The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Dan Martell - Why People Stay Poor, Time Management, & How To Get Rid Of Self Limiting Beliefs

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

#736: Today we’re sitting down with Dan Martell, an entrepreneur, angel investor, thought leader, author, and highly sought-after coach in the software service industry. We discuss replacing bad habits, instilling self-worth, the fear of success, time management, and the concept of the perfect week and morning routine.    To connect with Dan Martell click HERE   To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE To Watch the Show click HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential Head to the HIM & HER Show ShopMy page HERE to find all of Michael and Lauryn’s favorite products mentioned on their latest episodes.   This episode is brought to you by AG1 If you want to take ownership of your health, it starts with AG1. Go to drinkAG1.com/SKINNY to get a free 1-year supply of Vitamin D3K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase.    This episode is brought to you by Branch Basics The Branch Basics Premium Starter Kit will provide you with everything you need to replace all of your toxic cleaning products in your home. It’s really a no-brainer. Go to branchbasics.com and use code SKINNY for 15% off their starter kit and free shipping.   This episode is brought to you by Soaak.   Go to soaak.com/skinny and use code SKINNY at checkout to get your first month free.   This episode is brought to you by Smartwater   Life's full of choices. Smartwater is a simple one. Visit drinksmartwater.com to learn more.   This episode is brought to you by Amazon Small Business.   From entrepreneurs just starting out to well established brands known in households around the world, Amazon is creating an amazing place for sellers of all sizes to launch and build a successful business by offering sellers the best possible selling experience, including powerful, cost-effective tools and services to support their growth and success.   Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to The Skinny Confidential, him and her.

When you get to a place where you realize nobody can make you feel anything, you choose the meaning you associate to an activity, an action, anything that happens to you, and that produces a feeling, then it puts you back into control. The light philosophy that I've taught my boys on that concept is this simple philosophy,

which is the world will show you where you're not free. If you don't learn the lesson, the world has this beautiful way of bringing that back up and again and again. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential, him and her show. Today, we're sitting down with Dan Martell, who is an entrepreneur, angel investor, thought leader, author, and highly sought after coach in the software service industry. He coaches entrepreneurs and all sorts of different leaders. He's got a new book out called Buy Back Your Time. This episode is for anyone who wants to learn more about time management, wants to learn how to get into a mindset of abundance, wants to learn how to make a greater income, wants to limit

self-limiting beliefs. We had an incredible conversation with Dan all about mindset, performance, and about upping your game and improving as a person. With that, Dan Martell, welcome to Skinny Confidential, him and her show. This is the Skinny Confidential, him and her. Let's get the lay of the land here and get your story before all of this massive success that you've had. Tell us about how you grew up, your diagnosis with ADHD, jail, drugs, all the things. You know, I always joke with people that I kind of had a colorful childhood, a little rocky. I'm the fourth or the second oldest of four kids, high energy. When I was 10 or 11, I got diagnosed with ADHD.

My mom was an alcoholic. So, you know, that was one of the questions when the psychiatrist asked, did your mom drink while you were... I don't know if she drank when she was pregnant, but it turns out she did. So at a very young age, I just felt like there was something wrong with me, like that I was broken just because why am I taking this pill for breakfast every day? Why are my teachers putting me in special classes? So it was kind of crazy. Growing up, I didn't feel confident about myself at all. I wasn't great in school, kind of a reject. And things just escalated over the years to getting introduced to drugs. So when I was 13, I had a bit of addictive personality, had a lot of energy playing in the

woods, building tree forts. And then as teenager got introduced to you know smoking weed initially but then it just kind of escalated pretty quick and that's where I found myself in a high-speed chase trying to get away from the cops when you look back on being really little you say you have a pill with breakfast do you wish now that you're an adult in retrospect that you just were never given the pill to begin with? Because I've heard a lot of people who are adults now that come on the podcast that say, I wish that I never took a Ritalin at all because that was like a gateway. What's your belief now? I think it's the biggest farce right now in the society, giving people pills to solve their problems. So looking back, you wish your parents had just never...

I wish they would have just understood that not everybody's the same. You know how like you look physically at somebody and somebody could be seven foot tall and somebody's four too? Yeah. Well, our brains are the same way. Like some people have different brains than other people. It doesn't make them bad. It doesn't mean that they have to take a pill.

Just means they're different. So like, had they just like, I have a kid that's like that and I don't think I'm going to default to a pill just means they're different. So like, had they just like, I have a kid that's like, like that. And I don't think I'm going to default to a pill. I think about his nutrition. I think about the amount of exercise. I mean, my problem was, is that I just, I wasn't meant to just sit in a chair and try to memorize stuff that I didn't see the point to, I think that's a lot of people. That's like everybody.

I don't know. Like anybody that's creative. Yeah. At that time. And you're maybe, maybe a little older than me, but maybe not so much. I'm 44. Yeah. So not so much. It's like seven years older. That happened to me too when I was a kid, but my dad was basically like, no, he was kind of like a hard line, like not, but they tried to

give me that subject because I couldn't sit still and kind of like similar story. And I felt kind of like out of place in school. But I imagine your story is more common than mine where a lot of parents at the time were nervous and said, okay, well, my kid is having these issues, put them on the medicine, right? Like that's what the school or the doctor or whoever saying, and like, maybe they just didn't know better. I mean, I already love your dad. That's awesome that you did that. Yeah. I think what happened was, is there was four of us and they were just trying to figure out how to survive. And not only that, I had anger issues. I, you know, I wasn't well-behaved. So yeah, I think the pill just, you know,

the experts are saying this, so they put me on medication and. Do you remember it making you feel different when you started taking it? Like, do you remember like, could you tell at that age? As soon as I took it. And that's why I say for breakfast, because I used to not want to take it.

And then my mom would hide it in my breakfast. Oh my God. Yeah, I took it. And that's why I say for breakfast, because I used to not want to take it. And then my mom would hide it in my breakfast. Oh my God. Yeah. I would refuse. Sometimes if I, if I noticed it was like in the muffin or something, I would spit it back out. Oh my God.

That's intense. Yeah. But I mean, it's two different kids. I don't know if you've like, there's a lot of adults today when they want to like, I'm going to do emails today. And they take frigging Ativan or whatever they're,

you know, like you can notice the difference. So yeah, as a, as an eight, nine, 10 year old, I was like, there's two different dance. I heard this story about little boys and it really resonated. It says like the testosterone's the strongest between three and seven. And so you get this little boy with so much testosterone and they put them in circle time with the girls and the boy doesn't want to listen he wants to run around and get the energy out and get the testosterone moving and it is true it needs to be treated i think differently because it is different hormones i just to me it was i now knowing what i know now and having kids and you know i've spoken about adhd it's one of the

most popular videos on my youtube channel is and about about a decade ago, I even decided I didn't want to get off all medication. So I used to be on Adderall up until I was in my early thirties. And I was just like, I don't like the way this makes me. I would much rather, and that's a lot of the concepts of my book came from was just like, how do I design my life in a way that I don't have to take a pill to feel normal when I don't like the way I am when I'm on it? You'd mentioned a high-speed chase. What does it give us that? Yeah, I mean, if you grew up with any friend or kid in your high school that you knew that was kind of on the wrong side of the tracks, that was just me.

