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Dan Martell: How To Work 100-Hour Weeks & Win | E118 · In Search Of Excellence

• 0:00
  Dan Martell: I see people every day today that have no work ethic. Like even today, I wake up at four in the morning, and I work pretty much till 5pm Every day, because the definition of what I do is creation. It's kind of like if I wanted to be an Olympic athlete, and I was training, you wouldn't be like, Yo, Randy, calm down. Why are you training so hard? Right, but I think some people don't realize that what they're trying to do is the equivalent of trying to go for gold as an Olympic athlete, like if you want to bring companies public, or you want to exit your company for 100 million, that's rare air. And if you think that you can show up as an amateur, you know, equivalent in sports and train and try to be successful.
• 0:36
  Dan Martell: You ain't doing that on any balanced lifestyle. It's impossible 35 hours a week, because you just won't even be in the headspace to see the opportunities because that's where the real shifts of step functions of growth come in business is, is connecting these dots at at the right time. Like it was sometimes those wee hours of the night, where the innovation came from. Like what if I did it, I don't know if it's the tiredness or the quietness, like for me in the mornings where I create now because it's so quiet, right?
• 1:04
  Dan Martell: There's this energetic feeling where I feel connected to source, you're listening to part two of my amazing Interview with Dan Martell, if you haven't checked out part one yet, be sure to do that one first. And without further ado, here's part two with amazing Dan Martell.
• 1:23
  Randall Kaplan: Someone once told me that the four most powerful words in the English language are I believe in you.
• 1:28
  Randall Kaplan: And I think that's so true. And I think as a coach, as a parent, I've got five kids, I tell my kids this all the time, I have three in college. Well, one actually graduated last week, and I got one graduating the following weekend. They're twins. And I just think as a parent, and as a friend. And as a mentor.
• 1:48
  Randall Kaplan: You mentor, I know a lot of kids that Portage today and I mentor tons of people. And I love doing it. It's very important to me as I know it is to you. But to people who really need it, it just lights lights, a fire in them. And you can just see their eyes expand. It's really as a beautiful thing. It's everything.
• 2:08
  Dan Martell: Brian did something for me that day that I didn't understand the impact it would have on my life until many years later. That's just the truth.
• 2:14
  Dan Martell: But he planted a seed of belief that started a process of me being open to the idea that he was right. And then eventually going to rehab and finding other folks that poured into that belief, right water that seed.
• 2:35
  Dan Martell: And in many ways, is kind of what I do today. To your point, like my job is to believe in people when they have no belief in themselves, to borrow my belief to borrow my, you know, confidence in what they're capable of. Right, even when they have no proof.
• 2:53
  Randall Kaplan: And I think that's one of the coolest gifts we can give somebody and it's in us all million percent. Yeah.
• 2:59
  Randall Kaplan: People ask me all the time.
• 2:59
  Randall Kaplan: Well, you've had all the success. You've made money and you do this, you do that. And what's your biggest accomplishment that you're most proud of? And it's no doubt giving back. And a lot of that is I'm not talking about the money by the way, because you can easily get away the money.
• 3:13
  Randall Kaplan: Oh, writing checks. Easy shine with your time showing up? Yeah.
• 3:15
  Randall Kaplan: Showing up. Cool. Yeah. So you go into the rehab center for 11 months Portage house about Rick and cleaning room and what happened next? I literally just talking to them. This is the start of 27 years ago. This is where it's still part of my life. Yeah, break is still a part of your life for sure. I love this. Yeah, we're gonna introduce me to Dixie Chicks.
• 3:43
  Dan Martell: Rick was a very quiet man. He was a maintenance guy. So it's cool because this this rehab center was built on an old church camp and they donated it to this new project is this this you know, therapeutic community they called it essentially addiction Center for Youth specifically for youth like 12 to 18 years old, which is very hard in Canada there's not a lot of them actually staffed by ex addicts.
• 4:08
  Dan Martell: Yes. All the all the staff that work there are ex drug addicts from the adult program in Montreal of all places. And so but Rick's wife is I don't even know her what's her real name because I we always call her mom. That's hilarious. I literally could not tell you her name because we always call her mom. She was the cook, Roberta. Roberta. Her last name was actually cook which is hilarious. So Roberta Carver to cook the correct cook. Yeah. And yeah, we always call her mom and man. She got us fat. She would feed us so like she would just we'd come in malnourished. You got our stand like all the kids that would show up. None of them. A lot of them came from prison. Most of them came from the streets and they were skinny. And Roberta Mom took it upon herself to nourish us. You want seconds? You want seconds on the spaghetti. You want some extra bread. You have one of my cookies a major these massive, beautiful. I mean it was I fell Asana as I remember one guy, man, he put on 40 pounds and five months. And I thought, man, what are they doing with us?
• 5:17
  Dan Martell: Like, this is hilarious. He came in here looking like, you know, like he was dying to something to to have stretch marks. I mean, that was kind of the thing. If you didn't watch yourself, you got stretch marks as a 617 year old. Anyway, so I ended up doing 11 months of therapy. I had a lot of stuff to work, and the average kid today does three months. Okay, when I was there, the average was five months, I ended up staying for 11 months. Because I, I just I was also really good at acting as if I would act as if everything was good and do do the therapy. But I wasn't doing it. I was I was acting as if I was doing it, but it wasn't really doing it. And that's the beauty of staff that were all drug addicts. Because they're watching, they're like, oh, Dan's not doing it. And they got me they push me they, I thought I was moving up. They're like, No, you're not do the work. And then I freak out. And they see told you, you're not doing the work. So they really that place forced me to work on my values.
