Most people that are wealthy didn't get wealthy diversified. They got there with one single focus, and they diversified as a risk mitigation to not completely lose everything in three or four years. You can build a million dollar business offt ten dollars task.
You can do it.
If you want to build anything meaningful, it requires other people, which means you're going to have to get.
Some time over here.
Today we're going to dive into the mindset and the strategies to create true financial freedom, and we have a powerhouse in the building to break it all down. My guest is Dan Martel. Now he's just not any entrepreneur. He's a multimillionaire investor, a coach of over one thousand founders.
Dan's investments have contributed to growth of over fifty startups through his own Martel Ventures fund, supportfolio of companies generating over one hundred million dollars in revenue, and his journey from troubled beginnings to founding and exiting multiple tech companies is nothing short of incredible. So today we're going to break down his blueprint so you can steal it so
you can apply it to your own life. So if you're serious about financial independence and ready to make your money work for you.
Then you're in the right place.
I think of three different forms of capital. So you have like financial capital, but then you have like mental capital, like skills, and then like relationship capital. And so most people are chasing the financial capital, not realizing it's a byproduct of the skills and the relationships that I had. That's such a good insight. If people think success is money, I can prove that it's not because nobody would trade their life right now for Warren Buffett. You wouldn't do it.
Why wouldn't you do it? Well? Because that best you might give them five, seven, ten years. If someone would give you a billion dollars and you would lose your eyesight in your hearing, would you take that? You wouldn't do it. Yeah, So right off the bat, that's just proof that it's not about the money. What it's about is a all right, Dan Martel, Hey Mark, thanks for joining and Honor.
It's fun.
Like I was saying, Man, so many mutual friends and some overlap on what we're talking about. So I'm super excited to talk to you today, so appreciate your time. Let's just jump right in and talk about your book, and I think there's a lot of overlaps between you know, what your book is about, what you talk about sort of my world, which is more traditional investing. But ultimately why right, we're trying to get to the same goal, which is time. Time freedom. All economics is based on time.
That's the most scarce thing.
So when I think of your book, and maybe it's just my mindset, but I think of it from like an investing standpoint, Right, if I'm going to buy back my time, then I'm investing into my time, which means I get more back return, I get a higher return. And I think about like a poor mentality versus a wealthy mentality, So poor think always about spending time.
I'm spending my time doing this, and I'm spending my.
Money versus like a wealthy mentality. Is like I'm investing to get more time back or investing to get more money back. I'm curious, do you think about it from that way in this book? Yeah? The way I like to think about it is broke people spend time to save money, and enrich people spend money to save time. And you see it all the time. I mean, it's actually quite interesting if you even break it up from
like broke people's spend money on distractions. I'd say middle class people spend money on improving their credit score, and then rich people spend money on things they're going to make the money. Right, And if you're going to buy back your time, then it means that that time you've gotten back, hopefully you reinvest it in things that are going to generate a better future for you, right. And that's why I like a lot of people have heard
time because investing like going to the gym. You don't like go to the gym once and wake up buff right, Like you got to like be consistent, show up. I know, and I think that's the same thing when you start buying back your time. A lot of people they don't see the results immediately and they don't have the faith that over time that's actually a better trade. But you know, and I'm a byproduct of twenty seven years of just doing this, so I'm not that impressive. I've literally been
doing it that long. I just think of it as every time I've hired somebody to buy back time to then go not do anything productive with it, while it usually slides backwards. I didn't get the trade I was supposed to get. And anytime I've been deliberate about saying, Okay, well this is what I want my life to look like, and these are the things I need to achieve I have, there's no way I can outwork to get there.
Right.
It's like, yeah, I like to tell people, like, you can't build a million dollar business soft ten dollars tasks. There's not enough hours in the week period full stop, Like there's you just you can't do it. If you want to build anything meaningful, it requires other people, which means you're gonna have to get some time leverage. But even like personal stuff, uh, food ordering tools or like, you can out task things is what I like to call it today in a world where that was impossible
back in the day. Literally apps on your phone where you can just like pay people fractional costs to get the time back to then go work on yourself, say have better mental health, go make better investments for your time. But that's that's always been how it works. It's just nobody's ever really I think unpacked it from the lens
I have because of my software background. Yeah, you said something really important in there, and I think it really breaks down the distinction that we were making about the investor or the wealthy mindset versus the poor mindset. And you said, if I hire someone to buy back my time, but I don't go reinvest that time, then it backsides on me, I think, is what you say every time. And so that's the difference of the mindset of the investor.
So I'm in if I'm investing, I'm buying back my time, but then I have to go reinvest that time, and it has to be something that gets a return. So here, like I know, I know rich people that mess it up. So this isn't even a broker poor person. So what does a rich person messing it up look like? Well, they're busy in their business. They let's say they're a
logo designer and they go hire another logo designer. Okay, well, you if you're charging fifty bucks an hour and you're gonna pay somebody else forty bucks an hour you bought an hour back of your time, you're not making a big return on that investment. So like you wouldn't buy a million dollar real estate property to make you know, two percent right, because the risk to reward ratio isn't there a lot of people do that with their time.
