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You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet. Just go to gohighlevel.com travis. What is going on, everybody? Welcome back to the show. On this episode, it's just me, you and the mic, and we're talking a little bit more about some of the lessons that I've taken away from some of the amazing guests that I've had here on the show and on my other show, my other podcast. It's just been a lot of people over the years, you know what I mean? It's been over a thousand interviews now and I felt like I was not getting enough juice out of the interviews that I've done. You know what I mean? Like you look forward to it. And I do all this work to book and to prep and then to interview and then for about a week you promote and then that's it. Then you move on to the next episode. And so there's just this whole, you know, catalog of, of gold that we've uncovered in the last almost decade of doing this show. And so this is basically just my journ journey of going back through the catalog and learning the things that I needed to learn as well. There are lessons and takeaways that I'm taking from the guests and then kind of just sharing them with you in these mini episodes. So it's just me, you and the mic. Today we're talking about the lessons and takeaways from my time with a guy by the name of Dan Martell. Now, if you don't know Dan, Dan is a savage entrepreneur online guy, software guy, built a, built and sold a couple software companies early on like, like Clarity fm, which was sort of a precursor to Site Cameo and Use Intro and Mentor Cam and Manect, Patrick David's company. This was sort of like the first version of all of this. This sort of like pay by the minute for advice from people that you normally wouldn't have access to. So that was the first, that was one of the first companies that Dan ended up building and selling. And he remained somewhat under the radar for quite some time and then a few years ago just decided to start building more of his personal brand, do more content, do more coaching, things like that. He was, he actually had a software coaching business. I, I joined that program when I was building my software company. Now he has a business coaching business which is just more for generic, you know, businesses. I don't know the exact number in terms of what his net worth would be, it's somewhere nine figures plus somewhere in that range. I don't know exactly how many nine figures, but it's in that range because he's built and sold several companies and he's really, really good at operations and systems. And then he wrote a national bestseller called Buy Back youk Time, which really think was part of the thing that put him on the map in his personal brand is because he actually took the time to write a really good book. He's like, it's. It's a good book. It's a good product. It's not just a thing to, like, help build his personal brand. It was a. It was a real book that solved a real problem. And he wrote it very well from a place of somebody who's actually practically figured this out and applied it to a very successful degree. So enjoyed my time with Dan. I enjoy a lot of the content he puts out. He also got in killer shape. He used to be close to 100 pounds overweight, like 80, 90 pounds overweight, something like that. He just never thought about it, never cared about it. He was a tech guy. He only worried about computers and coding and all that stuff. And in the last, like five years, he went from kind of okay, like he. He lost a lot of weight a long time ago, but then a few years ago, he was like, let me see what happens if I could get in shape. And then I think he competed in a fitness show or something, but he's always walking around with a six pack looking jacked. So Dan's. Dan's doing a lot of really good stuff in the world, and I appreciate his input here on the podcast. So here's a few of my lessons, takeaways from my time with Dan Martell. Number one, very practical business lesson here. Stop hiring for capacity. Hire to buy back your time. Most entrepreneurs think that they're adding people in order to be able to grow. Dan basically pushes back against that typical normal concept and says that the buyback principle is that you hire to reclaim your time first and then use that freed up time to do the work that only you can do. The stuff that actually moves the needle for your business. You've heard the phrase, you've been working in your business, business versus working on your business. Well, this allows you to work on your business rather than in your business. And once you understand that distinction, then that's where you can unlock the next layer of growth inside of your business. It changes the mountain that you're Trying to climb. It's not just hiring people for the sake of growing or hiring people for the sake of expanding or scaling or we need somebody over there. We need somebody over there. The first goal of bringing on people is to just buy back your time so that you can spend more of your total volume of working hours on the things that only you can do, the things that you are uniquely qualified to be able to do in that way. That way you, you can come up with a real system to start with those hires. Meaning that at the beginning it's just you, you're doing everything. Okay, well then you start separating all of the tasks and projects that you have on your plate. And then you start assigning a dollars per hour for each of those tasks. What would it cost for me to have somebody else do this type of a thing? And then you start