Like I got kicked out of school so many times, pretty much I think it was like grade nine or 10 when I kind of went down pretty hard where I was taking harder drugs and ran away from my home. And I'd already gone to juvenile detention when I was 14 for shoplifting, a bunch of other stuff. And I was high and drunk and the police were looking for me. So I decided to steal a car and kind of go to another state, make, make a run for it. And, um, I was driving this car all high and drunk and I took a exit to get some gas and there was a routine roadblock and I just gunned it. So it was kind of bananas. It was

like out in the middle of like the country. And I took off the cops immediately, you know, pursued, and I had quite a bit of distance ahead of them. So I was in a neighborhood and I came around a corner. I saw an open garage door, you know, thought maybe I could sneak in the garage closed. You know, I might've watched too many car chase movies. And prior to stealing the car, I had, I made a commitment to myself that if the cops stopped me, I was going to pull the handgun I had on me and let them take my life. So it came into this driveway carrying way too much speed, smashing the side of the house. And as soon as I kind of came to, cause I wasn't wearing a seatbelt, I just went for the gun. And so what, what happened after that? When you went for the gun, they,

you're lucky they didn't shoot you, right? The gun actually got stuck in the bag and the side of the seat. Oh, you're lucky. I would not be here if it didn't. Damn. And so what happens after that? Were you a minor at this time? Yeah.

Okay, so you go to obviously a juvenile detention center. So it was unique about that situation because of my background. I got put into the original juvenile detention called King's Clear for, I think I was there three months on remand. And then eventually got released to an adult facility because they had a cell block unit for adolescents that had drug addiction and wanted to be in recovery. And I obviously knew I had a problem and that's what the judge sentenced me to. And it was, I mean, jail's probably the worst thing I've ever experienced in my life. Anybody that's ever been arrested, I mean, jail is probably the worst thing I've ever experienced in my life. Anybody that's ever been arrested, I mean, just even just getting stripped down in search is just

so degrading. So it was tough and it was a big reason I didn't want to go back. And for whatever reason, the gun got stuck and I woke up sober next morning wondering what my life was going to look like. What does jail look like to someone who has never been there? I can just explain it from my point of view. Even though I had anger issues and I was on medication and all that stuff, there was some micro part of my being that knew I was a good person. You know, like people do bad things, but they also, you know, I, so what happened was, is I go in this environment where I'm like, okay, I'm going to use this time to try to be better.

It's, it's almost impossible. Like, you know, right off the bat. And I know in the U S it's even worse. It's like, there's kind of gangs, right? There's clicks, there's people. So even if you want to stay to yourself, you can, as soon as you walk through and you're new, people are in your face, pushing your buttons, trying to see how you're going to react. So, you know, I, I tried to like hold my own and, and kind of find my click. And I actually did pretty good. I was there for probably three months doing my, you know, working on my GED, staying away from the stuff they were doing. Cause there's drugs and stuff in prison. I didn't want to add to my sentence. I think I got sentenced to two years and I had a shot at potentially getting out to a rehab center. Unfortunately though, one day I was having breakfast, I took the last of

the coffee, which in jail, that's kind of a big deal. And some kid named Kirk that looked like a muscle, he had about an eight pack and 14 years old, but just built like a mini Hulk. He looks around the table and said, who drank the last of the coffee? So I had to say to me, boom, fight breaks out. It's going off in the jail cell. The guards pick us up, drag us down the hallway and throw us in the hole. So the hole is the worst thing you could probably experience. You're in your underwear, 24 hours a day, lights are on, cement bed, stainless steel toilet, sink. They only let you out legally 30 minutes a day in this, this like fenced in cement thing. And they don't tell you how long you're going to be there. In my case, they didn't. And after three days, the door opens and it's this guard named

Brian, just staring at me disappointed. And Brian tells me to follow him. And I'm, you know, he wasn't there when the fight happened. It was a weekend or something. And then I'm following back to the cell block and we go past the door where I'm supposed to go to the next door, which is the guard unit. And no inmates are allowed in the guard unit.

They read you the rules. These are the rules. One of them is you're never allowed in that room. And he says, follow me. And I don't know what's going on. I'm 16 at the time. Brian pulls me down, sits, you know, sits me in the corner and then pulls a chair in front of me and just looks me in the eyes and goes, what are you doing here? And I said, what do you mean? He goes, what? He goes, Dan, what are you doing here, man? And I go, well, I got in a fight with Kirk. He says, not the fight, man.

He goes, what are you doing in this place? I said, well, I got in a high-speed chase and the drugs. And he goes, he goes, nobody's ever told you this. I believe in you and you don't belong here. And it makes no sense to me that you're in this place. And that, that planted a seed of some belief. I thought this guy knows, I mean, there's, he's been here for 10 years. He must see something that I don't. And, and in that moment, it was just like the beginning of like leaning on Brian's belief

in myself when I had no belief in myself. And it took me another three or four months and I eventually eventually got released to a rehab center that literally saved my life. What was your, your Rika tipping point after that to get you set on a very right track? Cause obviously you got back on a track. That's incredible. I mean, you're an author, podcaster, like it's so, what was the other little moments that you remember that set you back on the right track when you were in rehab? There were so many. I mean, I almost got kicked out twice. Like I, man, I had some bad habits. I had some bad mindsets. I had some bad beliefs. I had this thing with a girl that was in, so most rehab centers are one, you know, gender. This one was

mixed. And one of the rules is definitely don't fraternize and broke that one, almost got kicked out after four months, fought my way to stay there, then gotten another altercation with another guy physically. So that there's really three cardinal rules. Don't use drugs. Don't, don't, you know, don't get involved in the other genders and then don't get in a fight. So it took me, the average person did six months to kind of get clean. I was there for 11 months. And during that 11 months, I learned my stories, my mind, like all these things I know now today is personal development. I got at 16, 17 years old. It was in hindsight, the best gift, but the thing that shaped it all for me was I was helping Rick, the maintenance guy, clean out

one of the cabins. So it's built on this old church camp. And in one of the rooms, I found an old computer and a yellow book on Java programming, computer programming language. And for whatever reason, I opened it up and it just spoke to me. It kind of made sense. So I started the computer and followed the instructions of chapter one. And 20 minutes later, I got the computer to say, hello world. And that, that became like, oh, this is a thing. Like I can, I just coded a computer. What else is in here? Chapter two, three, four.

And I just followed it and this is 97. So I get out my new obsession slash addiction became writing code and then found out about this little thing called the internet. And that's been my path since then. So for somebody who, you know, looking back, someone who has self-limiting beliefs or they're listening to this podcast and they're just down on themselves all the time. They don't believe that they can achieve. They don't believe that they're enough. What, what were some of the things that got you to switch and knowing what you know now, like what are some of those tools you tap into? Totally. One of the biggest gifts that I got while in rehab was the concept of a transition plan. So a transition plan is essentially a business plan for your life. They don't call it that,

but essentially it's like, here are all the things you have to tell us you're going to go do so that when you get out, you're not caught with idle hands. Is this unique to recovery? I think so. I mean, it was unique to this program for sure. I don't know if like 12 step programs, et cetera, do it, but yeah, it was, it was probably unique to that specific facility. But one of the things that they required us to do is to identify positive people in our lives that we're going to start reinvesting and investing in relationships, activities we're going to do. So it was funny. Cause like the biggest thing that's impacted my life the most. I mean, the reason I'm even on this podcast is relationships, you know, people

that, you know, support your dreams. And, and it's hard. Cause like I grew up and these are only friends I've ever known are people that I got in trouble with and it met in prison, did things I shouldn't have done with. And here I get out, I got to change high schools. Cause right off the bat, like there's just too much, you know, Dan's this way. So right off the bat, I was like, okay, I'm going to change high schools, same city. And I remember even just going to the farmer's market on a Saturday, running into like my buddy, Stefan. And he's like, Hey Dan, heard you're out. Like, you know, let's hang out this weekend. And, and just like that feeling in my gut, like just the heat on my chest, just going like,

yeah, it's good to see, you know, and like trying to come up with a reason to just like punt. But I would, I just tell you like one of the most important things is the people that you allow in your life and not, you hear these people say that it's, you become the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. I actually think it's, you become the average of the five people you let influence you. So it's actually not the people you spend the time with, although that definitely has influence, but it's literally who, whose opinion do you respect? So what I had to do is say, okay, I don't care if this group of people, I had to associate, if I spend time with these

