#734: How To Create A True Wealth Mindset and Your First “I Made It” Moment with Dan Martell

When we learn to say no, we realize we're actually saying yes. We're saying yes to our dreams, yes to a better life, yes to opportunities. But if we just fill ourselves up with a bunch of things that we don't kind of intentionally think about, then we're saying no indirectly to our dreams and goals.

I'm Amy Porterfield, ex-corporate girl turned CEO of a multi-seven-figure business. But it wasn't all that long ago that I lacked the confidence, the budget, and the time to focus on growing my small but mighty business.

Fast forward past many failed attempts and lessons learned, and you'll see the business I have today. One that changes lives and gives me more freedom than I ever thought possible. One that used to only exist as a daydream.

I created the Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast to give you simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies to help you do the same. If you're an ambitious entrepreneur or one in the making who's looking to create a business that makes an impact and a life you love, you're in the right place, friend. Let's get started.

Welcome to another episode of Online Marketing Made Easy. Thank you so much for tuning in once again. And if you're new here, I'm thrilled that you found me and this really amazing community. I'm especially excited about today's episode because you're about to hear from someone who has completely transformed how entrepreneurs think about growth and creating a mindset to build your dream life. His name is Dan Martell. And if he's not on your radar yet, you're about to be blown away.

Dan is a renowned serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and author of the best-selling book, Buy Back Your Time. You don't even know how many times I have been with my students, and they have told me that is their very favorite book. I think it's a must read for all entrepreneurs. Buy Back Your Time.

In this episode, Dan is going to walk us through his unique approach to wealth building from his own story, how he went from a troubled youth to becoming one of the most sought after business mentors today. You're going to hear about the power of mindset, the strategies he uses to create exponential growth, and the exact steps you can take to start building wealth from where you are right now. So if you're ready to learn how to take control of your time, your business, and your wealth, let's get started.

Hey there, Dan. Welcome to the show. Hey, me. It's an honor. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks. I've been really looking forward to this. I did a deep dive on all things, Dan. And I'm really excited to chat with you. My audience is going to eat this up because you've got a really unique story and so many great perspectives on wealth and building wealth and building businesses. So we're just going to get right to it. Good for it. Good with you.

That sounds amazing. So I want to start at the top. I want you to talk a little bit about your background and how that led you to your first successful company.

It's a great question. I'll try to give you the shorter answer. It's a big one, it's a big question. It is, and the more I've talked about it, and for 15 years I had a lot of shame around it, so I didn't tell anybody. And what I've discovered the more people have found out is, I'm not alone. It turns out a lot of people that have had success have dealt with troubling situations as a child, as a teenager,

It turns out that uncertainty sometimes is the foundation that allows us to be entrepreneurial because we're okay with chaos. But yeah, I grew up in a home where I didn't know what version of my mama was going to get when I got home. She she struggled with.

addiction and alcohol and, you know, at a very young age, I had my own issues with anger and diagnosed with ADHD when I was young. And just like one bad decision led to another bad decision to me finding myself in juvenile detention, essentially twice by the time I was 16.

And what's crazy is a lot of people today know me as the software guy, you know, I've built an exit for software companies. But it all came from eventually getting released into a rehab center that saved my life, you know, where I spent 11 months rebuilding, honestly, the trust that I lost with my family at that point, understanding the story.

understanding the meaning of giving myself. And it was the end of that program. I was helping one of the maintenance guys clean out this old cabin. I found this super old computer sitting in one of the rooms on a book on Java program and sitting next to it. And yeah, I just follow it. It was kind of crazy because like I'm 17. I've never touched a computer my whole life. And I opened this book and I just follow the instructions in chapter one and 20 minutes later, I get the computer to print out Hello World.

That's impressive for never touching a computer before. Never. And it was kind of neat because in that moment, I thought maybe...

I struggled in life because my brain was different and computers was my thing. But I didn't, you know, when they say like, don't judge a duck for its ability to fly because it wasn't meant to fly, I felt like that was kind of the same thing I've realized is I was never meant to do things other than what I was doing. It's just I didn't get, I never was put in a position to win.

And in many ways, that learning to code became my new addiction, because I grew up with so much chaos and challenges that when I started just building things for myself, there was something very therapeutic, I think, about just the consistency of software and the getting in the flow. And I ended up doing just a lot of personal development by myself with my computer, building apps for myself and my friends. I mean, this is 1997.

And I get out of rehab and discover this little thing called the internet. And that's really, it took me a while to figure out success though. I mean, I tried a couple of failed companies. And honestly, it wasn't until I got a mentor when I was 2324 that showed me, oh, this is how you do business. Turns out, there's a way to do it and I wasn't following any instructions.

That's kind of been my journey is just massive pain growing up as a teenager led to the belief that I could do it because honestly, as long as I was sober, my parents were happy. Like it was so great. I remember like, people asked me like, did you ever have a vision for your life? You know, today I have the privilege of flying around on my own plane and I'm involved in

I think I own something north of like 20 companies. Like I've co-created with, I've invested in over 100, the portfolio of companies that I actively manage does over 100 million a year in revenue. So it's crazy for me. My dad always last when I talked to me and goes, did you ever think? And I was like, no, no. Honestly, I didn't think I would make it past 21. So every minute today just feels like a freaking blessing.

Amen to that. I want you to take me back to rehab because I've heard you talk about some lessons that you've learned in rehab that just transferred into how you actually conduct business. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, I don't get asked this question at all. So I know people, it's interesting is people go, what'd you learn in your first failure in business? And I'm like, I learned some crazy stuff before I ever started my first business, like you alluded to. There's a few things. And it's actually kind of interesting because I think most people that are adults would benefit from going to a therapeutic community recovery. I mean, that's kind of technically what retreats are.

