Buying back your time sounds awesome… but HOW!?!?
I have Dan Martell to explain exactly that! Dan is a serial entrepreneur having built several multi-million dollar technology companies starting at the age of 17. He’s also an award-winning angel investor, having invested in companies like Intercom, Udemy, Hootsuite, Unbounce.
Today he’s an executive coach focused exclusively on B2B SaaS working with the founders from ClickFunnels.com, Proposify.com, Carrot.com, and many others to help scale their businesses in a predictable way. He lives in Kelowna, British Columbia with his wife, Renee, and two boys.
Listen as Dan talks about his unexpected past and explains ways to make the most out of your day and work less in your business so you can start enjoying life!
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TRANSCRIPTS:
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, my fellow Ripples. This is Chris Miles, your cashflow expert and anti financianal advisor.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Chris Miles was able to retire twice by the time he was 39 years old, but he’s not content to just enjoy his own financial freedom and peace of mind. Chris wants you to have your own ripple effect so you can live free today. He’s not the financial advisor you expected. He’s the non-financial advisor you deserve. He’s jumping behind the mic right now, ready to make waves. Here’s Chris Miles.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Welcome to our show. It’s for you those that work so hard for your money and you’re now ready for your money to start working harder for you today. You want that freedom and cashflow now, not 30 or 40 years from now, but you want it today so that you can live that life that you love with those that you love. But more importantly, guys, it’s not just about getting rich. You know that as you get more free, as you create this richness in your life, you can create a rich life blessing the lives of those around you because as you’re blessed financially, you have a greater capacity to serve and create a great ripple effect around those that you have in your influence and space. Guys, thank you so much for joining us today. Appreciate allowing me to create that ripple effect through you. You guys have been amazing.
(01:13)
You’ve been binging and sharing on these episodes. Thank you again for doing so. Feel free to leave us a review, especially if you like this episode. Do so. If you think it sucks, then just turn it off and go somewhere else. Alright guys, so I’m going to start the show today. I’ve actually got a special guest here, which funny enough, I got introduced to a mutual acquaintance and what’s interesting is I had just ordered his book just before I got this introduction, so I know that there are no accidents, everything happens for a reason, but Dan Martel here, I’ve actually read this book, buy Back Your Time, which I definitely recommend if you’re a CEO or any kind of entrepreneur for that matter, got to read that book. You got to read it if you want to actually have some sort of freedom versus being in your own entrepreneur rat race. But one thing that’s interesting about him, this guy has had startups galore. He’s even had investments in things like Udemy and Hootsuite and things like that. Huge, making lots of influence in his market and not to mention for those either are up in friends up north in Canada. He’s a fellow from British Columbia and Kelowna there. So definitely excited to have you on today, Dan. So welcome to our show.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
It’s an honor, Chris, I’m super pumped. I love talking to all things money and I love helping entrepreneurs. So let’s make it happen.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Let’s make it happen. Well, those who haven’t met you yet, give ’em about your backstory. You have a very interesting childhood that kind of created a turn. Almost that chaos moved you into entrepreneurship, didn’t it?
Speaker 3 (02:33):
It’s crazy because I think entrepreneurs, some of them are addicted to chaos. That’s why they’re the worst people to work for because they chase shiny objects. And so it’s kind of funny when I look back, because I’ll be honest with you Chris, it’s kind of like watching a movie because the person that sits here today, multiple exits, nine figure plus empire, it doesn’t really compute in my brain that it was the same person that experienced a lot of trauma as a kid. I mean, I grew up in a challenging environment. My mom was an alcoholic, my dad was in sales, traveling a lot, wasn’t at home much. I’m the second oldest of four and diagnosed with a DHD when I was 11 and put into group homes in foster care when I was 12, 13. So just a wild childhood growing up and ended up getting into drugs and prison twice, once juvenile detention.
(03:24)
Second, I was an adult prison, even though I was a juvenile, I was about 16 and my life kind of turned around in rehab. So I got released the second time I went to jail into a rehab center where I spent 11 months kind of rebuilding everything, my self-worth, the meaning that I associated all the bad things that ever happened to me to just built the trust that I’d lost with my brothers and sisters and eventually kind of healed the family. And at the end of that program, I was helping Rick, the maintenance guy, clean out one of the cabins. It was built in an old church camp. I found this old computer, 4 86 computer and a yellow book on Java programming and followed chapter one and got the computer to say hello whirl. There was just something about that that for me, I kind of was like, oh, that’s kind of neat and cool.
