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

Have you ever wondered how someone goes from juvenile detention to flying in helicopters to save time? In this episode of the Habits and Hustle podcast, I talk with Dan Martell as he shares his incredible journey from troubled teen to wildly successful business leader. We discuss Dan's story of redemption and his strategies for reclaiming your time, building wealth, and creating a life of purpose. We also dive into how his morning routine, fitness transformation, and media company creation all stem from the same core principles. Dan Martell is an entrepreneur, best-selling author of "Buy Back Your Time," and one of the most sought-after executive coaches in the software industry. Overcoming a troubled youth that included addiction and juvenile detention, Martell transformed his life through technology and personal development, building and selling three successful tech companies and investing in over 60 startups including billion-dollar ventures like Hootsuite and Intercom. What We Discuss: (05:50) From Addiction to Multimillionaire (16:32) Transitioning From Amateur to Pro Media (22:19) Building a Media Company Playbook (28:44) Content Creation Strategies for Growth (36:47) Unapologetic Wealth and Personal Growth (42:09) Journey of Personal Growth and Transformation (48:59) Optimizing Fitness Routine for Success (56:49) Maximizing Time Efficiency and Outsourcing Tasks …and more! Thank you to our sponsors: Therasage: Head over to therasage.com http://therasage.com/ and use code Be Bold for 15% off TruNiagen: Head over to truniagen.com http://truniagen.com/ and use code HUSTLE20 to get $20 off any purchase over $100. Magic Mind: Head over to www http://www/.magicmind.com http://magicmind.com//jen and use code Jen at checkout. Air Doctor: Go to airdoctorpro.com http://airdoctorpro.com/ and use promo code HUSTLE for up to $300 off and a 3-year warranty on air purifiers. Bio.me: Link to daily prebiotic fiber here https://bio.me/?utm_source=Jennifer, code Jennifer20 for 20% off. Momentous: Shop this link https://www.livemomentous.com/?srsltid=AfmBOorDUIZz3psr1Qsq_n1yE8_6JTq_QUFabOO9lH65HDEXCIoJOPLj and use code Jen for 20% off Find more from Jen: Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagement Find more from Dan Martell: Website: https://www.danmartell.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annie.sarnblad/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hi guys, this is Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.

• 0:07Jen Cohen?

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• 1:33Jen Cohen?

  All right, so today we have Dan Martel.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36Jen Cohen?

  Right? All right. And his, and, and team. And they're, and he's Canadian, so automatically you have a place in my heart. We're friends right off the bat.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 1:46Jen Cohen?

  He wrote a book called Buy Back Your Time. And I thought he was joking, I gotta just say this, because his, his schedule is super, super tight. And he's like, well, maybe I'll just take a helicopter to get to you. And I'm like, yeah, ha, ha, ha. And he legit meant it and took a helicopter to get here. And I had no idea you were being serious.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Sunday. I mean, LA, as you know, it's so unpredictable. We were just down in San Clemente. And I wanted to get up here and we've done this before in LA specifically, there's certain cities where helicopter move makes sense. Again, to buy back your time because it was either that or 90 minutes on the freeway and I gotta be back in Newport. So, and I have my son here, so we just made an experience.

• 2:23Jen Cohen?

  Okay, wait, how long did it take to get here? So in, okay, so on the helicopter from San Clemente, which is like new, which is like Orange County. Okay, to like where I live, which is like Santa Monica. It was 17 minutes. And then you're gonna go back from there to Newport. Where Newport are you gonna go?

• 2:42Speaker 02

  Don't know. I don't actually know where I go, so that's another part we can talk about.

• 2:46Jen Cohen?

  You have no idea.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  Sam's laughing right now because he manages me. I just follow heels. Usually Anne's here, but we couldn't fit four on the helicopter, so she wait, she's waiting for us with our driver.

• 2:55Jen Cohen?

  This is hilarious.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  I know.

• 2:57Jen Cohen?

  Okay, wait, how much did it cost to get the helicopter?

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Don't know. Anne has a budget. So the way I do my life is I create rules and as long as the rules are followed, I don't get involved in decisions. So Anne knows what my hour to buy back my time is worth. So if it's less than that, she just makes a decision.

• 3:12Jen Cohen?

  Oh, my God, I love this. I'm so happy you're here right now.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  Let's go.

• 3:15Jen Cohen?

  So you always do, you always take the helicopter in California?

• 3:18Speaker 02

  No, not always. It depends what I'm trying to do and if I can get there and save time and the numbers work for sure. Yeah. Like here, last time I think we did it, we were in Santa Monica doing a pod with David Nurse and Casey. So we did two back to back and I had to be in Temecula for another podcast. So we took the helicopter, landed on property, did the podcast and then I was in Hollywood for dinner.

• 3:39Jen Cohen?

  So why didn't you, I guess you couldn't land it over here?

• 3:42Speaker 02

  The pilot tries typically, but usually there's errors like aviation, space issues.

• 3:47Jen Cohen?

  So why, okay, because I'm far from Santa Monica. So that's like another 30 minutes.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  No, it was only 14 minutes.

• 3:53Jen Cohen?

  That's it?

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:55Jen Cohen?

  Okay, best because the traffic is really not that bad right now?

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:58Jen Cohen?

  So where, couldn't you get closer? Like I do have an area over there.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  And you're speaking my love language. At the end of the day, Anne tries and if she can't, she can't. And I just, literally I stay out of it. It's kind of funny because like people, like even my friend Damon that flew down this morning with me on my plane, he goes, like, what are you doing today? And I was like, well, I know who I'm gonna talk to, but I don't know like what the order is. And he's like, well, how do you not know? And I go, because Anne manages it. She literally 100% of my calendar is managed by somebody else.

• 4:24Jen Cohen?

  Okay, but how did you get to this place? So like, walk me through your life, because in all transparency, I had really had no clue who you were.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:31Jen Cohen?

  And then our friend, I guess our mutual friend introduced us.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  We have like a, like, I went through your pod, listened to your stuff, know your background quite well, love the books, the, the concepts. My wife actually loves your stuff.

• 4:43Jen Cohen?

  Oh, really?

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Just the idea of Strong is the New Skinny.

• 4:46Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is my old book.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  I know, but she loved that one.

• 4:48Jen Cohen?

  I love it.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  And I saw the new Bold one. But my background's kind of crazy because if you went back and met the 15-year-old version of Dan, you would meet a very angry, dark, drug addict, criminal. And, uh.

• 5:07Jen Cohen?

  Cause you were in jail, I saw.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Ended up in juvenile detention twice by the time I was seven, 16, 17.

• 5:14Jen Cohen?

  For what?

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Everything. I mean, I got, I got in trouble from shoplifting to assault to drug-related charges to stealing a car, high-speed chase. I mean, things that I was pretty ashamed of for a really long time.

• 5:28Jen Cohen?

  Wow. Okay. So then how did you go from that to taking helicopters, you know, in LA and having all the things you have? So let me just kind of tell you what I do know and then you can kind of go back.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 5:40Jen Cohen?

  Okay. I know that you have a fund that you said that was, you, you, it's a hundred million dollars in revenue.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  That one, yeah.

• 5:47Jen Cohen?

  Right? And you've invested in 60 startups, 60, over 60 startups.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 5:51Jen Cohen?

  You do a ton. You're the biggest executive coach in soft, in like software.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, software as a service, SaaS, yeah.

• 5:57Jen Cohen?

  You do a lot of speaking gigs.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:59Jen Cohen?

  And now you do a lot of social media stuff.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 6:02Jen Cohen?

  Someone's following you around, you know, doing your little stuff.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  Five of those guys, but Sam runs the team.

• 6:07Jen Cohen?

  Sam runs the team. So you've got five of these guys. So how did you go, like, what, I want you, I want you to talk about the evolution. Like, what was the, the evolution of how you became where you are now?

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Well, just so everybody feels better about themselves, I'm really old, you know, I'm not really old. I'm forty four. I'm not really old, but I've just been doing a long time. I've been, this is twenty seven years.

• 6:29Jen Cohen?

  Okay, then why do I know, why do I only know about you now?

• 6:32Speaker 02

  So, so it's interesting. I'll, I'll let people know kind of what changed for me to get to a place where I was at least being productive member of society. And then why is the media thing a thing in the last year? Because it's only fourteen months old, which is bananas. I know.

• 6:46Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's kind of crazy to me, too. So just, just so you know, I'm still like, whoa, what's happening? Because it's kind of, okay, wow, that's interesting. The moment that changed for me is I ended up in adult prison, eventually released into a rehab center. And it was this place on the east coast of Canada, small town of Sussex, New Brunswick, this incredible therapeutic community called Portage that saved my life. I mean, I spent eleven months doing the work, you know, all caps, the work, whatever you want to call it. Like, now I know what it was. I didn't know it at the time, but it was personal development. It was, you know, internal family systems. It was, is all of this stuff. And it was, it was, it was exactly what I needed. And, you know, my dad still, when

• 7:32Speaker 02

  he speaks on stages to other parents struggling with, with kids that deal with addiction, you know, he always says that Portage gave him his son back. So.

• 7:41Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm crazy grateful for this place.

• 7:44Jen Cohen?

