Dan Martell:
I should never deploy labor dollars to hire somebody unless I've already figured out how they're going to make me 10 times what I pay them.
Chris Dreyer:
Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, the legal marketing company that the best firms hire when they want the rankings, traffic, and cases other law firm marketing agencies can't deliver. On this show, I've been fortunate enough to learn from some of the best minds in PI, and now we're bringing them together in one place at the first-ever PIM conference. PIMCon is coming in Scottsdale this September. We're laser focused on one thing, giving more leads. I'm not talking about just any leads, but quality leads that actually turn into cases. That's it. That's our entire focus. It's not just theory.
We're talking about actionable strategies that have been tried and tested by the best in the business. If you're looking to conquer personal injury marketing and go from good to GOAT, PIMCon is where you need to be. We've gathered the top of the PI marketing experts to share their secrets, and believe me, this is cutting-edge stuff you won't find anywhere else. Don't miss out on another potential client. Grab your ticket to PIMCon now and get ready to supercharge your practice, your future self will thank you. Go to pimcon.org. That's P-I-M-C-O-N dot O-R-G. All right, let's dive in.
Dan Martell is a name you'll want to remember. His journey is fascinating. He started his entrepreneurial path at 17 and by his own admission, faced two failed businesses before hitting his stride. But when he did, he became unstoppable. By 27, he had his first million in cash in the bank. Since then, he's only picked up speed. He's buying and scaling software companies at an impressive clip. We're talking about acquiring a company every month. As the brains behind SaaS Academy, Dan's helped over 1,000 founders skyrocket their growth. We're talking at 209% boost and recurring revenue in just a half a year. Dan's not just about tech. He's taking his hard-won lessons and translating them into strategies for service-based businesses. Imagine applying all those lessons to your law firm. Dan shows us how to overcome those hurdles to keep most firms stuck in neutral. We'll explore strategies to multiply your impact without multiplying your workload and learn how to reinvest your practice for maximum payoff. Here's Dan Martell on how he made his first million.
Dan Martell:
I think I was 27 when my accountant called me up and he asked me, he's like, "You want to hear something cool?" I'm like, "What?" He's like, "You have a million dollars." And when I say a million dollars, I mean like cash in the bank, taxes paid. Some people are millionaires, but it's not real money. It's like paper millionaires, real estate millionaires, et cetera. What changed for me, that company, because prior to that I had two failed businesses. Even though people that follow my online stuff and I have millions of people follow me on the internet and I have my own jet and supercars and beautiful homes and all that stuff, I'm not that impressive, and I'll tell you why. It took me almost a decade to finally figure out business. I started when I was 17 and it took till I was 27 to finally start making any money and two failed companies.
What changed for Spheric Technologies was very simple. I was new to reading. It was funny, because I taught myself how to code and write software at 17, but it wasn't until I was 23 that I actually read business books, which sounds, again, I'm not that impressive. It's like, well, that's weird. Why would you only read programming books? I thought that was a problem to solve. So what happened was is I read a book called The E-Myth, the Entrepreneurial Myth by Michael Gerber, which talked about building systems and playbooks. And I'm like listening to this audiobook driving and I remember I was staying in Ohio and I was going to Greenbelt Maryland to meet with a potential business partner. And on that drive I'm listening to the E-Myth, because I didn't even read books, I listened to it while I was driving. It's kind of a captive audience, and it spoke to me.
I realized that this was how I did not build my previous companies, and it was 100% dependent on me and it was stressing me out. So first thing I did is I hired a business coach, this guy named Bob. And at 23, $1,500 bucks a month, no business because my partner I was going to start that company with, he didn't want to read the book. And I was like, if you don't read the book, then I can't even start the business with you. And that's what changed. I mean, it sounds so funny, but having somebody who's been there before give you guidance, today I would never, ever do anything without that. That's the cheat code. I am literally a professional at saying, here's where I want to end up. Who's done it before? How do I get in front of those people?
