The STRUGGLE Isn't Real. It's Self-Inflicted w/ Dan Martell

Most people grew up in some level of chaos. It's what's familiar. And actually when they start buying back their time and things get too easy, freaks them out. And then they wonder, why do they keep repeating the same challenges over and over again? So to me it's you start with the time and energy because it's a forcing function to figure out who's the next hire. The second step is T, which is transfer. See, most people don't hire folks because they go. It's easier for me to do it myself. It's going to take me more time to train somebody else. Or what if I train them and they leave, you know? Well, what if you don't and they stay?

Own your future. Because if you don't, someone else will. Welcome back to the Own youn Future podcast. I am so stoked for the guest today. Not only is he the author of Buy back your Time, this book is on fire. A book you're going to want to grab. But I want to unpackage this. How do we all want to buy back our time? And I got to tell you a personal story. This gentleman is not only the founder and creator of SaaS Academy, over a thousand businesses rely on this man to be coached by to help take their business to another level. His reputation in this industry as being a thought leader, someone who can help you at any stage of business to help people with subscription subscription model businesses. He's a best selling author, investor, amazing dad, amazing husband. And on a personal note, this is a guy I heard from people like Alex Hermosi and Jesse Ecker and so many others what a great dude he is and how smart Marty is that. I was working on our subscription based company Mastermind years ago and I love doing masterminds. I called this guy out of the blue. I said, hey, we barely know each other. No, we don't know each other at all. Would you mind jumping on a plane, inconveniencing yourself and come down here and spend a day helping me on my business? No hesitation. He was here in the office and I am. It's such a pleasure to support him to support this book. Dan Martell, pleasure to have you here, man.

It's an honor, Dean. It was fun and I came from Canada, so that's like a real trip.

Exactly. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you coming down, man. I'm so excited about this book and having you on the Own youn Future podcast because so many times in life, no matter what we're doing, aren't. Aren't we really like I love the title because aren't we all just working to buy back our time?

It's the dream. We all, we all started these companies or businesses or, you know, even try to better our lives so that we have more freedom. And that's only going to come if we can get to a place where we have the ability to, you know, hire people or implement technology to essentially get more. More time back.

I think there's a. A big misconception, though, only because I. I get to be in a business where so many people that were in corporate America.

Yeah.

Or in a typical job want to do their own thing. And that's the first thing to think. I, I am going to do this to buy back my time. But they don't get a framework or don't have a philosophy. They don't have the context, maybe, or a plan or a strategy, whatever you want to call it. And what happens so many times is that they leave the thing that they hated and they enter something else they hate, because now it's a. They built a business that basically is a job that eats up more time so good than they did when they were working for somebody else.

So. So my mission of this book is literally to help people build businesses they don't grow to hate.

Yeah.

You get it. We've all seen it. Right. It's too much.

Too much. That's usually when they come to you or come to me. Right. So give me some of the top philosophers. I have so many questions to ask you. I'm going to try not to have ADD today because I have a lot.

Dude, you and I both.

Let's start with buy back your time. What are some of the core principles? Somebody's watching right now and said, I want to start. I'm already in it. I see this happening. I know I can make this impact. I know I can make this money.

How do I do it, man?

I'm not going to be here for my kids. I'm going to miss the teenage years. I'm going to miss the high school years. How do they start that?

There's a lot. I mean, the, the buyback principle, which is the core process, I call it a first principle, is we don't hire people to grow our business. We hire people to buy back our time. People need to write that down, because if you do the first hire people, grow our business, we'll actually not get the second. But if you do the second, hire people to buy back our time, we get the first. So most entrepreneurs end up experiencing what I call the pain line. Right, right. Where the more they grow, the more pain in their calendar, chaos in their calendar will show up. Right. You know this, if I, if you say to this, this entrepreneur, here's the strategy to triple your business, they drag their feet. Right. Cause inadvertently they're sabotaging themselves. Right. Because they know that more growth equals more pain. And what I've learned a long time ago is entrepreneurs will never grow into pain. It's impossible. It's like me holding a knife to your throat and say, step forward. You're just not gonna do it. So most people hit the pain line. They either decide to stall, sell, or sabotage. Right. And what I offer people is a completely different approach. It's called the buyback loop. And the buyback loop states that once you feel pain in your calendar, and I do it maybe two or three times a year, you go three step process. The first one is audit. Okay. Atf, everybody needs to write this down. ATF audit is your time and your energy. Right. And the reason why, it's what, when you look at a two week audit of your calendar and you look at what lights you up, what takes your energy, what has a low cost to pay somebody else to do? What has a higher cost. If you took all the stuff that's red sucks your energy and low cost to pay somebody else to do and you put it in a bucket, that is the only next hire you should be making.

Yeah.

Because that is how you build a business you don't grow to hate.

That's why Pace Mor said we should chat.

Oh, yeah. He's like, no, no. Everything you're talking about.

Yeah. We have the same philosophy. Right. And, and I want you to keep going because I, I, I love being transparent, especially here. I feel so comfortable with this group of people. I feel blessed. They made this podcast, one of the top podcasts in the world, and it's in its category and that's everybody from you guys watching and sharing. So thank you. But I like to get really transparent, though. I teach that. Though I've been blessed to build multiple big companies, I've exited out of two and now I have another. We have two. Tony and I have Tony Robbins. And I have two more growing exponentially. Feel beyond blessed, though I teach that. Though it's been my philosophy that got me here, there's still days if I don't practice it. And I bet you feel the same where I go, how did I let myself get back into this? I have four kids now, two little ones and two teenagers. And I'M like, I'm missing softball. I'm gonna miss that practice. And I haven't been on a date night with my wife in three weeks. How the hell did I let that happen? So the reason I'm the guy that has multiple New York Times best selling books like this amazing book, teach it. I live it. It got me here. But it's like this old version of us.

