Episode 439: Dan Martell: How to Master Your Time and Turn it into Wealth Today

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JEN for 20% off. Livemomentous.com All right, so today we have Dan Martel.
Yeah. Right? All right.
And team. And he's Canadian, so automatically you have a place in my heart.
We're friends right off the bat. He wrote a book called buy back your time.
And I thought he was joking. I got to just say this because he has, his schedule is super, super tight.
And he's like, well, maybe I'll just take a helicopter to get to you. And I'm like, yeah, ha ha ha.
And he legit meant it and took a helicopter to get here. And I had no idea you were being serious.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, LA, as you know, it's so unpredictable. We were just down in San Clemente and I wanted to get up here.
And we've done this before in LA specifically, there's certain cities where a helicopter move makes sense. Again, to buy back your time, because it was either that or 90 minutes on the freeway and I got to be back in Newport.
So, and I have my son here. So we just made an experience.
Okay. Wait, how long did it take to get here from there minutes so in okay so on the helicopter from san clemente which is like new which is like orange county yeah okay to like where i live which is like santa monica landed yeah it was 17 minutes yeah and then you're gonna go back from there to newport yeah where in newport you're gonna go don't know i don't actually know where go.
So that's another part we can talk about. You have no idea.
Sam's laughing right now because he manages me. I just follow heels.
Usually Anne's here, but we couldn't fit four on the helicopter. So she's waiting for us with our driver.
This is hilarious. I know.
Okay, wait, how much did it cost to get the helicopter? Don't know. Anne has a budget.
So the way I do my life is I create rules. And as long as the rules are followed, I don't get involved in decisions.
So Ann knows what my hour to buy back my time is worth. So if it's less than that, she just makes a decision.
Oh, my God. I love this.
I'm so happy you're here right now. Let's go.
So you always take the helicopter in California? No, not always. It depends what I'm trying to do.
And if I can get there and save time, then the numbers work for sure. Yeah.
Like here, last time I think we did it, we're in Santa Monica doing a pod with David Nurse and Casey. So we did two back to back and I had to be in Temecula for another podcast.
So we took the helicopter, landed on property, did the podcast, and then I was in Hollywood for dinner. So why didn't you do that? I guess you couldn't land it over here.
The pilot tries typically, but usually there's aviation space issues. So why? Okay.
Because I'm far from Santa Monica. So that's like another 30 minutes.
The airport was, no, it was only 14 minutes. That's it? Yeah.
Okay. That's because the traffic is really not that bad right now.
We got lucky. Yeah.
So where, couldn't you get closer? Like I do have an area over there. And you're speaking my love language.
At the end of the day, Anne tries. And if she can't, she can't.
And I just literally, I stay out of it. It's kind of funny because like people, like even my friend Damon that flew down this morning with me on my plane, he goes like, what are you doing today? And I was like, well, I know who I'm going to talk to, but I don't know like what the order is.
And he's like, well, how do you not know? And I go, because Anne managed it. She literally, 100% of my calendar is managed by somebody else.
Okay. But how did you get to this place? So like walk me through your life because in all transparency, I really had no clue who you were.
Yeah. And then our friend, I guess our mutual friend introduced us.
We have like a, like I went through your pod, listened to your stuff, know your background quite well, love the books, the concepts. My wife actually loves your stuff.
Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. Just the idea of strong is a new skinny.
Yeah, yeah, i know but she loved that one um and i saw the new bold one but my background is kind of crazy because if you went back and met the 15 year old version of dan you would meet a very angry dark drug addict criminal and uh because you were, I saw. Yeah, I ended up in juvenile detention twice by the time I was 16, 17.
For what? Everything. I mean, I got in trouble from shoplifting to assault to drug-related charges to stealing a car, high-speed chase.
I mean, things that I was pretty ashamed of for a really long time. Wow.
Okay, so then how did you go from that to taking helicopters in LA and having all the things you have? So let me just kind of tell you what I do know, and then you can kind of go back. For sure.
Okay? I know that you have a fund that you said that was $100 million in revenue. That one, yeah.
Right? And you've invested in 60 startups, over 60 startups. Yep.
You do a ton. You're the biggest executive coach in software.
Yeah, software as a service, yeah. You do a lot of speaking gigs.
Yeah. And now you do a lot of social media stuff.
Yep. Someone's following you around, doing your little stuff.
I've got five of those guys, but Sam runs the team. Sam runs the team.
So you've got five of these guys. So how did you go? Like, I want you to talk about the evolution.
Like, what was the evolution of how you became where you are now? Well, just so everybody feels better about themselves, I'm really old. You know, I'm not really old.
I'm 44. I'm not really old, but I've just been doing a long time.
This is 27 years. Okay.
Then why do I only know about you now? So it's interesting. I'll let people know kind of what changed for me to get to a place where I was at least being a productive member of society.
And then why is the media thing a thing in the last year? Because it's only 14 months old, which is bananas. I know.
Really? Yeah. And it's kind of crazy to me too.
So just so you know, I'm still like, whoa, what's happening? Because it's kind of, okay, wow, that's interesting. The moment that changed for me is I ended up in an adult prison, eventually released into a rehab center.
And it was this place on the east coast of Canada, small town of Sussex, New Brunswick, this incredible therapeutic community called Portage that saved my life. I mean, I spent 11 months doing the work, all caps, the work, whatever you want to call it.
Like now I know what it was. I didn't know it at the time, but it was personal development.
It was internal family systems. It was all of this stuff.

And it was exactly what I needed.

And my dad still, when he speaks on stages to other parents struggling with kids

that deal with addiction, he always says

that Portage gave him his son back.

Wow.

Yeah, I'm crazy grateful for this place.

So you were addicted to your drug

just everything i was addicted to not feeling i was a drunk i was everything and um luckily this place helped me get sober and what happened was 11 months of therapy how old were you back at this 17, 16, 17.

Okay, you're still young.

Yep.

And at the end of that journey, I was helping the maintenance guy, Rick, clean out one of these cabins. It was built in a little church camp.
And I found this old computer, this 486 computer, dusty, just sitting in a room and next to it, a yellow book on Java programming, some software language. And when I opened it up, it made sense to me for whatever reason.
And I just followed the first chapter and I got just tapping away. 20 minutes later, I get the computer to print out the words, hello world.
And I don't know, I just, I was like, whoa, that's cool. I wonder what else is there.
And I just kept following the book and I, it literally became my new addiction. It became the thing that I became

obsessed about, you know, as I got out and into the world. And, you know, my dad, my dad was always

said growing up, he's like, if you just find something you're passionate about that isn't

illegal, Dan, I think you do pretty good with yourself. So when I got out, this is 1997, discovered this little tiny thing called the internet.
And that's my life. I went from one failure to another failure eventually at 24.
So I started at 17 in business, self-taught programmer, trying to build apps, websites, things. And then when I was 24, I hired a business coach, this guy named Bob.
He was an e-myth coach. If you ever read that book, I was like- No, what is it called? The e-myth was written by a guy named Michael Gerber.
And I read it and it was just this idea of

building systems. And I was like, okay, I've tried business twice by myself.
Clearly, I'm not good at this thing. I can't do the same thing over and over because that's the definition of insanity.
So I get this book and hired this coach. And within the first year of trying, we did almost a million in revenue.

Wow. It blew my brain wide open.
And it taught me habits. It taught me vision.
It taught me, I mean, one of the first exercise he asked me to do was to write my eulogy. Can you imagine at 23, 24 years old sitting down to, when you talk about begin with the end in mind, that was the most eye-opening, clearing, aligning exercise I could ever do.