And I hired a business coach Bob, and Bob taught me the business side that I had never been taught, and he taught me how to think about marketing and sales and finance and teams and all these different things that I just, I don't know, I just thought maybe I'd learn along the way. And within our first year we did 970,000 in revenue. That was a big shift for me as hiring somebody who'd been there before that showed me the way to do it and the sequences and the steps, it changed everything.
Chris Dreyer:
And you didn't stop there. So you've read over 1,800 business books, probably over 2,000 now. So you had this unique concept that you referred to as the pain line as owners grow their business and can you really expand on what that is and what causes founders to want to sell, stall, or sabotage their business?
Dan Martell:
It doesn't matter what level you're at, you could be 300,000 a year as a specialist. You could be doing a million a year, you could be doing 3 million a year, you could be doing 10 million a year. And what happens is if you don't build the business right, you'll get to a point where more growth equals pain. What most people do is they hit the pain line and they usually do one of three things. They either decide to stall, they'll say to themselves, "Last year I made the same amount of money, I was more profitable because I didn't decide to grow. So you know what? I'm going to go back to that." Problem with that is the market is not going to stop growing. So gross domestic product expansion happens every year. Your customer's requirements on you providing a better service every year compared to your competitors grows their expectations.
And the most important one is that your top people want to work in an environment where they have opportunity for growth. Because if your vision for your business isn't big enough for everybody on your team's dreams and goals that fit inside of, the best people will eat. So stalling is not an option, although people think it is. The other option is sabotage. So sabotage is a funny one because unless you work with a coach, it's hard to know when you're sabotaging. So for example, one of my clients that I worked with, very successful CEO, he built the strategies, implemented all the stuff I taught him, and then got a bunch of time back and he texted me one day and he goes, his name was Trevor, and he goes, "Hey man, I'm about to go on vacation for six weeks to Thailand and we're going to see how the team holds up. Thank you for helping me build it so that I can leave for six weeks." And I just replied, "Sabotage?"
Where in our coaching did you think it was a smart idea for the CEO of the business not to be present for six weeks? That's unfortunately not what leadership is about. So what happens in sabotage is people will make decisions to create chaos to then give themselves a reason to then stay small and it's so subtle and it comes on a bunch of beliefs and mindsets about actually achievement of the success. But the big one I see is people have opportunities in their inbox to go and grow their business and they drag their feet to reply, and by the time they reply, the person's like, yeah, we already solved, we fulfilled that order, or we already found somebody. And they don't even realize they're doing it.
They're just overwhelmed and they don't have time. And they're just like, "I'll get to it on the weekend." And that turns into next weekend because they're not ready and that's sabotage. And then the third S. So we got stall, sabotage, and the third is sell. And I always get the call. I have so many incredible entrepreneurial friends, but when they get overwhelmed, I usually get the call and they usually say something like, "You know, Dan, I think it's time for me to sell." Usually my follow-up question is, "Well, what's stressing you out about the current business?" And they usually say, "Well, this person quit and I'm doing this and we had this happen and da, da, da, da." And I say, "Well, if those weren't true, would you want to build this business?" And the answer is always like, "Well, of course." I go, "Well, here's the deal, your frustration just uncovered your complexity ceiling."
So everybody's got one. Everybody has a level of complexity that if they hit that, they feel overwhelmed. And I said, "It doesn't matter if it's this business or the next business, you've now discovered what that ceiling is. So in this moment we can either decide to resolve this and I'll give you some strategies to overcome those challenges, or that is just your limit. That is your upper limit of possibility of value creation and that's what it's going to be." So the pain line for me is a beautiful point for you to realize this is my opportunity to grow. And I teach it in the book, the buyback loop is how you fix it.
