Epic Real Estate Investing - JFDI - Dan Martell's Business Playbook | 569

Episode Date: January 17, 2019

From broke to thought leader – after two big failures in the software industry, our today’s guest realized that he actually needs to learn business in order to become successful in any area of entrepreneurship. And now he has more than a few tips for us, so be ready to take it away straight from Dan Martell business playbook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Terio Media. When I look at if your goal is to build wealth and your goal is to build an empire and your goal is to create massive impact, when I look at all the people that are on my list of folks that I admire aspects of what they've done, it's because they put in the time over decades. They didn't do it over 16 months. It was decades of focus and grinding it out. And I just think that too many people are using the excuse of, well, I just don't, I'm not passionate about this anymore. All righty, welcome to the epic real estate investing show. And today is Thought Leader Thursday. I got a great show for you today.

Okay, so our guest today started his tech company at the age of 17 and failed. Started again at 19 and failed there. And then became a consultant after that and absolutely hated it. Then his first success came at the veteran age of 24 with a software company there. But the struggle wasn't done. Nope, he was stuck. He was stressed. He was overworked, underslap, and nowhere to turn for help.

So through self-education and seeking out mental, tours. In a few years, he transitioned from broke to thought leader in the software as a service space, making his first million by the age of 27. He runs the biggest YouTube channel online for software as a service. Entrepreneur, I guess YouTube would be online, wouldn't it? The former advisor to a billion-dollar companies like Hood Suite, Intercom, and Udeme. He's an investor in more than 40 startups and now helps others that share his aspiration to do the same. Wow. So please help me welcome to the show, Mr. Dan Martel. Dan, welcome to Epic Real Estate Investing. Matt, thank you so much for having me a real honor to be on here. Yeah, no, I'm glad to have you. Tell me, like,

like, we've known each other for a little while, and I've had a couple of these interviews in the last few weeks of people that I know, and I know pretty well, and I was a surprise on how little I actually know about them. So as I was preparing for this, I was doing some more research about you, and I just never, we never had this conversation, so I'd just love to do it here. What does childhood look like for someone that starts a tech company at the age of 17? Yeah, so what's interesting, about my, you know, story growing up is software literally saved my life. You know, at 17, I found myself through, you know, a bunch of things from being diagnosed with ADHD at 11 to being thrown in foster care, group homes, ended up jail twice by the age of 16. And it was in

rehab that I discovered this yellow book on Java programming. And I, uh, I actually typed in a command window and I made it say, hello world, which, you know, every software book, if anybody picked one up on JavaScript program or whatever. That is the first project you build is to make it say, hello world. And that became my new addiction. And honestly, entrepreneurship, the ultimate personal development program. And I'm alive today because some incredible people showed up in my life and believed in me when I definitely didn't have that belief myself.

And software just happened. You know, my dad, I had two loves, botany, which some of you guys might guess why. And programming. And I remember telling my dad that I may go, you know, take biology or botany as a degree. And he laughed and he said, no, you're going to stick this computer stuff. And yeah, you know, history, I've hired over 500 people in my career. Last two companies were, or last three were acquired.

The last two were venture backed, you know, from some of the biggest investors in the valley like Travis Kalnick from Uber, the CEO of Uber was investor. My company, Flowtown to Mark Cuban was an investor in my company, Clarity. And I grew up in a small town in Eastern Canada. Like literally, Matt, if you looked on a map, a place called Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. It's on, I call it the top hat of Maine. And San Francisco, where I spent a good portion of my life,

like they're polar opposites. You know, I just, I don't know, I feel super blessed to even be here doing what I get to do today. So that's the, you know, short version of a pretty long life so far. Perfect. Well, I'm glad you're here too, so. Age 17, you had a failure, 19, yet a failure.