And that company, I think I became a cash millionaire at 27, so three years later, and then sold that when I was 28 and became a multimillionaire. When you say multimillionaire, are we talking 2 million or are we talking 20 million? I was closer to like 7 or 8.
And you were 27 at that time. 28 when I exited.

27 when I made cash million.

That's like cash in the bank.

Yeah. Because like a lot of people say they're millionaires,

but.

It means nothing.

I know.

They're not.

I want to know the,

like the.

Yeah.

And then like,

and I mean,

so this is what's crazy is you like go there at 28.

Again,

I'm 44.

And then I just,

I've always been a builder.

Sometimes hardheaded,

sometimes incredibly dumb, emotional, not smart. I just never stopped.
And even moments where I took two years off to like chill out, you know, I was still angel investing. I was doing other stuff.
And I'm just a byproduct of waking up every day and just trying to be a little bit better. Okay, but so like, okay, so now you're 27.
You have like 7 million in the bank. Let's just say, what do you do now? What's the next thing? I moved to San Francisco.
OK. Yeah, from New Brunswick.
OK, big move. Yeah, it was huge.
I mean, the other side of the world, really. Yeah.
Think about it. If you actually look at the country, Atlantic Canada is like way out, almost in the ocean.
And then I moved to the other side to. Why there, of all places? Silicon Valley.
So you wanted to be close to tech. i wanted to see if any of my crazy ideas would am i really good or am i lucky you know i mean like that was always you know it was a little exit in the grand scheme of things and that's uh that's what i went didn't know a soul showed up with my backpack or my suitcase and i just started going to events and trying to figure this thing out and yeah I eventually met some entrepreneurs and invested in companies which ones did you invest in uh hootsuite was early so that's a billion dollar company today intercom so it's a messaging app get around to compete against Turo I've done I mean it's 60 is what's reported it's more like a hundred now but I mean and how much were you giving each like 25,000 a.
It's more like a hundred now, but I mean. And how much were you giving each, like 25,000, a hundred thousand? No, more, more like a hundred.
Yeah. A hundred K each.
And were you kind of getting those opportunities by the network that you were meeting? So I, nobody knew me. So like until recently, not like, like you said, like, how did I never hear about you? Because I was just behind the scenes.
I was, I was networking. You know, I read a book called Never Eat Alone and I did what it said.
Oh, I love that book. Yeah, Keith Rossi.
I just did what he said. Organize meals, invite people to it.
Never eat alone. You should never eat lunch alone.
I would organize daily Canadian entrepreneur lunches. We would all have burritos in the mission in San Francisco.
And I put on some weight eating too many Mexican burritos. Like that was, in hindsight, not a smart move for my health, but a great way to just have a place as people emailed me and wanted to meet up or I was meeting people I could invite them to.
And I met hundreds. And I wasn't trying to start anything.
So it was kind of fun for me. I moved there and I didn't know a soul.
I almost went home after three weeks because the truth is, San Francisco specifically, they don't like people that aren't from there. If you didn't go to Berkeley or Stanford or you're like, they were like, who are you? What are you trying to get from? It was really weird.
They were very standoffish. Yeah.
Aloof. Yeah.
Yeah. And just like, oh, you don't want to build a billion dollar company? Because I would, people go, what are you working on? I go, I don't know.
As soon as I said, I don't know, they'd be like, I'm going to talk to this guy because he's working on a billion dollar company and you're clueless. It was kind of interesting.
So I did this for three weeks, going to coffee shops and trying to meet people and nobody would want to talk to me. How long did you live there for? Five years total, beginning to the end.
But what changed for me and everybody listening can take this lesson was I cold emailed, I saw a blog post TechCrunch's tech site and it said here are the 100 most influential CEOs and online bloggers tweeters all that stuff and I cold emailed every one of them and I just asked them questions about like you know I'm new to the city I'm trying to get to know people what you know here's my skill set what do you recommend I do with this this like three sentences and it was paul graham the founder of y combinator which today you know incubated dropbox and airbnb and all these luminary tech companies he replied and most didn't and he said all startups need help with marketing help them with that and i said oh next day i go to ritual roses little coffee shop on valencia street in the mission and um first person i meet they do? And I say, well, I helped start us with marketing. And he's like, I'm a startup, help me.
And I was like, game on. So I went three weeks with people not talking to me, ignoring me.
I remember calling my brother, like this city sucks. People aren't very nice.
I'm used to Canadians. Yeah, that's right.
And the truth was, is nobody knew what I did. And I think a lot of people go through life and don't know how to explain what they do.
And then they confuse people and they wonder why opportunities don't come to them. So now I'm very clear.
I wrote a book called Buy Back Your Time. People ask me, what do you do? Doesn't matter all the other stuff you talked about.
If somebody asked me, they see me driving around, they go, what do you do? I go, I wrote a book. That's it.
It's just clear. Keep it simple, stupid.
It's so clear. And then people go, oh, okay, well, if you're driving that car, you wrote that book.
I might want to read it. Or you flew in on your plane.
Maybe I should read the book. Cool.
Read the book. And then in there, they get to know who I am.
No, I think that's a great, I think that's a really good piece of advice because you're right. Like I get people who call me all the time or email me or text me for like information sessions or they want to, whatever it is.
Right. And I say, well, what do you do? And they have no clue or they're talking too many syllables.
And I'm like, you lost me already. Like you should have an elevator pitch that's so succinct where people know, okay, this is what I do.
I wrote a book. Great.
I can understand that. Because if they don't, you think, well, I can't have a conversation with somebody that confuses me at this level.
We're talking basic entry level, what do you do?

Can you imagine asking them a deeper question?

No.

Like that's what happened.

No, you don't.

That's why these people, including me at the time, I didn't realize the impact of not being

able to answer a simple question like, what do you do?

So then you go into these things and you're like, okay, now you're like basically bullshitting

and you're a marketing person for a startup.

No, I actually didn't know how to do marketing. I just knew how to position it.
So what I would do is I offered two weeks. But how did you know how to do marketing? Because you were doing all that.
From my previous company. Yeah, but you were more like, it sounds to me, you were more like the coder.
Yeah. So what's interesting in software, a lot of the coding, you've ever heard the term growth hacker? Yeah.
It's actually a technical strategy, not a marketing thing. Growth hacking is actually, for the most part, APIs, like programming stuff.
And it's actually not like what people think is imagery and ads. Growth hacking is trying to scrape a website, find everybody's email, and send an email to invite them because they've been tagged in a photo.
Right. And then they sign up for Facebook.
That's smart. By the way, I know a lot of people have made a ton of money being able to do all that stuff.
That's LA. LA's media background is, you know, like all the guys, there's a ton of companies that just figured out SEO.
They figured, you know, like Airbnb, they figured out how to cross post on Craigslist from their app. That's a programming problem, not a what channel are we going to run our TV commercials on?

Well, that's true.

And then also, I guess that's also growth hacking

could be personal branding too, right?

100%.

Like, did you growth hack yourself?

I guess you did.

Well, so let's go to the second question you asked earlier,

which is how did I not hear about you and me?

Like everything, so the Dan Martel brand today,

we're adding, I mean, we added almost 2.3 million followers in the last 12 months. How many? 2.3 million.
Where? Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn. How? Well, lots of stuff.
I would say, because people knew that I was, I was doing YouTube before, okay? So like when I started 14, 15 months ago, I had a YouTube channel. I've been doing it for nine years.
I had 60,000 followers. Yeah.
Okay. Now we're almost at half a million.
So the big thing, if you want to know, Jen, because people want to know the how, you got to understand, I just decided to stop treating marketing like a marketing department, instead decided to build a media company. And that was the difference.
And I call it the difference between going from amateur to pro. And I know a lot of people that say they want to have a lot of impact and help a lot of people, but they're still acting like amateurs.
And I used to brag about it. I used to be like, I shoot all my YouTube videos for a whole quarter and two days a month.
And I switch my shirts and I batch everything. And I have these scripts and data.
And then I'm wondering, why are all these other people growing? And my videos would get 2000, 3000 views and I wouldn't add any subscribers. So that's how I used to do it for a very long time.