But, you know, at 1617, I didn't realize what I was learning. I mean, I learned things like, you know, you get to decide the meaning you make to the events that happened to you from the past. That's crazy. And that's because

Those meanings are as likely to be true as the complete opposite, you know, so I could be upset that something happened or I could be grateful because it shaped me. So that was interesting. And what was cool is the program I was in is quite unique where

Every cleanup, they would pair you up with another residence and one of you had to share your life story. So you understand, I did 11 months there, three cleanups a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner, and every time I was either hearing or telling my story.

about what I went through or they went through. And it was interesting because indirectly I was kind of learning about the concept of, you know, blueprints on the world and how everybody had their own and how those stories they told themselves shaped their actions and being able to watch somebody come in week one

and over three, four, five months literally change their relationship to those events. It was something it almost took a year or a decade later for me to realize the value that I was learning, but that showed up in business. I'd be in meetings negotiating really serious situations and the other person would get heated.

And I would just sit back calmly and I'd be like, in my mind going, wow, that person's easily triggered. And I think because I had gone through so much where other people normally would feel intense about things, I could just find the calm in the storm and it 100% gave me an edge. The other stuff I would say rehab, maybe growing up indirectly on the streets,

I just have a ability to endure, like call it grit, call it resourcefulness. I just never accept no. I don't accept can't, don't accept not able. I'm just like, hey, I just need to figure out and it's kind of crazy. But if you think about this,

The person who's homeless on the street, let's call them a drug addict or they have a challenge with their mind, but like the drug addicts, they wake up every day and they have nothing. Like when we say nothing, like less than nothing, right? They're homeless, they don't have resources, they don't have a place to sleep, they don't have money. And by two o'clock that afternoon, maybe one, maybe three, they find a way to be intoxicated high. And I've always thought to myself, that obsession, when people say like, I'm really trying,

No, you're not.

No, you're not because I've literally seen people have nothing and figure out ways to be, you know, resourceful, fine. And I'm not saying it's a legal or anything. I just, I always calibrate to that. So these are kind of these lessons I learned after the fact that I'm so grateful. You know, I know you've done, you know, you worked with Tony, but Tony used to say this, Tony Robbins would go, you know, if you want to wake up and blame your parents for all the bad stuff and you're grateful for where you're at, you should also blame them for all the good stuff.

And that's kind of where I got to. And those lessons that I learned in rehab have made me rich, have made me continue to be on a journey for self-discovery, to realize that even though I got sober at 1718, it didn't stop the learning, the opportunity.

And I continue, it's one of my, it's the thing that I'm the most grateful for, which sounds crazy, because a lot of people go, if you could change it, would you go back and I'm like, not one moment, nothing zero period. Because I wouldn't want to risk the chance that I wouldn't be where I'm at today, because I'm really grateful for where that is.

So true. You know, most of us won't have a rehab experience, but I was thinking, I'm going to tell you a belief that I have. And you tell me if you also agree or if you disagree. I believe that everybody who is growing a business at one time or another

should work with a coach or a therapist. And therapy meaning like really dig into those issues that they have. I just think I'm such a better entrepreneur because I have a leadership coach, I have a therapist, I have a health coach, like I invest in all of that. So talk to me about your thoughts on that.

Well, I mean, if you look at different philosophies, they say a life unexamined is a life illived. Like our goal, I think of trauma, because a lot of people talk about trauma, we'll call it capital T trauma. In many ways, the metaphor I come to is that trauma is like a book, and we all have it, and we're given the book.

but unfortunately most of us decide to go put it on the bookshelf, never to open it ever. And they don't realize that their life is a reflection of what's in that book. And if they chose to have the courage, and that would be my invitation, the work on the other side of reading those stories and understanding where, who they are and how they react to things, where that comes from is actually the reason we're all here.

Right? We're all here to go on a journey, call it a soul contract, call it a divine assignment, but we're here to do the work. All caps the work. And I just think without somebody that is a coach, a therapist, et cetera, because you can reflect, like you can sit down journal, all great habits, talk out loud while you go for a walk. All incredibly cool tools cost you nothing, but

Man, I've had the right question from the right person as to the right moment that crack through through the noise, through the depth. I just this past week, I was working with one of my spiritual therapists and she just said something beautiful. She said to the depths of the deepest parts of the ocean you're willing to go, people will know who you are. Ooh, say that one more time. That is good. To the depths.

of the deepest ocean you're willing to explore, the more people know who you really are, including yourself. Yes. Well, okay, that's crazy. What am I gonna do with that? And I just, I've had a coach since I was 23. My first coach was an Emyth coach. I read the book. Michael Gerber wrote an incredible book called The Emyth, and then I said, I need somebody that can teach me this, because I'm not too bright. At that point, I had two failed companies.

And from zero and two failed companies, 12 months later, I do almost a million in revenue, 968,000. Wow. That's crazy as a 24 year old. Yeah. So today I have probably six or seven, because, and again, I don't even consider it like kind of the way you just talked about it.

Having somebody that is, you know, I have a coach for my nutrition that's different from my coach that I train with that's different from my parent coach is different from my spiritual coach is different from my business coach my strategy coach my media coach like I just look at it as an investment in me.

And the only thing that stops me is my ability to metabolize. So if I had the time and I want to get an outcome, I'd rather just pay somebody. It's so much faster. It's so much more productive. It's how it's always been. It's kind of interesting, right? It's like my son started editing videos. He uses his iPad and he records himself playing video games and then does his edits.

And I remember talking to him because he was like calling my media guy, you know, Sam, he was called Sam. He's like, Hey, how do I add the Mr. Beast font and this voice over thing? And I said, we could buy a course. You could hire somebody to teach you. And he's like, well, I don't want to waste my money.

We had to have a little conversation about this. Because I said, some people spend time to save money. And that's what you've been doing. How long you've been on YouTube trying to find the answers to that question? Yeah, exactly. Two hours. Other people spend money to save time.

And that's been my philosophy. I know that this hour I don't get back into the degree that I can get as much knowledge or insights or strategies from it. I'm willing to pay for that. And it's just, it seems like the more I invest in myself, the better my life gets.

Okay, so I know what some of my listeners are thinking right now. I have a lot of people that listen that they're just getting started in business. And they're thinking, oh, easy for you to say, Dan, you make millions and millions of dollars a year. I haven't even gotten to a hundred K yet. I can't afford to hire people to do it for me. Talk to me about that mindset, that thought.