But the way I think about it is this is I think the world presents you circumstances to show you you where you're not free. So think about this, the world as you live in the world, your fears, your frustrations, your emotional, I call it sometimes people get emotionally flooded and create emotional shrapnel. That emotional shrapnel is literally the world showing you where you're not free. And in that moment you can decide to go do the work to become free and become better, or that's your limit, that's your complexity ceiling and the pain line will always be the maximum you're ever going to be able to build in a business.
Chris Dreyer:
When I'm hearing this right, it's natural to think about yourself, but I think about our audience too. It's like a lot of times it comes with delegation. You worked the 100 hours just because no one could do it as good as me, so they're doing it there. But then is it also the people component of Dunbar's number where that becomes an issue and the interconnectedness and maybe having a fully a large HR department, what would you see as the common ones that maybe you've experienced or you've seen that individuals have?
Dan Martell:
Yeah, I mean, I've experienced it all. That's why I wrote this book is this morning I was talking with an entrepreneurial friend. I do a hike every Tuesday morning. So lots of conversations Tuesday morning helping people. I just pour into people. I'm like, if somebody wants to learn from me, they can literally fly to my hometown Tuesday morning, 6:30 and we go hike a mountain and it's open to the public. And so this one founder asked me, they go, "Well, how do you know when you should decide to do something new?" Because that's usually the thing that gets people. Most people, if they're actually focused on one business, over time they'll figure it out because it's one thing. Where people get themselves in trouble is where they're successful, a little bit successful, let's say they start making a little bit of money in the thing and then they decide to start doing other stuff.
And what I told him, I said, "See, the goal in business for me is I'm a who, not how kind of guy now. So I don't actually try to find out how to do something. I try to find somebody who's going to own it because that's actually how I buy back my time." And the problem is that if you have a lot of little things, let's say I have a friend, he's got 30 different businesses, but they're little businesses. They're tiny little businesses. They do about a million to 2 million a year each. If any problem happens in that business, he gets the call, because it's too small to have professional management or a CEO in it, and he has all these little businesses that he has to take care of and make sure all the plates are spinning. The alternative is having what I have.
I have a lot of companies, but they're big companies. And what's cool about having a big company and a real team is that when fires erupt, I don't get the call, because I hired somebody to run the company and that person will try to solve it themselves and usually they can. And I never hear about it and I don't need to hear about it. Why do I share this? If you're starting off, there's skills that you need to stack to get to a place where you can deal with the people problems. At the end of the day, that's all business is. It's either a process problem or people problem. Some people blame the people, but it's just a process. They literally, I always say don't hire somebody and tell them what to do, hire people and train them what to do, but I don't tell people what to do.
If I hired you to do a role, I can't tell you what to do, because then I didn't actually gain any benefit of hiring you to do the work, then I got to tell you what to do. I'm allowed to train you. And I think that's a very unique distinction that some people don't get. And again, in the book I talk about 80% done by somebody else is 100% freaking awesome. Learn the skill of recruiting, Chapter 6, Talent Pipeline. I talk about it, test first hire method. Recruiting, developing, and retaining talent. That is the job. What is an entrepreneur? Yes, have a vision, know we want to solve a problem, but at the end of the day, you're not going to do it all yourself, which means you're going to have people that's going to support you. So to the degree you develop your leadership skills to be able to identify, recruit, develop talent, and retain talent, that's skill.
That was the unlock for me. That's what I didn't know before I hired Bob, my business coach that he really dialed in. He goes, "For example, if you don't have some organizational chart that shows everybody what they're responsible for and then a document that explains how to do the work, then you can't be mad at the people that don't do the work the way you want to because they didn't even know that they were responsible for it, because you never told them." So it's like stuff like that that I think is, it's kind of a beautiful frame to think about it. It's like, my job is to become world-class at identifying, recruiting, developing, and retaining talent. And if I can do that, every dream on my vision board that I can think of, everything I want to create, every nonprofit I want to support, all the impact I want to have is on the other side of my ability to do that.