And what changed was the decision of really just going all in on media.

But because I realized everything that I wanted to accomplish in my life,

then at that point, on the backside of two things would be 10 times easier,

100 times easier.

And that was reputation, which luckily I had a good reputation. Problem was the second part, which is reach.
Nobody knew who I was. And like growing up, Keith Ferrazzi's book, Never Eat Alone, you hear it's who you know that can solve problems for you.
And I don't disagree. That's actually a really important point.
Turns out it's who knows you even more important, right? And if you're creating content, we live in this beautiful world that I didn't grow up in.

What happens on social media today

and the power of this phone and these platforms,

I didn't have that growing up.

You couldn't follow billionaires on social media

and watch how they interacted

and they taught you stuff for free.

That's crazy.

And I just thought, you know what?

I always ask myself like, what scares me?

And that thought of going pro on that, I was already rich. I was already successful.
I didn't need to do that, but it also gave me the most anxiety. And oftentimes I always like, look at like what things or decisions give me the most.
And I go, okay, that's what I have to do. So it's kind of like the, whatever scares me the most is almost like the prioritization method.
And then the book is really what started it though. So the book came out last January 17th.
You know, my publisher said, if you sold 4,000 copy, that'd be really cool. Sold 20,000.
It's now number one book in entrepreneurship, time management and small business in the world. Sells more copies every week than the previous week.
People in the publishing world says that's a pretty good thing. Who's your publisher? Penguin Random House.
And I'm a person of faith. And I had this moment.
So it comes out in January. And it's probably April or May that I realized I've been asking God for this gift my whole life.
And I wasn't going to just ignore it. I almost ignored it.
I honestly almost decided to keep building my businesses and not support the book, not support the message, not do the thing. Because again, it was scary.
I didn't want to. I remember I was talking to my wife.
I was like, I think I'm going to go all in. She's like, what does that mean? I said, the thing, the thing.
Like, you know, the Gary V thing and the Harmozy thing and all these people thing. I think I'm going to go do that.
And she's like, well, you're in my house and I'm like okay that's fair and uh I called up my buddy Sam and he lived back on the other side of the world at that time and I said I think I'm going to go and build a media company Martell Media I'm going to go all I'm going to shift my whole life I literally thought okay if this is a part this is where I'm at and this is my priority I'm going to do this and I said if you want to be part of this I need you I need you in my hometown I need you we're going to build a studio. We're going to my priority.
I'm going to do this. And I said, if you want to be part of this, I need you in my hometown.
We're going to build a studio. We're going to do this.
We're going to do the thing. I don't know what it is.
I just know two things. I look at my calendar and I look at my bank account.
So if somebody tells me like my family's important to me, that's cool that you said that. Show me.
Those are the two things I need to see. And I couldn't give you a good answer back then about if this was really a priority.
Like I was bragging about what I was doing. I was spending four or five grand a month.
That's in the grand scheme of thing. That was, that was little budgets.
My calendar, two days, once a quarter. And I was trying to have impact.
Nope. I just couldn't lie to myself anymore.
So I'd say, Sam, we're going to go do the same. If you want to be there, you got to move.
Two weeks later, he shows up, my front door, packed up, got rid of his apartment, shows up with his buddy Matisse. So I had a two for one, didn't know it was a package deal.
That's cool. Two protein bros in my basement.
White wife Renee's like, how long Sam and Matisse got to live down there? I said, oh, just for like a week or so. A month later, they're still there.
I love it. But that's what we've built in the last 14, 15 months, a team of 15 people that wake up every day to try to create as much value for the world than anybody else.
OK, I've got a bunch of questions. So first, does Sam have experience building a media company? He worked on my marketing department for a while.
He has no experience building a media company. OK, and when you say media company, describe what that is to you.
So it's called Martell Media and we don't produce anything for anybody else. It's all my own content, which is kind of bananas.
We have an equipment room that's got more stuff. I'm like, what is all this? Like gimbals and drones and da, da, da, da, da.
And Sam's convincing me that we need all this stuff. And I'm like, okay.
No, I'm kidding. We do use it.
No, it's fascinating. Yeah.
No, we shoot contents on scooters. I mean, we have mounts for things, car content.
I mean, we just, and again, do I know what I'm doing? No. Do I have a process for figuring things out? Sure do.
What's the process? Process is you have to try a bunch of things that feel a hundred percent aligned and authentic to you. And if something hits, you have to figure out what the format is and you got to lock in the format.
So what a lot of people in the content world that are not, because if you don't do enough volume, you don't have to do this because it's not a priority and you can just try a bunch of stuff, but all the best people, and I would say, you know, Mr. Beast is always at the top.
If you actually look at his videos and he's talked about this in these kind of like nerdy you know producer type conversations with different youtube channels but essentially he realized that you know there's these formats that work for his audience and then he takes that format he figures out all the variations and for example we'll spend 60 of our effort just on the packaging of a youtube video what does that that mean? It means the concept, the title, the thumbnails.

Let's add some S's to that.

Split testing.

We're talking first 30, we go literally one second,

three second, 10 second, 30 second.

And it's not like, oh, I like this, I put it.

No, it is in its tested and retention. And we're looking at the analytics's it's just deciding if you want to get fit it's same thing to the degree that you measure with more precision you will have the feedback to be able to improve your situation people that are struggling with their health it's because they don't measure anything they don't measure their sleep they don't measure the weight they don't measure their food they don't measure anything you know i learned hey mac got to focus on them.
Workout intensity and progressive overload, you got to track your workouts, all these things. So it's like, I just applied the same concept from software just to media.
And again, surround yourself with people that do it. So we built a network around Sam.
We hired great talent consultants, agencies. Do you have a lot of outside agencies who work with you? No.
So what we do, and this is Sam, full credit to him, is we'll hire an agency for 90 days if they have an expertise, but we'll just tell them up front, we're hiring you to teach our team. And then we usually hire somebody to pair them with.
And then we just, because everything, you can't do artistic projects at the scale we're trying to do if everybody's contractors, because they just don't care as much. Totally agree.
They just can't. And I don't blame them for it.
They're running a business with their margins and processes and blueprints, and that's how it works. We're really in it.
I mean, rule number one, if we don't consume our own content, then we've messed up. So you're not allowed to work on the media team if you don't already subscribe to newsletter, watch the reels, watch the YouTube.
There's no ifs, ands, or buts. If you don't consume the content we put out there, you're not the right person for the team because you're not a consumer.
Imagine Magic Mind founder doesn't take his own product. I know a lot of people have marketing departments that the people creating the content don't consume the stuff they make for their customers.
You've got to drink the Kool-Aid and live authentically. It's just impossible.
You can't win without that.

So I- the stuff they make for their customers. I could not, you gotta like drink the Kool-Aid and live authentically.

It's just impossible.

You can't win without that.

So I, no, I understand.

So basically then you decided 14 months

to go all in on you.

You built a team around it

and your team now is not just Sam,

but people around it.

About 15 people, yeah.

How much does it cost a month to upkeep that?