Well, first off, it doesn't take money. Now, that's going to break people's brains because we just talked about money. If you think of the idea of getting feedback on your situation, you can find anybody that is one, two, three years ahead of you and get feedback on your situation. Most people don't want to do that because they're scared of the answers.

They're scared of being held accountable. They're scared of having a mirror held to them and saying, hey, why are you asking me that question when my gut tells me you actually know the answer? And if you need me to just confirm your answer, I can do that. If you need to borrow my confidence, I can do that. But the truth is,

Most people are scared to actually know where they've been under indexing or underperforming. So it's not a money thing because there are people in our lives, in our cities. People say this and go, well, yeah, but you know, you work with, you know, Ed Mylatte, I coach with Ed for a year right now, I coach with a few other really top people and well, you can afford them. But when I couldn't, I had mentors locally.

And guess what? I had to spend my time to get them because they were not putting their hand up saying, I will mentor you for free. They were sitting on nonprofit boards. They were the owner of the card dealership and the insurance company. And I had to call the email. I had to put myself out there. I had to be willing to be criticized. And those are all indirectly different forms of payment. And the truth is sometimes the best mentorship is through a book. My first mentor was a guy named Tim Sanders. He wrote an incredible book called Love is a Killer App.

That was my first book and he became our mentor and I emailed him every year with an update on my life. It didn't cost me anything. And I just, I think that people just use money as an immediate showstopper when I go back to the resourcefulness. Think about the person that woke up with nothing and they still made it happen. It's possible. And then once you've got more resources, it's just about speed. Okay, talk about that a little.

Well, if you now all of a sudden will go from 100 to 300,000 because you invested in your program or your coaching, then you take a percentage of that income and you decide to put it as personal development, as investment in yourself, in education. I mean, I don't know what my budget is per year, but it's a percentage of my income. And what's cool about that, like for example, my wife and I, we decide every year we're gonna do a personal development seminar together, right? And we've done a lot of cool ones.

Because that's allocated, we actually like go through the world searching for the next one. And we tell that to our friends and they go, oh, you should consider this one and we add it to the list. And it's because it's a budget item and it's not a one off decision. It just makes it more fun. It makes it more impactful. We know that when we pay, we pay attention. And here's a crazy part. I hope people resonate with this because once I heard it, I couldn't unhear it.

Often times when we make the investment, the transformation happened at the transaction. Totally agree. Yes. It's that decision you made. You're ready to change. You're ready to transform. You're ready to do something different. That one decision and the action to take to sign up for it, it's powerful. That's funny you should say that because when people buy digital course academy,

Opportunities start opening up for them before they even start my course. And I always tell them, look for the magic, the minute you enroll, look for the magic, it will be there. And so I'm a firm believer in that for sure. So I was thinking about all of your success and how well you do in business and how well you steward your money. And I'm curious, what mindset shifts did you need to make along the way around money

and around business in order to be as successful as you are with money and in business.

Such a good question. I love that. Again, I'm always talking about productivity stuff. I don't get to talk about money, yet it's the foundation. So I'm gonna teach people a framework that will absolutely shift their whole, like it has for me and will change their whole relationship with money. This is the way I think about it. Whatever you want, any goal, okay, we have to decide what that looks like. So let's just say the goal is to be rich.

Well, what happens is when somebody has a desire for something, they don't realize it, but subconsciously, there's these stories that they tell themselves about that achievement. And you could use it for weight loss, health, fitness, but let's just stay on the money topic. I always ask the person that's struggling with money, two things.

What is something you believe that you have a limiting belief, your skill level around them being rich? And it's funny because like I remember I asked in a friend recently and she goes, well, I'm scared if I got rich that I wouldn't know how to manage it. And then I would get in trouble with the IRS and I would get, you know, and I would probably go to jail. Hmm.

Okay, let's write the other ones down. So she had all these limiting beliefs about being rich, about her ability to be rich. So we wrote those down. Then I asked her, I said, okay, what are all the negative beliefs you have? Okay, so we have limiting beliefs and negative beliefs. Negative beliefs about people who are rich.

She's like, well, I don't. I think rich people are cool. I said, let's talk about that. Have you ever felt when somebody drove around in a fancy car that maybe they were showing off? Well, I mean, who needs a bright red Ferrari that makes it? And I'm like, this guy right here, that's who, just so you know.

And then she's like, oh yeah, sorry, I don't mean you. And I go, no, you kind of do, let's stay on this. What about if you watch somebody on Instagram and they post their home and it's this 14,000 square foot mansion on top of a mountain or do you judge that? Well, I mean, who needs that much space? Okay, cool, write that down. Like, people don't realize we have these money blockers or beliefs around achievement.

that if we don't bring to the light, they will always be road bumps or walls of us achieving that thing. So what we do is we write these things down, negative beliefs around the achievement and limiting beliefs we have around being rich or having money. And then we ask ourselves a few questions. First off, let's say, you know, one of them is so fasting, rich people don't pay taxes. Okay, first question, is that true?

Well, no, that's not true. Trust me, British people pay taxes. Is it always true? You're right, it's not always true. Okay, perfect. What would need to be true for you not to do that? Because we're not talking about other people, we're talking about you.

Well, I would need to make sure that I figure out what my taxes are and maybe pay them off every year. I said, well, what about if you paid them off every quarter? Yeah, that'd be good. Well, what about if you paid them every month? Because you're allowed to trust me, the IRS wants that money. Right. And she goes, oh, I said, cool. So now you just go, I will never do that because I'm going to commit to this. Same thing. It's like people like rich people are selfish. Okay. Is that true?

Well now, not always. Okay, it's not. What would need to be true for you not to be selfish with your money? Well, I want to donate some to charity. How much?

Is it 3%, 5%, 10%, you tell me. I think, I mean, if I'm rich, I wanna do 10%, cool. What would you need to do to make sure that's always true? Well, I'd write it down and tell my finance person to always donate 10%, could you start today? Well, I mean, I'm not making a lot of money today. Interesting, let's talk about that, because what I've learned is when people have a little and they don't do it with a little, they won't do it with a lot. So true. So it's interesting how,

We have these unexamined beliefs that are blockers to the achievement of being wealthy. And the only way to actually overcome them, because if you don't, here's what happens, you sell sabotage. You get some money and you give it away because you don't feel like you deserve it. You get some money and you feel awkward with it and you give it to somebody else to manage and then they lose it and you're like, why do they lose all my money? You knew better. You didn't develop the skills to manage it because you had these beliefs around it.

