The ONE Strategy That Transformed My Business and Life: Lessons from Dan Martell

Wherever you're at today, know that next year you can't be doing half of the stuff if you want to grow. That is one of my favorite questions to ask in the universe of history of questions. If you come to me and you ask me for advice, first question I'm going to ask you is what problem are you trying to solve? Your job as a leader is to create a vision big enough for everybody else's dreams and goals to fit inside of. And if you don't do that, your top people, they will bounce. The truth is, is that no matter what that next thing is, you will hit what's called your complexity ceiling. I spent, you know, I'm 43 now, so I spent 26 years building, scaling software companies. I've invested in 100 plus four of them are billion dollar companies. You know, if anybody's in software, you probably come across my YouTube videos. I started that about seven years ago. It's the largest channel. And I've just like, I used to live in Silicon Valley. I built and exited three software companies. It's just what I know, it's like, I don't know why, but that's just what I know better than most.

Okay. So there's many different things I can talk with you about what I, what I want to do. You are a person who easily could have died, you could have went down many bad paths and you did. And you talk pretty openly about that with addiction. I talk very openly about my addiction struggles and whatnot. I've read your whole book. You've read my book. In terms of the drive, the drive that destroys the entrepreneur from having freedom, from being successful, from feeling really connected, to not having a business they love, having a business they hate and all these things that you've really created a process around that for yourself first, and now you're teaching it to other people. What are some of the things that, what happened to you that first off caused you to be in a pretty destructive place and what happened that ended up having you shift in spite of luck, in spite of the guy in jail telling you.

The guardian. Yeah.

Telling you that no, you shouldn't be here and giving you motivational words, which you probably said to a lot of other people, like you said, but for some reason to do.

Yeah, I mean, do you want me to share that part of it or just like in general, what drives me and how did I kind of fall in love with this? Because what I usually to that question, I would talk about my dark energy, light energy. I think anybody that grew Talk about.

That actually, because I think that's useful. We talk a lot about that here in genius owner.

And I mean, this is the thing, is that proved people wrong, proved my dad wrong, prove all the people that ever said I was a piece of shit. The people that thought I grew up and I wasn't allowed to play with any of the other kids in my neighborhood, I would literally have to run to the backyard, to the woods, and to go hang out with the neighbors because their parents were like, you're the kid that the police came over. And so, yeah, I just grew up just not feeling like I was worth much. So even though I got sober, that didn't go away. It was still there. So for a long time, probably a decade, I was building businesses, trying to be successful, trying to fill that void, to try to become enough. And. And it's a very powerful energy source, right? It's, it's kind of like, you know, it's like a diesel energy source where it's got a lot of torque, it just doesn't burn very clean. And what happened was, is when I was 27, you know, almost a decade of building companies, I had two failures right out the gate. Like, you know, people are like, how'd you have so much success? I just started really young, so it's not that impressive. You know, when you look at the entrepreneurial year, some people are like, oh my gosh. It's like, yeah, but I've been doing this for 26 entrepreneurial years for real, you know, like, like trying not side hustle. And at 27, I was in a relationship, engaged to a woman. And I came home and I found her in tears. And she takes the ring off and she drops it on the counter and she says, I'm done. And she left. She went to stay with her parents. And this was seven weeks before the wedding. And in that moment, my life just fucking fell apart. Like, it was everything I'd been doing up to that point, you know, building the business, trying to be successful just went away. And I had to ask myself, like, why was I doing this? Why was, why was I trying to be successful for a person? And she never, ever, ever asked me for any of it. She never, never once did. She's like, you better be successful or I'm going to lead. She was like, I would love to be in a relationship with somebody that talks to me. And all I knew is, you know, how to out work and how to hustle, because that's what I did. So she leaves six months before I Exit my company, I become a multi millionaire. Depressed, anxiety attacks, a fucking mental mindset guy. I was like, positive mental attitude and all this shit. And I'm having anxiety attacks. I have to go see a therapist. And he's telling me, like, walk around with a rock in your pocket and when you feel the pressure on your chest, squeeze it. And I was just thinking, like, how stupid? Like, how much am I paying you? Now? He did give me some good advice. He said, you should buy a boat because being in the water is a very therapeutic thing. Two thumbs up for that suggestion. But yeah, I went through this like, crazy period where, okay, I had the money but nobody wanted. Like, all my friends were like, you were the worst person. I could go to birthday parties with my laptop. And in my mind I'm thinking, I am the best friend ever because I'm busy and at least I'm at the party and I'm sitting there working on contracts and fucking sending emails. Oh, yeah. And I justified all of it. You know, my parents were pissed off at me because I do. I don't know if you guys do this, but I answer the phone when they call and then tell them how busy I am. Don't answer the phone. It sounds crazy, but my dad one time screamed at me, goes, why are you answering that if you're so busy? And I go, I don't know what you need. And he goes, I. I'm retired. Like, I don't need anything. Just want to talk to you. So I was like, okay, new rule. Don't answer unless I can talk. But it was really like after I got through that period, you know, when I was in my late 20s, that I moved to San Francisco and I give a lot of credit to a guy named Naval. Many of you guys would know who he is today. Naval Ravikant. But when I moved to the Valley, Silicon Valley, and met these young, early 20 tech luminary entrepreneurs, right, that had built these $100 million companies in five years, I couldn't understand because I was very driven. I don't know about you guys, but, like, I can't turn off the fire in my belly. Like, I like to build, I'm a creator, but I had to find a way to do it so that I didn't alienate the people in my life, because that was easy. I could go all in, be obsessed, and just not talk to anybody else and just work. But that wasn't going to lead to me being in a relationship that I think anybody should be in. And Naval introduced me to the concept of leverage and that literally there's only four ways to get leverage. Okay, Write these down. You're gonna wanna write em down. Okay. It's literally. I call them four master skills. The first one is capital. Right? So when I look at businesses, the way I help them scale is understanding where their constraint is. So I call this the theory of constraint. It's not even my idea. It's from manufacturing. Okay. Toc Theory of constraints. Money. Most businesses are capital constraint and they haven't solved that problem. The second one is code, right? Software automation. In today's world, AI. Okay. What a fricking. Like, if AI didn't write that intro, I wouldn't like. I would have been super like, yeah, of course AI wrote that. It sounds great. So like, AI has and it actually didn't. It didn't, no. Well, someday. And then the third one is content. It's what we're doing right now. Think about content. Think Joe Rogan. Think. Writing an SOP, standard operating procedure, huge leverage. Write it once 10,000 people fall, it doesn't cost you one extra second of your time. The fourth C is collaboration. And this is what I talk predominantly in this book about, is the idea of working with other people, of using, you know, labor as a concept dollars to buy back your time so that you can work on things that light you up to make you more money. And once I understood that, it was like, now I can push as hard as I want under using. Because literally then it's like, I just need to become an expert at these four points of leverage. Four Cs. And that was when everything unlocked. That's when I was like, the only thing stopping me now is my creativity to solve a problem. It's not time.

Yeah. So the pain. Where do you think? So there was an artist named Peaches that had a song. I met her when I was having dinner with the global director of MTV probably eight years ago in New York. And her name was Peaches Singer.

She has a song I feel like I might know.

