How The SaaS Academy Teaches Founders to Scale to $10M ARR Through Leadership Systems (Interview with CEO Dan Martell)

Opening: The CEO's Real Job and Today's Agenda

Dan Martell

00:00The job of the CEO is not to build the ship, even though it is part of that. Our job is to actually set the sail. 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 wanna share with you guys today is how to scale to 10,000,000, but do it in the craziest environments. Okay? If you learn what I'm sharing with you today, not

Dan Martell's Personal Story: Early Failures and the E-Myth

Dan Martell

00:27only will you get to the 10,000,000 mark, which is absolutely cool and fun, but more important importantly, you guys are gonna transform your relationship with chaos. You guys down for that? Yes or yes? Yes. Perfect. You guys are in the right room. I wanna 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

00:54again, 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 e myth. And through that process, I decided I need to do this. K. 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

01:19e 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

01:51of what other people would call successful and started generating revenue, I was just all in and that's what I did for four years. I was working a hundred hours a week, I was traveling two hundred and fifty 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

02:08and 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. Do you guys know what blue facing is? It's 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

Building Spheric Technologies and Becoming a Millionaire at 27

Dan Martell

02:30of 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 fucking 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.

02:52Can anybody relate to that where you guys are just doing and doing and 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 when was 27,

03:07but 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 06:30 and I go, shit, I'm late. I jumped in my car and I rushed back and I run up the stairs to our to our home and I walk into the living room that was open to the kitchen

03:30and 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 leaves, and walks right past me, goes and stays with her parents. And it wasn't

03:56the first time she'd 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. Guys wanna hear the craziest part about all this? She never asked me for any of it. Some of you are on this rat race

04:29of 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 had figured out how to achieve, but I didn't understand how to lead. Even my team, I was successful in my business but

04:55I had 30 people reporting directly to me and I was explosive. I was emotional. I didn't I would just tell everybody what to do and they would do it out of fear. Didn't I 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 10,000,000? Because there's this philosophy called the law of the lid. John Maxwell talks about it in the

05:1721 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. And no business will grow past the level of the leader. So if you're in this room and you want to scale to 10,000,000 in ARR, 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

The Pain Line: Stall, Sabotage, or Sell

Dan Martell

05:41when I put this up here. 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 with my wife every quarter. We take three days off. And I want to 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

06:07to grow, my team continues to show up and it doesn't require like stock options and all these incentives that 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 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

06:28any 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 going 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 wanna do one of three things. I call them the three S's. They either

06:51wanna stall. You know, 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 of 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

07:11market's not going to slow down. It grows every year. It's called GDP. Your customers aren't gonna require less of you. They're gonna expect more. So eventually your best customers are gonna leave. And then the third is your best team members are gonna 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

07:33to have a vision big enough for every person on our team's goals and dreams to fit within it. If your vision for your business isn't big enough for everybody on your team's goals and dreams to fit within it, you're gonna lose your best people. The second s is sabotage. And this one is a funny one, so I'm gonna give you a few examples. My buddy Trevor did this recently and he essentially had an opportunity to three

07:55x 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 the email, and he opened the email, and he closed the email. He never replied. Eleven 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

08:16had email and the person's response was, hey man, like appreciate you replying, but that opportunity's already left. He sabotaged himself from growing. Some of you don't realise that you've 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 hire out of fear. It could show up essentially anytime your calendar will be compromised. If growth means your calendar will turn into chaos,

08:45then 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, listen to the three things that are not going good in the business. He's like one, two and three. I said cool. If those three things weren't an issue, would you sell the business? He's like no. I go, well here's the thing man,

09:06every entrepreneur will hit their complexity ceiling and you either decide to deal with that complexity ceiling today or you can go to the next business, the next green pasture, the next you know, we always think the other idea, the other market's better. You will hit that same complexity ceiling and it's gonna stop you. So either start today or deal with it later. So what I want to share with you guys is the buyback principle, which is

The Buyback Principle: Hire to Buy Back Your Time

Dan Martell

09:28we don't hire to grow our business, we hire to buy back our time. Because if you do the second, you get the first, but if you do the first, you won't get the second. Does everybody get this? Yes or yes? Yes. Buyback principle. This is the the philosophy. So here's what I learned a long time ago. $10,000,000 companies, startups were not built off $10 tasks. Mathematically impossible. It's a physics thing. You don't have enough hours in