  So you were, you were addicted to, you were a drug addict?

• 7:47Speaker 02

  Just everything. I was addicted to not feeling. I was a drunk. I was everything. And luckily, this place helped me get sober. And what happened was eleven months of therapy.

• 8:01Jen Cohen?

  How old were you back at this point?

• 8:02Speaker 02

  Seventeen, sixteen, seventeen.

• 8:03Jen Cohen?

  Okay, you're still young.

• 8:05Speaker 02

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

• 8:50Speaker 02

  my dad was always said growing up, he's like, if you just find something you're passionate about that isn't illegal, then I think you do pretty good with yourself. So when I got out, this is 1997, discovered this little tiny thing called the internet. And that's my life. I, I went from one failure to another failure. Eventually at 24, so I started at 17 in business. Self-taught programmer, trying to build apps, websites, things. And then, um, when I was 24, I hired a business coach, this guy named Bob. He was an E-Myth coach. If you ever read that book, I was like,

• 9:19Jen Cohen?

  No, what is it called?

• 9:19Speaker 02

  The E-Myth was written by a guy named Michael Gerber. And, you know, I read it and it was just this idea of building systems. And I was like, okay, I've tried business twice by myself. Clearly I'm not good at this thing. I can't do the same thing over and over because that's the definition of insanity. So I get this book and hired this coach and within the first year of trying, we did almost a million in revenue.

• 9:45Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  It blew, it blew my brain wide open. And it taught me habits. It taught me vision. It taught me, I mean, one of the first exercise he asked me to do was to write my eulogy. Can you imagine at 23, 24 years old, sitting down to, when you talk about begin with the end in mind? That was the most eye-opening, clearing, aligning exercise I could ever do. And that company, I think I became a cash millionaire at 27. So three years later and then sold that when I was 28 and became a multimillionaire and

• 10:16Jen Cohen?

  When you say, when you say multimillionaire, are we talking two million or are we talking?

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Closer to like seven or eight.

• 10:22Jen Cohen?

  And you were 27 at that time.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  28 when I exited, 27 when I made cash million. That's like cash in the bank. Cause like a lot of people say they're millionaires, but.

• 10:30Jen Cohen?

  It means nothing. I know.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  They're not.

• 10:31Jen Cohen?

  I want to know that like the.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then like to, and I mean, so this is what's crazy is you like go there at 28. Again, I'm 44 and then I just, I've always been a builder, sometimes hard headed, sometimes incredibly dumb, emotional, not smart. I just never stopped. And even moments where I took two years off to like chill out, you know, I was still angel investing. I was doing other stuff and I'm just a byproduct of waking up every day and just trying to be a little bit better.

• 11:01Jen Cohen?

  Okay. But so like, well, okay. So now you're 27, you have like seven million in the bank. Let's just say, what do you do now? What's the next thing?

• 11:07Speaker 02

  I moved to San Francisco.

• 11:08Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, from New Brunswick.

• 11:10Jen Cohen?

  Okay. Big move.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was huge. I mean, the other side of the world, really.

• 11:13Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Think about it. If you actually look at the country, Atlantic Canada is like way out, almost in the ocean. And then I moved to the other side to.

• 11:21Jen Cohen?

  Why there of all places?

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Silicon Valley tech.

• 11:24Jen Cohen?

  So you want to be close to tech.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  See if any of my crazy ideas would, am I really good or am I lucky? You know what I mean? Like that was always, you know, it was a little exit in the grand scheme of things. And that's, uh, that's what I went. Didn't know a soul showed up with my backpack or my suitcase. And I just started going to events and trying to figure this thing out. And yeah, I eventually met some entrepreneurs and invested in companies.

• 11:49Jen Cohen?

  Which ones did you invest in?

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Uh, Hootsuite was early. So that's a billion dollar company today. Intercom. So it's a messaging app. Get around to compete against Turo. I've done, I mean, it's 60 is what's reported. It's more like a hundred now, but I mean.

• 12:04Jen Cohen?

  And how much were you giving each, like 25,000, a hundred thousand?

• 12:07Speaker 02

  More, more like a hundred. Yeah. A hundred K each.

• 12:10Jen Cohen?

  And were you kind of getting those opportunities by the network that you were meet, meeting?

• 12:15Speaker 02

  So I, nobody knew me. So like, until recently, not like, like you said, like, how did I never hear about you? Because I was just behind the scenes. I was, I was networking and I read a book called Never Eat Alone. And I did what it said.

• 12:27Jen Cohen?

  That book.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. Keith Rozi. I li, I just did what he said.

• 12:30Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Organize meals, invite people to it.

• 12:32Jen Cohen?

  Never eat alone, like every lot, you should never eat lunch alone.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Organize daily Canadian entrepreneur lunches. We will have burritos in the mission. In San Francisco and like I put on some weight eating too many Mexican burritos. Like that was in hindsight, not a smart move for my health, but a great, a great way to just have a place. As people emailed me and wanted to meet up or I was meeting people I could invite them to. And I met hundreds and I wasn't, I wasn't trying to start anything. So it was kind of fun for me. I, I moved there and I didn't know a soul. I almost went home after three weeks because the truth is, is San Francisco specifically, they don't like people that aren't from there. Like if you didn't go to Berkeley or Stanford or you're like, they were like, who are you? What are you trying to get from? It was really weird. They were very standoffish.

• 13:16Jen Cohen?

  Aloof or?

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. And just like, oh, you don't want to build a billion dollar company? Cause like I would, people go, what do you, you know, what are you working on? I go, I don't know. As soon as I said, I don't know. They'd be like, I'm going to talk to this guy because he's working on a billion dollar company and you're clueless. It was kind of interesting. So I did this for three weeks, going to coffee shops and trying to meet people and nobody would want to talk to me.

• 13:35Jen Cohen?

  By the way, how long did you live there for?

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Uh, five years total, beginning to end. But what changed for me and everybody listening can learn, take this lesson was I cold emailed. I, I saw a blog post on TechCrunch's tech site and it said, here are the hundred most influential CEOs and, and online bloggers, tweeters, all that stuff. And I cold emailed every one of them and I just asked them questions about like, you know, I'm new to the city. I'm trying to get to know people. What, you know, here's my skillset. What, what do you recommend I do with this? This like three sentences? And it was Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, which today, you know, incubated Dropbox and Airbnb and all these luminary tech companies. He replied, and most didn't. And he said, all startups need help with marketing. Help them with that.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  And I said, oh, next day I go to Ritual Roast, this little coffee shop on Valencia Street in the Mission. And, um, first person I meet, they go, what do you do? And I said, well, I help startups with marketing. And he's like, I'm a startup. Help me. And I was like, game on. So I went three weeks with people not, not talking to me, ignoring me. I remember calling my brother depr- like this city sucks. People aren't very nice. I'm used to Canadians.

• 14:39Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  And, uh, the truth was, is nobody knew what I did. And I think a lot of people go through life and don't know how to explain what they do. And then they confuse people and they wonder why. Opportunities don't come to them. So now I'm very clear. I wrote a book called Buy Back Your Time. People ask me, what do you do? Doesn't matter. All the other stuff you talked about. If somebody asked me, they see me driving around, they go, what do you do? I go, I wrote a book. That's it. It's just clear. It's so clear. And then people go, oh, okay. Well, if you're driving that car, you wrote that book. I'm, I might want to read it or you flew in on your plane. Maybe I should read the book. Cool. Read the book. And then in there, they get to know who I am.

• 15:14Jen Cohen?

  No, I think that's a great, I think that's a really good piece of advice because you're right. Like I get people who call me all the time or email me or text me for like information sessions or they want to, whatever it is, right? And I say, well, what do you do? And they have no clue or they're talking, they're talking in too many syllables. And I'm like, you lost me already. Like you should have an elevator pitch that's so succinct. Where people know, okay, this is what I do. I wrote a book. Great. I can understand that.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Because if they don't, you think, well, I can't have a conversation with somebody who confuses me at this level. We're talking, we're talking basic entry level. What do you do? Can you imagine asking them a deeper question? Like, that's what happened. No, you don't. That's why these people, including me at the time, I didn't realize the impact of not being able to answer a simple question like, what do you do?

• 15:58Jen Cohen?

  So then you go into these things and you're like, okay, now you're like basically bullshitting and you're going to do your marketing.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  No, I actually did know how to do marketing. I just knew how to position it. So what I would do is I offered two weeks.

• 16:08Jen Cohen?

  But how did you know how to do marketing? Cause you were doing all the.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  My previous company.

• 16:11Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, but you were more like, it sounds to me, you were more like the coder.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. So what's interesting in software, a lot of the coding, you ever heard the term growth hacker?

• 16:19Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  It's actually a technical strategy, not a marketing thing. Growth hacking is actually for the most part APIs, like, you know, programming stuff. And it's actually not like what people think is like imagery and ads. Growth hacking is trying to scrape a website, find everybody's email and send an email to invite them because they've been tagged in a photo.

• 16:42Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  And then they sign up for Facebook.

• 16:44Jen Cohen?

