Dan Martell Of Clarity Reveals His Framework For Success In Startups And In Life

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Hey there. Welcome back to the show. I'm Brad Costanzo, your host of Bacon Wrap Business. And if this is your first time listening or in this case, watching the video episode of this, then I welcome all the new subscribers and listeners. Cannot wait to share with you the stuff that's on this episode today. One of the really, really cool things, things about today's episode is I'm actually interviewing the founder of Clarity fm. His name is Dan Martel. And once more, I've been a fan of the service that he built the software as a service, which is really a place where experts go to gather to give advice for years. And it was a real blessing to get to meet Dan about four months ago at a party here in San Diego. And we got to kind of talking and then we decided to do this interview together because I really wanted to get in there and pick his brain about some of the challenges that and successes that he's gone through as he's built. I think he's built five businesses alone or, you know, with his team right now. And I believe he said two or three of them failed and two or three of them were, you know, wild successes. In fact, I believe he sold three of his businesses, the most recent one just a few months ago being, well, Clarity fm. And although he's still very closely involved with them, he's moving on to some new ventures and that's one of the things we're going to talk about today. But when I get somebody like Dan on who is angel funded, like 30 different companies, he's originally from Canada and not that that matters, it's just everywhere I see Dan's profile in his bio. He's always like Canadian entrepreneur. Like that really matters. Bottom line, he's an entrepreneur and he's a great entrepreneur and he's somebody we can all learn from, especially when you hear his struggles and when you hear how he started. For instance, Dan, you may not know this, but you will soon. He was in jail when he was a kid. He was a juvenile delinquent and that's where he learned to code. And he came out of this and he built multiple multi million dollar businesses. And what was really cool as I am actually recording this part of the interview prior like after I've already done the interview is that I know what we talked about. So a couple of the things you're going to learn is the mindset that went into creating these, like where the spark of inspiration came, where what he did when he didn't know where else to turn and what his philosophy on the type of business you should be building. How he feels about that after the exit moment that a lot of us entrepreneurs really would love, you know, to exit a business for, you know, seven, eight, nine figures and what's next. But then we're also going to talk about what's next. And I'm going to pick Dan's brain for some really cool bacon wrapped strategies. These are the strategies and tactics that these, you know, these folks don't like to tell everybody but I'm going to force him to tell me this one. And I already heard it as the time of this intro here. And I can tell you it is awesome and it is so awesome that it is going to change the way that I start to deliver information once I kind of really wrap my mind around this. So if you are in any way, shape or form in the advice industry or you know what, scrap that, that's where it's going to be most applicable. But if you're selling anything at all, then you're gonna really wanna pay attention to the advice that Dan gives. And he even said, man, people don't usually get this out of me. It's something really big. But I want you to hear it because I think it'll help you as well. Now before we get going over there, I wanna let you know that I did have to edit the audio and the video a little bit because Dan is up in Canada and he is in like north of Maine, Nova Scotia area I guess, and I'm in San Diego and I don't know if it was the Internet or whatever, but we had a couple of little. Gonna try to edit those out and present to you the best of this episode. Sorry. Episizzle of bacon wrapped business featuring Dan Martell, founder of Clarity, founder of Flowtown, founder of a lot of companies. So without any further ado, let's try to jump over here and talk to Dan. Okay, Dan, welcome to bacon wrap business. How are you buddy?

I'm doing great, Brad. Thanks for having me on, man.

Yeah, it's good to see you again. I mean, as I said, the last time we hung out was in February here in San Diego, and you've seen since went about as far away as you can get. You said you're wearing near New Brunswick.

I'm in New Brunswick. Yeah. I call it the top hat of Maine.

Right.

So you've got Maine and then you got this province of New Brunswick, which is really. It's on the ocean. So I'm still close to the water, but night and day difference from San Diego, that's for sure.

You know, the water temperature is still probably about the same, though. It's freezing when you get in the water out here.

Warmer here. We actually have this really neat park part of the world where we have another province called Prince Edward Island.

Yeah.

And it's the warmest water north of Virginia. So Pacific is crazy cold. Yeah. I mean, I went surfing there in San Diego. Yeah, we're lucky we get it warm, but I mean, for six weeks out of the summer, the rest of the year it's frozen, so.

But we didn't get on here to talk about surfing and beaches, although I could all day. One of the things I think is really cool to have you on the show for is because several years ago I found Clarity fm, which was your company, since sold it, which is great. But I loved it. I was an evangelist for it. I was telling everybody that you guys need to go out and jump on this thing right now. I mean, even for one of the smallest reasons, just personal, like to have a profile up there is. It was great for personal branding and SEO. I put my thing up there and after like maybe a two weeks, it was like number three or number four for my name. And it's just a great way to put yourself out there. Like, hey, look, this guy is actually an expert in all this stuff and he's charging money, so he must be good. And it was just really neat. And then I found a lot of people had discovered me. So when did you start? Before I go into the Clarity, why don't you. We're not going to talk a lot about this because I want to talk about what you're doing right now, but I think it's really important for people to understand what you built just prior to this, because it really leads into what you're working on right now. So explain Clarity in a nutshell.

Yeah, So, I mean, I'll go back. I'll give you the quick 30 seconds.

Yeah.

So my personal story is, you know, like a lot of entrepreneurs, I had a really colorful childhood, really challenging environment. You know, I got put into group homes, foster homes at a young age.

I read about that. I was going to bring that up.

Yeah, yeah. No. And, you know, it was through going through that challenge and kind of, you know, I mean, it got really bad. Ended up in jail a couple times. Went to rehab at 17 years old.

All those parking tickets, right? It was parking tickets.