people, I will die. That's where I went with my mind. Cause then it became binary. There was no like negotiating with myself. I can go to my buddy's birthday party. It was no time there. Follow the plan. I was just so scared I was going to relapse and end up back in a worse spot. And now I'm pretty much at that point, I was getting close to being an adult. I have no criminal record because I was a juvenile. So I would say that lesson of really sitting down and auditing my friend group

and saying, who are the people that I think are going to support my sobriety? I think that people find that very challenging, especially if you've grown up with someone from childhood and maybe you start to outgrow them. How do you, outside of telling yourself, literally this would kill you if you stayed with these people, what are some of the things you did in order to kind of distance yourself? Was it like a full cut or was it a slow back away? It was a full cut for, let's say the friends, the high school friends. It was the family members you're talking about. That's the hardest. I mean, some of them could be your parents, right? In my case, for the most part, it was my mom. Like my mom was not a healthy person at that time to be around. That's why I went and lived with my dad. And what I did is I had to get to a place and it was so hard. I remember like just,

cause there's this angst where I don't want the person to feel rejected. I don't want to make it worse because a lot of these people have their own addiction. And then if I reject them, I don't want to be the person that pushes them over an edge. That's always a fear. And the big thing I got to is I can love them from a distance. And I just kept reminding myself that. I don't hate them. I'm not upset with them. I love them, but I don't have to spend time with them. And the more I spend time with me, and that was a big thing I learned in recovery is if I keep trying to be the best for myself when they're ready, then I'll have more resources to help them. But the last thing you want to do is,

you know, get sober for a week and then try to convince every person you were doing drugs with to get sober. You're just not, you're not strong enough yet. And you see this all the time. A person goes to CrossFit for seven days and they're like, you got to do CrossFit. It's like, how about you go for six months and let's talk. So doing the work you do now and hosting the show and writing books and all and reaching the people you reach, what is the most common issue you see with people that are struggling? And maybe there's a handful of them, but I guess the ones that come to mind the most.

The hardest one right now is that there's so many vices that are just so socially acceptable. Such as? Oh, alcohol, sugar, news, gambling, gaming. Porn. Porn. It's just, there's never been a time in the history of humanity where we're you know the other day my wife and i were on a date and we were scooting around our little lake area we live in you know i call it these people that just pause i don't know if you see them in austin but they're just like standing up bent over paused doing what they're all they're

like they just probably did something I don't know if it's fentanyl. Yeah. I don't know what it is. I call them pause people. They're literally just standing there bent over as if they're about to pick something up, but they're there for 15 minutes, an hour. It's fascinating to watch because you got to ask yourself what is happening in their body chemically that essentially it's so low level that it's keeping their their organs doing the thing but their brain is offline heroin maybe it's heroin I honestly don't know what specific drug it is but all I know is that I've never seen more incidents of it like now around me all over in small towns big towns so the the availability of it maybe the price point

of it I don't know what it is but but you know, and then obviously with the internet, with, you know, even purchasing stuff over the internet, right. It's all available. So I think that's where just getting honest with it. And, and then just for people to go, like, do you feel better after you do this? You know, like, I don't love to go to the gym, but after I go to the gym, I'm like, this feels great. I think what's really helped me with any bad habit is crowding it out with good habits. And then when you almost get addicted to feeling good as opposed to feeling bad. So when you do the bad thing, it's like, Ooh, I don't want to feel that way. I want to go back to feeling really good. So like an example, like for me is like, I now like going in the sauna at night. So I don't really, I don't want

to have a margarita because I want to go in the sauna because I feel so great. So like you kind of like you have, I think you have to replace the bad habits with something really positive. Positive. And the replacement is key. So when I was in rehab, I replaced the addiction for drugs with writing code. Yes. I used to smoke cigarettes as a teenager. When I quit, I started eating these pink peppermints. You know, those little pink peppermints? I probably ate 300 a day, okay, for weeks to replace the desire to have a cigarette. What do you eat instead of peppermints now? I don't know. I just know that I put 20 pounds on in three months. So that wasn't a good alternative. I heard sunflower seeds are good.

Yeah, exactly. Nobody sat me down and said, hey, put the pink peppermints down. You're eating 7,000 calories of sugar. Let's kick into the sunflower seeds. So I think that for most people that know anything about habits, yeah, replacing it with something positive so that you give it enough time, that 21 days or whatever, three months to just rebuild. Cause, cause everything in our mind is malleable. Like we can actually program it. It just, it requires time for the neurons to actually realign into this new norm. Right. And it comes down to the identity. That was the other thing that portage, the rehab center I went to taught me how to create my self-worth because prior to that,

unfortunately I had zero. Honestly, if it wasn't for Brian, sit me down saying like, you confuse me while you're here. Like you don't act like the rest of the kids. I see you doing your homework. I see you staying out of trouble. Like I don't think I would have ever believed that I was worth not being in trouble all the time because that's my reality growing up. And I think for a lot of people, the vices is a byproduct of not feeling they deserve happiness. I think a lot of what you went through too is projection of how you felt

because of maybe your parents. Now that you're a parent, what are things that you do to instill self-worth in your kids because of your experience that you went through? what are things that you do to instill self-worth in your kids because of your experience that you went through this is my favorite question that is an awesome question and if we call my boys no if we call my boys right now they would they would tell you because they make fun of me for it and i think that's how you know you're consistent when your friends or your family can make fun of you for something one of my favorite things to do for them that i learned

from one of my mentors was tell them about them. So since they were young, when I put them to bed, I go, hey, Noah, can I tell you about you? And now this is what he does. Oh, I don't want to leave me alone. Okay. And all I do is I just tell them how like last night I saw Noah play with his friends and they played really well and you know he's funny my other son Max is like such a he edits in CapCut he's 11 he when you see him on his iPad it's like Mozart in CapCut I didn't even know I don't think even CapCut knew that people would use it the way he does because you know he grew up with tap right he doesn't I'd be there with my index finger clicking around, typing stuff. And I just, I just tell them about them. I just, my whole thing is, is the world isn't going to have less access to things that will be bad for them. But if I can help instill their self-worth by telling them about the things that I see that I think they're incredible at that costs nothing, that's like my favorite thing in the world to do.

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every single night for the last three years, listen to these frequencies before we go to bed. And all throughout the night, we sleep super deep. When we need to focus, we listen to them. When we want a better workout, we listen to them. When we're getting ready to do an interview, these frequencies can absolutely alter your state of mind. And what we love the most is all you have to do is listen. In the episode we did with the Soak team, we dove into all of the reasons why frequencies can absolutely change your state of mind. And like I said, we love it so much because all you have to do is listen. You can put it on the background. You can do it while you're multitasking. You can do it while you're sleeping, while you're eating, while you're working out,

while you're trying to focus, anything, anything performance related that you want to do better, tap into a frequency with the Soak app. Of course, we have a special offer for you. Visit Soak.com slash skinny and use code skinny at checkout to get your first month free. That's S-O-A-A-K.com slash skinny and use code skinny to get your first month free. Soak.com slash skinny. not only in yourself, but in your kids. And the reason I asked this is I think part of the reason people are in so much pain is that we've really, as a people moved away from personal accountability. There's always a reason. I'm going to play this for you when we get in a fight. There's keep going. There's always, there's always some reason or some story or someone else or something to blame. Like I, I think that at least in my life, anytime I've been in pain, it's for a lack of personal accountability. It's like, it's an outward projection of something else is happening or someone else did something.

And every time I've taken accountability is when things start to improve. How do you instill that in your kids or even people you speak to? Yeah. I mean, I sucked at all of that. I think that's why I struggled with addiction. And honestly, I struggled in life for years before I found had any success was it was just so easy to blame other people.