  That's smart. By the way, I know a lot of people have made a ton of money being able to do all that stuff.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  That's LA. LA's media background is, you know, like all the guys, there's a ton of companies that just figured out SEO, they figure, you know? Like Airbnb, they figured out how to cross post on Craigslist. List from their app. That's a programming problem, not a what channel are we going to run our TV commercials on?

• 17:07Jen Cohen?

  Well, that's true. And then also, I guess that's also growth hacking could be personal branding too, right? How do you grow? Like, did you growth hack yourself? I guess you did.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  Well, so let's go to the second question you asked earlier, which is, how did I not hear about you and me like everything? So the Dan Martell brand today, we're adding, I mean, we added almost 2.3 million followers in the last 12 months.

• 17:27Jen Cohen?

  How many?

• 17:28Speaker 02

  2.3 million.

• 17:29Jen Cohen?

  Where?

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok, LinkedIn.

• 17:32Jen Cohen?

  How?

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Well, lots of stuff. I would say, because people knew that I was, I was doing YouTube before. Okay. So like when I started 14, 15 months ago, I had a YouTube channel. I've been doing it for nine years. I had 60,000 followers.

• 17:44Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Okay. Now we're almost at half a million. So the big thing, if you want to know Jen, like the, like, because people want to know the how. You got to understand, I just decided to stop treating marketing like a marketing department, instead decided to build a media company. And that was the difference. And I call it the difference between going from amateur to pro. And I know a lot of people that say they want to have a lot of impact and help a lot of people, but they're still acting like amateurs. And I used to brag about it. I used to be like, I shoot all my YouTube videos for a whole quarter in two days a month. And I switch my shirts and I batch everything and I have these scripts and da, da. And then I'm wondering like, why are all these other people growing and my, my videos would get 2,000, 3,000 views and I wouldn't add any subscribers.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  So that's how I used to do it for a very long time. And what changed was the decision of really just going all in on media. But because I realized everything that I wanted to accomplish in my life, that at that point, on the backside of two things would be 10 times easier, a hundred times easier. And that was reputation, which luckily I had a good reputation. Problem was the second part, which is reach. Nobody knew who I was. And like, growing up, Keith Rozzy's book, Never Eat Alone, you hear it's, you know, it's who you know. They can solve problems for you. And I don't disagree. That's actually a really important point. Turns out it's who knows you even more important, right? And if you're creating content, we live in this beautiful world that I didn't grow up in.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  What happens on social media today and the power of these, this, this phone and this platforms? I didn't have that growing up. You couldn't follow billionaires on social media and watch how they interacted and they taught you stuff for free. That's crazy. And I just thought, you know what? I always ask myself like, what scares me? And that thought of going pro on that? I was already rich. I was already successful. I didn't need to do that. But it also gave me the most anxiety. And oftentimes I always like, look at like, what things or decisions give me the most? And I go, okay, that's what I have to do. So it's kind of like the whatever scares me the most is almost like the prioritization method. And then the book is really what started it though.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  So the book came out last January 17th. You know, my publisher said, if you sold 4,000 copies, that'd be really cool. Sold 20,000. It's now number one book in entrepreneurship, time management and small business in the world. Sells more copies every week than the previous week. People in the publishing world says that's a pretty good thing.

• 20:06Jen Cohen?

  Who's your publisher?

• 20:07Speaker 02

  Penguin Random House. And I, I'm a person of faith and I, you know, I had this moment. So it comes out in January and it's probably April or May. That I realized I've been asking God for this gift my whole life. And I wasn't gonna just ignore it. I almost ignored it. I honestly almost decided to keep building my businesses and not support the book, not support the message, not do the thing. Cause again, it was scary. I didn't want to. I remember I talked to my wife. I was like, I think I'm gonna go all in. She's like, what does that mean? I said, the thing, the thing, like, you know, the Gary V thing and the Hermosy thing and all these people thing? I think I'm gonna go do that. And she's like, well, you're not doing that in my house. And I'm like, okay, that's fair. And I called up my buddy Sam and he lived back on the other side of the world at that time.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  And I said, I think I'm gonna go and build a media company, Martell Media. I'm gonna go all in, I'm gonna shift my whole life. I literally thought, okay, if this is a part, this is where I'm at and this is my priority. I'm gonna do this. And I said, if you want to be part of this, I need you, I need you in my hometown. I need you, we're gonna build a studio. We're gonna do this, we're gonna do the thing. I don't know what it is. I just know two things. I look at my calendar and I look at my bank account. So if you, if somebody tells me like, my family's important to me, that's cool that you said that. Show me. Those are the two things I need to see. And I couldn't give you a good answer back then about if this was really a priority. Like I was bragging about what I was doing. I was spending four or five grand a month. That's in the grand scheme of thing, that was. That was little budgets. My calendar, two days, once a quarter. And I was trying to have impact.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Nope. I just couldn't lie to myself anymore. So I say, Sam, we're gonna go do the same. If you want to be there, you gotta move. Two weeks later, he shows up at my front door, packed up, got rid of his apartment, shows up with his buddy, Matisse. So I had a two for one. Didn't know it was a package deal. That's cool. Two protein bros in my basement. Wife Renee's like, how long Sam and Matisse can live down there? I said, oh, just for like a week or so. A month later, they're still there.

• 22:03Jen Cohen?

  I love it.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  But that's what we've built in the last 14, 15 months. A team of, you know, 15 people that wake up every day to try to create as much value for the world than anybody else and.

• 22:14Jen Cohen?

  Okay, I've got a bunch of questions. So first, does Sam have experience building a media company?

• 22:19Speaker 02

  He worked on my marketing department for a while. He has no experience building a media company.

• 22:23Jen Cohen?

  Okay. And when you say media company, describe what that is to you.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  So it's called Martell Media and we don't produce anything for anybody else. It's all my own content, which is kind of bananas. We have a, we have an equipment room that's got more stuff. I'm like, what is all this? Like gimbals and drones and da, da, da, da, da. And Sam's convincing me that we need all this stuff. And I'm like, okay. No, I'm kidding. We do use it.

• 22:45Jen Cohen?

  No, it's fascinating.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, we, we shoot contents on scooters. I mean, we have mounts for things, car content. I mean, we just, and again, do I know what I'm doing? No. Do I have a process for figuring things out? Sure do.

• 22:56Jen Cohen?

  What's the process?

• 22:57Speaker 02

  Process is you, you have to try a bunch of things that feel a hundred percent aligned and authentic to you. And if something hits, you have to figure out what the format is and you gotta lock in the format. So what a lot of people in the content world that are not, because if you don't do enough volume, you don't, you don't have to do this because it's not a priority. And you can just try a bunch of stuff, but all the best people, and I would say, you know, Mr. Beast is always at the top. If you actually look at his videos and he's talked about this in these kind of like nerdy, you know, producer type conversations with different YouTube channels. But essentially he realized that, you know, there's these formats that work for his audience. And then he takes that format and he figures out all the variations. And for example, we'll spend 60% of our effort.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  Just on the packaging of a YouTube video, what does that mean? It means the, the concept, the title, the thumb thumbnails. Let's add some S's to that. Split testing, we're talking first thirty, we go, we go literally one second, three second, ten second, thirty second. And it is, it's not, it's not like, oh, I like this, I put it, no, it is. And it's tested and retention and we're looking at the analytics. It's, it's just deciding if you want to get fit. It's same thing, to the degree that you measure with more precision, you will have the feedback to be able to improve your situation. People that are struggling with their health, it's because they don't measure anything. They don't measure their sleep, they don't measure the weight, they don't measure their food, they don't measure anything.

• 24:22Speaker 02

  You know, I learned, hey, macros, you need to, you gotta focus on them. Workout intensity and progressive overload, you gotta track your workouts, all these things. So it's like, I just applied the same concept from software, just to media. And again, surround yourself with people that do it. So we built a network around Sam, we hired great talent, consultants, agencies and.

• 24:41Jen Cohen?

  Do you have a lot of outside agencies who work with you?

• 24:44Speaker 02

  No, so what we do, and this is Sam, full credit to him, is we'll hire an agency for ninety days if they have an expertise. But we'll just tell them upfront, we're hiring you to teach our team. And then we usually hire somebody to pair them with, and then we just, because we, everything. You can't do artistic projects at the scale we're trying to do if everybody's contractors, because it's, they just don't care as much.

• 25:06Jen Cohen?

  Totally agree.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  They just can't, and I don't blame them for it. They're running a business with their margins and processes and blueprints, and that's how it works. We're like, really in it. I mean, rule number one, if we don't consume our own content, then we've messed up. So you're not allowed to work on the media team if you don't already subscribe to newsletter, watch the reels, watch the YouTube. There's no ifs, ands, or buts. If you don't consume the content we put out there, you're not the right person for the team. Because we're, you're not a consumer of the, imagine built, you know, Magic Mind founder doesn't take his own product. I know a lot of people have marketing departments that the people creating the content don't consume the stuff they make for their customers.

• 25:41Jen Cohen?

  I could, I could not, you gotta, you gotta like drink the Kool-Aid and live, like live.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  It's a non, it's just impossible, you can't win without that.

• 25:49Jen Cohen?

  So I, no, I understand. So basically then you decided fourteen months ago, all in on you. You built a team around it and your team now is not just Sam, but people around it.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  About fifteen people, yeah.