assigning a dollar per hour worth on your time. And then you go, okay, whatever's less than the doll feel I should be doing or that, that, that I should be valuing my time at. Whatever's less than that. I need to make a list of people who I could potentially hire to do those things so that they can take these 12 hours a week off of my plate or these 24 hours a week off of my plate and that time can be given back to me so that I can do more of the stuff that I get paid the big bucks to do. So stop hiring for capacity hire to buy back your time. Number two, the buyback loop, Audit, transfer, fill. So, sounds simple. Most people sk3, you audit where your time and energy are going like we just talked about. You transfer those tasks to somebody else, and then you fill that space with higher leverage work. So the problem that Dan kept seeing over and over again with entrepreneurs that he work with is that a lot of people would do the first two steps. They would, they would bring somebody on, they would audit where their time energy was going, that they'd transfer those tasks, those products to somebody else. But then in the free time that they just unlocked for themselves, they didn't fill it with the highest leverage income generating skill that they have. They filled it with a bunch of nonsense. So, or they just drifted. They just kind of were like, okay, cool, now I have some free time. And then didn't do anything. So if you don't know what to do with a free day, you'll never build a business that gives you a free day. So you got to be able to build a calendar that keeps you busy because you don't want to have A bunch of empty spots in your calendar. Like they've always said, idle, idle hands are the devil's workshop. You know, like there's just. You start losing momentum. You can start doing things that are unproductive, Start using your time in a way that does not move the needle in the business. And then it sort of affects the culture of the workplace as well. If people kind of sense that you're checked out or you're not working as much and they're required to work this much and you're not doing anything, it sort of bleeds into the rest of the culture as well. So do not forget step number three. You have to like the entire reason to do step one and two, audit and transfer, is so that you can fill the remainder of your time, your working hours with the stuff, stuff in your business that just nobody else can do. And then, you know, do that long enough until you find somebody else, maybe three people who you're going to have to hire to end up doing all the things that you can uniquely do so you can pull yourself out of the business completely. But that's a long way down the road. Don't skip some of those steps. I know I've been, I've been guilty of doing that myself in the past. Number three, your self worth. Being tied to your company will destroy your life. This one, it's almost like it was written for me. Dan had a company that he poured four years and 100 hour work weeks into. Then he got engaged. Then he lost his company and his fiance in the same stretch and nearly just, I mean, hit a wall. He sat alone in a house and had panic attacks. And he told me dead serious that he wondered if relationships just weren't meant for him. Maybe I'm just the type of guy that just can't be in a relationship. I just can't figure this thing out. Panic attacks, lost his company, lost his fiance because of his company, and then lost his company anyway. And that's what he said his mistake was. He says his mistake was that I tied my identity to what the business was doing. And he said I had to realize that the business wasn't me. I'm not the business. It is a thing that I do. It is not who I am. And, and I've had this experience myself in the past where I tied my entire sense of self worth into a company that I was building. And then if the company goes well, that might be good for a period of time, but if the company doesn't go well, then, you know, you've lost your sense of worth, you've lost your sense of identity. And it takes a little while to kind of rediscover that purpose, that rediscover that sense of self worth. So do not tie your self worth to the success of the company that you're building. It's just one company. The odds of your very first company out of the gate being the most successful one that you build are extremely low. They just are. And not to say that it doesn't happen, but because sometimes it does, but not all the time. And I would say it, it happens a very, very small percentage of the time. The majority of the entrepreneurs that I've talked to here on the show, which again is over a thousand people now, they all had a plethora of failures before they had a big success. So stick in the game. Do not tie your sense of self worth to your company because it has the potential to really derail and destroy your life. Number four, for big life decisions, ask mentors, not parents. This one's kind of tough. Basically his rule was if the person that you're asking hasn't done what you want to do, their advice is going to get you their results, not the ones that you want. Their love for you is real, right? That, that's the hard thing about parents sometimes is like, it doesn't mean that they don't, that, that they're not giving you the best advice that they could possibly give you. But their job is like, to love you and to protect you. And so if they, if you're looking at something that is a massive risk, then it's sort of their job to be like, hey, maybe don't do that. Like, it's, it's instinctual. It's in them, they want to