Fuck the Pain Away is the name of her song. One of her songs. And so it's like, people work the pain away. They gamble the pain away. They do all kinds of things. So there's this entrepreneurial pain and angst. And I like the Charles Bukowski, the alcoholic poet. He has take the writer away from the typewriter and all you have left is a sickness which started him writing in the first place. So you take the writer away from work and all you have left is a sickness which got them Starting a business or whatever in the first place. So turning your occupation, your career, your profession into a something that you actually really enjoy. Not just be one of these people that pontificate that love what you do, and you never work a day in your life. That sounds good. But most people grind really hard and they don't really love what it is they do. And there's parts of it they do and other parts that they can't stand. I think you've done a masterful job of differentiating and you're willing to pay money to do it. So your whole premise of don't, you know, don't hire to, you know, grow your business, hire to buy back your time. So for one, what is the pain? And then secondly, let's talk about how to remove it, how to eliminate it, because you have a great methodology to do that.

Yeah. So most people, when they grow businesses, they'll get to a place where they feel pain. Does that all make sense? Like, the more you grow, like, if I. If I could triple your business tomorrow, some of you guys would say, like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Not ready to handle that. Right. We all say we want it until it happens. And then you're like, son of a. I gotta get some shit figured out first. So when, you know, and I learned a long time ago that entrepreneurs will not grow into pain. If I held a knife to your throat and say, step forward, you would not do it because your body says, well, that would hurt. So I'm not gonna do it. So a lot of you guys, when you have opportunities to grow, you feel this pain line. I call it. You do one of three things. The first thing is you decide, you know what this hurt. I'm gonna do what I did last year. Cause I made more money and it was easier. Right? I call it stalling. The problem with stalling is essentially the world isn't stopping to grow. Gross domestic product increases every year. Whether you like it or not, the customers demand of what you deliver year over year. I mean, gosh, it'd be great, Joe, if we could just do what we did 20 years ago and everybody would be happy. Doesn't happen. So your customers needs are gonna grow. And. And the most importantly, this is one that I lean on the most is your top people. They expect a future. Because here's what I know. Your job as a leader is to create a vision big enough for everybody else's dreams and goals to fit inside of. And if you don't do that, your top people, they will bounce. So stalling is not an option. The second one is sabotage. And sabotage is a funny one because most entrepreneurs don't know when they're doing it. But sabotage is essentially dragging your feet, replying to an email. It's deciding to come into your business and launch a whole new company, a whole new product, knowing that it doesn't have the proper resources to succeed. But in doing that, it's going to create chaos. And then through that chaos, you're going to be able to downsize and you can blame it on that thing. Anybody else throw hand grenades in their business? Come on, let's be honest, Every once in a while it's a good hand grenade, is a good fun time, right? A little chaos, why not? So sabotage is the second one and the third one is selling, right? It's, I heard there's more money in solar. I mean, Joe, you've been doing this so long that, you know, you've seen it. You've probably seen people in this room that have gone through transitions because you hear that somebody else, it's, you know, I'm going to do AI, I'm going to do software, I'm going to do whatever. The truth is, is that no matter what that next thing is, you will hit what's called your complexity ceiling. You will hit the same place you're at today in regards to your ability to deal with chaos, your ability to deal with people, your ability to be creative, and you'll run into the same problems. So it doesn't matter what vehicle it is, you're still bringing you with you to that next thing. So what I encourage people to do is when you feel that pain, to lean into what I call the buyback loop. And the buyback loop is a three step process. Because everything in the world is a three step process. But the three step process is pretty easy. But what's unique about it is the implementation. The first one is you audit your calendar for time and energy. So when I look at, and Ann's here, my assistant, you guys will probably read about her in the book, but Ann, raise your hand. She's right there. This is Ann. Okay, Joe, know she runs my life. Anytime I feel like there's chaos in my calendar, where I feel like I'm being held back or I can't express myself. Ann and I do a calendar audit. We look at what are you doing, what lights you up, where do you really drive results from your time, and anything that doesn't pass that filter, it's got to go. So time and energy audit. The second step is Transfer. So ATF T is transfer. Transfer is how do I get that stuff in my life to somebody else in a way that I can feel comfortable? How many guys have a fear of letting go? Just let's be honest. Okay, here's the thing, is that wherever you're at today, know that next year you can't be doing half of the stuff if you want to grow. So whatever you do today, half of it has to be somebody else if you want to give yourself a fighting chance to achieve your goals. It's just the law of the way it works. So learning how to transfer to another person where you can feel in control is really important. I teach this framework called the camcorder method. I do it almost every day, and I literally record myself doing the work. And then I hire somebody, they watch the recordings, and then they create the standard operating procedures. Some of you guys are such control freaks that you need to create it. Does that make sense? I'm going to encourage you to let the smart people that are professionally studying in the thing you need them to do. Watch them. You do the genius you do, but have them document it. So then that's really cool. And then the fill. And this is where if you don't finish the loop, it's a buyback loop. The fill's the most important because without the last step, you don't get the acceleration. And what the fill is, is filling up your calendar initially with things that make you money. So if you're a logo designer, you should be designing more logos. If you sell whatever, sell more stuff. Once you've got all of the operations of the business not on your plate, then. Then it's becoming more so. The three areas I tell people to invest in, other than relationships, obviously, is skills. What skills do I not possess that my organization needs? What are the beliefs that I have that are simply not true? The biggest cost or the worst belief to have is one that just simply isn't true. The other day, I had an entrepreneur. She believed the more she grew, the more weight she put on. That's a real thing. I know men that I coach. If they lose the weight, women will make passes at them and they may do something that would jeopardize their marriage. Real talk. Well, how the heck are you supposed to have success if you have a belief that the more successful you are, that you have pain, Right? So beliefs is the second one. And then the third one is your character traits. Discipline, motivation, leadership, communication. Most people don't have the character traits of somebody that's achieving at that level. And to me, that's like, if I buy back my time, then I'm investing. That's why I love investing in coaching and seminars and all that stuff, because it's literally a cheat code. I'd rather pay for the world's best person to come into my life to teach me what they know. It's literally how I build all my companies. I find the agency who's the best at the thing, pay them, come in, teach my team, bring your playbooks, and then I'm good. Team execute. It's literally the fastest thing in the world, but you got to pay for it. So that's why the buyback loop is just such an efficient way to grow your business. Yeah. Yeah.

Awesome. All right, well, let's get into it. What do you mean by buy back your time? Explain. Well, let me say it this way, because I have some notes here. So you. Why do you spend 2 million a year buying back your time? So that you can scroll TikTok.

I love that you saw that. It is kind of funny because if you know me and you actually came into my house and watched me, when I work, I work incredibly efficient, right? I'm not busy. People are like, I'm always busy. It's like, fuck, I don't give. If you want to brag about being busy, go ahead. That's just not me. When I work, I'm effective. Like, I'm here doing a media tour. I got 13. And how many podcasts? 13 podcasts? People are like, how long are you telling I want to hang out? It's like, no time allocated, right? But when I'm not, I'm not. And I don't mind laying on the couch and just chilling and scrolling TikTok.

Getting a dopamine hit, whatever.