• 6:10
  Dan Martell: Obviously learn how to stay clean and replace my negative habits and my emotions and rebuild the trust I lost with my my parents and my brothers and sisters. And yeah, towards the end, I got put on transition, but I wanted to stick around for a little bit longer. And Rick had just gotten a project from the government to to build these new kind of a new school area with these trailers. So he said he asked me if I would want to stay on to help out that summer.
• 6:39
  Dan Martell: And so I was around and that's what that Rick would play Dixie Chicks nonstop wide open spaces, like on repeat on a ghetto blaster while we were doing construction stuff. So anytime I hear that music is like a trigger, I come back to that 16 Seven drill version, a dam, but the place built in the old church camp and there was this cabin, I was helping recommend a clean out. And in one of the rooms because it's just a bunch of storage. You know, there's put everything in there old gym equipment and dressers and stuff. So we had to like take everything out and dump stuff and sort things. And then one of the rooms I was cleaning out there was this old 46 computer.
• 7:15
  Dan Martell: This you know, and a book on Java programming sitting next to it. And I kind of open up the book Thinking it was gonna be like, you know, hieroglyphics computer like I mean, I don't know, it says Java programming.
• 7:25
  Dan Martell: And it actually reads like English anybody's ever seen Java script or a programming language. It's If This Then That and select case, and I'm like, kind of makes sense. Like, it's not complicated, didn't do anything fancy. But I just literally just booted up the computer and followed the first chapter in this book. And 20 minutes later, I got the computer to spit out hello world. And that was your world.
• 7:48
  Dan Martell: Dude, I was like, what is that?
• 7:53
  Dan Martell: Like? That's cool. In many ways.
• 7:53
  Dan Martell: I had this like, unfounded confidence that maybe I was a computer genius. At 17, I thought maybe my brain worked.
• 8:02
  Dan Martell: How could I not ever touch a computer and got the thing to say hello world. Turns out any kid could do this. I didn't know any better. I thought maybe that's why I always got in trouble. Because my brain was built different. And I should be into computers, because I just kept following the chapters and kept getting better at it better at it. And that became my new obsession. That's how I got into software was in rehab. That's my whole world. Everything I've built since then was building technology companies, because I found this yellow book on Java programming. You know, straight out of prison, addicted to drugs. That became my new addiction. You're
• 8:44
  Randall Kaplan: also into botany for a little while. What was that about?
• 8:47
  Dan Martell: Well, I grew I grew weed. Gotcha. I love plants.
• 8:52
  Dan Martell: Yeah, I grew weed. I love plants. I used to one of the things my mom actually let me do which is fascinating. She was upset with the guns but what she did let me do is build a whole grow up in my basement.
• 9:02
  Dan Martell: Hydroponics? Yeah, I went nuts.
• 9:07
  Dan Martell: I had I had full three different cycles of lighting systems from germination to kind of growth to flowering and a
• 9:16
  Randall Kaplan: lot of electricity. That's how they finally a
• 9:18
  Dan Martell: lot a lot, a lot of electricity, the smell the smell. If you came in our house, you knew something was weird going on. I even tried to like ozone, cleanse it and spit it out through the there was a chimney in her house to try to let it vent off the top. But I was surprised I didn't you know, she didn't. But that was okay.
• 9:37
  Dan Martell: Well, I did lie to her and tell him his tomatoes. But
• 10:35
  Randall Kaplan: so you're out.
• 10:35
  Randall Kaplan: You've now got the bug. He started two companies maritime vacations and then be host seven years of that and it failed.
• 10:44
  Randall Kaplan: What do you learn from the failures and how important were those lessons to your ultimate success?
• 10:51
  Dan Martell: Well, I just I I just believe that, you know, life gives you lessons or blessings. And if you're lucky, there's blessings in the lessons, right? So so people often get upset because they fail. But I don't get better when things are going good.
• 11:05
  Dan Martell: There's I've never, ever, that's why I feel so blessed to have gone through what I did as a teenager. Because I had a I was given a masterclass in living.
• 11:16
  Dan Martell: When I got out of rehab, 11 months of personal development, literally, it's personal development, they didn't call it that. But it was 11 months of hardcore personal development, I could run when I got into the business world, I would run circles around most adults, my EQ is off the charts why? Every day I every clean up, you would partner with another resident, and they would have to share their life story or you shared your life story with them to learn how to processes. So I had like, not 10,000 hours, but I had some serious time here and what people say and what they do I watch them. So like I can almost thin slice when I'm talking to somebody in a business deal. Like if they actually believed what they were saying. And it became a superpower I didn't even know I had until I was in my mid 20s.
• 11:59
  Dan Martell: But the first two failure companies I just wanted them I learned, you know, plan for success. Sounds crazy. But like, what if you win? What could that look like? Make sure you build the foundation to be successful?
• 12:14
  Dan Martell: Because I was so not expecting for it to become a thing that I you know, I gave it a wrong name. Bad domain. Name is not great. No, the name wasn't good.
• 12:23
  Dan Martell: It was a.ca it was it was the east coast of Canada was called Maritime Vacation. It wasn't at the cottage.com. And that guy came in and grabbed all my customers. So I learned about positioning and like plan for success and me host that one biggest lesson I learned is never sell a commodity. I'll never do that. Like what were you selling? Web hosting? Okay, like, whoo. And I that was I was paying one in one, one on one server, whatever. One one.com.