09:54a week. You can't build a 10,000,000 error company doing $10 task. What I'm gonna share with you today specifically about scaling is the leadership side. Because I feel like that is the the biggest opportunity for all of you is how to show up for your team in a way that can scale you and you don't become the complexity ceiling for your business. So three mistakes I see entrepreneurs make all the time. Number one is holding on

Three Mistakes: Holding On Too Long and the Replacement Ladder

Dan Martell

10:17too long. Right? How many of you guys start to feel really warm on your chest or kind of like get super anxious if I tell you about delegating to other people? You guys a little nervous? Right? The reason why is because a lot of us have a fear of losing control. K? My son's like that. He has Legos and he considers himself a master builder, but he does not like letting anybody else help him because what

10:41if they do it wrong and then he's gotta fix it. Many entrepreneurs deal with this. They hold on for too long and write this one down, your number one strength becomes your Achilles heel as you grow. So that's a crazy one for you to wrestle with. The thing you're great at as you grow to 10,000,000 will be the number one Achilles heel in stopping you from growing because it's the thing you're gonna judge the most, you'll

11:06be the most critical of, and it's the last thing you'll give up and you'll be the bottleneck for your team. So I wanna share with you the big lesson I learned from Richard Branson, which was it's not even just about buying back our time, it's about protecting our time. Okay? The the opportunity for you to transform your team and the way you show up as a leader is through protecting your time. So I had the fortune.

11:31I grew up in a small town in Eastern Canada. K? Like I read Richard's books and if you don't know who Richard Branson is, he's technically the billionaire every other billionaire wants to be like. Okay. Like literally, exactly. So so when I get the email in 2017 asking me if I want to spend a week with Richard Branson, I was like, okay, what's the date? Is this April 1? Like what's this makes no sense to my

11:53brain. Okay. The reason why is I was working on this company called Clarity and Richard, was an investor in my friend Dan's company, Zozy, and he said, hey Dan, I'm going to Switzerland for a ski week. You should invite some friends. I'd love to meet some of the people in The Valley doing cool stuff. Whatever reason he thought what I was doing was interesting. So I get to go spend a week at Richard Branson's. Tim Ferriss

12:16is there.

12:18Brian who just sold his company, Brain Tree for I think 650 millions there. There's literally it's like impostor syndrome on my part out the wazoo. Like, I'm thinking somebody's gonna discover quickly I'm not supposed to be there and I'm gonna get pulled out of this house and brought back to back home. And here's the thing that resonated the most with me, was watching how Richard spent his time. It was fascinating. And I think this is the

12:47opportunity for everybody in this room to understand is here's a guy that runs 400 companies. Technically, he owns 400 companies. Virgin Group of Companies is like this big conglomerate. Each one has CEOs and he has two CEOs that runs the Virgin Group. It's amazing. And he's skiing all day with us. He's coming out with us for Apres ski. And I was obviously really excited to finally get to meet him and talk to him and we had

13:13dinner every night and it was amazing. But the thing that impressed me the most was how he protected his time. And the way he did that is every message coming into his life went through a person named Helen and Helen was his executive assistant. And when you hear things like he doesn't do email and he doesn't have a laptop or a smartphone, It's true. He might today but at the time literally every demand on his time

13:39went through Helen and the way he processed it was they would have breakfast and for ninety minutes she would bring to him only the things she didn't know how to handle and they would talk about it. And I remember talking to Helen on the third day and I was like, tell me about your relationship with Richard if you don't mind. Like how does it work? And she walks me through this process and I go, that's completely

14:01different than the way I'm working right now. And and what I believe is where you're at today, if you want to get to 10,000,000, you're at a million, it requires a completely different paradigm shift in how you think about your time. When I was younger, I had all the time in the world. So guess what? I didn't value it. What I've discovered is when people get into their forties and fifties, all of a sudden it becomes

14:22really valuable and they start looking at these opportunities to buy it back. And I learned that from Richard. He literally said, I do these things better than most people in the world and I love doing this. Everything else has to go through Helen and she knows what I prefer. So I want to teach you the framework called the replacement ladder. Okay? So if I was starting today from scratch, this is the sequence. If you don't have

14:43something to write down, take photos, but I'm going to go through it and you're going to want to remember this stuff. The first level of replacement is your admin. This is somebody that can do all the administrative stuff in your life and specifically I talk about inbox and calendar. Again, if you're building a $10,000,000 a year company, you're doing $10 tasks, the math doesn't work out. So even from day one, which will be counterintuitive to what