And that's why I always say sunlight sanitizes. When we take something that's unexpressed subconscious and we bring it to the surface and we look at it and we examine it, that's when we get the opportunity to rewrite those money rules. That's what I didn't realize when I was in rehab at the time that I was learning the process to do, that when I started, for example, Amy, I had this belief up until my late twenties that to be successful, you have to go bankrupt. What?

Oh, here's why. I read it in Dave Ramsey's book. I read it in Donald Trump's book. I read it. I read all these books of wealthy people and they all went bankrupt and I thought to myself, you're not a real entrepreneur, Dan, if you don't go bankrupt. Wow. Could you imagine the

crazy circumstances, the decisions I may have made that put me on the brink of that being a true fact because I believed it. Like, these are the unexamined beliefs. Lucky I never did, but did I inadvertently give permission to my team to wire money? Like, did I should have never done? Yeah, 100%. My dad, remember my dad asked me, well, how did you pay for that? I said, oh, my team just wires it over. Well, how did they do that? Well, they have access to our admin login.

You shared your bank admin login to your team to a pro. I'm like, uh, is that bad? He's like, yes, that's bad. So like again, you, you, you, you manufacture situations allow you to fail because you have these subconscious beliefs towards being rich. And I think that is if everybody listened and did that exercise, it would transform the game for them.

Absolutely. While you were talking, I was thinking about what my one of mine would be. And I feel like we get a lot of them from our childhood, our parents, and my dad is a really hard worker. He's a firefighter and he had an air conditioning business. We had two things going on.

And he instilled in me that you have to work really hard to make money. Hard work that you don't even want to do, but you do it to make money. And that's the only way you deserve the money and you make the money.

And with that way of thinking, if I didn't catch it a few years back, actually, I would have worked myself into the ground. Like, you talk about productivity and efficiency, and that doesn't come into play when you just have to work hard no matter what. And so I realized it doesn't need to be this hard. But I got that really clear from my dad growing up. Yeah. What you just mentioned is one of the questions when I'm working with people privately is how old is this?

Because you said a lot of them, yeah, how old is this? Where'd that come from? When I talk about that book of trauma, that's all I'm saying is where did that first come into your life? Was it a comment that your parents made about some guy driving by in a fancy car? Was it something your uncle said your grandfather said? I mean, I have the same thing. My dad owned a couple of real estate properties and he would mow his lawn every Sunday and he was never around. And he would say the same thing. If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.

Guess what? I did everything in my first company and it almost drove me into the ground. And then I realized that that came from my dad watching him always work and then he wouldn't have time for us. And I remember one time I said, I said, Dad, why do you do this? He goes, I like to do it. And I said, if you like to mow the lawn so much, why don't you offer to mow the neighbor's lawn? He's like, I don't like to do it that much. And I go, well, then I think your definition of like and mine are a little different. And it's kind of funny that if we don't examine these things,

that we can just keep going and going and then wonder why our life keeps getting to the same place. And that's why like, especially when it comes to money, if you want to be successful, you need to learn the beliefs that are gonna block you from it actually. Cause I had a mentor, luckily when I was younger, Ken, and he said to me, after I sold my first company, he goes, making money is actually easy, keeping it as hard. He said a lot of people know how to make money, but they don't have anything left at the end of the month.

They can sell their company, make tens of millions. And four or five years later, they're back at it trying to raise money for the next venture because they didn't understand how to keep it. And his advice, it was great advice, I continue to stay. Anytime I make a surplus of money, I take 50% and it goes away in the do not lose it bucket.

period full stop, safe index, boring, you know, like it's, it's the not the next venture, not the new thing, not even in my main business. He said, take, because I sold my company, I said, what do I do? He goes easiest advice I can give you is take 50 or take half of it, put it away.

And if you want to go do some angel investing or do some new stuff, you use that part and you never touch the other one. And if you do that every time, that'll create wealth. And I mean, if I didn't have that perspective, my mom was watching my mom live was kind of anybody sees me online. They see their like action sport, you know, wake surfing, snowboarding kind of Dan. That's from my mom. Oh, that's your mom?

She's YOLO. She is the only live one. Spend it now. Tomorrow's not guaranteed. My dad. Oh, wow. Conservative. If my dad said, I got a business deal I want you to be part of, I wouldn't even ask him about it. I'd wire him the money. He wouldn't do things unless it was guaranteed. So it's kind of cool to have both of those exposures, understand what scenarios one makes a lot of sense and other times they make no sense.

But yeah, I got exposed to that a little bit too freeing in the decision mode for my mom. OK, so you've seen both sides.

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So this actually teased me up for my next question well because I was thinking, what makes your approach to wealth building? You're talking about like what you do with your money. What do you think makes your approach to wealth building different than say others?

Yeah, and to give context, because a lot of people talk about money, I mean, my portfolio of companies is over 100 million every year, very profitable, and I live off of a fraction of that, like less than 10%. It just actually had a meeting with my house manager, but she manages our home stuff, real estate, vehicles, all that. And the reason why is I think I learned a long time ago, again, it's not what you make, it's what you keep.

And the best thing to do with your money is to reinvest it in yourself until you have a surplus, you know, back to the coaching, back into the personal development. You know, I have a bunch of young kids that I mentor, you know, 15 to 22. I do this program called Kings Club. It's absolutely free. 100 kids in a room every two weeks. And it's, you know, it's part of my, the work I want to do to help kind of trouble to you throughout risk youth. And they always go, I have some extra money, which I invested.

I go yourself. I love that answer. It's because it's the SNE 500. Invest in you. Invest in your ability to increase your earning potential. Invest in ways that you can create more value because that comp, if you think, think about it this way, I mean, I thought about this the other day, take all the money you personally invested in coaching, training, seminars, et cetera.