• 12:54
  Dan Martell: They were the web hosting. I was paying them for a server and then trying to sell hosting on top of their hosting. You know, I wasn't smart enough to come up with an Amazon Web Service. Like some people like what Amazon Web Services is the most valued SAS in the world right now. It's like, yeah, I
• 13:07
  Randall Kaplan: wasn't that.
• 13:07
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah. But when they started, by the way, just to be very clear.
• 13:09
  Randall Kaplan: Andy Jassy. I met when he was at Harvard, we were in the same wedding party, weirdly, Sheryl Sandberg was in the same wedding party as well. Andy was first cousin was one of my best friends. And Cheryl was best friends with his wife. Okay, so and he was employee number 14. I remember when he came up with the idea everyone made fun of that. No one's ever gonna outsource their server needs ever. I mean, we had two people in my office, we had a server in the office totally joke. Yeah.
• 13:36
  Randall Kaplan: But crazy, crazy idea. But back to the web hosting the other some huge companies, public companies. Yeah, doing that.
• 13:46
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, I'm building the websites to which was, yeah, back in the day. commoditized. Business.
• 13:52
  Dan Martell: Yeah, just, I just learned, we ended up getting a bank as a customer. And that was just way too above my skill set in a server room, blah, blah, blah. So I just, but again, they were just opportunities to learn what not to do to get in the training the dojo to build some skill sets. And then it was my third company. And I went, I went and consulted for a while because I like, obviously it hurt. Like, these are real, like, this is a side hustle.
• 14:18
  Dan Martell: Like Dan really wanted to be successful. And I remember my dad, you know, at one point going, like, Maybe we should get a normal job. And I laughed, I go, I can't work for somebody else. Like, I'm way too opinionated. And the truth is, and one of the gifts I had was, as long as I was sober. My parents were happy. Right? So like, a lot of kids grow up with expectations for what they think their parents want them to do.
• 14:43
  Dan Martell: My parents wanted one simple thing, stay sober. Don't get in jail, don't get caught in jail or do something wrong. And you could, we don't care. So like, they were actually pretty easy on me. So I just I started consulting for a couple years, tried to make some money. And then what and then I hired a business coach.
• 15:01
  Randall Kaplan: Right. So this is Dan, the Bob. Bob. Bob, the business coach. So tell how about business coach, I never thought of that. But the business coach, so tell us about Bob and then the book E Myth.
• 15:10
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, I think right. At the same time, though.
• 15:14
  Dan Martell: This is what happened. I wasn't even reading books. Okay. I might have read a book called love his killer app.
• 15:19
  Dan Martell: Maybe another book. I was new to reading. My buddy Cory. He called me out one time. It's like, Dude, I just read this book. I think you'll love it. I was like, I don't even know. I didn't even know he read books.
• 15:30
  Dan Martell: Okay, so I didn't take his suggestion too strong. But it's like, yeah, it's called the E Myth. I think you'll really like it. Like, I know you're building companies like because, you know, there's people always entrepreneur, that was me. I just sucked at it. Cory never even pulled the trigger. So he was inspired by the fact that I was starting companies. He read a book about entrepreneurship.
• 15:48
  Dan Martell: So he's like, You got to read it. So I remember I was driving to Um, I was in was I was in rubbers to Akron, Ohio, headed into Greenbelt, Maryland to meet with a potential business partner going to start a new company. And because the drive was like eight hours, 10 hours, I decided to stop at the bookstore and buy the audio version, the CDs of this book, the E Myth, by Michael Gerber, by the CDs that I'm listening to the whole time. The cool part is Gerber is a storyteller. And the CDS is written is read by him.
• 16:21
  Dan Martell: And it's a story about Sarah's pies. And it's an it's a, it's a, essentially a story of explaining how systems work and businesses and franchise prototypes on this stuff. So what happened by the time I got to green belt, I tell my potential business partner, Carl said, Dude, I think I figured out the missing key of why we suck at business. And he was too excited about stuck in a business. He, he didn't think he's such a business. And I was like, You're no better than I am. And I'm telling you, this is the key. I was so adamant that I said, if you don't read this book, I'm not going to even get into business with you. Because this is the key. This is the thing we don't do we need to do.
• 17:02
  Dan Martell: We're both tech guys. And he never read the books. I never started the business with Carl.
• 17:05
  Dan Martell: And instead, I'm 23 I have very little money saved up. And I hire Bob, the business coach, I found I found I went on the website, e myth.com. Or whatever. And I found out in Canada, they had like certified coaches. And I hired hired this guy Baum. And I ended up ventually starting a company.
• 17:24
  Dan Martell: And within the first year Bob helped me dude 960,000 in revenue after having two failed companies.
• 17:32
  Randall Kaplan: So we're talking about Spheric Technologies. And it grew as you said very quickly, 1,000,009 months and then I think you did 2 million and then find more
• 17:42
  Dan Martell: than two the second year. Yeah, pretty much doubled and change for four years.
• 17:48
  Randall Kaplan: So tell us about what happened on that Sunday.
• 17:51
  Randall Kaplan: You're gonna go to your parents house and what your what what happened, what your fiance did when you walked in the door?
• 17:57
  Randall Kaplan: Well,
• 17:58
  Dan Martell: this is what's crazy, right? So I finally find success. And I'm trying to keep all the plates spinning. And I don't even know what's working.