Chris Dreyer:
I think that's incredible and that makes me think of the rule by delegation, not abdication. And I think with your book, and I told you right before we started, I was like, it hit different the second time because the second time when I was reading it, I was experiencing a lack of freedom and some of the burnout and stress. So buy back your time, it teaches entrepreneurs at every level how to avoid this. So this was a lot of effort. 10 years of just putting all these lessons together, what caused you to break it all together and why did you decide to write the book?
Dan Martell:
You know what's interesting is if I would've wanted to write a book four or five years ago, this wouldn't have been the book I probably would've wrote, but what happened was is I started building my personal brand and right now we have millions of people that follow me on all my different social accounts and they were the ones that pulled the book out of me. I've been teaching the buyback loop forever, for 15 years. Because it was the tool that I developed for myself to essentially build what I call the empire. And I know that word scares people, Chris, but the empire in my world is a life of unlimited creation. You never have to retire from, at the end of the day, if you don't have an assistant, for example, you are the assistant. So people need to understand. And guess what? You probably suck at the job and you're overpaid.
My audience pulled the book out of me, but the way I wrote the book was quite unique. I sat down and I wrote down about 25 people's names. These are people that are family members, my best friends, colleagues, investment CEOs that I've hired. They're people that I really have a lot of admiration for, but there's levels at the different parts of the strategies I teach that where they were blocked and I wrote the book for them and I literally had their names and I would cross them out. I worked with my writing partner, Paul, and it was just like, okay, we got my friend Nick and we got my brother Mo and my wife Renee. I put all these people's names and I would make sure that's why the five time assassins came from, there was a swath of people that it wasn't a tactical thing, it was a mindset issue.
It was self-inflicted time suckage that didn't fit from a strategy point of view. I was like, I got to write a whole chapter about the five time assassins. It's become one of those things where I'm on a mission to help entrepreneurs build companies that don't grow to hate. I really think that is, at the end of the day, what I want to do more than anything else in the world. I want to help entrepreneurs build companies that they don't build in a way that they grow to hate, because that's actually the biggest killer of a business is that entrepreneurs deciding to not want to do it anymore, not because the market's not there, not because they're not talented around the skill or the service, but because they built it in a way that feels horrible. And the truth is, if you follow the process in the book, it's impossible for you to build a company that you grow to hate because the more you grow, the more time you get back, which is why we started companies in the first place for freedom.
Chris Dreyer:
When that purpose and passion dries up, it's like the Venn diagram of purpose, passion, and profits just gone. You're off and that's where people look to have the exit and then it's a painful experience going through that selling process. One of the things you mentioned, I love, I had Jack Daly resonating too because I remember I was in Vistage and he was basically said something along the lines about the assistant, if you don't have one, you are one. And that hit me. You talk about focusing on what you do best and letting other individuals in and actually buying back your time to create freedom. Many individuals think of virtual assistants for the CEOs and the executives. Should PI attorneys be looking for virtual assistants for mid-managers? Maybe they're litigators, maybe they're case managers. What's your thoughts on that?
Dan Martell:
So what's fun is, I didn't write the book for this purpose, but the reason why it continues to sell more copies every week than the previous week is because great CEOs are buying it for their executive and leadership teams. The fundamentals are the fundamentals. At the end of the day, if I hired somebody that's talented, I want them to do the thing that creates the most value for the business and nothing else. And if they can have somebody that helps them with scheduling and research and management and follow up and paperwork and all this other stuff so that they can do only the thing that they can do, that's the best thing for the business. For example, I had a sales guy, Wendell and Wendell was watching my stuff. He was listening to my coaching calls. He saw me teach these principles to my clients before I ever wrote the book.