And you look at your business and what it's done. And I know you have a remarkable business. That's the return. There's no index fund stock crypto that's going to give you that kind of and guess what? If you lost it all tomorrow, you get to use everything you already know on the next thing and nobody takes that away from you. And I just think,

I'm going to take me with me for the rest of my life in every interaction, every circumstance. If I get better, the ROI of that over time, there is no better investment. And that's why I think that's first and foremost, I'm unique on that. I have extra money. I invest in me so I can create more value. That's the way the world works. It doesn't pay you for how hard you work, because trust me, there are people that put roofs on houses and build cement walls that work a lot harder than me from a work hard point of view.

But it's not about hard work. The market rewards you for the size of the problem that you solve. The bigger the problem, the more you'll get rewarded. The second thing is because I know that my time is the most valuable resource I have, you know, and I was telling this to a friend yesterday because he was struggling with somebody. I said, the reason you're struggling with that person is because they don't value their time and people that don't value their time will waste your time.

Yes. And that's what happens. People are like, oh, I never thought of that. Yes. If the other person doesn't value their time, trust me, they will waste your time. And that's what you're feeling. So because I know that that's the most valuable asset, I invest disproportionately in my ability to increase my bandwidth or my ability to create more than the normal person.

So when I was younger, I had no problem hiring. So if I just think about my personal life, the amount of people that I have to support that, I don't have to spend that. And then I would have to do it all. And that's a meaningful investment. But why do I do that?

for my health, for my energy, for my ability to be present, for my ability to create more. Turns out if I have more time to do the thing that only I can do, I can build more. It's actually more productive. It feels better and it makes more money. So it's actually the best trade you can make. It's just, again, if you have a belief that

You know, if you want to dump something right, you go do it yourself, you're never going to invest in buying back more time. And you see people drive 27 minutes to save eight cents a lit or a gallon on gas. I'm like, what are we doing? Run some numbers here. The math doesn't matter.

It's always wild. My mom would always drive a little bit farther to go to get that Costco gas. And I always just thought, what are we doing? So yeah, totally agree with that. So I'm curious, you've had so many crazy moments in your life, so many pivotal moments in your life getting to where you are today. Is there a pivotal moment or a decision that just drastically changed either your career or your financial trajectory? Can you think of anything like that?

I mean, the one that's most recent, and I think last time we chatted, we talked about this, because a lot of people that know my work now, my book, buy back your time, or my YouTube, or my Instagram, or my socials, really, they don't realize that that's all in the last 14 months. That's what's wild to me. When I was like diving deep, I'm like, wait a second. So how is that all in the last 14 months? How did that come together so quickly?

And that's why when you say, was there a decision? There really was. There was a moment. My book came out January 17th, 2023. And growing up, I've read 16, 1700 books. When people stop me and I'm in one of my cars and they go, what do you do? It's like, it's not what I do. It's what I've done. And what I've done is I've read some books. And then the little kids sometimes will joke and go like, you make money reading books? And I'm like,

Technically, yes, but no. But I tell them that I'm built by books. This car was bought by books. This is just how it's always been because I don't know how to do the thing I'm about to do before I've done it. And the only way for me to do that fast sometimes is just start reading. And so I've always had aspirations, I think, just like yourself, I'm sure, to write a book. And it comes out into the world, and you hope people read it.

And I'm a person of faith. So, you know, sometimes you ask God for gifts and He gives them to you, but sometimes you don't realize what they are at the time. So the book comes out. My publisher was like, if you could sell 4,000 copies, that would be great. In the first week, we did almost 20,000 copies. The book today is number one on Amazon for time management, small business, entrepreneurship. It continues to sell more copies every week than the previous week.

And what happened was is about two months after it came out last year, I had to be honest with myself, if my goal truly is impact over income, because we hear people say, I'm sure you share with people all the time. It's like, hey, this is about who we can serve.

I knew that the best way for me to serve was actually through deciding to go all in on media. And I use the word media specifically because I think a lot of people do content, but they treat it like a marketing department. And that's fine. I did that for nine years. I had a YouTube channel and followers and Instagram, all the stuff, but I had 20,000 subscribers on YouTube and 70,000 followers on Instagram and 60,000 on Twitter.

Today, in the last 12 months, we've added almost 2.5 million on all our platforms. We get this month alone, we're going to get 100 million views on our content. Oh my gosh. So what changed was me deciding to go pro. And that decision to go pro, and I've done it in other areas of my life, my fitness, my relationship, my businesses, is really two things. Is my calendar?

Am I investing real time, dance time in this? If this is a priority, show me in the calendar where it's a priority. Cause a lot of people say my kids, my business, my health is a priority. No, it's not. Show me your calendar. It's not there. Well, I mean, I don't have to put in my calendar. Yeah, you do. Show me.

And then the other one was my bank account. And I'm literally ashamed to say that I would brag at how little amount of money, let's call it $4,000 or $5,000 a month on my YouTube channel, because I had an editor that would edit the videos after I hit the record button and did whatever I did. And I would batch them. So I would brag about how little amount of money I was spending and how little amount of time on something in that moment that I was saying to myself is really important.

And that's all that shifted. I mean, a long time ago, I read the book going pro by Stephen Pressfield. And so I knew what it meant. And I just had to have a real honest conversation with myself and with my wife. Because Renee, obviously, if I decide I'm going to go live my life on the internet, she has to understand what that comes with and consequence. And that's why I got a studio because first thing she said, not my house. And she's not wrong. I get it. Like, there's one thing to record right here like this, but having a team around and videographers and all that stuff.

I just decided to go pro and I remember calling my buddy Sam up and I said, you know, I've been working with Sam for five, six years at the time. I said, Hey man, I'm going to go do this. I'd love to be involved, but to do this, you need to be here. I really want, we're going to go all in and budget. He's always a budget. I said no budget.

Like, I'm gonna honor this, no budget. Like, I'll tell you if you're being wasteful, but I trust you, go. And on the calendar, within three months, I had to renegotiate, reschedule 80% of my calendar. You know, I think Dr. Ben, he wrote 10X is better, he's either in 2X. He mentioned, he said that if you want to 10X your life, your business, your results, 80% of your calendar has to be dramatically different in the next 12 months. And that's where I got that concept.