Sam would know the numbers

because he manages it with Todd. Yeah, no, give a real number like Todd's number for the whole thing.
Give me like a real number. It's probably like 180.
180 a month. Probably.
So does that mean that includes people walking around with you 24 hours a day or whatever? They're not allowed in my house. They're not allowed in your house? My wife said no, no.
No in your house. That's why you do it all.
They have to text her if they want to come to my front door. Sometimes they show up for some stuff.
They have to text her the day before. If they don't, I tell them run away.
Okay, good. So it's everything outside the house.
Are your kids allowed to be on? Yeah, Renee doesn't care. We put the kids on.
Yeah, that's fine. Okay, so basically you basically have someone to follow you around.
You have more than one person. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, we have. So essentially, there's two parts of the team.
There's a revenue team because you monetize content. A lot of people, I didn't know this when I started.
Right. Yeah, our YouTube makes enough to cover the production costs.
So that's crazy. Right.
Nobody told me that. So we have a revenue team.
We have a media team. And then Todd runs the thing.
So that's the one thing. Again, I write about it in my book.
I don't need to CEO companies anymore. I like to be the talent.
I like to create them, but have other people run them. So technically- I remember what I saw of yours now that I liked.
What was that? I just remembered. You talked about building talent, about CEOs who they are spending their time building talent, not, and like getting that, like- Build the people.
Building the people.

And the people build the business.

And the people build the business.

It's 100% how it is.

And that's why I love that we now have a camera

showing people the conversations,

how I move through the world,

how it actually works.

Because you can read it.

It's like trying to learn to surf.

You can't learn to surf reading a book.

We want to show people behind the scenes

and we do the best we can to do that.

But day one, hire Sam to run all media stuff, hired Todd todd to run the media company and then he built the rest of it because like people when you start off you build bottom up right because you don't have you don't have any money you don't have any resources you're like hey cousin can you help me do this and you kind of piece things together you make some money you buy back some time but most people actually make it at the top or have some kind of liquidity or event. They're not supposed to do that again.
They're actually supposed to start top down. Nobody ever told them that.
So I learned a long time ago that I made that mistake. And I go, why would I do that if I've got money in the bank? Next time I hire top and then they deal with all of it.
I think that's a great strategy. My question is what happens for people who don't have millions of dollars in the bank to spend a hundred plus thousand dollars a month? They don't need to.
Okay. Walk me through how someone can build a media company with themselves when they have very little money.
This is literally what I teach my friends all the time. Anybody interested, like follow me right now, just follow me on Instagram and ask me that question and I'll give them the playbook.
Like I, cause I get all my friends have watched me do this in 14 months, asked me the exact same question. Guess what I did? I wrote it down and I sent it to them.
So here's the thing. First off, your gear is your phone, period, full stop.
Number two, focus on one platform. Instagram is the best for monetizing, okay? I can talk about why, but let's just go.
And because it has the best messaging platform. And that's honestly the reason why.
Then we talk about format. Well, you gotta figure out what works for you, but you need to do at least three to five stories per day.
You need a main post three times a week. You need to do two reels a day.
That's a lot of content, but not really. Wait for the second part.
Most people are already creating the content every day. They're just not capturing it.
So I have a camera that sits on my desk on an angle. And anytime in a meeting where people ask me questions, so let's say I'm with a bunch of my CEOs and they're asking me questions, or I'm

talking to a team, I'm doing leadership development. Anytime where I'm teaching or answering question,

that side camera is on and it automatically records and saves it to a Dropbox. And that

produces the content the team clips and puts on my social. I did that for the first part.

The only reason I added more capacity is because we wanted to do more. But if I didn't do anything other than have an editor and use my phone the way I just explained, everybody could grow their brand.
And it's not a lot of effort. And it costs you.
I mean, an editor might cost you 1000 bucks a month, maybe you can do like 20 bucks a video like a clip. It's just the problem is nobody got the rep.
So their content's not very good. So I was going to say to you, I think a lot of times we're struggling with the content because unless you have a busy life and that you're doing a lot of stuff, you're stuck with like having, if you have a boring life, it's hard to create content.
Okay. Perfect question.
You want to know how I do it? Sam calls it creating the containers. So what Sam realizes are certain experiences or moments where Dan gives his best stuff.
So what he did is he asked me to work with my assistant to restructure my calendar so that the scenarios are in there that gets him what he needs. So for example, it's one of my favorite things that he realized, and it's some of our most viral content, is I've always done youth work.
Youth programs, at-risk youth, juvenile detention centers, recovery centers, always part of my life. Sam goes, you know, we do the youth club or King's Club, but the way you're doing it right now doesn't get the kids asking you questions.
You're teaching them and then you're hanging out with the car, but they're not really like, and he goes, it was really brilliant on his part. He goes, here's what would be great.
It's one, shorter teach, then Q&A. Then we've got the in-room Q&A.
And then he goes, at the end of it, before we go outside for the car show component of it, could you ask them all to just think, if they had an opportunity to sit down with you at a coffee shop and ask you a question about habits, mindset, or beliefs. What would their question be for you? And then what we'll do is the first 10 that find you to ask you those questions, you'll let them sit and start your car.
Cause I have a whole car collection of supercars. And I was like, okay, the first time we did that, I can't tell you how much I loved it.
These kids, there's this little kid chat. If you own my reels, you'll see them.
And he asked a question, he's like, how do I sell more candies? And it was a genuine, and I was just like, let's talk about it. And I gave him an answer that 100% helped Chet, but it actually would help.
And I think it's almost 2 million views. And that format, now he took- What's the answer? Well, the answer is you figure out who buys your candies, kids, and where do they hang out, parks, parks and which park in your city has the most kids called the city.
And he never thought of that. And I said, if you show up at the park, you're going to sell all your candies out now.
Brilliant. But it's not that it's, it's a principle I've learned a long time ago, which is who's your ideal customer? Where do they hang out? Make an offer they can't refuse.
Okay. I'm going to ask this question for my son.
So him and his friend started this business about they go to Smart and Final, they buy a bunch of candy, and then they take it to school. And then their idea, and I'm all for it, so maybe I'm a bad mom, but they'll do it until they get caught.
Ask for forgiveness, not permission. You're not a bad mom, you're an entrepreneur.
I am, really. And so they buy all this candy, they go to the school, and they take the candy in half of it, and they try to sell it, right? Yeah, they buy wholesale, they sell retail.
Right, to these kids who want candy. Yeah, for sure.
Is there any suggestions for them on how they should sell more candy in a closed environment? 100%. Two things from my drug dealing days.
I would figure out how they could empower other people to sell candy at other schools, one. Two, before that actually is how can you differentiate the candy? And I think there's a way they probably could.
And that's where that kid was doing the freeze-dried version. So he bought Skittles and then put it in a freeze-dried machine, dehydrator, and it would turn it into like this crystal Skittles.
So he's taking a raw material, adding some value, and charging a markup for it. That's such a good idea.
Just saying, I'm full of them. I love that.
I'm going to clip this and give this to my kid. Take it.
And go have your kids go. This is the cool part is now that we figured out going back to the content format, once Sam realized that, then he goes, oh, what are other things Dan does that we can turn it into better content? So I do leadership training every Monday.
And we sat down and he said, okay, here's what we're going to do. You're going to teach these things because these things are what people are asking about.
It's also what you need to teach the team. Cause like, I'm not going to just teach stuff for your content.
I need to make sure I deliver what I need. So that's all we do.
We sat down and said, okay, this is the kind of things I think the team's missing. He goes, okay, well out of a hundred of those ideas, 60% is what I think will do well out to the world.
Can you just start with the first 60%? I said, cool, that content now is going viral. So I just think most people don't ask themselves, like for example, if you know Q&A content because they see content like this and they go, how do I get on podcasts? Most of the clips you see is not me on a podcast.
It's me with the angle of being on a podcast, but this could be me sitting down with my executive assistant and her asking me questions that she needs the answers to, to make her life easier. And it just happens to turn into content.
I love it. Like one-on-ones.
My one-on-ones with my leaders is content. I go into the studio.
We have a studio we built. Again, I don't want people to go like, I don't have a studio.
Go into your office, your boardroom, and have your four or five direct reports sit there and ask them, write down five questions that you really need me to answer, but ask it in a way that would be broadly applicable to other people. They all sit down, they write down those five questions, and you go, who wants to go first? And the first person asks, and you answer them, but you answer broad enough, not specific.
Because what happens if you're too specific, it lacks context. You don't explain yourself wide enough so that the people watching, they go, well, I don't know.
What does he mean by that? Last Tuesday, when you did this thing, where are they? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So you have to just totally change it a little bit.
Everybody wins. They get the content.
I call it net time, no extra time. So most of my content creation is just capture with the tweak of the format that Sam looks at and just tweaks a little bit.
So what is your ultimate goal? Besides just helping people and trying to give people content, you wanted to be a content creator, obviously. Are you trying to be like a thought? I mean, obviously you're trying to be like a Gary Vee or a, I mean, I'm looking at your book here, the people who are on this book here.
Some pretty world-class people. Like, are you trying to be like an Alex Formosie? Are you trying to be like a Tony Robbins? Trying to be a Dan Martell.
Right. So, I mean, this is very time consuming too.
Like how many hours are you? Three hours a week in the studio. That's it.
That's it? I just live my life. And have someone just like with you all the time.
Yeah. So then, okay, how much money did you make before you- A lot.
Like, are we talking upwards of, are you like upwards of 100 million? Are we talking 70 million? Just from you going to San Francisco, you're making all these investments. Some of them hit, some of them didn't.
Yeah, I mean, I have a portfolio of companies that we do over 100 million every year and it's highly profitable, but I've built and exited three of my own companies invested in, you know, a hundred plus and four of them are billion dollar companies. I am wealthy, unapologetic.
I'm rich. Don't have a problem with that.
You know, if people, I actually don't care though. Like if somebody is going to judge me based on my net worth, I think you're missing the whole plot.
Right. Because why would anyone judge you on that though? Some people, and it's just because I do so much work with youth.
I use that to get their attention. And then once they, like when you roll up to a rehab center and you're driving, I mean, even a BMW or Mercedes, it has a different, they pay attention differently than when you roll up in a million dollar, you know, Aventador SVJ.
They're like, Oh my God. How many cars do you have? A lot.
Is that the most expensive car?

