This week we're re-airing an episode from 2023 with business LEGEND Dan Martell. Dan Martell is the founder and CEO of SaaS Academy. He is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and coach who has helped thousands of entrepreneurs worldwide build successful businesses. He is passionate about helping entrepreneurs achieve their goals and has consequently developed a range of resources to support them, including his podcast, "The Martell Method," and his best-selling book, "Buy Back Your Time." Don't forget to register for Tommy's event, Freedom 2025! This is the event where Tommy's billion-dollar network will break down exactly how to accelerate your business and dominate your market. For more details visit freedomevent.com
Chapter 1: Why do small problems limit your growth?
Well, here's the... Because I'm all about mental models. The mental model is this. When you start off, you will deal with $10 mistakes. And those $10 mistakes will probably frustrate you. Cell phone comes in. Oh, 90 bucks. It should be 80 bucks. Why is it over... Data over it, blah, blah, blah. And you call... You call to say, hey, it's 80 bucks, not 90 bucks. I want a refund. Right.
Or, you know, they go to a hotel and there's valet and they go, screw that. I'll park my own car. I ain't paying 15 bucks for valet or whatever. Like literally people have problems when they start off with $10 problems. And if you don't learn to elevate your size of your problems, you will always play to the level of that problem size.
So, you know, some people, if they're lucky, they graduate to $100 problems and then eventually, hopefully, $1,000 problems. And there's at some point a level where the person cannot deal with a bigger problem. And if it's 10 grand or 100 grand or like whatever number that is, could be a million bucks. And you know these people, they're stuck.
They might be worth a lot of money to everybody else, but they'll never get to their next level because they can't graduate. I call them factors of 10 problems. So what I always invite myself to do is to be comfortable with a higher quality problem.
Chapter 2: What is Tommy Mello's podcast about?
Welcome to The Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, The Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mello.
Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES, N-O-T-E-S, to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299.
and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview.
Chapter 3: How did Dan Martell overcome his troubled youth?
All right, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today is gonna be amazing because I have a guy that I wanted to interview for a long time. I'm a big fan of yours. And I always tell people, his name is Dan Martell, and he wrote Back by Back Your Time, and he's done a lot of other cool stuff. But I tell people, Why do you do everything?
I find it almost impossible to teach people how to like hire a personal assistant, get away from email. You know, what you said, listen, I got this thing called the camcorder trick that I record myself. I'm like, every time I book a flight and I'm training somebody, I just record it and I talk out loud of what I'm doing.
And it's amazing that you're here because I bring up your book, but it's almost like a phrase now. Buy Back Your Time.
Yeah. It never existed before I wrote the title. Just kidding. Never did.
Every time somebody uses it, I get five cents. People are like, how obsessed are you with Dan Martella? I'm like, I've always said Buy Back Your Time. So I'm going to do a little bit of an intro here. Dan Martell is an expert of sales coaching, B2B commerce, SaaS.
He told me earlier at Joe Polish's event, as we were having a bit of a private lunch, that he is the number one guy in software in the world. He understands it more than anybody. So kind of a jack of all trades. He understands to buy back your time, spend time with family. One of the things that really stood out to me
as I'm doing this intro, which I normally don't do this, but we just got done listening to you, is look at your calendar. I'm going to go through and look at everything you do, and I'm going to tell you what your priorities are. Is it your family? Is it your work? What is it? Is it going out and partying? Quick bio. He's at a... Kelowna.
Kelowna.
Kelowna, Canada. He's the founder of SaaS Academy from 2016 to present. He's the managing partner of High Speed Ventures. Started that in May 2021. He's the founder and CEO of Clarity.fm, acquired by Startups.co. Co-founder and CMO of Flowtown, acquired by DemandForce.
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Chapter 4: How did Dan Martell discover his passion for software?
43.
So we're talking. 26 years ago.
Back then, I mean, when I hit elementary school, we were playing Oregon Trail on the beginning of the first Apple Macintosh. So I would have been about 13.
It was before that.
I would have been about 13 years old.
Yeah. This was 1997. 1997?
So if I was 13, I was in eighth grade. I mean, we were typing on computers, not typewriters. I mean, it was... Yeah, yeah.
97.
So there was Windows 95. There still was...
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Chapter 5: What lessons did Dan learn from his past failures?
You have an unlimited budget for books, computer books at the time. And then I started building software for, for myself, websites, you know, apps, you know, digital cameras came out. They had one megapixel cameras. So I built this app that all my friends could upload their photos to. Like it was just literally the beginning of the internet. And I got to ride that wave.
And it came from a place of like literally not feeling like I was worth anything to then all of a sudden people writing about me in newspapers and talking about some of my success. So it's been a wild ride.
So how many kids do you have? Two. Two boys. Two boys. Where do you think something that I don't have any kids. I'm 40. I want to have kids when I grow up. But. Where do you think mom and dad went wrong to make you feel that way? What, what happened? Was it, was it your adolescence? Was it your siblings or was it your friends?
You know, it's funny. Cause like, as soon as I had kids, my first, I remember I was like driving around my son. I called my mom and I just said, sorry. And she's like, for what? You know, I have two younger brothers and older sister. And I said, mom, I have one. And I can't even imagine how hard this was. And we were so tough on you. Now, I grew up in an alcoholic home.
