How Dan Martell Built The Ultimate Coaching Business for SaaS Companies Without Being Scammy

You don't grow when things are good. You grow when you inflict pain or there's a challenge or there's frustration.

You've done a lot of different things, and I'm curious, maybe just a little bit about your background first, and then I want to talk about kind of the long-term vision too. So go for it, however you want to take it.

I grew up in a really challenging environment, in and out of jail in my teenage years, ended up in rehab at 17, spent 11 months there rebuilding my self-confidence. working through emotional challenges, trauma, that kind of stuff. And at the end of that, I discovered programming, helping Rick the maintenance guy clear out one of the old— it was a church campus rehab center, and there was an old book on Java programming, and I just took to it. And essentially, software became my new addiction at 17. Entrepreneurship had always been a passion of mine. I just wasn't doing anything legal prior to that. So, I started a bunch of companies, and what's cool is it just, it's become the ultimate personal development program for me. That's my feedback loop is my businesses. Since then, I've started 5 companies. The first 2 were complete failures. Things shifted for me when I started reading books. So I read, Love Is a Killer App is the first book I ever read at 23. But then I read a bunch of the top, you know, 100. E-Myth resonated with me from Michael Gerber. I hired an E-Myth business coach before I even had my third company. 'Cause I was just so fed up failing. That's the one that, you know, made me a millionaire at 27. And then I took all my money and reinvested it in software companies as an angel investor. I think I've got 3 IPOs about to happen this year. So that's turned out to be pretty awesome. And then as you mentioned with SaaS Academy, we're rebranding to sascoach.com, and it is the largest training coaching company in the world at this point for SaaS founders. And then I have my other venture thing that I talk a lot about called High Speed Ventures, which is where I buy companies 100% with my own capital and do what I teach my clients to do over here with the High Speed team and having a lot of fun there. So just keeping busy, man. I just, I just love life and I know what I'm good at and I stick to my lane.

Got it. I love that.

Every person in the world, doesn't matter if you're 50 or 21 or 17, If you start today and you apply 1% better every day, your life can look magically different in a short amount of time.

And I will say that picture was probably the most impactful thing because I, I didn't realize before, I didn't know that you were this big guy before and you're trying, like everyone's trying to figure things out, right? They're going through a journey. You just mentioned it, trying to compound 1% better every single day. You start reading, you start building habits, you might have some failures in the beginning but You figure it out, right? So this is really for anybody that's listening right now that's just starting out. Like, it takes time to build up, right? So—

Well, dude, I had 10 years-ish. So I started at 17. I didn't become a millionaire until I was 27. 10 years. And I'm talking like 100-hour weeks. Like, the amount of time I wasted doing shit that didn't matter, that I didn't know any better, like, it's embarrassing, dude. It's embarrassing. The relationship stuff I had to learn, right? I used to be engaged. And then I wasn't, right? Like, I mean, there's— that's why when people tell me about their struggles, it's like, I'm not sure I've been through that specific situation, but I just know that no pressure, no diamonds. I'm here because I decided to continuously audit and investigate and ask myself what the next level is. I've designed my life so that I can play the game and never have to stop playing. And I know there's always another level, and it doesn't matter where you're at. There is always another level for you, and who you can be is who you must be, right? Like if you have the potential, you have to express that. I believe that at my core, and everybody listening has way more potential. And if you choose to just sit on the couch and watch Netflix, that's your thing. But just know that you can't ask to live an extraordinary life and act ordinary.

It doesn't work.

Those 2 things are opposed, right? You know, somebody said once, like, you know, do what others won't so you can live a life others can't. And that's the biggest thing that over the years I've gotten better at is the more successful I am, the harder I work, the more I show up, the more disciplined I am, the more I'm willing to grind. And I didn't have that in my mid-20s that I have now in my early 40s, that I am absolutely gonna be doing this when I'm 100. Like, people think I work out and work hard now? Wait.

I mean, you're just starting. That's what it is.

Just starting. It's kind of like writing, right? Like, I like to have written. I like to have run. I like to have done the competition. In the moment, I don't like it, but to me, it's in that moment of conversation with yourself, right? Like, do I slow down? Do I stop? Do I fake an injury? Like, trust me, every thought that people— like, people think Like, I've had friends, they're like, yeah, I couldn't do it because I hurt myself. Nah, you didn't fucking hurt yourself. Like, you just— let's be honest. Like, whatever. I'll call people out when I think that they're not being honest with themselves. But those are like— the truth is those are the moments when you actually get to grow. Like, you don't grow when things are good. You grow when you inflict pain or there's a challenge or there's frustration, right? Like, the no pressure, no diamonds.

Yeah.