Yeah, parking tickets. That's exactly what it was. But it was in rehab where I discovered programming, this book on Java programming and then the Internet when I got out. And, you know, it just changed my life. And it probably saved my life because it gave me something to focus on that was obviously not illegal that I. That I. I really felt passionate and excited about. And I've been just super fortunate and blessed to have gone on to build five companies since then, one of them being Clarity. I raised money from Mark Cuban last year. I got to spend a week with Richard Branson at his house in Switzerland. And it's really crazy to even think again. I come from a small town of 80,000 people in the middle of nowhere to having these opportunities and kind of experiences, and I just feel really lucky. And that was really the inspiration for Clarity. And Clarity was a marketplace for entrepreneurs to get advice from other entrepreneurs over the phone to grow their dreams and hit their goals. And that's what we did. We raised 1.6 million in funding. We grew it to 50,000 experts within two years. 300,000 calls. Recently got acquired by a great company called Startups Co, which is now the largest startup community in the world. And, you know, it really allowed me to fulfill that passion and mission, which was a lesson I learned when I was 17, when I was in rehab. The reason why this place worked for me was all the staff were ex drug addicts. Right. So they had a philosophy. Yeah, they had a philosophy that unless you've been in that hole, you've tried to climb out, it was really hard for you to kind of just scream down, telling the people the kind of different places, put your hands and your feet to get out of it if you've never done it yourself. Right. And for me, that really resonated is. And when it came to business, that same philosophy of getting advice from people that have been through it before, that had the success that you admire, is the right way to get advice. And that's why we built Clarity is kind of. I was living in San Francisco at the time, and there was just an abundance of amazing knowledge and experience. And I thought, what would happen if you could unlock all this advice and experience and knowledge and make it available for the rest of the world? For people that need it most. And that's what we did.

Yeah. And that's what I thought was really remarkable. And there's one of the hardest things in the, in the past has been how do I get connected with people who can help me out. And there really was no. I mean, you had to be really, really crafty in order to do that. I mean, actually, one of the best things I've ever done is start a podcast like this because it allows me to connect with individuals like you, with, like, other people so that I can get on there and talk to them. When the Clarity Marketplace came up, you kind of realized that, yeah, there are people out there, they're willing to help, they're willing to give a hand. And most successful people like to give advice, especially if people are paying for it, if they're demonstrating that they really want it. And it's not just, hey, can I pick your brain? And which is the worst thing.

That's the unfortunate part. I mean, the truth is people that have, that have gotten success, like myself, like, we know we're only there because of a thousand other people that spent the 15 minutes to an hour time teaching us and sharing with us and supporting us and lifting us up. And like, you know, the unfortunate part is it's. Without the monetary friction or filter, it's really hard to decipher if somebody truly needs you and your advice at that moment versus somebody that's got an ulterior motive, like they're trying to sell you something or they want to pitch you as an investor or they want to get an introduction to somebody, you know, in your network or whatever it is. So, you know, we never figured out a way to do it through other means. Although there were some really creative ideas we came up with using kind of social networks and graphs and stuff. The money one was a no brainer and it turned out to be a really great way for people to also raise money for their charities of their choice, which was a big piece of clarity in our mission in life.

And just allow people to make extra income to do what they love to do, which is give advice to other people. And still. And what was neat is it unlocked a whole new segment of people. So, like, a lot of Clarity members were not full time consultants or experts. They were entrepreneurs that felt like this is a great tool for them to make themselves available without distracting them from their primary business.

That's how I use it. I put my Clarity profile on there before I was an official consultant because I thought it was a great place to be what gave you the initial idea? What was that spark idea that said, I think I've got something here.

Yeah. So I mean, the way I've built all my companies has always been solving a problem that I've had myself that's kind of like just first order filter. And what happened is after I sold my last company, Flowtown In 2011, I got an influx of emails from people asking to pick my brain or have coffee or what it is. It's probably the Canadian in me that just can't. Like I reply to every email if you've ever emailed me.

Canadians are so nice.

I mean, it's just in your blood. Just so grateful. You know, we're just, we just. It's kind of like this, aw shucks, like, I can't believe we get to do this.

So.

So you don't forget where you came from. So I wanted to reply and engage in all these people, but there's just, there was no way. There was like 150plus emails of people wanting to get together in person. So what I did as a developer, you know, I write code, I sat down and I built this really simple call app. It was a link with a form and you can put your name and number and reason one for the call. It would queue up all the requests and then whenever I was free, it would try to call them back. It would proxy my cell number. So it would use this 1-800-number, call both parties and if they were free, it would connect us. And if they weren't free, it would just call the next person. And it was cool. Cause it would tell me who. It'd be like calling Brad to talk about his new podcast and it would tell me that before it called him. And then when you'd be like connecting Brad, then it'd be like, hey man, you wanna talk about your podcast? And it was really this really neat kind of almost like call system. And I had it for probably about six weeks. I kind of plowed through all those email requests to pick my brain. And one night I decided to go to the roof of my house and tweet it out to my Twitter followers. Cause prior to that I was just using it privately in email. And I went to the roof and I tweeted out and I just said, if you need startup advice, book like schedule me here. And I spent three hours talking to like 20 entrepreneurs all over the world.

One of the things I read that you had said in some of your either blog posts or podcasts, the stuff I was doing My pre research on you is that, you know, when you did sell your company, one of the big realizations that you had was, you know, hey, like, you probably retire if you want, right? But crap, I'm bored. Or I'm just not. It's not all about the exit. And once you get done, especially when you're young and you've got a lot of creative energy. So what was the biggest.

You know, what was the biggest epiphany you had when that happened? Because I know there's a lot of folks out there, a lot of startups and founders and people who are the end all be all the nirvana for them is to get that exit so they don't have to hustle. Or at least they think that. What was the biggest epiphany you had when you, you know, sold everything?

Yeah, I mean, I was. I was 28 at the time that my third company, Spheric, got acquired. It was like May. So summer was around the corner. I decided to buy a hot tub, a wakeboarding boat, and a cottage. And I thought, what more could you need? You know, like, I was, you know, pretty young guy, and I had probably to this day, one of the best summers of my life. You know, a lot of. A lot of fun excursions. But, you know, pretty much come August when everybody was done through their vacations and people started going back to university or back to their jobs, I. I just thought, like, it was probably the most unproductive last four or five months of my life as well. And I'm like, you know, obviously I'm capable about for like, solving problems and creating value. Like, I accomplished something I never personally even thought I could do, let alone other people. You know, we had won all these awards, and I got recognized as the top entrepreneur in the province and eventually in Canada. So it was just. It was just a thing about like, you know, especially going through what I did in my younger teenage years. Like, I didn't want to waste my life, right? And I think that's where the original hustle came to kind of create a business. But then it was like, okay. Once I got to this point where financially I didn't need to work, I also had to ask myself, it's like, oh, but am I just gonna waste my days by not having impact? And there's actually a great quote, John Asraf, who's a native of San Diego, guy I finally got to meet. So this is so funny. Cause, like 2008, his quote, never met him before. Read it in some book that said, ask not if you're worthy of your goals, ask instead. Are your goals worthy of your life?