And that's why today it's the byproduct of the decision. It doesn't take away like, well, how did you do it? And what did you, you know, how did you sequence it and all that? But it was first and foremost a decision. And honestly, Amy, best thing I've ever done in my life in a long time, other than having my kids and marrying my wife.

the opportunity to support and create and get invited to do things that otherwise I don't think I would even be on people's radar. And that was the big idea was realizing that all the impact I wanted to have, all the things on my vision board, right? My vision board is the wallpaper on my laptop.

All those things, all those moments, experiences, people I wanted to help, all of that existed on the back end of two things, reach and reputation. And that's what I did. I decided to go all in on reaching reputation. Luckily, I'm Canadian, so I had a pretty decent reputation, but the reach part was scary.

You know, putting yourself out there and getting criticized and what if it would, you know, I remember one time I had a fear. What if I teach something that isn't right and somebody there's harm created in their business? Cause I was a misspoke, you know, not through intention. Yeah. I was like, wow, this is an interesting one. Dan, where's that? You know, where does that come from? How old is that? So true. So that's, that's how I got here.

One of the things I love that you said that I've never thought about, and I want to share this with all my students, so those listening, I want you to do this. Dan was talking about 80% of your calendar needs to be shifted, and I'm curious for those that are listening right now, go to your calendar after, don't go now, and look at the last month of your calendar, and ask yourself, does this reflect what I truly want, what I truly value, the goals that I'm going for, how I spent my entire last month? Does it reflect that?

And I'm going to do that too because I'm going to guess I'm probably off in some areas for sure. That's just really profound to me.

I love that. Yeah, that reflection is actually something that I coach people on because there's the daily reflection at the end of the day to just look back and say, did I deliver or complete the things I committed to? There's the weekly, you know, for me, I do them on Sundays where I look at it and go, okay, here are my 12 goals for the year. Does my calendar going forward reflect those priorities? And then there's the quarterly and then the yearly. And, you know, even when Renee and I do our annual planning in December,

We always start by reflecting on the past year and just go, okay, we said yes to this vacation and this spot or we did this with these people or we, you know, I said yes to speaking at this event and we just reflecting go, was it a heck? Yeah, like knowing what we know now, would we do it again? If the answer is no, guess what? We use that to inform the following year.

And that's how, over time, not right away, your life can get quite magical. And the reason why is, when we learn to say no, we realize we're actually saying yes. We're saying yes to our dreams, yes to a better life, yes to opportunities. But if we just fill ourselves up with a bunch of things that we don't kind of intentionally think about,

Then we're saying no indirectly to our dreams and goals, right? Another way to think about it. I heard somebody say, don't trust a person that always says yes, because they'd never say no, which means at some point they got to let you down if they're saying yes to everybody. Right. And also, they probably don't have their goals and values in check if they're just saying yes to everything. So that's interesting. Oh, I love that.

Okay, so I keep thinking about like, how does your brain work? And so when it comes to growing a business, everyone that's listening right now, they want to grow their business. So can you think of one or two questions that they should be asking on a regular basis of themselves? Like what's the question they need to be asking to stay focused on growing their businesses?

I love this. This is like my happy place. Because I do a lot of reflection on, because I've built and exited so many companies, helped a lot of people do the same thing. I always get a chance to go in like sequencing-wise, right? Because it's all about sequencing equal success. You're making a cake. You might have all the right ingredients with the wrong recipe. One recipe gets a beautiful chocolate cake, the other one gets a pile of mush, right? Because you just do it out of sequence.

Here's a few things I would encourage people to ask themselves. What is the number one problem that is the biggest bottleneck in the business today? That if it was not there, would allow you to grow the most? That is the least amount of effort for the biggest amount of reward, okay? And in my book, I actually talk about this scoring system called rights, which is reach, impact, confidence, and ease. A lot of people go, I can do anything. And I go, I know. And that's the way the world works. You have 100 things you can do to make your business better.

But out of all those things, what is the number one bottleneck that would actually produce the most profit the fastest that you kind of know how to do that you feel confident with? So that's why the right score is a really good mental question of how big of an impact, how confident you are, how easy it is. So that would be question number one. And the second question, this one's gonna be tough for people.

is who do you need to become to achieve that goal? Love this question. This is what people they go, Dan, why do you work the way you do when you don't have to? Amy, you get this. People are like, I don't get it. You're rich. Why do you work so hard? Someone asked me yesterday, why aren't you already retired?

I always say retired from being me. Good one. I'm gonna retire from what? This is who I am. This is what I do. I love doing it. If I didn't love doing it, I wouldn't do it. And if I was retired, I'd be pretty sad.

The idea of who do I need to become is just this belief, I've gotten honest with myself, that if I was the person I needed to be to achieve the thing I want to achieve on my vision board, then I'd already have it in my life. And the fact that it's not present in my life is proof that I have work to do. You know, Jim Rohn used to say this a long time ago, that we don't create success, we attract success by becoming an attractive character. I would have those results today, the media stuff,

if I was the type of person who knew how to do and create that stuff and attract it. And I don't know. I just, I love that question because it gives me 100% of the control. It's me. It's not, I'm not saying who does somebody else need to become. Who do I need to become to achieve that thing? And because also most people can't deal with problems. So it's like, who do I need to become to deal with bigger problems? Cause the world doesn't get easier.

We get better. I mean, some people get a $10 overage on their cell phone bill and it ruins their whole day. Like if you can't deal with a $10 overage on your cell phone data plan, you're not going to get $1,000 business problems. And trust me, $1,000 companies come with $10,000 problems. So true. So true. I love that. And what I love about talking to you is I feel like you believe you can figure anything out. And am I correct in that?

Yeah, it reminds me of that woman's boy, what'd she call it, a figure out? Marie Corleo, everything is figure out. Yeah, Marie Corleo, I loved that title because it was just, what you just said reminded me. Yes. That's probably the essence of that. Yeah, for sure. And when you believe you could figure anything out, like what you just said, like if it's on my vision board and I don't have it yet, there's work I need to do and I need to become that person to get that. And I just love this drive and I'm just curious, do you think

You've had it for a very, very long time. Is this something you've developed over the years or when you were in your 20s building your first business, you figured it out then.