And I remember one day he asked me, he goes, "Is it okay if I hire an assistant to help me with follow-up and sourcing and data enrichment, all this stuff in the back office that wasn't anything to do with being on a call with a potential client?" And I was like, "You want to pay for it yourself?" And he's like, "Yeah, I mean, if I could do that, I could get 20 hours back a week and take those 20 hours and be on phone calls, I think I could double my output." And I said, "As long as they sign the agreements and all that stuff, I'm cool for them having access to the CRM and all that stuff." So out of his own pocket, he went from a guy that was producing a couple hundred thousand a year to doing over 350,000. He shared this with the whole sales team, and guess what? Nobody else followed his lead. Nobody else thought to themselves, "Well, I'm prospecting, I'm not talking, and I make money when I'm talking. So how do I stop prospecting?"
So from a leadership point of view, myself, every one of my leaders have an assistant, every one of them I'm looking for what is the activity that generates the most resources that they enjoy doing, and how do I support them from doing that the most? Obviously at the highest level, it's great because our executive teams, we call them executive assistants because they truly are that, they help coordinate things behind the scenes so that me and my leaders, we're working on stuff that's just like high leverage, high energy stuff.
I think the best CEOs do that. They understand at the end of the day, I've got people, I've got to unlock that resource and having somebody take over some of the low value tasks that can be done, especially when you think about international, there's huge ROI of having somebody, well, you're done for the day. 5:00 P.M, you wind down, 6:00 P.M. you wind down and you go to bed, or you go play with family and the next morning you wake up and there's eight hours worth of work done, finished for you to review in the morning. That is, I mean, that is super strategic and valuable, and I think a lot of businesses should consider it
Chris Dreyer:
Pricing arbitrage, and I think a lot of the PI attorneys listening, it's the after hours intake on different time zones could be really beneficial.
Dan Martell:
Yeah, my philosophy, Chris, on hiring is this, if you do it right, every hire is free.
Chris Dreyer:
Oh, expound.
Dan Martell:
Every hire is free. I should never deploy labor dollars to hire somebody unless I've already figured out how they're going to make me 10 times what I pay them, at least five times. Like you said, nighttime intake forms replying, what's that sales velocity worth? If I can pull two or three months' worth of sales into this calendar year, what is that worth? Why? Well, if somebody is doing nights and weekends, all of a sudden 30% of my week has now got coverage, I'm pulling 30% more of the opportunities into the week, the month, then I have more bandwidth to do other stuff, whereas... You know what I mean? It's just fascinating that people don't think about that, because that is at the end of the day, one of the biggest opportunities. But yeah, every hire I make, before I hire them, I figure out how does the equation work? Where they're going to buy my time back, what am I going to redeploy my time on? What are they going to do that's going to create value for the business? What's that continuity worth? And if you do it right, every hire is free.
Chris Dreyer:
In the world of high-performing businesses, time is more than just money, it's the ultimate currency. Enter the buyback rate, a revolutionary concept pioneered by Dan Martell. This isn't just about knowing the value of your time. It's about strategically investing your own freedom. The buyback rate is a powerful tool that helps entrepreneurs calculate the true cost of their time and make informed decisions about delegation and resource allocation. It's the secret weapon and allows top performers to focus on what they do best while building scalable, efficient operations. As we'll hear, this concept isn't just about theory. It's a practical approach that Dan used to write his book and scale multiple successful businesses.
Dan Martell:
The buyback rate's a formula, and I'll let them read the book to get the equation, but essentially it's an argument that says every CEO or individual has a value creation score annualized, they create revenue every year. And so if you have a million dollar business, that's your value creation score. You're a million a year producing person, and some people stay there for the rest of their lives. If you know what your value creation score is, then you can figure out the math, and I teach you in the book where you can figure out what your hour's worth and then what your buyback rate is. So how much should you spend and only up to that amount to pay somebody else to take something off your plate? Because the other thing is, some people make the mistake of like, I got a little business and I hire a COO.
Well, paying somebody 150 grand as a COO when your business does 300,000 a year does make zero sense. So the buyback rate is almost there to protect entrepreneurs from themselves, from growing above their abilities based on what the business is at. So some people run the numbers and they go, well, my buyback rate is $4 an hour. What should I do? And usually my answer is, raise your prices, fix your cost structure, increase your gross margin. It's not my fault. You have a business that is not very profitable, fix that. It's possible, and then you get to invest in buying back more time. But once you have that, then you get to deploy it. So when I was writing the book, I have this other principle I teach in the book called The 10/80/10 rule, is I want to do things that leverage my unique ability that creates value.