• 26:01Jen Cohen?

  How much does it cost a month to upkeep that?

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Sam would know the numbers because he managed it with Todd. Yeah, no, give a real number like Todd's number.

• 26:08Jen Cohen?

  Give me like a real number.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  It's probably like a hundred and eighty.

• 26:12Jen Cohen?

  A hundred and eighty a month.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  Probably.

• 26:13Jen Cohen?

  So is that with that, does that mean when that includes people walking around with you 24 hours a day?

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 26:19Jen Cohen?

  Or whatever.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  They're not allowed in my house.

• 26:21Jen Cohen?

  They're not allowed in your house?

• 26:22Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 26:23Jen Cohen?

  No, in your house. That's why you do it all.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  They have to text her if they want to come to my front door. Sometimes they show up for some stuff. They have to text her the day before. If they don't, I tell them run away.

• 26:33Jen Cohen?

  Okay, good. So, so you can, so it's everything outside the house. Are your kids allowed to be on?

• 26:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, Renee doesn't care. We put the kids on.

• 26:40Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, that's fine. Okay, so basically, you basically have someone to follow you around. You said you have more than one person.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, we have. So essentially, there's two parts to the team. There's a revenue team because you monetize content. A lot of people, I didn't know this when I started.

• 26:53Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, our YouTube makes enough to cover the production costs. So that's crazy. Nobody told me that. So we have a revenue team. We have a media team and then Todd runs the thing. So that's the one thing, again, I write about it in my book. I don't need to CEO companies anymore. I like to be the talent. I like to create them, but have other people run them. So.

• 27:11Jen Cohen?

  I remember what I saw of yours now that I liked.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  What was that?

• 27:14Jen Cohen?

  I just remembered you talked about building talent, about CEOs who they are spending their time building talent, not and like getting that like.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  Build the people.

• 27:24Jen Cohen?

  Building the people.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  And the people build the business.

• 27:26Jen Cohen?

  And the people.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  It's a hundred percent how it is. And, and that's why I love that we now have a camera showing people the conversations, how I move through the world, how it actually works. Cause you can read, it's like trying to learn to surf. You can't learn to surf reading a book. We want to show people behind the scenes and we do the best we can to do that. But day one, hire Sam to run all media stuff, hired Todd to run the media company, and then he built the rest of it. Cause like people, when you start off, you build bottom up, right? Cause you don't have, you don't have any money, you don't have any resources. You're like, hey cousin, can you help me do this? And you kind of piece things together. You make some money, buy back some time. But most people actually make it at the top or have some kind of liquidity or vent. They're not supposed to do that again. They're actually supposed to start top down. Nobody ever told them that.

• 28:10Speaker 02

  So I learned a long time ago, I made that mistake and I go, why would I do that if I've got money in the bank? Next time I hire top. Then they deal with all of it.

• 28:18Jen Cohen?

  That's a, that's a great, I think that's a great strategy. My question is, what happens for people who don't have millions of dollars in the bank to spend a hundred plus thousand dollars?

• 28:26Speaker 02

  They don't need to.

• 28:27Jen Cohen?

  How, okay, walk me through how someone can build a media company with themselves.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:32Jen Cohen?

  When they have very little money.

• 28:34Speaker 02

  This is literally what I teach my friends all the time. Anybody interested, like, follow me right now? Just follow me on Instagram and ask me that question and I'll give them the playbook. Like, I, cause I get, all my friends have watched me do this in 14 months, asked me the exact same question. Guess what I did? I wrote it down and I sent it to them. So here, here's the thing. First off, your gear is your phone. Period. Full stop. Number two, focus on one platform. Instagram is the best for monetizing. Okay? I can talk about why, but let's just go, and because it's the best messaging platform. And that's honestly the reason why. Then we talk about formats. Well, you got to figure out what works for you, but you need to do at least three to five stories per day. You need a main post three times a week. You need to do two reels a day. That's, that's a lot of content, but not really, wait for the second part. Most people are already creating the content every day. They're just not capturing it.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  So I have a camera that sits on my desk on an angle. And anytime in a meeting where people ask me questions, so let's say I'm with a bunch of my CEOs and they're asking me questions, or I'm talking to a team, I'm doing leadership development, anytime where I'm teaching or answering a question, that side camera is on and it automatically records and saves it to a Dropbox. And that produces the content, the team clips and puts on my social. I did that for the first part. The only reason I added more capacity is because we wanted to do more, but if I didn't do anything other than have an editor and use my phone the way I just explained, everybody could grow their brand and it's not a lot of effort and it costs you, I mean, an editor might cost you a thousand bucks a month, maybe. You can do like 20 bucks a video, like a clip.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  It's just, the problem is, is nobody got the reps, so their content's not very good.

• 30:07Jen Cohen?

  So I was going to say to you, I think a lot of times we're struggling with the content because unless you have a busy life and that you're doing a lot of stuff, you're stuck with like having, if you have a boring life, it's hard to create content.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  Okay. Perfect question. Want to know how I do it? Sam calls it creating the containers. So what Sam realizes, there's certain experiences or moments where Dan gets Gives his best stuff. So what he did is he asked me to work with my assistant to restructure my calendar so that the scenarios are in there that gets him what he needs. So for example, it's one of my favorite things that he realized, and it's some of our most viral content, is I've always done youth work, youth programs, at-risk youth, juvenile detention centers, recovery centers, always part of my life. Sam goes, you know, we do the youth club or King's Club, but the way you're doing it right now doesn't get the kids asking you questions. You're teaching them and then you're hanging

• 31:00Speaker 02

  out at the car, but they're not really like, and he goes, it was really brilliant on his part. He goes, here's, here's what'd be great is one, shorter teach, then Q and A, then we've got the in-room Q and A. And then he goes, at the end of it, before we go outside for the car show component of it, could you ask them all to just think if they had an opportunity to sit down with you at a coffee shop and ask you a life, ask you a question about habits, mindset, or beliefs, what would their question be for you? And then what we'll do is the first 10 that find you to ask you those questions, you'll let them sit and start your car. Cause I have a whole car collection of supercars. And I was like, okay. The first time we did that, I can't tell you how much I loved it. These kids, there's this little kid, Chet,

• 31:43Speaker 02

  if you on my reels, you'll see them. And he asked a question. It's like, how do I sell more candies? And, and it was a genuine, and I was just like, let's talk about it. And I gave him an answer that a hundred percent helped Chet, but it actually would help. And it's, I think it's almost 2 million views. And, and that format, now he took-

• 32:00Jen Cohen?

  What's the answer?

• 32:01Speaker 02

  Well, the answer is you figure out who buys your candies, kids, and where do they hang out? Parks? And which park in your city has the most kids? Call the city. And you never thought of that. And I said, if you show up at the park, you're going to sell all your candies out. Now-

• 32:12Jen Cohen?

  Brilliant.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  But it's not that, it's, it's a principle I've learned a long time ago, which is who's your ideal customer? Where do they hang out? Make an offer they can't refuse.

• 32:20Jen Cohen?

  Okay. I'm going to ask this, this question for my son. So him and his friends started this business about they, they go to Smart and Final, they buy a bunch of candy, and then they take it to school. And then their, their idea, and I'm all for it. So maybe I'm a bad mom, but they'll do it until they get caught.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:36Jen Cohen?

  Ask for forgiveness, not permission.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  You're not a bad mom. You're an entrepreneur.

• 32:40Jen Cohen?

  I am really. And so they buy all this candy. They go to the, they go to the school and they take the candy and halves it and they try to sell it, right?

• 32:48Speaker 02

  They buy wholesale, they sell retail.

• 32:50Jen Cohen?

  Right. To these kids who are like, who want candy.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 32:53Jen Cohen?

  Is there any suggestions for them on how they should sell more candy in a closed environment?

• 32:58Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. Uh, two things from a drug dealing days, I would figure out how they could empower other people to sell candy at other schools. One. Two, before that actually is how can you differentiate the candy? And I think there's a way they probably could. And that's where that kid was doing the freeze dried version. So he bought Skittles and then put it in a freeze dried machine, dehydrator, and it would turn it into like this crystal Skittles. So he's taken a raw material, adding some value and charging a markup for it.

• 33:24Jen Cohen?

  That's such a good idea.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  Just saying, I'm full of them.

• 33:27Jen Cohen?

  I love that. I'm gonna clip this and give this to my kid.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  Like, and go have your kids go, like, this is the cool part is now that we figured out going back to the content format, once Sam realized that, then he goes, oh, what are other things Dan does that we can turn it into better content? So I do leadership training every Monday and we sat down and he said, okay, here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna teach these things, because these things are what people are asking about. It's also what you need to teach the team, because like, I'm not gonna just teach stuff for your content. I need to make sure I deliver what I need. So that's all we do. He sat down and said, okay, this is the kind of things I think the team's missing. He goes, okay, well, out of a hundred of those ideas, 60% is what I think will do well out to the world. Can you just start with the first 60%? I said, cool. That content now is going viral. So I just think most people don't ask themselves,

• 34:14Speaker 02

  like, for example, if you know Q and A content, because they see content like this and they go, how do I get on podcasts? Most of the clips you see is not me on a podcast. It's me with the angle of being on a podcast, but this could be me sitting down with my executive assistant and her asking me questions that she needs the answers to, to make her life easier, and it just happens to turn into content.