No.

No, I just got a new 765 LT that's pretty crazy spec in McLaren. I think I saw that in one of your videos.
Is that the blue one? Yeah, I just got it last night. How much is that? That one's not much more than the SVJ, but it is more expensive.
I mean, I've got quite a few cars that are close to a million bucks. Jesus.
Yeah. And I buy more because I run King's Club and we like to have the unveiling at the King's Club.
That's crazy. Yeah, but I just do that so they read the freaking book.
But I find it, you know what? I actually find that very inspirational because you weren't handed money. Like what bothers me when people are given money, they were just like trust fund babies.

You freaking did it. No, there's not even handed.

You came from nothing.

I was in a hole, okay?

And I almost didn't get out the hole.

See, that's amazing.

Luckily, some people showed up in my life and said, hey, Dan, I've gone through this.

If you put your feet here and your hands there and you keep your head looking up, not

even guaranteed, you might fall down a couple of times, but let's get you to the top.

Thank you. gone through this.
If you put your feet here and your hands there and you keep your head looking up, not even guaranteed, you might fall down a couple of times, but let's get you to the top. And that's where we'll start.
And that's why for me, I just have a belief that if you've ever come from that environment and you get out of it, it's your responsibility to help other people. And that's what I've done my whole life.
What's crazy, Jen, is I didn't tell anybody for 15 years. What do you mean you didn't tell anybody? I got out of rehab.
I got sober. I started an entrepreneurship world.
And I didn't tell the world about anything I went through as a teenager. My parents and my brothers and sisters, we didn't talk about it.
We pretended like it didn't happen. And it wasn't until about a decade ago that I just decided that I had the most powerful thing I could use to help other people was my story.
Wow. When you say parent, are you talking about your foster parents? No, my real parents.
I was in foster care, but yeah, my birth parents are still alive. And they're now part of my life, my best friends.
When did they become part of your life again? They were always, so I grew up in a really tough home and got taken out when I was 12 and then brought back when I was 13, 14. Oh, what happened? Just a lot of stuff.
Just a lot of stuff. I mean, the things.
And then you went back into your house? Yeah. And then you were living there? My parents separated and I live with my mom and she let us do whatever we want.
And she would buy us booze and cigarettes every Friday. And that was her way of showing love.
And it's bananas. It's bananas.
And how about your dad? My wife grew up in a completely different home. So when she hears these stories, she's just like.
How did she grow up? Whatever the opposite is. Two parents have been, literally, we just celebrated their 39th wedding anniversary and had dinner every night at 530 together.
And her parents went to every and and and and so different the opposite so it's crazy fun little fact when i decide finally at this event just because whoever won the best talk was going to get a 50 000 donation to the charity of their choice i decide 10 years ago to tell this story she didn't know my fiancee wife at the time she was pregnant we we ended up had to push away and back because she got pregnant. So we had her firstborn.
She was pregnant. She didn't know.
And I tell her, I'm going to give a talk today. You don't know the details, and I just need you to stick around, and it might be a little tough for you to hear.
We'll talk after. And she goes, well, my parents wanted to surprise you, and they're going to be here for your talk.
And I'm like, OK, um don't let them leave and i remember me and her mom for a long time didn't like she didn't understand the damn martel entrepreneur she didn't get me right and i get off stage and i come up to her and she's in tears and she just looks at me she goes i get you now she gave me a big hug i said i knew you would this is the thing is i know myself i know my intentions i know that i was a good person it took a long long time to see that and sometimes people that don't understand why i'm so driven right you jen i know you get this i do i get all all the time they're like why is she like that she's a little much i know why i'm a lot and i'm unapologetic about it because i'm not doing it for your approval anybody's and not you're like i wasn't doing it for her mom's approval because she didn't understand me did i i knew why who i was doing it for is little dan and i will fight for little dan and i will show up to try to be the best person i can possibly be for that little kid don't know if i'll ever be the person I needed at that time, but I try. What was the story that she heard?

