How The SaaS Academy CEO Dan Martell grew The SaaS Academy to $40.9K revenue with a 60 person team in 2024.

the job of the CEO is not to build the ship even though it is part of that our job is to actually set the sale right now we've been gone through a whole lot of stuff in the economy Banks crashing valuations going to a third and what I want to share with you guys today is how to scale to 10 million but do it in the craziest environments okay if you learn what I'm sharing with you today not only will you get to the 10 million Mark which is absolutely cool and fun but more important importantly you guys are going to transform your relationship with chaos you guys down for that yes or yes perfect you guys are in the right room um I want to start off by sharing my personal story because when I was 28 I thought I was doing everything right I had failed my first company at 17 gave it another try at 19 failed again uh started Consulting writing code for three or four years and when I was 24 I finally decided to read a business book it's crazy that I went so long never reading a business book but I read the email and through that process I decided I need to do this okay I need to create a franchise prototype and I hired a coach named Bob and Bob was this cool dude out of Toronto he was a certified e-myth coach and Bob showed me all the missing pieces around building a business and because of his mentorship I was able to finally find success in my third company called spheric Technologies and what happened is because I got a taste of success I kept pulling on that string I just wanted to win you gotta understand I went from 17 to 24 trying really hard and just failure after failure so once I tasted a little bit of what other people call successful and started generating Revenue I was just all in and that's what I did for four years I was working 100 hours a week I was traveling 250 days a year I was if a customer called on a Sunday I answered the phone I went to my laptop I would go to my friend's birthday parties I remember one time my buddy Nick he had a birthday party and I show up with my laptop and I'm sitting in the living room while there's a full-on party going on to celebrate his birthday and I'm working on contracts and emails it's called Blue facing you guys know what blue facing is when you're in the dark and you got your phone in your face you look blue I was blue facing at his his birthday party and I thought in my head I am one of the best friends in the world because I'm so busy but I still showed up for his party and he thought to himself Dan is the most ridiculous dude in the world why is he sitting there on a laptop that was my mentality I don't know if you guys can relate to this but because I had no success for so long I was worried if I would stop any of that that everything would slide backwards can anybody relate to that where you guys are just doing and doing you're building momentum and volume and you're just worried if you stop well here's what happened to me not only did I build a multi-million dollar company at 27 I became a millionaire I was 27. um but the downside was is one Sunday I was working at the office and I was supposed to be home for dinner I was engaged to a woman we had just bought a new house and I looked down at 6 30 and I go I'm late I jumped in my car and I rushed back and I run up the stairs to our to our uh our home and I walk into the living room that was open to the kitchen and I see her in tears and her name was Amy and she's just sitting there in the kitchen just beside herself like can't even breathe I don't know if you've ever had somebody just emotionally distraught and she just looks at me and just takes the ring off and drops it on the counter and just blurts out I can't do this anymore and leads and walks right past me goes and stays with her parents and it wasn't the first time she had ever shared this with me but I just knew that time it was different and this was three months before our wedding day and it absolutely crushed me because I had been doing everything for us for our future for this family we were going to create to to have success you guys want to hear the craziest part about all this she never asked me for any of it some of you are on this rat race of success and you're using the excuse of my family my community my the people paying attention my employees but none of them have asked you for any of that right and that's where I had to learn these lessons and I went on a journey after she left to just try to find myself because I hadn't figured out how to achieve but I didn't understand how to lead even my team I was successful in my business but I had 30 people reporting directly to me and I was I was explosive I was emotional I didn't I I would just tell everybody what to do and they would do it out of fear I didn't build a team I didn't build a culture and that's what I want to share with you guys today is how do you scale your leadership to 10 million because there's this philosophy called The Law of the lid John Maxwell talks about it in the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership and no business will grow past the the level of the leader so if you're in this room and you want to scale to 10 million in AR go look in the mirror because the only way that's going to happen is if you level up your leadership skills so are you guys down to learn how to do that yes or yes it's wicked let's dive in so this is I know how douchey I look when I put this up here um and it's either gonna inspire you or trigger you and I'm totally fine with that but I share this because this is a picture from a retreat that I do my wife every quarter we take three days off and I wanna hopefully sell you on this concept that you can absolutely live a life that's bigger and actually build a bigger business while I do these quarterly Retreats my company continues to grow my team continues to show up and it doesn't require like stock options and all these incentives a lot of you guys have been hearing about in the valley it just requires you to show up differently as a leader and that's that's the meat of it so I want to share with you guys three big ideas but before I get into that I want to talk about the pain line so in the growth phase of any company entrepreneurs will eventually hit What's called the pain line and here's what I've learned about entrepreneurs they will not grow into pain if there is a knife to your throat and walking forward means you're gonna get stabbed in the neck you will not walk forward does that make sense yes or yes perfect usually in these moments I get the call because people want to do one of three things I call them the three s's they either want to stall you know I made more money last year with less headaches anybody resonate with that message we've all been there right where we grew a lot and we made less money and it was a lot more headaches my buddy Matt had an electrical company he's like hey Dan is it okay if I don't want to grow can I just like be the same size and I'm like yeah you can but here's what I know the Market's not going to slow down it grows every year it's called GDP um your customers aren't going to require less of you they're going to expect more So eventually your best customer is going to leave and then the third is your best team members are going to leave because they have a vision for their life that if you can't fulfill they'll find that person to fulfill it right because our goal As Leaders you might want to write this one down is to have a vision big enough for every person on our teams goals and dreams to fit within it if your vision for your business isn't big enough for everybody on your teams goals and dreams to fit within it you're going to lose your best people the second s is sabotage and this one is a funny one so I'm going to give you a few examples my buddy Trevor did this recently and he essentially had an opportunity to 3x his business in a month through a new partnership and instead of replying right away to the opportunity he sat on it and he opened the email and he closed email then he opened the email any closed email he never replied 11 days later he goes to the gym on a Saturday he's feeling good about himself he ate really clean the day before he's got the confidence up so he finally replies that I'd email and the person's response was hey man like appreciate you replying but that opportunity has already left he sabotaged himself from growing some of you don't realize that you hit the pain line and because growth means more pain you sabotage your success and it can show up as simple as not making a key higher out of fear it could show up essentially anytime your calendar will be compromised if growth means your calendar will turn into chaos then you won't grow and then the third s is sell you know my buddy Jason called me probably six months ago because his business wasn't doing well he wanted to exit and I asked him list me the three things that are not going good into business he's like one two and three is it cool if those three...