• 34:36Jen Cohen?

  I love it.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Like one on ones, my one on ones with my leaders is content. I go into the studio. We have a studio we built. Again, I don't want people to go like, I don't have a studio. Go into your office, your boardroom, and have your four or five direct reports sit there and ask, write down five questions that you really need me to answer, but ask it in a way that would be broadly applicable to other people. They all sit down, they write down those five questions. You go, who wants to go first? And the first person asks, and you answer them, but you answer broad enough, not specific. So there's, because what happens if you're too specific, it lacks context. You don't explain yourself wide enough so that the people watching, they go, well, I don't know, what does he mean by that? Last Tuesday, when you did this thing, who, where are they? You know what I'm saying?

• 35:15Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  So you have to just

• 35:17Jen Cohen?

  Totally.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  change it a little bit. Everybody wins. They get the content. I call it net time, no extra time. So most of my content creations just capture with the tweak of the format that Sam looks at and just tweaks a little bit.

• 35:30Jen Cohen?

  So what is your ultimate goal? Besides just helping people and trying to give people content? You wanted to be a content creator, obviously. Are you trying to be like, uh, thought, I mean, obviously you're trying to be like a Gary Vee? Or, uh, I mean, I'm looking at your book here, the people who, who are on this book here.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Some pretty world-class.

• 35:47Jen Cohen?

  Like you're trying to be like an Alex Vermosi? Are you trying to be like a

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Trying to be a Dan Martell.

• 35:52Jen Cohen?

  Right. So, I mean, this is very time consuming too. Like, how many hours are you?

• 35:57Speaker 02

  Three hours a week in the studio. That's it.

• 35:59Jen Cohen?

  That's it?

• 36:00Speaker 02

  I just live my life.

• 36:01Jen Cohen?

  And have someone just like with you all the time?

• 36:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:03Jen Cohen?

  So then, okay, how much money did you make in the, before you, like, are we talking upwards of, are you like upwards of a hundred million? Are we talking 70 million? Just from you going to San Francisco, you're making all these investments, some of them hit, some of them didn't?

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I have a portfolio of companies that we do over a hundred million every year and it's highly profitable. But I've built and exited three of my own companies, invested in, you know, a hundred plus and four of them are billion dollar companies. I am wealthy, unapologetic. I'm rich. Don't have a problem with that. You know, if people, I actually don't care though. Like if somebody's going to judge me based on my net worth, I think you're missing the whole plot, right?

• 36:40Jen Cohen?

  Yeah. Why would anyone judge you on that though?

• 36:43Speaker 02

  Some people, and it's just because I do so much work with youth, I use that to get their attention. And then once they, like, when you roll up to a rehab center and you're driving, I mean, even a BMW Mercedes, it has a different, they pay attention differently than when you roll up in a million dollar, you know, Aventador SVJ. They're like,

• 37:00Jen Cohen?

  Oh my God, how many cars do you have?

• 37:01Speaker 02

  A lot.

• 37:02Jen Cohen?

  Was, was, is that the most expensive car?

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Uh, no, no, I just got a new seven, six, five LT. That's pretty crazy spec in McLaren.

• 37:14Jen Cohen?

  I think I saw that in one of your videos. Is that the blue one?

• 37:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just got it last night.

• 37:17Jen Cohen?

  How much is that?

• 37:18Speaker 02

  That one's not much more than the SVJ, but it is more expensive. I mean, I've got quite a few cars that are close to a million bucks.

• 37:26Jen Cohen?

  Jesus.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I, and I buy more because I run Kings Club and we like to have the, the unveiling at the Kings Club.

• 37:33Jen Cohen?

  That's crazy.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, but the, I just do that so they read the fricking book.

• 37:37Jen Cohen?

  But I find it, you know what? I actually find that very aspirational because you weren't handed money. Like what bothers me when people are given money, but they were just like trust fund babies. You fricking did it.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Not even handed. I was in a hole, okay? And I almost didn't get out the hole. Luckily, some people showed up in my life and said, hey, Dan, I've gone through this. If you put your feet here and your hands there and you keep your head looking out, not even guaranteed. You might fall down a couple of times, but let's get you to the top. And that's where we'll start. And that's why for me, I just have a belief that if you've ever come from that environment and you get out of it, it's your responsibility to help other people. And that's what I've done my whole life. What's crazy, Jen, is I didn't tell anybody for 15 years.

• 38:23Jen Cohen?

  What do you mean? You didn't tell anybody?

• 38:24Speaker 02

  I got out of rehab. I got sober. I started an entrepreneurship world. And I didn't tell the world about anything I went through as a teenager. My parents and my brothers and sisters, we didn't talk about it. We pretended like it didn't happen. And it wasn't till about a decade ago that I just decided that had the most powerful thing I could use to help other people was my story.

• 38:43Jen Cohen?

  Wow. And you're, when you say parent, it took me to your foster parents?

• 38:46Speaker 02

  No, my real parents. I was in foster care, but yeah, my birth parents are still alive. And they're, they're now part of my life, my best friends.

• 38:52Jen Cohen?

  Were they, how, when did you, when did they become part of your life again?

• 38:55Speaker 02

  They were always, so I grew up in a really tough, like, home and got taken out when I was 12 and then brought back when I was 13, 14.

• 39:05Jen Cohen?

  Oh, what happened?

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Just a lot of stuff. Just a lot of stuff. I mean, the, the things.

• 39:12Jen Cohen?

  And then you went back into your house?

• 39:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:14Jen Cohen?

  And then you were living there.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  My parents separated and I live with my mom and she let us do whatever we want and she would buy us booze and cigarettes every Friday and that was her way of showing love and.

• 39:24Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  It's bananas. My wife, my wife grew up in a completely different home. So when she hears these stories, she's just like.

• 39:31Jen Cohen?

  How did she grow up?

• 39:32Speaker 02

  Whatever the opposite is, two parents that have been, uh, literally, we just celebrated their 39th wedding anniversary and had dinner every night at 5:30 together and her parents went to every game and, and, and, and.

• 39:45Jen Cohen?

  So different.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  The opposite. So it's crazy. Fun little fact. When I decide finally at this event, just because whoever won the best talk was going to get a $50,000 donation to the charity of their choice. I decide 10 years ago to tell this story. She didn't know, my fiancee wife at the time, she was pregnant. We, we ended up had to push away and back because she got pregnant. So she, we had our first born, she was pregnant. She didn't know. And I tell her, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give a talk today. You don't know the details and I just need you to stick around and it might be a little tough for you to hear. We'll talk after and she, and she goes, well, my parents wanted to surprise you and they're gonna be here for your talk. And I'm like, okay, um, don't let them leave.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  And I remember me and her mom for a long time didn't, like, she didn't understand the damn Martell entrepreneur. She didn't get me.

• 40:35Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  And I get off stage and I come up to her and she's in tears and she just looks at me. She goes, I get you now. She gave me a big hug. I said, I knew you would. This is the thing is I know myself. I know my intentions. I know that I was a good person. It took a long, long time to see that. And sometimes people that don't understand why I'm so driven, right? You, you, Jen, I know you get this.

• 40:59Jen Cohen?

  I do. I get all of it.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  Oh, all the time. They're like, why is she like that? She's a little much. I know why I'm a lot and I'm unapologetic about it because I'm not doing it for your approval. Anybody's and, and not your like, I wasn't doing it for her mom's approval because she didn't understand me. I, I knew why, who I was doing it for is little Dan. And I will fight for little Dan and I will show up to try to be the best person I can possibly be for that little kid. Don't know if I'll ever be the person I needed at that time, but I try.

• 41:27Jen Cohen?

  What was the story that she heard?

• 41:29Speaker 02

  About the high speed chase, about almost taking my life, about going through prison and what it, what it did to me.

• 41:36Jen Cohen?

  How long were you in prison for though?

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Uh, first time, two months over summer and the second time, five months. But it was getting thrown in the hole that really.

• 41:46Jen Cohen?

  Like solitary?

• 41:47Speaker 02

  In an adult prison.

• 41:49Jen Cohen?

  Like was, was it like, how long were you in that hole for?

• 41:51Speaker 02

  Three days, but they don't tell you and you're locked up for 23 and a half hours a day in your underwear.

• 41:56Jen Cohen?

  They don't tell you?

• 41:57Speaker 02

  Nope. No, it's part of the torture, I guess.

• 42:01Jen Cohen?

  What do you think about in that way? Do you remember what you were thinking about or were you thinking or?

• 42:07Speaker 02

  It, it floats from, I wonder how much longer and I wonder how much longer.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  Like you just think, maybe I could make a rope out of my, my pants or something and I just, just a lot of crazy thoughts. I mean, you're in this, where I was, because it's an adult prison, there's whatever, let's call it eight cells. And there's two juveniles, but the other six are full of adults and they're rocking the cell, which is they're sitting on their back, smashing that door, screaming at the guards. And I'm just hoping the doors don't accidentally crack open and they decide to come in my cell. So I don't know what was I thinking? I was hoping I was gonna wake up.