15:08you've heard from everybody else, I will actually encourage you and my portfolio companies, that's what I do, is to hire an executive assistant and have them manage your email and your calendar. Okay. My brother hired an assistant and I was asking him how it was going. He's like, well I don't understand the big ideas. And I'm like, dude, it's like transformational. He's like, yeah, I'm not really getting a lot of value. And when I asked him

15:29if he delegated his inbox to his assistant, he said no. What I do is I just send her stuff or him and cc them on task. And I was like, no dude. All the stuff that's coming into your world needs to be processed by somebody else, and then you guys talk about what they don't know how to handle. So level one is an admin. Level two is customer success. If you're not there, you're gonna feel stalled,

15:52and the key roles they have to take over is all onboarding and all support. Okay? So far so good? Yes or yes? Yes. Perfect. Level three is marketing. Okay? Because if you're still the one dependent on generating leads, then as soon as you go on vacation or get busy with a new hire or go on a fundraising process, your business slows down. It's a dangerous place. But the key is is they gotta own the traffic in

16:16the campaigns. They gotta own the creativity and make sure the traffic's coming through. The fourth level is sales and this is freedom. And the reason why it's freedom is because of this. And these are only four hires in your business. You now can sleep and have somebody generate leads, talk to those opportunities, close them as a customer and somebody can onboard them and bring them into your software. Okay? For hires and you're now at a level

16:40of freedom. And the favorite one is leadership, which is the top level. This is where you have to hire people that lead, but you got to give them the you got to ask them to own strategy and outcomes. Okay. We'll talk about this in a bit. But if you hire somebody and tell them what to do, you're doing it wrong. Okay. So this is level one or this is the first mistake I see founders make. Okay.

17:04It's that they hold on for too long and they don't know how to replace themselves. This is the model to follow. Here's the deal.

17:14And guess what? You suck at it and you're overpaid.

17:20Let's be honest. You're not good at it and you're making way too much money. Okay? So find a partner that can support you. Second mistake, heads not hands. A lot of you are in software, so you guys think to yourself, well, I just need to automate this. I need to outsource this to another part of the world. I need to have just a bunch of of hands doing stuff, following SOPs and automations. What you need to

17:43do is understand how to get leverage with your people. That's why I call it heads not hands. Too often I meet founders and they're like, oh yeah, I got 26 people in The Philippines. It's like, yeah, but are they just following scripts blindly? Are you actually hiring people, training them and having them come up with solutions to problems? So I learned this moving to San Francisco. When I was 28 after I sold my first company, I

18:04moved there and within a few months, I meet Naval at this entrepreneurial dinner. And Naval Ravikan is arguably like our modern day philosopher in startup world. Right? How many of guys know who Naval is? Naval Robicon? Perfect. So I met Naval before he was I think even before AngelList was a thing. And it was literally after going through so much pain in my previous company and asking myself, well, how do I create in the world but

Four Forms of Leverage: Capital, Content, Code, Collaboration

Dan Martell

18:32still do it in a way that, doesn't sacrifice my relationships? I I didn't have an answer to that question, but I wanted to figure it out. And I meet Nival and Nival shared with me this really, really important framework. K? And if you write this down, you will now have the four master skills of an entrepreneur. There's only four ways to get leverage and leverage is everything. Right? Because if you wanna increase your output, time is

Week with Richard Branson: Protecting Your Time

Dan Martell

18:59a constant, the leverage is a variable, a multiplication of leverage, and then the output is dependent on how well you have leverage. And there's only four ways to create leverage. The first one is capital. A lot of us know this. We're in the software world. Raise capital to hire people, to generate revenue that's more efficient, right? And then we return the capital and we keep the balance. The second one is content, okay? That's why James said,

19:24you know, Dan's the guy, he's sharing content. I realised a long time ago when I was building standard operating procedures or playbooks for my businesses, that's content. Content has incredible leverage. Right? Creating videos, media, all this stuff, incredible leverage. If I record a podcast, it doesn't cost me anything more to have 10,000,000 people listen to it than the first 10. Does that make sense? Huge leverage. The third, which is like hot and heavy right now in

19:50the market is code. Right? Think about automation software. It's what all you guys do if you're in b to b SaaS. And then AI. AI is one of the coolest. If you haven't been playing with GPT-four, it's blowing my mind what it can do. Right? So the third area is finding leverage with code. The fourth one and what I want to talk about today is collaboration. Okay. Those are the four capital, content, code, collaboration. And when