• 18:06
  Dan Martell: It's just working. And I just want it to not fall apart. So I had one one move, which was work. And I was 100 hours a week pure like how do you work 100 hours a week. Wake up, breathe work. Like there was it wasn't it wasn't even like it's impossible. I remember my wife, my current wife saying that to me. I don't even understand how you could do it as like, you just you sleep six hours. I don't know, like do the math
• 18:35
  Randall Kaplan: 15 hours a day, seven days a week for I would just
• 18:37
  Dan Martell: Yeah, I would sleep five, six hours, I'd wake up, I'd work. I'd go until I pass out I'd wake up I do it again.
• 18:42
  Dan Martell: And it was normal. Like I was an addict. So like, I get what it means to be obsessed about getting high. And that would be 16 hours of my day. So it wasn't actually even hard for me. So I did that because I was you know, I ended up meeting this girl. We did long distance. I was traveling, installing software, data, data data building this company we met right at the beginning of building this company. So she kind of got used to me and she was in university.
• 19:02
  Dan Martell: I was young. I was 24 when I started it, she was you know, 22 still working on her degree. So it wasn't a big deal right. Now we ended up I think it was 27.
• 19:13
  Dan Martell: So three years together. You know, we're together two, three years, it's time to get engaged.
• 19:16
  Dan Martell: So get engaged. And we ended up buying a house together. And one day I'm is a Sunday afternoon.
• 19:25
  Dan Martell: And I was supposed to be home.
• 19:25
  Dan Martell: By five I remember because we were supposed to be at our parents house for six. And I look up and I'm at my office.
• 19:31
  Dan Martell: And it's like 630 Yeah, that and this was not the first time. So I jumped in the car, race to our place, run up the stairs, open the door. And I find her in tears in the kitchen. Her name was Amy. And she is so beside herself. She can't even breathe.
• 19:58
  Dan Martell: And um, I said sorry. And are you okay? Like, are you ready to go? And eventually, she just takes a ring off, drops it on the counter and says I can't do this anymore and walks right past me jumps in her car and goes to her parents house. And that was the last day we were together. Seven weeks before the wedding.
• 20:33
  Randall Kaplan: You went to a strip club?
• 20:34
  Dan Martell: No, I didn't go to strip club. Where's that out there? Awesome Guy. Guy. Like dude, let's
• 20:43
  Randall Kaplan: go now with that.
• 20:45
  Dan Martell: Guy, some guy was interviewing me and his co host said and then you went to a strip club. And it was just so fun. He that I think we actually created a real about it. So we created something out of nothing. It was just so funny the way he said it. So sounds good to get people begun. But but here's the big idea that I want people to hear what I eventually got to talk to her about what happened because I was I needed to learn, I didn't want to replicate this. I felt horrible. I obviously, I knew kind of what I was doing wrong.
• 21:23
  Dan Martell: But the big, big lesson was when I told her everything I was doing was for her. And she looks at me. And she goes, I never asked you for any of it. When she said that, to me, it was like somebody jabbed me in the heart. Like it was so obvious and so careless. She's like, I never asked you for any of that.
• 21:54
  Dan Martell: Because I was like, you know, I was doing this for this. And we were going to build there and have kids and this future and I was setting things up. And she's like, those were your dreams.
• 22:04
  Dan Martell: never asked for any of it. That, that messed me up. That messed me up for a while, because I realized I had been lying to myself. I
• 22:14
  Randall Kaplan: had a girlfriend in law school, Tracy Glassman phenomenal human being one of those people was always happy, born happy came from a very privileged background. So she didn't have necessarily the same drive I had and certainly didn't go to graduate school. Studying wasn't her thing. But it was my thing. Because I needed to study and graduated top my class to get a really good job. And she saved me all the time. Gonna be very rich. But you're going to be alone and miserable. And I was kind of studying my way through getting to the top of my class. It was lonely, people were going out, I was studying.
• 22:53
  Randall Kaplan: And then when I was working so hard, putting in the 100 hour weeks, and I do want to talk about that in a minute. I did think about it and said, you know, at some point, I hope I can enjoy the fruits of my labor, but I wasn't engaged. I mean, we were in law school. So this is after I graduated, we broke up before I graduated, but it was never going to be imput a problem for me at that point in my life. But in the back of my head, I was thinking about as I was making my way down, you know, I had a horrible career start. And as I was making my way up and just saying, hey, there's, there's more to life than working 100 hour weeks, and you got to find some balance there. Let's talk about what it means to work that amount of time, because I've had a bunch of people on my show very successful people Mark Cuban, 100 hours a week is 15 hours a day, roughly seven days a week, and so many entrepreneurs I know, work that amount of time when people talk about hard work these days. And people say yeah, I'm willing to work hard. I don't think they understand what. So what's your tell everybody out there? What are the differences between 6070 8090 Then you're in really thin air at 100.
• 24:10
  Dan Martell: So what this is why, like, most people are not able to suffer long enough to actually succeed. Because it does require that, you know, like, Eric Thomas has this great talk where he you know, he talks to a lot of urban, you know, youth and he says, you know, when you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, and you'll be successful. And that's kind of what it what it came down to, right? I was, you know, or there's that. Is it 50 It says, you know, or maybe the game or somebody's like die rich, you know, get rich or die trying. Like, I just had to be successful. And I would have sacrificed anything to figure it out. So I didn't know what my timeline was gonna look like.
• 24:55
  Dan Martell: But there was no doubt that I knew someday I was going to be like a millionaire was like the thing. I see people every day today that have no work ethic.
• 25:05
  Dan Martell: Like even today, I wake up at four in the morning, and I work pretty much till 5pm every day.