Yeah, just fuck it. Like, I get it. Like, I help people build software like this. I understand what's going on neurologically, but I give myself the permission. Why? Because when I wake up, I attack the day until I feel drained. And when I'm done, that's like. That's like, I love reality tv. Like, Real Housewives. Game on. Me and my wife loves that shit. Selling Sunset. Let's go. Like, it's weird, but it's just. It's just true, right? But, yeah, I spend probably a couple million dollars on hiring people to run companies, to run my household, to run my life, so that I can do only what I want to do and not what I don't. Not because I'm not willing to do it. Because I did it for a long time just because I know that's not a good use of my time. Does that make sense?

Yeah, no, totally. Well, and so I think.

But you got to spend the money. I just think some of you guys are pretty freaking cheap. Yeah. Like legit. If you tell me you don't have time and you drive the new Mercedes and you got a big ass house and you fly, you charter private a lot. Just saying you might want to allocate your capital somewhere else. Yeah, yeah.

So here's, here's what I think. We have Dr. Don Wood, who's actually watching on Zoom and we were talking earlier today and he has this line, we were talking about it earlier. If you understood the atmospheric conditions of somebody's life, it would make sense why they are the way they are. So the way that somebody shows up has a lot to do with it. So upbringing what they've been exposed to, their own identity, their rationalizations drilled into them to not, you know, a lot of people have deservance issues with having other people do stuff. There is this great line. I interviewed a guy when I was a carpet cleaner and I was just starting to teach carpet cleaners marketing and his name was Jim Henry and it was 21 ideas on hiring and firing. And he said, you don't buy a dog and bark for it. And I was like, that's a very interesting line. And how often as entrepreneurs do we buy dogs and bark for them? Right. And that's a really hard thing. It's been hard in my life to let go of stuff. I certainly have a team. I have a great team. I certainly have invested a lot. And part of my agenda here, and even with you, is because you're really good and you've coached a lot of people on how to do this. And I don't think it was very easy for you in the beginning, but you've learned how to do that. And I'd like to be able to have you to go back to transfer, to transfer what you learned. Because I'd love to have everyone leave this conversation with a lot more leverage.

Yeah, you guys want some very tactical ways to work through people. So here's the big idea is that at each stage of revenue, usually 300K2 million, 10 million, 30 million, 100 million, there's different skills. The CEO, like there's one skill the CEO absolutely need to adopt or they'll never be able to get to the next one. And I'm assuming most of this room kind of like seven figures, couple set.

There's not. There's no one in here that has a company that's doing less than a million and there's, there's at least 15 people that have a hundred million dollar plus company.

Well, the cool part is this strategy works at all levels, but predominantly for the 2 million level, plus or minus 500k is because at that level, the skill to learn is how to work through through somebody. And that is a scary proposition, especially if you are the product, you are the business, your name's out there, and you're asking somebody else to lead a team that then talks to the customer. So that's where you would easily want to, you know, buy a dog and then bark for it. What I'm gonna encourage you to do is a few things. Number one is empower your frontline workers to fix problems. So one of my favorite strategies I talk about in the book is the $50 magic pill. Sometimes I call it the 50 to fix it. But essentially anybody on my team can spend up to $50 to solve any problem they deem worthy without ever asking for permission. Okay, now that sounds cool. You probably heard it before, but let me show you how it scales up. And I don't talk about this in the book. So I want to bring stuff for Joe. Specifically, it's 50 for frontline workers, 500 for managers, 5,000 for directors, and 50,000 for sea level. Now think about that. So I literally empower my team at different levels to spend real dollars without ever asking for permission to solve problems. The only thing I ask them is after they solve it, that they tell their leader. So if one of my manager spends $5,000 to solve a problem, all I ask them is spend it, solve it, get it done. But then you have to tell your leader so that there's an opportunity to have a feedback loop. Does that make sense? Same thing with C level. So that's how I'm able to scale companies is because I empower the people to make decisions to solve problems. So first off, figure out what you feel comfortable with and then literally have it all hands and tell your teams if you see a problem. Now I love it because Sam's here and Sam's the one that caused this little kerfuffle in the business. Sam was early on in our relationship. He's one of my business partners now, but he was one of our editors on our YouTube channel and we had this rule. So he had an issue with a thumbnail, so he needed a thumbnail. And the designer on the team didn't get back to Him. So what does Sam do? Hires a freelance thumbnail designer. And the video comes out, thumbnails goes out. The designer goes, I didn't design that. Who designed that? Well, Sam hired something. Why are you guys hiring people? To do my job. See what happens there? Now, our leaders are well trained to have a conversation, to say, if Sam felt like he wasn't getting the response time fast enough, that then there's an issue with process. But the issue with process shouldn't stop because we're waiting on somebody. It's, hey, if that hurts your feelings, let's talk about why he didn't get what he needed by the certain time. See what I'm saying? So it will uncover opportunities for you to hopefully develop your people.

I like that. The very nice way to say that. Or someone's just a total slug.

Or somebody can't manage themselves, and you might have to transition them off or AKA fire them. So that's one of my favorite things. But the other One is the one three one rule. Okay, so the 131 rule states this is that anybody that comes to you with a problem, you ask them, what is the problem we're trying to solve? That is one of my favorite questions asked in the universe of history of questions. If you come to me and you ask me for advice, first question I'm going to ask you is, what problem are you trying to solve? I don't know if you've ever been down the rabbit hole of answering somebody's question to find out. At the end. End of your answer, they were like, oh, no, you didn't understand me. And you're like, you didn't ask that question. What are you talking about? And it's like, okay, reset. So step one, what problem are you trying to solve? Then the three part of the equation is, what are the three options you've evaluated? Because as entrepreneurs, what we actually want from other people is that they've thought through the option set the way we would. Because, like, that's the thing. When I talk to somebody, I feel like they don't get it. It's. Cause I don't think you have evaluated all the options. So I always ask people, what are your three options that you've evaluated? And then the last one is, what's your one recommendation? So if you came to me and said, hey, Joe, we need to fill this room. We don't have enough people, I'd say, what's your one three one? I don't know. I don't run marketing. I know, but you own this room. You lead this area of the business. Well, I don't know. Well, do you need some time to go? Think about it. I literally ask them, how much time do you need to go come up with some options? And if they don't even know where to start, I say, well, who could you tell me that you consider calling to get some feedback on coming up with those options? And they go, oh, I get it now. Okay, perfect. So it's like one time I had an HR guy, Adam, and he came to me. He's like, dude, I'm stressed out. I said, why? He goes, we gotta hire 12 people in the next month. I said, cool. Well, I'm stressed out. I can hear it in your voice. He's like, what are you gonna do about it? I don't know. You're the HR person. Like, why is it my job? I think I hired you to do your job. I'm just not going to bark for you. And he's like, well, I've never done this before. I go, hey, guess what? Nobody on the team's done what we're doing right now. We're growing really fast. We all got to learn really fast. So I said, what's your one? Three. One? He's like, dude, I don't have time for this shit. I get that you think it's shit, but for me, this is how I'm going to lead you properly. And the way I show up for you is how you're going to show up for your team. And if I don't teach you this, you're going to be the bottleneck. And I was like, how much time do you need to figure it out? He said, give me a day. I said, tomorrow, same time, 4 o'. Clock. He's like, yep, cool. Next morning, 10am, text me, I'm good. He didn't eat. He didn't need me, because once he started looking at it, he solved the problem. And what happens is when you hold yourself accountable to that process is that you will eventually wake up one day and have an organization where you are not needed. Now, that brings up some feelings. So all you guys want to be really important. I know I can fucking this, especially this group. Like, trust me, I Talk to software CEOs different than people where they are the person in the business we like to feel needed. But I'll tell you, if you want the freedom that I talk about in this book, a third of the problem is leadership. It's how you're showing up as a leader in your team and the 1, 3. One rule will literally allow you to build a business that grows on its own. My philosophy is simple. I build the people. The people build the business.