20:16he explained to me collaboration, I was like, I'm I'm thinking about it completely wrong because if I keep telling people what they have to do, then I'm not getting any leverage. Does everybody get that? Like truly listen to that. If you have to tell people what to do, then you're not getting any leverage. So Naval shares this with me and I take it to another level and I built this framework called transformational leadership, okay? This is

Transformational vs Transactional Leadership

Dan Martell

20:39the solution to the second biggest problem. Transformational leadership is completely different than what I was taught or taught myself when I started in business, which is transactional management. Transactional management is you tell them what to do, you tell them what to do next, and then or you tell them you check that it got done, then you tell them what to do next. Okay? Which sounds like what I I did for the first three companies. Literally, I

21:04showed up. I told people what to do. I checked they got it done, and then I told them what to do next. The challenge with that is that as you add people, there's this natural bottleneck of being able to do that. It usually is about 11 to 12 people, about a million and a half in ARR where you just can't manage. Has anybody ever woken up in the morning with like a project list then you get

21:24into your inbox and then you get phone calls and then you get text messages and then by like 04:00 in the afternoon and you put out all the fires and you told people what to do and you checked that they got it done and you told them what to do next, then you finally at five, six, 07:00 at night get a chance to do the work you were supposed to do? That sound familiar to anybody? Yeah,

21:40I'm not going call you out but that's because you're doing transactional leadership or management. What you want to do is do transformational leadership, which is you start with the outcome. If I was trying to climb a mountain, I would be clear as day on what we're trying to accomplish. We'll get to the top of this mountain. When we get there, it's going look like this. You're going have these resources. Here's how it's going to feel. Right?

22:02Think of it this way. If you're asking somebody to revamp your website, tell them the success criteria that you're gonna use to evaluate if they did a good job. Outcomes. Okay? Then you give them the measurement that you're gonna use to measure their progress. If we're climbing a mountain, I'm gonna say, hey, the core metric we're gonna measure is feet of elevation per day. If I know how many feet of elevation per day you've been doing

22:27every day and you just text me, then I can do the third part which is coach to success. Because maybe day one you got a thousand feet of elevation and then the second day you only got 50 and I'm going to check-in with you. Hey dude, what happened? And you're going to be like, yeah, I got lost. Then I'd say, well what are ways to avoid getting lost? And then the person hopefully will reply and say,

22:47it'd be good if I had a map. I go, well where would you get a map? And he's like, well there's these other hikers, maybe I could ask them. Sounds like a good idea. Try that. See what I'm saying? That's what coaching to success looks like. And then you just keep measuring, you set the outcome. Here's why this strategy is so powerful. If you get this, it will change the game on your rise to 10,000,000 in

23:09ARR. Essentially over time you build people to a point where they no longer have to come to you for the answers because you're building a pattern where they they learn how to self lead. Does that make sense? That's why it's transformational leadership. They'll eventually get to a point where they will start with the outcomes, they will define the measurement for success, and then they will come to you only when they need coaching, but for the most

23:33part they're gonna self coach themselves or find the resources online. And this is how you remove yourself from having to be the person. And the day you remove yourself from having to be the person is the day your business will grow. It's the law of the lid in full effect. So here's the big idea. Delegate the outcome not the task. Okay. Delegate the outcome not the task. And really ask yourself when you're writing that email reply

Delegate the Outcome, Not the Task

Dan Martell

24:00or you're getting on that Zoom call and you're about to say something, just go, am I am I about to tell somebody what to do or am I talking about the outcome? And just and and and watch your team elevate through this process. It's a beautiful thing. It's it's why I love the work I get to do so much is because I know helping the CEOs in this room is gonna allow you to show up for

24:19your team in a way that's gonna transform your culture, it's gonna transform your people and it's gonna build them to become the people that I'm sure you saw in them when they started with you, but maybe after a few months they start to frustrate you. Those people where you're like, I saw potential but why is he pissing me off so much? It's because of way you're showing up. The third big mistake is the genius bottleneck. The

The Genius Bottleneck

Dan Martell

24:43genius bottleneck.

