How To Shift Your Frequency From Lack To Abundance & Attract Wealth

Dan Martell didn't just escape a destructive path that led him to juvenile detention twice—he completely rewired his relationship with worth, value, and time. Now he coaches some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world, and what he's learned might surprise you: the biggest thing holding people back isn't lack of opportunity or talent. It's their money story, their unwillingness to invest in themselves, and their inability to buy back their time. In this raw conversation, Dan breaks down why wealth isn't about working harder, it's about becoming more valuable. He shares the exact three-step framework (audit, transfer, fill) that allows you to reclaim your calendar and scale without burning out. You'll walk away understanding that your bank account is simply a reflection of your beliefs, and that the work you do today instills the worth you feel tomorrow. Buy Dan’s book Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your EmpireBuy Dan’s book Software as a Science: Unlock Limitless Recurring Revenue Without Losing ControlIn this episode you will:Discover why most entrepreneurs hit a "pain line" where more growth means more suffering, and the exact framework to break free so you can scale without losing your life. Transform your relationship with money by identifying the limiting beliefs and negative stories that keep you broke, even if you're working incredibly hard. Break through the worthiness barrier that prevents you from charging what you're actually worth and receiving the abundance you've been blocking. Master the Buyback Loop - a three-step system (audit, transfer, fill) that allows you to hire strategically, reclaim your time, and focus only on what makes you more valuable. Understand why the work instills the worth and how showing up consistently builds the self-confidence and proof you need to level up in every area of life. For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1832For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Jaspreet Singh – greatness.lnk.to/1644SCDave Ramsey – greatness.lnk.to/1758SCCodie Sanchez – greatness.lnk.to/1823SC Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneymeasibook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment, moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to this episode on the School of Greatness.

• 0:40Dan Martell?

  If you became the person who could become rich, when you say, what should they do first? It's they got to focus on the abundances all around them because your frequency, your energy is what you frequently see.

• 0:52Lewis Howes?

  Dan Martell.

• 0:53Dan Martell?

  Dan is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book.

• 0:56Lewis Howes?

  Buyback your time has taken the world by storm.

• 0:58Dan Martell?

  Dan has founded, scaled and successfully exited three technology companies. I'm Dan Martell. I don't think we create success, we attract success.

• 1:07Lewis Howes?

  Why is it people that seem to work extremely hard don't make that much money?

• 1:11Dan Martell?

  Because they're not working on the right things. They're working hard on the work, they're not working hard on themselves. When I think wealth, I think time and just the freedom. And when we think about the value of the time, it's not how much you get paid for your hour. It's what do you think you're worth? So I learned a long time ago is nobody's going to get paid a penny more than they think they're worth. What's negative beliefs that keeps people broke? The rich people are evil. I think a lot of people that think, well, if I was rich, I would just hang out on the beach and do nothing, drink Mai Tais. The reason why you'll never be rich is because.

• 1:43Lewis Howes?

  How does someone identify what their current money story is from their past? And then how do you rewrite your money story to create more abundance versus scarcity?

• 1:52Dan Martell?

  So good. It's a great question. I've never told anybody this.

• 1:59Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Dan Martell in the house. My man.

• 2:05Dan Martell?

  Dude.

• 2:06Lewis Howes?

  Good to see you, brother.

• 2:06Dan Martell?

  Man.

• 2:07Lewis Howes?

  We have.

• 2:07Dan Martell?

  It's an honor.

• 2:08Lewis Howes?

  We have known each other for 15 years. Uh, we're here in my home studio in Los Angeles in the basement. I'm still trying to figure out what this is going to be called. The basement of greatness or something.

• 2:18Dan Martell?

  Downstairs studio.

• 2:19Lewis Howes?

  Downstairs studio, you know, just trying to upgrade our life in the downstairs studio.

• 2:23Dan Martell?

  Now, let's see. I think greatness, something sounds better.

• 2:25Lewis Howes?

  Greatness basement, greatness.

• 2:27Dan Martell?

  Something.

• 2:28Lewis Howes?

  Something.

• 2:28Dan Martell?

  We're not there. Yeah.

• 2:29Lewis Howes?

  Well, we'll figure it out. It'll come to us.

• 2:30Dan Martell?

  Yeah.

• 2:31Lewis Howes?

  But, uh, I've seen you evolve over the last 15 years as an entrepreneur, as a leader, as a father, as a husband, and transform in so many different ways. And a lot of people know you for the SaaS stuff that you do.

• 2:45Dan Martell?

  Yeah.

• 2:45Lewis Howes?

  But your newest book, which is all about buying back your time, has really helped people rethink what it means to be a human being in life and how, not just towards entrepreneurship or as a freelancer or in business, but also anyone in a career, how they can reimagine their life to optimize their life with time.

• 3:05Dan Martell?

  Yeah.

• 3:05Lewis Howes?

  And the first thing I want to dive into, because you coach and work with a lot of nine-figure entrepreneurs. And my community, I think people that are coming to this are really going to want to understand about the three principles of building wealth first before we get into time. So I'm curious with all the people you coach and work with, what are the three keys that they all have in order to build wealth sustainably and exponentially? What would you say those three things are?

• 3:36Dan Martell?

  Yeah. I mean, the first thing I'd say is most entrepreneurs, unfortunately, because they've never been taught different, end up building companies they grow to hate.

• 3:44Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 3:45Dan Martell?

  Think about that. It's not the economy that takes a business down or an entrepreneur. It's usually the fact that they wake up one day and they look around and they hit what I call the pain line, which is essentially they have opportunity to grow, but the more they grow, the more pain they're going to feel. So

• 3:59Lewis Howes?

  What is the thing they're they have the most pain around is that their teams, their customers, the clients, is it the industry they're in?

• 4:05Dan Martell?

  It's the calendar.

• 4:06Lewis Howes?

  It's their schedule.

• 4:07Dan Martell?

  Yeah, and it's it's maybe the way they hired where they don't have the right people or the thing they're selling is too complicated. And the more they do, the more their calendar explodes. So imagine you get an email where you could double your capacity, double your revenue, and you can't take that business on because that would mean more pain in your life. And you're already trying to get more time for the weekends for your kids or whatever it is. I mean, it's tough.

• 4:29Lewis Howes?

  And you're exhausted.

• 4:30Dan Martell?

  You're you're burnt out and it's not the dream that you were sold. You sold yourself a vision of a future where the bigger this gets, the more time you're going to have and the more freedom. And and unfortunately, if you're not taught to do it properly, that's what ends up happening. That's what happened to me. The three things that I would say that people who've created wealth and when I think wealth, I think of like time and just like the the freedom is first off is they understand the value of their time. So and and when we think about the value of the time, it's not how much you get paid for your hour. It's what do you think you're worth? So I learned a long time ago is nobody's going to get paid a penny more than they think they're worth. So if you

• 5:10Lewis Howes?

  So wait, what's the difference between how much you get paid per hour versus how much you're worth?

• 5:14Dan Martell?

  I think there's one that materializes in the minute. How much did somebody just pay me for what I just offered? And there's what do you think you're worth? What's your value?

• 5:24Lewis Howes?

  Well, some people might say, well, I'm worth a thousand dollars an hour.

• 5:26Dan Martell?

  Yeah.

• 5:27Lewis Howes?

  But they're not getting paid that.

• 5:29Dan Martell?

  No.

• 5:29Lewis Howes?

  And you could, is that delusional to think, oh, I'm worth this, but if the market's not willing to pay it, are you worth it?

• 5:35Dan Martell?

  Dude, such a good question. Here's why it's a great question is because there has to be a belief you're worth more than what you're currently getting paid. So you make better trades. See, if you think you're worth a thousand, but you're only getting paid a hundred, then you're going to start thinking about your time differently, where you'll say no to things that don't even look remotely close to a two hundred, maybe a three hundred dollar an hour opportunity. Or you might decide to spend some money. See, most people spend time to save money. I encourage them to spend money to save time.

• 6:03Lewis Howes?

  Yes, this is kind of how I grew up. You know, this is what people do. It's like, you know, we're cutting coupons. We're going to discount, we're going, waiting in line for an hour to like, save money, whatever it might be. It's like you wait, or you spend time to try to save money, but why is that the wrong way to look at it?

• 6:19Dan Martell?

  Because if we're talking about creating wealth, the only ways we can create wealth is by making that hour worth more. And this is what's interesting is, is the, so the first part is worthiness, but the second part is increasing your value. So if you think you're worth a thousand, but you're only charging a hundred, or people aren't willing to pay you more than that, then you can say, well, how can I become more valuable? For me, the three areas I always look at is the character traits that I have, right? Like, you're not valuable if you're not somebody that can deliver on the commitments you've made.

• 6:46Lewis Howes?

  Right. And so then are you worthy if you're not valuable?

• 6:49Dan Martell?

  Exactly. So I think that you have to start with the belief you're worthy, but then you got to back it up by action.

• 6:54Lewis Howes?

  And, and by creating value, what, developing skills?

• 6:59Dan Martell?

  Yeah. So it's character traits first off, right? Like just being somebody that shows up that honors their word, right? Be impeccable with your language. Um, second would be skills, like what, what skill do you currently have that's creating value? And is there a way to upgrade that skill, right? Marketing, sales, et cetera. And then the third part I think is, um, belief systems, right? So.

• 7:19Lewis Howes?

  What are the, what are the belief systems that keep people bankrupt or broke?

• 7:23Dan Martell?

  Hmm. I, I always look at two things, whatever the, let's say the goal is becoming rich. There's two parts of this, there's the negative, there's this limiting beliefs you have about yourself about being rich. And then there's the negative beliefs you have about the achievement. So both of those are in the mind. So think about like limiting beliefs is like, well, I can't do this. I've never done this before. And I know the person has those beliefs if I hear the language and you, and you know, I'm talking about this language like could, should, it'd be nice.

• 7:52Lewis Howes?

  Right. One, two, yeah, yeah.

• 7:53Dan Martell?

  Yeah, that language has the expectation of failure built into it. So, so that's the, the, the limitation beliefs. And then on the other side, the coin of the outcome is the negative belief. So what's the negative belief that keeps people broke? The rich people are evil. There's no chance you're going to wake up to try to be rich if you believe rich people are evil.

• 8:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:13Dan Martell?

  Or rich people don't pay taxes, or rich people took advantage of somebody, or rich people are unhappy.

• 8:18Lewis Howes?

  Cause if you believe rich people are evil, you don't want to become that belief of evil.

• 8:22Dan Martell?

  If I held a knife to your throat and said, step forward, you'd be like, well, I don't want to step forward because I'll hurt myself. It's like, yeah, so you'll never push for the goal if you think the outcome is negative. So until we work through those beliefs, I see, and that's what I call self sabotage. The biggest work I do with entrepreneurs is understanding what are the unconscious beliefs they have that are literally self sabotaging their progress to winning.

• 8:47Lewis Howes?

  What are the beliefs that most people have around money that are holding them back then? Is it that money's bad or people with money are takers or what is it?

• 8:55Dan Martell?

  Yeah, I think it's, it's anything negative. So, I mean, I know I had money beliefs around. I used to, I had this crazy belief that everybody had to go bankrupt.

• 9:05Lewis Howes?

  That everyone had to?

• 9:06Dan Martell?

  If you want to be successful.

• 9:07Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 9:08Dan Martell?

  It was this weird belief that I, I read Donald Trump's book and I read a bunch of other people's books. And, and when you look at the history, they all talk about like, you know, if you're really trying, you're taking risks. And at some point you'll probably go bankrupt. So get used to it. So like, well, if I have that belief, how hard am I going to push to try to be successful? If I've got a young family and I'm trying not to create pain in their life.

• 9:28Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 9:28Dan Martell?

  So that one kept me playing small for a long time.

• 9:31Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 9:32Dan Martell?

  Yeah. The other belief is, you know, what will other people in my family say?

• 9:37Lewis Howes?

  If I have money?

• 9:38Dan Martell?

  Oh my gosh.

• 9:39Lewis Howes?

  Do you ever feel guilty about the money you have?

• 9:41Dan Martell?

  I, I felt so guilty, Louis, because you've known me for a long time. I didn't tell anybody I had money. I was quiet about it. I didn't allow myself to buy anything nice until I was 30. I made my first million at 27, multimillion at 28, and it wasn't until I was 36 I allowed myself to buy a McLaren.

• 9:59Lewis Howes?

  Dude, it's so funny.

• 10:00Dan Martell?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 10:01Lewis Howes?

  Well, somebody says this because I still don't really buy myself anything. I mean, I bought a nice home.

• 10:06Dan Martell?

  You built it. Yeah, you bought a beautiful.

• 10:07Lewis Howes?

  I'm buying like, you know, I'm not buying things to like show off that I have money though. Like I don't showcase my home. I'm not like taking photos of it and posting it online and like, look at me. My friend got me a Rolex for my 40th birthday last year. I think I've worn it like seven times. Cause part of me is still kind of like, should I be wearing this?

• 10:28Dan Martell?

  Talk to me about that.

• 10:29Lewis Howes?

  You know, it's, well, part of it is not my style.

• 10:32Dan Martell?

  Yeah.

• 10:32Lewis Howes?

  You know, I don't like, you know, part of it's like, I just wear the same black thing, just like.

• 10:35Dan Martell?

  I'm the same. I only wear a watch. Yep.

• 10:37Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. So that's part of it. The other part of this is,

• 10:42Lewis Howes?

  you know, I don't want to reject money coming my way by, by not wearing it, but it's also like, how are people going to, are they going to judge me? Are they going to want more from me? Are they going to be thinking I should be doing more? It's just like, do you also, do I want to attract some type of judgment that is unnecessary? I don't know. It's, it's kind of a lot of that.