So at the end of the day, the book had to be promoted, the book had to be written. Those are the two things I'm responsible for. Dan is the face of the promotion, so I need to be the person on the podcast. I can't buy back that time until we get AI good enough where I'm not here. Maybe I'm not, you never know. Woo-hoo. Is Dan really on this call? I don't know, but for now it's me. And so I focused on relationships and promotion, and then what I did is I built a book team. So I had Lucinda, my agent, Ron, my book CEO, I had Paul, my writing partner, we had a researcher, Chris, we had a bunch of people support the book, but I was still involved in every aspect of it. The book is written by Dan. It was videos in different parts, and when we transcribed it and then edited it together, then I would sit down and I would only be involved on certain writing sessions with Paul once the processing was done, the research was done.
And it was more the first 10% of the ideation of the book outline, the last 10% of the integration of the big ideas, and that's how the book got written using my buyback rate, because I know what it is and how I could deploy that to buy back time with talented people. Now, I'm not starting at zero. I'm a first-time author, I'm not a first-time entrepreneur, so my buyback rate is very, very high. Somebody asked me, I had an event once, and I told them, and it made everybody feel uncomfortable. But that's just the reality because I know what level of income my empire does. So every hour I'm not doing something to increase the value of the empire, that's not a good use of my time. That's the way I think about it and the book was no different.
Chris Dreyer:
I think that's incredible. And I want to circle back to the point where you said like, hey, an individual's got a decent business and he goes to start the second one, and right before he knows it, he's trying to hire this executive, but maybe there's not enough revenue. You talk to about your friend that's got 30 individuals. I mean, you hear stories about Andrew Wilkinson and Tiny and Buffett and all these guys.
Dan Martell:
I know all these people.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah.
Dan Martell:
If you talk to Andrew, the first thing he'll tell you is, I hire a who before I buy a company
Chris Dreyer:
Before.
Dan Martell:
Yes, he knows who's going to run the company before he buys it because he's not running the company. Andrew's like me, I buy software companies. We do a company a month. I'm not running those companies. I have a team of CEOs that we've identified that we've got on the bench ready to go so that when we find an opportunity that fits what they want to do, we put them together. But that's a who, not how thing. The how process is building the pipeline. I did a whole video on this, how we buy a company a month, but it was building the marketing engine, the deal engine to be able to identify, and then the due diligence involved in purchasing a company.
And then what do we do in the first 100 days to make it viable? But no part of operation is done by myself or my business partner. We bring in CEOs that are talented to do that because that scales. You build an engine to identify acquisitions, you put them through the machine on the other side, you pair the company with the CEO, and you do one a month, you get it to two a month, you get it to one a week. All of a sudden you've got a pretty cool business.
Chris Dreyer:
As kind of a separate, just wanted to hear your thought process on this is because you said, hey, if you didn't have the stress, you'd never want to sell your business. You've got Felix Dennis, and I think it's How to Get Rich, or I don't know the exact title of that book. He talks about true wealth is through ownership, but you hear these individuals like, oh, you got to have an exit before you can get wealthy. You listen to Sam Parr or whoever on My First Million, they're always talking about the exit. And this is different, you're acquiring, you're holding. So how do you think it-
Dan Martell:
I'm buying revenue. So I don't know what Sam or Sean's perspective is on this. I mean, I know they like to talk about the exit, because it's chocolate, people want to watch that video. But I mean, they've interviewed a bunch of my friends that have very healthy cash flowing businesses like Syed Balkhi. I coached him in my program SaaS Academy and he's got 100 million in revenue every year. I can't believe he shared that. I remember when we coached him, he was very, don't tell anybody, but he's growing up. He's feeling comfortable with it. There's two parts to this, because again, this morning I had this conversation on the hike, these hikes, if anybody's interested, you're invited, whatever, it's there. Because somebody asked me that, they said, "How do you think of increasing your wealth? What do you invest in?"