It was easy to blame the psychiatrist. It was easy to blame the prison system. It was easy to blame the business partner or whatever. I think over the years, I read a bunch of books that talked about the concept of like the locus of control, external things versus internal. What does that mean? I don't know what that means. The locus of control is the idea that either the world happens from you external, that's inward versus outward, which is it happens to you. And a lot of people consume the news. They have

conversations, you know, when they hit a misery loves company, they like to complain because they're essentially trying to have other people validate their feelings, but it's all external happening to them. And what this concept and many other people have talked about for years is when you get to a place where you realize nobody can make you feel anything, you choose the meaning you associate to an activity, an action, anything that happens to you, and that produces a feeling, then it puts you back into control. Like no matter what happens, if the lights go out right now, I can either appreciate the fact that

I'm in Austin hanging out with you guys, even though we can't do the pod, or I can be upset that we're not going to shoot the pod. But I get to decide that feeling based on the meaning I associate. So the light philosophy that I've taught my boys on that concept is this simple philosophy, which is the world will show you where you're not free. The world will show you where you're not free. And if you don't learn the lesson,

the world has this beautiful way of bringing that back up and again and again. Give us an example of what you mean by that. Oh, I mean, some entrepreneurs, for example, because I work with a lot of entrepreneurs, they're like, oh, this employee screwed something up and it cost me money. And for some reason, it just seems to always happen to this one entrepreneur. Well, what are you supposed to learn? Can you pause for a second and say, let's admit to your point, right? Michael, this is a great question. You hired them. You trained them. You created the process. You allowed them to act a certain way.

And it's not the first time it's happened. It's not the second time. It literally happens every three months for you. So my philosophy is the world will show me where I'm not free. So if I'm emotionally responding to something, I need to ask myself, what am I supposed to learn here? Same thing in relationships. You meet people and they're like, oh yeah, this guy, he's different. Because he's got brown hair instead of blonde hair. No, it's the same guy. They're physically different people, but they have the same. That person came into your life to teach you something about you.

And that's one of the things that I teach my boys is your brother can't make you mad. Because I have two brothers. We fought all the the time. You know, my wife always, when they were punching and hitting each other, she's like, is this normal? I'm like, there's no blood. This is, this is actually really good. Like we should celebrate this moment. And you know, they're like, oh, he said this, he made me mad. I said, he never made you mad. You decided to be upset by the things he said. For example, like Lauren, if I came up to you and I screamed in your eyes, I said, you have purple eyes, you have purple eyes. I'm upset. And I'm like, you have purple eyes. You're going to be like, I don't have purple eyes. So if you did

get upset, it's because you have something about that language, that scenario that upsets you. And that's your work to do if you want to do it or not. You got upset with me about 10 minutes ago. So that's, it was, it turns out it was because your response was impatience and irritability, which is my next question. Or was your response that perception? Okay. Next question. Tell me more. I'm curious what happened. No, what I mean, listen, I mean, like any other couple, I always say like, if you want, I believe this on both sides, like if you want something to change in the relationship, you can't change the other person. You have to change your behavior or leave, or it's, it's really like on you like on you the other person like i we have a lot of friends

that are either in relationships as many people do or trying to date and it's always this part of my earlier question it's always this external reason why they're not getting or receiving what they want and at some point you have to look yourself in the mirror and say like how am i contributing to this equation and what am i doing to not to not get the things that I want? You know what I mean? A hundred percent. I mean, it's, there's, there's this great quote that says you teach people how to treat you. Right. So if somebody is acting a certain way, well, somehow, somehow you've, you've made that. Okay. You know, recently we're in Cabo and we, we help, we hold a couple's retreat. So like once a year with our entrepreneurial friends, we do this retreat.

And I know usually like, it's very abnormal. You guys are like very unique in the sense you guys are together and in a business, right? Like, I don't know if you know a lot of people that do that, but I don't. I tell everyone not to do it. I'm just saying it's abnormal. So, so what happened is we do this retreat and most of the people there, I know one or the other, the woman or the man, but I've never met their partner. And I opened the retreat by just saying, how many of you were brought to this event? Like put your hand up. So the other couple, they put their hand up and I say, well, your partner thinks that I brought you here to help fix you. And the truth is they got to do the work. And they're like, yeah, you tell them. I mean, that's, it's always

our work to do. What is the most common thing that you see with these couples retreats, what is the main problem? Usually, I think it's just about rhythms of success. I like, you know, in my book, I talk about kind of my calendar and how I've been able to, you know, build quote unquote, the empire. It's everything I try to do is enhancing. It's like going to the gym, right? Okay, that's a good rhythm, lock and load. Just stay there. That's like going to the gym, right? Okay. That's a good rhythm, lock and load. Just stay there. That's a foundation. Because if we don't build habits that create a foundation, then as we try to add new stuff, the foundation is rocky, right? So like, if you can't get basic

things, like maybe going to bed on time, locked and loaded, well, don't try to start a business because then you're not going to be like some people, you know, I always joke like going to bed on time would probably solve most people's problems. Yeah. Right. So it's just, so the foundations have to be there, but the thing from a rhythm point of view for couples is some weekly conversation that has some structure to allow the other person to be on the same page, communicate, discuss issues. So my wife and I, we have it every week, every Monday we have lunch. And one example of a question that we ask each other is for me, I ask her, how have I been for you as a husband? And the only answer, I don't mean to cause any issues at home, but the only response, no matter what she says is thank you oh and i gotta feel those feelings and she

might have just let let loose can you do it and you know what's fascinating i will say from it i can do it are you down well i hope when i ask how i've been as a wife you're like spectacular amazing the best i've never had because he's highly intelligent anyone like you? I would be like, this has been exquisite. Yeah, dude. Us tears are coming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fascinating is my language. Yeah, but I mean, it's always a running joke.

Who goes first? We always try to alternate. But I think what happens in relationships that fracture is there was a point where it started. And because there's no rhythm to kind of evaluate and bring it back by the time it becomes a major issue, we're talking Grand Canyon type departure. And those are just harder. And this is true for business relationships. So my whole thing is trying to inoculate the resentment.

Yeah. Maybe we don't talk, Lauren and I don't talk about this a lot, but one thing that I tell our friends and family privately is I don't think people realize how much Lauren and I actually communicate about what we want, not only in business, but with our family and our kids and our life. It's all the time. Sometimes it can be to the point where it's annoying to her, but what I've seen some couples struggle with is they don't talk about anything anything at all and all of a sudden they're on completely not even on different pages they're in different books yeah and we have people close to us that will come to us and they're sometimes surprised that we talk about these things all the time i say like if you're not talking you're not on the same page how do you know if you're moving in the same direction right it's really easy in a

relationship and we're not perfect trust me to really start moving in opposite directions and like completely fracture the relationship just from a lack of communication yeah and you and one partner's in there thinking everything's great the other partner's in everything like i this is terrible i'm about to leave get ready for mondays yeah yeah you can do any day of the week good news thank you we'll just add it to our um three podcasts that we do every single week and everything else yeah add it to your life why do people stay poor? I know I just hit you with that question, but you talk about this.

There's so much there. It's, I love that question. You know, the more I work with people to help them be more successful, personal, mindset, business, health, wealth, that kind of stuff, there's a part of them, because it's easy to say,

well, I just don't know how. I think there's a part of them that is scared to win because then the fear is actually in the things they'd have to change to maintain it. Elaborate. Well, first off, if you actually, let's say, on the financial side, right off the bat, they're scared that, well, what if I am financially successful and I don't know how to manage my money? And then, so I don't like the thing they'd have to change is, well, I'd have to learn how to do this. I don't know how that's scary. What if I upgraded my neighborhood? Cause I can afford to move out of an apartment, get a house. And now all my friends think I'm Mr. Fancy pants. Cause I have a house and they're still in the condo or whatever it is.