Ah, I like that.

That quote says, set me on a mission to buy a plane ticket, move to San Francisco. Yeah, that one's. That one's a keeper.

And.

And. And take a stab at. What I always admired was building a software technology company in the heart of where the smartest people in the world, you know, come together to do that. Right? And. And. And be me being from this small town. And, yeah, maybe financially I was okay, but, like, you know, I was really a small fish or a big fish in a small pond. Like, taking myself out of that scenario and going to a city where I didn't know anybody, I didn't know one person, and seeing if any of my crazy ideas would hold water, I'm here. Yeah. Like, hey, I got some ideas. Let's see if it works. That's great. That was. That quote really set me on fire to try it out. And, you know, it was pretty cool. You know, after I started coming off Flowtown three years later, we. We ended up raising money, sold that company, and it was while doing Clarity. When I raised my round of funding, I actually got them to wire the money to my hometown because I built Clarity out of Canada. And that was the plan. Like, never thought it would work, but if you ask me, why are you moving to San Francisco? I was like, someday I'm gonna go learn, and I'm gonna bring everything I learned back to this small town of people and teach all these younger kids that were like me, that didn't have any kind of people building technology companies around them. And I remember the day one of my investors asked me, they're like, where is Moncton and why am I wiring my money there? And I'm like, hey, man, this is just. This is part of the deal, man. I want to build my company there. There's a lot of reasons for that. And that was really neat. Five years after the fact came full circle.

Oh, that's awesome. You know, and that's the thing, is the whole concept of the serial entrepreneur and people who start, sell, start, sell, etcetera, There is no real end game for people like us. Because I think that when you get. When you have the drive and the skills necessary to build something of value, and especially to build something of immense value, then you're done. You don't lose those skills. You don't lose that drive and ambition. You don't lose. Because it's never really about the money. It's always.

This is the Thing about retiring, right?

Yeah.

What I do every day, what I did for my whole life, is who I am. It's an extension of who I am. You can't keep me away from doing what I do because I absolutely love to do it. So it's like, you know, I just find the whole idea of not getting up and creating the most boring, meaningless life, and that's just not what I lived. And I don't think that's why I was given a second chance to do. And I just can't do it to myself or my family. And I'm not happy. I mean, you read the blog post I recently wrote. Like, I took six months off recently, I was gonna take a year off. I lasted six months and realized I am not happy.

Yeah, yeah, that's. I've experienced that. I know exactly where you're coming from. You said something like, I'm not an expert because I think I am. I'm an expert because I know I'm a student.

Yeah. I mean, that was the thing that actually got tweeted out a lot, right. I don't think I'm an expert as I know I'm a student.

Yes, that's it. I don't think I'm an expert. I know I'm a student. Being a student, constant student, has been one of the biggest, biggest, best things I've ever done for my own success. So how has that really affected you? What are you constantly. What are you learning right now? What are you really excited about?

So, you know, it's kind of one of those things. Like somebody asked me today, they go, you seem like a guy that makes decisions fast, right. And that's true. But they go, do you always like, are you always like that? And it took me back. Cause I'm like, I had to think about kind of my thinking framework. And here's the way I am is long term strategy and like starting a company, it takes me a while and a while could be three months, right. To some people that seems fast, but to me that's slow. So I'll take three months to kind of go through this decision. Took me six months, Right. But once I decide, I'm full on, like possessed, right? Like, consume, like, screw anything else in my life. Obviously my family's still important, but like social events and all this other stuff. So because I wrote that post Thursday last week, I. I've just been on a tear and really it's just dissecting this industry, right. Some people call it the expert industry, some people call it online Marketing, media companies, online education, content creation, whatever you want to call it, just becoming a student of that industry and trying to make a list of all the strategies I'm going to have to figure out, plus all the content I'm going to have to create and really figure out how can I have the most impact as possible. So what I've been learning a lot lately is like crazy stuff, like, how do you conduct a three day seminar? How do you get in front of a group of people, keep the energy high, transfer knowledge, teach adult education. Like, I'm not a formal teacher, I've never taught anything. Right. I build companies and like now have to think about how do you create frameworks and design content and ensure that things are landing and sticking and being able for the people hearing it, to teach, teach it to other people and then writing, right? Like someday I've got to write a book. So like make discipline. Every day I write, you know, 1500 words every day. It's like, just get them done. And a lot of that turns into blog posts or stuff I'll keep for later. But you know, like, I'm really in this really amazing creative space and it's just been super fun, but it's all new to me. Right? And I think that's why you reached out, because you read the blog, you said like, hey, Dan, we should reconnect, blah, blah, blah. I'd love to, you know, talk to you about what I, what I've learned. Because you've been doing this for a while. For me, it's really about just finding the pieces that resonates with me and kind of putting them together. But this is no different than how I build any company.

Right.

I think that's the solve your own problem. So for me, I write content from things that I've experienced and challenges I've had around business and marketing and fundraising and software and that kind of stuff. And then get inspired from people and say, well, this part really feels good and I'm gonna emulate that or model that and know for other parts. So I've learned from everybody. I mean, there's, I probably been fortunate for the last six months to meet like 150 people in the industry and some people doing eight figures and some people just, you know, still struggling. But each one had something to teach me. It's been really fun.

That's awesome. So in any of your businesses, what is maybe a few of the really cool things that you've done to provide a ton of leverage?

Here's the thing is I'm going to tell you it and it doesn't sound exciting, but it is the most invaluable thing that I do every day. There's been two books that I know have been written about about this concept. One's called the Slight Edge, the other one's called the Compound Effect.

Yep, I've heard of both, haven't read either. I think they're both in my Kindle on Deck. I will read them.

Well, start with either one. They kind of talk about the same concept, but the idea is what are some success principles or some daily habits that you're gonna do that will over time add to your success? Right. So you know, as an example, one of those things I do personally is I read 10 pages of a book every day. It's a non negotiable. It happens no matter what. I've been doing it for 15 years. It's just part of my approach from a business point of view. Once a week I organize a founders lunch or a founders dinner where I invite at least four or five other people to have lunch. Actually just had one today at my house and we just get together with other entrepreneurs. Another one is every day I work on marketing for 30 minutes and that there's always bigger initiatives and projects, but I'll always spend 30 minutes understanding source of time, traffic, conversions, messages, making sure things are wired up and proper. And again, it's 30 minutes every day for three or four or five years is how you end up building eight figure businesses. Right?