A book. to try to be the best person I can possibly be for that little kid.
Don't know if I'll ever be the person I needed at that time, but I try. What was the story that she heard? About the high-speed chase, about almost taking my life, about going through prison and what it did to me.
How long were you in prison for, though? First time, two months over summer, and the second time, five months. But it was getting thrown in the hole that really like solitary in an adult prison like was it like how long were you in that hole for three days but they don't tell you and you're locked up for 23 and a half hours a day in your underwear they don't tell you nope no that's part of the torture i guess what do you think about in that way do you remember what you were thinking about or were you thinking or it it floats from I wonder how much longer and I wonder how much longer like you just think maybe I could make a rope out of my my pants or something and just just a lot of crazy thoughts I mean you're in this where I was because it's now a prison.
There's whatever, let's call it eight cells and there's two juveniles, but the other six are full of adults and they're rocking the cell, which is they're sitting on their back, smashing that door, screaming at the guards. And I'm just hoping the doors don't accidentally crack open and they decide to come in my cell.
So I don't know what was I thinking. I was hoping I was going to wake go.
What a crazy dichotomy of life, right? Like where you came from to where you are now. I know.
I pinch myself every day. My dad calls me.
He's like, can you imagine? No, I couldn't imagine that. If people see me, that's why I know what I look like.
You know what I mean? Like I know. They say, hey, look at this guy.
He's full of himself. And look at how he looks.
And he thinks he's's like you have no idea you have no idea right no idea i'm not that cool i'm not full of myself i'm very honest about my shortcomings i'm very honest about what i'm doing and why i'm driven and uh and you know sometimes i had my wife two days ago she she was like what are you thinking of you know women like yeah what are you thinking about what are you thinking about? What are you thinking about? It's like 4.30 in the morning, I'm laying on the couch. And what are you thinking about? I said, I'm undecided if my drive is a massive trauma response to resolve my ego's need for acceptance or if I'm doing it for the right reason.
She goes, yeah, probably. So that's the kind of weird things I think about.
Because I think that the people that have gone the furthest down have the most to give the world. That's just the truth.
If they can figure it out, the people that have gone through the most have the most to give. It's always been that way.
Of course, because they have life experience to pull from. It's deep.
If they can go to the bottom of the ocean because a lot of times these things happen to us. Again, this is a byproduct of continuously doing therapy and betterment and personal development is, you know, the truth is the person with no secrets is the freest person in the room.
Totally true. But sometimes we do have to go to the bottom of the ocean where it's dark and cold to investigate, to ask ourselves these questions, to even audit those memories and ask ourselves, are those even real? Did I make those up? Or did they happen? And what else was involved? And what meaning did I associate? And am I willing to bring it to the surface and throw some sunlight at it? Because that's scary.
I mean, who have you looked at? Like when you did like your, I mean, besides, you know, when you were kind of coming up and all the other things, did you have very specific habits? Obviously, you're into fitness, you're very fit. Did you like lean on fitness to kind of teach you certain things like discipline and patience and all this stuff? So again, I'm glad we've documented some of it.
When I was 20 some years old, I was, I don't know, 32% body fat, 265 pounds.

I'm 214 right now at like 9%. So I struggled with my weight my whole life.

And even this version of Dan is from last December.

I decided somebody said some dumb comment to me that said, you know, there's 22 million millionaires in the US, but only 3 million people with visible abs.

I said, well, I should have visible abs.

And so you're like, I'm on this train. We did this whole thing called Project Visible Abs for 90 days.
It was this stupid, here's where I'm at. Here's where I should be.
Can I do it? And if I don't, the stakes I was at, if I didn't hit the goal, I had to enter in a fitness competition as I was. No tan, no shaved chest, no nothing, dad bod, like it was banana.

I recorded the whole thing. And what did you do? What was your routine? I learned two things, macro-based nutrition, progressive overload training style.
And those two things, obviously with consistency, changed my whole physique, my whole body, my whole energy, my whole, I got down to, I started at 231.

I got down to 197.

Shredded, ripped.

No. my whole body, my whole energy, my whole, I got down to, I was, I started at 231.
I got down to 197, shredded, ripped, no TR. This is all natural too.
I met Dr. Mike Isretel the other day in Austin.
He's like one of the top YouTube dudes. I actually love him.
He's funny. And he goes, the TRT looks good on you.
I said, all natural, dude, whole foods, not even creatine. Really? I know.
And then that's where you go. Well, that's not smart.
Well, no. I just had a whole podcast before you got here about creatine.
Do you eat a lot of red meat? Lots. You don't need creatine, you say.
I know. And guess what? I absolutely blast my legs at the gym, which turns out it releases a lot of testosterone.
A lot of testosterone. I know.
So these are all the things I learned because once I made the decision, then all of a sudden people in my life started getting introduced. My coach, Alan, who looks like Superman and my team.
And we all, we have a fridge in our studio. It's called Martell Macros.
It's like meal prep, food. Everybody trains like this.
It's a non-negotiable. If you're on the media team, there's no, we're not having a conversation about how you show up physically.
You need to show up physically fit. If you're not, there's a 90-day video you should watch and get on the train.
Well, I think it also says something about your mindset, right? I think that when you show up fit, it looks like you're someone who has discipline, who puts time in. Quiet confidence.
Quiet confidence. It's 100% true.
Mental strength, right? It's hard. To do something that's hard, and when you don't feel like it, and you don't want to.
I call the bicep vein the McLaren of the body. The bicep vein, right? Yeah.
Oh, I see. No, 100%.
Because it's one of those things that if you see, you know, yes, even if I did TRT, it doesn't give you a bicep vein. You have to do the work.
You got to do the work. So what do you do? Tell me the routine.
I pretty much work out seven days a week. Okay.
What time do you wake up? Like give me your daily habit. I get up early.
So my habits are dialed in and you don't start here. I'll tell you what it is to have an idea of what it can look like, but I'll tell you this, this today is a by-product of identity, not habits.
And I know you know that that's actually, the way that this becomes not hard is it just becomes who I am. 100%.
So that's what I've done. So who am I? I'm somebody that gets up before my kids because I don't want my drive to ever impact their life.
What time? It's 4 a.m., 3.52 this morning. Okay.
And I post on Instagram every morning. You can follow me.
You can see that I do it. So I get up early.
I do my morning routine. It's about two hours.
And it's not like, you have to do cold plunge and all. And I get that.
I do what I want to do. I want to create connected to my creator.
I want quiet time. I want to read.
I want to review. I want to meditate.
I want to focus on my, I want to look at my vision. So that morning time till 6.30 when these guys wake up.

Right.

How many other kids do you have besides?

Two.

And they're 11 months apart, Irish twins.

Oh, really?

Oh, wow.

My wife is an angel.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my gosh.

I know.

Can you imagine?

No, I can't.

It was bananas.

Yeah.

Yeah, I was excited she was not.

I can imagine.

And then usually the morning part, that's when I do strategic work work. I'll like look at my different companies.
I'll get reports. I, you know what I mean? Like I take, I ingest information and then I don't do, and then I go to the gym around eight o'clock with my trainer and I just train with other people.
Cause I know that I push. And this is the big thing I learned through project visible labs is that when I work out with somebody else, I'm at least 30% more, I'm pushing harder.
I feel safer, right? Some of the lifts that normally you would do, you wouldn't do as heavy because you don't have somebody to spot you, or you wouldn't have somebody saying, hey, look, let's go to failure. And it's not just fair.
Let's go to failure, to partials, to a static hold. So you're doing seven days a week of weight training.
No, I'm doing a day of active recovery on Sundays.

Which is like what?

Like a walking?

Active recovery will be incline cardio.

I'll do some core work.

I'll do some kettlebell walking lunges, whatever.

Like nothing crazy to rip the muscle,

but more just for stability and mobility.

And the other six days you're doing heavy lifting?

Yeah, I do like whatever split.

You're doing a split? Oh, yeah. Okay, so how long is it? 45 minutes? 60 minutes, start to finish, and I'm in zone two.
So my coach has this belief you don't have to do cardio if you actually work out. Yeah.
So most people go to the gym and don't break a sweat. If you saw me work out, you'd be like, poor soul.
Really? Oh, the videos are there. We recorded the whole 90 days, and I've continued doing this almost a year now.
Okay, so you work out every day with a trainer. Not every day, but I would say 70% of the time.
Because look at this one. He looks like a body...
I'll show you. And guess what? We used to call him Skinny Boy Sam.
If you met the 16-year-old Sam that I met, you wouldn't believe this young gentleman. Wow.
So do you do cardio cardio or no? No, I used to do Ironman. So that's like, yeah, my background, I think about six years ago, I got fed up of being fat and I was, cause you know, the kids were like, you know, five, six years old and I'm like, Hey Dan, you know better.
You know, you're not dumb. You read these books about success.
It's like, you don't look it. So I started with CrossFit and then running and then marathons, then triathlons and then ultras.