• 25:08
  Dan Martell: That's 13 hours. Every day, no problem. Now, I have my workouts have family time. You know, in the mornings, I wake up, I wake up early work, spend time with my kids, then create, then work with my teams. Within that I'll run my errands if I have to buy you know, I'm lucky to have teams support me. But even today, like let's call it 10 hours. I'm a 50 hour a week no problem that's not considering I also wake up at four in the morning on Saturday and Sunday and I work. Yep, I work on vacation. I don't because the definition of what I do is creation. It's kind of like if I wanted to be an Olympic athlete and I was training you You wouldn't be like, Yo, Randy, calm down. Why are you training so hard? Right, but I think some people don't realize that what they're trying to do is the equivalent of trying to go for gold as an Olympic athlete, like if you want to bring a company public, or you want to exit your company for 100 million, like, that's rare air. And if you think that you can show up as an amateur, you know, equivalent in sports and train and try to be successful, you ain't doing that on any balanced lifestyle, it's impossible, 35 hours a week, no, like, because you just won't even be in the headspace to see the opportunities because like, that's where the real shifts of step functions of growth come in business is, is connecting these dots at at the right time. Like I used to stay up till two, three in the morning, I used to be the opposite of where I'm at today. But because I had human alarm clocks, right, these little kids. So all of a sudden, they stayed up till two or three in the morning didn't work, because they were up at 530. So I had to shift everything. But it was sometimes those wee hours of the night where the innovation came from. Like what if I did, and I don't know if it's the tiredness or the quietness, like for me in the mornings where I create now because it's so quiet, right?
• 26:56
  Dan Martell: There's this energetic feeling where I feel connected to source. Most people just don't want to put in that amount of of time. And I think today, I found a completely different way of doing it. Like the cool part is, is I can choose at any point to stop the output. And, and because I built the machine that builds the machine, it'll continue to roll. It just rolls faster and bigger if I'm active.
• 27:16
  Dan Martell: But if I'm not at least I've figured out how to keep it going. But yeah, just think I'm grateful in many ways for learning how to do that, because it did make me wealthy like that. 100% and that wealth gave me leverage and then leverage I could hire like my next company.
• 27:34
  Dan Martell: I had a CEO Ethan he ran the company, I was his fancy titles.
• 27:38
  Dan Martell: nonemployee co founder, that was his way to get me involved. But um, yeah, I just think that work ethic again, my work ethics of reflection, my gratitude. I'm just grateful that, you know, my Creator decided to have bigger plans for my life and put the right people in my world that allowed me to do that stuff.
• 28:00
  Randall Kaplan: So after your fiance leaves you sell spiric for $8 million. Yeah,
• 28:06
  Dan Martell: something like that wasn't really public, but enough to not have to work for often I have to work. So you're now a multimillionaire, you achieved your company, first million dollars, paid my taxes in Canada. And now I actually made my first million at 27, which is kind of cool. The business was crazy profitable. Okay,
• 28:23
  Randall Kaplan: so but it's your first big sale, and now it's, it's, you've got some real money in your pocket. And you have to work again. Well, I
• 28:29
  Dan Martell: thought I thought I was fucking rich. I was I was nothing.
• 28:34
  Randall Kaplan: But it mostly will be like, oh, sweet, man, this is fucking greatest thing ever in the world. But you're depressed, you have anxiety, and you started seeing a therapist.
• 28:43
  Randall Kaplan: So tell us about squeezing a rock in your pocket. And why after achieving such amazing financial success at a young age, you were depressed and had anxiety. So
• 28:53
  Dan Martell: what happened is my fiance leaves me probably six to seven months before we get acquired. And when she left his early conversations, I didn't think it would come to anything, you know, everybody always gets approached. And so she leaves me and I go into a tailspin of anxiety. In many ways, I think that's why I was even open to the option of exiting. Because I was just not not functioning well. And it's just because my whole identity at that point was my my business and my relationship. And then it got actually worse after I exited.
• 29:25
  Dan Martell: Because I negotiated essentially a zero dirt day or night I had a year of advisory I just stay on.
• 29:29
  Dan Martell: But I remember there was a day I woke up and nobody. Nobody actually would know if I didn't get up today. It's kind of a weird idea. hadn't talked to my family. And while she was out of my life, I was working all the time exited the company. The team took over so I wasn't needed in any meetings. And I remember waking up just laying there going. If I wasn't alive right now, nobody would I wonder how long before somebody would actually come knocking. That was a weird that was like a moment for me. Here I was with millions of dollars in my bank account.
• 30:05
  Dan Martell: Feeling absolutely empty.
• 30:12
  Randall Kaplan: The dream is not the dream.
• 30:15
  Dan Martell: And people hear it and not understand it until they get it and then they get it. And I explained it to people this way. The things people want the million dollars, the stuff whatever it is, it's because they want those things to make themselves feel a certain way.
• 30:31
  Dan Martell: What they don't realize is that those things will not make them feel a certain way. It might be for a minute, they'll feel good for a day but they won't feel good. Like it doesn't change who they are right? It's the whole beat you have right? They thinks once they have something then they'll they'll they'll do something and then they could be somebody right and it's just not the way It works. And the cool part is be actually open to the idea is you can actually be happy today with nothing. It's hard for people though, to really understand that. So that was easy for you then you rich.
• 31:03
  Dan Martell: No, no, you can literally decide if you took everything away tomorrow. I would smile, I'd be full of gratitude. I would pray, I would work. I would show up.