Right.

But doing it once a month when things are broken or things aren't working out, I don't think that's how it works. And for me I've decided these habits have to be something I'm willing to do for the rest of my life.

Right.

So regardless of what I'm working on, I have my personal blog that's kind of my outlet when I don't have an active business. But 30 minutes every day, regardless if I have a business or not, is spent on understanding how the traffic's coming to my blog, converting my newsletter, whatever it is.

Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I was listening to another friend of mine named Michael Bernoff and I don't know if you know Michael or know of him, but heard his name. Yeah, great guy. Another expert he was talking about and I think this has been said elsewhere, but you know, if you just improve 1% a day, he'll ask crowds, you know, how great will you be in a year? And they'll say, well, 365% better. He's like. No, no, no. It's a compounding effect exactly like that. So, you know, you're improving 1% over day two.

Like 10,000.

It's. Yeah, it's crazy. And that really, that stuff like that resonates with me because it's something tangible that I can hold on to. And I like that you said that because it's. It's important. I've got my little whiteboard. You can't see it over here, but I've got my little. My daily things that I absolutely will do. I write a little bit every day. I will work out, I'll do a handful of things, and I just mark my little. Every week, I just do my little seven little things to make sure I do it.

What are you terrible at in business? What is the bane of your existence? Every one of us has something we hate, whether it's spreadsheets or whether it's.

I mean, I think it's very traditional entrepreneurship stuff. So. I mean.

Yeah.

So I don't. But I guess what might be useful to the audience is the way I've dealt with those. Right. So, like, I to this day have never created an invoice. Never.

All the financial.

I have no need to create invoices or follow up on receivables when I can just build systems to have other people do that. Way funner. I mean, I try to hire people that work at the things or play at the things I work.

Yeah.

So at a very young age, when I was 24, I hired a woman named Sandy. She still works for me today. She's worked in every one of my companies, and she is that person. Right. I read the four hour work week and I went nuts. I implemented it all. So I've never touched mail. I hate paper. I'm a software guy, so that makes sense. So every week I get emails with all of my different mailboxes and corporations and business interests. I just don't do anything that my filters. If it doesn't. If it's not creating value for the world using my unique gift or spending time with my family and friends and relationships, I don't do it. I don't mow my lawn, I don't clean my car. I don't do my groceries. I don't cook my food, I don't do shit. And I'm okay with that. And a lot of people that don't know me very well, they think I'm arrogant because I'm like. But here's the way I look at it. If you catch Me or if I catch myself doing that, that means I don't respect myself. And it bugs me if I ever catch myself in a position where I'm doing something that is not the highest use of my time and what I know in my abilities. And I could have been doing that. I feel like I've done a disservice to the people that I serve, to my family, to my employees, to my investors or whatever, whoever those people are, because I know better. And now that I've told your audience, they know better.

That's right. You know, I've struggled with that for years. And I think. I think it's because, like, I'm much more naturally exactly like yourself. Like, I don't. There's certain things I don't want to do. I was raised like, my dad is the guy. The exact opposite. Like, why hire it don if you can do it myself, right? And it was like, that was instilled in me. Like, why would I pay somebody to mow the lawn when I. I can go out there and just do it on Saturday.

Capable of mowing the lawn, right?

And even if you hate, like, if you love mowing the lawn, if that's at your Zen time, cool. It was not. Mine was the allergies, and I was blowing up. And I'm like. Like, I'm never going to do this again. And I've also found, like, I heard many people talk about it. Tim Ferriss had a podcast about decision fatigue. And I have also found, yeah, the more decisions and things I have to think about or do during the day, the worse I am with the stuff that matters, which is the creation. This creation and selling are the only two things I want to do. Creation, selling, and connecting.

I said creating products or creating your service and marketing or selling. Selling your product. Those are, like, the two things every entrepreneur should be doing all the time.

One of the problems that a lot of entrepreneurs like us have is we're a little bit add. We were so interested in everything. We'll. We'll procrastinate. Like, I will procrastinate by starting, like, something else, whether it's a new business, a project, or whatever. So because, hey, I've got a little free time. This is going well. I'm going to start something over here, and then that's what ends up derailing. That's that indigestion. I was reading somebody else saying that the best thing that an entrepreneur with that can do is procrastinate just with your. You know, sounds so silly, but procrastinate with your hobbies and do that really, really.

Intently, because otherwise you will start other things that are going to require work. It's always a hobby in the very beginning. Oh, I'm going to start a podcast. I'm going to have a little bit of fun with this. This actually happened to me, right? So I was starting my podcast as a total side business to my normal consulting business, and then I would start to get derailed. In the beginning, I had the time, and then all of a sudden, it became responsibilities, et cetera, et cetera. And I saw a little bit of that turbulence in my life until I systematized things and hired the stuff out. But it was kind of funny, like, to procrastinate in the things you really love to do. But you also mentioned something about, look at where you procrastinate. What do you love doing? Maybe that's. Maybe that's gonna create an opportunity for you.

Yeah, well, that. That was, you know, that. That came from the blog post where I kind of announced what was next for me and kind of the journey of discovering that. And, you know, when I asked entrepreneurs, I've helped other people kind of because I've built so many companies. You know, people that have sold the company and they're in that position of what do I work on next? I always ask them, like, well, what do you do when you procrastinate, Right? Like, what is that thing? Do you play video games? Do you. Do you work out? Do you clean your house? Do you. I mean, it's crazy. My wife cleans her house, and I still find it ridiculous. Again, we have a cleaning lady, but she has the need, and that's when she's cleaning. I know that there's something big going on at work that she doesn't want to tackle, and I don't. I stopped calling her out on it because, you know, I got to choose my battles. But, you know, everybody has their own thing. And for me, I always found, like, I was. I was offering to help somebody else or take somebody out for coffee and talk to them or tweet out that I could be helpful and do some clarity calls or whatever it was. And, you know, I feel like that's sometimes a place where you can look to figure out what you should be doing full time. Because if it's, you know, if you can eventually get to a position where your life is built around that thing that you love, that thing that you default to procrastinate, I think that's when true work is attached to intent and Meaning that it is just unstoppable. Right. Like that your ability to create value in the world is uncapped because it's aligned with who you are at a fundamental level.

