Lessons - The Ex-Convict Who Built 3 Tech Companies & Sold Them All | Dan Martell - Serial Entrepreneur

In this lessons episode, discover how high achievers outgrow old identities to pursue bigger visions. Understand why treating the organization as the product lets leaders scale beyond personal strengths, explore top-down design with talent first hiring, and learn how abundance and attachment feel bold creation without burnout. Tactics, how do you manage that idea? So an example, maybe you are great at selling and you jump on calls all the time and that's how you build your business. So how do you remove that out of your formula? Yeah, I mean most people's edge they'll call it selling, they'll call it their copy skills, they'll call it their leadership, I'm the CEO, I'm the vision maker, they'll call it their heart, their kindness, whatever it is, right, their directness. Here's what I would encourage people to consider. Who you are today is not who you need to become to achieve what you want because if you were, you'd have it. Period full stop. I hope people get my life isn't a byproduct of a decision I made today. My life is a byproduct of a decision I made six months ago, a year ago, four years ago. The reason I made those decisions is because an identity that I believed I could become and I knew I needed to become that version of me to bring those things into my life. Because if you were actually giving that you know this man, it's Jim, Jim Roni's talk about this back in the day said, you should hope you don't be given a million dollars because if you're not a millionaire yet, you'll lose it all. People think having a million bucks makes you a millionaire. My definition of a millionaire is not a person that has a million dollars in the bank account because any one of the people listen right now, I can wire you the money. Like I've been thinking about doing this because I think it'd be a great video obviously. But you don't even have to do it because you look at lottery winners. We just watched it happen with the pandemic. Yeah. Everybody got the money. It ended up back in the same pockets period full stop. So that's the thing I want people to understand. It's not the it's who you need to become to achieve. And that's why I went for me. I'd like have people get crystal clear on their vision and then make that silly list. And I love this because here's the thing. I teach them how to be crazy, whole, grateful enough at any moment right now. From that place, now we create. That's the beautiful part. From this place, I'm not saying you don't create because that a lot of people is you saying I should just hang out on the beach and come by and home. I'm like, no, you were created to create your creators, the human experience. It's why you want a new new earphone and you're inspired by people who have nice things and you don't live on the street. And you know, I mean, like just accept it. This is not a capitalism, materialism thing. This is just human experience. But it's why we create. And I want to create from a place of abundance, of pure creation, of pure giving, of pure enoughness, of pure, like, and guess what? Those people. That's your Steve Jobs. That's your Walt Disney's. That's your Elon Musk. Like, what's driving Elon? He don't need to do anything. No, he's just, he's just living in this place of, I just want to build not from a place of not enoughness. Like, there's not enough. No, like, I almost, I don't know what the number is. And honestly, I think it's different for everybody because you have that 37 billion, you know, Russian, killed himself lays down on the train track. I think it's, it's, and that's why it's so powerful. The person who needs nothing is the most dangerous person in the world. Like, you can't control literally the person who needs nothing from anybody is dangerous to everybody else to compete against them. And the same token, if that person wakes up and they start building and creating, because they don't need anything, there's no emotional response to not initially achieving. Because to them, there's no need to achieve. Again, they're, they're just like, I'm in flow. I'm in the process. I'm creating. This is, this is bone. This is crazy awesome. You know what I mean? And that's where I just got into it. It's my favorite thing to introduce people to. What is the most important difference or distinction in how you build now outside of mindset? What are the, what is the thing that you did? Is it, is it you build SOPs? And that's how you structure your organization. You bring more balance. You focus on shutting off at a certain time. Like, there's all these different ideas. It's a great question. I'm just scanning my brain, trying to pattern match what I do before what I do now. Number one thing is I focus on building the organization as a product. I don't get involved in the product. So what happens is most people when they start a business, it's the thing they sell. They honestly, they do the thing they sell. Like they're, they have a, they help people get fit. They're the trainer. And then if you're lucky, you know, and I got to plug my book, because it is one of the, the buybacker time is the process for getting out of the doing to the managing owning kind of face, right? If you're a trainer, now all of a sudden, you own a gym and you have trainers. The creation step I'm at is thinking of the problem I want to solve in the world. And then designing the company that attracts the talent that, that gets involved in the business. And I refine the business as a product itself. And that's where I play. When you talk to like people that have sold and exited their companies, most of them, when they're doing their next thing, the first question they ask is, who's going to run this? When Richard Branson decides to get into cruises, right? You got into virgin cruises. His first question, he didn't like go try to even start talking to ship makers and buying ships. He said, who's the num, this is literally, I talked him about this. He said, who's the number two at the number one company? And he goes and hires the COO at carnival and ask them, do you want to be the CEO at virgin cruises? He said, wow, yes. And now all of a sudden, he's got an organization. He gets involved at the brand level, right? He shows up for the PR stunts. He's looking at it through that lens. That's the biggest difference. I always say, when you start from zero, you start bottom up. If you're blessed to have success, the next time you do it, you start top down. And that is 100% the difference. And why is that beautiful? It's an easier energy. It's not a grind. It's not in the business. It's not even on the business. It's of the business. It's like I'm designing the thing that everybody else plays. And it's like I'm like starting a new sport and I'm deciding how the sport works. And I try this and all that didn't work. The Indians are too long or the bat. I need to make it like, you know, literally, no, you will, you attract the right. I mean, I don't want to sound cliche, but you build the culture that attracts that vision. It's 100% vision. Yeah. If you think about it, two things have to be true. You have to solve a big problem. Do you know why Elon is so wealthy? So the biggest problem. The big dude. Yeah. The biggest problems. Stuff that's