• 31:09
  Dan Martell: I'd create. Nothing would change.
• 31:12
  Randall Kaplan: After spheric he started flow town. And that was going well. You eventually sold it. But you met your wife, Renee. Yeah, he twittered. You essentially she tweeted, she tweeted you I should say, tweeted and was wearing a flow town t shirt, I guess at a conference we were at in Toronto. We dated for three years you went on this trip?
• 31:32
  Randall Kaplan: What happened on the Bahamas trip? And how was that a moment Cinnabon story. Know that you were drinking and came home?
• 31:39
  Dan Martell: Oh, that worry.
• 31:39
  Dan Martell: Yeah, that was the Bahamas.
• 31:42
  Dan Martell: You're right. I started drinking when I was 22 after rehab, and I knew better. But I made up for I made excuses. And I drank the whole time. And I I would drink.
• 31:51
  Dan Martell: Sometimes I wouldn't drink till you know, Thursday or Friday.
• 31:55
  Dan Martell: But when I drank, I drank. And you know, my wife drank quite a bit with me. That's kind of how we met right at a party. You know, it's kind of our thing.
• 32:05
  Dan Martell: But then she got pregnant. And she wasn't drinking, obviously.
• 32:08
  Dan Martell: And we were on a vacation. And remember, the first day we stopped to the liquor store. And when it came out, she goes are we have a party? Like what is all this? Like, oh, you know, if we don't drink at all, we'll just leave it for the staff or something like that. And first night, I got absolutely plastered. And she was upset with me. I told you blah, blah, blah. And there's just something in that moment, you know, she had her belly. I just I kind of flashback to my childhood. And it occurred to me that I was repeating the same pattern that I had experience, you know, my, my mom would drink all the time, my dad would drink with her. And I just knew better. And I just decided I'm done. And I said that to her my my drunken stupor, I said, I'm done. And I started pouring everything out into the sink. And I remember her looking at me going sure you've said this before, we'll see how long that lasts. And I just decided I was done. And the next day she woke up, kind of waiting for me to go to the pool bar and order something I didn't next day, same thing. She didn't I don't it took probably three years before she actually believed I was done done. And it's been 13 years. And the cool part is I didn't know this at the time. But essentially, there's a thing called a transcendent character. And every family that's ever won in life had a transcendent character show up in the lineage of that family to do the work that was required for everybody else. So I became that transcendent character by being successful in business and eventually in my personal, my physical, the no drinking 13 year sober. So that's why when I said the beginning of this conversation, if you came and you saw the way our family is today, in many ways is because we healed ourselves. I had to go first, I had to get sober as a teenager. My two brothers were into trouble with the law to my sister got in trouble the law to once I got clean. I never said a word to them. But I think they realized that, hey, there's gotta be a different way to do this. And they just, over time kind of cleaned up their act.
• 34:26
  Dan Martell: And even my brother decide he want to start a business. He called me up and I helped him and I wrote him a check for$173,000 Man, it's all the money I had in my bank account at 26 years old. It was humbling.
• 34:38
  Dan Martell: Yeah. And my dad says the dumbest thing you've ever done.
• 34:41
  Dan Martell: I said, Dad, you don't know the day that my brother gave me last$53 so that I can go on the run.
• 34:43
  Dan Martell: I stole that car. I called my brother and he showed up. gave me his last $53 so I could put gas in this car.
• 34:53
  Randall Kaplan: You have an you have a friend who one day invites you to somebody's house in Verbier Switzerland. Tell us about that trip. Richard's assistant and how that changed your life and really set your life. Yeah, I was different path. Yeah, I
• 35:09
  Dan Martell: think I was 29. And my buddy Dan, he had a startup called Zozi asked me email me his random email. Do you want to come to Switzerland to hang out or Richard Branson's house with with about 10 other entrepreneurs? I was like, yeah, let me let me check my schedule clear. And I got I got this and I remember I until I saw Richard Branson sitting there. I thought maybe this was I was being punked or something. And I showed up at the airport, Tim Ferriss there. I was like, Okay, that's a good sign. So I was like Tim did that yet. We're gonna hang out. Richard, you had the same email. Yep. All right, cool. So the guy who was co founder Randy he was a co founder of square which Back on Twitter, so I ended up spending a week in Verbier Switzerland.
• 35:58
  Dan Martell: Richard Branson's Lodge, 18 bedroom 22 staff, awesome spot in the hill. And that's where I understood why Richard was the billionaire everybody else.
• 36:13
  Dan Martell: Every other billionaire wanted to be like, because he truly lives an integrated lifestyle.
• 36:17
  Dan Martell: Like the whole time we were there. He was hosting dinners inviting other local entrepreneurs. He had his CEO of one of his companies flying on helicopter to have breakfast with them to talk about some board issues they were having in one of his companies. He was skiing with us every day we're we rent a go karts went parasailing. I mean, it was it was literally like Disneyland for entrepreneurs. And the thing that I admired him the most that he did that I didn't understand when I saw it was how he managed the demand on his time. And the way he does is every morning, he has breakfast with Helen, his assistant, which I think today, still, 15 years later, she's still with him. She travels with him because he has several homes. And it's during those conversations where she brings to him only things that she doesn't know how to respond to, but she owns 100% of all inbound, all his teams, all the CEOs, all this stuff goes through Helen, he doesn't even do emails, he might today but back then didn't even didn't even have a phone, I don't think. And he would just talk to her. And she would say, well, we have this thing. There's this and this, and I know you want to do this, but you want to do this instead. And you'd be like, No, let's keep this perfect. So like, after their breakfast, he would come with a skin and she would move all the stuff forward. And that shifted everything for me because I had an assistant at the time, but I was giving her stuff to do. What he showed me was route everything through her and let them decide what to do and only bring to me the things that they didn't know how to deal with.