Right. So going forward and helping people and doing this again because you, you were helping amazing entrepreneurs, you're doing this great stuff with clarity. Now you've said that you don't want to start another software company or tech business. Right. Because you know we.

In the near future.

In the near future, right. Yeah. Let's say you're brand new out of it. So. So I'm sure that there's a lot of headaches you don't want to deal with.

The reason I say that is because I actually see a model for building online training courses and content and a lot of value for people and then monetizing it and then adding a software product onto it as a continuity product. Like I've seen this as a trend. Right. When you see a lot of these guys, you know, I think it's Nathan Barry from he has an authority product. He has convertkit.com right. Or Laura Roeder had her in influence courses and now she has Oscar. Right. A social media management tool. And you just see this. So I think there's definitely a possibility within the next five years as I build my audience that there's going to be a problem that I have they might have as well and I could solve that with software. So I don't want to say I'm never going to start another software company. It may not be a traditional venture back like I've done for the last two companies. It would just be a hybrid of that.

Right. So the model that you see going forward for you, at least right now, is it information, products, consulting, public speaking, is this kind of the model that you're foreseeing right now?

I mean I kind of drew a map. It's actually fine, I'll show it to your audience. It's hilarious. If you want to know what.

Entrepreneur does to build a business plan, it kind of looks like this.

Yep. Love it.

Right. This scribbles.

Uh huh. I do that concept.

That's my world domination map. And I mean, I don't know, like I'm new to this, right. So what I did is I just kind of found people that were, that had the brand, the execution, the business model to support. Cause the thing with the business model, it's not about making money off people, it's really about just the opportunity to have more impact. Right. The more value I create, the more revenue then I can dive kind of put that back into the marketing and just have a bigger audience. So, you know, it's pretty traditional. Like I found the model that feels really good is, you know, speaking not so much. Definitely going to write a book, definitely going to have a lot of online courses, going to be very focused on kind of vertical kind of topic areas. Definitely want to do some seminars around those topic areas. Definitely want to have kind of an inner circle, higher end group.

What are some of the topic areas? Not to interrupt, but what are some of the topic areas that you feel the most passionate? Because business is, is obviously extremely broad and you've got background with software startups, etc. Is that kind of your ideal?

Yeah, so it's kind of the way I see it is kind of like, you know, you should always focus on a niche and then kind of expand. So I'd say for the next two years it'll very much be around software and kind of innovative marketing approaches that are very unique to that world that can be applied broader in a broader sense. But you know, I have a bunch of co content I've already blogged about, but I've never kind of formalized into training that I've been calling idea to exit. Like how do you go from idea to build, you know, start, build and grow your company to some kind of outcome and exit doesn't mean, you know, raise money and sell or it just means build a business you could exit. Right. So like I've been fortunate to, you know, every business I've built, if I didn't go to work or get up that day, the company continued to group. I mean Clarity continues to have record weeks and I haven't been there in six months.

Isn't that great?

The team has built anything new. They're just migrating the data and the back end system. So you know, I have a really specific philosophy on how to build companies, what I call growth engines that continue to grow on their own. So it would be very much around that for the first two years and then broaden that out to more operational philosophies that I have around building companies and hiring and staffing and stuff. So and then eventually I want to get more into high performance. You know, like I really feel, you know, my last company I. So my wife started a company, I started a company, we had a kid, we had another kid. Eleven months later we built a house. Then when we had the second kid, we actually built a new house all in a two year period. Wow, you're busy, happy, love each other. Kids are great. So I feel I have a lot of ideas around life lessons, especially with my background and kind of the craziness that I went through growing up. I've really had to grow from that and kind of learn what things do I want, kind of what patterns do I want and not repeat.

Right.

A lot of some passions around that that I'd like to share. So. But that might be like, you know, four or five years down the road. So that's the general themes, I would say. And then each one's gonna follow a very specific model.

I love it.

I think people still don't understand the power of video. You know, I'm new to this, right. I just started four months ago, really building my weekly video submissions, right. Four minute, five minute videos, and I've gotten over 60,000 views. I built my email list of 10,000 people and have hundreds of thousands of people visit my blog because of video. I'm building relationships with people all over the world. People that email me, calling me their mentor that I've never talked to.

That's amazing.

Emails with or met in person because the power of video. And when. When you believe business is human or business is personal, like I do, then if you're not online, if you're not creating video, then you're just missing this huge. I mean, 40 Super Bowls worth of views happen every day on YouTube.

I know, it's crazy.

Every day. And you can get in front of your target audience for $0.02 to $0.06 a view. And targeting never existed before. That's why, like, when I look at my plan and it's aggressive and there's a lot of work to do, I'm so excited because I know that as long as I produce the best quality content that I can possibly put together and really create a lot of value and results for people, the medium to get that message out there is unlimited.

Yeah, it really is. Now, are you speaking about getting it out there now? You had, you know, probably a decent Twitter following at the moment. You know, when you put this out.

I didn't have a channel on YouTube.

Okay.

I had no fan page on Facebook.

Cool.

And no email list.

Okay, cool.

Considering I'm right.

But this is perfect. This is exactly where I want to go. And I want to know when you got that out there, because this is really recent, so it's really top of mind. What did you do in order to get that initial.

Burst of audience? I mean, were you running?

There's no burst. That's what I'm saying. Every day I Write.

Yeah, but I mean, are you doing any, like, YouTube advertising, for instance? Are you doing any of that?

Yeah, no, I have a really.

I call it the authority engine. I don't know if somebody has that as a name.

Yeah, somebody does, but I don't.

Yeah, I don't. I don't know. I call it that because I like it. And it's the. You know, I always think when I name things, I have to have a visual mental model for it so that I feel like it has a good position. You know, like, idea to exit has this, like, really, like I can see that or growth engine. So, like, it's visual or kind of, I can connect to it. But the authority engine, the reason why I like that is because it applies to both, you know, personal brands as well as business brands. Like, when you become authority in your industry, you're the guy the newspaper turns to for quotes. You're the person asked to speak at the events. You're the person the competitors look to to copy. Yeah, right. And that is a magical place to be in this world.