Yeah.

And that's why I love talking to you about this. And I want to go deeper on this. There's. I always feel like there's this old version of us. It still has like the hook and there's still a real. That every once in a while, if you're not paying attention, it reels you right back and then. But. But what I love about what you wrote in this book, what I love about what you do is when you have a framework. As soon as you recognize it. Oh, you know the path to get back to where you need to be. And I think where most people, they, they just don't have the. They're on, it's the unknown. This is just overwhelming. Screw it. I'm gonna go drive Uber. I can't handle this. No, you are a brilliant human who should be thriving and changing the world. You just need a plan.

Yeah. I mean, the truth is, is what you're describing is most people grew up in some level chaos. It's what's familiar. And actually, when they start buying back their time and things get too easy, it freaks them out and they throw huge hand grenades. They like lob the pit and their own life. Yeah. And then they wonder, why do they keep repeating the same challenges over and over again? So to me, it's, you start with the time and energy because it's a forcing function to figure out who's the next hire. The second step is T, which is transfer. See, most people don't hire folks because they go. It's easier for me to do it myself. It's going to take me more time to train somebody else. Or what if I train them and they leave, you know? Well, what if you don't and they stay? So my whole thing is transfer, dude. It happens all the time.

So simple and so true. Write that down. Think through what he just said.

Yeah. So. So transfer in my world is this methodology called the camcorder meth. So I record everything I do today, knowing that someday somebody else is going to do it. So as I'm doing it, I just record all these little clips, put them in a folder. So when I make that Higher. I give them, you know, 20, 30 hours of recordings of me talking out loud. They create what's called the standard operating procedure. Not me. See, most people go away for a weekend and say, that's so good.

It's so many times, you know, you have your. And. And I don't mean to interrupt. I just want to go deeper into some of these. Sometimes there are core competencies. What I've seen over the years, been in business since I was 17. I'm 55 next month. I can't believe it goes quick. Too quick. But there are some things that you think through time, this is just my core competency. I could hire someone to do that, but they could never do this. And I think that's one of the biggest lies we tell ourselves. Like, I was at Pace's mastermind. He asked me to come speak, and I drew a circle all the way down, like a bullseye, down to this dot. I said that dot. Let's say that dot is your core competency. When you live in that core competency, that unique ability, that flow, maybe you're making 10 grand an hour, thousand an hour, 500 hour, whatever. I don't want a hundred grand an hour in that spot. But all the other rings of the bullseye are what suck us in. But what I see over years is as you get wiser and more time and more immersion in a business and the size businesses you run and invest in, you realize the more you could chip away and not be doing those things in the outer rings, then maybe at first you get somebody to do $20 an hour stuff because you got an ROI. And then eventually you get people doing $500 an hour. And then there's. Sometimes you might have people at 10 grand an hour, because when you're in your core competency, you make 100 grand an hour, and you're kind of chipping away the rings, is how I described it, looking at an ROI on each level. But what I love about what you just said is there are some things that I've lied to myself for years and said, no one else can do this. I have to. This is my unique thing that got this business here. And I was lying to myself, and you just shared away on recording what you do. Because where I've gotten stuck, and I love being honest so people know that we all deal with this. Is there certain things where my team will say, hey, man, could you just create an SOP on how you do it? I'm like, I can't. I don't know. It Comes to me like last night, this morning I whiteboarded something for our next phase of one division, our companies. It came to me last night. I went to bed, I couldn't sleep. I got up this morning. Today the team is here. I called them at 6 o' clock this morning. I said have the whiteboard in the studio ready for after because I'm going to whiteboard it and I'm going to just record how I came up with it. So we're on the same page. But it took me see, I'm a slow learner. I wish I would talk to you sooner. At 55 years old, I'm finding ways to realize no, there are so many more things I can hand off. Which allows you, us, everybody watching to go deeper on that center of the.

Thing only they can do.

Because there, there is only a few things you do, Dan. That's why your business is so great. But there's so many we thought were ours. Is that true?

Totally. And the letting go is actually a really important skill. And I get it when I talk about this.

Yeah.

I mean this is, you know, you'll never get a penny more than you think you deserve. You don't get what you want, you don't get what you think. And it's so true. So, so that's what happens is most people don't believe they deserve to be paid a thousand. That sounds crazy to a lot of entrepreneurs. And I get it, you know, so when they think of paying somebody else 30 bucks and they don't even feel like they're worth 20, they can't do it. So that's why the third chapter of my book is Time Assassins. It's literally systematically going through every mindset, monster and belief around time and what you're worth. I can't get you to do this stuff if you don't get on. You know how it is. It's a mindset problem.

Oh my God, this is so good, Dan. We could have a four hour.

I know. Talk to Dean.

I'm like, so I don't consult anymore unless I get if I love the company, get some equity. I have time and I just know that I can bring some fuel really fast. Right. But it's hard. I, I, I run a couple companies with Tony. I help run his main company and, and it's fun. I'm just really enjoying this phase of my life. Busier than ever. Busier is having a one year old today. She's actually one year old today. My little girl, a three year old, a 14 and a 16. Right. So it's busy. But I had this gentleman that was. And, and this is something I really want you guys to hear. I had this gentleman that wanted me to consult for him. He said, you got to help me on how, how we do our big challenges. He's my. We talked about con event, Tony's events and ours. Right. We do million, 2 million people at a time. He's like, please consult. I said, I'll give you the blueprint. I recorded a video. I said, here, please. He's like, no, I need. So he said to me, give me six hours of your time. I said, and I literally was so immersed, I said, hey, if you want to pay 250 grand, I'll do six hours. He's like, done cheap.