• 11:03Dan Martell?

  Well, and that is it. So you said a few things that I just want to kind of pull up to the surface is one of them is I'm worried if they expect me to do more. A lot of people don't want to call their shot or live a bigger life because then that becomes the new floor they got to live into. So that's a fascinating one. It's like, well, I don't want to create wealth because then I have to maintain that. And if I lose, then people will visually publicly see me rise and fall.

• 11:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:29Dan Martell?

  That holds a lot of people back.

• 11:31Lewis Howes?

  I'm not afraid of the rise and fall because I've been in the bottom.

• 11:33Dan Martell?

  But it's the, it's the judgment around. Yes. A hundred percent. And, and like for me, it was, what would my family say? Like, oh, you're too cool for us now? Why did you get that kind of car? I remember, dude, I got the car.

• 11:44Lewis Howes?

  Especially Canadian.

• 11:45Dan Martell?

  Oh, it was the only McLaren in the province I lived in. And you said I have to go to Montreal to get serviced.

• 11:51Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 11:51Dan Martell?

  And I remember the first time I had it for almost two weeks. I didn't want anybody to know. It was in the garage. I was, I was, I wasn't even sure how it was going to like, like be with it. That was really weird. And I remember the first time I wanted to go to the gym and drive it with my wife. We went and worked out every day. You know, Renee? And she wouldn't come with me. She took her car.

• 12:09Lewis Howes?

  Why?

• 12:10Dan Martell?

  She didn't want to have to deal with what people were going to say.

• 12:13Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 12:13Dan Martell?

  So it's fascinating that like, when people just kind of try on these, these ideas, like what would it mean to say? Even a lot of my clients, I say, can you say, I am ultra-rich?

• 12:24Lewis Howes?

  They can't say it.

• 12:25Dan Martell?

  Nope.

• 12:26Lewis Howes?

  Why not?

• 12:27Dan Martell?

  I mean, they, everybody's got a personal story, but what does that mean? Why does saying the word ultra-rich scare you, frustrate you, like your, the judgment? What is it? What is, what does it mean to you? It's just words.

• 12:41Lewis Howes?

  What do most ultra-rich, rich people say around why they can't own that they're uber wealthy? By speaking about it?

• 12:49Dan Martell?

  I think there's a part of it that is if I acknowledge it, then I'm different than other people. And they don't want anybody to think that they think they're better.

• 12:56Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 12:57Dan Martell?

  Yeah. I mean, I'm that way, man. I don't want anybody to think that because I drive a certain car or fly around in my jet, that I think I'm better than you. Cause that's, and you're the same way. Like, we don't, right? I don't, the reason I don't wear watches is because I don't like it to get in the way. I appreciate beautiful things and design.

• 13:13Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 13:14Dan Martell?

  But yeah, I'm definitely, when I first got the McLaren, I was worried that people would treat me different. And guess what? They did.

• 13:19Lewis Howes?

  They do. They look at you differently.

• 13:21Dan Martell?

  Dude, I remember the first, it was awesome. I mean, I showed up, I went and did a talk at a rehab center. I'll tell you why. So I pull up to go, I do a lot of work with troubled youth and every kid immediately, the, the, like they want to know what I have to say. Whereas before I'd show up in whatever car and then they'd be like, who is this guy? Isn't that fascinating? So, you know, perception is reality. But yeah, people do treat you different. And sometimes if you are comfortable with it, you can use that to fast track conversations. And if you're not okay with it, then it can be a source of a lot of pain. And I think that's, that's the mindset.

• 13:57Lewis Howes?

  Who are the wealthiest people that you know, that you respect? Based on how they live their life? And what are the things that they do that you respect the most about them?

• 14:07Dan Martell?

  Yeah, I'm going to say Gary V for sure.

• 14:09Lewis Howes?

  I just interviewed him yesterday.

• 14:10Dan Martell?

  Yeah. I mean, Gary's.

• 14:12Lewis Howes?

  What are the characteristics about the wealthy like Gary that you respect?

• 14:16Dan Martell?

  That he uses his money to create and to help other people. And I, and I would, and I would aspire to always be that. And that's what it is. And I think that if you truly, it's like when people say, well, I don't need to be rich. And I'm like, cool, why don't you become rich? And then if you want to do good with it, then you can. Like, why wouldn't you accumulate the resources? If you think somebody else, the government, this other entrepreneur, this CEO, isn't going to do right by having that money. Go get it. And once you got it, decide what you want to do with it. Right. That's the way I think about it. So when I watch Gary, you know, create his empire and then reinvest it into content and helping other people and running these big events and building companies, inspire entrepreneurship and

• 14:59Dan Martell?

  and really like help other people around them become wealthy. I mean, we've seen Gary over the years make concessions for his career for other people. Yeah. I mean, dude, even the fact that he helped build his dad's wine shop, like no, like, most people don't know this. He built it to 60 million. He owned none of it. Yeah. And was paying himself maybe a hundred K a year. Dude, I don't pay my CEOs a hundred K a year if they're generating 60 million a year. Right, right, right. Dude, that's not how the math works. Sure. So he inspires me just the way he shows up. I think, you know, Alex and Leila Hermosy, friends of ours, like they, they do the same thing. They're, they're very much like, how do I use this to create more? How do I buy back my time?

• 15:39Dan Martell?

  Like, cause I really think it's about an experience and a leverage thing. Like wealth should be an opportunity to live a more fully developed life, right? Like I think the word empire subtitle of my book, I believe an empire is a life of unlimited creation. You never have to retire from. And I think everybody should want to aspire to do that. Interesting. Just be a creator. That's why I talk a lot about artists and creators in the book. The, the book's really meant for people that are starting off. Cause I don't want them to get the wrong headspace for what it means to be successful. And I try to teach them how to value their time, the math behind it, the value of it, the worthiness.

• 16:19Dan Martell?

  And then allow yourself to, if you have a desire to drive a supercar, don't tame it. If you have a desire to own a jet, don't tame it. There's nothing wrong with that. Live in a beautiful home. I think the number one thing you could ever do for somebody else is inspire them to live a bigger life and you don't inspire people by playing small.

• 16:42Dan Martell?

  And to add to that though.

• 16:45Lewis Howes?

  What is the difference between inspiring people and showing off?

• 16:48Dan Martell?

  It's the intent. Think about it. Money is an amplifier. That's it. It's not good or bad. It's like a fork. A fork can be used to hurt somebody, it can be used to nourish somebody. It's a tool. That's it. So, some people buy the Rolex because they're trying to fill a hole that says, I'm not enough. Maybe this will make me feel worthy of that affection. Other people get it because they understand the history and from a engineering point of view, and a story, maybe their grandfather had one, they want to wear it as a reminder of that. Or, and it could be, like, this is the cool part, is that it's not necessarily the thing, it's the story behind the thing. It's not fun. Like, that's why I help people kind of rewrite their money stories.

• 17:30Dan Martell?

  Because then if we, if we say, okay, like I had a client, he was worth like, you know, 50 million, and he couldn't bring himself to, he had, he had a car he wanted to get. I think it was, um, it wasn't, it was like the, the new Corvette, okay, the C8, brand new rear-engine Corvette. And he, and he couldn't bring himself, okay, guy's worth 50 million, car's like 100 and some thousand. And I said, why is that? And his mindset was always about, well, if I do that, then I'm taking away from something else I could help somebody with. And I said, cool, I totally honored that, I appreciate it. I said, but what if you got the car to help inspire other kids that were just like you? And I could see the light bulb. And he goes, oh, I said, so talk to me about what just, you just, I saw the math click.

• 18:13Dan Martell?

  And he goes, well, if I got the car, then I could use it for charity rallies and I could do it, I could go to schools and I could like go to car shows and I go, now we're talking. See, if you have a thing, a house, and you don't host people there?

• 18:27Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 18:28Dan Martell?

  You have a, a company, but you don't allow the resources to be leveraged by your team to do good? You have money, but you just try to hoard it and keep it in one spot and not, not use it to create experiences for yourself? That's, that's where I think people get prisoner of money. And here's, and here's the thing, and I got this from one of my friends, I really liked the way he framed it, he said, It doesn't matter how much money you have, a hundred thousand or a hundred million. He said, if money is the primary decision, you make a decision, you're a prisoner. Said, money needs to be a consideration, but it can't be the primary reason.

• 19:03Lewis Howes?

  Why you do something, why you create something, make something, start a business. It has to be a consideration.

• 19:09Dan Martell?

  It has to be.

• 19:10Lewis Howes?

  You can't say, I want to do this, but I may make no money. You have to be thinking about the money as well. How much do you think about the money versus the impact when you're making a decision?

• 19:18Dan Martell?

  Exactly.

• 19:19Lewis Howes?

  How much, how much should you weigh them?

• 19:21Dan Martell?

  Impact should be at least 50%. I think the money should almost be, let's not be wasteful. But I think we should listen to our heart and say, that's what I feel called to do. If you feel called to, you know, charter a boat and invite all your friends on it to create a magical experience. You know, I think that is a beautiful thing and, and economically it might make no sense. You know, calling my dad and sharing with him some of my travel stuff I'm doing, he for sure would go wasteful. Makes no sense. Why would you do that? But again, different mindset, right? He had a belief that money didn't grow on trees and there was a limited supply. I have a belief that to the level I'm creative and resourceful, it's unlimited.

• 20:05Lewis Howes?

  Let's go.

• 20:06Dan Martell?

  But that's true because you've experienced it.

• 20:08Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 20:08Dan Martell?

  Right? To the degree that I can create opportunities for people or feel a certain way, then all of a sudden I attract it into my life. Then I need to show up and always, that's why the desire to help other people should be at least 50% of every decision. Because it's actually a better way to live.

• 20:26Lewis Howes?

  You mentioned money story. How does someone identify what their current money story is from their past? And, and then how do you rewrite your money story to create more abundance versus scarcity?

• 20:38Dan Martell?

  So good. It's a great question. So what I do with people is I ask them to sit down and say, as it pertains to money, being rich, and let's call it like being rich. What are all the negative beliefs that you have around that language? And really sit with that for 15 minutes. Don't move on it. Well, and I, and I've had people say the, the craziest things. And crazy to me, but maybe obvious to a lot of people listening. The first one, I remember one time they said, uh, that rich people don't pay taxes. That's fascinating. And what I've paid a lot of taxes. I'm like, I know how much I write and I want to pay taxes. The more taxes I pay, it means that I've obviously created more wealth. Like I have no problem paying, I don't want to pay one penny more and I have to.

• 21:22Dan Martell?

  But I have no, I have zero problem. And it's funny how that belief, well, what is that? Why does that matter to you? Well, I don't want to make, I want to give a penny more to the government. I have to. Interesting. So you have an anger issue against your government that's stopping you from being wealthy. Cause you don't want to pay more. So you don't want to make more because you don't want to give more. Dude, it's so fascinating, right? When people literally say like, well, I don't want more because I might make, you know, if I'm wealthy or rich, my sister might be upset with me. Talk to me about that. Well, last time I got a raise and I told her, all of a sudden she didn't talk to me for three weeks because she thought I was better than her. That's interesting. Let's talk about that. So I always go to three questions when this stuff comes up is number one, is it true?

• 22:06Dan Martell?

  So first off, write off all the beliefs. Write all the beliefs. On your money story. Yep. Then for each one of them, the first question, is it true? What if they believe it's true? Well, is it really true is the follow up? Is it true, comma, is it really true? Is there a scenario where that's not true? And for most people, if I say, is it really true? They're like, well, no, it's not really true. It's like, cool. Let's start there. Second question is what would need to be true for that not to be true? Cause that's another great question. It's like, well, I don't want to pay taxes. It's like, perfect. So what if you had a tax expert that specialized in making sure that you didn't pay a penny more to the government you had to, would that solve the problem? Cool. Cause again, it's, it's not about overcoming that they don't believe it anymore. It's resolving the belief.

• 22:50Dan Martell?

  So if I then found a firm that I knew would help me not pay the government one penny more, then I could push harder, right? Cause again, people don't want to grow if they have a negative belief of achievement. So once we resolve that, then we move it forward. Now, the third question is how old is that belief? How long have you been thinking about it? Or how old are you when you came up? When did that start? You know, I'm talking about Seven, I was 10, I was nine. I saw, you know, I saw my dad, you know, upset and he made a comment. And that stuck with me. Or my dad, my dad used to say that it's fascinating. He used to always say to me, That it's not what you make, it's what you spend. Okay, which is a good advice. On the surface, it's not what you make, it's what you spend.

• 23:35Dan Martell?

  So you could make a million dollars a year, but if you spend a million and one, then you're no worse off than somebody that didn't make any money. But what I took that and internalized it for my twenties, in my twenties, when I started in business, was every dollar I was an expense was I was taking it away from me. So think about the concept of buying back your time. My belief, if I spent a dollar, then I was taking away profit. So I tried to do as much as I could. To save. Save, dude. I was like, I was making like, you know, hundreds of thousands a year, and instead of investing in the business, I was constraining it, I was choking it from its potential, because I wouldn't, I wouldn't let a dollar go if it wasn't absolutely necessary.

• 24:20Dan Martell?

  And the challenge, if you understand business, is that it requires an investment. And what happens if you make good investments, you get a return on that investment. And if you get really good in business, then the more investments you make, like when I ask somebody like, how much you pay for a customer? Well, I pay $10 a customer. How much is that customer worth to you? $100. How quick do you get that $100 within the first month? How many $10 bills do you want to trade for a $100 bill? So what's your marketing budget? But originally, they'll say, well, my budget's $10,000 a month. I go, no, it's unlimited to the degree that you get that $100 bill for every $10 that you put in. It took me six years of being in business and choking the potential of the business till I flipped the mindset of, oh, no, it's not what you make, it's not what you keep.