• 37:45
  Dan Martell: And that shifted everything.
• 37:49
  Dan Martell: That's That's literally how I've now rebuilt my leadership style to this idea of transformational leadership where I work through people, most people tell people what to do. I work through people to generate outcomes by giving them ownership of stuff.
• 38:05
  Dan Martell: Like just even now I don't manage my calendar. I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing next. But I know it's designed. We talked about it on Monday. And it's just like having other people owned. Even this the studio, you're in the Martell media that's owned by Todd Todd runs the whole thing.
• 38:19
  Dan Martell: Um, talent. It's kind of awesome. But I learned that watching Richard, he doesn't sit on boards, he calls him boring.
• 38:26
  Dan Martell: It's got 400 companies in the Virgin Group of businesses. Two CEOs that run the holding company and a CEO for every one of the companies is awesome.
• 38:34
  Randall Kaplan: 100 of that leads to the buyback principle.
• 38:36
  Randall Kaplan: So what is the buyback principle? Tell everybody what it is?
• 38:38
  Dan Martell: Yeah, the buyback principle states that you don't hire people to grow your business, you hire people to buy back your time. Because if you do the second, you'll get the first. But if you do the first, you definitely don't get the second, most people look at their growing as a capacity problem. And I look at it as a calendar problem. The job of the owner CEO, the person who created the business is to grow the business to get more freedom as they grow. If you are a logo designer, and you get busy and you hire another logo designer, that might give you more capacity. The problem is then you're stuck doing all this stuff that the logo designer is not going to do or can't do, which is administrative stuff, running errands, cleaning out the garbage data data that that's that doesn't create a business. So most people end up building businesses they grow to hate. So I learned a completely different way to scale companies through Richard for sure. But I've been doing versions of this just understanding the value of my time. But that was just a big unlock in regards to how to work with an executive assistant.
• 39:35
  Randall Kaplan: And what's the buyback loop.
• 39:37
  Dan Martell: The buyback loop is this concept that when you hit the pain line, so as you grow and you can grow, so most people will have opportunities all the time to 10x their business. But they drag their feet because growing would mean pain in their calendar, right to create chaos.
• 39:49
  Dan Martell: When they hit the pain line, then they should go to their calendar, they audit the audit account for time and energy, what are the things that they're spending time on that they could pay somebody else little amount to do that they don't want to do in the first place. Like I've never created an invoice in my life ever. I have no interest in understanding how to create an invoice. Then we transfer all that stuff to somebody else.
• 40:12
  Dan Martell: That's the tea in my back loop audit, transfer, fill and then fill is work and invest on your skill set your character traits, your beliefs to become the person who can then grow. So that's why it's a loop if you don't do the film properly, if you just buy back your time to go hang out on the beach, or watch Netflix, then your business is going to stall out because you haven't grown who you are and you haven't become better so that you can go tackle bigger problems. The bigger the problem, the bigger the life.
• 40:37
  Dan Martell: And most people don't realize that they try to shy away from problems and it's like no, no, you want to go create massive problems and work really quick to develop the skills to overcome them.
• 40:45
  Randall Kaplan: And one of the three areas to invest in to complete a buyback loop.
• 40:51
  Dan Martell: So I always look first at what skills, what are the skills I need to invest in?
• 40:53
  Dan Martell: So, you know, if you're starting off and you have an assistant, but you don't really know how to work with an assistant, that could be the skill, or you're about to hire your first employee, and you're worried you gonna hire the wrong person, that's a skill, or you don't have enough leads, that's a skill. So you invest in skills, the other areas, your belief systems, see a lot of people have beliefs about how the world is the most expensive thing is to believe something that simply isn't true. Right. So some people, I believe that nobody can do as good as me. If you hold on to that one, I'll tell you what your business will look like, small. Like, it's just impossible, right? I have a belief that 80% done by somebody else is 100%. freakin awesome.
• 41:32
  Dan Martell: That belief creates scale in my world. So really challenging your worldviews and your beliefs is kind of the second area. And the third is character traits.
• 41:38
  Dan Martell: Right? Courage, consistency, confidence, those are character traits, that in many ways, lock in the skills and the beliefs into your identity. And that's why I call this kind of the ladder of ladder of skills or the ladder of success, because you over time build an identity of what's possible or who you are, and then that person gets to go tackle bigger challenges.
• 42:04
  Randall Kaplan: I think a lot of people listening to your show in my show want to be rich. Right?
• 42:07
  Randall Kaplan: They they people work hard, they want money, they you have a job, yeah, you know, have a nice home, etc, etc. are rich people happier? And people who aren't rich? No,
• 42:20
  Dan Martell: no. So money doesn't make anybody happier.
• 42:22
  Dan Martell: And, and not money doesn't make any happy. Like, if people understood that, pretty much in the statistics are out there.