My rule is four times ROI minimum. So if I'm spending you know, twenty five dollars an hour to buy back my time, I get to go find investments or activities that are going to generate one hundred because then I've got leverage, I've got margin because the truth is, you're not going to be that efficient the first time you do it, and if it does slide back, at
least you're still ahead. Yeah. So a lot of people think they can just invest and buy back their time, but then they don't reinvest the time, so they're not actually making more money, no return, It's just an expense. At that point, it literally sucks your profit out of your life. I'm curious how you think about it. You know. For me, I don't like doing like handyman products around
the house. I don't want to work on my own dirt filth takea I have my mechanic pick it up and do the service for me, you know, And I think like, I mean, it's Saturday, I want to go surfing with my kids. I could work on my dirt bike. I'd rather not. So how do you think about valuing that free time? So I just look at time as time, and I break it into professional and personal, and then I ask myself, it's kind of like think of like Tetris, right, So we play Tetris, the blocks drop from the top.
Life you could say, a day, a week or whatever is essentially a Tetris you know, playing field, and our ability to take those blocks personal, professional and put them in a structure that gets them so that if the you know, that area is whatever size you get, it is full with the most you know, optimal use of your time. And the thing is is I'm also okay sitting down on the couch with my wife and scrolling on TikTok for an hour and a half, Like that's also part of the the you know, the board game.
And I think people just don't think about their time through that lens. So either they're working too much and trying to be too efficient and then personal stuff falls to the wayside, or they try to do balance, which is not key. Nobody's done anything incredible, has had balance, and they just don't consider like some people just buy back their time in the professional world and not in their personal So I look at it as just time.
So like free time, I just asked myself, what are the what are the rhythms of life that I know if I follow I'm going to feel good about my day, my week, my month, my quarter, my year. So we were talking about mountain bike in I have two mountain bike trips every year. I've been doing them for four or five years, and those are rhythms. I have snowboard trips. I have vacations with my family. I have all these things.
I'll tell you what I don't want to be doing is cleaning my garage, right, you know, doing doing mechanic work on my toys, or even managing a portfolio of assets like in my personal life. So I have a house manager that deals with that. I have somebody that is the CEO of our personal life. And people go, what is what is a house manager? What does Betty do? Managing passports, managing credit cards, managing vehicles, gas maintenance, washing all real estate, all vehicles we have, we have toys, uh,
family staff, coordination, travel, et cetera. Everything personal is managed by them. Why cause I all want to spend time with my kids like one on one, dedicated doing stuff they want to do. They don't want to wash, they don't want to watch me wash my car, they want me to go mountain biking with them, or they want you know, I have my son here. Like every trip I do, it goes. I alternate between my two boys, so I get some solo time, they get to come hang out. I don't want them to feel like they're
doing stuff that they don't. You know that I'm not even interested in doing so. To me, personal time is still part of the same bucket of time, and I treat that hour as the same value. And if I can spend some money to buy it back so I'm not distracted, I'm not I'm not wasting that time, then I one hundred percent will do it. Yeah.
Yeah, I love that.
And to your point earlier, with an age of technology and apps and stuff, it's never been easier to automate those tasks. I think about it. Sort of My productivity guru is David Alley with the book Getting Things Done is one of my.
Favorites c TV.
Yeah. I was twenty three and went to a seminar in New York City. Yeah yeah, I've probably read it like a dozen times. It's site so much my memory now. So yeah, so because that's sort of what my my framework is built off of but he said, he said something that you know, you have to capture every idea because you can't afford to have the same idea or thought twice.
And so like I like to also think about.
Like for lunch every day, I can't afford to think about what I want to have for lunch every day. So just I have prepackers meals every day. Right, I can't think about when I need to get my haircut.
So it's just like every time at the same month, someone comes and does it, right, And so like freeing up that mental space, it's also a buy back, right, buying back that mental space, you can think about higher value things, especially as we move into the creative world, we really need to have that mental space a lot more. I want to jump into a bunch of topics, but let's just stick on this sort of investing thing for a while. So, I mean, you're obviously a very accomplished entrepreneur,
but you're also an accomplished investor. So you have your Martels, Martel Ventures, fifty plus startups, some notable ones Intercom you to me, hoot Sweet, so some good companies there. When you think about investing in these other companies, like what kind of framework do you have?
Do you have like a deal.
Box like Warren Buffett talks about. I mean, do you try to invest across a diverse set of industries. I'll tell you how you lose your money as an investor. And it's first off, thinking that you can spot the outliers. So that's like the first thing is when I started angel investing, specifically buying equity in other companies. I was twenty six twenty seven when I started, and I thought, meet the entrepreneur, great idea, I can spot a winner.
And then I would you know, I'd be like, how much you need He's like quarter million, okay, how much you need one hundred thousand okay? And I just I my first dozen deals was Dan thinking that he has the Midas touch, and I would put different amount of capital in different companies because every situation was different. I probably deployed almost two and a half million dollars in three or four years when I started, and probably lost seventy percent of it. The reason why is I didn't
understand portfolio theory. And I moved to San Francisco and I'm twenty eight at the time, and I just sold my company, so I had a bit of extra dry powder and luckily I met a guy named Naval Raba kon So Naval. Today everybody knows him for angel lists, but back in the day, angelist was actually an email list. It was like he was based on Craigslist. I was where he got the inspiration and I was one of the Canadian angel investors on there. That's how I got
in the Hootsuite deal and many others. And I remember talking to Evolve because today you know early in Uber Early and like you know, he's incredibly wealthy, incredibly smart. A lot of people now I see him as a philosopher. I have full of his theater. Yeah, he's just that guy. But I asked him about this. I said, what's your philosophy on investing? And this is what he said to me. He says, there's a lot of different things. One, you should have a thesis of some sort, like what is
the parameter of deals? You say, even a first meeting or no to And then he said, two, you always have to be investing over at least a four year period because if not, then you're trying to time markets. And then you want to be essentially dollar cost averaging into private equity aka angel VC kind of as an investment portfolio. And he said, the other thing is you got to write the same check on everyone because if not, then you're trying to pick winners.