Yeah, that's great. That's great. So email is one of the most horrifying, scary things of my entire existence. No, it's not that bad. But it annoys me. And you have a great way of outsourcing all of it. And I have a friend I won't even mention, you probably know him, but he's built a billion dollar company, he has a thousand employees, he has an autoresponder that basically says, you know, I'm not able to get back to most emails. I may or I may not. And in spite of how much you preach this, most people don't do it. And now I am more intent on figuring this process out. And there's always an excuse. We were talking earlier about alibis. One of my alibis is I deal with a lot of high profile people in the area of addiction recovery and I don't want an email coming that anyone's going to read. So I'm very protective of even Eunice, who's been my assistant for 28 years, who I trust with everything. She doesn't read my emails directly. Now we have different emails that come to me that go to team, but I have this private email box that no one gets direct to and I can't keep up with it. Never been able to. And part of it I'm like, you know, I'm talking to Dan Martell. He's probably the best guy that I could, that could ever lay this out and once and for all I can handle this shit. And just fricking that's been one of my, like, why have I not done this? It's wasted so much of my time. So how do you. Because you route all your messages, not just email.

I don't do email. Yeah, I don't do email. Anne's there, she can tell you I don't do email. Yeah, I don't do text messages. Honestly, Joe probably gets annoyed with me because he messaged me. I don't reply to him sometimes. Eventually I get to it, but it's. I just don't. One thing about me is I turn off all notifications on my phone and I consume the things like TikTok when I want to. Right now here's what I would ask you, Joe, to consider is like, because change is hard. Does that make sense, everybody? Like, change is like scary and we won't change unless one or two things is The. The pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. And what I would assume, Joe, is the pain isn't that painful yet, because if it was, you would have made the change.

Oh, yeah. And also, like, it's weird because, you know, I'm a relationship guy, so I know what to do with messages, and I have yet to figure out how. I think about 10% of what we do is magic. 90% of it can be taught to other people. So that 10% of me, that's magic. I don't know how to teach that to other people, but I can teach a lot of other stuff to people.

Yeah. So in the book, I have this framework called the 1080, 10 rule, which is all about the magic. It's the first 10%. Steve Jobs goes down with Jony Ives in his studio, and they talk about imacs and ipods and iPhones, right? And then Jony Ives takes all those crazy ideas from Steve Jobs and talks to his production folks and prototypers, and they, you know, they do shit. And then they come back and they go, hey, Steve, look at the thing we built. And he's like, okay. And his last 10% is, let's tweak it. And then I'm going to present it to the world. That's his genius. That's his happy place. That's his magic. So I totally get that. And I'm the same way. I just don't do that 80%. So, first off, if you have this, like, belief that there's no way in the history of the world that anybody else could ever read this before me, then I can't help, because that would be required. Now, when I say, say that out loud, and some of you guys, not Joe, but you might be in the same position, I would just encourage you to consider that there are incredible people out there that could give two shits less about who you're friends with, what you do, your personal affairs, and they just want to help you. And if you empower them to do that, like, for me, Ann. And Ann has an assistant. We have a team, but she manages that communication. Then you can just defer it. And when I hire an assistant, I have a very clear conversation with them. Everything I do and you see is considered private. Do not put me in an awkward position to have to let you go because you're at a party at a friend's house that heard you work for me and you accidentally shared with them something that nobody should have known. Even if it's my schedule, just take it like, pretend like you don't know me, and that's probably a good place to stay because you will see stuff. Dude, I do invest. I do investments in publicly traded companies. It's very illegal. Like, it's insiders trading. So I totally get. And I have those same emails from. People are struggling with addiction, etc. I just, like, at minimum, if I want to solve the problem, then somebody else has to be able to review those messages and then sort them. I get to still do my magic. I just. I'm just not in there. So then once a day, literally before this meeting, we're driving from a previous podcast. We're sitting in the. In the. The suv, and Ann's got my review folder open, and she's saying, boom, boom, boom. I mean, we did an investment. We did a ton of shit in the car. And I get to come here, hang out, and do lunch with Joe. I don't even think about my inbox. So some of you guys I've actually met, I just forget because literally, Ann is routing so much stuff. And I would love to, but I'm more of a person. I like hanging out with people, and that's where my magic is. It ain't my inbox. So if you want to know if I'm free next Thursday for your podcast, I. I'm the last person you should ask. Like, Tommy, you're asking me where I'm staying. I literally don't know. Yeah, no, and it's not Tempe. Sam doesn't even know because Ann takes care of us, and we have Ubers and we drive. You know what I mean? So, like, I just. A long time ago, I realized there's a lot of, like, for you to be able to scale, you have to be okay not knowing. Do you know how crazy it is for my dad? My dad goes, hey, Dan, when's your next event? It's in Scottsdale next week. Cool. How many people are coming? I don't know. How do you not know? Why is it my job to know? Well, what if nobody shows up? Well, dad, good news. If nobody's showing up, the team will tell me. But the fact that they haven't told me tells me people are showing up. So I'm still going. I don't get it. What do you not get? Well, don't you care? I care a lot about other stuff. Not necessarily how many people are coming to the event, because I'm going to be on stage in what I do, regardless of if there's four people and the team actually has red, green, yellow, and you got to build the system. And I think that's like a big thing is if the pain is hard enough for you, want to solve it, trust me, there is a solution. It's going to take process, it's going to take thinking. But again, when I talked about skills, beliefs and character traits, you're going to have to go through the process of developing the skills to let it go. But I'll tell you, man, the day that you wake up and you don't do email and you are there with your kids or present with a friend or you didn't come back from a vacation and you're totally stressed out day one because you got an inbox full of messages. Wow. You want to talk about creativity and freedom and the ability to just push and drive as hard as you can with no pain line. It is a magical place. And that's that. Literally, that's the movement I'm trying to create is I want to teach people how to build businesses they don't grow to hate. Because it ain't the business that they're in, it's how they designed it and they get to a place where it sucks. I'm not saying you know what I mean, but that's literally when people shut down a business, it's because they built it wrong. And the way they're doing it, it hurts. And the process I teach, literally, from a dollar to ROI point of view, you can't deny it's a math equation. Right? So that's why I'm like really passionate about this message.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. By the way, what I'm doing here is a bit of a setup because when I decided I was going to take a one year sabbatical in 2021 in 2020, I was like thinking, okay, in order to have the conditions of taking an entire year off, I have to set it up. So in order to not have email, I have to set it up. So right now I'm going through the setup process. But I thought about it, I had a few conversations. Am I really going to do this? And then I decided to publicly announce it and I did an interview.

Are we doing this oh, well, no.

I did it in 2021, but we're doing this.

No, no, this will say you're committing to getting your inbox. Eunice, are you hearing it?

Yeah. And so I'm looking at a case because I've had.

Do you believe him, though?

Do you believe me?