But I didn't look the part.

So what happened was is all those activities are kind of cheated because you can use races as a way to like stay fit, but you're actually eating like crap.

Like I would train for Ironman and eat the worst.

Like, cause I was burning 4,000 calories a day on top of my metabolic burn.

So it was-

We just did a whole podcast on this because I feel like a lot of those endurance races

or crazy races, like-

There's zero healthy about it too.

And it's... a day on top of my metabolic burn.
So it was- We just did a whole podcast on this because I feel like a lot of those endurance races or crazy races- There's zero healthy about it too. First of all, you're ruining your body.
Yeah. But more than that, you don't have that aesthetic that people are trying to get.
Nobody looked at me and go, oh, I want to look like you. No, very rarely.
Yeah, yeah. Very rarely.
Yeah. You look like you're like, either you look like a fat, thin person.
Yeah, the Tyrannosaurus Rex little arms, bigger midsection. Just flabby.
Yeah. Because you're basically like breaking down muscle mass all day and it's not for body composition.
Yeah. So that was the big shift when I did Project Visible Abs was the decision, you know what? I do want to look the part.
And the craziest thing, and if you watch the video, it's on my YouTube. I think it's called How to Get Abs in 90 Days, some clickbaity title.
People love the abs in 90 days. That's the great.
Yep. And the thing I learned doing it, you hear me say it throughout the whole video, as I got cleaner, leaner, leaner, is like, I could have looked like this my whole life.
That was the craziest idea to me. I could have looked like this my whole life.
I didn't know. I didn't know about macro-based nutrition.
I didn't know about progressive overload. I just knew the other stuff.
And it turns out that- But tell people that it's just for, I know, but just- Yeah. So the way I like to think about it is micronutrients is for your brain, calories is for how much you weigh, and macro is for how you look.
Okay. So protein, fats, and carbs.
And it turns out your body, if you adjust the different protein, fats, and carbs to your workout and body composition goals, you can do the body response. It's the craziest thing.
Like when I'm cutting and you drop my carbs down, boom, all of a sudden I look lean. The veins get veiny.
It's like, whoa, that's interesting. If I want strength, I might add more carbs so that I have the capacity, you know, the glycogen in the muscle to be able to throw some weights around.
I need that to be able to rip the muscle to actually grow the muscle. And I love when people go, I want to work out, but I won't look too big.
I'm like, okay, there, calm down there, Popeye. Because just so you know, it takes a lot of effort to put on muscle.
And the biggest you're going to look is at the end of your workout when you get a pump on. So if you're okay with the pump look, don't worry about it.
Totally. It's like women too.
Like they're scared they're going to get too big. Oh, women say that to me.
They're like, I don't want to look like that. I'm like, by the time you look in a mirror and feel that way, you can stop.
Yeah. So chill.
It's not going to happen. And then, so that's macros.
And then progressive overload is the idea that if you lift the same, you look the same. And that's the way I think about it.
So if I'm not tracking volume of weight, essentially in reps- That's such a great way of putting it. I say it all the time, lift the same, look the same.
Because people don't realize that. And you see these people, 90% of the people at the gym, a year ago, they looked the same.
Well, I know why, it's because you're lifting the same. You go there to get a mild pump on, you don't actually rip the muscle.
You don't, there's no, and then if you plateau, you're supposed to, so my trainer, we look at, you know, cause I track everything in an app. And then when he notices me plateau for two or three workouts, then we swap the whole.
So we keep the same splits. We change the movements and that's how we muscle confusion.
I love it. Yeah.
So, I mean, as a male, if I put three or four pounds on naturally eating whole foods, and that's the other thing is I eat whole foods, I travel with my food. I ate lunch,

you know, right before in the car before I jumped on the helicopter. Like- What'd you have?

I don't know. It's like in meal prep.
It's like it was ground beef and vegetables. Yeah,

literally. Well, and this is the thing is I just get rid of decisions I don't need to make anymore.

And I think that's one of the best habits you possibly do. Decide once.
In software,

we call it dry. Do not repeat yourself.
So when you write code, code is dry if you never have to write the code again because you just reference it. So in life, I like to make a decision once.
This is what I want to eat for the next four months. And I'm good.
I don't need variety in that area of my life. I'm going to use variety in other, like flying around LA.
That sounds like more fun than me wasting my brain power. You asked me, why do you always wear a blue shirt? Same reason.
I don't want to think. I wear the same thing every day.
Guess what? I think about how am I going to help this company 10X in the next 12 months? That's a hard problem for me to put my brain to, not where am I going to eat lunch today. So I like this shirt.
I mean, I figured because I have a whole thing in my book about wearing the same clothes. Steve Jobs did it with his black turtleneck.
I mean, people do it all the time. It's decision fatigue.
It's just decision fatigue. That's what I call it.
Of course, it's decision fatigue. Don't put your energy in areas that don't need.
No ROI. Absolutely agree.
So you chose to have blue. Yeah.
Blue, A, it makes my eyes pop, my wife told me. Yeah, that's good.
True. Facts, hopefully.
And two, it's a color of trust, hence the cover of the book. As a business person, IBM is blue, et cetera.
And if I pour coffee on myself, it gives a little bit of lenience of stains. It's not white.
White, I would, if I'm eating white, I'm done. Me too.
So luckily, it covers mistakes up. And yeah, it got people talking talking.
I remember when they started asking me and I was just laughing. So yesterday was Halloween.
I walk into my studio and guess what I see? Everybody in my studio dresses Dan. And then I did King's Club, my youth program.
And there was about, out of a hundred kids, about 10, 15 kids dresses Dan. I love that.
And I thought that was the coolest thing in the world. So yeah, I'm going to wear a blue shirt.
How long have you been doing it for? I don't know, eight months. I love it.
It just was a thing that happened in the content. And then Sam's like, hey, man, I think that's your uniform.
I said, done. Just wear the same blue, beige, white shoes.
That's what I wear all the time. And do I own other shirts? Sure do.
Do I wear them when I'm shooting content? Nope. Always the blue.
Always the blue. Can you do like different tones of blue? Yeah, I have different.
This is my new tone of blue. Okay, that's a new one.
Okay. Yeah.
Okay, let's talk about buy back your time. I want to know ways we can buy back our time.
I saw the decision fatigue we got. I'm on board with that one.
Well, let's do the home stuff because it's probably the most approachable, right? So first off is most people waste their time. They have time assassins, I call them, and that's chapter three of the book.
So I would just say, how about we just start by not wasting our time by, you know, stepping over dollars to save pennies, like the people that drive, 45 minutes of Costco to save $3 a gallon of gas. People don't ever stop and ask themselves, what's my time worth? I mean, how about we just do this? Just assume your hour is worth 100 bucks.
If you're actually an entrepreneur, go to 500. If you want to stretch it, go to 1,000.
And then you think about it as every hour, you paid. Like, that's the way I think about it.
I paid for this hour, that amount of money. So how am I going to get a return? I will tell you, most people will discover quickly they should start saying no more often.
Because a no is a yes. A no today to somebody is a yes to a goal you decided on yesterday.
And some people say yes to stuff because they don't know what they should be deciding on. So they don't have anything to say no to.
So I just look at the calendars where I think a lot of people have opportunity. I mean, again, if you have the means, you should not be cleaning your own house.
You know, why don't I pay for my own house? That's cool. Do you not like creating jobs? Do you not like, you know, supporting other people that might need that opportunity? I like Costco.
That's where I'm still stuck on because I like Costco and people laugh at me all the time because I will waste my entire day by going to Costco to save four cents or $1.99. Yeah.
I was just talking about you. Here's the thing though.
I also tell people that if something brings you joy, keep doing it, but don't do it if you analyze your time and you don't have time for the other stuff. Totally.
So if you told me you're going to Costco to save four cents on a loaf of bread, and then you're complaining you don't have time to go to the gym, I'd say you probably want to drop to Costco. Right, 100%.
That's where I, I talk about, you know, starting with the calendar because that's where all the gold is. That's where the knowledge is on what to do.
Also, there's a big difference between busy and productive. Yeah.
You know, you can make yourself busy all day doing silly things that get you no return on your investment. Busy, not effective.
Yeah. Yeah.
And I mean, so like one thing I talk about often is, you know, let's say exactly. So that's the home stuff, you know, and there's enough apps today and it's very unexpected.
Wash and fold laundry service, meal prep. So I have all my meal prep stuff done by a chef.
And then you go to- By a chef or by a food service company? No, chef. And I have a house manager, Betty.
So like when you said Ann, Betty reports to Ann. So Betty manages my whole life.
She's the CEO of the Martell family betty is okay so what's betty's job house manager okay which which entails what everything tell me okay is my passport expiring betty insurance on my cards betty all my real estate betty my car collection betty managing max and noah's soccer schedule betty figuring out everything our travel like personal trial essentially anything re Renee or I would have to do. Renee and I do two things, hang out with our kids or spend time with each other or people we love.
That is it. Anything that looks like not that, we choose not to do it.
And Betty supports us. Now, Betty has a team.
Betty has Sarah that cleans the house. She has people deal with all the fixing and the stuff.
And again, you don't start there. You start by buying back your time and then reinvesting and doing other stuff.