I think what it was is like everything, it's always a great story, because I study story. Every hero has this, stories is I was going upon my life, just as normal, and then incident happens, called to action, monster, the bigger the monster, the bigger the hero. Every movie's like this. Once you understand this pattern, you can't unsee it. In every X-Men movie, you'll probably feel rude to you.

And then you overcome it, and then there's a transformation of the hero. And it's a great story. But my experience is it's almost like phasic or like waves in an ocean is when I started, I had zero vision for my life other than, hey, Dan, it'd be really great if today you stayed sober. And it was really that simple. Like I didn't, I wasn't thinking success. I wasn't thinking anything, just hey, today, one day at a time.

And I think what happens is you get enough one of those one days at a time together and you start thinking a little bit bigger, maybe, what do I want to do in a month? What do I want to do with this year? So it was never a big vision. So even when I was younger and I made my first million in my business,

I think the next thing I thought I could maybe do is five. And I remember putting it in a deck like I was gonna, I'm gonna tell my team and they're gonna think I'm crazy. But I think if we work really hard, I read good to great. And they were talking about all this, like have a, you know, have a B-HAG. My B-HAG was 50 employees, 5 million in revenue, five countries. And just cause it was all five. It made no sense. It hindsight dumb, but it mattered. It was just something to look forward to. And I think what happens is,

My confidence over time, it would come and it would go because I would win and then I would lose a little bit and I would win and I would lose a little bit and sometimes the losses were a little bit bigger than the wins and it took the win out of my sale.

But the one thing that I hope my life stands for and that I'm proof of is that every day I decided to get back up. I just got up and I said, I can't control what happened. I can control what I do right now. And I know this really hurts. And it used to be bad. Amy, I used to lay in bed. I saw your post recently about your anxiety. And I thought that was the coolest thing that I'd ever seen you post, period full stop. Thank you.

Yeah, it was beautiful, very honest, and I went through the same thing. When I was in my 20s, I would get so overwhelmed that I would just lay in bed and cancel all my meetings. And I remember when I was, at the time, my girlfriend, my wife, today, she'd come in the room and go like, oh, you're in one of those moods, and I'm like, I don't want to talk about it. And then it was like, sometimes she'd let it go on for two or three or four, sometimes a whole week.

And I couldn't explain it. It felt like a dark cloud. And what's happened over time is I've just gotten better at responding to it. And it's like, today I was training with my coach, Alan, and he says, you ever have bad days? They say, no, bad moments.

I don't do bad days. I haven't had a day where I wanted to lay in bed in a long time, like years. It didn't mean it didn't happen. Was there a moment where I just snapped out of it? Nope. Did it just get better over time? Yeah, a little bit. And trend lines look like it'll just get better and better. Maybe my bad moments that lasted two hours are going to get down to 10 minutes and that would be cool. But I'm human. I deal with things. I'm pushing on the world. I'm trying to change things and it's like, no. And I'm like, yes. You know, so,

I would be lying if I said I always had a big vision for my life, because even a year ago, what we're doing today wasn't even part of the reality. I mean, I think it's because I grew up in Canada. I always had an inferiority belief around the Americans, right? A lot of Canadians struggle with this. I'm less than most, but I didn't go, I didn't know a famous person growing up. Like I didn't go to school with LeBron James or anything like it's kind of weird, but like all my American friends know a famous person from a TV show.

I didn't, like I don't know Justin Bieber or, you know, Ryan Reynolds. And I think what happens is as you inch by inch grow, expand, and the big thing is you're consistent, because that's where my confidence comes from, is from keeping the commitments I make to myself in private. I built the confidence it allows me to see over the horizon further. That's all it is, is I can just,

I can believe it a little bit more. And yeah, I still say some crazy things like someday I want to interview the rock on his private jet for my YouTube channel. I say that stuff because I need that. I love that. If it happens, cool. If it doesn't, also cool. Yes. But there was never a moment. It was just more of a process.

And I think what I heard from all of that is that you didn't have it all figured out. You didn't say, I'm gonna do exactly this. And it sounds like you have many phases of success in your business and you didn't necessarily know exactly where all of those were going. But you kept going, baby steps, you kept believing. And I love that because some people are listening right now and they can't even imagine how good it can get.

And I think you and I are great examples. I remember when Hobie and I, we bought our first really fancy house in California and we were in a jacuzzi and we were looking up at the house and I looked at them and I said, would you ever imagine this in your wildest dreams? And he said, never. And I think that's really cool that even if you can't figure it out or imagine it right now, doesn't mean it can't happen. And I think people needed to hear that. So I appreciate you saying that. Final question for you, Dan.

Some people that are listening right now, they are struggling in their businesses. They've been in business for a few years, maybe even more, and they're just struggling. And although you don't know what their businesses are, I'm just curious if you could give a little bit advice of what do they do right now? They're stuck, they're struggling, it's not working as planned. What do they do right now?

Anytime somebody comes to me in that headspace, I always go to the same thing. It's control of controllables. That's like, there's a foundation that's required. And that's why we say consistency is the foundation of winning because

If you don't just lock in the best practices, the habits, then adding more like thinking it's a marketing problem, the sales problem, a product problem is actually an illusion to distract you from the core. So, you know, a lot of people come to me.

I'll tell you a quick story. I remember there was this young person on my team once. He was on my media team like six, seven years ago. I was speaking at a nonprofit that does free therapy for youths. They couldn't afford it. Parents couldn't afford it. And I was speaking to the staff to give them some encouragement because I was technically one of the kids that they would have talked to. And sometimes they feel like they're talking to a wall. I understand it. We are listening. You may not tell them.

And at the end, we're sitting in the car and he confides in me that he was recently put on anxiety medication. And he says, I don't like the way it makes me feel. What should I do? And I was like, I'm not a doctor. I'm just curious, like, are you, you know, are you drinking lots of water every day? And he's like, what do you mean? And I said, well, I don't know, three, two, three liters a day would be great. And he's like, oh no. I said, did your doctor talk to you about that? Nope.