There we go. Here's what I'm gonna do for Joe is Ann, I'm putting you on the spot. Ann is your resource, 1000%. Everything I have. You can ask Ann. She will teach you how we do it, the process. So you've got the best in the world trained, you know what I mean, to support you.

I love it. No, I appreciate that. And by the way, I'm doing this for me because I want to, you know, totally. What's in it for me? That's my new book, by the way. And secondly, I have had conversations with at least 10 people that are in this room over the years that in the same boat. They're in the same boat as me. And I want this to be for everyone here, too, that struggles with it.

Can I just ask, how many of you guys, even if Inbox wasn't in your life, most people text you anyways? How many of you guys have that problem? Yeah, okay, perfect. Here's what I do. So Joe texts me and he's like, hey, man, let's get together for this thing on this day, blah, blah, blah. I screenshot it and I send it to Anne. I literally do this all day long. I screenshot, start a new text thread, put Ann in the person in charge, paste it in so I don't have to write anything. And Ann knows got will change the game for you. Why is that powerful? You just started teaching people who really knows what's going on in your life. Okay. And over time, you will teach people how to treat you. So I want people to call me when they're in need and they need damn or tell conversation. But if you need me to do something or you need my bio or you need to know if I'm available on a certain date, I don't even know, so don't ask me, but I'll introduce you to the person that does so. And there's ways to build the tools, even the software, because some people like, well, what if Ann goes somewhere else? And all of a sudden, the phone number, you can get a global phone number that anybody on the back end can get access to. Like, these are problems that can be solved. I just. I don't even want to talk about that because I want you to just make a commitment like Joe just did, to give it the fuck up, like, just to make today the day I'm done. Email doesn't support me. If I could get those two hours a day back, what would I do with that? Hopefully you go to the gym and spend time with people you love, because that's probably a really good investment. And buy back your time.

Yeah, love it. All right, so what are the creative ways that you preload your year to get the most out of it for?

It's a great question. So I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to, like, doing as much as I can in a period of time. And I do it because obviously I teach it to people. So it's like, I don't know if you, like, they always say, like, if you want to get wealthy, help other people get wealthy. So it's like, because I'm teaching other people how to get more time back to live a pretty high quality life. It's kind of fun because then I keep asking myself, like, how do I do it? Even better. So my wife and my friends are all like, this is great, Dan. You have so much time for us. Because I teach it, so I have to do it. But what I have is a process for essentially designing my year. Okay, so the first step is at the end of last year in December, I review everything I do with my wife, like, everything that happened in the previous year. My wife and I do a retreat and we look at it and we ask ourselves, fuck yeah or never again. And it's literally that simple. If it's not a fuck yeah, we just, we won't do it again. And I'm talking like family trips. We just, we just decided, I'll tell you guys, we used to go home because I grew up on the east coast, live on the west coast. We used to go to the east coast every summer for two weeks. This trip, we decided, ain't a fuck yeah no more. They can come to us and I'll pay for it. I think you guys should give yourselves permission to do that stuff. Some of you guys are holding on to stuff. You need to create some space. It's not what you're doing, it's what you got to stop doing. Okay? So like, we look at all that, then we look at all this requests of things we want to do. Look at our bucket list stuff. Look at, you know, we made a commitment that like every two years we do like this big family trip with all our families, her family one year, the other Year, my family, two countries a year with our kids, all that stuff. And then we have this one page document that I'll give you. It's literally a template. It's got all the months, like days. And we take the list and we put it into the calendar. Visually, I use my pen on my iPad and I highlight. We have different color codes. So like red is Renee and I time my wife Renee, and then like orange is work and green is like my boys trips and like all that stuff. And then we kind of look at it like a piece of art and ask ourselves, does this feel good? If we actually did this this year, would it feel good? And then we had the feedback. So like, I remember one year I used to do my vacations before my events. I don't know how many of you guys run events. Show of hands. Okay. Imagine going on vacation before your event. Dumbest idea ever. Never occurred to me to sit down and ask myself, does that feel good? So when we were looking at it, I was like, hmm, let's move it after. That's all I did. And then, wow, what a crazy idea. Now I go on vacation after my event. So literally after this event, I'm on vacation and I am so present. The team is happy, the customers are filled up, like, I'm good to go. So it's like all these little tweaks that I do other things that I do to preload my year. I put all my like business building stuff in there. So I put all my quarterly strategic plannings with my, the key people on my teams. I put all my events in there. I put the things I need to do to recharge, right? So if anybody follows me on social, I do snowboard trip, snow biking trip, mountain bike trip. And they're also spaced out throughout the year. And literally if, and I'm not even joking, if today was my last day, obviously I'd miss my kids and I love my wife, but that would be the hardest thing, right? I'm good and I've been good for a really long time. It's a regret minimization strategy. For a long time I've said, if today was my last day, would I be okay with it? And a long time I couldn't say yes. But now, because I know that I've done the time with my kids, spent time with my family, spent time with my teams, you know what I mean? Like, and I just think being a little bit more intentional with a cool tool like the preloaded year, it just changes the game for your ability to get the most out of a 12 month period.

So what was present when it wasn't working that caused it to not work? Other than alcohol?

Yeah, no, alcohol was a big one. So I quit drinking 11 years ago. Best decision I ever made in my life. I get emotional because I think of my boys. I grew up around it. We grew. Like, I mean, I knew better. Dan, you should not drink. Oh, no, it's okay. I'll be a social drinker. And if I was drinking, I wouldn't be with my wife and my kids would have to experience a lot of chaos. So I'm just like, super grateful that God said stop. Like, and so that was a big thing. But honestly, it was all the last minute reschedules, the, oh, I forgot to do this with this person. Like, there's all these feedback loops that happen in our lives that should indicate to us that we're missing the mark a little bit. And it doesn't take a lot of work. I'll tell you a stupid example, but it's, it's representative of the issue. Like, I have one of my best friends. I love him, okay? He read the book, said he read the book. I can tell you didn't really read. You know what I mean? Like, some people read books. I don't think you really didn't. And like, we'll go and do something and he'll forget a thing. And I'm like, dude, this is not the first time you forgot your thing to do the thing. And like, he'll have to drive 45 minutes back home to get it. I was like, why don't you have a checklist? And like, I know some of you guys, I don't want a checklist. Cool, well then just be okay that you'll always forget a thing. I have a checklist. Does it take a little bit of planning to write down? Like, if Joe says, hey, I want you to do this, I say, ann add it to her travel schedule and we have like a meeting where we review stuff and we evaluate. You know what I mean? Like, it takes a little bit of planning, but because I do that, I don't have those conversations like, oh, shit, it was my dad's birthday yesterday. Fuck, I'm an asshole. I should. If I knew that, I would have planned, I would have went home. You know what I mean? So, like, for me, it's all the times that I miss something, I wasn't on top of it. That was the feedback loop to say, hey, if you just planned a little bit with a little bit more Discipline, because that's a big character trait I think most people are having a hard time with. They make commitments to themselves in private that they don't keep. Okay. There's two problems this book's going to surface. Two things for people. One is that you'll never earn a penny more than you think you deserve. So the buying back of your time, it's not that you can't afford it, is you don't think you deserve it. And that's not something I can help out in 45 minutes on stage. The second one is that you lack confidence in your ability to figure it out. And the reason you lack confidence is because you don't keep the commitments you make to yourself in private, and you erode that. So until you upgrade your self worth so that you realize your time is worth triple what you're saying it's worth, and you hold the commitments that you make to yourself in private. Discipline, then it's going to be really hard for you to justify buying back your time. Yeah.