And I think it's really about the fear of what needs to have to change if they succeed. And now it's a new level I have to maintain. See, and I think it's Marianne Williamson's quote about we don't fear kind of the darkness, we fear the light, or we fear the potential we could be because then there's this new standard that you

have to hold if you have a fear of failing in public, right? So it's like the person that doesn't want to lose the weight because they don't want to put it back on and then publicly have a visual representation of failure because everybody congratulated on losing 40 pounds. And six months later, you put it right back on, right? Or building a business, breaking a million in revenue. And then all of a sudden updating your LinkedIn to having saying, I got a job at the dealership because my business failed. So a lot of people play small because it feels safe, especially the ones that haven't had anything. They grew up with nothing. And then they finally have something. Cause it's funny when they started off to have these big visions for

their lives. And then as they make progress, they might get to a level where they just decide to like, oh, now I have something to lose. And they don't even see themselves change the way they believe they were. They started at a better mindset than when they actually had wealth. So most people stay broke because it's familiar. I've spoken to some people, some people come once in a while to me for some advice. And I've seen people that I believe have a lot of potential. And I think they believe they have potential, but then what happens is what you're describing, where they start to kind of question.

They are so worried about the failure and not actualizing that potential. And people say, actually, you didn't have the potential that they hold themselves back. And one of the things that I see some of these individuals doing is they start to tell themselves these stories like, hey, money is not the most important thing. There's other things that are more important. Like if you've, you know, I don't value material things. And it's like this narrative to like kind of diminish people that have found that success. And it's a story they tell themselves so that they don't have to actually try and execute on the things that they feel they could do, but are

unsure of, and that they're, they're scared of the actual failure more than they are of the success to your point. And, and on that, cause that's, I can tell you think about this a lot, cause that's a very nuanced perception of it. I think about it because like, there's some individuals that come to mind that have come to me and it's like, I know that they could do the thing, but it's more of like, they're so scared to do it and then fail.

But you see them criticize other people because it allows them to be okay where they're at. Yes. Or they're a forever student. Yeah. They're saying, I have to do the course. I have to read the books.

I got to do the notes. Not even like even criticizing other people, but just criticizing the- The desire for it. The desire. Like, oh, material things aren't the most important. You don't need money. You can be happy with where you are. There's more. That kind of thing. I'm like, listen, yes, all of those things are true. But if you're telling yourself that so that you don't have to go and try it yourself, I think that's not a- It was funny because the other day, I do a hike every Tuesday in my hometown and I bought a, car. It's a GT three. It's a pretty cool car.

Anybody knows cars. Yeah. And, uh, cause it's manual. It's a touring, if you know. Yeah. It's good. Okay. So it's just a beautiful, if you know cars and I wasn't even a Porsche guy, but once I drove on, I was like, Oh, I get it now. Especially manual. Yes. Oh, anyway. All I care about, Dan, is what color is it? I know. This is the thing. It's actually a beautiful chalk color. You'd love it. My wife loves it.

Gold wheels. Yeah. So after the hike, my buddy's walking down and he sees it and he goes, dude, that's my dream car. And I said, well, here's the deal. Because I know he's been struggling with creating content. I said, you create content for 30 days in a row, post every day. And on the 31st day, I'll let you drive it. And I could see in his eyes, he was like, he, he, he literally sold

him down. He goes, nah, that's cool, man. Like, you know, I don't want to do it. And I, and I asked, like, I thought about, I was like, why did he do that? I'm literally allowing him to, to like, he doesn't know anybody else with the GT3 is going to let him drive it. And he said, no, right. And it wasn't even the content. Cause he probably would did the 30 day challenge for any other reward. And my interpretation from that is, I think he's scared to touch his dreams because the moment he drives that car, he can't now say to him,

I'm not a car guy anymore. Like he can't say to himself, I don't really need that. Cause he's probably thought about, and this is an entrepreneur that probably makes a couple million a year. Like he could probably make it work to own that car, but he's told himself a story that it's not important. And I was really fascinated watching him

sell himself against his dream. So what, did you call him out? No. Will you? No, I have this philosophy of being the lighthouse, not the tugboat. Ah, talk about that. What does that mean? Well, I learned it in rehab because as soon as you go and you come out,

they tell you, hey, you're going to want to tell everybody about the gospel, about being sober, okay? And the mistake is that you're still trying to learn to float. And the last thing you want to do is let somebody else in your boat. That's going to cause a ruckus and cause you potentially both of you to go down. Right. So the lighthouse is this philosophy that, you know, most people are tugboats. Honestly, they, they see somebody in their life doing something wrong and they run out

and they tell them like, you got to stop doing this. Our parents, most of us receive the tugboats, honestly. They see somebody in their life doing something wrong and they run out and they tell them, like, you gotta stop doing this. Our parents, most of us receive the tugboating of our parents. And that does work. I mean, some people just get annoyed and they're like, okay, stop nagging me, I'll just do it. The challenge with that is it takes a lot of effort

and energy, right? If I'm a tugboat and I gotta go out into the harbor and I gotta bump into ships to try to get them aligned and in the right path, it's just a lot of effort. Whereas if you think of the lighthouse, the lighthouse stands there, shines its light on the corner and provides guidance for all these ships. And it doesn't take any more effort for the lighthouse to shine its light to help one ship or a thousand ships. So every time I catch myself wanting to call them out, I go back to my content.

I go back to social media. I go back to giving to the people that want to hear it. I use that story. And I actually think it's a spiritual thing. I think that the world will show us those opportunities to use those stories to help other people that are ready. And my little secret sometimes is when I tell these stories is that someday maybe they'll hear it.

But it will help somebody else. Who are the people that you consume? Like, is it like a Wayne Dyer? You mentioned Marianne Williamson. Like who is like the person though, that you were like, this person has been like a thread. Maybe they're dead alive that you are like, this is, this like, this is my lighthouse. Yeah, I mean, there's so many people over the years. I think early days was definitely Tony Robbins. Okay. Yeah, and then I would say the last, then there was just like all the authors. I've read over 1600 books.

So I went through, yeah. And I went through different like themes of like personal development to like hardcore business to spirituality and faith to philosophy. And then probably three years ago, I went on chat GPT when it came out. I was just testing it out. I'm curious how smart this thing is.

And I said, what are all the books that are referenced in Think and Grow Rich? And it gave me like 25 books. And then I said, well, what are all the books referenced in those books and all written before 1937, I think is when. That's so cool. You should, it's cool.

So it gave me the list of the 200 books that inspired or were referenced in the book that most people would say is the book. And so for the last three years, all I've read is those books. So we're talking Psycho-Cybernetics, Wallace Waddles, Ernest Holmes, Nightingale. I mean, just the classic.

Who's the one though that stood out? Probably Jim Rohn. Hey, I love Jim Rohn. Yeah. Jim Rohn is my kid's unofficial grandfather. Jim Rohn is the one that inspired all of Tony Robbins' content. Wasn't that his mentor? Yeah. 100%. Yeah. He's amazing. Yeah.

I need to read his books. I just consume his content. I've never read his books. I re-listen in the car with my kids. There's a two hour, 20 minute YouTube video of him in front of a green chalkboard and it's classic Jim Rohn. You have to send it to me. I would love to. It's just, it's a great start. It's just his style is so folksy. It's so clear. He has a gift. And I think a lot of the best communicators have is to explain these fairly, not complex, but hard to hear concepts

in a way that just become undeniable. I think his goal too is to make people wealthy with money, yes, but also wealthy of the mind. Yeah. The mindset. He's really good at that. Yeah. What do you do on a Sunday to set up your week

to be the most successful week when it comes to time management? So I have a process, you know, not to promote my book. No, promote it. Yeah. Buy Back Your Time is the title. That's, by the way, one of the reasons you're on the podcast because I told you off air,

I'm obsessed with time management and calendars. I love it. And you said you've been screenshotting my Instagram and my shorts. I said, I screenshot your content because I love talking about time because to me, time is obviously the most important commodity that you have. It's all we got. So tell us exactly how you think about it. So I have a unique philosophy that most people would have a hard time adopting, but I can't tell you how much money it's made me,

how much peace it's brought me and is the cornerstone for everything I do. And it's the concept of the perfect week. So a long time ago, it occurred to me that it doesn't matter how much money I have. It's what I do with my time that's gonna dictate if I'm feeling good. And I'm not about happiness, I'm about fulfillment.