And I laughed because I said, "Look, here's the deal, first thing about wealth..." And you can study all the top people, including Buffett, including Bogle, including whoever, they made it make doing one thing really well. And I think the best thinking around this is actually one of my mentors where he talks about the idea of equity ownership, but he said, every one of these wealthy people did it by getting really good at a thing and doubling down on that and then figuring out how with that skill set, could you, because you're really good at a thing. For me, it's software for other people, it's real estate, some other people... But the fallacy is people go like, oh, most wealth was created with real estate. No, it wasn't. Most millionaires were created because of real estate, but anybody that's built like 100 million dollars net worth, it came from ownership of a business and valuation of the business, meaning they created a business they could sell.
See, a company you could sell is a great company to own. So even if you never plan on selling it, you should build it in a way where it could be bought because it's valuable. So when I look at my PNW, my personal net worth, which I think active income is, it's something you should aspire to until you get enough cash flow in your active income to be able to live a high quality life, then you should focus on PNW, your personal net worth. When I look at the growth in my PNW year over year for the last 20 years, the big wins came from ownership equity in businesses and for me, software businesses, because that's what I know really well. And so at a certain point, my lifestyle is covered by my active income and my cash flow, then I take my know-how, and I go apply it into acquiring these assets that I know how to do.
That's what I mean. You look at private equity firms, what do they do? They buy a company, it's a platform. Then they do roll-ups around that platform. Then they take that revenue and then they sell it to somebody else. So you could do that yourself in your own business, but I mean, most people, it's funny, because they're like, "Oh, should I invest in index funds or should I invest in this and that?" It's like your biggest ROI is investing in your business. If you don't know how to invest money in your business, then go figure out how to build that skill.
So Warren Buffett always looks at ROE, return on equity. ROE in a business at the low end is 50%. I don't know what kind of deals you got in the market, but nobody's doing consistently 50%. Now, is there a risk in having 100% of your personal net worth tied up in the equity in your business? Yeah. Could you get some liquidity? For sure. You could sell a piece of it if you want, and then share those distributions. But in regards to, I've got a $1.00, where should I invest it to get a $1.50 next year? Most people should be investing in themselves, become better, and then their business.
Chris Dreyer:
I think that pairs so nicely with your book Buy Back Your Time, and especially you choosing the SaaS from a leverage perspective and Ravikant, you get a ton of leverage of SaaS and the ownership there a unique conversation that I don't think is talked about enough. It's like, but I agree with you. A lot of people when I'm hearing when they're talking to even me when they're wanting to sell their businesses is because they don't like some component of it or they feel that it's at risk.
Dan Martell:
Those are things they can fix if they want to go and invest in themselves and then invest in the business. And that's, to me, it's like either somebody else is going to do it. The person that buys it is going to do it, or you could do it. And I love the fact that, again, going back to the world will show you where you're not free. Your business is this perfect dojo for personal development if you look at it through that lens. It's just some people stress themselves out over opportunities that they should be grateful for.
When I run into a big challenge, I actually say to myself, cool, worthy opponent. It's been a while. I love this. I get an opportunity right now to show myself I'm as good as I thought I am, or I don't, and I crumble and I feel bad for myself and I retreat and I don't want to sell. I just think that people got to decide. If you want to give a gift to another person, one of the most important things, inspiring things you could ever do is the gift of inspiration, but nobody's going to inspire another person by playing small.
Chris Dreyer:
What new projects do you have that you're excited about? And just one final question, where can our audience go to learn more about you?