So that psychological issue of not thinking you deserve it, what needed to happen in your life in order for you to get to that place?

I think there's levels, right? It's like, do I feel like I deserve to be? Like, do I? I mean, literally, when I think back and I skimp, when I was, you know, 26, after 10 years of being an entrepreneur is like, do I? Do I deserve to be a millionaire? Like, really? Like people say you write it down. Fucking, you know, goals. You know, you read all the books and like, what, you know, you write, you write it all down. But as you write it, you don't believe it. Like, this is true. I can really, I can remember I went to a seminar and I wrote down the goal, and I will be a millionaire. But I'm like, will I really? You know what I mean? Like, like, I don't know. I'm not like, good. And like, okay, I'll write it down. I'll play along. I'll visualize it. So there was like these levels of like, okay, I did it. So sometimes I wonder which comes first. Right. Is it the. Well, I know which comes first. It's the person who does the thing that gets the result. So at different levels, what I've changed and this will probably serve a lot of people. I don't talk about this in the book at all. Is whatever my goal is, whatever the self, like, whatever the number is, the outcome I want to do the achievement. I don't focus on just writing that down and hold it in my mind, although I do, I'm a big visualization manifestation energy guy. Like, like bigger than most people know. You ask me, I'll tell you all about it. But what I do now is I ask myself what's the daily standard that I would have to uphold to make that true. And that's where I've really learn to build my self confidence. And my self worth is. My self worth is not tied to the achievement. My self worth is tied to the activity. And Naval actually said this to me a long time ago. He said be patient with results and impatient with action. Be patient with results, impatient with action. Which means that if I want to build a 10 million year business. Cool. What would need to be true on a daily weekly basis in my schedule because really I can tell you what's important to you, right? If I ask you guys, how many is family really important to you? Raise of hands. I don't mean to put you guys under the bus, but here, check this out. If I looked at your bank account and I looked at your spending, would I see family on there disproportionate to what you just said, which is number one. And if I looked at your calendar, would I see that stuff in there as well disproportionate to what you said? Because those are just realities. Where do you invest? So like I have a family coach, I have a parent coach. Like why do we invest in Genius Network? And for some of you guys never even considered inviting somebody to coach you as a family unit, right? They exist. We live in this. Cool. I think it's the coolest thing in the world. And Joe, you know them all. Like there's literally an expert in anything you could ever want to do, including gifting. Shout out to John, right? Like anything that you aspire to be. There's a person that will coach you and you can just pay them just again. Then there's somebody that's going to teach you how to outsource and delegate and you don't even have to like, it's not me, you can just hire them and do it.

And there's some people, they just for the life of them, they want everyone else to pay them, but they don't want to pay for anything.

Those people have a fucking problem. Oh yeah, okay. I don't know, they're not in this room, but let's say they're out there. You, how you show up as a buyer is how your customers will show up for you. And if you're struggling your business, it's because you're putting out shitty energy. The amount of people we talk to that will not invest in themselves but yet charge a premium for people invested in them is fascinating to me.

Yeah, completely. There's so many people that are the pontificators of self help, that are too cool for school. They only show up if they're on stage, but they won't learn. And I say this a lot, and I've thought of this a lot, because I started my first podcast in 2010. The first time I ever recorded a podcast was 2005, when no one even knew what they were. And it was a podcast on promoting whatever.

They didn't call them podcasts then.

Well, they had just started. Apple had just started. Yeah.

Okay.

This is Apple, like, literally the first time podcasts came out. So we used it as a promotion for our carpet cleaning super conference. That was in 2005. Then I started I Love Marketing in 2010. And, you know, such a new thing. And it's amazing because I had been doing interviews since 1997, and so I've interviewed over, you know, a thousand people for an hour to 90 minutes that we've just published. It's probably double that in terms of just, if you think interviews I've done at Genius Network and stuff. But so it's a lot of stuff. And what I, you know, and along the way, you know, working on my recovery, having all kinds of just challenges throughout, you know, a couple decades of my life and spent over half a million dollars on recovery, and I spent that much acting out addictively, too. So it was kind of a. I didn't calculate every aspect of it, but.

It was a lot.

And so I did a lot of therapy. I've done a lot of work and, you know, everything from plant medicines to, you name it. And what I learned now today is that many of the people, men and women, but a lot of my male friends that are not willing to do the work or go and get real help, what they do instead for is they start a podcast and free therapy.

Yeah, exactly.

And they interview everyone, and everyone thinks they have their fucking shit together. But if you actually say, have you ever done any real fucking work? Have you ever? No. You know, and so they do surface stuff. And look, everyone's got their own journey. I mean, I'm like, whatever. It's, you know, people do what they do. It's just there's something about, you know, walking the walk and talking the talk. One of the. Joey who gave you a testimonial on your book?

Coleman. Yeah.

Yeah, his book's great.

Oh, yeah, yeah. His new one and his previous one.

And I met him, Michael Fishman, who I think is downstairs, had him speak at his Consumer Health Summit, and he said, I think it's him. Or I'm not sure who, where, or maybe it's Garrett Gunderson. Yeah, hold on. Yeah, he's also better. Oh, yeah, it's Garrett. Okay. They say those who can't do, teach, but not here. Dan did it, then masterfully taught it. A book on living a life you don't want to retire from and how to live your retirement dream today. So I've known Garrett for close to 20 years. But it's true, though, those that can't, teach. There's. There's a lot to be said about people that are out there doing it. And I think I like it when someone's a convert of their own system. I think there's a different result when you actually walk the path and you figure out how to do it and then you're able to transfer that to other people. And here's the thing on his book, oftentimes I'll buy books for everybody in Genius Network, they invest a lot of money in this. It's not that big of a deal to buy books. What I'd like to do with this one and what I'd like to do with John, who I'm going to interview tomorrow, is I want you to buy the book. This is also on audio, if you prefer audio, buy the book. And then if you just read the book and just send me like literally an insight, you can email it to euniceopolish.com and just like, here's the big aha and the big insight that I got out of it, for one. I'd love to share that with Dan. I'd love for him to see what everyone's perspective. I want you to up to your own fruition, go and buy the book and share that. And then I will make a donation to Genius Recovery in your name as a result of it, for the cost of the book. Just because I want everyone to do it. I just don't want to give this book out and say, yeah, go read. Because I know all of you probably buy books at 10 times the speed of your rate of ingesting them. And some of you, it's, you know. But this one really is a good roadmap and I think you'll learn a lot. And I think we can have a future discussion on this too, because it's really important. But the Foundational stuff that Dan teaches is great, especially for highly successful entrepreneurs, which all of you are. So my other question is why most CEOs hire COO's instead of assistants. How many of you have an assistant? Okay. How many of you do not have an assistant? Okay. And I kind of set that up there. Like get afraid to raise your hand. How many of you have a CEO or coo?

Okay.

Keep your hand raised if you also have an assistant too. Okay. So a couple hands went down. Okay, so why is that? Because it is true.