So then I had to be honest with myself and look at my calendar and say, am I doing things on a weekly basis back to the rhythms of success that allow me to operate and feel and live in a way that feels good, right? Because I think, again, I'm a better person if I go and I wake surf. It's one of my hobbies. I love it. Or mountain bike. I'm also a better person if I make sure I have date night with my wife every week. I'm also a better person if I have time with my kids.

Am I willing to do the work? If anything, my personality type, I have a hard time not working. So it was the opposite. Some people have a hard time actually dragging their feet to work. And those people might need to go to the opposite end. But what I do is I've already defined what the strategy looks like for a perfect week in regards to placeholders. I sat down, I have a whole worksheet I teach people and essentially Sunday to Saturday, if this happened in a week, I would feel like I won the week. So on Sunday,

unlike most people that like plan their week, my week's kind of already baked because I've already figured out what are the buckets of things I want to do in those times. And as those requests come into my life, they just get slotted into those spots. Does that mean that sometimes people want to talk to biking on Thursday and I go Tuesday nights? Yep. So you hear it all the time when you're flying, it's like put your mask on first before you help other people. I just think people would be a lot happier and a better version of them for the people around them if they actually put themselves first. If you don't make plans for yourself, then people will make plans for you. Let me tell you about the most beautiful water on the planet. But not only is it beautiful, it's also so delicious. It's crisp. It's pure.

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This should not surprise you because it really is a superior bottle of water. So first of all, Smart Water Alkaline keeps you hydrated throughout your active life. So if you're really active, you're running miles, you're running meetings, you're weightlifting like I do, you're running around, you're a busy mom. This is a great one. And I just feel like in a world full of overthinking, they really provide a refreshing change of pace. This is like a moment of clarity with a simple choice of hydration. And that is with Smart Water. I personally enjoy Smart Water because I always like to drink water with added electrolytes, and this one has that. It's also 9.5 plus pH, and it has added antioxidants. It's vapor distilled, which we love, and this is a

water that I give my kids, I give my husband, and it's my favorite water, especially to travel with because I just like how the bottle feels and I love how it tastes. Life's full of choices and Smart Water is a simple one. Visit drinksmartwater.com to learn more. That's drinksmartwater.com to learn more. Amazon small business has got it going on. Did you guys know that more than 60% of sales in Amazon store come from independent sellers, most of which are small and medium sized businesses? And guess what? One of those businesses is the Skinny Confidential. That's right. We sell on Amazon and I'm obsessed with it for the Skinny Confidential because I've really got to see the back end and how much value Amazon provides for small businesses of all sizes. So I spend less time dealing with the complex logistics,

the warehousing, the fulfillment, the customer service, or other challenging aspects of running our business thanks to Amazon's small business program. So if you're a small business and you're looking to sell and thrive, Amazon stores are it. You should also know sellers have the option of using Fulfillment by Amazon where Amazon stores, picks, packs, ships, and provides customer service. It's really incredible. If you're an entrepreneur just starting out or even a well-established brand already, you should absolutely check out Amazon. Give us a micro example of like maybe walk us through Monday through Wednesday of what the morning looks like, the day. Give us the perfect week for a couple days.

Yeah, so at a high level, I have my morning routine that involves reading, meditation, kind of all the normal stuff. What do you meditate to? I just meditate to my vision. Like I have a visualization exercise where I kind of go through what I'm trying to create because I'm trying to live in the energy of the thing I've already envisioned. So like, I don't want to live in today's energy.

I want to actually live in the energy of the thing I'm trying to create existing. So that's where I go in my mind. So I believe our frequency is what we frequently see. So I'm always going to energy. Cause I don't think, you know, Jim Rohn talks about this. We don't create our future. We attract our future.

I'm on the same frequency as you. Sperry Joe Dispenza. Yeah. I love it. So like sometimes even today, there's been some huge wins on our content side. And, you know, Sam's like, I can't believe this is happening.

And I'm like, oh no, we gotta act as if we expected it. Yep. Yes, exactly. Like we're just waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. Yeah. So that's like the morning routine. But the biggest thing I do that's unique

is I create every day, usually the first three to four hours of the day connected to my creator. So I'm a person of faith. Everything I do before I came in this podcast, I did a little prayer with myself. I just, I just, I know that the best work I ever do is connected to a higher power. And a long time ago that this might help people is I discovered that the energy that goes into my work is felt by the viewer, is felt by the reader, is felt by the

consumer. And I think sometimes we get, we have these structured. So that's why, like, it's funny because people think I'm very systematized and I am, but I'm very artistic in the thing I do in that time because I know that the energy and the set and setting matters so much to produce some of the best work. Like things that I create sometimes, there's no way I could have made it up.

It was channeled or it was felt or there was a person I was thinking about when I wrote that book, there was 25 names I wrote down. And I, I looked at those names and I said, did I, did I solve the problem in the book for that person? So like names of friends, they were, well, my wife was on there. My brother Pierre was on there. My best friend, Nick was on there. And then 20, some other people, the guy that owns the local bike shop was on there. My buddy Roddy was on there. Like just people I loved that again, Lighthouse Tugboat. The people that never asked, but I saw that I wanted to help.

So all the stories in those books, they're all real stories. I changed the first name. So the real name is the first initial is the same. That helped me keep everything straight. So you have three hours that is dedicated towards. Yeah, pretty much. I don't do meetings till 11 AM. Okay. Yeah. I totally agree with that. Yeah. But I'm working, I'm creating and I have breakfast with my kids in the morning, you know? So I usually, I get up at four. I usually work till about seven 30, hang out with the kids. Yeah.

Four is early. Yeah. But I go to bed early. So people go like, how do you do that? Well, I'm sleeping by 9 PM. Yeah. So it's not bed early. So people go like, how do you do that? Well, I'm sleeping by 9 p.m. Yeah. So it's not that impressive. And it's just something I've taught myself over the years, right? You don't start there. You probably walk around pretty bleary eyed. But that's like the first part of my morning. And then for me, and I like to work out in the morning as well. Like really, you know, the pump cures all.

Like just get the workout in, get it done. And then the afternoon is where I interact with people. Because usually, energetically, I just, that's what I want. I want to talk to people. I want to, I want to hang out. Right. So that's where like meetings or whatever will happen. But for most days, you know, every night I do this cool thing. So I've got Tuesday nights off to hang out with my friends. My wife's got Monday nights off, right. We have two kids. So like having that reoccurring rhythm so that she knows if she wants to take a night off to go to the spa or to hang out with her friends

or go for dinner, that's always there. That's hers. Mine's Tuesdays. And then most nights I put the kids to bed and it's just like figuring out what it is for me. So I work, you know, probably 50 hours a week sometimes. You know, it's the work, the work question's funny because like, I don't do things I don't enjoy

doing. So if working is flying here to Austin to hang out with you guys, well, sign me up all day long. This is fun. Yeah. It feels more like a hobby. It's all a hobby. And I think that's the whole point is we start off as an entrepreneur doing stuff maybe we don't love to do, but we get paid to do it to then, and that's why I talk about my book, to buy back our time, to then get to a place where we start doing the thing we love to do that makes the most money for our company. And then eventually, if you keep working your way up the replacement ladder, you get to a place where you now own a thing that makes you money, that creates the freedom to be able to continue to express. So I'm not a four-hour workweek guy.