You made it work at the age of 24. What did you learn from your failures at those first two that made it work the second or the third time around um a few things uh i i've started to read which is crazy because i read software books like you know i remember going to our local chapters you know indigo i don't know what in the u.s you guys had borders um and that's kind of how i self-taught over two-year period my dad gave me an unlimited budget for computer books so i spent three thousand dollars i think in that two-year period just consuming and devouring everything i would i didn't go out i mean i was a bit more introverted back then and it wasn't

I was 23 that I actually read my first business book. And it was a book called Never, Love is a Killer App by Tim Sanders. And I mean, to this day, it's funny because, you know, obviously we, for the most part, I'll remember our first books. I mean, I still remember reading Richard Branson's books. And then, you know, three years ago getting invited by him to, to spend a week in Switzerland.

I was a friggin' honor. And Tim is somebody I consider a friend today. But I didn't, I emailed them every year. with an update for almost 15 years until because of my YouTube channel, he reached out to me and said, hey, Dan, love to get on a call to get your advice, which is crazy because like that book transformed my life, you know, three core concept. One, acquire knowledge, you know, for your customers. I think that is a huge lesson I've learned. Two, your network is your net worth, you know, the power of people. And then three was just be a good dude. Don't be a dick. I used to think

that entrepreneurs and business people were horrible people and that's why they were wealthy. and it turns out that is not the case. That is a decision. And for most people that I've met, maybe it's just my group of people, they're incredibly giving and thoughtful and amazing. So, yeah, I owe it a lot to reading books like Tim's and many others since then.

What's Tim's last name? Sanders. Sanders, Tim Sanders. I have a very similar, I totally forgot all about this until you just said it. But when Robert Kiyosaki had heard the podcast and he reached out to me, and he wanted to meet me and went up to his office, that was like, it's pretty nice, what social media does now, right?

Bananas. Yeah, yeah. So how long have you had your YouTube channel? So I started about three years ago, and I've published every Monday for those three years, and I haven't missed the week. And, you know, it's not a big, you know, 25,000 subscribers, almost 30,000. But I speak on a very niche topic of business to business software as a service, SaaS. You've got all of them, basically.

Pretty much. There's only about my estimation, there's about 30,000. 8,000 SaaS entrepreneurs in the world. And yeah, I feel like I've got the ones that are up and coming and the ones that are building. There's some room for growth there. You've got like 7,000 more people to get. Awesome. So what does business look like for you today?

Yeah, so three parts of my life. One, I have my investment portfolio. So 43 investments now. So incredible entrepreneurs, like the founders of Intercom and Unbounce and Udeme and just a bunch a really cool folks that were kind enough to allow me to participate in their growth. And then, so managing that portfolio, talking to them, making sure that they have the right capital or advice or strategy, making connections. And then the other one is SaaS Academy, which is a group, leverage group coaching program that is new for me. So I launched out about two years ago. And I think

we've got almost, you know, 70 plus incredible software founders that I get to mentor and guide and coach. And then another third part of my life is my creators program, which is I work with at-risk youth, helping them build their confidence through building business. And for me, I think entrepreneurship is an incredible Trojan horse for betterment. And I have a deep passion for working with teenagers that for the rest of society, most of them might have given up on. And for me, I get excited to spend time with them. Got it. Because you can relate to that.

100%. I just tell them my story. And then all of a sudden, they're like, okay, this is not just some guy that read a book that's showing up. to try to teach me something. This is a guy that's not only actively doing it. And, you know, it's always funny because I never led with the, you know, if everybody follows me on social media, you'll never see me posts about watches or cars or houses and stuff.

But I've clearly done pretty well. And when I'm with those kids, they're the only ones that I actually show that stuff too. Because I've realized that they need that to really connect the, oh, this is possible. A guy that's just like me, if anything worse than where I was, is living a completely different life today. So I actually, you know, I let them sit in the cars and come to my house and all that fun stuff. Right. It's amazing how powerful just evidence can be to what you're up to is actually possible and then someone that it connects you and that's possible for you as well. Yeah, that's funny that you just said that. I was speaking on that, just had a conversation about that