And you can.
And he said, look, I've invested at that point, he probably invested in seventy five companies.
He goes, I.
Can't tell you which ones work, I can tell you the essence of the founder, And yes, I invest in things where I'm inspired by the person's vision. I feel like they have grit, I feel like they have product market fit like, yes, all those things. But man, over a five, seven, ten year period, which is how long it takes to actually have an exit for most tech startups, there's so much that could happen. So I would say that's where I ended up on my angel investing is
I've decided an allocation. I find great portunities. The truth is also just portfolio and opportunity. Like I used to only invest in Eastern Canada because that's where I grew up. Well, unfortunately, the best tech entrepreneurs are probably not going to be there. You know, if you're going to invest in media, I think LA's probably going to a higher pool of talent than you know, Madison, Wisconsin, So choosing even the geography you invest in. And then also do you have access
to proprietary pipeline? And that to me was you know how I started doing better angel investments. Also, I started Big Band where I buy software company, same thing, proprietary pipeline. Now Martel Ventures where we co create same thing. I have access to founders that nobody else does because of my personal brand, and it's just the deal box. Yes, every one of those asset classes and not really asset class, but let's say revenue rhythms or like types of deals
I do. I have a criteria that because I also have team members that helped me put these together, and we review it through those lens. So we have essentially a scorecard for each every bucket of come means if I'm an angel investing versus buying, versus co creating, we have a criteria that we've identified and we great everybody,
and we don't do anything. We don't move it forward past kind of investment committee until they're like eighty you know, eight out of ten qualified, and that's I'm a systems guy, So to me, that just makes a lot of sense, and I give all credit to Naval to teach me that because part of that I lost most of my money as an angel investor.
Yeah, it seems like the same familiar story.
Like most people who have a big exit all of a sudden want to become this angel VC in size. But hey, I'm successful. I guess I'm a king maker. I can go like put money in and most likely.
It ends up pretty bad. That seems to be the story. I'm curious.
You're overall investing theory and where the angel venture sits inside of that. So you're obviously very successful, had multiple exits, so you have money saved and then that's invested. I'm curious how you think about that? Like in buckets, so like, hey, a big chunk in just like SMP index because it's safe, and then I have a bunch of cash flow real estate, but then I have a little bit over here of
adventure or how do you think about that? I again, I'm not getting I don't give people financial advice, so I'm going to caveat with that. What works for me is what works for me. I also don't care if I had nothing, so I'm kind of a weird cat where I'm incredibly blessed at the same time, none of that I require. For Dan, Well, you're a mountain biker, entrepreneur and a snowboarder. See, your risk tolerance is very Oh, my risk tolerance is high, and I don't care about money.
So I'm kind of a weird cat because I don't. I don't like, I know a guy that was so poor all you had was money, And I think people that measure themselves on personal net worth are completely flawed. Now is that is that a tool to know if you're creating more value? One hundred percent? Do I care if I have money or not? I flew a out of my plane, if I lost a plane tomorrow, I'm not gonna I'm literally not gonna cry. I'm not even
feel boud. I'm gonna feel grateful that I had it for the time I had, and I'm gonna get back to doing what I did today. So my philosophy is not if you use the lens of optimizing it for risk adjusted best returns diversification. Zero part of what I'm gonna say makes sense to anybody. First off, one of my early mentors gave me some great advice said, making money is easy, keeping.
It as hard.
So they've learned that. One yes, first time I had a big payday when I sold my first company, half of it went into low cost index fund Vanguard Bolt like literally nothing exciting SMP five hundred. There's a portfolio now that we manage, and I kind of do that with every new trash of capital I get in half goes to stuff that's low risk, and then the other half I build.
I'm a builder.
I build, but I build machines that build machine. I don't some people just put their money like the Angel stuff, right, They're like, hey, what's your idea? Oh you're my friend, Bob, Bob's my cousin. I'm going to invest in Bob's idea. Hey when you got Mark? Okay, cool, complete CpG real estate agency. Like there's no thesis. I only do B to B SaaS okay, business a business, software as a service, period, full stop. It's all I've ever done. It's what I know.
I have a disproportionate amount of information networking. When you think of the four levels of luck and devolve, Ravikon's concept on that and like Warren Buffett, like people talk about diversification As you know, most people that are wealthy didn't get wealthy diversified. They got there with one single focus and they diversified as a risk mitigation to not completely lose everything in three or four years. That's that bucket. The fifty percent which is in the market, and what
I'm world class at is scaling software. So I own the largest software CEO coaching organization called SAS Academy. I have my angel investing stuff where I invest in incredibly talented and growing as a VCA portfolio. I have my big Band Software. We have one hundred million dollars hold code. We buy a company every month software B to B SaaS. And I've got Martell Ventures where I co create with the CEOs that I coach that have exited that want
to do another business with me as a partner. We co create businesses that we start with very little capital that I own a large percentage of, using the media company to get distribution. Yeah, it's not diversified. I don't do real estate. I literally do two things. Put my money in the market in low cost index funds because I don't like paying people fees because they don't do anything anyway. And I manage my portfolio and have an incredible team where we do that. That's my strategy.
Yeah, of it.