Didn't even. Yeah.

And I got off the phone and I'm like, no, but I got to, I got it. I want to help others. See, because someone's afraid to ask for 250 when their value huge is so huge. You know, I've been asking this question. I don't say that to brag. I'm just saying even at this level of my life, I still realize the value of experience, the value of finding a better way. Right. And the last thing I'll say, that maybe could increase your. Understand your value in the marketplace. I love saying this. I've asked at this point, millions of people when we do our big events, I always say, hey, if you, if I right now, I could cut you a check for a million bucks or you could prepare for a week and you could go back and spend a week with your 20 year old self. Do you want the million or the week with yourself? Millions of people. And that's our chat board over there and over there. I've never seen somebody say, take a million. So we can put the value on that when we look at it through our own lens. But then sometimes we put our value in the marketplace. Like, no, I'm just a. Yeah. And I think finding a way to understanding your own value will also lead to everything you're saying. If my value is so good and when I do what I do, I need others to help replicate the things that I shouldn't be doing.

Yeah. There's two, two stories that come to mind when you share this. Because it's brilliant like that, that that thought process is what's required. My dad growing up owned some real estate, couple properties. And every Sunday he would spend the whole afternoon mowing these lawns. And growing up, I was like, this makes no sense. Like, you own the building. You're not the first person go get another building. Yeah. It just sounds crazy. And eventually I just said, dad, why do you do this? And he goes, I like to do it. I said, well, if you like to do it so much, why don't you do the neighbors? He goes, I don't like to do it that much. I go, well, then your definition of like and mine are completely different. So there's that. And then the other thing that people should consider is, whatever you're doing, would you allow somebody to pay you to do that for them in their business?

Think of that.

Oh, this one. They're not gonna like this.

Not a million years.

Are you booking your own travel? Some. You know what I mean? Like, ask these questions. You book your own travel. Do you do this? You do this? They go, yeah. I go, would you allow yourself to be paid to do that for somebody else's business?

Right.

No, you wouldn't.

Yeah. And I always think about. It's funny, this is why people said we'd have fun talking. Because I tell a story about mowing my own lawn back in the day and my dad getting mad at me.

Yeah.

Because I hired someone else. And he's like, why would you hire someone else when you do it yourself? I'm like, because at the time, I had a car business. I said, if I go work the day Saturday, I'll sell two cars. Back then, I made 1500 bucks a car. So if I go to the office, I make three grand. If I stay here, I save 50 bucks by mowing my own lawn. And there was a philosophy I remember. My dad's an amazing man. I love him. But he was broke his whole life. I retired him when I was 27. I've been giving him a check every week since I was 27 years old. Smartest man you've ever met. Graduated top of his class, got almost 100 on his SATs. Everything this guy does, he still remembers when he was a year old. He's 87, but still never made more than 35 grand a year of that. Do it. If you could do it all yourself, why would you hire someone else? And the philosophy I got. I don't mean to dominate this conversation. I want to hear more about your book, and I'm going to shut up after this one. But the philosophy I got, that I know you live by, I can hear it, is I just started attaching an ROI to everything. I could pay somebody 50 bucks to mow my own lawn if I could make a hundred Would anybody on this call, would you take a two for one? If you spend a dollar, would you.

Love to get back to how many trades? How many times would you do that? Unlimited.

Unlimited. So if I can even somebody mows my lawn for 50 and I can go make 100 every day of the week, but if I can pay 50 and go make three grand, where else can I do that? And I. And the last thing I want to share with you because you just sparked some things, is I don't do anything around my house because I love. I don't change my own light bulbs. I don't take out my garbage. I don't mow my lawn. I don't know. If the garage door doesn't work, we call.

Pace told me the story of your mom over saying, where do I put the garbage?

Yeah. My mom said, what day does the garbage go out? And I'm like, I don't know. She goes, you've lived here for five years. I'm like, it just magically gets out there. And my mom was upset with me until I explained this philosophy. I said, mom, I'm in the middle of writing a book. My last one sold a million copies. Should I go out and take the garbage out, mow the lawn, change that light bulb, or pay somebody 30 bucks to go do that and write two more chapters of my book? And she's like, oh, my God, babe, why don't you teach it? Why didn't people teach us in school? I'm like, anyway, I'm going to shut up. I want to know more what's next and buy back your time.

Yeah. So that's the transfer side. Because I know that if it's hard, people won't do it. So we record ourselves, we give to somebody else. Then we have them create the SOP and follow it. And people say this book is one of the best productivity books out there. I said, I appreciate it. But they also say it's a leadership book. Because what I know is about entrepreneurs is they're a little cuckoo. And if we don't give them a framework for interacting with people, we're going to piss them off. We're going to get upset, they're going to quit, we're going to fire them. This has been. It's how you hire. All that stuff is in the book. But the last one is Phil. And I think this is where we're going to have a lot of fun is now that you have that time, you say, like, would you trade $10 for $50? So that one's the easiest fill where you just do. If you're a logo designer, design more logos. If you write code. If you're an agency, whatever your thing is, do, do more of the thing that gets you paid. But at a certain point, when you then buy back that time and you're no longer. If you own a landscaping company, doing the landscaping, that's where people actually get like, what do I do with this extra day? Two days. If you hire an executive assistant, you get 30 hours a week. And that's where I talk about the beliefs, right. What worldviews that I have, the money beliefs, the productivity beliefs, the people beliefs that are. They're not supporting me. What are the skill sets that I need to acquire? So where's the gap from where I'm at, where I want to go? I got to make a list. You know, we do it with our team, we call them learning and development plans. But like, here's the skill sets. And the most important is what are the character traits? Dean, you know, you teach this I love about this conversation is you gotta ask yourself, somebody that's running a million dollar company, how do they act? You know, what kind of discipline, what kind of motivation, what kind of communication skills? Like, what are the character traits of that individual? Because, you know, John Maxwell talked about this a long time ago, the law of the lid. The business will never grow, you know, to the level of your goals. They'll grow to a level of the leadership.