So, okay, so you put out great content. The best you could do. You shared it with. Yeah. Consistent, great content. That's actually been one of the problems I've had on the show is every once in a while, it's typically a weekly show, but every once in a while I'll go like two or three weeks without content and just because life gets in the way. But it always kind of drives me nuts. And I've. And I've seen the trends. When I'm not consistent, it starts to flatten out or decrease.

People want consistency. Even if they're inconsistent, they want.

They want that beacon of consistency.

They want to go away for two weeks on vacation and come back and know they got two shows to watch. You know what I mean? Like, and I guess if you ask me, the big thing here's. Here's the number one thing. If you are in the online education space, I'm going to give you the nugget that I've spent tens of thousands of dollars to figure out and hundreds, if not thousands of hours of studying. And nobody told me this. I just started to see it, and when I did it, it changed everything.

Cool. That's what I like to hear. Bring it on.

I'm going to teach you guys this. And I. I wasn't gonna. But you twisted my arm.

I'm known for bringing this out.

The power in teaching is creating a framework. So if you teach a topic, if you're out there talking about Branding, marketing. If you have not designed a framework for somebody else, and here's how you know you've got it figured out. When that person, after hearing you once, can teach their friend or their colleague. Yeah, that's the test.

That's true.

Design a framework, name it, define it, teach it. Then you know you're onto something.

Yeah. Where you really connected those dots too. Because I understand the, you know, I call it like information architecture and framework and breaking down what you're doing into various milestones that you must pass in order to achieve X. But I love the fact that you added so that they know it so well that they can teach somebody else.

Because as they've said, see, even some frameworks, Brad.

Yeah.

They're complicated as shit. Yeah, right. They're like 17 modules and they're. Because when you create them, you want to make it seem complicated because you want to kind of show off how smart you are. And what I'm arguing is design a simple framework. Right. You can talk about the three, you know, five Ps of Mark. There's so many just Google. Google Images type framework. And it has to be able to be taught after they heard it once.

Oh, great book, by the way. I highly recommend buying it. The Micro. The microscript Rules. So it's about microscripts, whether it's developing, you know, USPs or whatever, but the microscript rules. Amazing book. And one of the quotes in there was, it's not what people remember, it's what they repeat. And it's very, very similar.

So my new sound bite, man, that's the one. That's exactly what I was trying to say.

Exactly. Ten years from now, I'm gonna be like John Assaraf. You're sitting next to me and saying, hey, remember when you said that? But I remember that it's. Can you get them to repeat it? Because if they just remember it like you said with Eckhart Tolle's stuff, that's one thing. But if they can go and tell their wife or their friends or whatever, oh, my God, I just learned how to do this. And all you need to do is X, Y and Z.

There's all this stuff that I've started to piece together from, you know, just basic human learning and psychology that we can leverage to do these things. And when I started doing that, that's when everything took off from a content point of view and my audience started to build. Prior to that, I felt like people, they liked the content, but it wasn't differentiated. It wasn't Truly creating value in their lives. And it wasn't something that they could feel like they could execute on. And when I changed that, if you look at my blog post now, there's like an image with drawings, and I just use. I just use Keynote. Yeah, I just use Keynote. Like, it's not complicated, Right. But that's what I do.

So when you go. When you sit down and you're starting to build a framework, how to do xyz, whatever, build a growth engine, how do I build authority? Yeah, I would love to see that, because that's like. Do you start with the end in mind? Do you start with, okay, well, what are the various.

I just draw. I draw pictures.

Okay.

I just think of what I want to teach. So that one was around brands of distinction, kind of like what makes up brands of distinction. It's like this kind of trinity. And then I did one today around growth, stacking, product marketing.

Yeah.

So, like, trying to design that. I had this fly. Like, I have enough. I already have a process. See, the thing is, like, I'm just trying to take all the things that I've done and say, okay, what's these functional units of action and activities that I could kind of create? And I write them down, and then I just say, what would that thing look like if it was a visual representation? So is it a triangle? Is it a circle? Is it a square? Is it octagon? And then I try to figure out, does these things fit? And I'll do a bunch of iterations, right? Like, I might do two or three different. I'll just use my pen and just draw different things. And then I'll be like, oh, that looks good. That feels really good. And then I might share it with a friend on instant message, and then get some feedback and then tweak it, and then I'll write the blog post right now.

Have you ever seen that book? It's a very illustrative book. I'm gonna see if I have it right back here.

Is this Model Generations.

That's amazing. I love that book. However, there is a book, and it's all about sell. Like, kind of selling or drawing visually. It's really about how to represent all your ideas in a very visual way.

Because, I mean, I'm going deep on this. Yeah, I think this is everything.

Yeah, I've got it somewhere. And it's really, really good.

Because you're reading it.

It's like, okay, if you're trying to demonstrate this idea, draw figures like this. Don't do this. Use symbols like this. So it's a. It's really how to. How to demonstrate your ideas, like on the back of a napkin or what you're doing in a way that really, really resonates. And the fact that you bring that up makes me want to go dig through and find it somewhere, because it was that. That good.

Dude, I love it.

So, I mean, Brad, it is. I think it's everything. I think it's. Yeah. If you're a service company, your methodology is your product.

Yeah, yeah. No, you're absolutely right. So the framework is a. To you, a visual representation, but it's also breaking down the components in a way that it can be easily not only integrated and learned, but understood and taught.

Like you said, it's not what I understand, it's what I repeat. If somebody's able to repeat. Like, you know, yesterday I did some training at an event I was asked to speak at, and at the end of it, here's what I did to know if I nailed it. I asked people to look at their notebooks.

Yep.

And when I looked at it, they totally drew the framework, which was great. And then I asked them, I took their notebook and I said, can you draw it again? Here's a piece of paper. Draw it.

That's all. That's cool.

And I was like, yes.

Yep. That means I got it. You know, the. I'm kind of famous among my friends for if I learn something new, let's say I read an info product on a new business model, Right. I will go, I will grab them, and for the next week or two, I will sit down and I will explain the entire business. I will teach it to them. And I know that subconsciously, I'm just excited about it. And I want to share this, Brad.

That's how I learned.

That's how I learned.