two days ago. So software as a service, that's something, this SaaS phrase, it's kind of worked its way and then working more and more its way into the entrepreneur lexicon. It's becoming really popular. I don't know too much about it, but I hear what it is, software as a service. It sounds pretty self-explanatory. Is there anything more to it? Is that kind of what it is? Can you explain that? Yeah, I mean, the short history is back in the day when you bought software, it came in binders on CDs, and then you'd have to buy a server and go in a server room, get it hosted somewhere and install the software. You usually have to buy, you know, licenses up front for your whole organization, and then you had to hire somebody to manage an administrator,

etc. What shifted is all of a sudden, and the ownership was 100% on the company to adopt the technology, you know, your ERP, your software, your financial system, et cetera. Now it's pretty much, you know, try before you buy. And 100% of the adoption is on the software provider ownership. But what's cool about it is that you create this reoccurring revenue stream versus just a one-time upfront, you know, 50K, 100K deal. And what's great about it for a lot of entrepreneurs and the reason why, you know, guys that I coach like Ryan Leveck from the Ask method or Ryan Dice from Digital Marketer, you know, and a ton of other clients, you know, Darrell from FlexPay, many of them came from an information product. I mean, everybody knows,

you know, ClickFunnels and Russell Brunson, what he's done, 100 million a year company in like five years is one, the reoccurring revenue is really great. If anybody knows the business model, Like, I've never done a business outside of a subscription model just because I like the predictability and the scalability of it. And then the second is just valuation. So for a lot of companies that can get north of $5 million plus in annual reoccurring revenue, the valuations that people are getting on exits is 7 to 10x top line revenue, which, you know, I don't think is it's probably the highest out of maybe like biotech or some weird

intellectual property or science stuff. it's very rare for that to be the consistent valuation multiplier on top line revenue, not EBDA. Like literally, you know, there's companies like Vista partners, big private equity fund that are buying companies like Marquetto for billions of dollars now on a couple hundred million in top line revenue because they're so valuable and they're so predictable that it's almost like an annuity. So a lot of people are going that way.

So they show up on my YouTube channel, they show up in my email list. it's very hard to build, hence why the valuations are so great. But once you build that flywheel, you know, and really it's north of kind of 10 million plus in annual recurring revenue, it's unstoppable. Like it creates this, you know, flywheel in your industry. I have a few clients that are well past that. And, you know, they just own the market they're in. So you think of Slack, Dropbox, Trello, et cetera.

Those are the kind of tools that I work with founders to develop and scale. We use all three of those. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where when you look under the hood of every industry, there's point solutions. I'm sure you know many of them. Well, deal machine is one of my clients, David. Yeah, we said David on the show a couple weeks ago. Awesome.

Well, just an incredible entrepreneur. But like, you know, Trevor Mock from Oncarat.com, another client of mine. There's a lot of real estate guys. Daniel Schwartz, you know, from investor. Yeah, investor fuse. So all the, you know, in the real estate space, And the same is true for spawn salons and accountants. I mean, there's these vertical solutions that help them run their businesses.

And, you know, I think that if you have domain expertise in an area, building a software tool to augment your revenue streams is a really great way to build some more equity in the business and leverage the high gross margin that you might be generating through real estate information or other. Who's your ideal client? I mean, it's obviously someone that wants to start a software as a software as a service, but at what point, does it make sense for them to reach out to you? Yeah, so I have an online digital program called I Do to Exit, which literally is probably

the most valuable thing that I offer that people can buy. It does come with monthly coaching with me, but I, you know, if people are interested, they can reach out and they can chat with Michael, my scale specialist. But for SaaS Academy, it's 10K minimum revenue. So their products in market, they have product market fit, the revenue generating. But most of my clients now come to me when they're a lot further along, 25 to 100K a month in reoccurring revenue. And my job is to help them on these four core areas,

which is really about demand generation, client conversion, and then expansion revenue. Because the cool thing about software is that if you build it right and people are successful, if you think about the tools that I just mentioned, you might use, Slack, Trello, Dropbox, etc., your spend has probably gone up over the years, right?