It's it sounds complicated, but it's so not complicated because my brother's a real estate guy. He has one he's one of the largest home builders in the East Coast. He does multi unit and all that stuff. If I was going to do anything, it'd be with him, and I did early in my career. But honestly, the whole thing about passive income, it's so funny. Passive income. So you talk to these real estate guys who's like, oh, yeah,
I have a real estate portfolio. It's passive. And then I I walk in and I see a room of eighteen people. Yeah, well, how passive can it be? What are those eighteen people doing. Well, they're managing the property managers and the deal they're looking for deals. And I was like, well, no, it's not very passive. My index funds are legit passive, but they're not gonna make me the wealth that I want.
That's this machine.
So I have a wealth managed a wealth creation machine, and I have a wealth preservation machine and those are completely separate.
Yeah, that's great.
I kind of say the same thing. You can't invest your way to wealth. You have to earn it, you have to create it. And then I was just on a coaching call before you got here, and I was telling them that I think of my investments as savings. So I save my money in real estate and I save my money in bitcoin. That's where I saved most of my money. And the reason why I call it that is because then it's passive. It's there, it's just park that's where it's going to be. But it's not
like active. Yeah, and and you're not looking for liquidity. The other problem is sometimes people invest in things where they need liquidity and then they burn themselves as they pull the money out of the wrong times, right, And I don't do that. I remember when my mentor told me that. I said, half in like, you're not going to use and it's the wealth creation side or the wealth the wealth preservation side. He goes, that's your foundation. This is where you go swing as hard as you want.
But guess what, there's a constraint because you are never to use that capital. If that business is going to die because you can't fund it, guess what, it dies. You do not expose yourself to the other side. So that's like, you know, I see Elon take all of this personal net worth and put it into this company that and I'm like, I wouldn't do that. Yeah, I love that he's the kind of person that would do that,
but it's not my philosophy. Yeah, a small business owner, are you buried in all types of work keeping you from the real thing that makes you money? Well that's where just Works comes in. They're the all in one platform that supports small business growth.
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Well I love how you say.
I mean, you know what your philosophy is you stick to that. You're a builder and you want to build, and so I mean being a dirtbiker and a snowboarder. I just see a mountain and I just want to climb it one hundred percent. I don't know why, but I just have this urge to climb. And I think about businesses the same way. I'm trying to get this. I have a contract on a big piece of land down in Mexico.
I love Mexico.
I'm building in Mexico now and I want to build this development down there. And I was telling my wife the other day, It's like, I'll probably make way more money just focusing on what I'm doing. But for some reason, I just want to do that this and.
It's just a mountain for me. And it's not an ROI thing.
This is what people don't understand. If I was optimizing for money, that would be a good Like when people give me advice. It's like I have one of my pet peeves. I'm at the gym and I'm working out and some guy comes up to me. They might know me whatever, but I don't know them, and they start spotting me. You know, you're doing curls and they walk on next to you and they go three more, two more, and you're sitting there headphones on. I'm like, why what
are you doing? And I look at them and I'm like, I don't want to be rude, but I'm not taking advice from somebody that's smaller than me. My coach, Allen is a superman. I have be like, you know what I mean, Like yeah, And it's the same thing with the money. It's like, if you're trying to give me advice to optimize returns, then you're flawed because you think that's what I'm optimizing for. Where you're saying I'm optimizing for exposure of creative projects to speak to my soul.
And at the end of the day, if you truly believe that everything is a gift, and that's why we call it the present, we've already won, Like Mark an extra whatever million bucks is going to change your life zero right then, And if it's not, to choose projects that speak to our soul, that just sound fun and expose us a new opportunities. Most of my angel investing, one of the big criterias is will I learn something
from that founder? All things being equal, can this person teach me new things because I value that over a financial return. I love that, And that's going to take me into my next topic I want to talk about. But I would want to say I have a bitcoin focused VC hedge fund and we invest through the bitcoin ecosystems of companies that are building on and around Yeah, on the blockchain, on bitcoin specifically, Okay, but that's very broad.
So there's energy companies, it's changing the grid infrastructure. For example, we have this one deal that came through the day where they're going to take trash and they're going to turn the trash into energy. But it's like, I don't know anything about the trash market. Does trash really need to be burned for energy? Like, I don't know what the demand of that, right, And all of a sudden, I'm talking to my partners. I'm like, listen, we don't
know about this. We get the bitcoin side, but I don't know about trash.
I don't know about energy. And so I.
Deal with that all the time, trying to stay with where not only do I have some expertise, but am
I able to even affect and help that. Well, that's how disproportionate returns have always worked, is when the person investing like a bill ackman, like he just knows things, like if he can get a board seat like the like there's is That's why I have a problem with old mutual fund industry because the only people getting rich is the managers, right right, And like, you know, the market did what it did, and you're giving points and you're giving credit to a person to actively manage to
fund the numbers. Don't back out that thesis at all. Yet it feels safe, it feels predictable. And the truth is is the thing that you know better than anybody else. Like that's what I actually think Warren Buffet's philosophy of Like, if you're a customer of a product and you think it's a diehard great product, like a dairy queen, like a Coca Cola, you're better off buying the stock of the companies that you spend your money with, so you
get a double whammy. You get the benefit of the product, but you're also helping the company of the stock you own. Right if you're trying to create some actively managed portfolio of things, because maybe then you'll be paying attention to the business more. You'll be you know, if you're a tesla stock owner and a customer, and you notice their product lines are starting to kind of go sideways because you've been a customer for seven years and you don't
feel like they're innovating anymore. Then you can then you have some insight into going maybe I don't want to own this stock. I just think like people don't realize that money's made when when you decide to go deep and learn about something, and to do that it takes a decade. Like, dude, it sounds like you've been in bitcoin for a while, Like I don't. I don't have the time to learn. I don't have the time to learn what you forget every day, right, Like, think about
how much you probably just forget. I'm gonna it's gonna take me longer to learn what you forget every day than trying to learn it. So I just stick what I do, like B to B SaaS I just came out with the number one book in the space, Like I do one thing, I'll do the rest of my life. It feels awesome, exposes me to new opportunities, and it's made me incredibly wealthy. And I just don't see a world where that's not a good strategy. No, it's a
great strategy. You talked about a couple things that you were thrown out there was making me think about like three different I think of three different forms of capital. So you have like financial capital, but then you have like mental capital, like skills, and then like relationship capital. And so most people are chasing the financial capital not realizing it's a byproduct of the skills and the relationships
that I had. That's such a good insight, right, And so if we spend time to invest in our relationships and our skills, the money, the money comes. And you had said just earlier that a lot of these deals you get into with some of these founders, maybe it's not even about the deal, but it's about working with the founder.