Yeah.

And it is such that most entrepreneurs don't look in a mirror and say, if I want my business to grow, it's not just another growth hack. Another tactic or strategy is I literally have to become better.

Yeah.

And for me, that's why I love this book so much. And I use the word empire at the bottom because, you know, my editor's like, you know, that's a big word. I don't think a lot of entrepreneurs want to create empires. I go, your definition of an empire is different than mine. Because an empire in my world is a life of unlimited creation I never have to retire from.

Yeah.

And I think everybody wants that. So that's the, the third step. And if you don't fill properly, you don't actually get the loop. You don't get the slingshot. You don't finish the complete circle. And. And you get stuck between audit transfer, pissed off people, they're not working. You just keep going back and forth. So that's why I've been really excited to get this message out.

So many people ask me when when you started making more money, like, what changes? And I, I, I'd love to say, you know, the freedom, all, all the things that you would expect in control of your calendar, more responsibility. People say more money, less problems. Like, no, you just get better at handling bigger problems.

Bigger problems, Right.

Jim Rohn said for things to get better, you have to get better. Right. It's really simple.

Don't wish the world was easier, wish you were better.

Right, Exactly. Because the world's not getting easy. In fact, it is off the rails right now. Right. So we have to get better. But when people ask me that, the thing I think about Dan, and you just sparked this in me, is I was running away from. I read some stuff on your childhood and things you went through and going broke at a certain time and working seven hours, seven days a week and fiance that ready to leave or left because of all you were going through and how hard you were working and missing dinners and all that kind of stuff. I think of all of that and all you go through to get here. But during that time, and I want you to really hear this, the greatest gift of getting success, or money, however you want to call it, money out of the way. I believe the greatest gift is not what you think. It's not the second house and the private plane. I hope all that works for you or the watch you've been wanting to buy or the gift you want to buy your spouse or retiring your mom or retiring your husband or whatever that is. But I know that I ran away from being broke so hard. My parents weren't in control. They didn't make any money. They divorced and married nine times between them. We got evicted from our trailer park. Like I was running so hard away from that, that that's all I focused on. I didn't work on me. And there was a moment money was out of the way. My, like, I'm okay and the only thing left standing was the guy in the mirror. And it was the scariest time in my life because it's like, I'm not going to go broke. I can afford the things I wanted. My family's safe. I retired. My parents, my kids are going to be okay. Shit, I got to work on me. And I remember this moment. So the greatest gift was that got it away. And I had to look in the mirror. And the stuff that happened as a childhood, nine marriages and some crazy stuff and my dad who went through really violent years and I had a bleeding ulcer at 12. And some of those things I ran away from I. I was divorced before. Like, I don't think I cherished relationships at the level I should have. It was just a thing. It's because my parents just run away from marriages. They don't work. You run like, that's what you do. Like, so you put a shell around your heart. You don't let anybody. So all these things that I didn't know were there, Dan, when money was out of the way, man, they were loud. And what it did is it allowed me to go time to work on me. So what you're saying in my. Just my version of that is I still work my tail off in my business because I love it, but it gave me the space to be a better man, and I'm a better father because of it. I'm in a better ex to my previous wife. We're dear friends. I'm a better husband. I brought a better version of me as a man, as a provider, as a father, as someone in this relationship. I think I'm a way better team member to my team. We have a culture here that's off the charts. I have real depth of friends in my life. And none of that wouldn't have happened if I had didn't figure out these ways to buy back my time and go, oh, crap, there's space, Dan.

Yeah, well, see, what happens though, Dean, is you probably. I don't know if you experienced it. It was true for me, is that all of a sudden I had to look at. I. I was like, all the money people think it's going to solve the problems, and then all the problems technically are solved. And you don't. You still feel the same?

Exact.

Yeah, just like, insecure, I guess. It was crazy. And I remember somebody said this once. They go, you know, at the end of the day, when you get the money, the money will just make you more of who you are. And if you don't do the work, that person, that person that. It gave you, that dark energy, that fuel to drive you. For me, it was like, prove my dad wrong. And every person that didn't believe me in high school and the jail guard that said I was a piece of shit and all this stuff, like. And then eventually I was by myself with the money and I realized I still felt that way. And that's where I had to look and say, okay, it's time to do the work. And that's, for me, where it shifted to be more about the light energy. And I think dark energy is like diesel, and it'll get you going, but at Some point it has to transition to something more aspirational.

Pulling rather than running, running away. You're being pulled towards something.

It'll absolutely eat you up inside. And I think that's one of the biggest gifts if you allow it to is. And there's this great quote that says become the person you needed most in your darkest days.

Oh, I love that.

And when I went through my darkest days and even today when I think back when people go like, why do you do all this? I know damn well I do all this.

Yeah.

Because I asked myself, would that 15 year old boy listen to the man I become?

Yeah.

I don't know if It's a yes 100% all the time. So that's. Those are my edges, those are my opportunities. Yeah. I just, that's.

I think I love that you wrote this book. Seriously, if you guys watch me, you know, I've hardly ever personally promote anything but go get buy back your time Amazon. Yeah, that's the way to get it.

Yeah.

Even your books go to Amazon. Did you record it as well?

Yeah, I record myself and I added bonus chapters to answer the questions that always come up.

And it's okay. So I got the hardcover.

The audible is the best.