Yeah. I thought you were going to ask how many people wouldn't raise their hand no matter how many times you ask. I seen that. I know. That's right. I saw it last night. Here's what I've discovered, right? And there's some great people that have written some great frameworks and great books that we've all. We know the people, we've read the books. You know what I'm talking about. Like the business books, the ones how to operate your business. And they tell you, you hire somebody to help you in this area and then you're, you know, life is magical. The challenge for most entrepreneurs is you need to learn how to collaborate with those people. It's a skill, and if you don't learn it, it doesn't work out. So I can tell you there are a lot of people that hire a COO, and six months later, nine months later, 12 months later, they fire them and it just didn't work. And they blame the person. And that person had a pedigree and they came with playbooks and they wanted to help the CEO, but there was the way that the CEO collaborated with them just didn't work out. I literally coach those types of CEOs, and oftentimes they didn't hire the wrong person. They didn't understand how to have a partner. Right? So the reason why, if you look at in chapter five, it's called the replacement ladder, okay. And I teach the hires in sequence. You should make that are the least amount of investment cost for the biggest ROI on time. And the COO would be at the top. So there's four others, but the bottom one is the assistant. And the reason why is because when you're trying to learn how to collaborate with a partner that has intimate knowledge about your schedule and your calendar and your email and your relationships, you're better off starting at the bottom, where the stick stakes are low. Does that make sense? Like, you gotta learn. So it's like, hey, if I'm gonna learn how to tightrope or slack rope. You see these kids in parks and they're fucking flips and jumping like, they're not doing that over the Grand Canyon. They're starting on the grass. And I would encourage you to consider if you have many people have assistants, but, like, there's different levels. Okay, so let me just share. A virtual assistant that you just cc in your emails to do stuff for you, or even an executive assistant, and you just cc them. That's not what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about right there. I love that you have that up. It's 100% of your inbox and 100% of your calendar. And when you can get those two things out of your life, you've earned the right. And honestly, financially, it's one of the best investments you can make to then move to the second level. And that's the delivery or fulfillment side. Right? Some of you guys are still coaching, practicing, doing the work, and it's grinding at you. That's why I say I want to help people build a business they don't grow to hate. Don't hate your craft. Just figure out how to design it in a way that you enjoy doing it. But don't abandon your customer either. Like, they've come to you for an outcome. And what people buy. Check this out. Write it down. They buy your standards, not you. They buy your standards. You bought Joe's standard for relationship quality, for how he shows up in the world, for what he values. That's why you're in this room, okay? If you get time with Joe, it's a fucking bonus, but it ain't why you invest it. So people buy your standard. They don't buy your time. So that's why that replacement ladder is such a fundamental process. And don't skip to the top and hire an operations leader when you haven't even figured out how to be a good CEO. You haven't even been a good collaborator. Because I'll tell you what's going to happen. You get top heavy. It's like the deck of cards. You hire ahead, you pay 200, 300. I mean, the other day I tweeted, it went viral. I said, you can't pay somebody 80 grand a year and call them your COO. Some of you guys aren't laughing because you might have done that. And you're like, is that a bad thing? Yeah, it's a bad thing. You do not want somebody who's your coo, Nobody that knows what the fuck they're doing would accept that scenario. Okay, so learn with an executive assistant. But really, I'm gonna invite you to consider, to integrate them into your life, have them as a business partner. Okay. I often call Ann. She's my partner. She's my partner in crime. You know, she knows the family. She's part of my life, just like you. I love when I meet assistants like a Eunice who's been with somebody for so long, because, man, that is rare. Okay. But if you find somebody, you have somebody in your life, take care of them, invest in them, because they will literally unlock a level of revenue and opportunity for you that you'll never, ever imagine until you just, like, let it go.

Yeah. And that's true. I mean, I couldn't have done what I've done without Eunice. Yeah, it would.

There's no way. Yeah. For Eunice, you've known her since high school, is that correct?

Oh, yeah. Well, her husband, now, husband in high school, he was one of my best friends. He was my best friend, actually, in high school. And then they. So I've known Eunice before. She was even my assistant.

So.

And that it was so funny because she, like. So I hire her when I was just starting to sell information courses and programs to carpet and upholstery cleaners. And, you know, it's. I'm like, you know, mid-20s. And how old was I, like, 24? I don't know. And, you know, and I've been struggling with this carpet cleaning business, and I turned it around, and then I started teaching these other systems to other carpet cleaners. And I think even before that, when I had my carpet cleaning business, I think as temporary work, I hired Eunice a couple of times just to answer phone calls, do database entry. I don't even know what it was. So I tried that, and I'm like, okay, now I have this business, and I'm going to start teaching other carpet cleaners how to build and grow their businesses and do what I do in this new business. And we ended up building the largest training organization in the world for carpenter upholstery cleaners. I mean, it became a very successful company. But the first week that she was there, she comes to me and she's like, can we talk? And I'm like, sure. And I had an office in a train caboose in Tempe. Those of you that are in Tempe, like, next to Depot Cantina, which is like the. I used to rent a train caboose was my office. It was crazy. And it Was converted. It had a bathroom and two desks. And so Eunice is in the front, I'm in the back, you know, the executive suite in the back of this caboose. And she's like, can we talk? And I'm like, sure. She's like, I don't think I can work here anymore. And I'm like, why? And she's like, well, these people are calling up and they're wanting to buy stuff, and I don't want to do sales. And I'm like, what do you mean? And she's like, well, you know, I don't want to talk these people into having to buy something. So she had this association with sales. And in the back of my mind, I'm like, going, I just started this thing. I don't have anyone else right now. I'm like, so you don't want to do sales? And she's like, I was in a really good. I can't repeat even exactly what I said there, but it was one of those channeled moments where I was like, well, Eunice, I mean, what do you mean by sales? Like, you have to talk someone into something and help them with helping them build and grow their business. She's like, yeah. I go, well, everything that you're saying right now is pretty much selling me on the fact that you don't want to do sales. I mean, you are. You're doing a really good job. I'm almost convinced you don't want to. To work for me. And she's like, well, I don't want to do this job. I go, no, you got me almost believing that. And so I went. This whole riff of, like, everything you say is either designed to attract or repel someone. I even use that message today when someone asks about selling, and I go, you're selling me right now. Everything we're doing is going to be sales. It's going to be influenced into either direction you want to go or not want to go. And for whatever reason, I. She stayed. She bought that inspirational talk, and she has now brought in literally tens of millions of dollars into this organization over the years, while simultaneously supporting me and our team in a myriad of different ways. But, yeah, One of our 100k members, Garen, is it A I O A.

E I O Unis.

A E I O Unis. He wants her to write a book called A E I O Unis on how she does what it is she does. Because I've had people over the years that have offered her triple what I pay her in terms of like salary. But she is well taken care, she believes in what it is you do. And it is like a partnership. And anyone that works for me, I mean, you don't vibe with everyone. Like, not everyone vibes with me. I'm sure I have team members that I drive them bananas and others that they really, you know, jovial, whatever. But the thing is, like, how do you. What are your criteria for rules of engagement? Alignment.

Yeah, I mean, the one thing about me is I am a hundred percent okay communicating what do I expect, right. And because of that, like, I have preferences. And I think some people that are more on the pushover, I don't think we're on that. Like, so there's literally people that will never tell somebody else what they want or need. Okay. I'm assuming that's not you.

I don't think so.

