Dan Martell: How To Work 100-Hour Weeks & Win | E118

you training so hard? Right, but I think some people don't realize that what they're trying to do is the equivalent of trying to go for gold as an Olympic athlete, like if you want to bring companies public, or you want to exit your company for 100 million, that's rare air. And if you think that you can show up as an amateur, you know, equivalent in sports and train and try to be successful. You ain't doing that on any

balanced lifestyle. It's impossible 35 hours a week, because you just won't even be in the headspace to see the opportunities because that's where the real shifts of step functions of growth come in business is, is connecting these dots at at the right time. Like it was sometimes those wee hours of the night, where the innovation came from. Like what if I did it, I don't know if it's the tiredness or the quietness, like for me in the mornings where I create now because it's so quiet, right?

There's this energetic feeling where I feel connected to source, you're listening to part two of my amazing Interview with Dan Martell, if you haven't checked out part one yet, be sure to do that one first. And without further ado, here's part two with amazing Dan Martell.

tons of people. And I love doing it. It's very important to me as I know it is to you. But to people who really need it, it just lights lights, a fire in them. And you can just see their eyes expand. It's really as a beautiful thing. It's everything.

what I do today. To your point, like my job is to believe in people when they have no belief in themselves, to borrow my belief to borrow my, you know, confidence in what they're capable of. Right, even when they have no proof.

Showing up. Cool. Yeah. So you go into the rehab center for 11 months Portage house about Rick and cleaning room and what happened next? I literally just talking to them. This is the start of 27 years ago. This is where it's still part of my life. Yeah, break is still a part of your life for sure. I love this. Yeah, we're gonna introduce me to Dixie Chicks.

Montreal of all places. And so but Rick's wife is I don't even know her what's her real name because I we always call her mom. That's hilarious. I literally could not tell you her name because we always call her mom. She was the cook, Roberta. Roberta. Her last name was actually cook which is hilarious. So Roberta Carver to cook the correct cook. Yeah. And yeah, we always call her mom and man. She got us fat. She would feed us so like she would just

we'd come in malnourished. You got our stand like all the kids that would show up. None of them. A lot of them came from prison. Most of them came from the streets and they were skinny. And Roberta Mom took it upon herself to nourish us. You want seconds? You want seconds on the spaghetti. You want some extra bread. You have one of my cookies a major these massive, beautiful. I mean it was I fell Asana as I remember one guy, man, he put on 40 pounds and

five months. And I thought, man, what are they doing with us? Like, this is hilarious. He came in here looking like, you know, like he was dying to something to to have stretch marks. I mean, that was kind of the thing. If you didn't watch yourself, you got stretch marks as a 617 year old. Anyway, so I ended up doing 11 months of therapy. I had a lot of stuff to work, and the average kid today does three months. Okay, when I was there, the average was five months, I ended up staying for

11 months. Because I, I just I was also really good at acting as if I would act as if everything was good and do do the therapy. But I wasn't doing it. I was I was acting as if I was doing it, but it wasn't really doing it. And that's the beauty of staff that were all drug addicts. Because they're watching, they're like, oh, Dan's not doing it. And they got me they push me they, I thought I was moving up. They're like, No, you're not do the work. And

then I freak out. And they see told you, you're not doing the work. So they really that place forced me to work on my values. Obviously learn how to stay clean and replace my negative habits and my emotions and rebuild the trust I lost with my my parents and my brothers and sisters. And yeah, towards the end, I got put on transition, but I wanted to stick around for a little bit longer. And Rick had just gotten a project from the government to to build these new kind of a new school area

with these trailers. So he said he asked me if I would want to stay on to help out that summer. And so I was around and that's what that Rick would play Dixie Chicks nonstop wide open spaces, like on repeat on a ghetto blaster while we were doing construction stuff. So anytime I hear that music is like a trigger, I come back to that 16 Seven drill version, a dam, but the place built in the old church camp and there was this cabin, I was helping recommend a

clean out. And in one of the rooms because it's just a bunch of storage. You know, there's put everything in there old gym equipment and dressers and stuff. So we had to like take everything out and dump stuff and sort things. And then one of the rooms I was cleaning out there was this old 46 computer. This you know, and a book on Java programming sitting next to