(04:08)
Maybe I’m a secret computer nerd. I don’t know. I was just trying to grasp on anything at that point. And software became my new addiction full on obsessed building apps. Eventually discovered this little thing called the internet. This is in 1998. And then personal development kind of became the foundation for everything. For me, going through 11 months of essentially rehab, personal development, 12 step programs and finding my faith that kind of set the stage. And I just haven’t stopped since. It took me a really Chris, it took me a fricking embarrassing amount of time to figure out business, but once I did, it wasn’t until I was 23, 24 and then it all clicked and I built an exit. My first company when I was 28, became a multimillionaire, did it again at 32, moved to San Francisco, built a venture backed company, exited that, did another one exited. So I mean, in a 10 year period, I sold three companies. It doesn’t even sound real mean. So that’s kind of my background. But yeah, the thing I’m most passionate about is helping people buy back their time so they can do cooler stuff. Why I love your message about passive income and the freedom of today. Don’t wait until someday. That’s kind of the life I live.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah. Do you find that a lot when you are working with entrepreneurs and business owners? Do you see that a lot of them, that they think they kind of mistake that hustle is not supposed to be a lifestyle, it’s supposed to be a temporary season, and I’ve noticed that’s been, it’s almost like they create their own rat race that never ends. They can never escape it.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Yeah, I call it they forget that it’s supposed to be a sprint within a marathon, not a sprint until they die. Most people are chaos junkies because being somebody that’s okay, dealing with a huge amount of uncertainty is actually a powerful skill when you’re starting entrepreneur land because that’s all you got is uncertainty. You, I don’t know if this product will work. I don’t know if anybody will buy from me. I don’t know if that person will work for me. I don’t know if anything’s going to work. And it turns out to be a superpower until you find a rhythm and things are going good. But most people in business create their own emotional shrapnel. They create all these challenges. I call it throwing hand grenades in their business when things are actually starting to come together. Then they’re like, oh, I’m going to change my whole product suite or I’m going to fire half my team. Or they just lobb these hand grenades into their business and wonder what’s going on. And I think that’s the evolution, right? In business at each stage, there’s different plateaus you have to develop into the person that can overcome those limitations or what I call complexity ceilings. So yeah, chaos is a big one and it’s chapter three of my book, the Five Time Assassins. Most people don’t have to spend a dollar to get their time back. They’re just got to stop robbing it from themselves.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
And that’s one thing I want to bring up. A lot of books out there talking about trying to free yourself, create more time, create systems and whatnot. But what I like about your book there is that you really go into the psychology of why, just like you mentioned here with entrepreneurs that can handle a certain amount of chaos, sometimes they create it subconsciously or it’s just something they end up doing because they create some bad habits and even those that end up on the weekends. And I’ve seen these guys go into mastermind groups and they work their tails off to make their multiple seven or eight figure businesses and then they go drink themselves crazy until they premature passed out for a whole weekend. Tell us more about that. What are some of those traps that we create that really is just creating undue stress in our lives?
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Yeah, I mean, if you first understand that entrepreneurs are addicted to chaos and 70%, it’s not my number, but when I’m speaking to an audience of a hundred people and I ask ’em to raise their hands, if they ever experienced some challenges between the ages of nine and 12, they can usually pinpoint exactly what crazy thing happened to them. So that’s a great skill when you’re starting off. It allows you to deal with a whole lot of uncertainty. But then at a certain point you got to ask yourself, am I inflicting pain, emotional shrapnel into my life? And usually there’s five of these time assassins that I encourage people to consider. The first one is the staller, the person that they have opportunities to grow their business, but they stall in decisions they don’t realize an indecision to make a decision is a decision. And these are people that opportunities are literally shown up in their lives, but because they drag their feet, they go away.
(08:24)
So that’s the first one, Staller. The second one’s a speed demon. This is kind of the opposite. We all know those people. They’re like need to hire somebody post on Facebook, first person that responds with a pulse and can fog a mirror. Cool, you’re hired. And then they have to because they live by the, I can make decisions fast, and then they got to deal with the downside of that when they hire the wrong people. The third one is the supervisor. This is a person that hires folks and then does their job for them. I see people do this on a daily basis. I’ll be honest, I love my wife, but this morning I was like, babes, why did you feed the dog? She’s like, ah, I know. And I’m like, today’s not your day, today’s my day. And when you do that, what you told me is, if I don’t feed the dog, you’ll feed the dog.