Like you might start off with a low-end plan, but over the years it goes up. So what's great about software is, if you do a really, you know, if you strategically design it properly, if you didn't grow your new customer base at all, on an annual basis, the best software companies grow by 20 to 30% per year. So no new features, no new customers in the top of the funnel, and the business grows 20 or 30% on its own. Like, I don't know a lot of businesses that can do that, hence why software is such a valuable asset. Right. What do you like best about what you do? I love just designing stuff. I'm, you know,

I grew up as a fairly artistic guy. So, you know, building interfaces and problem solving and building user experiences has always been a passion of mine. But at the end of the day, what I've always done with business is I kind of took my nerdy software architecture mind and thinking and just applied it to how I scale companies. So understanding the six core functions of a business and how each part hands off to the next one and what information is required. and, you know, what should stay in its own core function and, you know, and understanding how that velocity allows a business to grow in a predictable, scalable way. I just find that that problem, like, solving that is, like, my favorite thing.

And it never gets old. And the coolest part is all of my clients are literally shaping the future for their customers and how the world's going to work. I mean, that's the funnest part is being able to see like an intercom. And I met Owen, the founders. And they were literally living in Ireland and no revenue to now, you know, north of a billion dollar valuation in six years, you know, and most companies using their product. I mean, that's just, that's just amazing and fascinating. So I just love how fast things move in

software. World is moving very fast. Very far. All right. What do you wish you could talk more about that you don't get to? You know, I think, you know, as most people listen, probably are more entrepreneurial nature. I just think that there's a few core ideas that I think are really important for entrepreneurs to get. One is to become the person who can deal. I think a lot of times when we run into issues, right? So, you know, when I was starting off, $10 problems were kind of a pain in the butt. If I misallocated $10 or, you know, you go up by a factor of $10 to $100 problems, you know, and I used to always be frustrated. And one of my mentors said to me, he says, Dan, you just need to become the person who can deal with $1,000, $10,000,

$100,000 million problems. Like, if you want to build that kind of empire, then you can't wish that those problems didn't happen, wish you were better. And that, that transformed my thinking because all of a sudden now, you know, challenges became opportunities, you know, and it's really like when things are not going my way, I'm like, cool, I get to learn. You never grow when you get what you expect. You grow when you don't get what you expect, as long as you understand it that way. So I think people need to talk more about that to, you know, become the person who can deal with bigger problems instead of wishing they didn't happen. Because as I've learned, the more you grow, the bigger the businesses, the bigger the problems.

And now, I mean, as you can probably testify, Matt, if one of my team members came to me with the $10 problem, I'd probably reprimand their ass. Because like, literally, you're going to waste my time. Like, pretty much if it's not north of a $1,000 issue, I don't want to hear about it. It's just not good use of time. And then the other one is just like being more decisive when my gut tells me I'm on purpose. You know, so I had this slogan called JFDI, which, you know, people can Google it to figure out what it is, but it's part of my manifesto.

So I created this, you know, Dan Martel, 2elsamartel.com, forward slash manifesto, which is just like these beliefs that I. have about life. And both of these are on there and there's probably a dozen others. But JFDI to me is about really shorting the knowing doing gap. I just figured it out. But go ahead. Some people get it right away. Some people still that are my best friend just finally figured out the other day. So it's my license plate. It's on my wall. It's printed in my garage. Like it's a big part of my life. Because if I had any skill, it was that. Is that because I came from such a low point in my life, people's expectations of me were zero. My dad used to say if you could just

find something that isn't illegal that you're passionate about, like two thumbs up. Like that would be amazing. So because of that, you know, I've always been more of an action taker. When I started reading business books, you know, there's never a time where I've read a book and I didn't say, what are three actionable things that I can implement tomorrow that I've learned, right? So JFDI to me is about saying, you know, when it speaks to my soul, I have to say yes. So I'm always default yes to especially when I'm anxious and scared about it, only when it speaks to my sold and I know it's the right decision. And those to me are two big things. I think people are like, they think about things. They wait too long. I mean, nine months, especially in the software market,

there's opportunities and they close. And if you wait nine months, you're going to read on TechCrunch or some other site that they just announced the tool that you thought of. And that's just the world we live in. One thing that you had said earlier when I'd ask you what you wish you'd talk more about, you talked about the $10, $100 problem. It's actually, it's funny that you said that I'm really enjoying this conversation. I'm learning a lot about you and I think we have a lot of commonalities I didn't realize. But that's like a little coping mechanism that I have where I'm a little bit overwhelmed with a challenge at the moment. And I just think about who would gladly trade their problem for mine, right? And then I was like, okay, that's, it's what's difficult to me is easy to somebody else.