it. And I kind of open up the book Thinking it was gonna be like, you know, hieroglyphics computer like I mean, I don't know, it says Java programming. And it actually reads like English anybody's ever seen Java script or a programming language. It's If This Then That and select case, and I'm like, kind of makes sense. Like, it's not complicated, didn't do anything fancy. But I just literally just booted up the computer and followed the first

chapter in this book. And 20 minutes later, I got the computer to spit out hello world. And that was your world. Dude, I was like, what is that? Like? That's cool. In many ways. I had this like, unfounded confidence that maybe I was a computer genius. At 17, I thought maybe my brain worked. How could I not ever touch a computer and got the thing to say hello world. Turns out any kid could do this. I didn't know any better. I thought maybe that's why I always got in trouble. Because my brain was

built different. And I should be into computers, because I just kept following the chapters and kept getting better at it better at it. And that became my new obsession. That's how I got into software was in rehab. That's my whole world. Everything I've built since then was building technology companies, because I found this yellow book on Java programming. You know, straight out of prison, addicted to drugs. That became my new addiction. You're

When I got out of rehab, 11 months of personal development, literally, it's personal development, they didn't call it that. But it was 11 months of hardcore personal development, I could run when I got into the business world, I would run circles around most adults, my EQ is off the charts why? Every day I every clean up, you would partner with another resident, and they would have to share their life story or you shared your life story with them to

learn how to processes. So I had like, not 10,000 hours, but I had some serious time here and what people say and what they do I watch them. So like I can almost thin slice when I'm talking to somebody in a business deal. Like if they actually believed what they were saying. And it became a superpower I didn't even know I had until I was in my mid 20s. But the first two failure companies I just wanted them I learned, you know, plan for success. Sounds crazy. But like,

what if you win? What could that look like? Make sure you build the foundation to be successful? Because I was so not expecting for it to become a thing that I you know, I gave it a wrong name. Bad domain. Name is not great. No, the name wasn't good. It was a.ca it was it was the east coast of Canada was called Maritime Vacation. It wasn't at the cottage.com. And that guy came in and grabbed all my

customers. So I learned about positioning and like plan for success and me host that one biggest lesson I learned is never sell a commodity. I'll never do that. Like what were you selling? Web hosting? Okay, like, whoo. And I that was I was paying one in one, one on one server, whatever. One one.com. They were the web hosting. I was paying them for a server and then trying to sell hosting on top of their hosting. You know, I wasn't smart enough to come up

with an Amazon Web Service. Like some people like what Amazon Web Services is the most valued SAS in the world right now. It's like, yeah, I

ever. I mean, we had two people in my office, we had a server in the office totally joke. Yeah. But crazy, crazy idea. But back to the web hosting the other some huge companies, public companies. Yeah, doing that. Yeah, I'm building the websites to which was, yeah, back in the day. commoditized. Business.

successful. And I remember my dad, you know, at one point going, like, Maybe we should get a normal job. And I laughed, I go, I can't work for somebody else. Like, I'm way too opinionated. And the truth is, and one of the gifts I had was, as long as I was sober. My parents were happy. Right? So like, a lot of kids grow up with expectations for what they think their parents want them to do. My parents wanted one simple thing, stay sober. Don't get in jail, don't get caught in jail

or do something wrong. And you could, we don't care. So like, they were actually pretty easy on me. So I just I started consulting for a couple years, tried to make some money. And then what and then I hired a business coach.

it. Like, I know you're building companies like because, you know, there's people always entrepreneur, that was me. I just sucked at it. Cory never even pulled the trigger. So he was inspired by the fact that I was starting companies. He read a book about entrepreneurship. So he's like, You got to read it. So I remember I was driving to Um, I was in was I was in rubbers to Akron, Ohio, headed into Greenbelt, Maryland to meet with a potential business partner going to start a new

company. And because the drive was like eight hours, 10 hours, I decided to stop at the bookstore and buy the audio version, the CDs of this book, the E Myth, by Michael Gerber, by the CDs that I'm listening to the whole time. The cool part is Gerber is a storyteller. And the CDS is written is read by him. And it's a story about Sarah's pies. And it's an it's a, it's a, essentially a story of explaining how systems work and businesses and franchise

prototypes on this stuff. So what happened by the time I got to green belt, I tell my potential business partner, Carl said, Dude, I think I figured out the missing key of why we suck at business. And he was too excited about stuck in a business. He, he didn't think he's such a business. And I was like, You're no better than I am. And I'm telling you, this is the key. I was so adamant that I said, if you don't read this book, I'm not going to even get into business with you. Because

this is the key. This is the thing we don't do we need to do. We're both tech guys. And he never read the books. I never started the business with Carl. And instead, I'm 23 I have very little money saved up. And I hire Bob, the business coach, I found I found I went on the website, e myth.com. Or whatever. And I found out in Canada, they had like certified coaches. And I hired hired this guy Baum. And I ended up ventually starting a company.