(09:06)
So guess what you’re going to teach me over time not to feed the dog. You’re going to do it. And then one day you’re going to be pissed off. Everybody’s not doing the thing they’re supposed to do, but you kind of taught them to not do it. Does that make sense, Chris? This happens all the time. I’ve done it. Yes, we’re guilty of it. So the supervisors is a big one. The fourth one is the saver, right? This is literally the person that walks over dollars to save dimes. I see it all the time. I had a friend that had a 2 million mastermind and he was frustrated with the structure and the content and the curriculum, and he heard that we were doing 2 million a month. And he’s like, how are you doing that? And I said, well, I hired this guy, Simon, he’ll help you solve that problem.
(09:42)
And he’s like, well, does Simon have a book? I’m like, no, Simon doesn’t have a book. Simon’s an expert and he don’t need more clients. He’s busy, but I’ll make an intro and I can get you on his list. And he is like, well, let me Google first. He was literally willing to throw away a 2 million mastermind that was frustrating and sucking the life out of him instead of investing maybe 15 K, 10 K to solve the problem. It’s fascinating to me. And then the last one is the self medicator. This is the person you alluded to. Even when they win, they drink, when they lose, they drink. And if they’re lucky, that’s the worst part. And they just spend a day or two in bed and hungover. But worse than that is the ones that create friction. They create challenges. They drink, get in a fight with their co-founder.
(10:23)
They drink, they make an inappropriate pass at a coworker. They drink, they get in their car and they get arrested. For DUI, the amount of my clients, this is fascinating because not a lot, but I’d say probably seven, eight, 10% of my clients that I coach can’t go to another country. And I don’t ask, but I know why I’m not an idiot. They can’t come to my Canadian event or this other event. So it’s like a lot of this stuff is self-inflicted time sucking challenges because they are a chaos junkie. But if they can work their way through that and create the space, then they can truly buy back their time.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
And other than awareness, what can somebody do to really overcome some of these challenges?
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Therapy. But I mean, awareness is step one. The first step in 12 steps is admit you have a problem. So if people are aware they have a problem, then what they should then do is find somebody who has the opposite behavior to how they’re showing up. So if I’m somebody that can’t take risks, I should find somebody that takes risks in business all the time that I admire and ask them for the way they think, right? So all these things are good and bad, depending on the context. The speed demon is an incredible skill to have. If you have a framework for making decisions so that you’re evaluating the different options and processes and cost structures and return on investments in real time, I can make a decision very quickly because I have all these other things in place that allows me to do that, and seven times out of 10, it’s going to get knocked out of the park.
(11:58)
And for all those three that get lost, I don’t beat myself up for it. So I just think self-awareness, find yourself other people that have the opposite of yours, and then go be willing to do the work. And when I say the work, I mean all caps, the work, which is the mental game. 90% of success in business is a mental game. Our results in our business life is a reflection of the conversations and the beliefs we have inside of our mind. And to the degree that you’re willing to explore that headspace, that most valuable real estate, the six inches between your ears, then you will find opportunities to actually transform the landscape of your business and be way more successful and have more fun at work and communicate more clear and have people that are way more talented than you join and stay with your team and help you build your dreams because you’ve built that internal confidence and belief. And even just energetic blissfulness and joy. I mean, these are things that attract other people that are similar and not a bunch of toxic folks.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
That leads me to another question I had here because one thing I thought was unique about your approach to this is that so often you have people that say, well, if you want to scale and go big, just hire more people. Your method’s kind of like, well, maybe not. That may not be your answer. Why is that?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Because to me, I think that scaling and going big is the same. Here’s what I know most people that don’t grow is usually because they have a story about what that means. So for example, the other day I was talking to a woman, she wanted to grow her business, but she also had a belief that the more she grew her business, the more weight she would put on. So I call that a pain line. If you have a belief fundamentally that the more you grow your business, you’re going to put on weight, or the more you grow your business, you have less time with your kids or the more you grow your business, your calendar is going to be chaotic, then there’s no way you’re going to wake up tomorrow morning jumping out of bed, excited for the future because you have these subconscious beliefs that are going to be driving with the handbrake on.
(14:03)
So my whole philosophy is that we always evaluate our calendar through time and energy because I want to do less of the things that suck my energy, less of the things that have a low cost to pay somebody else to do. And honestly, sometimes paying that money, it’s not necessarily hiring somebody, it’s automating something, it’s deleting something, it’s using technology. There’s four ways to get leverage. It’s capital code, content and collaboration. The people side is the collaboration, but there’s always capital content and code to be evaluated. And if you can master those four skills, then that’s where your leverage is unlimited. And I always joke with people, I spend millions of dollars every year to buy back my time. You just met my house manager before we started recording. She literally, I mean, I started the call with the helmet on, right? Because buying a new carbon helmet for my downhill mountain bike trips, she deals with all of that stuff, the travel, et cetera.