Okay, do you work out? I like to sweat every day. It helps with my brain. Do you do that? And he's like, no. He's like, I was smoking a lot of weed, and that's where I started to get these anxiety to. I was like, oh, okay, yeah, you might want to try going to the gym. Definitely probably stopped smoking the weed. And then I started asking about sugar and nutrition.

All essentially these things that for me are non-negotiables. I have these non-negotiables in my life that if I wake up and the end of the day ends with D-A-Y, every day does. This is what I do. And yes, working out, yes, reading, yes, hydrating, yes, eating, clean, because again, for me,

Growing up with ADHD, I needed to do that as almost like a way, because I don't take medication for it. And if I didn't do it, I wouldn't be able to have the energy, the headspace to be able to tackle these problems. And I just think for a lot of people listening, they just have to go back to basics. Because honestly, every time somebody asked me that and I said, when's the last time I went to the gym? They're like, well, that's been a few weeks. All right, how about we go to the gym tomorrow? I've never gone. I not want to go, but I've never came out of going and thought to myself, oh, I don't feel better.

Right. Let's dial in breakfast. Are you still doing those cream cheese bagels from the coffee shop in the morning with your adult milkshake? Because that latte frappuccino thing, that's what that is. They're like, yeah, I'm like, you should probably stop that.

I just think people think they have business problems, but they have personal problems. And the business is just a reflection of the inconsistency they have. And it's kind of crazy because I coach a lot of really high level people. And I watch them get frustrated with their team.

when really they're frustrated with themselves. They just take it out on their team and that's a big no-no. So I always tell people, if you can tell them, if you're doing those things, you're going to the gym, you're eating clean, drinking lots of water, you're sleeping well, that's another one. Huge. If you just, your business will actually sort itself out. But if those things aren't good, if relationship, I mean, for a man, if our relationship isn't good, it is tough. Cause we're just spinning, spinning, spinning, ruminating. So that's what I would say.

No, I love that. And that's such a different perspective. Fully agree with it. 100% when I started to focus more on my health and my mental health. Holy cow, everything changed in my business. So I love that we're ending there. So my audience, they are very familiar with your book, but I still want you to tell them one more time. What's the title of your book?

buy back your time, literally get unstuck, reclaim your freedom, and build your empire. Because I'm not a four hour work week person. I want you to buy back your time to create more. I love creatives. I love artists. I just want to see them express their art more in the world.

I think it should be required reading for all entrepreneurs. So if you haven't listened yet, go grab it. And then where can they find you online? You're doing so many cool things. So tell everyone where they can find you. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people, especially if they read the book, they always struggle with the assistance side. And I know Amy, you have always had great people around you. But the truth is if you're going to buy back your time, it's usually the first hire.

I would love to do something exclusive for your audience because I knew when I heard my first I said, I just didn't know what they should do. So I've got a document. And I think I gave it to you last time I saw you last December. It's my executive assistant document. It's literally the internal document I use in my assistant. If everybody goes to Instagram and follows me, Dan Martell to Elzemartell on Instagram, and message me, E-A-A-M-Y. If you don't put Amy, I'm not sending it to you.

I will send them directly to the Google Doc. There's no opt-in. There's no nothing. It's just my gift to the audience because I think if people understood how much time they could get back and then use that time to go to the gym and to work on that marketing strategy and to build that new product and launch that, I think it would just

It would shift everything. And it's got, I got my preference file in there. I've got my North Star principles from my EA. By the way, I set up my inbox. It is all in this like 40 page Google Doc. My gift to everybody. Just follow me on Instagram and send me that message.

Okay, this is so valuable. I want all of you to do this right now. So you're at Dan Martel on Instagram. They're just gonna follow me. That's all I'm asking for. Give me a little bit of a talk. Follow him, follow him, and you'll love it. There's a lot of great insight. And then you're gonna DM him E.A. Amy, and he's going to me this link. And I'm gonna tell you all, it is good. And Dan, I love this and thank you for doing this because I always tell people your first hire is an assistant. That is your first hire. And they'll say, I don't know what to do with them or I don't know how to set them up.

This is your answer, my friends. So go follow Dan on Instagram, go grab that free guide. And Dan, thank you so much. This has been incredible. I'm so very grateful for you to be here. It's a real honor. Thanks again, Amy. You're such a pro and it's been a long time coming. I'm glad we got to do this.

Me too. Thanks again. So there you have it. I hope that you found so much incredible value from today's episode. Listen, I know that making big moves can feel daunting. I have absolutely been there myself. But once I started applying many other habits that Dan talked about today,

It completely transformed how I run my business and honestly my life. And I want to take a quick moment. I think my favorite part of the interview was something unexpected. When I asked Dan at the end, if some of my listeners are struggling with their business, if they're not hitting their goals, if things aren't working out, what do you suggest they do? And I was expecting a business strategy.

I don't know if I was expecting him to say, like, create this exact funnel or build your email list or anything like that. But I thought his answer was going to be a little bit more focused on business strategy. And I was pleasantly surprised when he went more in a personal direction. Are you moving your body? Are you getting enough sleep? Are you working with a therapist if you need it? Are you drinking enough water?

And I have to tell you, as somebody who's struggled with my weight and my mental health, what feels like all my life, when I finally just a few years ago got really serious about my health and really took the time to

dive into some of the challenges I was having with depression and anxiety. I did a whole episode about that. You can go back a few episodes and you'll find it. Things started to just work out in my favor more easily.

And I started to feel more confident. So if you're struggling with confidence, maybe it's not the business strategies. Maybe it's turning inward and working more on yourself, not maybe. I know it is. And the business stuff starts to become easier and make more sense. And I think really it's because you become more resilient and you ride the waves of the ups and downs a little bit more easily, which there will always be those waves in entrepreneurship.

So I hope after listening to this episode, you're walking away with a clear vision of where you want to go in terms of working on yourself and working on the business, especially when it comes to the mindset shifts that are needed. I also love the special offer that he put in front of us because I always say the best hire, the first best hire is in EA. And he's going to give you the roadmap to do it in a way that saves you time and money.

So go find him on Instagram. He's just at Dan Martell and make sure to send him that DM. All right, my sweet friends. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you next week for more entrepreneurial goodness. Bye for now.