• 25:06Dan Martell?

  It's literally what's the return on the growth? Because the real value in a lot of businesses, yes, it's the profit, but even more importantly, it's what's the business worth to somebody else? Because to the degree that, and this is what I talk about in the book, to the degree that I can build a business that doesn't need me to grow, and that it has predictable revenue, predictable profits, those two equations equals how much it's worth to somebody else. And for, and this is what happened to me at 20, my company got bought, my first company I sold. That was when

• 25:34Lewis Howes?

  Flowtown?

• 25:35Dan Martell?

  Spirit, even before that. That one, that was the one that really set me up to then do a bunch of other stuff. But that's when I learned that yes, you can't be not profitable. But at the same time, don't constrain the business from its potential growth. Because if you can build a business that doesn't require you to run and is predictable profit, then it's going to be incredibly valuable to somebody else.

• 25:56Lewis Howes?

  Or for someone like you, where the business requires some of you to grow, your personality, your likeness, your knowledge, your wisdom, your content creation, all of them might be. How do you justify that when it's a personality driven business? Or expertise driven? There's a lot of creators who are watching, a lot of solo entrepreneurs.

• 26:14Dan Martell?

  It's my favorite question.

• 26:15Lewis Howes?

  That are, they're the experts, they're the face. And they feel like they need more of them in order to grow.

• 26:22Dan Martell?

  Here, here's the way I would think about it is we got to reframe the problem we're trying to solve. Cause I think the problem, you know, I call them puzzles, not problems, but the puzzle is what, what is true about the business? So do you need to be the person that creates? Yes, but what parts of it? So I have this framework I teach in the book called the 108010 rule. The 108010 rule, I saw Steve Jobs do this, Gary Vee do this. And honestly, most massive creators at scale, Jimmy Donaldson, Mr. Beast talks about this, is they'll be involved in the first 10%, the ideation, the creative. And then they'll hand it off to a team that executes. And then at the very end, they'll come back for the integration. So what I do and what a lot of people do is I resolve to be the talent.

• 27:07Dan Martell?

  And by design, in my company where I am the talent, that is my role. I have a general manager that runs that company. So I don't do one on ones. I don't do strategic planning. I don't manage finance. I don't, you know what I mean?

• 27:19Lewis Howes?

  With the whole team. You're just talent.

• 27:21Dan Martell?

  I am literally talent. When I wake up, the team says, I need this from you, this from you, this for you. I negotiate. And and then I try to figure out like, do you really need me to do that?

• 27:31Lewis Howes?

  Negotiate your time.

• 27:33Dan Martell?

  A hundred percent. And then also like, hey, we've got revenue. Can you spend some, invest some to go get eighty percent of this project done that I'm not going to do? So for example, a lot of the creative projects, we have like writers that help us with it that come with the ideation that go research all the videos I might have done and they present the solutions.

• 27:54Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:54Dan Martell?

  So it's really about just looking at your calendar and saying, okay, I want to be the person on camera. That's the thing I can't until AI and maybe Neuralink or whatever gets good enough. I'm doing that. But anything that isn't that, I'm not doing it.

• 28:07Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 28:08Dan Martell?

  So so create a forcing function, a decision to say, I'm the talent team. You guys want to grow the revenue. Try to come up with ideas that don't require more of my time.

• 28:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 28:18Dan Martell?

  So that's the puzzle.

• 28:18Lewis Howes?

  That's big.

• 28:19Dan Martell?

  That's the question.

• 28:20Lewis Howes?

  But then you got to figure out how to hire the right people and then people, you know, all that stuff.

• 28:23Dan Martell?

  That's the business stuff.

• 28:24Lewis Howes?

  That's that's challenging.

• 28:26Dan Martell?

  Yeah. No, and that's why I talk about in the book, test first hiring method, like.

• 28:29Lewis Howes?

  What's that?

• 28:30Dan Martell?

  So the test first hiring method is the idea that, you know, I got this from Seth Godin, you know, a long time ago. You know, Clay Bear, he introduced me to Seth. I'm in New York and we go to his favorite ice cream place. That was when I was doing clarity.fm and I was just so excited to meet the legend marketer Seth Godin. And we're talking about clarity, which is a marketplace for entrepreneurs get paid over the phone. And that was cool. It was like kind of LinkedIn had a call button. But in our conversation with Seth, we were talking about people and talent because we just raised a bunch of capital and we're hiring. And he goes, yeah, I have a rule. I just, I can't work with you until I work with you.

• 29:05Dan Martell?

  And I said, what, what does that mean? And and he was just like, he was ready to move on. I was like, I can't move on. What does that mean? And he essentially says, before I work with anybody, I do a project with them. And I'm like, I don't do that. And that was a big aha. And I said, tell me more. And he tells me about the whole process. So over the years, I've, I've developed kind of a three-part way of how I hire. And the first part is people have to submit a video answering questions that are very clear. And they have to figure out how they upload the video to give me the video. And why do I do that? Well, first off, I want to make sure they can read the instructions. And they can shoot a video and talk to a camera, which is really important from a communication point of view.

• 29:49Dan Martell?

  And they can technically, they're advanced because I mean, we're, we're doing distributed teams. I don't have time to teach you how to use Google Docs, right?

• 29:56Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 29:56Dan Martell?

  So can you record a video and upload it and get a link and then put it in the submission for the application? So that's step one. Step two, we do a profile assessment. So a lot of people hire folks and they're like, man, this person just isn't like the lights aren't on. You know, you're talking to them and it's like,

• 30:12Lewis Howes?

  What's going on?

• 30:12Dan Martell?

  Did you hear what I said? Turns out you can test for a lot of this cognitive intelligence. Yeah. Yeah. So we have a profile assessment that not only does it do their kind of the cognitive side, it also does just their, their, their default behaviors. See, I think

• 30:27Lewis Howes?

  Their personality style too.

• 30:28Dan Martell?

  Dude, it's all that because the best hire is somebody that selfishly has a desire to be better at the thing you hired them for.

• 30:34Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 30:35Dan Martell?

  My favorite question is to ask somebody in five years, we can't be working together. You wake up and you're living your dream life. What does that look like? And they explain to you exactly what they want to do is what you need them to become in your company.

• 30:46Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 30:47Dan Martell?

  Game on.

• 30:48Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 30:48Dan Martell?

  So that's step two. Step three is the test project. Here's what's different about the way I do test project. A lot of people are like, oh yeah, we do test projects. No, we simulate. So whatever the role they're going to do is what they do for the test project. So I just hired a CEO to run one of my companies. His test project amongst the four other candidates was to create a 90 day plan. Cause that's the first, you know what I mean?

• 31:12Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 31:12Dan Martell?

  Whatever they're gonna do when they start working for you.

• 31:15Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 31:15Dan Martell?

  Is a hundred percent what the project should be. And that's why it's called the test first hiring method. So before somebody ever gets to the end, the other rule I have is I always have to have three really good candidates, which it sounds like a lot of work and it is. But the chances of you not hiring somebody that can hit the ground running and add a lot of value to your business is very, it's limited.

• 31:35Lewis Howes?

  What happens when you hire fast and you don't have three potential candidates to make a decision from?

• 31:41Dan Martell?

  It happens sometimes, especially if it's like a key role, specialized role. I mean, we'll, we'll look for it and just manage the expectations. The big thing that we do that's quite different is we document everything. So if the person comes in and they don't pan out, at least we have a process. So we're not left hanging.

• 31:56Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 31:56Dan Martell?

  But it's never usually a good, and it also, think about what it communicates to the person that you're hiring. Right? If they go through this process, they're thinking to themselves, I'm trying to kill their team.

• 32:06Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 32:07Dan Martell?

  So like a lot of times really senior director level above hires we're making, they're so impressed with their process that they almost wanna come work for us as they're going through it. Cause they're thinking, if I had to go through this.

• 32:19Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 32:19Dan Martell?

  Imagine the other people I get to work with.

• 32:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 32:21Dan Martell?

  You know, so I think that's, the, the business part is, is always interesting because yes, you have to figure out how to be the talent. But then it's always about the people. I think we build the people, the people build the business.

• 32:32Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 32:33Dan Martell?

  So our job, and I call it teach, not tell. So this is a very, you're gonna love this. So when I have people that work for me, I don't tell them what to do. If I see something they're doing wrong, I write it down. I create a training, I teach it. And now I have a standard. So essentially when I'm coaching people and they say, you know, my team's not figuring it out, or they're too slow, or I don't feel like they're risk takers. I, I hear it all. I go, cool, make a list. What's on your list? And they're like, well, uh, they don't, they don't, they don't collaborate in meetings, or they don't take notes in meetings, or they're, they're slow on email replies, or whatever it is. Make a list, all of them, 13, 14 complaints about their team. I said, cool. Now show me where you've done a training on how those things should be done right.

• 33:17Dan Martell?

  Well, I don't.

• 33:18Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 33:18Dan Martell?

  That's the problem.

• 33:19Lewis Howes?

  Right. Or maybe they said, well, I told them one time or twice.

• 33:21Dan Martell?

  No, no, no, no.

• 33:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:22Dan Martell?

  Not tell.

• 33:23Lewis Howes?

  You have to show them.

• 33:24Dan Martell?

  Teach.

• 33:24Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 33:25Dan Martell?

  Do you need to show me where there's a video that if I watch that video and I follow what you told me are the five ways that I need to collaborate in a meeting? That when I show up in a meeting and I don't do it, you pull out that video and say, hey, you remember this video you watched? Let's talk about the way you showed up in that last meeting.

• 33:38Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 33:39Dan Martell?

  And see, what's cool about that is just so simple is great leaders, and you know this. Look at the people they've led to the degree those people have developed and grown. That says, you know, if you look at any organization that's performing, I will show you a world-class leader. It's impossible for you, Boy Scouts, you know, organization, businesses, media companies, if you, if you point to this company's doing awesome. I will introduce you to a world-class leader.

• 34:05Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 34:05Dan Martell?

  And that leader is really good at developing people.

• 34:08Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 34:08Dan Martell?

  That's a skill set.

• 34:09Lewis Howes?

  How important is creating bulletproof processes for your teams in order to grow and scale?

• 34:18Dan Martell?

  If you have an issue on your team, you have two options. It's either people problem or a process problem. So I default to assuming positive intent. I call it API. Assume positive intent. If there's a mistake, I assume somebody wasn't properly trained. So I always go to.

• 34:37Lewis Howes?

  And the process is broken.

• 34:38Dan Martell?

  It's the process. So I always ask before I get upset, I go, can you show me the process that led you to create this outcome? And sometimes it'll be like, well, I don't have one. Okay, it's missing. So I don't get upset at the person. And then if they have it, I look at it and there might be a step missing that causes the issue. Cool. Let's add it together. Well, just be like, can you add that step? See right there? Enter. Boom, boom, boom. It's done. Then now I have something I can hold them accountable to. But I think as a default, people, especially entrepreneurs, we're kind of crazy. CEOs are crazy, in case they didn't know that. Like, I'm very self-aware. I always want to go to the process. But once the process, that's why.

• 35:14Lewis Howes?

  But once the process is in place and then there's a breakdown continually, then they're not following a process.

• 35:18Dan Martell?

  Yep. And then it's their decision if they want to not step up to the standards, right? I think people. At the end of the day, if you don't have a process, a system, they'll fall to the level of your systems. So you need to train them. They have to exist. And then that's how you build a company that doesn't require you to run. And, and people, some people are like, well, I don't ever want to sell this company. Cool. I would still encourage you to build it in a way that you could sell it because a company that could be sold is a great company to own. Right? And that's how

• 35:47Lewis Howes?

  Less breakdowns and you can hire more people and put them into the process and

• 35:51Dan Martell?

  And think about just what's fun in life. Like my whole philosophy is I want to wake up every day and go back to back awesome stuff.

• 35:56Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 35:58Dan Martell?

  Fixing a problem that keeps happening is not fun.

• 36:01Lewis Howes?

  Not fun.

• 36:02Dan Martell?

  Hence why a lot of people build companies that grow to hate. It's the way they built it.

• 36:06Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 36:06Dan Martell?

  So as soon as you get to a place where you resolve a problem, and that's why I teach the framework, the camcorder method in the book. This is how we create processes in my life is when a problem happens, I solve it. I never want to have to revisit that. And then every time it's new problems. Like most entrepreneurs, I know you're this way, Louis, it's I'm addicted to my expansion. I don't want to revisit something I've already overcome.

• 36:31Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 36:32Dan Martell?

  And having new team members, sometimes it feels like, oh, I gotta teach them again. And here's what's crazy is whenever you feel that way is why you might not want to grow the business. Because if I grew it, it would probably, that person wouldn't be able to grow with me.

• 36:47Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 36:47Dan Martell?

  So I'd have to let them go, which means I have to hire somebody new, which means I gotta train them. So that's a lot of people, because they don't have those systems in place, they actually will stunt their growth.

• 36:57Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 36:57Dan Martell?

  Isn't that fascinating? It's really cool. Like when you sit down with an entrepreneur that's got a business and you're like, okay, where are the opportunities? And they're like, well, I can't do that because of this. It's like, let's talk about that thing, that person. Yeah.

• 37:10Lewis Howes?

  So when someone starts to develop their, and get to be aware of their money story, and they start to identify their story, is that true? Is that really true? And they go through these steps. Would you say that when they're clear on their money story, they then have a money personality or identity?

• 37:28Dan Martell?

  I think it definitely is identity.

• 37:30Lewis Howes?

  Identity.

• 37:31Dan Martell?