What can I learn from this?
So I think about investing in relationships and skills in that regard. So you said, let's go. I'm guessing that sort of resonates export sort of how you look at I mean, when you said the you said the entered the mindset. You said skills, relationships, skills, and money. Yeah, and then the money is a byproduct of the other two. Yeah, it's I mean, it's one of those because there's a lot of different capital because even on the skills side,
I would mindset. Mindset is energy, like you know, think about health.
Right.
I was just talking to my friend on my plane when we flew down here, because we were talking about kids and titlement and like you know, when you have an affluent life, you know, your kids sometimes have the bad end of the stick, especially if they interact with folks that don't understand it. They call them the rich kids or whatever. And the truth is is, you know, if people think success is money, I can prove that it's not because nobody would trade their life right now
for Warren Buffett. Right, you wouldn't do it. Why wouldn't you do it? Well? Because that best you might give them five, seven, ten years. If someone would give you a billion dollars and you would lose your eyesight in your hearing, would you take that? You wouldn't do it? Yeah, so I so right off the bat, that's just proof that it's not about the money. What it's about is a feeling. And the crazy part if people actually ask themselves what would need to be true for you to
feel that? It's nothing it's a decision, it's a remapping of your stories. So when you talk about these the relationships. Yes, having incredible relationships, especially people that can solve big problems for you very quickly. That's the way I think about a lot of my like you know, strategic relationships. When I look at my life and where I want to go and what I need to learn and who has
that information? And you know, as I go on this journey, I'm probably going to run into three, four or five problems. Is there somebody's best in class in the world. Can I start that relationship today so they'll take my call when I call? Yes, all those things are true, But I also look at my energy. I optimize, if anything, by back your time, Yes, by back your time to invest to be to get a better return. But at a certain point, more money is not going to change
your situation better health, better energy. And we talk about relationships. I have zero space in my life for anybody that has a negative mindset, that complains, that talks about other people that aren't responsible for themselves to blame it. Like there's there's certain things that are on an energetic vibe level that I think think people should spend more money on that. And if that means moving cities, Mark, I'm
all for it too. If you live in a neighborhood and it'say, oh yeah, but my cousin's not very positive. My neighbors are kind of a pain in the butt. Yeah, you're allowed to move, and countries you can move. Countries you can, you can. I think that's actually a more interesting investment in many ways, the energetic side, the health side, and that's yes, skills and relationships are also part of it. But even the relationship stuff like well, I don't know
people like that. Okay, we'll spend some money. Mark. Do you have a community people can join? Yeah, yeah, okay, perfect. People should listening. This should go. I should invest in that so I get around other people. Because here's what I've learned is and it can be through back in the day. Let's call it the golf membership, the golf club, the private golf clubs. I never I'm not a golfer, but you know, there's places where you can pay to
be part of a community. Those people are typically folks that are gonna vibe with the same energy that you have. And the price is not the price because of what it's worth as costs. It's it's there as a filter whether you like that or not. It's no different than a certain city or a country. If you want to live in a certain city, a certain country, a certain neighborhood, that dollar amount that you have to create creates the investment in your energy. And then you want to talk
about access to people, relationship, skill acquisition. I mean you can live next to a neighbor that One of the person people I've learned the most from is a guy that plays is the dad of a soccer player that my son plays soccer with, and we go on soccer tournaments. We hang out and he teaches me about stuff that I'm like, man, he has no idea. I would pay one hundred grand just to talk to him every year because it's but it's just what we do because our
kids play soccer together. And I just think people don't really they'll like invest in their business, no problem, you hire people, Okay, I got that one, No problem. They'll invest in the health, We'll get a trainer, no problem. I don't think they think about their environment, or their energy or the.
Headspace. Yeah, for sure.
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I got a first hand glimpse of that.
I've always lived right here at the beach, and my kids grew up surfing and going to school and playing sports, and so all my friends we do that and we talk about barbecues and going to the beach and things like that. In twenty twenty one, California was trying to compete with maybe Canada for being how strict they could be independent.
Yeah, they were like, we're out of here.
We went to Puerto Rico and moving to a new environment, I had to meet new people, and then I was able to choose the people as opposed to them sort of being legacy friends. And all of a sudden I met these people. My daughter's like Mark, dad, dad. These guys are nerds, you know, and they kind of work because they weren't my surfer friends, right, but they were
like really smart and intelligent. I learned so much from him, and all of a sudden, I was like, I had this epiphany, like maybe people should move because it gives you a chance to meet new people. Coming out of your shell, and I'm like, I'm sure those people are also. I mean, I'm in southern California. There's plenty of wealthy people here. But I haven't left that environ I've moved every six years my whole life. Oh really, every six years.
