What it’s Like to Live Like a $100M CEO (Day in the life of Dan Martell)

I'm Dan Martell, CEO of Martell Ventures, a group of companies that does over $100 million in revenue. I'm gonna take you behind the scenes for 24 hours and show you how I get more done in a day on the road than most get done in a month. We're on the highway in Austin, Texas, man, the frickin' construction zone that is the highway system here. I'm always trying to make sure I don't bottom out. What do we got? Get up at four, get some work done, always. Quick workout, boom, in the car. Batman style, to the plane, headin' to San Diego, land, podcast, then AI meetup, another podcast, then my keynote, five o'clock, grab some food, jump on the plane, back home, put the kids to bed tonight. Boom, that's what I'm doin' today. You want entertainment? Let's go. So what do you say when people mess up their day? Literally, my response was, we don't have energy, we produce energy. At any moment, you can decide to have more energy. When you're doin' something you absolutely love, you're not tired, you're not worried about, you know, your next meal, you're, like, in the moment. How's it goin'? This is a spec? Look at this thing, yeah, man. Oh, yeah, the exhaust is obnoxious. Pretty much a straight pipe. I'll take one just for after. The hospitality, Kai, so nice. Think about it, when I was like, hey, bro, I wanna start Martell Media, could you imagine that this is what we'd be doin'? Dude, flyin' around on the PJ, doin' that wasn't even in. I wasn't on the vision board, we were just gonna make YouTube videos. That's why people go, like, if you could go back and tell your 16-year-old self any advice, dream bigger, dream bigger, dream bigger. If people understood that they're one creative project away from being wildly successful, one, one song, one video, one blog post, one message, one tweet, one introduction, one. The whole thing, just proof. Because they make up these rules about what needs to be true for it to happen, and if you think that it has to happen in that order, of course it'll never happen, and it'll be hard. I love San Diego. I like the weather, the sunshine. If where I lived had San Diego weather, you'd have to come to me all the time. I wouldn't leave. What's up? It's him! I was like, Sam, when did you find out Alan's gonna be up there? He's like, I've known for a while. I was like, oh, I found out yesterday. Medium Americano, please. Why do I check my stories? I always check to see what the narrative is. Most people don't measure enough, dude. Like, I'm checking this four times a day. Why don't people measure? And why do you think people don't measure? You don't have the right system to measure. That was the first thing I was gonna say, is they think it's too hard and they don't have the right tooling, and they don't trust the numbers, so then they stop measuring. And then, I think there's a large portion of people that don't want to know what the reality is, because it's funner to live in make-believe Lando. Another invoice sent, made money. Invoice sent is not cash. It is like celebrating you sending an email. Round two, brother. It's been forever. How's everything? Amazing. Oh, man. Good to see you guys coming out, huh? By the way, your guy, Aaron, we just brought him on like a month ago. We're gonna TEDx our mastermind. Brought him on, and it's been a frickin' game changer. Most business problems are people problems. Yes. You get the right person, the right team. So, excited for it. You guys got a big day, so I wanna jump in, maximize our time. Let's do it. I got my man, Dan Martell. Dan, welcome back to the show. Rich, it's an honor, man. I'm pumped. Round two, and we're gonna bring the heat today. I think this is probably the number one question that I get. What should one focus on to get rich in 2025? I have nothing to sell, but I'm just gonna keep saying it's AI, AI, AI. If you don't realize there's this whole wave of transformation, I'm talking like multiple levels, just AI adoption, small business. Like, people are like, everybody must be using AI. Nobody's using it, bro. Even my own team. I walk around, I said, show me your chat GPT or cloud or whatever you're using. Show me the history. You can't be productive member of a team if you don't use it every day, half a dozen times a day, period. You're not that smart. Don't be so frickin' dumb. It has to be used. So getting into that, to surf that wave right now, in 2025, right now, everybody, I don't care what industry you're in, is a winning recipe to future-proof yourself and monetize. I have an interview. I do all final interviews with everybody in all my companies and hiring a new person to replace one of my top guys. And it's speed. I don't delay, right, Ed? Literally between two talks, we're doing it right now. Jared, what's up, dude? Wanted to squeeze you in, man. I'm all about speed. I wasn't gonna delay. So here's the deal. My job today is to convince you not to take the job. All right? And on the backside of that, I'm gonna ask you a few questions. Then I'm gonna switch roles and you can ask me whatever you got. By the time I get on final conversations with people, skills, knowledge, expertise, culture fit, all that fun stuff's there. I just wanna make sure that you know what you're getting into and all that fun stuff. Some people look at my schedule today and they go like, how are you not tired? And I'm like, how are you so lazy? Because I want them to come along for the adventure. Hey man, Dan. What's the dog's name? Faith. Faith the prayer puppy. Hello. Hey, Joanne. How are you? How are you doing? I'm good, how are you? I'm doing incredible. Good to see you. Can I get a name tag? Welcome. Nice to meet you, man. My name is Robin. I work with Ryan. That's my COO. How are you, man? Let's do it. Mike. Dan and your team, you guys have a super busy schedule, so I appreciate you getting some of your time. Without further ado, let's have a warm welcome for Mr. Dan Martell. Keep it going for Ryan, everybody. Give him some love. A lot of people read my book because they want time freedom. I