  Yeah, and we've all heard, you know, one of my coaches, Ed Mylett, talks about this a lot, right? The whole idea that, you know, whatever our identity is around our wealth, our love, our relationships, it's like a thermostat, right? If this room is got a thermostat set at eighty and it gets hot, the cooling is going to kick in, it's going to cool us down. If it gets cool, the heater is going to kick in, it's going to heat it up. And everybody has an identity around money and especially worth. And, you know, some people, it's fascinating to watch. They can just go look at their bank account. Usually it oscillates between the floor and the high, right? And some people, it's overdraft is cool. And it is like, no problem. Other people, if they don't have five thousand in their bank account and savings, they freak out.

• 38:16Dan Martell?

  So what's interesting from a working through the beliefs is trying to figure out, how do I make the old high, the new low?

• 38:25Lewis Howes?

  How does someone break through then?

• 38:26Dan Martell?

  You got to do the belief work. You have to understand what beliefs you have about breaking through. Cause if the low happened, if you looked in your bank account or you stepped on a scale, you step on a scale and you thought it was going to read a number and it read twenty pounds heavier, you're going to make a completely different set of decisions that day, right? About what you have for breakfast.

• 38:44Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 38:44Dan Martell?

  Do you go to the gym? Of course you're going to the gym. You're like, what am I doing? Twenty pounds heavier? I didn't know that was going to be there. So what happens is you need to trick yourself into making the old high, the new low, and act as if it was. The best way to fix your identity is get around other people.

• 39:02Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 39:02Dan Martell?

  We know this. I mean, the environment, it doesn't matter how motivated or how much positive motivation you have about being warm, if you're sitting inside a commercial freezer, you're going to be cold.

• 39:13Lewis Howes?

  Eventually you're going to get cold.

• 39:14Dan Martell?

  Yeah, you're going to be cold. So it's like, how about we move you out of the freezer into a warm room? And all of a sudden, that warm room is your peer group, right? And I always say, if you're the, if you're the big dog in your city, you might want to look around, right? If you're the smartest person on your street, find another street.

• 39:29Lewis Howes?

  Yes. So what would you say is the process then from shifting out of a belief system of scarcity or lack around money into abundance and prosperity?

• 39:42Lewis Howes?

  Would it be around the story first, then shifting your environment around people you're with? So that your identity starts to shift? How do we shift our identity to become wealthier?

• 39:52Dan Martell?

  Oh, man.

• 39:52Lewis Howes?

  Minded and wealthier materially?

• 39:55Dan Martell?

  Yeah, this beautiful question. I love it because oftentimes I'll talk about the chocolate and the broccoli. You know, people, you, you, sometimes you have to communicate the chocolate because that's what people really want. But what they need is the broccoli. So the chocolate for a lot of people is success. It's rich, it's money, it's accolades, it's recognition, it's, it's all that.

• 40:19Lewis Howes?

  And what is the, and point, uh, put a note in on that. What is the thing that people usually want? Is it they want financial freedom? Is they want, um, status? They want options? What is it people really want when they think around wanting more money?

• 40:35Dan Martell?

  I think it's, I think the word that comes to most entrepreneurs when I ask them this question, and I do, I run big events and I say, okay, why do we start the business? One word, write it down, go. It's freedom.

• 40:44Lewis Howes?

  Freedom.

• 40:45Dan Martell?

  It's freedom. Freedom means the ability to do what you want with who you want anytime you want. Which is, is interesting because it's a bit of a fallacy, right? I can actually, your work ethic is a byproduct of your gratitude. Think about that. I think a lot of people that think, well, if I was rich, I would just hang out on the beach and do nothing, drink Mai Tais. The reason why you'll never be rich is because that's all you would do with that resource. If you became the person who could become rich, you would have a different character trait that would, you would not be like, I don't want to waste my day.

• 41:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:20Dan Martell?

  I've done this for 14 days in a row. How many more days am I going to just hang out on the beach and do nothing?

• 41:25Lewis Howes?

  Get bored.

• 41:25Dan Martell?

  So it's fascinating that some people that are broke have a belief about what they would do when they're rich. And it's the reason they'll never be rich because that energy will never bring that to them, right? So when you say, what should they do first? It's they got to focus on the abundances all around them.

• 41:42Lewis Howes?

  So start paying attention to abundance around you.

• 41:44Dan Martell?

  It's it's you can wake up and you can decide that the world has scarcity and negativity and lack, and you will find evidence of that. Or you wake up and you decide that the world is abundant and there's positivity and there is so much opportunity around me. And my job is to just keep my eyes open for the rest of the day and not let. Yeah, because your frequency, your energy is what you frequently see. I want people to hear that. Your frequency, my energy is what I frequently see. You know, and that was, I was excited. My boys came in here, I wanted them to meet you because you're one of those people where I'm like, Lewis is such a good and positive, like you need to feel that energy. So it's, I'm never surprised when I meet somebody that's successful, that's positive,

• 42:27Dan Martell?

  because of course they are, because look at the way they, they look at life. So I think the first thing, any person, no matter where they're at, it doesn't matter how much money they have or have nothing, they can decide, hey, in the last hour, did I focus on opportunity? Did I focus on gratitude? Did I focus on abundance? Or was I complaining? Was I seeing the downside of my situation? Like, one question I ask myself a dozen times a day, Lewis, I've never told anybody this.

• 42:56Dan Martell?

  Anytime I feel any lack, and it happens all the time, or frustration, you know, I meant to be somewhere on time, I'm running late, or, you know, my driver, something happened. I always go to this question, how can I appreciate even more God's grace and guidance in this moment?

• 43:14Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 43:15Dan Martell?

  Any, anytime, it's like a cleanser. I could be sitting here and I'd be like, oh, man, I wish I would have had something to drink before I started or whatever. And I'd just be like, how can, in my mind, I just ask myself, how can I appreciate even more God's grace and guidance in this moment? And immediately, see how it just changes the scanning of the, the world? All of a sudden, I'm like, oh, I'm warm.

• 43:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 43:36Dan Martell?

  That's cool. Or, hey, I'm here with my buddy. That's cool.

• 43:40Lewis Howes?

  I'm healthy.

• 43:40Dan Martell?

  I'm healthy. Oh, my gosh, I'm breathing clean air. That's cool. I have, I have resources, I have friends, I have rich relationships, I just got back from vacation. Like, there's, as soon as you, and that's why I think questions are probably one of the most powerful tools we have. Because if you ask a more powerful question, you'll live a more powerful life. And that is my, that is my question. It's my primary question that I use to try to reset it. So it's not about like, go get another skill or character trait or change your belief. It's really about like, can you decide right now to see opportunity all around you? It's there.

• 44:15Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 44:15Dan Martell?

  It's right there.

• 44:16Lewis Howes?

  You mentioned frequency. How important is it for us to shift the frequency of our thoughts and our emotions? In order to draw in more financial opportunities? And is money attracted to a certain type of frequency? If so, what is that frequency?

• 44:36Dan Martell?

  It is. I think the number is like 433 hertz or something like, I think I saw it a lot of times like the money frequency is 433 hertz. I don't know. I do know this, in my kids' playroom in our house, there's a chart and it's, and it's essentially a spiral energy chart and there's a downward spiral and an upward spiral. So the feelings on the downward spiral are all the things you would assume. You know, anger, frustration, sadness, or whatever. The upward spiral is things like gratitude and joy and laughter. So when we think of our frequency attracting, because I don't think we create success, we attract success. And, and Jim Rohn says this often, right? We attract success by becoming an attractive character.

• 45:22Dan Martell?

  So.

• 45:22Lewis Howes?

  It's an attractive identity.

• 45:24Dan Martell?

  Yes, I mean, this is, I hope, I hope people can resonate with this. People want to do business with people they like that are positive, that make problems/puzzles not an issue.

• 45:38Lewis Howes?

  Easier, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:40Dan Martell?

  And oftentimes it's not even, do you have the skill to solve the problem? Is when you work on a problem, are you joyville? Are you kind? Are you funny about it? Do you take yourself seriously or do you just, do you crack a joke from time to time?

• 45:54Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 45:55Dan Martell?

  Cause that's what people want. I want to be around people that make life lighter, not make them harder for me. So I think that energy, that's why I tell the kids, because check this out. If you woke up today and you don't feel proud of where you're at, I can guarantee there was a day. Back in your past, six months ago, six years ago, doesn't matter when, where you went from an upward spiral to downward spiral. In that one day, that one decision, it was little, where you got upset at somebody when you knew you should, you knew better. You didn't apologize, you should have been quicker to apologize. Something happened to you, you assumed that they were trying to be malicious. You should have assumed a positive intent. And you started to downward spiral. Isn't that interesting? Like, if you wake up and you're 20 pounds overweight,

• 46:38Dan Martell?

  there was a day where you ate a little bit more than you should have, and you didn't go to the gym. It's never like the one day, it's the multiple days. That's why for me, that upward spiral, downward spiral, and the energy and that frequency, it's something I've been teaching my kids since they, they could understand language.

• 46:55Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 46:55Dan Martell?

  Oh, yeah, it's, because again, it's who you are attracts things into your world. The world isn't as it is, it's as you are.

• 47:03Lewis Howes?

  But how come, you know, people watching and listening might say, that sounds great, Dan. And I understand that, but why are there so many wealthy or rich people who are nasty and are mean and treat people poorly? How do they have money still?

• 47:19Dan Martell?

  Because money is not, and Tony Robbins talks about this. He said, there's a science of success, and then there's the art of fulfillment. So there is a science of being successful, just like there's a science for being healthy. And if you go into a chloric deficit and you do hypertrophy training, you will be ripped. If you sell something for way more than it costs you to make, and you can scale it up, ta-da, you're rich. The art of fulfillment is completely different. And that's the, that's the world we live in.

• 47:55Lewis Howes?

  But we're talking about frequencies also.

• 47:57Dan Martell?

  Yeah.

• 47:57Lewis Howes?

  Like personality and frequency and identity and beliefs and attitude, which I believe also, when someone, when I'm at a restaurant and someone is, like, just got the most positive attitude who's waiting on us, I'm like, I want to overtip, right? I want to give more because I appreciate and I value positive energy. So I value that. But there's a lot of wealthy people also who are mean and angry. Exactly. And all those things, and just like, you know, the, the least amount of tip or whatever it might be. And so how do they get away with it? Or how do they succeed in spite of a lower energy frequency? In some way.

• 48:35Dan Martell?

  Yeah, it's such a great question because I'm not saying you can't be successful or rich without it. It's just then you don't have the fulfillment.

• 48:44Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. So you can be that, but then you don't have good relationships.

• 48:47Dan Martell?

  Yeah, but let's talk about what they have that the people that are looking to create and have impact and have more fulfillment should consider it's the worthiness. See that person that uses what I call dark energy to create and I use it, dude, in my early twenties, proven all those people that ever second guessed me. I'm going to show them. I'm going to win so big that it's going to be undeniable that they were wrong. Like that was a very dark, like kind of diesel.

• 49:13Lewis Howes?

  It drives you.

• 49:14Dan Martell?

  It was powerful. It's got a lot of torque. Problem is it also it eats at you. It's dirty. It feels hard. And I think that's why you see a lot of billionaires want to be Buddhists, but you don't see any Buddhists who want to be billionaires.

• 49:28Lewis Howes?

  Because they got the fulfillment. They don't need the money to feel good.

• 49:32Dan Martell?

  They don't realize that I could have felt good the whole time.

• 49:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 49:35Dan Martell?

  That's a beautiful place to come from, right? And so what I would encourage people that want to be more full of positive energy and be successful to consider is just know that you're worthy of it. Because it doesn't matter how great of, and we all know these people, they're so kind, they're so giving, but almost to a fault. Right? They create opportunities for people all the time, but they don't feel worthy of getting a piece of it or being participating in it or collaborating around it.

• 50:05Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 50:05Dan Martell?

  So they lack, yeah, I have a friend, a mutual friend that I know he's given to me for 15 years. And I continuously ask him every year, when can I help you? And he's just like, oh, it's all good, man. I don't want to bug you.

• 50:18Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 50:19Dan Martell?

  Dude, that's not cool. Like for real, man. Like I really want, you know, and now I'm like kind of upset. It's like, hey, man, like, do you think my helping work good? You know what I mean? Like what's going on?

• 50:28Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 50:29Dan Martell?

  So I do think some people can be financially successful, but when it comes to the art of fulfillment, that that takes a different process.

• 50:37Lewis Howes?

  So I want to get back to this.

• 50:40Lewis Howes?

  Process from identifying your money story. And then realizing that's your money, identity and personality. Once you've created, identified that story. And once you've realized, okay, this is my identity. This is my personality and this is how I make decisions day to day. Or this is how, when money comes in my bank account, I feel something. I either feel excited, I feel anxious, I feel avoidance. I have this attachment style to money.

• 51:09Dan Martell?

  Yeah.

• 51:10Lewis Howes?

  How do we break free of an attachment style to money that is harming us? So that when money comes and goes, it flows. It feels good as opposed to anxious, avoidant or stressed emotions. Because growing up, I had a lot of anxiety around money.

• 51:30Dan Martell?

  Same, yeah.

• 51:31Lewis Howes?

  And now when money comes to me, I say, thank you. I appreciate it. I don't care if it's a penny or a hundred thousand dollars that comes in the bank. I'm like, thank you. And I learned this from my friend, Ken Honda. He said, when money comes to you, ask it where it wants to go. He said, where do you want to go? Do you want to go towards food? Do you want to go towards rent? Do you want to go towards giving it to people for free? Do you want to go towards investing in something? Where do you want it to go? And I like that philosophy of like, just paying attention of where you want it to go. What else would you say that we should be considering around? When money enters our account or it comes in our hands? What should we think? And what should we do with the next steps?

• 52:10Dan Martell?