I'm gonna get the audible because that's, that's easy for me. So that'll be my book next week. Now that I've gone through the, the hard I'm. I comprehend way better listening than reading. So amazing, amazing, great, great work. And this is so needed in today's world, especially where, I mean, listen, I think we've had three years of uncertainty. I guess that's a good word.

Yeah.

But I think it's been so long. And we became because of everybody being home and crazy politicians, Europe in Canada.

Yep.

Just as crazy.

Crazy.

Just as crazy. I'm watching yours and all just in crazy. Yeah. It's insanity, right?

Yeah.

And it's pushed people apart to say, hey, if you believe this, we, we can't be friends if we're right. It's just the craziest time. So we got that insecurity we have, obviously inflation and gas prices and now two different wars going on around the world. What hurts people's hearts and what are the beliefs and how do we, how do we come bring this all together and then simultaneously it doesn't look like it's getting better. And if you look at people smarter than me said, hey, everybody said we were in a recession. That was nothing compared to what's coming. I hope that's not the Case, I'm an optimist, but I'd rather talk about it and be more prepared than to react. And I think why this book is so timely is we just did a big event a couple weeks ago, monster event, and we enter on the way in, we ask certain questions so we could really serve the audience. Right? Let's meet people where they are more than ever. Things that popped up were time. I don't have time in a place where now we have electronics that supposedly buy us back time. Right? Distractions, big lie. They're distraction. Right? That's why I love you all.

Distraction devices.

Yeah, I love that. Right? But time and lack of joy. Now, this is people. Either entrepreneurs are on their way to be an entrepreneur. Usually it would be, hey, I want to make more money, or. Or, like, it was always money. Money was third. It was time, lack of joy, and then money. So you picture you're talking to entrepreneurs, and it's like, man, I just want more time. And I want to be happier. And, yes, I want to be successful where it used to be. Success, success, success. I hope that leads to joy and more time. And I think this book is so timely because we have more time if we know where to look. We have more time if. If we could be disciplined to say no to the things that don't serve us. Don't serve God. Don't serve a bigger future. Don't serve more income. Don't serve freedom. Don't serve the man or woman you're meant to be. But people just aren't doing it. So I was having a talk with my buddy, Brendan Burchard. He was in last week. We were doing this event, and he said, uncertainty has been the last three years. He said something I thought was really cool. He said, we've gone beyond that. We've lived in uncertainty. So much people are truly disappointed.

Oh, so good.

And he just let that sit. He's like, they're disappointed they didn't make a move. They're disappointed in their job. They're disappointed in our government. They're disappointed in that they're just sitting on their hands when they know they have something that can change the world. I was like, holy crap. I'm not going to use the word uncertain anymore. We. We've. We've transcended past uncertainty. Now we're in this disappointment. And when you're on disappointment, I literally went like this. We were at dinner. I'm like, the physicality.

Yeah. Yeah. You feel that.

Like, I'll just wait and see how things go and this is the time where I'm like, no, no. Like I am reinvigorated over the last couple of weeks, especially that conversation. And I spent a week, a couple days with Tony. Robin's my partner. So you get these group of people like this conversation with me, it lights me up. I'm like, oh, I got to do more. I, I got to wake people up and say, this is not. Get off your freaking hands. Like, this is a time where most people are going to sit on their hands. So if the world goes in a crazy spin, your opportunity's greater. If you could buy back your time, if you could lean into your full potential, if you could take uncomfortable action and you can keep moving forward. So I love that you did this now. And I would continue to do podcasts and scream from Mountaintops to Spark because, you know, those listening to this obviously follow me. We all have a voice that speaks to us. And as you read this book or follow Dan, you realize he might have a voice that also aligns with your philosophies or where you want to go. I want to shift gears a little bit. You are known as the absolute coach for those in the subscription based business. SaaS. Subscription based business. Love what you do. Love SAS Academy. In fact, when you first got here, I said, I want to put, you know, I want to put one of my team members in. I wish I had the time to personally go and maybe I, maybe if that works out, I can be a part of some of them. For somebody thinking of creating and I know it's a little different, a membership site compared to a subscription or a software as a service, it's, it's a, it could be different, but basically we want to bring people in, we want to onboarding them properly, keep them. We want to serve them so much and they actually eat what we gave them. Yeah, right. Some memberships or some subscriptions are so confusing. It's like we put the, we put so much food in their face, they don't know what to eat first. They go, I'll come back later and eat.

Yeah.

So we overwhelm them. What are some of the. Maybe high level because we have so many people that have memberships or they do a monthly training or they're a coach on a monthly basis. It might not be a SaaS. And we have some that are sass and, and a software. What are, say, what are some of the biggest myths of keeping people longer? Because I bet you have a common thread.

Oh, there's so many things. I mean, you just Touched on a few of them and I'm going to give some because I'm a tactical guy.

Right.

I love, I call it math and mindset. I can nerd out on both of those. But I want to give some people some math. If you actually look at all subscription businesses and you give me four numbers, you tell me how many customers you have, how many people you add every month, net new, how many people as a percentage you lose every month and what's the average they pay you per month. I can tell you to the month in the future where you will hit what's called the gross ceiling.

Wow.

Mass math problems. So you guys can Google gross ceiling. It's, it's known in the software space. They'll give you the formula, you can plug that in and get your. Get your month. So then how do we fix that? The biggest misconception is that more is better. Right. So more stuff. More. And what happens is entrepreneurs, we're used to this, right? We see everything as opportunities. Why we're entrepreneurs. We go around our house and we see 15 different business ideas, things that frustrate us. So what I want to encourage people to do, this is the tactical part. I want you to go through every one of the customers in your gym and your software product in your online membership that have canceled and just ask them why. Most people are scared to talk to the people that they would deem as upset. But that's where the gold lies. Now here's the kicker. Some people should have never bought in the first place. So when you get all that feedback, I want you to filter it based on who you felt would have been a perfect fit customer.