• 42:30
  Dan Martell: You know, I don't know what the number is today, with inflation, let's call it 75 grand, kind of once you get all your basic needs met, the thing that makes you happier is your own psychology, right? It's why they say the most valuable real estate in the world is the six inches between your ears, understanding your own mindset, the conversations you have with yourself, check this out, your first thought isn't your thought. People are going to be like, What are you talking about? When you're driving down the street? And you have an idea? Did you think to have that idea? Or did it just come to you? It just came to you. That's actually how your brain works, how you respond to that, that you control. And that's your psychology. So you can have a positive thought a negative thought you could focus on opportunity to focus on scarcity. And my philosophy is, the world isn't as it is as you are. And your energy, your frequency, what you put out to the world is what you will frequently see. So the external world of happiness is a byproduct of your internal world. Money is a tool, it's just like saying, Do forks make me happy? I don't know, you can use a fork to kill somebody, you can use a fork to nourish yourself. But a fork doesn't make me happy. It's a fork, money will not make you happy.
• 43:44
  Dan Martell: It's money. It's a a ability to store energy, that you can then deploy to other things, and you can use it to ruin your life and you can use it to amplify your life. But I've never had money make me happy. I decided based on the meaning associated to an event or an object if I was happy. And it turns out, I had that power. Since I was born. I just needed me to get to a certain place for me to realize it. People have
• 44:14
  Randall Kaplan: asked me frequently, how did you become so successful? And I think there's a lot of traits and work ethic, I think is up there. But I talked about something called extreme preparation. I'm writing a book called extreme preparation, it's a different way to prepare. When someone prepares one hour for meeting, I've gone sometimes 40 hours for meeting. Can you give some specific examples of how extreme preparation has led to some of your success?
• 44:40
  Dan Martell: I mean, I don't I think in decades, so my brain strategically is preparing in a decade. Because I learned a long time ago, we have to be ready to receive the things we're asking for. For example, if I knew I was having a baby in nine months, let's say seven, eight months, right? Would I prepare for such baby? Of course I would. I would figure out where they were gonna sleep where the crib were gonna be the clothes you're gonna wear, talk to some people that have babies and probably read a book maybe or hit some YouTube videos like you would prepare to have the baby.
• 45:09
  Dan Martell: Most people as you know, is probably why you're writing this book. It's beautiful. I love the idea is they don't prepare to receive the success. If you knew 100% You're gonna be successful.
• 45:21
  Dan Martell: You probably start figuring out your your finance team, like, like who's gonna manage the money once I get rich. I don't even have any friends to teach me or help me or go who who's coming on vacation with me so I don't have to pay all the time.
• 45:34
  Dan Martell: Like it's all these like, most people don't prepare at all for their life. But for me, I think strategically in decades, I plan my life out like I'm scheduling stuff into three years into the future. I'm very intentional and all those things that make me intentional To generate opportunities. I mean, for example, I spoke at Tony Robbins event a few months ago, you better believe it put some preparation into that. i By the time I gave that talk I had already given probably 25 times, scripted outline stories emotions, like, you know, and because of that when I thought I had 45 minutes, and they told me I had 90 I was prepared, didn't even flinch. No problem I found out before I hit the stairs going on stage. Oh, no, you've got 90 minutes. That's double the time I had allocate, I got slides. Luckily, I had prepared so I know which stories I could add to which slides extended. So I just think like, preparation for meeting so that you get key investors, key employees, you know, key customers, right?
• 46:37
  Dan Martell: Those Lighthouse customers, those Cornerstone customers, those, those, you know, those tenants that just like make everything else easier, that preparation costs very little and separates you from everybody, everybody, every it's I literally last Monday, I do leadership training every Monday here. And it was the first thing I taught everybody. These are the five things you can do in life that cause very little that will separate you from everybody else. And one of them was preparing Sunday for the week, the night before for the next day. Simple idea. We've known we've heard this for years, all successful people will agree visit. There's one thing they all did, they prepared because they're not gonna like wing it.
• 47:16
  Dan Martell: I like I hope today's a good day. That's silly. But most people do that. What
• 47:21
  Randall Kaplan: are the five things you look for in entrepreneurs when you're funding a company?
• 47:26
  Dan Martell: I mean, first off, I want to I want to, I can't invest, I look for problems that I have. That's one, two, I invest in people that are going to teach me things. Three, I got to feel like I can be helpful if I if I don't feel like it's a problem I've had I can't be helpful I don't want to invest for I got to feel like they've got the grit, the staying power.
• 47:50
  Dan Martell: Because I've just learned as you probably have learned same thing, like the idea I'm investing is not the issue. It's the people that are going to execute. So can they do they have staying power? Do they have grit? If there was a fifth? Will it be fun? That to me, it's like, I don't invest for money.
• 48:07
  Dan Martell: All those things have to be present. But the end of the day, will I enjoy myself because unfortunately most people will tell you this about angel investing is that you end up spending most time with the worst companies. People are doing well don't need you.
• 48:18
  Dan Martell: Right. Like nobody ever told me that like when I was investing, it's like, oh, yeah, by the way, you know, those people you really like hanging out with, you'll end up spending time with these other people. And if they're not fun, if you don't want to spend time with them, you're probably gonna really not enjoy your life. So that those are the five things I look for.
• 48:32
  Dan Martell: Dan
• 48:34
  Randall Kaplan: has been awesome. Really appreciate you have me in your studio
• 48:38
  Dan Martell: questions were so onpoint like literally the research you put into the conversation. I just want to acknowledge you for that.
• 48:43
  Dan Martell: That's, I do a lot of these and it was really cool.
• 48:49
  Randall Kaplan: I appreciate that. You're an amazing guy.
• 48:50
  Randall Kaplan: I've learned a lot from doing the research on you and I look forward to getting to know you better. Appreciate it. Randy.