  Yeah, you, you kind of touched on it. I think that one belief I would encourage people to consider that would help with the receiving is the belief that you're a steward of it.

• 52:21Lewis Howes?

  Oh, okay. Because some people can't receive money that well, right?

• 52:24Dan Martell?

  No.

• 52:25Lewis Howes?

  It's hard for them to let someone pay for them for a meal or to take money.

• 52:28Dan Martell?

  Not only that, they, they stress themselves out. If I put a million dollars in a lot of people's bank accounts, they'd be worried that somebody's going to rob them tomorrow. They'd be worried that they're going to mess it up and the government's going to say, you now owe us two million dollars. Like they, there's so much angst around receiving. And one of the big ideas of

• 52:45Lewis Howes?

  Is that a worthiness conversation? Is that a value conversation? Why is there angst around receiving?

• 52:50Dan Martell?

  I think it's a fear of not knowing, right? Cause it's new. A lot of people, you know, I call them factor of 10 problems. Most people start with $10 problems and those are, those are meaningful back then, right? Cell phone bills, a little extra and you're like, whoa. And you're calling up and you're spending three hours trying to get that $10 back. And then, and then we go to $100 problems, right? And then thousand dollar problems. And if you think about the mindset to the degree that we can become comfortable with bigger quality problems. I remember Oprah, one time she was being sued by my, the mad cow people. Cause it's something she said on the show for a billion dollars.

• 53:32Dan Martell?

  And somebody interviewed her and said, Oprah, like, how do you sleep at night? You're being sued for your whole life's work, your whole net worth. And she said, I'm just grateful to be the kind of person that could be sued for a billion dollars.

• 53:46Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 53:48Dan Martell?

  Huh? She got really comfortable with receiving and being. So I think that the first idea is to understand that we, it's not ours.

• 53:59Lewis Howes?

  Money is not ours.

• 54:00Dan Martell?

  It's nothing's ours. I mean, I love that you bought a new house.

• 54:02Lewis Howes?

  Eventually, when I leave, it's not mine.

• 54:04Dan Martell?

  It will, and there could be, exactly. So if, if we actually just get into the headspace that everything we've created in our life, there's a lot of, like, it's not permanent. Then all of a sudden, like you said, it's where does it want to go? How do we want to use to shape it? How do we use it to help other people, right? We're stewards of it. If you see other people that are rich and you're upset that evil people, you're like, they're rich, then go be rich. Take, take, take that resource and deploy it the way you want. So I think the way I look at it is, um, money coming into my life is a byproduct of the value that I created, right? So if I want to have a bigger impact, I want to do more good.

• 54:48Dan Martell?

  I want to create more, even as an artist. In the book, I talk about Andy Warhol and how he created the factory and he had, he had teams of people supporting his art.

• 54:59Dan Martell?

  He decided, I'm going to use this resource to do more. And I think that when you correlate that, and I think that's why tithing for a lot of religion is really important. Like I follow the same process and I believe you do as well. Like when you get money and you know that that money is going to help people. For example, my buddy Mark, he came to my house one day and he's like, dude, I have, I have money mindset problems. I just can't charge, you know, $5,000 for what I do. We're sitting in my sunroom. And I said, interesting. I knew he was a person of faith. And I said, what? I think he was charging two and he knew he should be charging five because everybody else charged five. He just felt, felt guilty about it. I said, well, what if you knew that every dollar you made 10% of your income went to your church? Dude, I saw his whole body.

• 55:44Lewis Howes?

  Meaning shifted, yeah.

• 55:45Dan Martell?

  He lit up. I want to charge 10. Of course you do, right? Cause he aligned his desire to serve, right? And I just thought that was just a beautiful way to, to think about what beliefs I have around money. Now it doesn't solve it. It doesn't fix the skill problem. You got to become more skillful and more valuable, but it helps you receive because you know that as I receive, it's not mine anyways. I don't have to protect it. I don't have to worry about losing it. And it's now a resource that I get to use to then go create other things I want to see in the world. And ideally, hopefully it's to help people.

• 56:19Lewis Howes?

  When someone hoards their money, what are they saying?

• 56:22Dan Martell?

  They're saying to the universe that it's fixed, that I won't get any more and I better protect it. And typically those people cannot live a fulfilled life.

• 56:32Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Yeah. How much should we, I mean, we live in a material world and there's, there could be challenges in the future. So how much money should we be putting aside of the money we're bringing in for paying our bills and expenses in the future and making sure that we're not day to day?

• 56:47Dan Martell?

  This, this is the stats because I always, I'm a data numbers guy. If you look at the worst case scenario, and we, we kind of went through with the, the global pandemic, it may be a year at most. Most financial experts will say you should have six months of overhead expenses set aside, available liquid. That way, if you ever. Had to restructure your business, or you got laid off, or whatever happened, you could weather that storm because it takes, that's about it. And you know, and some experts will say in the business side, it's about three months of operating expenses, six months, some say a year. I think that's a lot. But let's say worst case, everything else above

• 57:28Dan Martell?

  that is really about, okay, what's the allocation? Do you want to invest for the future? Do you want to set budgets aside for creating experiences? And I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer, because I think depending on the situation, how old somebody is, they might want to, you know, I know, I love the, the book Die With Zero. I think you've had the author on. Yeah. Super cool book, because the philosophy of actually designing the leverage, because he talks about the go-go years, the slow-go years, and the no-go years, right? So like, if I have money, especially if you have kids, there's two concepts from the book that I thought were phenomenal. One is if you want to bless your children, bless them when they're younger. When, like, for example, I call my, as soon as I read the book, I called my dad, I said, Dad, do you have any desire to leave money to my sister? And he goes, yes. I said, you should give it to her now.

• 58:14Lewis Howes?

  Why?

• 58:15Dan Martell?

  It'll have way more value to her now, when the kids are teenagers, in regards to the life decisions she can make and experiences than when she's 60. Think about it, an extra hundred grand, or whatever the number is, at 27 years old, will have a completely different impact on your life than at 57 years old. And unfortunately, a lot of parents that want to gift their children, they wait till the end of their life, and they don't do it. And, and he talks about it, that you want to do this when they're around the perfect age is like 27, 28. So that was one big idea. The other one is, you know,

• 58:46Lewis Howes?

  And the memory dividend of it, right? Like, you get to experience it, and you get to have those memories for the rest of your life.

• 58:51Dan Martell?

  And you're alive.

• 58:52Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 58:52Dan Martell?

  What a crazy idea. It's like, you can actually see it in their eyes, like, oh, my gosh. And you see the impact it had, not after you're not here anymore, right? Then the other one was, that when you, whatever age you want to say you retire, I'm not a big fan of retirement, but that there's the go-go years, right? You know, 50 to 60 or 65, and then there's the slow-go years. So a lot of, and then there's the no-go years. No-go years are like, Seventy five plus.

• 59:20Lewis Howes?

  You're not moving much.

• 59:21Dan Martell?

  No, so most people don't realize that the amount of money they save for retirement, you can buy insurance in case you're worried that it's going to run out. So that protects you on the upside that you live to a hundred. But you're not doing a whole lot of backcountry skiing.

• 59:35Lewis Howes?

  Traveling.

• 59:36Dan Martell?

  Seventy.

• 59:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:37Dan Martell?

  For most people, every once in a while.

• 59:39Lewis Howes?

  Maybe on a cruise or something.

• 59:40Dan Martell?

  Yeah, I'm like, wow, you're eighty two on the back mountains. But I just think that um, a lot of people worry about accumulating for, again, it's, it's, it's anything to extremities. It goes back to if the primary reason you're making this decision is only for money, then that's where you feel a prisoner of your money.

• 59:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 59:58Dan Martell?

  And it doesn't matter if you have ten bucks in your pockets or a hundred. It's a big idea. I know a lot of really wealthy people and they are prisoners of their wealth.

• 1:00:06Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:00:08Dan Martell?

  Yes, that unfortunately is the norm.

• 1:00:11Lewis Howes?

  What will make someone a prisoner of their wealth?

• 1:00:13Dan Martell?

  If every time they make a decision, it's they're always thinking about what it costs. It's not what it's costs, it's what it's worth.

• 1:00:24Lewis Howes?

  So what is it? Break that down for me. How should we be thinking about it? Cost versus worth?

• 1:00:28Dan Martell?

  I mean, think about, okay, I could go on this trip and it would cost me ten thousand dollars.

• 1:00:35Lewis Howes?

  Right. And they're thinking, man, that's a lot of money.

• 1:00:36Dan Martell?

  It's a lot of money. But the experience of bringing your children, especially if they're like seventeen, eighteen, you don't have a lot of, like, most people don't realize this, it's so, like, the life is, I think that if everybody just got really comfortable about how they're not going to be here forever, and that this time, like, dude, today, I don't get today back. I, I plan my life in five-year increments. I think it's enough time to do something meaningful, not too little time to be wasteful.

• 1:01:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:05Dan Martell?

  And I feel like if every five, every year I sit down, I reset for another five years and I try to figure out like, okay, so we do, for example, we just got finished doing a vacation with eighteen of my siblings and our, my, my, my nieces and nephews. That's a trip that my brother and I financed for the whole family.

• 1:01:22Lewis Howes?

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:01:22Dan Martell?

  We do it on a ski hill, all of it. Yeah, one house, eighteen of us, side of a mountain.

• 1:01:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:28Dan Martell?

  We do it once every two years.

• 1:01:29Lewis Howes?

  Food.

• 1:01:30Dan Martell?

  And, and, and it is the best. So cost-wise, big number.

• 1:01:35Lewis Howes?

  Big.

• 1:01:35Dan Martell?

  Worth?

• 1:01:37Dan Martell?

  Dude, take everything, take the McLaren, you know what I mean? Like, take the jet, I don't, that's not important to me. Wow, that one week together is like. If you ask somebody they had two weeks to live. Yeah. And you couldn't tell anybody else, what would you do at your time? Sure. They would get on in a one house. Of course. With their family members, pour into them to the degree they could. Wow. And then the last day, they'd have to say goodbye.

• 1:01:59Dan Martell?

  You're not taking anything with you? Nothing. It goes back into the pool. Wow. It's like you played the game of life and you put all the chips in and at the end of it, it's somebody else that just. It's crazy, right? Everybody gets it back. And I think that if people use that perception or perspective in making decisions, especially money decisions, they would, they would live a richer life. This is why I love Ramit Sethi's work around living a rich life. Cause he's not about, you know, scrimping and saving your way to wealth, right? He's about like, hey, let's set it up, automate it so that your mindset doesn't even become part of it. Let's take care of like where things should go. And then now let's talk about how do you increase your value? Yes.

• 1:02:41Dan Martell?

  So that you have more to then live a life. We were talking earlier about like, you know, travel and expenses. One of the ways I had to overcome this is put money aside that had to be spent for trips. Really? Yeah. Cause if not, then. It's like, man, that's a $20,000 trip. Dude, this is the problem. Every time I was making it as through a money lens. Class or just this, or should I go to this hotel? You're like, uh. Yeah. Should I took that? Should I take that 20 grand and put it into my business? Exactly. Look what I could do with this money. Yeah. So because I said. Laptops with this. A lot of stuff, man. I was thinking about iPhones. I'm always like, and it's like five iPhones I could use, you know?

• 1:03:19Dan Martell?

  That's so awesome. But I, I thought that was a good way for me. I remember somebody talking about this, like set the budget aside. Yes, because then you can't, you have to spend it. And if you don't spend it, you lose it next year.

• 1:03:32Dan Martell?

  Right? And then what does it do? It forces you to prioritize. If I know I've got 20 grand a year for trips, whatever the number is, and I'm not looking at the cost of the thing, I'm looking at the worth. And then I'm prioritizing because if I don't use it, You're scheduling the dates for it. You're doing all that. Yeah, you're making it a priority. You know, when people say like, my family's important to me and my health's important to me. I go, show me your calendar. Right. Show me where you're investing your time for your health. Bank account and calendar. Yeah. It does not lie. And people that say that it's important to them and they haven't, they don't have day night in there. They don't have family trips. They don't have investments in their relationship, like seminars where they can do together.

• 1:04:11Dan Martell?

  They don't have any money spent on it. Do you know, like, the entrepreneurs that will spend 50 grand to hire a consultant to come in to help them with their marketing, but won't spend $500 on buying a book or a course for their marriage? That's unfortunate, but that's the norm. Yes. Right? Because again, what do you think you're worth? Yeah. What is the biggest money problem you have today? Hmm, such a great question. You know, it's funny, man, is I don't think I take advantage of the biggest opportunity in front of me. What do you take advantage of instead? Smaller, safe. I know. And I'm a guy that buys a company a month and I. What's the biggest opportunity in front of you? That you don't, that you're not willing.

• 1:04:55Dan Martell?

  That's my biggest worry. I, I, when I think of where the like, because I don't think about money. I think about value creation. It's the same thing for me. So when I, when you say money, I just rewrite value creation. When you say, what's the biggest value creation block or thing stopping you? I think I bet there's something I don't see that is bigger than what I'm doing that I don't want to see because it would mean having to renegotiate some things. Like what? Just my time and my commitment and my, my success, whatever that is, but essentially for me to go for something bigger that's scarier, that's unknown. That's usually the thing and it could be, it potentially could be just doing more of what I'm doing now, but giving it even more resources.

• 1:05:40Dan Martell?

  That is the, that's probably the thing that I think about the most. Yeah, yeah, I love the power of questions and I love that question of what's a opportunity that is right in front of you that you're not taking advantage of? That's a beautiful question and that's kind of the one I kind of keep thinking is like, is it this? Is it this? On the money side, I would say in the last few months that I've gotten world-class out, but it was really bugging me is I had so many open loops.

• 1:06:10Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean?