(14:59)
So I have a bunch of people in my life now. I hire CEOs because I buy companies, but these people create space in my calendar so that I can decide what I want to do with my time. And sometimes I just want to lay on my couch and scroll TikTok. Chris and I do it literally, I was joking with my videographer the other day. He’s like, is crazy. You’re very effective when you’re working and then when you’re off, you can totally just veg and joke and be off. And I go, yeah, I’m a professional chiller and when I decide I want to get stuff done, please hold my NA beer. I don’t drink, but non-alcoholic beer, I’m going to push. I’m going to create. I
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Love that. So if somebody wants to break through that mental barrier, what do you recommend there?
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Start small. It’s the gateway drug of all business growth is getting a virtual assistant and as a first in my book, it may not be there, but the replacement ladder is chapter five. The replacement ladder is the answer to the question. If I was starting from scratch and I had a little extra money to pay somebody else to be on my team, who would I hire first, second, third, fourth, and fifth. And the first rung of the ladder is an administrative person. Somebody that can manage your books, can manage your email, can manage your calendar, can purchase things for you, can post on social media, can respond to comments publicly travel. Yeah, book your travel, dude. I mean, this doesn’t blows people’s mind when I go, I just got back from doing an Ironman. I didn’t pack my bike and I didn’t pack my suitcase.
(16:29)
And people are like, how do you do that? I go, I invested the time to build an SOP. I have a checklist, I have a picture. I did it once. I literally packed my stuff. I put it on my bed, I took a picture, I put it in a Google doc and I said, this is what I need when I’m doing this kind of trip, this kind of trip, this kind of trip. And now for the history of time, as long as I don’t need to change anything, and if I do, I just update the document. Everything I put in that photo in the checklist is there will end up in my suitcase. What a crazy idea. So some people stress themselves out going on a trip to me getting on a plane. Now I’m lucky I fly my own plane. I have a jet is not, I mean this sounds so freaking douchey, but people are like, he doesn’t even pack his own clothes and he flies in front.
(17:10)
I hope people understand I started lower than low and every day I’m like, still can’t believe this is my life. But at the same time, I don’t take it for granted and I try to squeeze as much joy out of every second, and it’s why I would rather not spend time at an airport and or pack my own bags. I got two young boys and we spent last night like I’m playing pool with them until they go to bed. I put ’em to bed every night. I have dinner with them every night. I would just rather redeploy my time on things that only I can do this conversation until I can find a generative video bot that can have the exact same conversation with same energy. Chris, there may be a day where you’re not talking to Dan and I’m going to be okay with that. But until that happens, I have a mission I’m on to help people build companies that they don’t grow to hate. It requires them to read my book and I’m going to be the guy pushing that message. But anything that doesn’t require me, I have no problem spending money to get that time back.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
That’s awesome. I love it. I’m going to switch gears a little bit with you because you mentioned you do Ironman’s, correct? Yeah,
Speaker 3 (18:14):
I just got done at 70.3 on Sunday.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Awesome. Cool. We got the half one then. Tell me about this.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Well, I’m full though. They’re crazy.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Oh, I know. I quit at the marathon point and I’m like, I’m done. That’s it. But tell me, what have you learned doing those things? I know you do a lot of things with physical health, you do health challenges and stuff as well. What is it that you feel like you can take from that part of your life and apply it into your business as well?
Speaker 3 (18:40):
There’s so much. I mean, so what I love about training for anything, so imagine you’re an Olympic gold athlete and you go to the Olympics and people are like, Hey, where’s your coach? And you’re like, I don’t need a coach. Do you know how stupid you would sound? Most Olympic athletes, any athlete at the highest level, not only has a coach they have, I have for my Ironmans, I have my Ironman coach Scott, and then I have Mark, my running coach. I have Paul, my biking coach. I have a swim coach. I mean, because if anything’s important to you, you should have somebody that can watch you operate and give you feedback. So right off the bat, when I started doing triathlons and then the instrumentation of all the devices, all the computers, I mean it’s kind of bananas, but everything gets recorded and uploaded in this app called Training Peaks.
(19:30)
And then my coaches, all of them, they can look at my strokes per minute on my swim. They can look at my strides, they can look at my gait, they, it’s crazy, the amount of data. And then they can create training plans and blocks where I execute this block. They know if I’ve done it perfectly. And then based on that feedback we tweak to see is my body responding the right way? Business is no different. If you don’t have a rhythm for how you operate your business and you have a cadence for certain meetings and the agenda structures and the outcomes and the strategic planning and all that stuff, then all you’re doing is just throwing wet spaghetti at the cupboard or throwing darts in the dark. You don’t know what’s working, right? So to me, that instrumentation part, it taught me a lot. The other thing I would say, and it sounds funny, but one of the things my coach said once to me, he says, if you see somebody doing something smart, ask yourself if you should do the same thing.
