sam was there and I say, one second. I brought Sam in from the waiting room onto the call and I said, sam, this person just asked this question and I said, what do you think? And he goes, it's because we gotta do stuff that is hard. And I go, exactly. Like, sometimes we all want to figure out, like, what's the least amount of moving parts to accomplish an outcome, which I am the king of. I love it.

Okay?

Minimum effective dose, automation, leverage, et cetera. However, in certain endeavors, especially that are creative in nature, you know, you shouldn't ask yourself, what's the least amount of effort I got to put into writing a song? You should say, what's the environment in the container, in the context and the relationships and the, the structure that I want to create to produce a world class song. So that's what we did. And, and it should look hard because if it wasn't, then every song that would come out would be a banger and they're not. So it's funny because the tip of the spear, or as our friend Jason Gaynor often says, like, the last mile is usually empty because very few people are willing to go above and beyond. So as it pertains to content for me today, which was different nine months ago, is I've decided to do what very few people are willing to do. And I really just analyze the top 10 in the world. And I said, what they're doing, that's baseline. That's table stakes. That's. That's just that we need to rush as fast as we can to do that. Let's start talking about what's the level above that, what's the state of the art that we could influence? How do we bring our own perspective around that? And I would say the person that used to brag about shooting 16 videos in one day and not having to shoot for four months, that person died. And the new person is, how do I show up and create more value for my audience than anybody else in the world and be willing to give himself to that art for the rest of his life? And that is who I am today. That's what will be shown online. And. And I'm excited because I'm willing to do it forever. And I'm. And I'm designing in a way that I never have to stop doing it. And I'm. I'm kind of excited about that.

And it is a lot of work, right? It is a lot of work. And it's not easy.

But. But define work. Like. Like, Bob, here's the funny part is, you know, is me talking to you right now. Work. Hell no. I love you, man. I love talking to you. I love your ideas. I'm so inspired by what you do. Okay. While I'm talking, there's a camera there, and there's camera there. There's pieces of our conversation that's going to end up on social. That didn't. That's zero extra work. Okay. Now, somebody had to set up the camera, the systems, the process of the team. So that was some work. When I go throughout my day and I have my video team with me and I'm doing meetings and I'm having conversations, and that becomes content. Is that work? No, Because I was going to have those meetings anyways. As long as I decide what needs to be true for me to want to do this forever. And I think that's the question most people don't ask themselves. And it's why I wrote that specific book. Right. The question is, what would you change if you could never retire? It's literally a question. In my manifesto, I have a personal manifesto. It's a big. The wall in my garage, when I park my car, it's right there. And One of the top left question says, what would you do if you couldn't retire? Because trying to figure that answer out and tweaking your calendar is actually the right move. And for me, when it comes to content, it's, how could I do it in a way that I would enjoy doing it for the rest of my life? Well, as soon as I ask myself what needs to be true for that to be true, I start saying things like, the people that I'm working with, they have to be awesome. They have to be great. So my video team, they're really fun people. They inspire me, they teach me stuff, they make me laugh. Just great human beings. It has to not take away from my family time. It has to be integrated into my life. Okay, well, how do I do that? Well, that's going to require some. Some magic. Okay? Some magic with my executive assistant, some magic with some private aviation, some magic with location shot. Like, it's. It's not. Not work, but it's in. I do it in a way where it doesn't feel hard. And honestly, I'm not. I'm lying because sometimes it is hard. And literally my team's like, hey, I need you to do this. And I'm like, I don't want to do it. And they give me that look because I told them they should give me that look. And I go, shut. You know, in my head, I go, shut the up, Dan. It's time. It's time to do for other people. Right? Because the moment you stop making about yourself and you start making about other people, your life will fundamentally change. And I believe that. And I just have to remind myself because I forget even in those moments when things get annoying, get tough and get frustrating, I to go, hey, Dan, who are we doing this for? Step up.

Yeah. And I love, I love the question, what would you do if you had to do it for the rest of your life? You could never retire. I'm curious. You know, I always love talking about one, financial literacy. But in the next generation, in our kids, that's a great question to ask our kids. What is the true passion that you would love to live your. The rest of your life? If you had to do it every single day, you could never retire.

And you're allowed to change your mind at any point.

Totally. Yeah.

Like, don't worry about making the right decision. Worry about making the decision right. Just make the decision directionally accurate or aligned with. If I had to do this for the rest of my life, it would feel good. And as soon as it doesn't just fix it. That's why I teach the time and energy audit in my book. It's like some things are green. When I started off, it gave me energy, made me a lot of money. And. And then over time, all of a sudden these things started getting yellow, then eventually like pink, and then they were bright red. And I'm like, I'm no longer doing this.

Getting louder too.

Yeah. And I gave myself permission to just say, no, I don't want to do this anymore.

Yeah. As you should. Right again. You know, building something that's fulfilling for you. We don't have to do it if it's not. We have a choice.