• 1:06:10Dan Martell?

  Dude, I had and still have in certain cases, 26 credit cards.

• 1:06:15Lewis Howes?

  Ho!

• 1:06:17Dan Martell?

  I have three banks that I deal with and spreadsheets of accounts. Just the complexity of my, my business empire.

• 1:06:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:26Dan Martell?

  I've got, uh, travel points. Like we're talking millions of points. I'm a hoarder when it comes to points.

• 1:06:32Lewis Howes?

  Dude, I just. You got the jet.

• 1:06:34Dan Martell?

  Okay, if you want some, I'll send them to you. But it's so funny because the other day I was like, and I have different reward points, programs, right? Cause I, I remember I decided one day I was like, I want status on everything. So I like did the whole credit card thing. I don't know if you've heard of this, it's a thing, but it added complexity. And so here's, here's what I know about going forward. You can't move forward until you clean up the past.

• 1:06:57Dan Martell?

  Think about.

• 1:06:58Lewis Howes?

  Isn't that true in relationships also?

• 1:06:59Dan Martell?

  It's in everything.

• 1:07:00Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:07:00Dan Martell?

  And when I think of, I remember I sat down, opened up a Google Doc and I just wrote down, I think I called it like a money cleanup. And it was just like a list of all these loose ends I knew were there.

• 1:07:12Lewis Howes?

  It's so funny you're saying this right now because in the last two months I have cleaned up so many energy, I guess, open loops in relationships.

• 1:07:24Lewis Howes?

  And I've been, and it takes a lot of courage because you have to use your voice. You have to speak up. You have to take actions. You get to disrupt situations and relationships. And things are going to shift and move. And so I've been using my voice in every different relationship that I have. When there's something I feel like that just feels off to me, whereas I used to just say, I'm going to be the nice guy. I'm going to take the high road. I'm going to, you know, not ruffle any feathers. But now I'm just like, there's too much energy that's seeping everywhere that I need to reclaim.

• 1:07:56Dan Martell?

  Yeah. It's almost like the holes in the dam. You had to go like plug them.

• 1:07:58Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:07:59Dan Martell?

  Right? Cause it was all that energy on the backside of the dam was leaking out.

• 1:08:02Lewis Howes?

  And the more I do it, the more powerful I feel. And it's not doing it in a, in a mean aggressive way. It's being conscious, it's being considerate. It's being, you know, communicating with kindness, I guess, but being firm in your communication of what you need. Or the boundary you're creating or closing a loop. And I think it's interesting you're doing that with kind of all these credit cards and points and things, just things that are out there.

• 1:08:28Dan Martell?

  It got silly.

• 1:08:28Lewis Howes?

  Things are just out there and you haven't.

• 1:08:30Dan Martell?

  And they're just open loops that need to be closed, right? Though the, a friend of mine said it once recently. It's so good.

• 1:08:36Lewis Howes?

  It's hard to do your homework until you clean your room, you know?

• 1:08:38Dan Martell?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:38Lewis Howes?

  It's like.

• 1:08:39Dan Martell?

  He, he said, he goes, I bet all the potential in your business is on the under, on other side of unexpressed conversations.

• 1:08:47Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 1:08:48Dan Martell?

  Oh, I was like.

• 1:08:49Lewis Howes?

  Dude.

• 1:08:50Dan Martell?

  Isn't that fascinating?

• 1:08:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:52Dan Martell?

  That the, the conversations you've been avoiding is where your potential sits.

• 1:08:57Lewis Howes?

  That I feel that. Literally Gary said this yesterday on the interview with, with him. He's like, I've got 2,000 employees and my biggest flaw is my lack of candidness, like.

• 1:09:08Dan Martell?

  Directness.

• 1:09:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. He's like, I'm very candid and honest with my audience. He's like, I can say whatever I need to, but when someone's been with me for a year or three years and I really like them and I know about their family and their life. But they're drastically underperforming. I haven't been able to be candid and say, here's the action plan you need. And or you can't be here anymore, you know? So he's like, I've carried people on my back by doing more speaking, by doing these things. Cause I don't want to be candid with them. And I was like, man, isn't that interesting? But he was like, if I just was candid more frequently and have those uncomfortable conversations, they would either step up or they would move on.

• 1:09:48Dan Martell?

  And then somebody better would come in.

• 1:09:50Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 1:09:50Dan Martell?

  Free up his time.

• 1:09:51Lewis Howes?

  And we would grow and expand, right? And I was just like, man, it's so challenging.

• 1:09:56Dan Martell?

  Need that. Yeah, it's, it's interesting because I like that damn metaphor as you shared that. Because when you said, the more I do it, the more I plug the holes, the more powerful I become.

• 1:10:06Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:10:07Dan Martell?

  Think about it, the more energy, because the water builds up.

• 1:10:10Lewis Howes?

  Geyser is now boom.

• 1:10:11Dan Martell?

  Yeah. And it's, I mean, that's the, you know, e- energy will flow where attention goes. And if you've got those people taking your attention.

• 1:10:21Lewis Howes?

  Just like little thoughts throughout the day. Ah, this is frustrating me.

• 1:10:24Dan Martell?

  It's a little resentment, man. Yeah, it's why people don't sleep well.

• 1:10:26Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 1:10:27Dan Martell?

  When I say when they're like, one clients of mine are not sleeping well. It's very simple. Have a journal. Write it out.

• 1:10:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:34Dan Martell?

  Because if not, you think that that process is going to resolve itself. You just have to write it out. Okay, I did, um, have you, um, heard about the 12 hour walk? What's his name that did that? He has a, it's called the 12 hour walk challenge. Forget the guy's name, but, um, amazing explorer. He's just like a world class explorer. He wrote a book, so I decided it's just, it's literally you wake up and you decide to walk for 12 hours.

• 1:10:56Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 1:10:57Dan Martell?

  So I was like, I do Ironmans, like I can do this.

• 1:11:00Lewis Howes?

  That's hard though.

• 1:11:01Dan Martell?

  I did not realize how hard it is. It was the most, it, it was like doing, it was like between a half and a full distance Ironman. It was legit. And I started it, I did it January 1st. And I started in the morning and it was six, six AM, because 12 hours, I want to be finished by dinner. And I went walking. And luckily, somebody gave me some advice on how to have the best experience. Cause some people have had horrible experiences. So do some research, but like, for example, somebody suggested have a series of questions that you, that you meditate. Cause you're walking by yourself, there's no devices. There's nothing, it's just you and yourself. Oh no, zero. So one of the questions was a quote, it wasn't even a question, it was a quote, Joseph Campbell quote that said,

• 1:11:45Dan Martell?

  "The cave you fear to enter holds the secret or the key of the secret you're looking for, the treasure you've been looking for."

• 1:11:52Lewis Howes?

  All those.

• 1:11:53Dan Martell?

  So I'm walking in the woods, Louis, and I'm screaming, it's just me. What's the cave? I'm willing to look at it. Just, I just, tell me what it is. And as I had my journal, I had something to write in and I would just get these, these, what you just said is openly conversations, things that have been just left unsaid. And I remember this, like, one of them, it wasn't even a big deal. It was just a, a group that I was in that I didn't want to do anymore.

• 1:12:20Lewis Howes?

  Dude.

• 1:12:20Dan Martell?

  I just had to call him up.

• 1:12:21Lewis Howes?

  Dude.

• 1:12:22Dan Martell?

  And I told him, he goes, man, I didn't even know you were still in it.

• 1:12:25Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh, man, dude, that was one of the things I did last week. I removed myself from a group.

• 1:12:31Dan Martell?

  And you think it's like the biggest thing and they're like, I can't believe you stayed. And so like, I just thought that, that question of the cave you fear to enter holds a treasure that you seek. And if you're willing to go in. There was some crazy stuff. I was like, oh no, I can't do that. I must do that. That was my to do list when I come back. But that 12 hour walk, I thought was one of the most fascinating experiences. I mean, talk about therapy.

• 1:12:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:12:58Dan Martell?

  Right? Just you and physically, oh my gosh, seized up. I was all ambitious. I'm going for a steak after this. I do, I fell in the parking lot. Like I got out of the car, meet my buddy Dave. Got out, I just fell to the ground. I was like, anybody see that? No? Okay, cool. Let's get to the bar. I gotta, I gotta sit down.

• 1:13:15Lewis Howes?

  Wow, man.

• 1:13:15Dan Martell?

  Yeah, but it was, it was, I think, like, meditating against questions of like,

• 1:13:22Dan Martell?

  again, just open loops, man. Right? And to the, because what, what are you telling yourself? It's, and in many ways, it's, it's helping you build that worthiness.

• 1:13:29Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:13:30Dan Martell?

  Because if you ask yourself, why have you not had it? It's like, well, I just don't want to create. Issues or disruptions or friction or it's like, well, why? Well, I'd rather take it myself. I'd rather be maybe the martyr. You know what I mean? It's interesting because I love Gary's stuff. I think Gary, he's the compliment to me because I am too direct sometimes. And that's literally I went from being the person was too quick to hire, too quick to give feedback. To now, when I, I hear Gary and he is a world-class operator that I don't think people give him enough credit for.

• 1:13:57Lewis Howes?

  Two thousand employees.

• 1:13:58Dan Martell?

  Is, is, it's, it's even the way he operates. People don't understand. Like his philosophy is continuity is this is a competitive advantage. He's like, and again, it's funny because it's, it's a double edged sword. He's like, I keep people around, so I have a competitive advantage, but I don't, I'm not quick to upgrade the talent. So it means I deal with the downside of that.

• 1:14:18Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:14:18Dan Martell?

  But all things said and done, there's no other leader that I can point to that I feel truly care about the people he cares about, the things they care about. That's leadership.

• 1:14:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:29Dan Martell?

  You need to care about the people you care about, things that they care about.

• 1:14:33Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:14:33Dan Martell?

  He does that at a world-class level.

• 1:14:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:36Dan Martell?

  And I think he's got a photographic memory. I mean, I've never seen anything like it.

• 1:14:38Lewis Howes?

  He remembers when he met you, how he met you, the conversation he had with you 10 years ago, where you were. He was telling me this in the interview.

• 1:14:45Dan Martell?

  Thousands of people a year, dude.

• 1:14:47Lewis Howes?

  It's amazing.

• 1:14:48Dan Martell?

  Yeah. So he's got to have a photographic memory.

• 1:14:50Lewis Howes?

  We, we met 2009 and he goes, I remember exactly where we were. We were in a world market in St. Louis and this and that. And then I went in your car, I drove him somewhere. We were like connected on Twitter and I was like, how do you remember world market?

• 1:15:01Dan Martell?

  I can't remember where I was last week.

• 1:15:02Lewis Howes?

  I know. It's crazy, man. It's a, it's a gift.

• 1:15:04Dan Martell?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:04Lewis Howes?

  We all have our talents.

• 1:15:07Lewis Howes?

  Speaking of talents and what people lack, what do you think is the, the, the three habits that keep people poor?

• 1:15:14Dan Martell?

  Hmm.

• 1:15:18Dan Martell?

  There's so many. The first habit that keeps people.

• 1:15:21Lewis Howes?

  Because you talked about a lack of worthiness. You're talking about talents.

• 1:15:23Dan Martell?

  I've got the habits.

• 1:15:24Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:15:25Dan Martell?

  The first habit that keeps people poor is blame. It's not being accountable for their life.

• 1:15:31Lewis Howes?

  Man, so many people love to stay in victim blame mode as opposed to responsibility.

• 1:15:36Dan Martell?

  Feels so good. Dude, I've how, I would love to say that it's like being on the beach in the sun. Like, how good would that feel when nothing that I'm experiencing that's negative is my fault? That's awesome. That feels great. Like, I get it. It's just, it'll keep you poor. Right? Step one is understanding you are a hundred percent accountable for your life and nobody's coming to save you. If, if you don't believe that. Then you'll, you'll never create.

• 1:16:04Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:16:04Dan Martell?

  So I think that's the first habit is just that negative belief around blaming other people. The other one is the, the habit of not investing in their skills. Right? The, the habit of, and, and it can come from, I don't feel unworthy. But it's really simple because it's not about working hard. I know a lot of people that work hard that really struggle to make, make ends meet. And I know other people that on the surface you look at them, they go, they hardly work and they are wealthy AF.

• 1:16:34Lewis Howes?

  Right. Why, why is it people that seem to work, some people that work extremely hard, don't make that much money?

• 1:16:40Dan Martell?

  Cause they're not working on the right things. They're, they're working hard on the work. They're not working hard on themselves.

• 1:16:47Lewis Howes?

  Oh, what do they need to be working harder on in order to break through to the next financial level?

• 1:16:53Dan Martell?

  They gotta find out what does the market value? Right? What is your boss value? If you've never talked to your boss or never talked to your customers and say, here's what I'm doing for you today. What could I do that you would find more valuable that I should consider learning how to do?

• 1:17:09Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:17:10Dan Martell?

  That conversation has, then you're, you're missing the boat. Cause the world rewards people that creates value. Like there's a reason why there's hedge funds managers making a billion dollars a year.

• 1:17:21Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 1:17:21Dan Martell?

  Some people hear that and they go, that's, that's, uh, that's not fair. Okay. He made a billion, but he made a hundred billion for people.

• 1:17:28Lewis Howes?

  Right. That's value.

• 1:17:30Dan Martell?

  Do you know how to do that? I don't know how to do that. And if I did, I think that's pretty awesome. So again, it's, that's the extreme. There's people at that level, but if you're making $50 an hour, 25 bucks an hour, you could ask yourself, what's the next level of value that I can create? So that belief that the habit of not feeding their mind, I mean, Lewis, there's people that are in troubling situations that don't even read books. Like, I don't know about you, man.