I'm a build your empire guy. I want you to free up your time to then go become more so that you have more to give. I want you to figure out what's your next level. What's the skillset? What's the character trait? What's the belief systems you got to adopt so you can go build and do more. I just want more creators to create.

What are three tips that audiences can apply to their own life to buy back their time? And then they'll have to get the rest in your book. But what are three quick tips that audiences can apply to their own life to buy back their time and then they'll have to get the rest in your book. But what are three quick tips that they can apply today? The first off is really, really, really believing that you're worth it. I can't help, like the amount of people that don't feel worthy of having somebody clean their house once a week, somebody else, you know, pick up something for them. Like, it's just, I don't want to bug them. I don't want to be an inconvenience.

I don't want to, I don't want to come off a certain way. So like, it all comes down to worthiness. That's like the first thing. Because without that, then you're not going to do the other ones. So I would say the first one is really challenge yourself on what do you think your hour's worth? Or what do you think your time is worth, your peace of mind, right? Like go to the gym if it makes you feel good and make it a priority and say no to people, right? Including your spouse and your friends, like go do that.

The second one is to really look at, I think, either the low hanging fruit in your business if you're an entrepreneur or in your home, right? So in the work life, and I teach this in your home, right? So in the work life, and I teach this in my book, the replacement ladder at the bottom is administrative type tasks. And what happens is people hold onto these because they're not a big deal, right? It's not a big deal. I'll create an invoice, send it off. I know so many people that do this. I did it. I wrote the book for me. I needed to learn these lessons to eventually become free. Because if I was working a hundred hours a week thinking it was normal, and then I'd meet these entrepreneurs that had all the time in the

world, had way bigger companies than me and go like, how are you doing? They're like, you don't have an assistant? I'm like, I'm just starting off. Why would I get an assistant? And they were, they just, the argument was very simple. It's like, anytime you're not doing something that you could get paid more money for, then you're working against your dreams. I remember hearing that going, okay, if I could have paid somebody eight bucks, 10 bucks, 12 bucks to do something and I get paid 25, then I'm working against me. This sounds like sometimes people say this is privilege and they don't like this message. But for example, I haven't gone to a grocery store

in years. I mean, I'll go once in a while if I'm traveling or something, but I don't go and I'll have grocers or services pick it up. And the reason being is not because I'm so great and it's so beneath me, but if that is an hour to hour and a half trip for me and I'm setting an hourly rate against my time, to your point, I'm losing money by doing that trip. And I know that sounds like a novel, crazy thing to some people, but as you work and you build and you grow as an entrepreneur, you build a business, you have to allocate a certain dollar amount to your time. And to your point, you have to say yes

or no to certain things that fall below that time threshold. You're already doing it, right? Because if somebody says, hey, I need you to paint my house, you give them a quote. So you valued your time. The problem is, is that when it comes to valuing your time for your own stuff, it's fine. I always tell people, like, if you don't have an assistant, you actually do. It's you, you suck and you're overpaid. Yep. And also like even going even further, maybe you don't want to buy back your time.

Maybe you just need space and clarity to have thinking time. The energy, the recess. I need to just think. It's not even about work or doing or executing. I need space and clarity to have thinking time. The energy, the resets. I need to just think. It's not even about work or doing or executing. I need space to think. And if someone getting my groceries can free up time for me to think, it's worth everything. I also even do it in reverse where I think about investment time, where say that you aren't where you want to be financially, and it's going to take you an hour and a half to go to the grocery store, which is going to stop you from doing a podcast or creating a YouTube or writing content or doing, you know, putting the time in the gym. Like I look at paying somebody to go do that service

as time that I am now going to be able to invest into my future. Does that make sense? It's a hundred percent. And so like some people will say, well, I don't have that luxury. I'm like, well, now you're wasting that time and you'll never get that back. And you could have maybe used that time to get to the point where this is not an inconvenience or not a burden for you. My whole philosophy, and this is a Jim Rohn for sure, right? The market rewards people that create value. They don't reward how many hours you work. They might pay you based on the hours, but they're actually rewarding you for the value. I tell everybody

in this company all the time, I am not impressed with hard work. It's for the bees. The hard work is the bar that when people are going to be like, well, I'm the bees. I, every, the, the hard work is the bar that like when people are going to be like, well, I'm working, I'm working hard. I'm like, yes, of course I showed up on time.

Yes, of course. That is the, that is the stakes just to play the game. Yeah. Michael's a fourth Japanese. Can you tell? Yeah,

but it's, are you being impactful? Japanese are some of the most impressive cultures. I just went to Japan. Well, there was no like, I guess in, in,

we've never been, there was a, I know we got it. It's cool. In that culture, it's pretty much like there is a right in a wrong way and the effort is not appreciated if it's the wrong effort. Anyways, but the point being is, when I was younger, I did this job. I went and worked with a landscaping company.

I'm just telling this story because during that time, I would come home from that job. I would be so tired that I would just fall on the floor and could barely pick myself up. I got paid very little. And the people that do that work, it's such hard fucking work. And so when I hear somebody saying it's hard, there's levels to what hard work is. But at that time, it was the lowest paying job I had ever had. I'm not saying that to diminish people. I'm just saying the fact was I was working harder than I'd ever worked and I got paid less than I've ever been paid. I worked at McDonald's at some point, working harder than I've ever worked, got paid less than I've ever been. And it wasn't until I kind of got that lesson, like hard work is not the thing that's going to get you to the finish line. Like that's

table stakes to your point. But at some point you have to elevate and start creating outsized value for your time. And that advice, if people listen to it, because it's so sage, like what you just said is the essence of it. Because like, I also, I did roofing. Hard work, dude. And this is like, I'm carrying the shingles on the ladder, could have killed myself on a roof. It's sunny, it's hot, hardest work I've ever done, lowest paid I've ever made. And this is what Jim Rohn said. It's like, we live in a society, you know, and he always, he says, this is American dream. I love the way he framed it. It's like, we have an economy. This is how the economy works. If you don't like it, go start your own country. But if you live in the country, this is how it works.

And we reward people to create value. And it's not associated to time. And it's not about being hard. So the third thing that I would add to like, how do they really understand how to do this is ask yourself, what skill do I need to acquire next based on where I'm at, where I want to go that I need to start learning. Because then when you buy back that time to think better, to buy back that time to become more valuable, you actually know. So the mistake that most entrepreneurs for sure make is they'll hire somebody without knowing what they're then going to redeploy their time to go do. And unfortunately, some of them end up with idle hands. Then they're wasteful. So you actually didn't get a return because you hired somebody to buy back 10, 15 hours of your week, but you

didn't know what you're going to do with that time ahead of time. And then now you're just hanging around watching Netflix. You didn't say, well, I'm going to take this course. I'm going to start working on our marketing strategy. I'm going to take this course. I'm going to start working on our marketing strategy. I'm going to figure out how to manage sales teams, whatever the next skill is. And that's where I think a lot of people don't understand how to build that personal development loop, right? Because our personal development is what drives our personal income. And all that being said, I think as you start and you're early in your career, you're going to have to take lower paying jobs where you're acquiring these skills over time. We're talking now 25 years of doing something like this where I've been acquiring skills, some periods of time in our lives where I would just sit and read and consume other things to learn how to do things. And I wasn't

getting paid for that time, but again, it was a future investment into up. You may not even have known how you're going to apply it. Of course. But it was, it was the thought process was I want to be able to do more than just manual labor at some point. And I want to be able to get paid for my time in a better way. Right. You had trust. Yeah. And I think, you know, if you're not thinking about that and you just kind of stay paycheck to paycheck and you never think about evolving and upgrading what your time and what it's worth, it starts to feel like this crazy answer wheel. Yeah. What is your third tip for the audience? That was my third tip is the self-reflection. Most people have dreams,

but they haven't asked themselves the question of who do I need to become? Because if you already were who you needed to be to achieve the goal, you would have it. It literally, like, it's really that simple. Like, we all know how to do what we do. So if you took it away from us, we could do this really fast.