• 42:44Jen Cohen?

  What a crazy diff, like dichotomy of life, right? Like where you came from to where you are now.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  I know, I pinch myself every day. My dad calls me, he's like, can you imagine? No, I couldn't imagine that. Like if, if people see me, that's why I know, I know what I look like. You know what I mean? Like I know they say, hey, look at this guy, he's full of himself and look at how he looks and he thinks he's cool. It's like, you have no idea.

• 43:06Jen Cohen?

  You have no idea, right?

• 43:07Speaker 02

  No idea. I'm not that cool. I'm not full of myself. I'm very honest about my shortcomings. I'm very honest about what I'm doing and why I'm driven. And, uh, and you know, sometimes I hushed to my wife two days ago, she, she was like, what are you thinking of? You know, women like.

• 43:22Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, what are you thinking about?

• 43:23Speaker 02

  What are you thinking about? It's like 4:30 and the more I'm laying on the couch and.

• 43:27Jen Cohen?

  What you thinking about?

• 43:28Speaker 02

  I said, I'm undecided if my drive is a massive trauma response to resolve my ego's need for acceptance, or if I'm doing it for the right reason. She goes, yeah, probably.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  So like, that's the kind of weird things I think about because of, you know, I think that the people that have gone the furthest down have the most to give the world. That's just the truth. If they can figure it out, the people that have gone through the most have the most to give. It's always been that way.

• 43:55Jen Cohen?

  Of course, because they have life experience to pull from.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  They have the, they, it's deep. If they can go to the bottom of the ocean. Because a lot of times, these things happen to us. Again, this is a byproduct of continuously doing therapy and betterment and personal development is,

• 44:16Speaker 02

  you know, the truth is, the person with no secrets is the freest person in the room.

• 44:20Jen Cohen?

  Totally true.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  But sometimes we do have to go to the bottom of the ocean where it's dark and cold to, to investigate, to ask ourselves these questions, to even audit those memories or, and ask ourselves if those are even real. Did I make those up? Or did they happen? And what else was involved? And what meaning did I associate? And am I willing to bring it to the surface and throw some sunlight at it? Because that's scary.

• 44:40Jen Cohen?

  I mean, who have you looked at? Like when you did like your, I mean, besides, you know, when you were kind of coming up and all the other things. Did you have very specific habits? Obviously, you're into fitness. You're very fit. Did you like lean on fitness to kind of teach you certain things like discipline and patience and all this stuff?

• 44:58Speaker 02

  I'm glad we've documented some of it. When I was 20 some years old, I was, I don't know, 32% body fat, 265 pounds. I'm 214 right now at like 9%. So I struggled with my weight my whole life. And even this version of Dan is from last December. I decided, somebody said some dumb comment to me that said, you know, there's 22 million millionaires in the US, but only 3 million people with visible abs. I said, well, I should have visible.

• 45:25Jen Cohen?

  And so you're like, I'm on this, on this train.

• 45:26Speaker 02

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

• 45:46Jen Cohen?

  And what did you do? What was your routine?

• 45:48Speaker 02

  I, I learned two things. Macro based nutrition, progressive overload training style. And those two things, obviously with consistency, changed my whole physique, my whole body, my whole energy, my whole. I got down to, I was, I started at 231, I got down to 2, 197, shredded, ripped, no TR. This is all natural too. I met, I met Dr. Mike Isratel the other day in Austin. He's like one of the top YouTube dudes. I actually love him. He's funny. And he goes, the TRT looks good on you. I said, all natural dude, Whole Foods.

• 46:21Jen Cohen?

  No, no testosterone.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  Not even creatine.

• 46:24Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 46:24Speaker 02

  I know. And then that's where you go, well, that's not smart.

• 46:27Jen Cohen?

  Well, no, I don't, I, I just had a whole podcast before you got here about creatine. Do you eat a lot of red meat?

• 46:31Speaker 02

  Lots.

• 46:32Jen Cohen?

  You don't need creatine, they say.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  I know. Like this is, and I guess what? I absolutely blast my legs at the gym, which turns out it releases a lot of testosterone. I know. So like people that, these are all the things I learned because once I made the decision, then all of a sudden people in my life started getting introduced. My coach, Alan, who looks like Superman and my, my team. And we all, we have a fridge in our studio. It's called Martell macros. It's like meal prep, food, everybody trains like this. It's a non-negotiable. If you're on the media team, there's no, we're not having a conversation about how you show up physically.

• 47:05Jen Cohen?

  You need to show up physically fit.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  If you're not, get on, there's a 90 day video you should watch and get on, get on the train.

• 47:12Jen Cohen?

  Well, I think it also says something about your mindset, right? It think, I think that someone, when you show up fit, it looks like you, you're someone who has discipline, who like puts time in.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  Quiet confidence.

• 47:23Jen Cohen?

  Quiet confidence. It's a hundred percent true. Ment- mental strength, right? It's hard, like to do something that's hard and when you don't feel like it and you don't want to.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  I call, I call the bicep vein the McLaren of the body.

• 47:34Jen Cohen?

  The bicep vein. Oh, I see.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  A hundred percent because it's, it's, it's one of those things that if you see, you know, you like, yes, even if I did TRT, it doesn't give you a bicep vein. You have to do the work.

• 47:45Jen Cohen?

  You gotta do the work. So what do you do? Tell me the routine and why not?

• 47:48Speaker 02

  I pretty much work out seven days a week.

• 47:50Jen Cohen?

  Okay. What time do you wake up? Like give me your daily habit.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  I get up early. So my habits are dialed in and you don't start here. I'll tell you what it is to have an idea of what it can look like. But I'll tell you this, this today is a byproduct of identity, not habits. And I know you know that that's actually, the, the way that this becomes not hard is it just becomes who I am.

• 48:10Jen Cohen?

  A hundred percent.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  So that's what I've done. So who am I? I'm somebody that gets up before my kids because I don't want my drive to ever impact their life.

• 48:18Jen Cohen?

  What time?

• 48:18Speaker 02

  It's four AM, three fifty-two this morning. Okay. And I post on Instagram every morning. You can follow me. You can see that I do it. So I get up early. I do my morning routine. It's about two hours and it's not like, you know, so he's like, you have that cold plunge and all. And I get that. I just, I do what I want to do. I want to create, connect it to my creator. I want quiet time. I want to read. I want to review. I want to meditate. I want to focus on my, I want to look at my vision. So that morning time till six thirty when these guys wake up.

• 48:47Jen Cohen?

  Right. How many other kids do you have besides?

• 48:49Speaker 02

  Two and they're eleven months apart, Irish twins.

• 48:51Jen Cohen?

  Oh, really? Oh, wow.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  My wife is an angel.

• 48:54Jen Cohen?

  Oh, my.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh, I know. Can you imagine?

• 48:56Jen Cohen?

  No, I can't.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  It was bananas. Yeah, I was excited. She was not.

• 49:01Jen Cohen?

  I can imagine.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  And then usually the morning part, that's when I do like strategic work. I'll like look at my different companies. I'll get reports. I, I, you know what I mean? Like I take, I ingest information and then I don't do, and then I go to the gym around eight o'clock with my trainer. And I just train with other people because I know that I push, and this is the big thing I learned through Project Visible Labs, is that when I work out with somebody else, I'm at least thirty percent more. I'm pushing harder. I feel safer, right? Some of the lifts that normally you would do, you wouldn't do as heavy because you don't have somebody to spot you. Or you wouldn't have somebody saying, hey, look, let's go to failure. And it's not just failure. Let's go to failure to partials to a static hold.

• 49:40Jen Cohen?

  So you're doing seven days a week of weight training?

• 49:44Speaker 02

  No, I'm doing a day of, of active recovery on Sundays.

• 49:47Jen Cohen?

  So just like what, like a?

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Active recovery will be incline cardio. I'll do some core work. I'll do some kettlebell, walking lunges, whatever. Like nothing crazy to rip the muscle, but more just for stability and mobility.

• 50:01Jen Cohen?

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

• 50:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do like whatever split.

• 50:05Jen Cohen?

  Are you doing a split?

• 50:05Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:06Jen Cohen?

  Okay. So how long is it? Forty-five minutes?

• 50:08Speaker 02

  Sixty minutes, start to finish and, and I'm in zone two. So my coach has this belief. You don't have to do cardio if you actually work out.

• 50:14Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  So most people go to the gym and don't break a sweat. If you saw me work out, you'd be like, poor soul.

• 50:19Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 50:19Speaker 02

  Oh. The videos are there. We recorded the whole 90 days and I've continued doing this almost a year now.

• 50:25Jen Cohen?

  Okay, so you work out every day with a trainer?

• 50:27Speaker 02

  Uh, not every day, but I would say 70% of the time.

• 50:30Jen Cohen?

  Cause look at this one. He looks like, like a body.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  I'll show you and guess what?

• 50:34Jen Cohen?

  Bodyguard.

• 50:34Speaker 02

  We used to call him Skinny Boy Sam. If you met the 16 year old Sam that I met, you wouldn't believe this young gentleman.

• 50:41Jen Cohen?