Perfect. That's great.

That's the language. Perfect fit customers, they're. They have the problem. They know they have the problem. They want to solve the problem they can easily buy. Yep, all those things have to be true. So when you look at the people that should have stayed from your. Your thoughts and they left, I want you to look at their answers for what was missing. And here's the philosophy. This one's going to really mess people up. If you add something to your thing, tell me what you took out.

Oh, that's so good.

Because creating what I call featuritis is easy. Complexity is actually really easy. Finding 15 things to do to improve stuff in your business, that's easy. But if you're going to add something, I want you to tell me what you took away. And that's where you have to talk to those people to say, well, what did we say? That we did or what did you experience that honestly you didn't value that much. Because those people are going to give you the recipe for what was missing and they're going to tell you what you thought was important that doesn't need to be there. And if you make those changes, it's impossible for you not to increase your retention. And that is the ultimate number. Everybody wants to talk about the chocolate marketing top of funnel customers, all that stuff. But the broccoli is retention is keeping a customer and to the degree that you can keep them. And then this in software world is another big idea is expand their relationship with you. It's called expansion revenue. Sell them more things to serve them.

Yep.

Those are the equations that transform businesses into six figure to seven figure to eight figure to nine figure in our world and all subscription businesses. That's the math.

Wow, so good. And. And you know the opposite side of that. But I think you just answered it. I said with all the thousand plus businesses and the people you have in SaaS Academy, is there a common thing like the aha moment that when they put it in their business it was the biggest needle mover or is it basically the. Sometimes it's small hinges that swing a big door and there's no magic bullet. Because some people are looking for the magic bullet. Some just have to be disciplined and say it's math. Let me reverse engineer each piece of this.

It's a thing called ttfv. Everybody write this acronym.

I'm writing it down.

TTFV and it stands for time to first value. Some people call it core value, some people call it an aha moment. Some people will call it a magical experience. But essentially you need the thing I just explained to reverse order the customers that were upset and then so that feedback. But then here's the kicker for that, the ttfv. You wanna talk to the customers that absolutely love you.

Okay.

And what you wanna ask them is what do you believe about our product that cause you to absolutely love us.

And then get more people to use.

That in the first experience it's called I'm not gonna get more acronyms. But in that first time your customers use the product, whatever your best customers that have stuck around the longest told you when I first used it, this thing absolutely crushed it for me. You want to front load that initial experience so that you can get everybody to time to first value to bring that down into days, if not hours, if not minutes. Because I'll tell you it's a compound effect. If I can. Some people have thousands of people sign up every day for their product. Okay, cool. But how many of them activate? How many of them experience time to first value? Oh, we don't measure that. Let's figure out what that is. We don't even know what that is.

And you see, you see. And I know I get to witness this from the outside and I'm always working on trying to balance the two is a lot of times you get someone who is obsessed with everything you are sharing. They build the perfect software, they build the perfect onboarding and they have this philosophy like field of dreams. If I built something so much better than everybody else, they will come and they don't. And I watched a lot of sasses in Silicon Valley raise the money, tons of money stuff I use. This thing should be a monster, but no marketing. And on the opposite side, people build something just good enough. And I picture it like a spaghetti colander, right? It's a bowl kinda, but it's got holes in it. But they're so good at marketing that a thousand people a day and you and I both know a couple of businesses we're probably thinking of, some of them are friends. A thousand people, twelve hundred people a day go into the bucket but they're leaking out non stop. So what do they do? Get better at marketing. Fill it up, fill it up, fill.

It up until it doesn't.

And the magic is, and very few can do it is building that obsessively amazing product. Service SaaS with those experiences. TTFV time, the first value and stick.

And it works for service businesses in.

A crazy marketing department. That's why you see certain companies go why are they worth a billion dollars? I have a better product and I'm worth $5, right?

Figured out both ends of it.

They figured out both ends of it. Wow, this is so good. I tell hey, when I love that.

We'Re talking about this because usually I'm talking about the book, but this is my nerdy yeah, but that's what I do all day long.

We have so many people that'll be listening to this. This serves subscription in a huge way. And, and why I know the answer, but I want to ask you why should people consider adding a subscription to their company, to their business?

It's interesting because I got into subscription because you mentioned, you know, growing up, I grew up in a lot of chaos and there was something about the reoccurring nature that brought a level of consistency that I didn't have in my life. And it sounds funny but literally the predictability of reoccurring revenue.

Yeah.

Kind of spoke to the, you know, uncertainty and chaos I grew up. So I just kept doing this like we didn't even call it subscription. It was just back in the day we built software, people paid us per month. And I love the argument that if I create enough value every month, they're going to reward me the next month by continuing to pay. The reason why it's so important is you create what's called durable revenue. And nobody, most people never talk about this, but the reason, like people say, well, how does that software company get sold for 20x top line revenue? And my restaurant is like you know, two, two, three times ebitda, you know, and I'm just like, because the revenue is durable. So the big reason for people to consider and implement a subscription component in their business or transform their whole business to subscription is so that they create a revenue base that's predictable and durable. And ideally, and this is the cool thing, if you want to get a little bit more nerdy, get to a place where you have what's called expansion revenue, meaning that if you grab 10 customers in January this year, okay, not all 10 are going to be around next year, but, but the ones that are left over next year, if you have good retention, let's call it seven, they've upgraded their spend with you.

Right?