protect you from this. Now it could be a little bit different if it, if you happen to be doing something, you know, if you happen to be, if you happen to be pursuing a path, what your parents were successful in pursuing, then maybe, maybe this can be one and the same. But I, I tend to think that that's probably not the case for most people. So just don't conflate love for good Advice is kind of the, is kind of the goal here. It's, it's that yes, your best friend might really care about you. Yes, your mom and dad might love you and might be trying to give you the best advice they possibly can. But their, their advice is going to be somewhat irrelevant for your particular path if they have not been down that path before. And to somebody who has Been down that path before. You're, you're, you're literally like speaking a different language. You're talking about different things. So stop expecting people who've never built the thing that you want to build to validate your reasoning to build that thing, especially when it requires you to take a massive amount of risk. It is not. Don't, don't conflate love for good advice. I suppose. Number five, consistency without results is just comfortable failure. Ooh, this one really stuck with me. The most common thing in the world today is someone who's consistent yet has no results. Which sucks, because being consistent is hard. Just being consistent is difficult, guys. It's not. I mean, it's the barrier to entry. It's the ticket to get you inside of the park. But once you're there, you gotta improve. You have to consistently improve over time, and you have to adapt and you have to pivot and you have to change. It's not enough to just show up. Just showing up is step one. Now, what's nice about that is that the majority of people won't even do that. They just won't show up. Like, the volume of people, like, it's crazy being an employer sometimes, because you hear all the time about people that are like, complaining about the job market and that they want to get a job and nobody's hiring and blah, blah, blah. And then as from the employer's perspective, you go through to try to hire somebody and you set up job interviews and then people just ghost you. They no show the appointment. They don't even, they don't even take the time to tell you that they weren't going to show up. They just don't show up. It's not difficult to gain an edge over the majority of people because showing up and being consistent in and of itself is really difficult to do. However, it is not the only thing that will get you results. You have to actually put in work once you're there. Once you've built the habit of consistency, then you have to adapt, you have to grow. You have to take feedback, pivot, change, move, and then maintain the consistency while you're doing that. You know, you see people that go to the gym three times a week. I've. I've had this exact experience where, where that was sort of me for a while, and then now I've seen it with other people where it's like, saw a guy in the gym the other day for the first time in a while, just because I had been going to a different gym location and I used to go early in mornings to another gym location and I, I ended up just randomly being there earlier one morning back at the other one I used to go to all the time and I saw this guy there who I used to see like every single morning, like clockwork. And I'm talking like five o' clock in the morning at the gym. Dude still looks the same, got a big old beer belly. He's probably 60, 70 pounds overweight. He has not changed one bit in like the five years that I've seen him go to the gym. Now, to be clear, I am always optimistic and happy when I see people in the gym. Doesn't matter how overweight you are, doesn't matter if you know what you're doing or not. I'm just thrilled to see people just being like, hey, you know what, good for you. You take the first step and that's really important and congrats on that. And frankly, you know, maybe he would be way worse off if he were not in the gym during that time. And maybe that's cool with him. I don't know his personal goals, but my point is to say that like, you see people go to the gym all the time. They're the same weight, they don't have any muscle, they don't have any new muscle, they haven't lost any weight. They're just the same, you see, who go to event after event and coaching after coaching and mastermind after mastermind and their business is the same exact size every single year. Consistency is not the only virtue that matters. It's intentional consistency compounded with improvement multiplied over time. And if you can do that, then, then you're going to be headed toward the goal that you have. You just have to like, showing up is important, but it's not the only thing that matters. It is the barrier to entry. It's the ticket, the park. Then at that point, it's your turn to now take the feedb, learn the lessons, strategize, move, change, grow. And then that doing that consistently over enough time will eventually get you to the goal that you're trying to get to. So great conversation with Dan Martell. He hit me up afterwards and, and, and thanked me for this one because he does a lot of these interviews and he really enjoyed our time together. We had a few viral clips that came from our conversation and so I always appreciate spending some time with Dan. Go check out the full episode with Dan over on Travis Makes friends, of course, but that's it for this episode of the show. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll catch you guys next time. Peace.