Dan Martell:
What I'm excited about is building teams. So I just got back from spending two days with John Maxwell. He's become a mentor of mine. He is a leadership goat, 77 and going strong. He's written 90 books. So spending time with John and seeing how he shows up, that's the thing I'm most excited about. I realized a long time ago that my ability to impact the world is going to come on the back end of reach and reputation. So do you have a good reputation? If not, fix that, that's character. And reach to the degree that you build, an audience that you can then plug things into.
So that's what I've been building for the last year, just a media company, increasing our reach and then learning from people like John, how to produce more content and serve more people and be a leader, not because of a title or a position, but because of the influence you have through your character and your experience and how you help people before they ever get a chance to meet you. That's why I do podcasts. I love it. I love talking to different communities of entrepreneurs trying to help them out. I just want to see everybody win. I mean, anybody follows me online, hopefully you get a feeling real quick like, I'm Dan and I'm your friend. I want to see you win probably more than anybody you have in your life. I will be your biggest cheerleader, and I just think that's my favorite thing to do in the world.
Chris Dreyer:
I love that. Love the enthusiasm and the candor. Just the, hey, this is what worked for me. This is what I see. Just-
Dan Martell:
That's all I can ever share. This is what worked for me and it may work for you. I'm never going to teach you stuff I don't do, and if it works, use it and if it doesn't, discard it, and that's fine.
Chris Dreyer:
Thanks so much to Dan for coming on the show. As a special gift, Dan is offering listeners his internal executive assistant SOP for free. It's 37 pages of pure gold. All you need to do is follow Dan on Instagram and DM him the letters EA and he'll send you the doc directly. No opt-ins, no sign-ups, nothing. His Instagram link is in the show notes. All right, Dan had so much to share. Let's hit the takeaways.
As you grow your firm, more cases, more staff, more everything, it can feel overwhelming. That's the pain line, the knee-jerk response to sell, stall, and sabotage. When you're drowning in cases, your inbox is exploding. It's tempting to just maintain the status quo, but that's not how we build a seven-figure firm is it? Next time you're feeling overwhelmed, take a step back and ask yourself, what's the systems can I put in place to handle this growth? Maybe it's time to invest in better case management software or bring on a rock star office manager. Remember, growing pains are just opportunities in disguise.
Dan Martell:
What happens in sabotage is people will make decisions to create chaos, to then give themselves a reason to then stay small. So we got stall, sabotage, and the third is sell.
Chris Dreyer:
Come to terms with your buyback rate. Figure out what your time is really worth. Use it to inform your hiring decisions. Start thinking about hiring before you're drowning. Look into virtual assistants or paralegals who can take routine tasks off your plate. Every hour you're not spending on teachable work is an hour you can dedicate to landing big cases or refining your trial strategy. That's how you 10X your firm's growth.
Dan Martell:
I've been teaching the buyback loop forever, for 15 years because it was the tool that I developed for myself to essentially build what I call the empire. And I know that word scares people, Chris, but the empire in my world is a life of unlimited creation you never have to retire from. At the end of the day, if you don't have an assistant, for example, you are the assistant, and guess what? You probably suck at the job and you're overpaid.
Chris Dreyer:
Reinvest, put money back in your firm. Think about how you can supercharge your practice. Maybe it's time to upgrade your space to impress high value clients. Or how about investing in some cutting edge digital marketing strategies? The point is, you know your business better than anyone. Chances are reinvesting in your firm will give you a much better ROI than any outside investment. Remember folks, the goal here isn't just to run a successful firm. It's to build a scalable, efficient operation that maximizes your impact and your income. Keep pushing those boundaries, keep innovating, and never stop learning. That's how we achieve unreasonable success in this game.
Dan Martell:
Your biggest ROI is investing in your business. If you don't know how to invest money in your business, then go figure out how to build that skill.
Chris Dreyer:
For more information about Dan, check out the show notes. Before you go, do me a solid and smash that follow button to subscribe. Don't miss the next episode of Personal Injury Mastermind with me, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io. All right everybody, thanks for hanging out. See you next time. I'm out.