I might have towns, well you said cities, full on cities, Yeah, even countries. I lived in the States for a long time. My wife and I, you know, probably in the next two years, will probably make another move. Yeah, I just I like the opportunity to pull out a blank piece of paper. Because you talked about the legacy friends, It's actually a beautiful language. I like that language. It's the default,
not designed. You know, sometimes we're friends with people not because we chose them, but because it was a default response to somebody sat next to us twenty six years ago in a class.
Exactly.
How crazy is that? Why am I still friends with somebody on Facebook that if I saw them in the mall today, I'd pretend like I didn't see them, And yet that person's post affects my mood, my headspace, my focus.
Oh that's that's heavy, dude.
I use my feed to feed my mind, and I protect that and I have no problem using the mute button or the unfollow button. And the idea of moving to a new city for me, and it always been this way is an opportunity to just reset. It's like you've probably had some friends that have gone to divorces and they're in like this massive, like tail spin of depression and like what is my life going to mean? And I get I I not that I'm not sad
for them, especially if they have kids involved. I'm also really excited because you now get to pull out a piece of paper. I always think of printer paper. Most people don't have printers anymore. But you go grab a printer paper and you put on the table and you go, Okay, what do you want to look like? Like, what do you mean? I go, whatever you want. You're you just broke up and are in you know, you're in this
divorce and you can choose to move to Italy. You can choose to sell your business, start a new thing. You can choose you can choose to go travel the world for a year and and nobody's gonna judge you for it because you're kind of like, hey, he's going through something, I say go through it. Use that as like a drawing board of like what do you want to look like? Go live in New York for six months? Who knows what you'll discover? But grow through it, don't
just go through it. And moving cities for me is it's kind of like an expansion reaction. It's like, you know, you land summers, you really don't know anybody. It's like, Okay, who do I want to know? What are they? What are what is the best neighborhood to live in this city? What are the activities? And what are who are the potentially new friends right season lifetime or a reason? Like sometimes these people are going to come into our life to teach us stuff. I don't. I think it's the
neatest thing. Yeah, it's a reset, like you said, and and building into relationships. Being a content creator on that side has opened up a lot of doors for me. I was I was at a barbecue at Michael Saylor's house and I got to sit down with the ball for a while and just talk to him Like that.
Was really cool.
And really, when I think about going in speaking, it's like my videos are geting hundreds of thousands of views, why don't go speak to two thousand people. But this is the part that people don't realize. It's the ROI of the other speakers or organizers that are there. It's the speaker dinner, the speaker dinner, right, and so it's like, uh, now,
there's so much of that, the traveling and things like that. Man, I really wanted to talk to you about scaling Team Martel Media because that's something that I'm kind of going through, but we don't have time to into that. So let's get into the next topic what I want to really talk about, which is the legacy piece, because I really wanted to get to that. You're a family guy. You have, like you said, your kids with you. I've been married twenty two years. I got my kids, Like I love that,
and that's kind of where I'm thinking. I was just I told you, I just filmed the show right in Dirtbikes in Mexico, and then I went to Sydney. I spoke at this event called cheat Code, and so I gave a talk about the cheat code in life, and I talked about how sort of the game is rigged against you, taxes, inflation, and debt, and it's meant to kind of keep you in the system, but you can get out of the system. And what I said is,
I'm sure you know the hero's two journey. You know the template that you tell a story on, right, the two journeys is that when the hero achieves what they think they wanted, they realized that's not what they wanted all along.
There was something different.
And so I said that the real cheat code is realizing that once you break out of that and you get the money, it wasn't the money that you wanted.
It was an illusion.
And really what we want is we want to provide value to the world. That's really what we want. That's where we get the fulfillment from. Yeah, and so that's what I think about the legacy piece. And so you mentioned like blockchain, I think of sort of my life. So bitcoin uses a proof of work, you know, consensus making.
So like whatever I do in this world is my proof of my work that I was here, and then my life is one block and then hopefully those come after me and my kids are the next block and the next block. So I'm thinking about pushing value into the future. We talked quickly before we recording about a book of
Diewa zero. But like the Fiat monetary system is a debt based system, So debt is pulling value, stealing value from the future, and I want to push value into the future, into my kids and my hopefully future generations. So one talking about that with your kids, how do you think through generational wealth? A lot of people think today that it's bad to give your kids something because then you'll disadvantage them. I think that maybe what that's
disadvantage if you don't train them properly. But if we train them, probably why wouldn't I want them to have a higher pedestal than I had? So how do you think about the generational wealth that's on that level? I think what I'm going to share is nuanced, and I understand that anytime you share an idea, the words used to communicate the idea have to be understood by both parties for it to actually land the way you wanted to.