• 1:17:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, the answers are out there.

• 1:18:01Dan Martell?

  I am shaped by books.

• 1:18:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:03Dan Martell?

  I've read sixteen hundred, continue to read every day. Why? Because for thirty dollars, six hours of my time, maybe it takes me a month, maybe it takes me a week, depending on how much I'm reading, I can learn a person's perspective on a topic that took them twenty-five years.

• 1:18:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:20Dan Martell?

  And I'm looking, and when I read, I'm looking for one nugget that's gonna add value to my life to make me more valuable. And if I can do that, then the market will reward that.

• 1:18:29Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:18:29Dan Martell?

  So one of my mentors said, he goes, don't read, this is a big, this is, this might shift everybody's perspective. Don't read for yourself, read for your customers.

• 1:18:40Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean?

• 1:18:41Dan Martell?

  It means acquire knowledge to be helpful to other people. See, most people, when they start reading, they're like, okay, I need to be more, yeah, it's all for themselves. Money management, productivity, time management. No, no, no. What business are you in? You're in solar? Cool. Go read the cus, like, read the books that your customer should be reading, right? About home maintenance, whatever it is. And then that way, you're, you're valuable to them. You're differentiated amongst all your peers to that customer. So that was like, when my mentor Tim said that to me, I was like, oh, I, I had a different lens on even just reading and investing myself. The third habit, I would say, is they don't understand money.

• 1:19:19Dan Martell?

  It's really just the, they.

• 1:19:21Lewis Howes?

  They don't have the knowledge about what money is.

• 1:19:22Dan Martell?

  Bad habits, right? They're wasteful.

• 1:19:25Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 1:19:26Dan Martell?

  They don't spend. It's, it's, it's, it's literally that habit of like, show me your bank account and I'll show you your money beliefs.

• 1:19:34Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, yeah.

• 1:19:35Dan Martell?

  Like, like what people don't realize is the environment definitely is a reflection of your beliefs. Your bank account is environment, your body's an environment, your house is environment, the city you live in's environment, it's country you live in. These are all containers.

• 1:19:48Lewis Howes?

  What you eat, all these things, yeah.

• 1:19:49Dan Martell?

  All of it. And it, it says something, but the words you use is your environment, like the language.

• 1:19:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:56Dan Martell?

  People don't audit themselves. So I think that that's a big part of it is the, the, the money. People say, I'm not good at math.

• 1:20:03Lewis Howes?

  Keep saying it.

• 1:20:04Dan Martell?

  Can we add a comma yet to this?

• 1:20:06Lewis Howes?

  Saying it, you're gonna believe it.

• 1:20:07Dan Martell?

  Yeah. And I think that's why language matters. So I think those are the three things is just make sure that you focus on them and then.

• 1:20:13Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's good.

• 1:20:14Dan Martell?

  You'll overcome them.

• 1:20:16Lewis Howes?

  What is the, I mean, we haven't really talked about buying back time, but I'm curious about.

• 1:20:21Dan Martell?

  But have we?

• 1:20:22Lewis Howes?

  We have.

• 1:20:22Dan Martell?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:23Lewis Howes?

  But I'm curious about.

• 1:20:27Lewis Howes?

  If people can get one thing from your book, buy back your time.

• 1:20:32Lewis Howes?

  What is the main thing we need to understand about?

• 1:20:36Lewis Howes?

  How to do this? Why we need to do this? And is there a simple framework that we should think about? When it comes with time and money?

• 1:20:45Dan Martell?

  Yeah, 100% and it's it's in chapter three, it's called the buyback loop. And it's kind of the core framework that the the unique part about this book, the perspective is that we don't hire people to grow our business. We hire people to buy back our time. Cause if we do the second, we get the first. But if we do the first, we definitely don't get the second.

• 1:21:06Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:21:07Dan Martell?

  Think about it. How many times do you like, I gotta hire six people? And all of a sudden, I don't have any time to do what I was supposed to do.

• 1:21:11Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:21:12Dan Martell?

  So it's really about how we look at the, what I call the, the sequences and the steps. What's the right step? So the buyback loop states that whenever you feel pain in your life, okay, and this, you don't even have to be an entrepreneur. You can be just a person working on a team. First off, you do a time and energy audit, and that's a two week review of your calendar.

• 1:21:31Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:21:32Dan Martell?

  Yes. Cause dude, this is what's crazy.

• 1:21:34Lewis Howes?

  What does that look like? Is there a process?

• 1:21:35Dan Martell?

  Yeah, it's in there. Yeah.

• 1:21:39Dan Martell?

  Chapter three is the buyback loop and the time and energy audit. Yeah, there it is. That's the buyback loop.

• 1:21:43Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:21:43Dan Martell?

  So I teach the whole like calendar review and you highlight things. But here's the, the philosophy is right off the bat, there's probably things that really suck your energy that would cost very little to have somebody else to do.

• 1:21:57Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:21:58Dan Martell?

  Like even in your home, like have a cleaner come in and clean for you. Hire somebody to do meal prep. We have meal prep, even though we have somebody in our home. We still, so like there's all these relatively low cost things. And it frees up your energy. So it's not even about being more productive in time. It's being able to go from thing to thing to thing with things that light you up. So time isn't created to say, I don't know about you, Lewis, but when I was in math class and I looked up at the clock, it took forever.

• 1:22:23Lewis Howes?

  Forever, man, school.

• 1:22:24Dan Martell?

  It was like the hour class felt like three hours.

• 1:22:27Lewis Howes?

  It was exhausting.

• 1:22:28Dan Martell?

  Go to math class. Clock, clock rings.

• 1:22:31Lewis Howes?

  For you?

• 1:22:32Dan Martell?

  For me, oh Matt, or sorry.

• 1:22:34Lewis Howes?

  Every subject for me. Oh yeah. Jim was the only thing.

• 1:22:36Dan Martell?

  Okay, so take that one. You go to Jim, the bell rings and all of a sudden an hour is 17 minutes. And you're like, oh, I don't want to leave yet. So time is not created equal in the sense that the energy that we feel within that time matter. So in the, the time and energy audit, we look at what we're doing with our time and what things would cost very little to pay somebody else to do that, that we don't want to do. And then we go to the next step, which is transfer. So audit's the first one. Transfer is the next step. Once we transfer that stuff the right way, right?

• 1:23:05Lewis Howes?

  Transfer what?

• 1:23:06Dan Martell?

  The task. How do you?

• 1:23:08Lewis Howes?

  People talking about delegation. Someone else doing it.

• 1:23:09Dan Martell?

  Yes. So I teach the camcorder method and I teach the, uh, the process for documenting things and, and how to do what I call transformational leadership.

• 1:23:18Lewis Howes?

  The camcorder method is you filming something?

• 1:23:21Dan Martell?

  Everything's recorded.

• 1:23:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:22Dan Martell?

  I don't even create SOPs.

• 1:23:24Lewis Howes?

  It might be.

• 1:23:24Dan Martell?

  Dude, on your phone, you can actually pull down your control panel and add screen and voice recording. Most of my transfers are, yeah, I can add it. So it's in your control panel.

• 1:23:36Lewis Howes?

  Scroll down.

• 1:23:36Dan Martell?

  Yeah. So I have it right here. It's this button right here.

• 1:23:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:39Dan Martell?

  You see the little one?

• 1:23:40Lewis Howes?

  Does that record audio though?

• 1:23:41Dan Martell?

  Dude, there, that button right there.

• 1:23:43Lewis Howes?

  Oh shoot.

• 1:23:43Dan Martell?

  Next level.

• 1:23:44Lewis Howes?

  So it records on the screen.

• 1:23:45Dan Martell?

  On the screen. So I'll hit start recording like that and then I'll pull up the app and I'll.

• 1:23:50Lewis Howes?

  And show someone step by step and it's getting.

• 1:23:51Dan Martell?

  And I just talk. I say, I'm going to take the next 26 minutes. I'm going to walk you through how I process my inbox. And I go through it or how I think about scheduling my flights or how I want you to, uh, maintain my, my road bike or whatever the thing is. And then when I'm done, I hit save, right? I hit stop and I upload it to a shared iCloud folder. It synchronizes in the background, sends them a notification and then they create the SOP.

• 1:24:13Lewis Howes?

  They create the process.

• 1:24:14Dan Martell?

  That's the key. Why? Because then I can see based on what they created, if they watched the video and did they get what I was saying?

• 1:24:20Lewis Howes?

  And if you taught it well.

• 1:24:21Dan Martell?

  Yes. And then if they didn't, I can either train them up or I can add some stuff to the process. So that's how we transfer. So audit for time and energy, transfer to other people and then fill ATF.

• 1:24:31Lewis Howes?

  What's fill?

• 1:24:32Dan Martell?

  Fill is the most beautiful part. Fill is what we've been talking about.

• 1:24:35Lewis Howes?

  What are you going to fill your time with?

• 1:24:37Dan Martell?

  Fill is literally what we've been talking from the beginning. That's why I was loving that we were having this conversation. Fill is who do I need to become to be able to deal with bigger problems?

• 1:24:46Lewis Howes?

  What do I need to learn? What value do I need to create? How do I with skills?

• 1:24:50Dan Martell?

  It's literally, don't wish the world is easier, as Jim Rohn says, wish that you were better.

• 1:24:54Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:24:55Dan Martell?

  Who do I need to become to go from $10 problems to $100 problems? I want billion dollar problems. Louis, I want you to have billion dollar problems, dude.

• 1:25:01Lewis Howes?

  And they shouldn't be daunting at that level.

• 1:25:04Dan Martell?

  No, because you've developed yourselves. Like, it's funny. One day I called my brother. I was hiking and we were talking. And he goes, how's things? I said, things are incredible and I'm a little worried. And it was, why is that? I go, it's not normal. Like, usually at my scale, there's always a thing, like a meaningful puzzle I gotta deal with. And he goes, well, what's going on in your life? I say, well, there's this, this, this. And he laughs. He goes, dude, last year, those things would be big things. He goes, have you ever considered that maybe you've just evolved where those are now little things?

• 1:25:39Dan Martell?

  I was like, oh, snap. That's, that's what happens is over time, the problems, puzzles, challenges are still there.

• 1:25:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:47Dan Martell?

  Oh, they just don't, they don't resonate. The first time somebody quits on you on your team, it's like somebody, you know, got you in the heart.

• 1:25:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And then it happens. You're like, okay.

• 1:25:56Dan Martell?

  And then it happens a hundred times. And the hundredth time, you're like, I didn't even, like, there's no losing sleep. It's just, yeah, they quit or the, the whatever. So I think that's what happens. And so the fill part for me is the ladder of success. And I think of it through, you know, skills, how do I become more valuable? Beliefs, what are the worldviews, the money beliefs I have? And then what are the character traits that I need to develop, right? The mental fortitude, toughness, consistency, productivity, like there's, there's character traits. And that's how we evolve to become better. And anytime we feel the pain line and we're, we need to scale, we go audit, transfer, fill. The coolest part about this framework, Louis, is it works with our team.

• 1:26:40Dan Martell?

  So you ever have a team member come to you and they say, I feel overwhelmed?

• 1:26:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:44Dan Martell?

  Give them the book.

• 1:26:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:46Dan Martell?

  Do the process. And by the time they go through it, they'll be like, I'm good.

• 1:26:50Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:26:50Dan Martell?

  I could see where I was spending time on stuff I shouldn't.

• 1:26:52Lewis Howes?

  I didn't need to be, yeah.

• 1:26:53Dan Martell?

  Yeah, or things I said yes to, I needed to say no to. Or I need to renegotiate timelines, or I just felt overwhelmed because I didn't have clarity. Most people feel overwhelmed because they don't have clear direction. This gives them the roadmap and the process to overcome it. And then that's where we spiral up. That's why it's the buyback loop.

• 1:27:09Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:27:09Dan Martell?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:10Lewis Howes?

  Speaking of team, you know, a lot of people struggle with meetings and I've heard you talk about meetings are a waste of time.

• 1:27:15Dan Martell?

  Big waste.

• 1:27:16Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think, do you think people should have meetings with their teams? If so, how should those look like? Or should we eliminate meetings altogether?

• 1:27:24Dan Martell?

  I think for most people, if the meeting isn't a scheduled reoccurring meeting, then it's usually a byproduct of poor communication and leadership. So I can almost correlate the amount of meetings a company has to their performance as a team. And the more meetings is bad. Yeah, because if you have a good process, for example, to review the strategy, decide, communicate it to the team, review it on a quarterly basis and a cadence, have the measurements in place, right?

• 1:28:00Lewis Howes?

  The goals, the metrics, all this stuff.

• 1:28:01Dan Martell?

  Yep, I have the mission, vision, values. I've got my, my metrics. I've got my project management side, like to the degree you have that built in, then the meetings are not really needed. They're there if you have to collaborate, which is fine. New project.

• 1:28:17Lewis Howes?

  Communicate something, hey, I need this thing.

• 1:28:18Dan Martell?

  Ideation phase, when I talk about the 1080 role, for sure, you need a meeting to do the ideation.

• 1:28:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:23Dan Martell?

  But it's not in response to lack or response to something went wrong. And I think for a lot of people, their default tool, they have one tool in their chest and it's a meeting. And again, meetings for me are an indication of poor leadership. My, my whole philosophy on leadership.

• 1:28:41Lewis Howes?

  Do you do weekly meeting, like a check in meetings or like scheduled meetings? I mean, like with the team though?

• 1:28:46Dan Martell?