And then I don't have that expression, but I think I'm going to adopt it, the JFDI now. Like, it's just, okay, now just, now let's just do it, right? So. Yeah, there's another, there's another thing on that, Matt, that I think is a good reframe as well is remembering that our worst day that we might have for you and I and many of people are listening is somebody else's dream day. Right. Like I never forget that. I might have the worst day. And I'm talking about some really bad stuff could happen and realize based on where I grew up,

where I lived, the family, the relationships, the bank account, all that stuff would be somebody else's dream day. And that just puts everything in the context for me. Yep. I've watched an Oprah Winfrey show a decade ago at least. And she was talking about how if you sat around in a circle with everyone that you know and everyone just emptied their pockets through all of their problems out in the middle of the floor so everyone could look at their problems.

Everyone would probably just pick their own problems back up and say, I'm glad I'm not that person over there, right? That's a good way to look at for sure. So what commonly held truth do you disagree with? I am not a fan of the fall of your passion. honestly I think people give up way too early you know it's this thing man

I just see this like I get it that we want to be passionate about it and I'm guilty of this I'm sure I've said it many times well this is a little bit contradicting what your dad had told you to do right no he said he said it would be great if you did that okay yeah I'm not saying that I did it or or he gave me good advice I'm just saying he just was wishing that I did anything that was legal

because I was passionate about a ton of stuff it just didn't get me in the right direction and look I definitely fell in love with programming, et cetera. But what I've learned over years, yeah, no, it's just a lot of people, I feel like when it gets hard, they give themselves a reason to give up. And I'm just, I'm just sick of it, dude. Like, I, you know, I mentor a lot of people indirectly through Instagram and social media and they show up my comments and email me and send me mail. It's really, you know, it's a, I feel privileged. I'm in a position to have people pay attention and send me content

like that. But the same time, you know, if you're giving up every 16 months on that thing, and to do the next thing, then you really need to ask yourself what you're doing because to me, there are moments as you can testify that even in an area you're passionate about, you've got to do the work, and it's shitty, and it's real work,

and you've got to figure it out, and you've got to grind, and that, to me, is not an excuse to just go find the next thing that you're more passionate about, etc., because when I look at, if your goal is to build wealth and your goal is to build an empire

and your goal is to create massive impact, when I look at all the people that are on my list the folks that I admire aspects of what they've done. It's because they put in the time over decades. They didn't do it over 16 months. It was decades of focus and, you know, grinding it out. And I just think that too many people are using the excuse of, well, I just, I'm not passionate about this anymore. Here's the way you know if you're using that excuse. If whatever scenario you're in was working, would you keep doing it? And if the answer is yes, then shut the F up, keep grinding and get to success.

because that is your problem. It's not you're not passionate about it. You're just sick of not winning. Does that make sense, Matt? Like to me, that's how I fix it real quick. If you were crushing your business, would you be passionate about doing your business? Yes, I'd love to. Perfect.

Go fix it. Because going to find the next business opportunity is not going to fix the problem with you, which is you didn't become the person who can deal. I know there's people listening right now that are thinking, Matt, why did you have a software as a service guy on your show? It's for this reason right here because that applies to all entrepreneurs, right? what's something few people know about you

that you wish more people did? Well, you know, I share my life pretty publicly. I mean, I share, you know, a video on the integrated life with my family and my kids, which I, you know, I allow my videographer to come into my house

at, you know, five in the morning and videotape a whole day with us just because he was fascinated by how I approach, you know, raising my kids. Because I, you know, as anybody's come through chaotic upbringing or challenges,

we kind of want to create a different life, you know, for our kids. And so, like, I share a lot, but I would say something people don't know that I wish they knew more of was just the amount of work I do with kids, which I need to do a better job of sharing that. The challenge for many of the youths that I work with is because they're underage, it's not something I can really post socially, but it doesn't mean I can't share more about it. I definitely have some reservation about a lot of the charity stuff.