Right. We've all started with the free product to the 50 bucks a month and then you look the other way and it's 400 bucks a month. That's the expansion revenue. And when you can create a business that has that built in, that's when you have an annuity, meaning that this revenue base today is worth more in a year. Even if nobody wakes up and does anything in the business, it just works. That's why these companies have such high valuations and get bought for so much money.

Yeah, subscription, subscription. And you know, I can remember, I know it sounds crazy. I've been in business for 30 plus years. I've been in this industry for almost 27, 28. But I remember the buzz of a decade ago of people who had successful, profitable businesses innocent in the online education space. And you hear somebody's like, I sold my company for three times ebitda. Right. And it was like, wow, you could sell a. I mean I've been in this, Tony's been in for 42 years. The only person in longer than me, I think is Tony. I got almost 30 years in this space and when I started coaching wasn't cool. Masterminds weren't even a thing. That's. Oh, you must have read a Napoleon Hill book. All right, good with that. Right? Like you say coach, like of a basketball team, like, or you did something.

Wrong and you have a coach because you're not performing.

Yeah, exactly. So. And online education, it's like, no, you just go to college, right? Like, it was a different philosophy back then. And I tell everybody, if you're in this industry now or getting in it, like, you have no idea. You. You have low barrier to entry. You could find people online. You don't have to do an infomercial or direct mail. When we started, there was no Internet, Right? But simultaneously, this. Finding someone who's already forged a path and then cutting them a check, like you in the SaaS Academy, I'm going to cut you a check this week to put our people in. I want to learn more of what you've done so I don't have to figure it out. You and your team have already figured out. We just get there quicker. It is just the philosophy. I remember when these businesses started getting more popular and they were selling two, three times even, it's like, wow, people are noticing online education. But then I remember maybe that was 15, 18 years ago. And then I remember about eight, nine years ago, it was like, I don't know, maybe this is something that if you're in that space, you know it. But I remember it's like, no, no, no. If you shift your business from just profit margins to durable revenue, reoccurring revenue, subscription, membership, SaaS. If you do that, it's worth 10 times gross revenue. And I remember thinking, that's bull. That's. I remember feeling that how could my company's at a 32% EBITDA for like. So you're saying if my EBITDA was less, but I had this, it could be worth more. And then I remember just the companies popping.

Lynda.com was LinkedIn for a billion dollars.

I'm like, are you kidding me? And then companies not making money smaller than my company getting evaluated. 300 million, 800 million, a billion dollars. And it was just like, duh. And I also think building a membership, building a subscription model, it makes you a better company because you're not a one and done. Like, I need to earn your business every month, and that means I better step up again. I better impact your life. I said one time I was on stage and somebody asked me about it, and this is definitely your world more than mine. I said, what my goal is, is I want mastermind that's the name of the company Tony and I own. That's our subscription based company. I want it to become a utility. Meaning this is how I described it. I said somebody's going through their credit card at the end of the month and you're like, oh, this thing. I, I don't know if I use that. That's, that's a, that's a luxury, not a utility. I want them to see Mastermind and underneath it, their Verizon phone bill and go, those two I am never freaking getting rid of. I might shut off my freaking phone before I'd stop being at Mastermind. Now are we there every day? No, that's. That's my North Star, though. I want somebody to look at that and go, this is like a freaking utility. This is like my life. It is like the heat. It is, it is. It is like my phone. I can't live without that. And when you create that, it's harmony.

It's beautiful. Yeah. I mean, like I said, I think that model of earning the customers like privilege, of having the ability to serve them next month, based on how you showed up this month, it just creates such a great way to get the whole team focus on the right things. You focus on the right things. And yeah, I've just, it's funny, I just somehow got lucky. I know why God was looking out and he introduced me to software and it's just been what I've done and it just ended up like, like you in this industry.

Yeah.

It then become a thing, but we were doing it before anybody and now.

It'S your thing and, and so good at what you're doing. Man, I'm so glad you wrote this book on this podcast, a lot. It started with the first couple of guests. They said, could I ask you a question? Anything you got for me that you'd like to ask.

On Mark, so many Dean, you know, we had dinner after you brought me down here and I just, you know, I wanted to be polite to other people, but I just, when I look at your ability to think about the customer's mindset, meet them where they're at. How do you, when you're sitting down with all these incredible people to think about, you know, designing an experience for a viewer.

Yeah.

To talk to them in the way you describe, like, how do you. What is there a framework that you use for how to do that? How. Where does that come from?

No one's ever asked me that. You know, I really do obsess on that because I heard probably 20 years ago. People buy from you when they feel understood, not when they understand you.

That.

And that's the framework I've been living by for probably two decades. And what happens is we fall in love with our products so much that we get tone deaf to what people are really feeling, not even what they're saying. People might cancel. Somebody might cancel being in SAS Academy, which I know you. No one cancels, believe me. I'm just saying this. And they might say to you, hey, it's just the money. But if you really got on the phone and say, but why? But why? But why? It's like, because my wife said, I'm in too many of these damn masterminds and I'm not home enough. And I. I got to be a better dad. It's like, oh, how do we fix that? Could we get you virtual two times a year, and maybe we do one closer to where your area is? Most of the time people will say, and. And it's the same thing with thinking. Like, sometimes we go, we built this thing. We know people need it, and we march to our own beat. And I always stop and go, yeah, but how do I live inside their head? What are their fears? What are their goals? And if you're in marketing, you know this. But how deep are you really going on? So I'll give you an example. You watched when we did with Makan.

100%.

So we did. We've done 10 events at a million plus people, right?

People.

People. Crazy was 2.4 million, right? Day one, 2.2 million people.

We know how crazy that is.

Think about going to a football game with 60,000 people.

Doesn't make sense. And it's beautiful.