  Wow. So do you do cardio cardio or no?

• 50:43Speaker 02

  No, I used to do Ironman. So that's like, yeah, my background, I think about six years ago, I, I got fed up of being fat. And I, cause you know, the kids were like, you know, five, six years old. And I'm like, okay, Dan, you know, better. You know, you're not dumb. You read these books about success. It's like, you don't look it. So I started with CrossFit and then running and then marathons, then triathlons and then ultras. But I didn't look the part. So what happened was is all those activities are kind of cheated. Cause you can use races as a way to like stay fit, but you're actually eating like crap. Like I would train for Ironman and eat the worst, like, cause I was burning 4,000 calories a day on top of my metabolic burn. So it was.

• 51:23Jen Cohen?

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

• 51:28Speaker 02

  There's zero healthy about it too.

• 51:29Jen Cohen?

  And first of all, you're like, you're like ruining your body.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:33Jen Cohen?

  But more than that, like people don't have, you don't have that aesthetic that people are trying to get.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  Nobody looked at me and go, I want to look like you.

• 51:40Jen Cohen?

  Very rarely, very rarely.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:43Jen Cohen?

  You look like you're like, uh, either you look like a fat, thin person.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  The taurine, a source Rex little arms, bigger mid second.

• 51:50Jen Cohen?

  Just flabby.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:51Jen Cohen?

  Cause you're like, you're basically like breaking down muscle mass all day and you're not, it's not for body composition.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. So that, that was the big shift when I did project visible abs was the decision. You know what? I do want to look the part. And the craziest thing, and I'm, and you, if you watch the video, it's on my YouTube. I think it's called how to get abs in 90 days, some clickbaity title.

• 52:11Jen Cohen?

  People love the abs in 90 days. That's the great.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  Yep. And the, the thing I learned doing it, you hear me say it throughout the whole video is I got leaner, leaner, leaner. It's like, I could have looked like this my whole life. That was the craziest idea to me. I could have looked like this my whole life. I didn't know. I didn't know about macro based nutrition. I didn't know about progressive overload. I just knew the other stuff and it turns out that

• 52:32Jen Cohen?

  But tell people that it's just for, I know, but just

• 52:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, so what the way I like to think about it is micronutrients is for your brain, calories is for how much you weigh and macro is for how you look. Okay, so protein, fats and carbs. And it turns out your body, if you adjust the different protein, fats and carbs to your workout and body composition goals, you can do, the body responds. It's the craziest thing. Like when I'm cutting and you drop my carbs down, boom, all of a sudden I look lean. The veins get veiny, it's like, whoa, that's interesting. If I want strength, I might add more carbs so that I have the capacity, you know, the glycogen in the muscle to be able to throw some weights around. I need that to be able to rip the muscle to actually grow the muscle. And I love when people go, I want to work out, but I want to look too big. I'm like, okay, there, calm down there, Popeye. Cause like, just so you know, it takes a lot of effort to put on muscle.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  And the biggest you're gonna look is at the end of your workout when you got a pump on. So if you're okay with the pump look,

• 53:24Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  don't worry about it.

• 53:25Jen Cohen?

  Totally. I think women too, like they're scared they're gonna get too big.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  Women say that to me, they're like, I don't want to look like that. I'm like, by the time you look in a mirror and feel that way, you can stop.

• 53:33Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  So chill.

• 53:34Jen Cohen?

  It's not gonna happen.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  And then, so that's macros. And then progressive overload is the idea that if you lift the same, you look the same. And that's the way I think about it. So if I'm not tracking volume of weight, um, essentially in reps.

• 53:48Jen Cohen?

  That's such a great way of putting it.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  I say it all the time, look, lift the same, look the same. Cause, cause people don't realize that. And you see these people, 90% of the people at the gym, a year ago, they looked the same. Well, I know why it's because you're lifting the same, right? You go there to get a mild pump on, you don't actually rip the muscle. You don't, there's no, and then if you plateau, you're supposed to, so my, my trainer, we look at, you know, cause I track everything in an app. And then when he notices me plateau for two or three workouts, then we swap the whole. So we, we keep the same splits, we change the movements. And that's how we muscle confusion.

• 54:19Jen Cohen?

  I love it. Yeah.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  So I mean, if you, as a male, if I put three or four pounds on naturally eating whole foods, and that's the other thing is I eat whole foods, I travel with my food. I ate lunch, you know, right before in, in the car before I jumped on the helicopter, like

• 54:31Jen Cohen?

  What'd you have?

• 54:32Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't know, it's like in meal prep, it's like, it was, uh, ground beef and vegetables. Yeah, literally. Well, and this is the thing is I just get rid of Decisions I don't need to make anymore. And I think that's one of the best habits you possibly do. Decide once. In software, we call it dry. Do not repeat yourself. So when you write code, code is dry if you never have to write the code again because you just reference it. So in life, I like to make a decision once. This is what I want to eat for the next four months. And I'm good. I don't need variety in that area of my life. I'm going to use variety in other, like flying around LA. That's, that sounds like more fun than me wasting my brain power. You asked me, why do you always wear a blue shirt? Same reason. I don't want to think. I wear the same thing every day. Guess what? I think about how am I going to help this company 10x in the next 12 months?

• 55:15Speaker 02

  That's a hard problem for me to put my brain to, not where am I going to eat lunch today?

• 55:20Jen Cohen?

  So I like this shirt. I mean, I figured because I have a whole thing in my book about wearing the same clothes. Steve Jobs did it with his black turtleneck. I mean, people do it all the time.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  Decision fatigue. It's just decision fatigue.

• 55:30Jen Cohen?

  That's what I call it. Of course, it's decision fatigue. Don't put your energy in areas that don't need.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  No ROI.

• 55:35Jen Cohen?

  Absolutely agree. So you chose to have blue?

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. Blue, A, it makes my eyes pop. My wife told me.

• 55:41Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, that's good. True.

• 55:43Speaker 02

  Facts, hopefully. And two, it's a color of trust, hence the cover of the book. As a business, first of all, IBM is blue, et cetera. And if I pour coffee on myself, it gives a little bit of lenience of like stains, right? It's not white. White, I would, my, anything white, I'm done.

• 56:00Jen Cohen?

  Me too.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  So luckily, it covers mistakes up. And yeah, it just, it got people talking. I remember when they started asking me and I was just laughing. So yesterday was Halloween. I walk into my studio and guess what I see? Everybody in my studio dresses Dan. And, and then I did King's Club, my youth program, and there was about, you know, out of a hundred kids, about 10, 15 kids dressed as Dan.

• 56:22Jen Cohen?

  I love that.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  And I thought that was the coolest thing in the world. So yeah, I'm going to wear a blue shirt.

• 56:25Jen Cohen?

  How long have you been doing it for?

• 56:27Speaker 02

  I don't know, eight months. It just was a thing that happened in the content. And then Sam's like, hey, man, I think that's your uniform. I said, done. Just wear the same blue, beige, white shoes. That's what I wear all the time. And do I own other shirts? Sure do. Do I wear them when I'm shooting content? Nope.

• 56:43Jen Cohen?

  Always a blue.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  Always a blue.

• 56:45Jen Cohen?

  Can you do like different tones of blue?

• 56:47Speaker 02

  I have different, this is my new tone of blue.

• 56:48Jen Cohen?

  Okay, that's a new one. Okay. Okay, let's talk about buy back your time. I want to know ways we can buy back our time. I saw the decision fatigue we got. I'm on board with that one.

• 56:57Speaker 02

  Well, let's do the home stuff because it's probably the most approachable. Right? So first off is most people waste their time. They have time assassins, I call them. And that's chapter three of the book. So I would just say, how about we just start by not wasting our time by, you know, stepping over dollars to save pennies. Like the people that drive, you know, 45 minutes of Costco to wait, save $3 a gallon of gas. Let's like, people don't ever stop and ask themselves, what's my time worth? I mean, how about we just do this? Just assume your hour is worth a hundred bucks. If you're actually an entrepreneur, go to 500. If you want to stretch it, go to a thousand. And then you think about is every hour you paid. Like, that's the way I think about it. I paid for this hour, that amount of money. So how am I going to get a return?

• 57:42Speaker 02

  I will, I will tell you, most people will discover quickly, they should start saying no more often. Okay, because a no is a yes. A no today to somebody is a yes to a goal you decided on yesterday. And some people say yes to stuff because they don't know what they should be deciding on. So they don't have anything to say no to. So I just look at the calendars where I think a lot of people have opportunity. I mean, again, if you have the means, you should not be cleaning your own house. You know, I don't like people in my own house. That's cool. Do you not like creating jobs? Do you not like, you know, supporting other people that might need that opportunity?

• 58:12Jen Cohen?

  I like Costco. That's where I'm still stuck on because I like Costco and people laugh at me all the time because I will waste my entire day by going to Costco to save four cents or a dollar 99.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was just talking about you. Here's the thing, though. I also tell people that if something brings you joy, keep doing it. But don't do it if you analyze your time and you don't have time for the other stuff.

• 58:34Jen Cohen?

  Totally.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  So if you told me you're going to Costco to save four cents on a loaf of bread and then you're complaining you don't have time to go to the gym, I'd say you probably want to drop to Costco.