actually wanna encourage you to go further than that and go for mind freedom. Rich to me is relationships, it's family, and yes, it's wealth. Now, there's two parts of my life. There's the media side and there's the venture side. What I realized a long time ago is that if you have a vision for your life that you wanna create, something magical, something big, you have to have a vision. The easiest way to make anything come true, 10 times, 100 times easier is to have two things, reach, people know who you are, and reputation. They have a positive understanding of who you are. Once you understand that everything in your life that you want to achieve is on the backside of reach and reputation, that equals distribution. Once you have distribution, you have audience, how easy it is to win. The other part is ventures. The ventures for me is really about AI in my world. When I looked at the opportunity for ventures for me was, okay, how do I take this new world, artificial intelligence, pair it with media, and do something that leverages, and this is the other part, which is talent. Write this down, two funnels. How many? First funnel, customer funnel. How do I create awareness, consideration, and purchase? The talent side works the exact same way. I'll actually draw it so you guys get the visual. Two funnels. Once I go awareness, consideration, hire, literally on the drive up here, I was doing a final interview with a very senior person, one of my companies. Once I hire them, then I gotta onboard them, I gotta develop them, and then I've got to retain them. Most people don't realise if they don't build a machine for talent, they'll always be at the mercy of the whole machine feeling hard. If you think of the goal of CEOing a business, it's making this machine work perfectly. Because when those things are in sync, when you can do some level of prediction and understand when the customers are gonna show up, then you figure out what's our lead time on hiring different levels of talent, and getting those people to show up and be productive, that's where the magic happens. Andrew, pleasure to meet you. I'm Andrew, what's up? Dude, most people are overwhelmed because they have no clarity. A confused mind gets overwhelmed. Thank you, man, thank you for your time. If I brought you in a room and I said, guess who's the engineer, you'd be like, that guy, that guy, that guy, and I'd be like. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Love you, brother. I love you. I'm in San Diego and love San Diego because of Travis. What is that, eight, nine, 10 years ago, dude! You know why? Because my YouTube channel, first video, this guy. So we went out for lunch, and he goes, you should create YouTube videos. And I was like, that sounds dumb. He goes, I'd watch. And the first thing I did, I bought a Sony camera, I don't even know which one, that's how technically illiterate I was. And I sat there and I shot videos. Here's how you run a meeting. And it was like the dork, I still had, those never made YouTube, but Travis kept being like, hey man, keep doing it, keep trying it. And to see that to today because of this guy, literally, I wouldn't be doing YouTube if it wasn't for Travis. Clap it up, so thank you. You know what Sam told me this morning? I said, what are we doing? What's the goal? He goes, have fun. Guess what I just did? Had fun! I love people. I would literally grab all of them, put them in this Uber or this car, and Rita would be like, what? We're not doing that. Get them out. This is Anne. Hi Anne, we were texting, nice to meet you. Hey man, I'm Dan. What's your name? Kane. Hey, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, brother. All right, all right, all right! Dan, you came all the way from Austin? Are you from Austin? I'm not from Austin, I'm Canadian. I'm just in Austin right now with the family, so. Okay, okay. On a day trip to San Diego. Hop on the jet, cruise through. I saw your schedule. It actually inspired me. I always feel like, you know, I'm doing a lot, but I look up to you. What did you, like, I'm curious, because some people are like, oh my God, it gave me anxiety. What part did you like? Oh no, I'm inspired. I'm like, he has his system so down, he knows exactly what he's doing, and he's gonna accomplish all of this, and fly back home, and just feel. Be with my kids. Yeah, be with your kids. That's really cool. What's the difference between millionaires and billionaires? What's the difference? I mean, you know what's interesting is, I think choosing who we get advice from is probably one of the most decisions you're gonna make in your life. Most people, if they're lucky, they have a mentor, a millionaire mentor. The challenge is that if you aspire to actually build a really massive life, the worst thing you could do is get advice from a millionaire. So I think millionaires can use systems to get rich, but if you wanna create wealth, billionaires build brands. Wow. And it's always been that way. Think about the billionaires you know. You could also tell me the brands they've built. Systems will help you become a millionaire, but brand will help you become a billionaire. So if you have aspirations to create massive wealth, I've been building companies for 28 years. Knowing that day one would have changed my whole life. How was it? What are you gonna ask? Either ask, how did you like that? Or, where are we going? Like a dad doing a home video. Hey, kids. Kids, tell me about your day. Tell me what you did. We already know this one Yeah, we're going to MTR. Midterm rental. What's a midterm rental? Over 30 days, I've been told. How many times have you done this keynote? This specific keynote? 