I never want people to think that I'm sharing out of ego or wanting to be significance. I just now realize, especially this year, that I have an audience and I'm not using it as much as I could to shine the light on organizations that I'm involved in. That's really not doing anybody any good. So I would say that's a big part of, you know, it's a third of my life. Literally a third of my time is spent thinking about how I can help kids and how I can do more in my community. But yet, I don't think it's really well known by many people, including my close friends. You're a good dude, Dan. that's good to spend this time with you.

If there were three guiding principles for your success, and you might have touched on them already, but if there were three of them, what would they be? I would say, you know, one of my early mentors is a guy named Ken Nickerson. He worked for Bill Gates,

one of the most successful angel investors in Canada. He told me that my job, if I wanted to, you know, build software companies, is to find the smartest people I can and spend as much time as I can with them, right?

Which is the whole concept of, you know, you're the average of the five people, but he gave me this advice in context to me, essentially, after I sold my company Spiric when I was 28, I decided to move to San Francisco. I didn't know his soul. I didn't know what to do. And he said, well, this is your one mandate. Just literally go wherever meetups, co-working spaces, events, find brilliant people and just try to spend as much time as they'll allow you to without being creepy. And I'll tell you, man, that advice to this day, you know, it's why you and I met.

It's why I'm friends with guys like Todd Herman and Kevin Huddo and, you know, and just when I look at my bookshelf today, I mean, it's crazy that like 20% of those books are written by people that I can consider friends, you know, that I've got their cell numbers. I mean, that's just, that blows my mind. I go to bookstores now, dude, and I move books around. I have no, I have zero, zero care. I'll, like, grab my friend's books, put them front face. I'll put them in the editors pick pile. Like, I don't even buy books at bookstores anymore, but I'll go there just to do that because I realized that has had such a huge impact on me is just finding the smartest people you can and really adding value. But there's this guy, Otavio, I met a real quick story. First week I was in San Francisco.

And I don't know if you've ever seen this iPhone app. It was called Quest Visual. And essentially, you put it in front, it was a video screen and you put it in front of a Spanish sign and it would translate the sign in the same color and font in English. So essentially, you could look through this app and it would translate the world. So I met Otavio when it was a prototype. He built it on iPhone 3, and I know enough about software. I thought it was a fake magic. I thought he was like messing with people, right? He had these cards in his wallet. And I was like, dude, you hard coded that. That's not true. And I said, show me the code. And I'm reading the code. And I'm like, holy cow, he cracked the nut. It's a very tough problem. And I spent a lot of time with Otavio. You know, like any moment

we'd go out and play soccer, we'd hang out, the guy sold his company to Google and is still one of my good friends today that I can turn to with any hard math problem. To have guys like that in my life means that I can come up with any crazy idea and know within 10 minutes if it's feasible or not based on where we are today in the technology world. And I think that no matter what industry you're in, and this is probably number two of like the big life lessons, number two is become a student of your industry. The other day I was sitting with an entrepreneur that's in that actually in the property management space of all things, right? And, you know, you know, He was doing like half a million a year as a property manager.