When I was a kid, I didn't read until I was 23. And what changed was I started asking myself, how would I read if I had to teach somebody else? After I've done reading, I wrote about it in my blog post. What's next? Next, here's the things that I know to be true. I can't read unless I know I'm going to teach somebody else.

Yep.

And so there was all these things I discovered, one of them being, I hate being on the beach every day. Which sounds nuts, but, yeah, you know, crazy Canadians.

Yeah.

Yeah, it does get boring. And to be able to do what I do now. Right. Again, I'm less than a week into it, but to be able to learn and create and model and it just feels so fun.

Yeah, that is really cool. But yeah, same thing. When one person. What is it when. When one person teaches two people learn. And it is a great way, especially if you set people up. If you're doing this consciously as you're creating the courses, tell them learn this in a way so that you could go teach somebody else. Because at that almost that challenge makes.

Me want frames or learning style.

That's interesting, right? Yeah, exactly. And just tell them, I'm going to teach this so that you're. You not only should be able to teach it, I want you to go teach somebody else. Because when you do that, it will integrate so much more. I know when I read a book, a book that I really like, my process is so I love, like, I love Kindle. I've almost gotten rid of most of my books. I've had like a five times bigger bookshelf than this because of the ability to highlight in Kindle. Right. And then go online and grab all those highlights and as a, as a document. But then I'll take it another step further because I love mind mapping. So I'll go to a mind map and I'll mind map whether it's an info product, I bought a book, or whatever. I'll. The last one I did, this was a book by Roger Hamilton called Millionaire Master Plan. It's a really, an amazing. Have you read that? Yeah. Right. It was a really neat framework. And it got to the point where I could teach other people because I could sit down, what would it be about? And I would. I would break it down because I mapped it out. And so my friends will say, how do you know all this crap? Well, it's because I actually subconsciously do it.

You did more work. It's kind of funny how, like some people will just like attend a seminar or read a book, but they don't really internalize it or, you know, they don't highlight. I mean, obviously the Kindle highlights is fucking amazing. But even prior to that, with real books, I would always write in the margins of the book the page number and the quote that I really resonate. Right. It was my version of highlights before I got a Kindle. Yeah. And just that act of taking that moment to go back, write it out, put pen to paper, it allowed me to remember these things and kind of internalize it in a more fundamental level.

Exactly. And the problem with the books is I would do that and I would never go back to the book once it was highlighted. I would almost Never reopen it and flip through those highlights. I should, but I'll do those with Kindle. I'll go, I'll grab them and I'll play with them. I'll grab it on my phone when I'm procrastinating. I'll come kind of go through my highlights, which I always really liked. But it's kind of cool that you remind me like, this is stuff I subconsciously do. I don't even really think about it.

Yeah.

I was gonna say, as a marketing tip, what I do is I take my highlights and turn them into quote cards.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, so you say as a marketing tip for other people, for.

No, for my content. So, like, as you're reading books there, you know, like Carol Dweck's book on growth mindset. I mean, it's a great, A great book. It's full of great quotes. So afterwards I'll just go in and I'll produce a bunch of quote cards with all these, these one liners from these authors and give them attribution. But that's what, what, why I do that is.

I like that.

It's. Yeah, it's, it's who I am. Right. It's. That passage resonated with me and my job as a content creator is to process information that comes to me in the world and, and put it together in a way that people that are like me or follow my stuff style will appreciate. Right?

Yep. You're curating it. You're adding your own spin. That's how it is.

That's. That's what trainers do. We learn a lot of stuff and then we kind of re. Jiggle it to make it look like no information is new. I don't have unique creative ideas. I'm just taking my interpretation of it and then sharing with people in my sphere of influence kind of thing. And that's how, that's what I do with my highlights.

One of my favorite books. Because you just said that. I know this one's up here somewhere, but I just can't. Can't see it. But it's called borrowing brilliance.

Can you send me those links to those books, Brad?

Yep, I sure will.

I just bought Microscript, so I got that one.

Oh, nice. You bought it while we were talking.

Click on Amazon to my Kindle.

So borrowing brilliance is a really cool way. He's like, look, yeah, there are no new ideas. But what's, I mean, no information or ideas. But what's new is with the combining of ideas and information. So when you're trying to solve a problem, but borrow from all these other places, like here's how to do it, here's a framework by which to do it. It's like a six step process to borrow brilliance, identify the problem, identify other, blah, blah, blah. Put together some like, what if scenarios. But it's a really cool book and actually saying this makes me want to go back and reread it. And it's one of those physical books that I don't have all highlighted, so I actually have to go reread it. But exactly what you said, it's like, no, the information's out there. It's how you combine it and what you add to it. You know who does two things that come to mind that do a great job of this? Jason Silva. Do you know who he is?

Yes. Jason does those videos.

Shots of awe. Yeah. And what I like, what I like about that is he's taking ideas and concepts that he's read out of books and he constantly gives attribution. In the videos he'll say, so like Neil DeGrasse Tyson said, blah, blah, blah, the universe is this, that and the other. And what I think that means is this, that and the other. And then what Ken Johnson over here said was this. And according to him, so he's taking things that have inspired him and he's adding his own unique spin and art form to it. There was another book by Wayne Dyer. Do you know who Wayne is? Yeah, right. Very few people don't. But one of my favorite books of his was called Wisdom of the Ages. And what he did is he took a. He took a book, he took 60 passages, like from poetry, religious texts, quotes, you name it. And the book was designed to be read in 60 days. So he would put a quote by, let's say, I don't know, Buddha. And it would just be a little quote. And then he would give like a page or two of his viewpoints and his interpretation of that. And he just said, I want. Your goal is to read this passage, read my interpretation and then write your own interpretation. And then the next day do it again. And then he goes, take 60 days to read this. But it really is the same thing. Look, all the answers to all the questions, the universe or the world have been out there for a long time. Here's my collection. And what I think challenge you to do the same thing. So along the same spirit, I love that of using your Kindle highlights as quote cards to just pull it up, say, today I'm going to talk about this.

I really believe the human condition is to teach people your interpretation of the world. Like that's, that's why we have language, it's why we have computers, it's why we have innovation, it's why we have education. Like our responsibility as humans, why we have kids. Right. Is to pass on information and teach.