No, no, Me and Joe, we're on the other side. So it's always fascinating when I meet these people that are like, yeah, I could never say that. And I'm like, I could never not say that. Right. So there's this beautiful middle that will eventually get there. But what I've discovered with team members is, you know, anytime I've had to let somebody go or they quit, I consider that a feedback loop to me that we did something wrong 100% of the time, either I shouldn't never let them on the team. So I made a decision that they should. So we gotta fix the recruiting process. Or if they left, they left because we didn't create a future that they could. They didn't see a dream where they could achieve what they wanted within our organization. Now some people leave and we could have never done that and it's totally fine. But I'm saying anytime somebody leaves or we have to fire them, and I didn't want to, so what do I do? Is in the interview, one of my favorite questions to ask is, you know, five years from now, we can't be working together. Describe me your dream life. And here's what I'm looking for. This is my favorite thing happens. And Sam, everybody on my team, I'm looking for them describing even without us working together, that what they want to create is what I need them to create in my business. So when I asked Sam that question, Sam, how old were you when you started working with me? 17. Okay. He's 20, I don't know, 22, something like that. Big kid. You should see his transformation is crazy. He was very skinny, didn't say a word. Like when I say he didn't say a word. Sam didn't talk for the first three years. I didn't even know he had a voice. Right. He worked for somebody else on the team? No. Well, he says he talked to other people. I never heard it, but I remember asking him, like, what's your big vision? And it was like, I want to create a media agency. Like, at some point someday in the future, I want to own my own. Well, fuck, guess what we need. We need a whole media division. Game on. Perfect. So that, to me, is how I find alignment. If I'm hiring a coo. What do you want to do? I want to be the operator of one of the world's largest coaching organizations. That's cool. Because I need to build the. You know what I mean? Like, I'm always trying to. Because here's what I've discovered. If you can find somebody who is. And it's not bad, selfishly, directionally aligned with your vision, meaning that their own internal desires is what they want to create. And that is what you need. You don't have to motivate them. See, some of us have the wrong people on the team or the wrong people in the seat, and we keep having to resell them and resell them and resell them, when the truth is, is that what we need them to do and what they want to do is not the same thing. Now, guess what? None of us in this room would put up with that. We would never do something that we don't want to do for a long period of time. You guys get that, right? So why do we ask our teams to do that so oftentimes? If I ever find in any of my companies that there's somebody that has that situation, I'll work with them to transition them out the company and find somebody that's in because it's better for everybody involved. You can't have a leader that doesn't want to be there, that can't show up the way you need them, because it's going to stop you and the rest of your team from achieving the goals, which, if you don't achieve those goals, your best people are going to leave, Right? When Covid happened, my favorite thing, Dana White, he said to everybody in the ufc, I'm not firing anybody. Nobody's getting laid off. Fuck this. Where do we do it, guys? Stop telling me no, stop. I love it. He, like, literally said, nobody say no to me. We're gonna put on a show. How do we do it? And everybody was like, so in just respect that he Said, I'm not letting anybody go. We're gonna figure this out. And he ends up buying an island, or Dubai gives them an island called Fight Island. And they were the only people you understand. NBA, NFL. You guys all watched it. The world shut down. And UFC says, no, we'll do it. And to me, like, that's, like, that's the best. When it literally, when you start creating with a team that can show up that way, but you showed up that way first, it feels effortless. And that's why, like, for me, the word empire on the COVID of my book, you know, my publishers, like, don't call it that. That's too big of a word. Entrepreneurs aren't gonna buy the book. I was like, I. It's never happened. My agent said. I literally said, if you don't call it that, I'm gonna buy the contract back. My agent's like, what did you say? Nobody's ever said that. I don't care. I don't. I will buy the contract. But I want to say Empire, because for me, an empire is a life of unlimited creation you never have to retire from. A life of unlimited creation you never have to retire from. I will always be creating until the last moment I take my breath, I'll be in the fucking. In the hospital or wherever I'm gonna be, hopefully at home, I'm gonna take my last breath, and I will have created that day. That's just what I was born to do, is what I'm gonna do. So, like, to me, I would encourage everybody to consider, how do you design your life and a team that's aligned with what you want to create and be okay, if the people on your team, some of them have to go learn, you're responsible. Don't make that mistake again. But then just continuously surround yourself with just people that are like, it's so much more fun doing it that way. And it's a little bit extra effort, but it's not a lot. Let me just on that point, because everybody's like, oh, Dan, where did you find this person? This. Because anybody interacts with my team, they're like, man, that person's so great. Eunice is so great. It's like, I don't have a magic pond that I go fishing in for people. I just want you guys to know there's no, like, secret fucking recruiting website that I know about that you guys just so you know, doesn't exist. What I am really good at is understanding what I'm looking for and picking the right people and Then I always tell people it's not about making the right decisions, about making the decision right. I then work with the people to develop the people. So if you're impressed with my team, it's because I'm maniacal about talent acquisition, talent development and talent retention. And I would argue if you're a CEO at 2 million plus, that is your primary, one of your top three money, people and vision. But the people side, it's, you got to get world class at talent acquisition, talent development, talent retention. Literally your life will just be magically easier if you just decide to go. Read John Maxwell, Patrick Lencioni. Like talk to the COO's that get world class cultures, figure out what they do. Read the Netflix book. Like if you can do those three things, think about this, Steve Jobs. Most people don't know this. I spent a lot of time in the Valley, so we talk a lot about the lures of the people and stuff. Steve. Steve Jobs had 50 people in Apple that he identified that every quarter he would go to Half Moon Bay with them. Every quarter the top 50 had to be anointed. Essentially, he'd tap you on the shoulder. It didn't matter if you're a designer, an executive assistant, a manager, marketing director. If you were part of the 50, he'd bring you to Half Moon Bay. And him personally, he'd run a mastermind no different than this. He would teach those people what he knows about business, branding, marketing, engineering, product, everything. He would just pour into those people and have the best people share with the rest of the people. Because his argument was that if I ever have to do this again, these are my 50 people. And guess what happened? He got kicked out of fucking Apple. So he had to do it again with Next. And those were the people. So the way I think about it, and I tell it to my top leaders, my partners all the time, all I need is 50 people. If I have the coolest, smartest, driven, awesomest, growth minded, fun people, the 50, there's zero project that I want to undertake that I can do. So just know that if you're ambitious, if you're driven, if you're somebody that wants to create something massive, like it should be a game of pouring into individuals and identifying those key people on your team. It's not for everybody, not everybody wants this. But when you find them, pour into them and trade a future where it's so big their dreams and goals fit inside of. The crazy part is when you start talking to them and they have a vision bigger than yours. What do you do then when they say, hey, you know, Joe, this is cool, but let's go for 100 million? Yeah. And you're like, whoa, whoa, calm down, Eunice, calm down. Buy a hundred. We're good right now. Because, Joe, if we don't do a hundred, I don't feel like I have an opportunity. What do I do now? I gotta, like, literally this happens to me where people are like, I want to bring a company public. Well, I didn't want to bring this company company public. Alright, let's want to buy a company. Like, I want you to stay around me. So, like, I guess we have to buy a company, you be the CEO and let's bring it public. Like, that's literally what your life will turn into at some point. If you. If you desire.

Okay. I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. You're over here. Do it now.

Come on. Thank you.

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