And I said, who are the top property managers in the city? He's like, I don't know. I say, well, what does the top property managers in, you know, Canada, what are their average revenues per year? I don't know. Who's got the top three YouTube channels for property management? I don't know. I like literally, it blew my mind because I will tell you, when I enter in new markets and I've

done this several times in my career, I buy the top books on Amazon. And that's the cool part. We live in a world where somebody writes 20 years of their. life into a book that I can consume in six hours and it cost me 20 bucks. And if you are that frigging ignorant that you think you don't you shouldn't read that, you're crazy and you're working way too hard. So one, I always get the books. Two, I definitely want to figure out where the online communities exist so that I can go and get, you know, influenced by that. And then third is I try to figure out where they get together in person because I'm a, I'm a person guy. I learned so much

sitting down with you, Matt, and just like asking you a ton of questions about your world to really piece together things, right? Yes, I read the book so I don't sound like an idiot when I'm asking questions, but at the same time, I'm very much a people learner. And I think if you did those two things, you know, spend as much time as you can with the smartest people, you know, and two, become a student of your industry. And here's the, and this is the key. And Tim Sanders taught me this in his book is do it for your customers. That's the nuance. I study SaaS, yes for myself, but more importantly for my customers, my coaching clients, my investment portfolio, so that I can always bring them the latest and the greatest and the best. And that's how I add value,

which helps the first thing, which is spend as much time as you can with the smartest people, you know. If I had to pick a third morning routines, I think that you own your morning, you win the day. And to me, it's whatever you want it to be. I think you should have it stack. The best book on this, if you had to make me pick one, Hal Elrod, another good friend of mine wrote Morning Miracle. And he's got, you know, I think it's called Savers. It's an acronym for, kind of the ritual. But my first, you know, pretty much my whole morning for the most part is part of a ritual. But I would say that first hour of my day, I've got a very structured process for how I review kind of my goals that I'm achieving. And this is quarterly. Like, it's so crazy how there was a point in

my life. I still remember, I didn't review my goals every day, which to me would just sound so stupid. It's like, why would I not look at my goals, then look at my day and make sure that what I'm about to go do? And even though I plan on Sunday, I still do a daily review. or do gratitude journaling, right? Like every morning I have a five-minute journal, which I think is an incredible tool, and I do gratitude journaling. Or, you know, I wake up and I drink a half liter of water.

And some people, you know, another great book is called Own Your Day by the guy from Onet, Aubrey Marcus. I mean, you want to take your day to the next level? Read Aubrey's book. But, you know, he talks about putting sea salt and I think is lime in your water, which is a good idea. I mean, just these little things, like wake up, check a half a liter of water, follow your process. I read 10 pages of a book every day, religiously.

Every day I sweat. I call it sweat every day. I just got back from CrossFit. Like to me, you know, if it's 10 minutes, you know, doing air squats or whatever, I need to sweat because to me that means it's like, okay, today was one. I don't know. I think that those would be the big three. Those are good.

So I got to find smart people, spend time with them, right? Become a student of the industry, of your industry. and do it for your customers. I love that. And then own the morning, own the day. Can I phrase it like that? 100%. Super.

Dan, it's been a pleasure. If someone wanted to get in touch with you, what would be the best way for them to do that? We probably already touched on it, but let's just wrap it up. Yeah, so find me on Instagram. At Dan Martel, Tuels Martel is my handle on Instagram. YouTube, you can search my name and my URL, my domain.

I did have three tools. I know that it was in your list of questions. I'm going to drop them real quick if that's cool, Matt. So the first tool is Voxer. So I use Voxer with my team. My trick for Voxer is voice out, typing back. So I'm really good at voice. I'm not so good at typing.

So every time I send messages to my team, they have to reply in text because it's easier for me to process. Great tool for group collaboration and chat. Second is Front app or Front, which is a new shared inbox, much like Dropbox and Trello or kind of like the thing everybody uses. I believe in the future Front will be one of those tools. and the other one is Airtable.com, which is essentially a spreadsheet on steroids.

And I would just, if anybody's looking for like efficiencies around communication and collaboration and workflow, check out Airtable, not a replacement for Google spreadsheets or Trello per se, but an enhancement for more complex like video production or that kind of like media-rich workflow, I think is incredible. Perfect. On those tools, what's the second one is Future Front? Front app.com. All right, Dan.

I'm going to see you next month. I'm looking forward to it. And thanks for being here. It was a pleasure. Matt, absolutely my pleasure. We'll talk soon. All righty. So that's it for today.

I'll see you next week on our other episode of Thought Leader Thursday right here on the epic real estate investing show. Take care. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.