My dad was in sales, wasn't home a lot. So like there's all of that stuff. And, you know, for a long time, I would say that there was a lot of frustration and anger for what I experienced as a kid. You know, there was emotional abuse and some physical abuse and all that stuff. But today I sit here, man, and I'll tell you that like they were the exact parents I needed.
Maybe not the parents I wanted, but 100% who I needed to become the person I've become. And what's funny is that a lot of entrepreneurs, CEOs, whatever, anybody, they get pissed off at their parents. You got to understand, like, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably cut from a different cloth, right? Like you probably read a book on personal development.
My dad doesn't even know what personal development is. My mom was, she was adopted. Both her parents were alcoholics. Like she didn't grow up in any environment to teach her any good habits. So like I could sit here and be upset at them or just be like, no, man, this happened for me. And I mean it.
I think it's what drives me today to spend, you know, the thing I'm most proud of is that like I go back to that same rehab center two or three times a year, speak to the kids, share my story, support them in their sobriety. And that wouldn't have happened if I didn't have the parents I had. It was tough. I don't enjoy what I went through, but I wouldn't change a thing.
What they didn't know, though, is just how to deal with a kid like me. Dude, I got diagnosed with ADHD when I was 11.
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Chapter 6: How does Dan Martell define success and fulfillment?
It's not monopoly money. Oh man. Yeah. Crazy. I'm 23, dude. No business. Two failures. Like I could barely make the payments every month. I didn't want them to know, but like every month had to, to, to hit. And Bob taught me how business worked. And he he started with simple stuff like begin with the end in mind. Let's write your eulogy. Let's talk about vision, all that stuff.
And so I had success. And because like I went from failure to some success, like the first year we did almost a million revenue, but nine hundred and eighty thousand. And then it just kept doubling year over year when the awards got features like entrepreneur of the year, all that stuff. And I was so scared of losing that that I just I just worked. you know, and I, and I was early 20.
That was like, you know, 24 when I started that company. But at 27, I was in a relationship with a woman and she, you know, she put out with it for two and a half years of somebody that wasn't present, wasn't there, you know, canceled on her for, you know, everything from like birthday parties with her friends to whatever I was traveling 200 days a year. I just wasn't present.
And one day I came home, we had just got engaged about five months prior and Just bought our first home together. I was working on a Sunday and I went in the morning. I was supposed to be home for dinner because we're going to her parents' house for dinner that night. And six o'clock, you know, hits and I look down. I'm supposed to be home at five. So I like jump in my car, run home.
And I walk in, big smile on my face, and I find her in tears. And she's just beside herself. Like she couldn't, you know, you ever make a woman angry that she, you know what I mean? Like. I have. Yeah. Like she was emotionally drained and she just takes the ring off and drops it on the counter and just blurts out, I'm done.
And she walks past me and goes to her parents' house and that was the last they were together.
And did you, did you, did you just kind of come to terms with it or did you fight or did you?
I don't know if you know this, Tommy, but when women get to that point, it's done. It's done. Capital D-O-N-E. Like it's done. Like she was, there was no recovering from that. And I try, trust me, I wrote the emails. I asked her friends, like I did everything promise. I'm going to change. And it was a wake up call.
And you know, it was crazy as it was six months before I ended up selling the company. So everything I'd been doing for our future sacrificing ended up happening. And I'm by myself in this house, waking up lonely, anxiety attacks.
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Chapter 7: Why is continuous self-improvement important?
And it just, it aligns everything to support your dreams. I think most people work against themselves by doing stuff like that.
And I think a lot of people do it, but they don't have the experience. They don't really know that. A lot of people were raised negotiating. Like, not in the United States, not in Canada. But if you go to another country. Professionals. That's what they have to do. And I love those type of people because I love learning about the art of negotiation. But the art of the deal, Donald Trump.
You know what's interesting is I got my number one tech in the company. And he's pretty high up. Like, number one tech out of almost 400 techs. Mm-hmm. And he was in my office yesterday. And I said, Brandon, how did you double your sales in the last six weeks? You were already number one. How did you double? And I knew the answer. He started selling more doors.
And I said, but why didn't you sell doors? We've been talking about this for two years. Yeah.
What took you so long?
And he said, well, I bought a house six months ago and I installed my own doors. And he says, I couldn't believe the difference. I believed. I believed in doors like I couldn't believe the difference, the difference of the noise or the street, the difference of the way it felt in the garage and just the insulation value and just the ease of use to open your garage from the app.
And he was a customer now. And he said everything changed. So believing is half the battle. And I talked to each and every one. I wrote the book Elevate. And the whole mindset is everybody gets to win. The employees get to win, which are my coworkers. The customer wins. My vendors win. My partnerships win. So when I sit down with somebody, I get their one, three, five-year plan.
I want to get your dreams. I want to understand what your dreams are, what your bucket list is, what your goals are. I want to do that with every vendor. Every partnership I have when we partner with another company, I'm getting that stuff because I need to make sure I'm helping you win. And if we can do that... You want to buy a house in two years? Let's just look at these KPIs.
If you get a higher conversion rate, higher average ticket, and you can sell a little bit more, here's what we can do. And it's not, sales is not a bad word, by the way. So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to help you if you want to be helped. There's one thing I know. And there's one thing you should know is you trust me, right? Yeah. You know I'll bleed for you.
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