You gotta earn it, though. That's the Bob. That's the part that I do have a problem. When people read my book and they're like, I bought back all my time and I'm on vacation. I haven't had a meeting with my team in friggin three weeks. And I'm like, you didn't finish the book. The fill step, audit, transfer. Fill. The fill requires you to reinvest that time in things that light you up, that make you more money. Not go on vacation for three weeks and not, not talk to your company and leave it, you know, CEO less totally.

And I see that all the time too. And even when people start to have a level of financial success, they take their foot off the brake because it's like, okay, we've done it, we've done all the work now we don't have to do it anymore. Right? And I see that all the time. And it's super frustrating.

You got to earn your right to do that. But it's all great things require constant forward drive. Like period, full stop. Right. It's like a flywheel. There's no company that's going to be successful and meaningful that had a CEO take five weeks off and say, hey, team trust ya sops, yay. See how you do.

Yeah, exactly. Because they need, they need mentorship and support as well. Right? It's. We can't just walk away.

I'm a top performer and I have five coaches. Like I have a coach for every area of my life that I care about. And I'm pretty disciplined. Like more than 99.9% of the population. I have those people there because I'm always wanting to have somebody critique the work, right. The feedback. If you have people on your team, yeah, they could do it. But what about having somebody that asks them great questions? What about having somebody pour into them, right? Like those are Things that leaders are supposed to do. Leaders are supposed to show up and inspire them and remind them why we're doing the thing. Like, let's talk about the future. You know, most of my meetings and all my companies I'm involved In, we're talking 18, 16 months into the future. Like, we don't talk about the quarter. The quarter's baked. Like, you guys are great. You run your rhythms, your planning strategy, all that stuff. We're talking about the future. Let's talk about where we want to go with this. Why do we want to do it? What. What do we believe about this space that makes our concepts unique? Right. And that actually pulls them forward. For somebody not to do that in a company, it's the vision part.

It's just.

It's literally leaderless businesses that read a book, you know, the book, they read the book, and I hire somebody to operate my business, and now I'm free. And it's like, no, you. There's still two parts of the equation, and the other part you're not doing, and the other person's freaking out because they can't get ahold of you, and you don't want to participate in the business. And it requires that part. Like, it's fascinating the way people want to interpret information.

Yeah. And if you want to have a continued positive evolution of who it is that you're becoming and the impact that you're having, you can't just walk away and hope everybody does it for you. It's just not going to happen that way.

It'll never happen.

Dan, last question for you is, you know, thinking of, you know, the entrepreneur who started the business starting to have their challenges growing, scaling, you know, what would be one sort of generic, or maybe your most favorite piece of generic advice that you would give a small.

Business owner, I'm going to actually broaden it to not just small business owners. I'm going to broaden it to people. Okay. Because this is the perspective that once I understood, my life completely changed, okay. And it's evolved. But this is where I've landed on it today. The way I explain it is I truly believe that every human, every person, every kid, every adult, every senior citizen is here to do two things. One, become the best version of themselves. Become what I call the 10.0 version of yourself. Right. I believe, regardless of what you believe in faith and spirit, that your creator created you in his image and you're here to do something. Another way to think about it, Bob, is to become the person you needed most in your darkest days. Right. And strive for that. So anytime somebody's not on that path, I think that's what makes them feel down and sad and, you know, they get anxiety over it. But if you wake up every day with the vision of trying to become one step closer to that person, that's the beginning. The second part that finishes the whole kind of infinity loop is to then share that process with the world. And if your world is your kid, then just show up and be the best parent you can be. If your world is your family, great. If your world is your CrossFit gym, your church, your community, or the business, then pour into it, share that. The amount of entrepreneurs that are not pouring into their team members, the people they spend the most time with, fascinates me. And then if you have the courage, I want to invite people to consider sharing that with the world publicly, like we're doing right now. On social media. We have these tools that allow us to access and influence tens of thousands of people potentially with one piece of content. It's bigger than us. It's not about us. It's the opportunity to honor who we are as a human, express that to the 10.0 level, and then share that journey with other people to inspire them. Because we are all built on the shoulders of giants. We are here because other people went first and they inspired us by their actions and story, their books, their podcast, their conversations, their speech. So to me, I just think that is what every human on earth is here to do. And business is just a vehicle for doing it that at a higher level.

Like, if I could do a mic drop right now, I would, but I'd have to break some stuff. Dan, such a pleasure. Buy back your time, guys. Make sure you jump out and you grab that book. Obviously, so many great insights from Dan. Dan, how can people find you? Obviously you're everywhere.

Yeah, Instagram's the best place. Two Ls of Martel. And if people want like my executive assistant playbook, I'll just send them the. The direct link to the Google Doc. It's like this very structured process. People always want to know. It's not in the book, it's not a download. But if you just message me EA on Instagram, I'll have my team send that over to you. But I'm on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn. Dan Martell 2000 Martell. It'd be an honor to support Dan Martell.

Thank you so much for joining me today. Always a pleasure. Love connecting with you, my friend. Guys, this has been the Wealthy Entrepreneur Podcast. If you like the podcast, make sure you leave a comment. Follow us. Share it out. You know, Dan has just shared so many insights that will change people's lives. I hope to see you guys next week. Thanks for watching.

Bye for now.