(20:26)
So for example, when you’re on the bike in an Ironman, you’re just putting down watts, you’re pushing on the pedals, you’re giving it a hundred percent and you don’t really feel like eating. But the problem is, is that if you don’t hydrate and feed yourself the nutrition when you go to run, your legs will spasm and you won’t be able to run. So I mean, for example, when I’m on my bike and I’m heads down in Arrow and I see somebody grab their water bottle and drink, I go, have I drank lately? No, I haven’t.
(20:55)
I think oftentimes that idea of, that’s why, I mean, I joke with TikTok scrolling, but my TikTok feed is banger. It’s literally motivational business strategy sales content. So I’m always allowing myself to be inspired by my environment of people doing things great. And then I ask myself, how am I doing that at that level? The last thing I’ll say is it is just the consistency. People go, dude, just Chris, I’ll be honest with you. When people say to me, I don’t feel like it or I don’t feel motivated, I go Too tough luck. I don’t understand what world you’re living in. My motivation and how I feel about something doesn’t dictate whether I get up and I do it. If I said I was going to do it, I do it. That’s called discipline. And discipline will round circles around people and their motivation all day long.
(21:42)
Your habits take over when your motivation dies, when your motivation is no longer there, but you have a system and a routine and a habit that you’ve put together where you just wake up and you work out every day. It’s like if you follow me on Instagram, it’s sweat every day. I can’t remember the last time I went a day without working out. It would be as weird as not wearing pants right now. For me, it would just be like, whoa, I didn’t work out. I got to go work out. So there’s no effort. So there’s no motivation. It just becomes an identity. It becomes a habit. And I just think I really learned that when I was doing my triathlon training because if you build the foundation in the base around your fitness scores and your health and your engine, you can do a lot of stuff in training for a full distance. Ironman. I think that summer I did two half Ironmans plus swam almost six miles across the lake, plus ran marathons. And this was just training because that was what was required to do such a massive undertaking. So I just think people don’t realize that if you’re just consistent and you just do a little bit, little bit, a little bit, little bit every day, and you measure it, you’ll wake up one day and you’ll just be like, damn, that’s crazy.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Absolutely. There’s little habits that just keep adding up and becomes, like you said, habit,
Speaker 3 (22:57):
It
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Just becomes part of your identity. Yeah. Yep. I have something that as well with my marathon training as well, and I love what you say about getting a coach when my game uplevel even more to work up my world rankings, right? And kind, what I heard was this is that whatever you want to master, you want to get a mentor, right? Whatever you want to master, get a mentor.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
I like
Speaker 1 (23:15):
That. Definitely borrow that to
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Be true. If anybody master, get a mentor.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yep, absolutely. Well, awesome man. I really appreciate having you on today. This has been awesome. Best way for people to follow you. What’s that?
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yeah, so Instagram’s my favorite. If people go on Instagram, Dan Martel two l, Martel, follow me and just if you want something cool, I’ll just do this for your audience, Chris, just message me ea, my executive assistant playbook, ea Chris, mention him. Just put that and I’ll have my team send that over to you. I just want to, and then my book’s at buyback your time.com, and I’m on the internet in all places in Dan Martel and my YouTube’s really banging right now. We’re spending a lot of time on some video edits that are pretty cool. All that being said, Chris, I want to encourage people to do two things. One, wake up every day to be the best version of themselves, what I call your 10.0 version. Strive for that. And then the same token in that same kind of breath. The second thing is share that process with the world. Share your, and if that world is your kids or your community, your CrossFit gym or your church, whatever it is, just share the process of winning with the world. And I think if you do those two things, you’ll live an incredibly fulfilled
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Life. That’s the ripple effect we’re talking about right there, man. Love it. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again for your time. Very generous. And definitely we’ll make sure to put that in the show notes so people can be sure to follow you and definitely get access to your stuff because telling you it’s good stuff. So guys, I would definitely recommend it. Thanks, Chris. So everybody, here’s the thing. You can be listening to these podcasts all day long, but until it becomes habitual to the point, you actually act upon it, that is when your life begins to change. Don’t just be a hear of the word, but be a doer as well. Go and make it a wonderful and prosperous week. We’ll see you later.