250 reps. Exact same talk. Why do you think the message still resonates with people to hear that? You know, I will tell you what I think it is because I keep seeing it every day. The title of the book is the thing people wanna do. So if anything, I gotta remember next time I write a book to give it a title of a thing that people naturally say to each other. I'm on, I was like, when am I on stage? He's like, yeah, 18 minutes. I'm like, you're gonna stress the organizers out. Like if I had an event and I had a speaker going on and they'd be like, is that guy here yet? Nope. The coolest thing about being an entrepreneur is the fact that every day we actually get to go to work working on ourselves. I hope you don't miss that because there's a lot of people that work at companies and they're not lucky enough to be on a team where the leader understands this and put themselves in a situation where when they go to work, they develop and grow. Today, as Alec mentioned, I have the privilege of flying to the world, speaking on stage like this. I literally woke up this morning with my family in Austin, flew here, did two podcasts, another keynote. After I'm done this, we're gonna hang out for a bit, sign books. I'm gonna jump on my plane, fly back to Austin to put my kids to bed. So if you wanna buy back your time, get a jet. It is quite cool, but I'm telling you, there's a completely different level of operating that I would invite you guys to consider. You guys wanna learn how to do that? Say yes. Yes. Perfect. Listen to this. It's a calendar over capacity problem. Some of you guys keep hiring people to do work, but your life gets harder and harder because you keep hiring people to do stuff you should be doing and you keep doing the stuff you feel guilty asking somebody else to do. If you're gonna put some money to labor, always hire first to buy back time out of your calendar. Here's how we do it. The first thing is we audit. We look at our calendar. Most people do this wrong because they hire people to do the thing that they actually love to do. If you're starting off and you really love doing deals, don't hire somebody to do the deals for you. You do the deals. I always look at my calendar and I sort it through two-week audit. I do a time and energy audit for the past two weeks and I go, what is there that is sucking my energy? Okay, green gives me energy. Red sucks my energy. The yellow stuff is where you gotta be worried. And as you grow in business, the stuff that's red feels really, really important. But guess what? When you're doing that work, you're not moving the business forward. So I look at everything in my calendar that is low, that sucks my energy, and that would cost very little to pay somebody else to do. So far, so good? Say yes. That becomes a bucket that is sucking my energy, costs very little to pay somebody else to do, that I then go to the second step, which is transfer. And that's where I hire. So when I transfer, I try to say, my first hire, most of the time, is somebody that can do my accounting, can also help my social media posting, and can also answer emails. What a crazy concept. The last step is fill, and this is the big one. Think of this. If you buy back your time and then go hang out on the beach, that doesn't work. Because the whole point of buying back your time is to reinvest it in things that make you more money, that light you up. See, the whole point is to build the machine that builds the machine. You have to get it to the point where it makes money, grows, and creates profit without you involved. So fill is all about three areas of focus. Number one is what's the next level skill you gotta develop? New levels, new devils. What's the habit? Now check this out. Success is a process of subtraction, not addition. You think you gotta add something to your life, I'm gonna tell you you gotta take something out of your life. The vices, the bad habits, you know. It's the thing you wake up the next morning going, I really should stop that. And the third part are the beliefs. You gotta fill your mind with a new set of beliefs that talks about what the world can do. See, some of you, your next level is believing that you can go to a next level. Fulfillment is on the byproduct of this. Waking up every day doing two things. One, becoming the best version of yourself, what I call the 10.0 version of yourself. Step two is share yourself with the world. A lot of you guys know you gotta be creating more content. That's the future. Personal brands, trust, speed. It's not who you know, it's who knows you. That's the future. And you want fulfillment. I'm telling you where it exists. It exists on the backside of waking up every day to try to become the 10.0 version of yourself and share that person with the world. Thanks for having me. Am I exhausted? No. Why would I be? You know why people get exhausted? Because they get in their head about what they're saying and then it becomes hard. My philosophy is this. I'm really good at being me. How about we all agree being me is okay. And then I can be me for the whole day. When I hang out with my friends and we have coffee and we play, it's not hard. It's true. When you hang out with your friends, is that hard? No. Why? Because you are who you are. When you try to act like somebody else because you're like, oh, I'm in a professional setting and I have to be all polished. I don't want to be that. I am who I am. You didn't do the face. Do it. Ready? Three, two, one. That's how she answers the phone every time I call. You're so pretty. You can see that. How was your day? You know, nothing that not really that busy or anything. I left a call. We've done worse. Anyways, I just want to call because we're five minutes away from jumping on the plane and heading back to you. Love you. Big fan of today. It's days like today that every other day, I'm like, oh, I could do more. Today shows capacity. I love days where flows, the people, the conversations. I feel like I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing with my time. That's it. What do you want to say to the person watching the end of this vlog? There's more. I hope you watch this and go, I'm not thinking about my time operating this way. Like there's more, like push, push. Always another level. Just don't be scared of it. Don't be scared of it. If they're watching, it's because they meant to watch. They needed to see that. They needed to see this. So I'll do it. I'll show up every day. Now, be inspired and do something with that.