And within the first year Bob helped me dude 960,000 in revenue after having two failed companies.

me. I don't even understand how you could do it as like, you just you sleep six hours. I don't know, like do the math

did long distance. I was traveling, installing software, data, data data building this company we met right at the beginning of building this company. So she kind of got used to me and she was in university. I was young. I was 24 when I started it, she was you know, 22 still working on her degree. So it wasn't a big deal right. Now we ended up I think it was 27. So three years together. You know, we're together two, three years, it's time to get engaged. So get engaged. And we ended up

buying a house together. And one day I'm is a Sunday afternoon. And I was supposed to be home. By five I remember because we were supposed to be at our parents house for six. And I look up and I'm at my office. And it's like 630 Yeah, that and this was not the first time. So I jumped in the car, race to our place, run up the stairs, open the door. And I find her in tears in the kitchen. Her name was Amy. And she is so beside herself. She can't even breathe. And um, I said sorry. And are

you okay? Like, are you ready to go? And eventually, she just takes a ring off, drops it on the counter and says I can't do this anymore and walks right past me jumps in her car and goes to her parents house. And that was the last day we were together. Seven weeks before the wedding.

horrible. I obviously, I knew kind of what I was doing wrong. But the big, big lesson was when I told her everything I was doing was for her. And she looks at me. And she goes, I never asked you for any of it. When she said that, to me, it was like somebody jabbed me in the heart. Like it was so obvious and so careless. She's like, I never asked you for any of that. Because I was like, you know, I was doing this for this. And we were going to build there and have kids and this future and I

was setting things up. And she's like, those were your dreams. never asked for any of it. That, that messed me up. That messed me up for a while, because I realized I had been lying to myself. I

be alone and miserable. And I was kind of studying my way through getting to the top of my class. It was lonely, people were going out, I was studying. And then when I was working so hard, putting in the 100 hour weeks, and I do want to talk about that in a minute. I did think about it and said, you know, at some point, I hope I can enjoy the fruits of my labor, but I wasn't engaged. I

mean, we were in law school. So this is after I graduated, we broke up before I graduated, but it was never going to be imput a problem for me at that point in my life. But in the back of my head, I was thinking about as I was making my way down, you know, I had a horrible career start. And as I was making my way up and just saying, hey, there's, there's more to life than working 100 hour weeks, and you got to find some balance

there. Let's talk about what it means to work that amount of time, because I've had a bunch of people on my show very successful people Mark Cuban, 100 hours a week is 15 hours a day, roughly seven days a week, and so many entrepreneurs I know, work that amount of time when people talk about hard work these days. And people say yeah, I'm willing to work hard. I don't think they understand what. So what's your tell

everybody out there? What are the differences between 6070 8090 Then you're in really thin air at 100.

or there's that. Is it 50 It says, you know, or maybe the game or somebody's like die rich, you know, get rich or die trying. Like, I just had to be successful. And I would have sacrificed anything to figure it out. So I didn't know what my timeline was gonna look like. But there was no doubt that I knew someday I was going to be like a millionaire was like the thing. I see people every day today that have no work ethic.