  Yeah. So there's different levels at the, at the bottom level. Let's, let's pretend I was the CEO. I have, I don't believe anybody should have more than five to seven direct reports. And those five to seven people are the people you've decided that if I want anything more to happen in my business, I must work through them. It's a big idea. So, so a lot of people, they, they're like, I want to do this. I want to do that. It's not, can you do it? Lewis, does your team have the bandwidth to do it? It's called management bandwidth. So I can only have five to seven. So when Gary is like, hey, I have a hard time letting people go. If he created that constraint, I, I bet it would create a forcing function for him to go like, but I want to go do this other thing, but I don't have the person. So it's, you don't want to add more because what happens is people get overwhelmed when they have 15, 20 people reporting to them.

• 1:29:32Dan Martell?

  So my rule is five to seven. I work through those people, those I have weekly one on ones. So anytime I see anything where it's like, I, I saw an email and something happened. I want to give you feedback. I just write it in a Google Doc. So I have a notes, your name, and I just write it down. My weekly meeting, I sit down and we have a format and I just review it with you.

• 1:29:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:50Dan Martell?

  That's where we do our.

• 1:29:51Lewis Howes?

  So you are doing weekly meetings with certain people.

• 1:29:54Dan Martell?

  Yeah. Your direct reports, but that's it. And then, and then if you lead a department, you'll have a weekly meeting to review that department's progress.

• 1:30:01Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 1:30:02Dan Martell?

  Right? And if there's a project that you're involved in from an ideation point, you might be in that project.

• 1:30:07Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:30:08Dan Martell?

  But what I encourage people to do is get the planning done at the beginning of the year for the year. And ideally you have a 10 year focus. Then you do quarterly kind of iterations. And then everything's measured. I mean, the, the big difference about how I lead is again, I don't tell people what to do. I teach them. And then I do what's called transformational leadership versus transactional leadership. So this is, this is all the entrepreneurs can be like, oh no, I do that. Here's, here's what that looks like. Most people do a tell, check, next loop. Tell them what to do, check they got done, tell them what to do next. Problem with that is that about 12 employees, you hit a ceiling and it hurts.

• 1:30:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:44Dan Martell?

  Because you wake up in the morning and you spend your whole day just trying to make sure everybody else is pulling on the rope in the right direction. What I do instead is a transformational leadership, which is I'm very clear on the outcomes. Um, I'm, let's say we're going to hike a mountain. I'm going to talk about the top and talk about how it's going to feel. I'm going to talk about where we're going. I'm going to give you a GPS coordinate. Then I'm going to do a measurement. Okay. So outcome, then measure. Here's how I'm going to measure your progress. Every day you need to report back how many feet of elevation gain you've made that day. Hiking a mountain.

• 1:31:13Lewis Howes?

  At the end of the, every day, each person reports back how far they've gone.

• 1:31:16Dan Martell?

  Yeah. How many feet? And that's the feedback loop. Why? Cause it lets them know if they're making progress. They know, did I do better today than yesterday? Cool. You have one day, like, I think most businesses just don't have a measurement for each person on the team. So now you're going to report. And if there's a huge deficit, the third step is coach. See, what I find fascinating is the amount of coaches that I work with that have training companies that are, that are, you know, really good at teaching, that don't coach their team. It's fascinating. They'll spend 98% of their time in their calendar with clients. Zero working on actually developing the skill. So the coach framework I teach, yeah, it's anytime, like if somebody made a hundred feet elevation, a hundred feet, and then they had two, I'd write that down. I'd sit down and be like, hey, I noticed you only did two feet of elevation and what going on?

• 1:32:00Dan Martell?

  Well, I got off track and ended up down a ravine. Interesting. Then I use the one, three, one rule, which is what's the one problem? The three solutions, potential solutions, and what's the one recommendation you have?

• 1:32:10Lewis Howes?

  Not what you want me to give you.

• 1:32:12Dan Martell?

  Never. I, Louis, I, I heard once a guy said, if you want to be rich, be lazy. If you want to be wealthy, be incompetent. My job is to not give people answers to the test. Cause I rob them from the opportunity to learn.

• 1:32:23Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:32:23Dan Martell?

  So when I coached them, I asked them, hey, I noticed you only went two feet yesterday. What do you think happened? Well, I ended up going off track. Cool. What are three options of not going off track? Well, I probably could have followed somebody. I probably could have bought a map. I could have done this. And I said, sounds great. Those are all good options. They're all good. Which one do you want to do? I'm going to probably buy a map. Sounds like a good idea.

• 1:32:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:45Dan Martell?

  So what happens is over time, that transformational leadership approach allows you to develop people.

• 1:32:50Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, that's good.

• 1:32:51Dan Martell?

  So that you don't become the bottleneck.

• 1:32:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:53Dan Martell?

  The reason they call it a bottleneck is because it's at the top.

• 1:32:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:55Dan Martell?

  Again, most people build businesses they grow to hate because they don't know a different way of leading and creating and training so that the bigger they grow, the more time it takes.

• 1:33:05Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:33:05Dan Martell?

  My philosophy is the bigger it gets, the more time you get back.

• 1:33:09Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:33:10Dan Martell?

  Yeah, it's, I mean, it's the funnest thing to show people because once they see it, it's like so logical. If I'm always hiring people to buy back time out of my calendar, it's impossible for me to get to a place where I feel overwhelmed.

• 1:33:21Lewis Howes?

  You should have more time every time you hire.

• 1:33:23Dan Martell?

  Every time you hire, the, the rule is start with the calendar, audit it. Okay, here's the bucket of things. That's the only people I'm going to hire to buy back that time. Things that I didn't want to do in the first place that don't make me a lot of money. Then I transfer it, then I fill my calendar with things that make me money I enjoy doing that develop me. So that I become more, so I'm, it's kind of awesome. That, and you've seen me do it for a decade. This is literally how I do it.

• 1:33:49Lewis Howes?

  I love it, man. This is awesome. I could ask you a lot more questions around this, but I want people to get the book. Buy Back Your Time, Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom and Build Your Empire by my man Dan Martell. Make sure you guys check this out. Get a few copies for some friends also. This will be a game changer for anyone. Um, and I think again, people want to feel free. They want to feel light. And it's hard to feel free if you're stuck doing too many things you don't want to do. And you're not evolving beyond that. And there's always going to be a season, or maybe this is a limiting belief, but I've been through many seasons of like, oh, I don't have the skills. I've got to go do something that's going to take time and energy at a, at a rate that I wish I was making more at

• 1:34:31Lewis Howes?

  to go develop skills until I get to the next level, you know, as a truck driver, I was mowing lawns, I was doing all these different things. I was like, that's not what I want to be doing, but I've got to keep developing the value within me, the skill set, filling up my time. Wherever I can get it to get more skills to then go showcase my value and exchange it for some type of money that I want, right? So, um, I think this has been a beautiful conversation. I love this concept of kind of knowing your worth, but also understanding your value. Because everyone can say I'm worth this, but unless the, the market

• 1:35:02Dan Martell?

  agrees.

• 1:35:03Lewis Howes?

  Wants that value and is willing to pay for that value, you're worth what you're getting, I guess, right?

• 1:35:08Dan Martell?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:09Lewis Howes?

  So there's a difference there.

• 1:35:12Lewis Howes?

  Where can we follow and support you the most?

• 1:35:14Dan Martell?

  Instagram is my favorite, you know, it's just like, I give away every, my, my plan is to die empty. Right? I want to die, give it all away. Um, a lot of people that read the book are always asking about like, how to manage your executive assistant?

• 1:35:28Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 1:35:28Dan Martell?

  So I'll do something for your audience only, Lewis. If they, if you guys message me, follow me on Instagram, message me Lewis, I'll send them direct link, no opt-in, no nothing to my Google Doc sanitized for my internal standard operating procedure for working with my assistant. I think it's like 42 page ask and to clean it up. So just for this audience, message me Lewis EA, I'll then know and I'll send it to you.

• 1:35:50Lewis Howes?

  Over on Instagram, Dan Martell.

• 1:35:51Dan Martell?

  Yeah, two L's and Martell, Dan Martell on Instagram and Dan Martell on YouTube and all platforms. And yeah, I mean, the, the, the big thing I want people to understand, I kind of call them the three universal truths. Is I think the biggest way for us to become more values, we talk about worthiness, is first off, realize that we become what we talk about. People talk about visualization. The problem is visualization is that a lot of people visualize big dreams. They don't tell anybody about.

• 1:36:23Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:36:24Dan Martell?

  So you talk your future into existence. That's a big, that's a big like for me. That's why I've always shared, these are my goals, this is my vision, this is what I'm doing. Number two is, I think that we will receive what we desire for others. Think about that. When we talk about money, if you want to be wealthy, I know how to do it. Go help other people become rich.

• 1:36:45Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:36:46Dan Martell?

  Right? If you don't want your boss to become rich, you might have a money mindset problem.

• 1:36:51Lewis Howes?

  Eee.

• 1:36:52Dan Martell?

  Cause you will receive what you desire for others. And the third one, especially as it pertains about worth and the concepts in the book is that the work instills the worth.

• 1:37:02Lewis Howes?

  The work instills the worth.

• 1:37:04Dan Martell?

  When I had no self-worth, when I was a teenager trying to figure out my way in life, all I knew is that if I could just show up and do the work, be consistent, right? Cause I think confidence is eaten away when we're not keeping the commitments we make to ourselves in private. So the work instills the self-worth.

• 1:37:23Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:37:23Dan Martell?

  And you can't think your way to that. It's a doing. It's proof. When I show up and I, and I'm consistent for forty five days, sixty days. Louis, when you've done this podcast for so long, the work instills the worth, like the least there.

• 1:37:39Lewis Howes?

  Every week for eleven years.

• 1:37:41Dan Martell?

  Those are the three universal truths. I think that if people would consider, it would just transform their whole mindset and perspective.

• 1:37:49Lewis Howes?

  And weren't you in jail for a period of time?

• 1:37:50Dan Martell?

  I did, man. Yeah. I got drawn to juvie. Well, I know that's what we connected originally with your brother's story. Yeah, I ended up.

• 1:37:56Lewis Howes?

  How were you?

• 1:37:57Dan Martell?

  I was fifteen the first time, sixteen the second time.

• 1:38:01Lewis Howes?

  I'm laughing, but it's not a funny really, but uh.

• 1:38:04Dan Martell?

  It's crazy, dude.

• 1:38:05Lewis Howes?

  I'm just curious, what is the, you know, what I love about your story and my brother as well? The cool thing, my brother went to prison for four and a half years.

• 1:38:12Dan Martell?

  Yeah, I think when you were eight, right?

• 1:38:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, eight to twelve.

• 1:38:14Dan Martell?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:14Lewis Howes?

  And the, one of the coolest things, and the thing that I'm really happy for him is last month, after twenty seven years of him being out, he got pardoned by the state of Ohio. The governor gave him like a full forgiveness pardon and everything. And it's cool to see that, you know, we can make mistakes or go through dark times and still have a life of success and fulfillment if we put in the work. If we're willing to reshape our story, our identities, our actions. So I just want to acknowledge you for the constant journey you've been on. Because you know, you could have gone down a much darker path twice in, in juvie. I don't know how long you were there for a few months each time or.

• 1:38:56Dan Martell?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:57Lewis Howes?

  You could have kept making those decisions based on a belief and a story that you were worthless or not good enough or bad or wrong or whatever it was. But you have decided continually to upgrade those beliefs and be of service to others. So I want to acknowledge you for that, my man. It's, it's beautiful to watch. I wish you lived in LA so we could hang out more, but now you got your jets. You can come down anytime.

• 1:39:22Lewis Howes?

  So I just want to acknowledge you for the service, man. It's cool to watch you put yourself out there more. And share this wisdom with the world in such a way where you understand processes. And also you can teach it so people can consume it and understand it and make it easier. Cause some of these concepts can seem daunting to understand and to implement. But with your book, you give people the tools, the processes, frameworks and the stories on how to take these kind of baby steps and grow beyond these old beliefs. So I acknowledge you for that. Appreciate you. Final question for you because you shared my three truths question already. My final question. You just went right into it. It's just great. What is your definition of greatness?

• 1:40:04Dan Martell?

  Such a great question. You know, I still remember the call when you'd bought greatness.com.

• 1:40:09Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:40:09Dan Martell?

  I do. I remember where I was at.

• 1:40:11Lewis Howes?

  What did I say?

• 1:40:12Dan Martell?

  I was asking what was new and you were all excited. There was a bunch of stuff. I think he just finished doing a big photo shoot with Nick. And he said, Hey dude, and I also bought greatness.com. And I said, I remember thinking, oh, that's a big dog move. That's a big move. You know what I mean? That was a, nobody in our space was doing that kind of stuff. And I was just so proud of you. I was just like, yeah, Louis, like, let's go.

• 1:40:35Lewis Howes?

  I remember Noah Kagan got like sumo.com.

• 1:40:38Dan Martell?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:39Lewis Howes?

  Before that, I think, and I was like, I need to do something. I need to own like more than my name.

• 1:40:44Dan Martell?

  A word.

• 1:40:44Lewis Howes?

  More than just my name, which I was like, I can't really, can I go so far with that? And it's limited by me, but owning a word is like.

• 1:40:53Dan Martell?

  And did you ever do that? The book, I mean, it's awesome. Like I read your last book and it was, I love that book. You wrote an incredible book.

• 1:41:02Lewis Howes?

  Thank you.

• 1:41:04Dan Martell?

  I think greatness is very simple is that are people better? After having you around them.

• 1:41:12Dan Martell?

  Like, are, if you look around the people you spend time with, are they better for having you in their life? If that's true, that's greatness.

• 1:41:20Lewis Howes?

  My man. Dan, appreciate you, brother.

• 1:41:21Dan Martell?

  Oh, honor.

• 1:41:22Lewis Howes?

  Thanks, man. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

• 1:42:05Lewis Howes?

  And now it's time to go out there and do something great.