Wait, does your wife cook?

Nobody cooks.

Betty deals with everything.

Does Betty do the cooking or she has a chef to do the cooking?

We have a chef that does meal prep.

Betty heats things up.

She works 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

So she makes the meals from 5 to 5.30 and we eat as a family at 5.30 every night.

Every night, 5.30. Okay.
Who makes the kids breakfast and to 5 30 and we eat as a family at 5 30 every night every night 5 30 okay who makes the kids breakfast and lunch the boys they do well i don't make them breakfast maybe mom does who makes breakfast for you max your mom yeah if d if dad's to and they call me dita if dita's taking care of you who makes your breakfast have i ever made you breakfast can you ever ever ever remember a time i made you breakfast? Never. How about lunch? I don't make them food.
Yeah. So who does make your lunch? Betty or you? They've been making their lunches in their backpacks since they were probably six, seven.
I like it. Okay, go on.
So Betty reports to my assistant. The problem with the assistant, especially if you're just an entrepreneur, most people think they can't afford them

or they don't know what they would do.

That's a big one, I think.

Yeah, and I understand it.

And I talk about it in the book, chapter five,

where I was like,

here's the way to think about hiring that person

and start with these little tasks.

And okay, if people want this,

and I usually never give this away.

So Jen, your audience, if they're listening,

follow me on Instagram

because I want to grow my audience. I will send them my internal Google Doc executive assistant playbook.
So we're talking- Send it to me. Never mind my audience.
Okay, I will get you a copy. Don't forget.
Okay. Sam.
Sam, make sure Ann sends that to Jen. But if you follow me on Instagram, Dan Martell, two hours of Martell on Instagram, message me, direct message E-A Jen.
If they don't add Jen, I'm not sending it to them. I will give them the direct link to the Google doc.
And it's my internal sanitized 40 pages long of here's what they do. It's the Northstar principles.
It's the meeting structure. It's the preference files.
It's everything. Cause once you see it, then you're like, Oh, I hired somebody and I was still doing their job.
That's what most people do. So I'll give that to everybody listening on Instagram.
This podcast is literally meant for me. From the candy for my kids, how to sell more candy to the Costco.
It's my favorite podcast. To the executive assistant.
I should be taking notes on myself. Okay, go on.
So the assistant one is the next big area of opportunity. Once you go personal, then I go professional.
And the reason why is anytime you're doing something that somebody else could have done for a quarter of what you charge for whatever you do, it's actually very inefficient, period. The math, maths.
If you could pay anybody else a quarter of what you bill, your hour, your services, whatever you do, then if you do that, you're working against yourself. It's like you're trying to swim upstream because you want to be in flow.
The reason why people watch me and they go, how do you have so much energy? I just stay in flow all day long. I don't deviate.
I don't have to think about where I'm supposed to be. I know we're talking and Sam's giving you whatever he's doing.
And then I don't have to worry if I'm late on time. Somebody canceled.
We're talking and I just trust that the process is going to take care of itself. You're going to be late, by the way.
That's okay. Okay.
Yeah. Okay, wait.
Finish what you just said. Executive assistant, personal assistant.
Yeah. So most people on the personal assistant, they're doing stuff that they should just give to somebody else.
Yeah. And it's hard because learning to let go is actually an issue with trauma.
We don't get into that, but that's what it is. It's like fears.
And the truth is, if you don't learn to let go, you'll always be a prisoner of the world you created. So true.
That's why I wrote that book, because it took me a while. Okay, I need to get one more ways we can buy back our time, and then you can leave.
Yeah, I would say the next most approachable and easiest for people is stop running so many errands. Just sit down and think of it.
Like I call it a movement study. So in manufacturing, what they'll do is they'll put a pedometer on their employees and they'll measure who's walking the most and then they'll go and see what they did and then put the stuff around them.
So they'll create, if you actually watch in facilities, they'll start moving the raw materials in better locations so the person has to walk less because the biggest cost in most manufacturing is labor. So most people don't apply that to their personal life and they don't realize that they spent seven hours driving or five hours running errands.
It's like my brother had a home building company and he spent half his day just moving equipment around and buying stuff at Home Depot and doing all this stuff. And I said, dude, that's an entry level position part time.
And all you got to do is be a little bit more prepared in the morning with a list, give them the list. And then you go and you actually go close more deals to sell more houses, not run around in your car thinking you're being productive.
Because I think you're right. It is a letting go situation.
It is. People can't, they feel that they, or they feel like they can do it better than someone else.
This is my rule. 80% done by somebody else is 100% freaking awesome.
And if you don't think 80% is good enough, it means you got to get better. That's good.
Okay, well, what we'll do is, because really I wanted to talk about this book and we didn't really talk about it as much as I'd like. I love what we did instead.
I like it too. I like it too.
But I also like actionable things that people can have when they can be like, oh, I can do that. I can integrate that into my life.
So those are a good amount. What we'll do is next time you're here, you can helicopter to my backyard or my roof.
I have a huge roof, by the way, where I can fit a helipad. I can, I can put a helipad.
I'm usually in this area anyway, so. Like, I know Lewis Howes is around the corner.
Yeah, right here. Yeah, and a few others are in San Mar, or like Delray or whatever.
Marina Delray. That's a little bit far, but like right here.
That tells you how much I know where I'm at. That's okay.
You have a helicopter. Yeah.
So you can just put one over here next to my house, and you can just kind of jaunt right in here for a few minutes, and then you'll coordinate this whole thing. This was fascinating.
I'm glad that we got introduced. And is there anything besides following you on YouTube, Instagram, buying your book, buy back your time? That's it.
Just the book. If I can help you.
Just the book. Just get the book if you're inspired by anything I said.
My whole backstory is in there, how I help the best.

And if you feel compelled, follow me on Instagram.

I'm a good time.

I love it.

Thank you, Dan, for coming on the podcast.

Thank you.