You know, like you are, so it's kind of like you have to do the thing first to become the person who can have the thing. So that's like the do, you know, or sorry, be, do, have. Some people think you need to have the thing to become the person, right? And that's just not the way it is. So I don't know, I'm just, I just know that I've got way more to give. And I'm willing to do the work. And my true north is just people. I just love people. I love to build teams. I love to build companies. That's the game I play. Like, can I get better at communicating? Can I get better at inspiring? Can I get better at giving clear direction? Can I get better at making better decisions strategically, sequencing? That's the game that I play.

So it's no longer SaaS Academy. It's gonna be called SaaS Coach. Is that what it is?

Yep.

Okay. So let's talk about that because I know you— I think you started this business, what, 5, 6 years ago? And I know— I think I was talking to Syed and you actually brought the idea to him, so he was talking about it. So what— can you talk a little more about the business and then how you make money? And then I guess for people that are interested, what level of SaaS people do you work with?

Yeah. So I mean, I've known Syed for a while. He became a client Probably two years ago, I love Syed and his team. Always built that awesome motive. We so in regards to what we do, we have three distinct programs, and they're designed for people that are revenue generating. So I've got my accelerator level for people that are trying to get to that kind of ten fifteen k a month in recurring revenue. But you have to have a product. Like I don't help people start businesses and build software. There's a ton of great people out there. Dane Maxwell had the foundation. Et cetera, et cetera. Eric, maybe you know some people. So like, I don't help people start anymore because I don't— it just wasn't my passion. My passion is helping driven, ambitious, motivated founders do great. So that's accelerator programme. Then I have my SaaS Academy, the academy side, which I help people kind of go from that $20K MRR to about $300K a month in recurring revenue. And then I have my boardroom programme, which is for the higher-end clients that are at like $3 to $4 million ARR, $300,000 MRR to scale up to 10 and beyond. But I also coach, you know, the founders of ClickFunnels and AgoraPulse. So like a bunch of companies that are in the 50— achievers.com, I mean, they're $160 million a year in revenue. So my— I'm just all B2B SaaS. It's what I do, it's what I love, and those are the programmes that help people get results really fast.

Got it. Makes sense. At the end of the day, when you look at Dan's ads, right, and I see your ads sometimes, it's straight up like, here are the templates, right? Here's the shortcuts, right? You get the value right there. It's not— look, to your point, it's not look at my McLaren, look at my Lambo, look at my big house, right? Because that's not what matters. It's when you, when you're working with people that have already started, they don't really care about that stuff. They just want to focus on the business, right? They don't want to focus on the Lambo and all that.

So— I call them the frustrated builders. Like, Alex Becker is one of my clients, and like You know, he studied a lot of those guys, the same Sam Ovens, Russell Brunson, etc. And like I, you know, so I what a lot of the people that work really well in my world are the frustrated builders. They're people that are bootstrapped technical backgrounds typically or marketing backgrounds, and they just want to be shown how to do it. They don't need to be convinced. They don't need the the weird motivations. Like they're looking to build real value, and they're just sick of like okay, we have a churn problem, or we have a pricing problem, or we have a You know, a team issue. Just show me how to solve the problem. And that's— I literally ask myself every day, how do I create more value for my customers than anybody else in the world?

I love that. And by the way, I do want to just let everyone know too, the number I was referring to earlier, that the 35% to 50% churn, that's monthly, right? Dan was talking about an annual churn, right? Which means way lower, obviously.

2% per month.

2%-ish, right? Yeah. So, um, so I guess, you know—

Oh, and a lot of that is because they exit their company. So just so people understand, like, we had 24 private equity Can you speak to maybe your biggest success story?

Like this company went from $0 to $100 million ARR?

Like a client of mine?

Yeah.

I mean, the bigger numbers are harder to achieve at scale, right? So they call them triple, triple doubles. So I would say my favourite more recently that I'm intimate with, because again, I'm not coaching, I have my coaches that coach, so I'm not aware, even though we share customer wins, etc. My favourite is Jo from a company called Gorilla. Jo was probably $30K in MRR when she worked, she joined about 14 months ago, and I think she just reported $140K in MRR. But the thing that I'm most proud of Jo is that she also bought back her time and she's only, 'cause this is a big principle, right?

Yeah.

I believe that you have a calendar and you have things in your calendar that either give you energy or take energy from you. And some things are tactical, some are strategic. What I love about Jo is not only did she grow her business executing our growth playbooks, but she's created a life where she's a new mother. She had a 6-month-old, like she, so she had a baby in the middle of all this, okay? So that's the reason why I'm most impressed with Jo is 'cause of that stuff, that anybody else would have gave themselves a reason to take their foot off the gas and she doubled down and she executed and she did that. But dude, if you go on my, well, the new website we're gonna be launching soon, we have hundreds of testimonials Our average client grows about 270% a year, right? So that's average. And honestly, if people are not doing the work, we just ask them to go find another group. We don't do well with people that think they're going to just buy some like fairy magic hustle dust or something.

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