• 58:42Jen Cohen?

  Right, 100%.

• 58:44Speaker 02

  That's, that's where I think in the book I talk about, you know, starting with the calendar, because that's where all the gold is. That's where the knowledge is on what to do.

• 58:51Jen Cohen?

  Also, there's a big difference between busy and productive.

• 58:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:54Jen Cohen?

  You know, you can make yourself busy all day doing silly things that get you no return on your investment.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  Busy, not effective.

• 59:00Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 59:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I mean, so like, one thing I talk about often is, you know, let's say, so that's the home stuff, you know, and there's enough apps today and it's very unexpected. Wash and fold laundry service, meal prep. So I have all my meal prep stuff done by a chef. And then you go to-

• 59:14Jen Cohen?

  By a chef or by a food service company?

• 59:16Speaker 02

  No, chef. And I, and I have a house manager, Betty. So like when you said Anne, Betty reports to Anne. So Betty manages my whole life. She's the CEO of the Martell family.

• 59:25Jen Cohen?

  Betty is. Okay. So what's Betty's job?

• 59:27Speaker 02

  House manager.

• 59:28Jen Cohen?

  Okay. Which, which entails what?

• 59:31Speaker 02

  Everything.

• 59:32Jen Cohen?

  Tell me.

• 59:32Speaker 02

  Okay. Is my passport expiring? Betty. Insurance on my car is Betty. All my real estate, Betty. My car collection, Betty. Managing Max and Noah's soccer schedule, Betty. Figuring out-

• 59:42Jen Cohen?

  No.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  Everything. Our travel, like personal travel, essentially anything Renee or I would have to do. Renee and I do two things. Hang out with our kids or spend time with each other, people we love. That is it. Anything that looks like not that, we choose not to do it and Betty supports us. Now Betty has a team. Betty has Sarah that cleans the house. She has people to deal with all the fixing and the stuff. And again, you don't start there. You start by buying back your time and then reinvesting and doing other stuff.

• 1:00:07Jen Cohen?

  Wait, does your wife cook?

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  Nobody cooks. Betty deals with everything.

• 1:00:11Jen Cohen?

  Betty, did you have, does Betty do the cooking or she has a chef to do the cooking?

• 1:00:15Speaker 02

  We have a chef that does meal prep. Betty heats things up. She works 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. So she makes the meals from 5 to 5:30 and we eat as a family at 5:30 every night.

• 1:00:24Jen Cohen?

  Every night, 5:30. Okay. Who makes the kids breakfast and lunch?

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  The boys.

• 1:00:30Jen Cohen?

  They do.

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  Well, I don't make them breakfast. Maybe mom does because she feels good.

• 1:00:33Jen Cohen?

  Who makes breakfast for you, Max? Your mom?

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, if Dad's, and they call me Dita, if Dita's taking care of you, who makes your breakfast? Have I ever made you breakfast? Can you ever, ever, ever remember a time I made you breakfast? Never.

• 1:00:46Jen Cohen?

  How about lunch?

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  I don't make them food. Yeah.

• 1:00:50Jen Cohen?

  So who does make your lunch? Betty? Or you?

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  They've been making their lunches in their backpacks since they were probably six.

• 1:00:57Jen Cohen?

  Got it. I like it. Okay, go on.

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  So Betty reports to my assistant. The problem with the assistant, especially if you're just an entrepreneur, most people think they can't afford them or they don't know what they would do.

• 1:01:07Jen Cohen?

  So that's a big one, I think.

• 1:01:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I understand it and I talk about it in the book, Chapter Five, where I was like, here's the way to think about hiring that person and start with these little tasks. And, okay, if people want this, and I usually never give this away. So Jen, your audience, if they're listening, follow me on Instagram, because I want to grow my audience. I will send them my internal Google Doc Executive Assistant Playbook. So we're talking-

• 1:01:31Jen Cohen?

  Send it to me. You don't have to remind my audience. I want to know.

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  I will get you a copy.

• 1:01:34Jen Cohen?

  Don't forget.

• 1:01:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:01:35Jen Cohen?

  Sam?

• 1:01:35Speaker 02

  Sam, make sure Anne sends that to Jen. But if you follow me on Instagram, Dan Martell, D L S A Martell on Instagram, message me, direct message, E A Jen. If they don't add Jen, I'm not sending it to them. I will give them the direct link to the Google Doc and it's my internal sanitized forty pages long of, here's what they do. It's the North Star Principles, it's the meeting structure, it's the preference files, it's everything. Because once you see it, then you're like, oh, I hired somebody and I was still doing their job. That's what most people do. So I'll give that to everybody listening on Instagram.

• 1:02:06Jen Cohen?

  This podcast is literally meant for me. From the candy for my kids, how to sell more candy to the Costco.

• 1:02:13Speaker 02

  It's my favorite.

• 1:02:13Jen Cohen?

  To the executive assistant. I should be taking notes on myself. Okay, go on.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  So the assistant one is the next big area of opportunity. Once you go personal, then I go professional. And the reason why is anytime you're doing something that somebody else could have done for a quarter of what you charge for whatever you do, it's actually very inefficient. Period. The math maths. Like, if you could pay anybody else a quarter of what you bill, your hour, your services, whatever you do, then if you do that, you're working against yourself. It's like you're trying to swim upstream because- You want to be in flow. The reason why people watch me and they go, how do you have so much energy? I just stay in flow all day long. I don't deviate. I'm, I don't have to think about where I'm supposed to be if I'm on time. I know we're talking and Sam's giving you whatever he's doing. And then I don't have to worry if I'm late on time, somebody canceled. We're, we're talking and I just trust that the process is going to take care of itself.

• 1:03:03Jen Cohen?

  You're gonna be late, by the way.

• 1:03:04Speaker 02

  That's okay.

• 1:03:05Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 1:03:07Jen Cohen?

  Okay, wait, finish what you just said. Executive assistant, personal assistant.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. So most people on the personal assistant, they, they're doing stuff that they should just give to somebody else.

• 1:03:18Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  And it's hard because learning to let go is actually an issue with trauma. And we don't get into that, but that's what it is. It's like fears. And the truth is, if you don't learn to let go, you'll always be a prisoner of the world you created.

• 1:03:30Jen Cohen?

  So true.

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  That's why I wrote that book because it took me a while.

• 1:03:34Jen Cohen?

  Okay, I need to, I need to get one more ways we can buy back our time and then you can leave.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would say the next most approachable and easiest for people is stop running so many errands. Just sit down and think of like, I call it a, um, a movement study. So in manufacturing, what they'll do is they'll put a pedometer on their employees and they'll measure who's walking the most. And then they'll go and see what they did and then put the stuff around them. So they'll create, if you actually watch in facilities, they'll start moving the raw materials in better locations. So the person has to walk less because the biggest cost in most manufacturing is labor. So most people don't apply that to their personal life and they don't realize that they spent seven hours driving or five hours running errands. It's like my brother had a home building company and he spent half his day just moving equipment around

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  and buying stuff at Home Depot and doing all this stuff. And I said, dude, that's a, that's an entry level position, part time. And all you gotta do is be a little bit more prepared in the morning with a list. Give them the list and then you go and you actually go close more deals to sell more houses, not run around in your car thinking you're being productive.

• 1:04:41Jen Cohen?

  Because it's, it's, I think you're right. It is a letting go situation.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  It is.

• 1:04:45Jen Cohen?

  People can't, they feel that they, or they feel like they can do it better than someone else.

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  This is my rule. 80% done by somebody else is 100% freaking awesome. And if you don't think 80% is good enough, it means you gotta get better.

• 1:04:57Jen Cohen?

  That's good. Okay. Well, what we'll do is because really I wanted to talk about this book and we didn't really talk about it as much as I like.

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  I love what we did instead. So.

• 1:05:06Jen Cohen?

  I like it too, but I, I like it too. But I also like actionable things that people can like have when they can like be like, oh, I can do that. I can integrate that into my life. So those are a good, those are a good amount. What we'll do is next time you're here, you can helicopter to my backyard. Or, or my roof of a huge roof, by the way, where I can fit a heli, I can, I can.

• 1:05:27Speaker 02

  I'm usually in this area anyway. So like, I know Lewis Howes is around the corner and yeah, and a few others are in Santa Monica or like Delray or whatever Marina Del Rey.

• 1:05:35Jen Cohen?

  That's a little bit far, but like right here.

• 1:05:37Speaker 02

  Tells you how much I know where I'm at.

• 1:05:38Jen Cohen?

  That's okay. You have a helicopter.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Jen Cohen?

  So you can just put one over here next to my house and you can just kind of jaunt run in here for a few minutes and then you'll, yeah, you'll coordinate this whole thing. This was fascinating. I'm glad that we got introduced. And is there anything besides following you on YouTube, Instagram, buying your book, buy, buy back your time?

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  That's it. Just the book. If I can help you, just the book. Just get the book. If you're inspired by anything I said, my whole backstory is in there. How I helped the best. And if you feel compelled, follow me on Instagram. I'm a good time.

• 1:06:09Jen Cohen?

  I love it. Thank you, Dan, for coming on the podcast. Thank you.