That's one of the things I do the show for here. This is a major outlet for me to meet and talk with people like yourself, but also to pass on the content to other people. Because, yeah, one person teaches, two people learn. So damn, this has been awesome. Is there anything else that you're doing right now? Any nuts that you're trying to crack in your own business? Like, I mean, you got access obviously to probably all the expert advice in the world.

I mean, the truth is I'm new to this industry, so I mean, obviously if there's anybody watching that has a podcast, has a stage, has an audience and they'd be open to introduce me to it, obviously, if it makes sense, I'd love to do that. You know, I'm really trying to, you know, my philosophy in business is really like put something out early and iterate as fast as possible possible. So like I'm already in the studio working on my course. I'm gonna launch the smallest version of that. I'm gonna iterate, I'm gonna learn. So really, if you, you know, subscribe to my blog@danmartel.com, i put out really, I think really great, useful content every week and then just give me feedback because I'm only going to learn from my audience teaching me because that's just the way I do it. So that's kind of the areas that I've been thinking about.

Cool. So right now if people, people wanted to.

You know, exchange money with you for advice, are you doing a one on one consultation? Are you doing any group coaching? Are you just right now focused on getting the digital version?

Yeah. So my whole philosophy around this is I want to do things that are scalable. Right, Right. So. So that's why speaking to me doesn't make sense because I don't want to spend 200 days a year on a plane. Right.

The occasional speech once in a while here in the. Once a month, not as a business model. Right.

Yeah, once a month for the right audience where I feel like I'm really gonna stretch and grow for sure. So. But so one on one doesn't work for me anymore. I am gonna probably launch a group coaching program. I'm only gonna offer that to people on my email list probably within the next three to four weeks and really focus on software entrepreneurs that want to either start and build a company or have one and they're just not finding the traction they need.

And then I should have my product launch timeframe around September is kind of what I'm planning. And then I want to do a live event before the end of the year. So maybe November in San Diego. Yeah, back in San Diego. Bring some people together and just kind of teach from the stage and get to connect people one on one. Because as much as technology is cool, it allows us to talk in different parts of the world. You know, we met in person. Something happens where you connect with somebody that can't get replaced by Skype or, you know.

No, exactly. It is funny. Especially in our world, tech world or marketing world or whatever. I talked to. I have so many friends that all over the country, actually all over the world now that I can't communicate with on Skype more than I do some friends in my own, you know, hometown. You know, when I look at like some of my most like my favorites in my phone, most of them aren't even around here. Most of them are all over the place. And you build these connections and it's amazing when you do have those events and you come in and you give them a big hug, it's like, man, feels like I see you all the time.

But it's nothing like in person.

No, there really isn't. I'm a big fan of that too. That's why I started my my Mastermind. And occasionally I do more events and I love it. I just, you know, can't get enough of it. But especially in this world where everything's digital and texting. Well, Dan, this has been, this has been awesome. I love the takeaways. There's been some really, really good stuff and definitely delivered some bacon wrapped value, especially with the framework stuff. That's really huge. And I think the audience should take that and really understand why that's so important and try to put some examples and links to your site where you're doing a really good job of this. If there's anything, Dan, that I can do p people to introduce you to resources to bring you. If there's ever a question, obviously you can reach out to me and let me know.

Send me those book recommendations, man. I'm gonna read them. I'm plugging through book every other day. So I need to consume.

No, absolutely. And then if. If there's anybody watching this who also wants my help I mean, you can do this a couple ways a go to ask or just email askbradbacon wrap business.com. tell me your thoughts, insights, questions. What is your biggest challenge? What's that nut that you're trying to crack in your business? I'm happy to help potentially feature you on a show if you're open to doing a hot seat. I've had a couple of hot seats where actually I had somebody find me on Clarity. This was great. And they wanted to, they wanted to ask me some questions about. I forget what it was, maybe about a landing page critique or something marketing related. And I said, yeah, by the way, would you, would you mind if I record this? And we, you know, I can share it on my. I can share it on my show, etc. He's like, yeah, by all means. That was kind of cool. So I got to use that connection not only to help him out, but I got paid to put content out of my show. I got to a little double, you know, use it in two ways. So by the way, that's one of the ways that I help if people want to pick my brain for free, I go, I don't do brain picking sessions, but if you're willing to do a hot seat, I, I'm happy to help you out. I'm just gonna tell the world about it.

That's the way I do it. I'm like, if you want to ask me a question, do it on my blog as a comment because I'd rather answer publicly and help everybody else out.

Exactly. Oh, speaking of that, one of the things I found in one of your blog comments before we go, because I thought this was great, I wrote that down and I did this little search on Twitter for is there an app in quotes? This was so cool. So I'll just repeat it. But you said, go to Twitter, type in in quotes. Is there an app? And then see what people are saying. Because you'll say, hey, is there an app for doing xyz? Is there an app for this? And you might just get that moment of.

You can do that for any idea, every idea. Like, I think, you know, if you ever think like, oh, people must be looking for this. If they've never. If you can't find somebody that's ever tweeted in the history of Twitter, tapping into the social consciousness of the world, then you may not want to get into that business.

Yeah, Product validation. You know, there was a. If you're very familiar with the T shirt model, right, The Teespring T shirt model where come up with funny slogans or whatnot. Exactly. So one of the strategies there being, you know, go into quote, I need this shirt, because people will post that like, oh, my God, I need this shirt. And they'll take pictures and they'll tweet it out. You just might. That's how people do product research. Like, oh, okay, cool. I'm gonna make a note of that. I'm gonna keep record. Anyway, wanted to leave with that little bacon wrap strategy once more, guys. If you like the show, subscribe on YouTube. If you're watching it there, if you're on itunes, hit that little subscribe button and then leave me a review, because this is the way that myself and my guests, like Dan, really understand that, you know, how much value that we're bringing to you for the cost of nothing except your time, which we greatly appreciate. But send me an email. Ask Brad Bacon wrap business. Go check out Dan's stuff at Dan Martell with two Ls, right?

Subscribe to his newsletter. I've already been reading and watching a lot of the stuff. And if, as you can see or here on the show, if you're paying attention, Dan knows how to deliver awesome value. He's done a lot of cool stuff. Dan, if there's anything else I can do for you, just let me know. And I look forward to hopefully seeing you back here in San Diego, brother.

See you soon, Brad. I appreciate the opportunity and thanks, everybody, for watching.

Thank you.