Like even today, I wake up at four in the morning, and I work pretty much till 5pm every day. That's 13 hours. Every day, no problem. Now, I have my workouts have family time. You know, in the mornings, I wake up, I wake up early work, spend time with my kids, then create, then work with my teams. Within that I'll run my errands if I have to buy you know, I'm lucky to have teams support me. But even today, like let's call it 10

hours. I'm a 50 hour a week no problem that's not considering I also wake up at four in the morning on Saturday and Sunday and I work. Yep, I work on vacation. I don't because the definition of what I do is creation. It's kind of like if I wanted to be an Olympic athlete and I was training you You wouldn't be like, Yo, Randy, calm down. Why are you training

so hard? Right, but I think some people don't realize that what they're trying to do is the equivalent of trying to go for gold as an Olympic athlete, like if you want to bring a company public, or you want to exit your company for 100 million, like,

that's rare air. And if you think that you can show up as an amateur, you know, equivalent in sports and train and try to be successful, you ain't doing that on any balanced lifestyle, it's impossible, 35 hours a week, no, like, because you just won't even be in the headspace to see the opportunities because like, that's where the real shifts of step functions of growth come in business is, is connecting these

dots at at the right time. Like I used to stay up till two, three in the morning, I used to be the opposite of where I'm at today. But because I had human alarm clocks, right, these little kids. So all of a sudden, they stayed up till two or three in the morning didn't work, because they were up at 530. So I had to shift everything. But it was sometimes those wee hours of the night where the

innovation came from. Like what if I did, and I don't know if it's the tiredness or the quietness, like for me in the mornings where I create now because it's so quiet, right? There's this energetic feeling where I feel connected to source. Most people just don't want to put in that amount of of time. And I think today, I found a completely different way of doing it. Like the cool part is, is I can choose at any point to

stop the output. And, and because I built the machine that builds the machine, it'll continue to roll. It just rolls faster and bigger if I'm active. But if I'm not at least I've figured out how to keep it going. But yeah, just think I'm grateful in many ways for learning how to do that, because it did make me wealthy like that. 100% and that wealth gave me leverage and then leverage I could hire like my next company. I had a CEO Ethan he ran the company, I was his fancy titles.

nonemployee co founder, that was his way to get me involved. But um, yeah, I just think that work ethic again, my work ethics of reflection, my gratitude. I'm just grateful that, you know, my Creator decided to have bigger plans for my life and put the right people in my world that allowed me to do that stuff.

relationship. And then it got actually worse after I exited. Because I negotiated essentially a zero dirt day or night I had a year of advisory I just stay on. But I remember there was a day I woke up and nobody. Nobody actually would know if I didn't get up today. It's kind of a weird idea. hadn't talked to my family. And while she was out of my life, I was working all the time exited the company. The team took over so I wasn't needed in any meetings. And I remember waking up just laying

there going. If I wasn't alive right now, nobody would I wonder how long before somebody would actually come knocking. That was a weird that was like a moment for me. Here I was with millions of dollars in my bank account. Feeling absolutely empty.

beat you have right? They thinks once they have something then they'll they'll they'll do something and then they could be somebody right and it's just not the way It works. And the cool part is be actually open to the idea is you can actually be happy today with nothing. It's hard for people though, to really understand that. So that was easy for you then you rich. No, no, you can literally decide if you took everything away tomorrow. I would smile, I'd be full of gratitude. I would pray,

I would work. I would show up. I'd create. Nothing would change.

And we were on a vacation. And remember, the first day we stopped to the liquor store. And when it came out, she goes are we have a party? Like what is all this? Like, oh, you know, if we don't drink at all, we'll just leave it for the staff or something like that. And first night, I got absolutely plastered. And she was upset with me. I told you blah, blah, blah. And there's just something in that moment, you know, she had her belly. I just I kind of

flashback to my childhood. And it occurred to me that I was repeating the same pattern that I had experience, you know, my, my mom would drink all the time, my dad would drink with her. And I just knew better. And I just decided I'm done. And I said that to her my my drunken stupor, I said, I'm done. And I started pouring everything out into the sink. And I remember her looking at me going sure you've said this before, we'll see how long that lasts. And I

just decided I was done. And the next day she woke up, kind of waiting for me to go to the pool bar and order something I didn't next day, same thing. She didn't I don't it took probably three years before she actually believed I was done done. And it's been 13 years. And the cool part is I didn't know this at the time. But essentially, there's a thing called a

transcendent character. And every family that's ever won in life had a transcendent character show up in the lineage of that family to do the work that was required for everybody else. So I became that transcendent character by being successful in business and eventually in my personal, my physical, the no drinking 13 year sober. So that's why when I said the beginning of this conversation, if you came and you saw the way our family is today, in many ways is because

we healed ourselves. I had to go first, I had to get sober as a teenager. My two brothers were into trouble with the law to my sister got in trouble the law to once I got clean. I never said a word to them. But I think they realized that, hey, there's gotta be a different way to do this. And they just, over time kind of cleaned up their act. And even my brother decide he

want to start a business. He called me up and I helped him and I wrote him a check for $173,000 Man, it's all the money I had in my bank account at 26 years old. It was humbling. Yeah. And my dad says the dumbest thing you've ever done. I said, Dad, you don't know the day that my brother gave me last $53 so that I can go on the run. I stole that car. I called my brother and he showed up. gave me his last $53 so I could put gas in this car.