And it's, you know, exponentially bigger than that. Right? So anyway, so I'll tell you. I'll give you an example. So if we're doing it, I'm doing an event with Tony Robbins. This is Tony's world. He's the leader in this world. He's impacted so many lives. He was my mentor 27 years ago. If you know Tony, you know his energy, you know, some of his. Ah. Or say, yes, like most people show up, Tony will say, make your move in the beginning of the event. And 12,000 people go, yes. I'm like, how did that happen?

We scream it in our house.

Yeah. I'm like, how did you know that? Right? So we're doing a big challenge with Tony. If I enter their conversation in their heads, I'm thinking to myself, this is somebody that might be thinking, Tony might Be a little much for me. He's that motivation guy for the new people, but I want to test drive him. So I want us to talk to that person. But I also know the Die hards that have been saying yes in their kitchen with their kids for 30 years. I don't want them to feel like, don't talk down to me. I already know you, Tony. So I will think about the three top voices and I'll go, how do we craft something tone that speaks to all three of them, not just alienated. The people that are our family are like, hey, let me help the newbie next to me. You got to say yes louder. Right? So I'll think in their mind. Right. But let me Fast forward to McConaughey. I read McConaughey's book. I get done with it. I'm like, damn, the world needs more green light.

So good. I listen.

Me too. So good. I was mad when it was over.

Yeah. I was like, that just ruined me for any audiobook going, yeah, it's always a voice.

So I'm like, so I had a mutual friend. I reach out. I sent McConaughey a seven minute voice memo. I'm like, hey, Tony. And he knew who we were. I'm like, if you're going to do this, man, do it with us. We've never done it with anybody else before. We want to give you everything we've learned. Let's do this massive event, change the world, and let's go deeper. I said, your book is inspirational, amazing. Let's make a course that's transformational. Let's keep them accountable. Give him freaking homework. He loved the concept. The man worked his tail off. My whole point, though, is now we're going to do an event. We got two and a half million people registered. They're not on my database and they're not on Tony's. Maybe 30% were on our databases. And we got the biggest personal development probably and. And success databases in the world. I think between the two of us, none of these people on our database. And I'm thinking, whoa, whoa, whoa. If I talk to these people, like, you're already in personal development. You get it? These are people that just enjoyed watching. Like me.

Yeah. Rom com.

They've been watching his rom coms. It was 78% women registering. And I'm like, if I talk to them, I'm not entering their conversation. They're just coming to see Matthew McConaughey and be inspired. Inspired. And I got to convince them that they probably got to do something they've never done before. They got to pay for speed. They got to pay for next level education, so they truly implement it. So my whole thing was, every time I come up with something, I'm like, they're going to say, screw that. Why the hell is McConaughey selling? Isn't he rich? Why the hell is McConaughey selling something? He's a, he's a freaking actor. Like. And I didn't want the guy to be criticized. I would have said no to the campaign if I thought in any way it would hurt his reputation. He is a really good man. He's a really good father, a really good family man. Loves his freaking wife. Moved out of Hollywood to really build a family in Texas, right? So I just kept thinking, am I. I got to serve this guy by meeting his people in a completely different spot than mine or Tony's or anything else we've done. So I, I geeked out in the, in the Facebook group with what they were posting. I entered their thing and, and you watch it. It was a complete, completely different presentation than what we did because we met those people, where they were, and simultaneously, I knew what they probably had to overcome in their head. Why do I really need this? I've never done personal development before. Do I really need a course? And through the entire time I was slaying those dragons, saying, hey, I know you're probably thinking. And then, I mean, I started like, you're probably thinking, who the hell's Dean Graziosi? I just want to see McConaughey, maybe with his shirt off. And everybody laughed. It was hysterical because you could see. But I, I, I, I know that was a long answer to a short question, but I really try to put myself in their shoes at the deepest level possible. And I don't just guess I'll find.

You'Re in the Facebook group. People need to understand that.

I will literally go find Facebook groups with those clients in it and spend five hours, three o' clock in the morning. I'm still reading and reading. Go. God, I forgot what it was feel like to feel hopeless. I forgot what it was like to feel like when. And, and there's some things I never knew. Like, there was so many women. This last thing I'll say, there was so many women in the group between 40 and 60 who were the badass moms, the PTA mom, and they dedicated their life to being a mom. And now it's their turn, and they know where to start. There was a ton of women who were Badasses in their career, the go to woman. But they put in the time, they made the money, the kids are through college. Hell do I do with this experience? And how do I find purpose again? So I was finding emotions and I was calling anybody I knew in that age, in that demographic, and they started telling, yes, it's like, I want to do my own thing, but where the hell to start? And technology's too confusing and my kids know TikTok and I don't. So I sit on my hands and I do nothing. And I drink a glass of wine just to get through it. I'm like, I need to talk to her. I'm talking to her. My first monologue when I started, I talked to her in my head. I'm picturing a mom picture that's a badass that's sipping a glass of wine, trying to figure out what do I do next. Okay, we got you. So anyway, that's the way I think.

It's mastery. It's beautiful. It's your gift. It's. It's awesome.

Well, listen, I appreciate you so much. I appreciate you, appreciate the way you think. I'm so glad to have you on this podcast. If right now, if you're watching, I'm holding up. Buy back your time. If you're not watching, I should say, if you're not watching, I'm holding it up. Buy back your time. Dan Martell, go to Amazon, grab the book, buy one for a friend. This is a time in history not to sit on your hands, not to be uncertain. And if it's led to disappointment, I get it. Congratulations for being human. Let's. Let's be bold, let's be brave. Let's help shift this world one person at a time. Why not start with you? Thank you so much for being a part of the own your future podcast. Go find Dan, grab his book, and we'll see you next time.