So I say that as a caveat knowing that some people misunderstand what I'm saying, and I'm okay with that. I'm always available if you want to message me on Instagram or whatever, We'll have that chat. But I was the same way I started. I mean, Mike, life is this arc of like building to prove to other people that I was worthy. Funny part is is I didn't
even like those people, right, that's crazy. Then I got to a place financially that I thought, once I got to i'd feel this bliss, you know, the thing would you know, the skies would part in, the trumpets would trumpet, and I would just feel absolutely complete. Never happened. Turned out, then I went on this journey of impact, which you know, for me, I grew up in really challenging environment, so troubled youth, at risk, youth youth programs, et cetera. So
I did that, and then I had kids. And here's where I've gotten to because I think legacy can sometimes be used as much as a crutch to drive decisions as wealth. And personally, I believe as a person of faith that I'm here to do two things. And if you understand those two things, and everything else might make sense or not, it's cool. One is God created me in his image and he had a purpose for who I could become. And in many ways I like to
say to people, and I heard this quote. I don't know who said it, but it's you know, you want to become the person you needed most in your darkest days. And I knew in my darkest days I wasn't listening to anybody, So for me to think of who that person would have to be, I'm talking energetically, physically appearanced success, language, the ability to break through to a fourteen fifteen year
old Dan. I hope someday I become that person. But that person would almost have to be godlike, Okay, So I wake up every day to try to be that and I believe that. And I love your word fulfillment because happiness is a fleeting moment. Fulfillment is an experience for me. A life of fulfillment is getting to a place where everything I learned that works for me teach it to other people. And we've been doing this since
humans were humans, because that's why we have kids. Every human that has kids says to themselves, I want to create a better future than the one I experience. Hence, we try to create a better situation for ourselves so that we have more resources in an environment to support
our children. I just think people don't realize that it's bigger than just their kids, or their family, or their community, or their church or their CrossFit gym, or their city, or their or their Today we live in this beautiful world where with the help of the device that we all have in our back pockets, we can share the
things that work best for us with the world. So my philosophy is to wake up every day to be the best version of myself, and anything that works for me, I'm going to share it with the world, share myself with the world. And I've gotten away from legacy for my kids. And here's why. People somebody asked me yesterday, Actually they go, Dan, are you going to leave your kids any money? And the answer is no, they don't need me to leave the money. They need me to
teach them their lessons, which is what you said. And some people wouldn't you want them to have more resources to do more and have legacy financially. I understand. It's just like I'm a big fan of the fact that I grew up in a country that has free medical Right, let's just put all the other crap to the side on the political system, but I do have and the quality of the medical system, we won't judge that too much.
But you know, like when you're born into a country, there's benefits just like if you're born into a family, there's benefits. But at the same time, you know, Buffett says, he says, I'm going to leave them some money so they can do anything, but not so much that they can do nothing. I just personally decided that I'm not optimizing for the traditional definition of legacy. My definition of what I'm trying to do is just those two things.
So I would much rather overinvest in. And you asked about the media briefly, and to understand me, now you understand why media is such a It is a decision. It wasn't a financial decision. It was if my goal is to become the best version of myself. It turns out if you create content that work actually does more work on you.
Yeah.
Like that's the crazy part. If anybody, if anybody wants like a fast track to therapy, go start talking to your phone. Yeah, because I will tell you will confront your demons, all of them. The insecurity. I don't like my voice. I didn't say anything smart. Nobody's watching my stuff. Why is this person leaving a negative comment that work will work on you more than the work is. And also I also know that at the end of the day. If I over optimize me personally for legacy, I'm doing
it for this future that I won't even experience. It doesn't matter. So if I am going to leave people money, I'd rather give it to them at the right time. And if you look statistically, the best time to give somebody money for your kids, it's between twenty seven and thirty four years of eight. Money deployed to your kids when you died at one hundred, they're eighty.
Well, good as a do.
That's what I call my dad. After I learned this, I said, are you going to leave my sister any money? He goes, probably, I said you should give it to her now, Yeah, he goes. Why I go because anything that you give her when she's literally seventy five is going to have zero impact on her life. We're talking one hundred grand. Yet right now she's struggling. Maybe she has a mortgage payoff, she's got her student or her kids a student school stuff she's stressing about. That's actually,
you know, talk about compound returns. Better to do it early now than later. So when I started thinking about that, and that's why we talked about Bill Perkins book died with zero and He makes a lot of strong arguments, so again I can't paraphrase his book in thirteen seconds,
but essentially net fulfillment over net worth. The goal of life for him and I tend to agree is create as much value for the world financially up to a point where you feel that over time you have the ability to deploy it to people while you're here, because I think if you give money to people when you're not here, is it really your choice? And then have
as much fun. Yeah, and that's if you understand now that you hear that, that's why you see me, you know, not only try to build the empire and the business side, but also, you know, be totally cool doing the family stuff and travel the world stuff and the extreme sports stuff and the media stuff because I'm just trying to be the best version of myself and my legacy hopefully will be whatever that leads to the world. And if it's nothing, that's cool too, because I don't need anything
for any like That's that's the other thing. I don't need anything to feel enough. Well, I think there's to the point that you made before you started going into that was that there's a lot of nuance to that and so I already referenced that there's money, but there's relationships and skills and so really when you think about legacy, it's really those three forms of capital. And so for my kids, and I want to talk about your King's Club as well, but for your kids, giving them the education.
Like my oldest daughter, she's not going to college, but she's going to like this trade school to get a holistic health coaching certification. She wants to be a all one health coach and was help people with health. And both of my kids are really into that. And like you know, people that are fat and out of shape typically unfortunately have kids that are fat and out of shape. And I was just thinking, one of the greatest gifts I could give my kids was the gift of health.
So both my daughters were super into sports and health and nutrition and all those things. And so that's that legacy piece, the education piece. So the legacy the education of how to make money, how to provide value. I mean, that's just as good. What if you didn't well, what if you didn't I mean, but like, how would you feel if you didn't well? I mean, hopefully, if I'm living the life, then they're learning it whether I sit
down and teach them the lessons anyway. So that's I guess that's the conversation that you know, if we had more time, I would just be curious, and not that it's bad.
It's just if you didn't give your kids the education.
What if what if your kids just were what they were? You know what I mean? Because you know the extreme. Let's think a parent that like their kid has to go to Pepperdine. If not, they feel like the worst parents in the world, right, and the kid doesn't want to go to Pepperdine, But they're like, if my kid was super fat and out of shape and had diabetes, I might feel like a pretty bad parent exactly. But is that your fault?