that's a good sign. So I was like Tim did that yet. We're gonna hang out. Richard, you had the same email. Yep. All right, cool. So the guy who was co founder Randy he was a co founder of square which Back on Twitter, so I ended up spending a week in Verbier Switzerland. Richard Branson's Lodge, 18 bedroom 22 staff, awesome spot in the hill. And that's where I understood why Richard was the billionaire everybody else.

Every other billionaire wanted to be like, because he truly lives an integrated lifestyle. Like the whole time we were there. He was hosting dinners inviting other local entrepreneurs. He had his CEO of one of his companies flying on helicopter to have breakfast with them to talk about some board issues they were having in one of his companies. He was skiing with us every day we're we rent a go karts went parasailing. I mean, it was it was literally like Disneyland

for entrepreneurs. And the thing that I admired him the most that he did that I didn't understand when I saw it was how he managed the demand on his time. And the way he does is every morning, he has breakfast with Helen, his assistant, which I think today, still, 15 years later, she's still with him. She travels with him because he has several

homes. And it's during those conversations where she brings to him only things that she doesn't know how to respond to, but she owns 100% of all inbound, all his teams, all the CEOs, all this stuff goes through Helen, he doesn't even do emails, he might today but back then didn't even didn't even have a phone, I don't think. And he would just talk to her. And she would say, well, we have this thing. There's this and this, and I know you want to do this, but you want to do this

instead. And you'd be like, No, let's keep this perfect. So like, after their breakfast, he would come with a skin and she would move all the stuff forward. And that shifted everything for me because I had an assistant at the time, but I was giving her stuff to do. What he showed me was route everything through her and let them decide what to do and only bring to me the things that they didn't know how to deal with. And that shifted everything.

That's That's literally how I've now rebuilt my leadership style to this idea of transformational leadership where I work through people, most people tell people what to do. I work through people to generate outcomes by giving them ownership of stuff. Like just even now I don't manage my calendar. I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing next. But I know it's designed. We talked about it on Monday. And it's just like

having other people owned. Even this the studio, you're in the Martell media that's owned by Todd Todd runs the whole thing. Um, talent. It's kind of awesome. But I learned that watching Richard, he doesn't sit on boards, he calls him boring. It's got 400 companies in the Virgin Group of businesses. Two CEOs that run the holding company and a CEO for every one of the companies is awesome.

as they grow. If you are a logo designer, and you get busy and you hire another logo designer, that might give you more capacity. The problem is then you're stuck doing all this stuff that the logo designer is not going to do or can't do, which is administrative stuff, running errands, cleaning out the garbage data data that that's that doesn't create a business. So most people end up building businesses they grow to hate. So I learned a completely different way to scale companies

through Richard for sure. But I've been doing versions of this just understanding the value of my time. But that was just a big unlock in regards to how to work with an executive assistant.

When they hit the pain line, then they should go to their calendar, they audit the audit account for time and energy, what are the things that they're spending time on that they could pay somebody else little amount to do that they don't want to do in the first place. Like I've never created an invoice in my life ever. I have no interest in understanding how to create an invoice. Then we transfer all that stuff to somebody else.