wild. Like I have in my office because I just, it's so wild to me. As I've been watching Elon at zip two. I'm a software guy. So back in the zip two days to the X is first company. Yeah. Zip two sold that. Then he did X and then merge with PayPal, really. And then over the years, and I was in Silicon Valley. So every once in a while, you'd show up at a party or you'd show up at a dinner or whatever. So he's around and then he does the Tesla and solar city and then the SpaceX. And you just watch this person attack problems. They're not even problems. Like humans did know they have a problem not being able to go be multi-planetary. He made up a problem because he's, and, and what happens is if you actually think about it, is it as IQ? Is it his work ethic? Like think about what makes him, is it as level of risk? You know, he's famous for saying I had 160 million after I sold PayPal. I put 100 here, 50, you know what I mean? Most people wouldn't do that. Most people wouldn't look down at their personal net worth or cash position and say half here, half there, all, you know what I mean? Like all in, what's not? No, okay. But guess what? That's not it because risk. So if you look at it, the thing that makes him different is that he thinks bigger. Dude, it's so great. If you think about this, most people think they're neighborhood. They think they're street. How big do I think compared to my neighbor? If you're successful, a little bit successful, you think you're city. Are you not thinking you're street? No, you're not. No, you're a city. But even then that's limited. Super limited. Hopefully you get exposed to some mentors, some people that say, hey, how about your, your state? Yeah. Let's go nationwide. Elon doesn't even think the little blue dot that he lives on. He goes galaxy. That's wild. But you have to balance that influence. What I mean by that is that influence is good to help you think bigger. But in terms of even people that mentor you, you need multiple different types of mentors as well. So you need people that are just beyond you, like a couple of years, people that are even at the same level as you. I think people even teaching for me is my favorite form of mentorship because when I teach something, then I understand all the gaps in my knowledge. So you need this like this whole array. But I think that people more often than not lack that really big thinking. So they can fill all the other gaps. It's just proof by their container. I always say you can tell somebody's psychological context how they think about themselves based on their container. What's the exercise you do to even understand if you want to play that big? Because not everybody wants to play that big. They do, they don't want to admit it. If you're a human, you have a heartbeat. You know your amount for more. Like I will fight. I will die on that. It's just true. If you're hearing my voice right now and you're listening to this podcast, you know you're here to do something way bigger than what you're doing right now. Now, making that decision is scary because it's probably going to mean some really tough conversations with people you love in your life and obviously who you are today is not who you're going to have to become to achieve that thing and all that is scary. Change is scary. I get that. But if today was your last day, like it was your last breath, I guarantee most people, 99.7% population would have massive regrets for not starting or creating or doing that thing. So it's like, do they want to play at that level? My philosophy is this. You were created to expand. I mean, it's just the fact that you're human, create. What you can accomplish, that's actually not your choice. I don't believe it is my choice. I don't know what I can do. I just know the expansion is available to me and there's a part of me that wants to do it and I can do it and it can be effortless. See, that's a part. The story you tell yourself that makes it seem as hard and it's going crazy. That's the X factor because most people think, sure, I can do whatever I want. I think, listen, especially listeners of this podcast are very aspirational and they do have big dreams to compare to probably 99% of the population. But the issue is, well, if I build something that is, if I'm a nine figure entrepreneur, I've built multiple companies. If I build anything meaningful, that means sacrifices and all the other areas of my life. But I know, and I want to talk about, eventually, how you've built a beautiful relationship. You have a great relationship with your kids. I'm somebody. I've seen your health journey, dude. So you have it all. I don't have it all. I just have a direction that I'm on that demonstrates that there's a different way. And I'm going to be the first one to say I'm still trying to figure it all out. But I can just tell you year over year, there's obviously expansion. I mean, right now, like I'm playing at the billion plus level over the next three years. It's all modeled out. It's inevitable. It's like one of those things where when you design it, and it's in, it's not like why do you want to be that? Like I don't need to. And if it doesn't happen, I will, I will lose zero sleep at night. I just got, I just literally just got back from five days in the woods by myself, no devices in a van with me and my thoughts. And I thought I was going to go crazy before I did it. I was like, I don't want to do that. I don't know if you've ever done that Scott. That's wow. Think about it. Not talking to another human life that do the, they go into a cave. Yeah. That was a black okay. Yeah. Yeah. So like to me as an extrovert, I love people. I love talking, obviously. Like I was like, I don't want to do that by the third day. I fell in love with nature and myself. That was a cool thing. I really, really, you know what I mean? Like I love myself. I didn't know what that meant. And then I experienced it. And it occurred to me because I had so much fun day four day. If I do, I was supposed to be home at nine. I didn't get back to noon. I was driving around just they call it, you know, windshield therapy. It was just beautiful. And what I discovered for me and I want to invite people to understand it's available to everybody is that when you realize, like it's kind of, so the whole space and I don't want to get into like his time real, but if you take every human off of earth, trees and birds don't think in time. It's a man-made construct. And if you believe that you're more than just your body, which we are, then as I'm driving around, I'm just laughing at how much I make meaning of stuff that is an illusion of importance. That's everybody though. I know. And it's so cool once you realize it because then from that place, you can actually go create massively because in one sense, it doesn't matter. In the other sense, it does. And it does, it's kind of crazy, man. That's kind of where I got. So that's why, like, when you say what's difference about the way I used to build versus now, it's I truly look at the exercise of creation of the thing without any need. So I think it was Ramda said, involved, not attached. I think that's the best way for me to explain. Beautiful line involved, not attached. We create, it works out, cool. It doesn't. Also cool. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.