Most people, want to ask them how much faster it's three times faster. So you've already become the person who can do what you do right now, this level. So if you have aspirations to become more, if you're only making 50 grand a year, you want to make a hundred, you got to ask yourself, well, who do I need to become? Skills, character traits, beliefs, to be a person that creates that kind of value. And that's the, unfortunately, that's what, again, back to your, why do people stay broke? They don't ever ask themselves that question. They don't ask their boss.

They don't ask a friend. Like, what do you think I need to do to make an extra 10 bucks an hour? Well, clearly stop complaining. Really? You think if I stop complaining, maybe I'm making, yeah, because you don't get the promotion because nobody wants to work with you. And they're not going to give you a leadership or management role. If you're the complainer, they're like, Oh geez, I got to stop complaining. So that to me is the third part. So once you value yourself and you understand where you can

kind of start freeing up some time, right. And I'm not even saying you got to pay for it. You can just stop. You can either stop doing something that's taking your time. You can ask your kids to start doing stuff. Like my kids take care of themselves. You know, I have a person in my home that takes care of my wife and I, that does not do the work for my kids. Okay. I always tell them they, she works for me. She don't work for you guys. I'm saying, I'm using that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. If you ask my kids, are you rich? They say, I'm not rich. My dad's rich. You know, I took that from Shaq. I think it's the coolest thing you ever said. So the third part is the reflection. Because without the reflection, you don't see where

the gap is. And that's what will give you at least a plan to hopefully go become more. Dan, where can everyone get your book? I also think this is a really great book to listen to on Audible if you're in the car. Thank you. Where can everyone find it? Well, most people that read the book want an assistant and they always ask, well, what would I get them to do? So if anybody wants to get my internal SOP,

this is the one I work with, and it's 47 pages. It's cleaned out and you guys can get a copy. Just find me on Instagram. It's my favorite place. Follow me on Instagram. And if you message me,

EA, Skinny Confidential, I'll literally send them the Google Doc link. No opt-in, no nothing. I'm going to send you EA. It is awesome because once you see it, you'll be like, because most people just don't know what they're going to get them to do. I have my five North Star principles in there. I've got the whole inbox management system, my travel system. It's all there, all my preference files. And then you go, oh, I could see how somebody could take care of 30 hours a week for me so I

can go do more of the business stuff I do. That's genius to have like a blueprint for what an EA looks like. Oh yeah. I've got SOPs for every part of, I got a house manager SOP. I'll give you guys that one. We're going to read this and I'm also, we're going to walk out and give this to our EA as well. Let's go. That's actually why it's done so well is the EAs have been reading it and talking about it as the kind of the operating manual for the work. We have an incredible EA. So I think that she'll love this. I would love to get your, your EA guide and also your house manager and you have to send me and I'll link it in the show notes, the Jim Rohn green screen. Yes. Yes. The YouTube. Yeah. Yeah. Him on his chalkboard.

Where can everyone find you on Instagram? Yeah. Instagram. And then the books, Amazon, everywhere. It's actually continues to sell more copies every week than the previous week, which is bananas. Yeah, it's been a year and a half now it's been out. So let's see if we can sell a few more for you here. I would love that. I mean, I'm just, my mission is to help entrepreneurs

build companies they don't grow to hate. Did you wear blue to match the book? I always wear blue. I don't like to think about stuff that I already thought about. I literally was just listening to this billionaire speak. I forgot who it was. And he said, the number one tip is if you want to be super rich is avoid decision fatigue. Okay. I was going to say where the same, because it's funny. I always joke that you can't be a

billionaire if you don't cold plunge as a joke and and and i think some people think i'm serious but it's it's the decision fatigue is that concept right it's the preferences it's it's i just want to make a decision once and then if people can just follow it then i can work on things that require the brain power michael always wears a white shirt unless we're on vacation and he pulls out a whole fucking new closet let's go i'm the same way man i'm the same way i mean i'm like who is this person when i go on vacation i go on vacation'm the same way, man. I'm the same way. I mean, I'm like, who is this person? When I go on vacation, I go on vacation. I don't think about it

because I'm like, listen, I'm not going to do it that often when I do it. Yeah. You disconnect from the old. You're on vacation. The brain is free. The creativity comes up.

Subconsciously, you start to come back. It's like, get off me. Let's go. I also think I could tell you go to the gym. Sometimes I like taking a week off and coming back.

I feel like you get more strength. That's interesting. Like a rest week. I haven't done that in a while, Sometimes I like taking a week off and coming back. I feel like you get more strength. That's interesting. Like a rest week. I haven't done that in a while, but I'm not opposed to it. It does work. You get more strong. Yeah, you just don't go on a binge eating. So you guys don't get pretty big.

Don't you think like a rest week sometimes? We train hard. We're actually going to the gym right after this. You guys all lift? Everybody in our studio lifts. Do you know I lost 60 pounds lifting weights and eating bowls of meat? Yeah, macros. I love lifting weights. And I'm trying to not be a tugboat to everyone.

I'm trying to be a lighthouse. Just be so undeniably fit that people just... That's why for me, anytime I think of trying to criticize somebody that needs to stop looking chubby, I just go, do I still have the bicep vein? Yes. Cool. Am I going calf vein next? Am I going tricep vein?

How obnoxious can I be? No, but I try, try like, I know it's, we had, we've had a few guys on here talking about this, but you know, if you're into the gym,

you get so addicted to that process. It becomes part of the routine. But I think honestly, to get some of the gains, taking like a five day or a week once in a while, like not all the time, but once a quarter maybe.

He does do this. And then you, like you come back, you think you're going to lose lose it but you actually come back stronger it's weird my trainer told me when i just took this week off he said wow you can do five pull-ups and i could only do three yeah we just went for a week and we're in a place where we didn't have wins right the break like makes you the recovery makes you like so much stronger it's a reset yeah i love it i'm curious what sam thinks sam is so hardcore workout 23 okay yeah his body works different he's like resting what do you can tell like it's so weird you can tell when people lift

oh and i think like whenever i meet someone, then you can just tell, especially, no, I don't say you're older, but like you're not 23, right? When I see guys- I love that you say we're similar age and I'm seven years older than you. That was very kind of you. I appreciate it. It's just, they told me the other day that when I was their age, they weren't even born. So that really got to me. Well, does everyone that's listening know that weightlifting gives you a human growth hormone? Yeah, that's where it comes. It makes you look younger. People don't understand.

Listen, these guys will get it. I'm being a tugboat. At 30 years old, you're going to start to see. You guys see. There was some wisdom in this room. You can always like, when you see someone like, okay, like they've still got it together. You can tell there's discipline. You can tell they're like, you know,

they take themselves seriously. Yeah, that's why I always tell my clients like, and the bicep vein is actually a joke that we play with them because I want, they don't realize that that just, it kind of like a reach and reputation of your brand is that it goes ahead of you. Like before you even open your mouth,

people are like, oh, this person listens to themselves. Because- Discipline. Yeah, you wouldn't look like that if you didn't have discipline. So if I'm gonna do business with you, then of course I wanna be in business with somebody that at least does the things

they say to themselves. I do a weird thing. I won't listen to any successful entrepreneur if their bodies keep a mess high five you so you know why because i'm like listen like it seems like you've got it you've got all this money in this great business but everything else is a disaster i'm gonna listen to tony soprano all day long i love tony soprano is a fictional character this is michael where you just say thank you listen i respect a lot of these people that have built great businesses,

but I'm like, I can't follow your blueprint of life because everything else is falling apart. Yeah, I'm not taking marriage advice from Elon Musk. Dan,

buy back your time. Go follow him on Instagram. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Come back anytime. Thank you, Dan.