That's the tea in my back loop audit, transfer, fill and then fill is work and invest on your skill set your character traits, your beliefs to become the person who can then grow. So that's why it's a loop if you don't do the film properly, if you just buy back your time to go hang out on the beach, or watch Netflix, then your business is going to stall out because you haven't grown who you are and you haven't become better so that you can go tackle

bigger problems. The bigger the problem, the bigger the life. And most people don't realize that they try to shy away from problems and it's like no, no, you want to go create massive problems and work really quick to develop the skills to overcome them.

skill. So you invest in skills, the other areas, your belief systems, see a lot of people have beliefs about how the world is the most expensive thing is to believe something that simply isn't true. Right. So some people, I believe that nobody can do as good as me. If you hold on to that one, I'll tell you what your business will look like, small. Like, it's just impossible, right? I have a belief that 80% done by somebody else is 100%. freakin awesome. That belief creates scale in my

world. So really challenging your worldviews and your beliefs is kind of the second area. And the third is character traits. Right? Courage, consistency, confidence, those are character traits, that in many ways, lock in the skills and the beliefs into your identity. And that's why I call this kind of the ladder of ladder of skills or the ladder of success, because you over time build an identity of what's possible or who you are, and then that person gets to go tackle bigger challenges.

psychology, right? It's why they say the most valuable real estate in the world is the six inches between your ears, understanding your own mindset, the conversations you have with yourself, check this out, your first thought isn't your thought. People are going to be like, What are you talking about? When you're driving down the street? And you have an idea? Did you think to have that idea? Or did it just come to

you? It just came to you. That's actually how your brain works, how you respond to that, that you control. And that's your psychology. So you can have a positive thought a negative thought you could focus on opportunity to focus on scarcity. And my philosophy is, the world isn't as it is as you are. And your energy, your frequency, what you put out to the world is what you will frequently see. So the external world of happiness is a byproduct of your internal

world. Money is a tool, it's just like saying, Do forks make me happy? I don't know, you can use a fork to kill somebody, you can use a fork to nourish yourself. But a fork doesn't make me happy. It's a fork, money will not make you happy. It's money. It's a a ability to store energy, that you can then deploy to other things, and you can use it to ruin your life and you can use it to amplify your life. But I've never had money

make me happy. I decided based on the meaning associated to an event or an object if I was happy. And it turns out, I had that power. Since I was born. I just needed me to get to a certain place for me to realize it. People have

would. I would figure out where they were gonna sleep where the crib were gonna be the clothes you're gonna wear, talk to some people that have babies and probably read a book maybe or hit some YouTube videos like you would prepare to have the baby. Most people as you know, is probably why you're writing this book. It's beautiful. I love the idea is they don't prepare to receive the success. If you knew 100% You're gonna be successful.

You probably start figuring out your your finance team, like, like who's gonna manage the money once I get rich. I don't even have any friends to teach me or help me or go who who's coming on vacation with me so I don't have to pay all the time. Like it's all these like, most people don't prepare at all for their life. But for me, I think strategically in decades, I plan my life out like I'm scheduling stuff into three years into the

future. I'm very intentional and all those things that make me intentional To generate opportunities. I mean, for example, I spoke at Tony Robbins event a few months ago, you better believe it put some preparation into that. i By the time I gave that talk I had already given probably 25 times, scripted outline stories emotions, like, you know, and because of that when I thought I had 45 minutes, and they told me I had 90 I was prepared, didn't

even flinch. No problem I found out before I hit the stairs going on stage. Oh, no, you've got 90 minutes. That's double the time I had allocate, I got slides. Luckily, I had prepared so I know which stories I could add to which slides extended. So I just think like, preparation for meeting so that you get key investors, key employees, you know, key customers, right?

Those Lighthouse customers, those Cornerstone customers, those, those, you know, those tenants that just like make everything else easier, that preparation costs very little and separates you from everybody, everybody, every it's I literally last Monday, I do leadership training every Monday here. And it was the first thing I taught everybody. These are the five things you can do in life that cause very little that will separate you from everybody

else. And one of them was preparing Sunday for the week, the night before for the next day. Simple idea. We've known we've heard this for years, all successful people will agree visit. There's one thing they all did, they prepared because they're not gonna like wing it. I like I hope today's a good day. That's silly. But most people do that. What

investing is not the issue. It's the people that are going to execute. So can they do they have staying power? Do they have grit? If there was a fifth? Will it be fun? That to me, it's like, I don't invest for money. All those things have to be present. But the end of the day, will I enjoy myself because unfortunately most people will tell you this about angel investing is that you end up spending most time with the worst companies. People are doing well don't need you.

Right. Like nobody ever told me that like when I was investing, it's like, oh, yeah, by the way, you know, those people you really like hanging out with, you'll end up spending time with these other people. And if they're not fun, if you don't want to spend time with them, you're probably gonna really not enjoy your life. So that those are the five things I look for. Dan