I would say, so. I think.
I mean, once a person becomes an adult, they also gotta be responsible to.
Be as an adult.
Yeah, but if you just woke up every day and tried to be the best example, and for whatever reason, they didn't pick that up and they got fat, That's that's like the part where I I I questioned the drive for legacy around what am I? What am I trying to feel? And can I get to a place where I don't need any persons my kid's doing well, not do like I tell my kids all the time, you don't have to do anything. I just want you to know, like you don't have to be anything, do anything.
I'm gonna love you because you know I created you and I know you wouldn't I know. I just call it like a thought experiment.
Yeah.
So like my oldest daughter, I'm not for college at all. I didn't want to go to college, but I didn't want to tell her that. I want her letter to decide what she wanted to do, so she knows kind of how I feel.
But I didn't say, hey.
They see, you don't have to tell her. But I'm sure you talk to somebody here, but you know.
And then all of a sudden, she started going through this thing where she wanted to go.
All her friends were going. She felt like she's missing out. She wants to go, and finally I sat, I did sit down with her. I said, look, babe, if you want to go, of course, I'm going to help you whatever you want to do. I'm your father. Like but there was no pre If she did or didn't like whatever, didn't matter to me.
But I don't know. I want my kids to be good people.
But what if you didn't leave them anything. Well, when we think about leaving something so money. So you know, I work with Garrett Gunderson on some things. So we work on like the trust and the family constitution. So I have this family constitution in place where the kids don't just get money. You can't just sit on the count.
I love his philosophy and all that. Yeah, So it's like we have this constitution and for example, if you have this great business idea, then it gets vetted and if we it's gonna do you.
Get the money?
Yeah, And that's the part of like you want to benefit of being in the family and having that name. Yeah, it's there and it gives you an opportunity. It doesn't give you a handout, right, And I want you.
Want to buy a house.
If you can qualify for the house and you can afford it, then we'll give you the money for the house. But there's no free handouse. It's just help handouts, not handouts. So that's kind of the way that I think about the generation wealth. It's more about education and then there's help if you need. I guess my what the way I think about it is even if I didn't pull that off. Can I still be content? Sure? You know. So that's where like, am I optimizing for something? Well,
our contenment doesn't come from that from exact sources. I mean we're both men of faith, Christians as you say or whatever, so our contentment doesn't come from that. I love what you said about being made in God's image, and I think, uh, Genesis one tells us who God is and God was a creator. Hey, yeah, and so we're meant to be creators. And that's why I try to tell my kids, like, we're not got simmers, we're creators.
We literally wake up and just try to create my more in some of my buddy this morning, flying out and he goes, what do you do you get up at four o'clock? You ask my son? Does your dad really get up that early?
And my son's like.
Yes, because what do you do early in the morning? I said, I create connected to my Creator. Yeah, Like, I don't even I can't tell you what tomorrow morning is going to hold because I try to get quiet and ask God what you got for me? Yeah, let's talk like man, when I when I give it to you and listen, My life is pretty spectacular it seems to be a winning recipe and when I try to control it and manufacture it and strategically and it's kind Funnyuse I wrote a book and like agenda, I no agenda,
no attend to kind of craziness. I just I just I'm like, really, I'm always trying to question beliefs and philosophies to see is their opportunities to do more because it's hard to know. You can't split test life right. You're not gonna get the end of the day and say, Okay, I did it this way. I can go back and try it a different way. But we can try.
These thought experiments.
So that's that would be my invitation anybody listening is like, again, the word legacy is so fully loaded. Sure we'd have to sit down and define what does legacy mean for you? For you? Yeah, for you? And do you and and do you need this or is it like where does it fit? And if it doesn't happen, you can feel horrible because then I just I'm just always worried that people have these things they feel need to be true
for them to feel a certain way. And if you if you do have a faith, the truth is no, but from that place you create, right, it's the absolutely grateful for everything you have and also realize that you're here to create more and if it works out, cool, if it doesn't, cool, And that's the that's kind of where I've gotten to And guess what often wrong, never in doubt. I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow.
That's the thing I.
Love about like Anvall or a lot of the philosophers, is that you know, it's almost like, if you don't contradict yourself, are you really growing? Yeah, because the definition of growth is new beliefs, new mindset, which means that you have to change the things you used to believe. So a lot of people that have never contradicted themselves for fifteen twenty years, I questioned their growth. Yeah, it's zero based accunting, and I call it zero based thinking.
And I learned that from Brian Tracy and he said that knowing Einstein said, the answers changed. So knowing what I now know what it's been different. So I made the best decision I could at the time. But knowing what I now know, I think that's a great place to end your a legend.
Appreciate it.
I just think the one word I think is so powerful, and I think it just sums up maybe the book and everything we talk about. It is just intention, living with intention, figuring out what you want, going to get it, Dan Martel, you're prolific online, so everyone can find you their willing to your staff if you don't mind me, Mark, Like a lot of people read the book and they get stuck on the first hire. I don't know, chapter five,
I talk about this. If anybody wants my internal sop for my you met and my executive assistant, just follow me on Instagram. You know everybody's on Instagram. Follow me on Instagram, message me Mark EA, and I'll send them that direct link. No opton, no nothing. It's my gift to them. And it's literally a forty page document with everything my assistant does for me. Yeah, and they can pick and choose the parts that might make sense for their life and just my gift for your audience.
Oh that's awesome.
We're going to link to that and the notes down below, and I when do that. Thanks awesome, Thanks Mark,