24:46Most entrepreneurs run around the world as the genius with a thousand helpers. Okay? And the problem is that you're never going to build the people around you. If you look at the most successful people, the Richard Branson, the Mark Cuban, you name it, Naval Ravikant, and you look at their leadership team, you look at Bezos, each one of his direct reports, CEOs of his divisions or whatever you want to call it, they're world class leaders. Individually,

25:15I heard if AWS was a public company, it would be bigger than Salesforce. So he hires talent that is able to grow and elevate businesses at a level that like, you know, not even a CEO, but just like from a leader point of view running these divisions in the company. And the reason why is because Bezos got rid of being the bottleneck. Okay? And this is the strategy to do it. Adam used to work for me

25:45in HR. And one day he comes to me and he's like, hey, man, I'm stressed. And I go, what about? He goes, well, we got to hire 12 people in the next quarter. And I go, cool. He goes, I don't know how to do that. And I go, okay.

26:02Well, what what should I do? I don't know. Well, I mean, there's a problem. What's the problem? I need to hire 12 people in the next quarter. Sounds like you have a problem. He's like, yeah. I go, so like I love you, man, but are you asking me to do your job because I think you're the HR director? Well, I'm not asking you to do my job. I said, well, sure sounds like it. If I have

26:28to tell you the answer to the test, it sounds like I'm taking the test. Yes or yes? Perfect. Stop telling the people the answer to the test. So instead, I taught Adam this simple rule. It's called the one three one rule. I learned it from my buddy Brad a long time ago and it's transformed the way I show up. K. I shared it with Adam and I said, you know, here's the way it works. Come back

The 1-3-1 Rule

Dan Martell

26:51to me tomorrow. In the morning, he texted me and he just says, I'm good. He didn't need to talk to me. Here's how it works. K. The one three wrong rule follows these three principles. First off is you have to come to me with one problem. The amount of times people come to me with this like very broad thing that's not specific is it blows my mind. Defining a problem, a well defined problem is the first

27:16challenge. So step one, one specific problem. Number two is three viable options. Tell me what are your three options to solving this problem. But viable ones, not like baloney ones that make no sense. Like one of our options is to do nothing. Well, duh. Like I could do that job. That's not a hard one. But like come to me with three viable options. So I shared this with him. And then number three is what's your one

27:41recommendation?

27:43Now here's what happened is I shared this with Adam and I go, how much time do you need to put together some options? He says, how about till tomorrow? I said, perfect. Let's talk same time tomorrow, circle back. By the morning when he did the research, it was obvious to him what he needed to do. He didn't even need to talk to me ever again. Here's why the one three one rule is a game changer for

28:04the genius bottleneck is that when you implement this into your team, over time you get to push all problems down to the frontline workers who have the most context to solve your problem in the first place. Some of you are solving problems with imperfect information, but the team has it. The context is down at the frontline individual contributor level. And anytime somebody comes to you with a problem and you say, what's your one three one? That's

28:32the language. You literally if you're on my team, I will say that to you very often. They go, oh, this is a problem. What's your 131? Well, I don't know yet. Perfect. How long do you need to research it? Alright, I get it. Cool. And see, it's not because I don't wanna do work. It's just my happy place is arguing around the sequencing and the ideation. Right? And that's what you love to do as a CEO.

28:53You don't wanna actually tell people what to do. You wanna know that they did the research to come up with options and then help them craft it and change it and tweak it and then say, what's your recommendation? And they go, this one. You go, totally agree. Let's do that. That is how you build a company that is not dependent on the CEO and it can scale. And it is one of the most beautiful things to

Build the People and the People Build the Business

Dan Martell

29:14watch. Here's my philosophy, is we build the people and the people build the business. You want to go from 2 to 10,000,000, 3 to 10,000,000 in ARR? I'm telling you it's a very simple recipe. Look at your team and invest in them the same way you invest in your marketing. If you invest in your people to a similar degree as you do in your marketing and your sales, you will build a team that can execute that

29:40vision. If you keep investing in every other area of your business, right, customer success and marketing all that stuff, but you don't invest in your people personally with your time, if you don't pour into your people then you're not gonna build the people that can build the business and you'll always be the bottleneck. So those are the three big ideas, right? Number one is what's the sequence of replacing yourself out of your business so you can

30:01get to 10,000,000? The second one is how do I show up as a transformational leader so that I can inspire and grow and develop my people but do it in a way that supports them so I'm not telling them what to do? And the third, how do I give them a tool where they as a leader can now push down to their direct reports so that they don't become a bottleneck for their own team because they're

30:23gonna do what you're doing. And if you show up as somebody tells people what to do, they're gonna do the same thing and the whole thing gets bottlenecked. Does that make sense? Yes or yes? Yes. Cool. The one question I get every time I share anything about the replacement ladder is, Dan, how do I hire an assistant? Anybody thinking that right now? Or what do I get them to do? Or what's your SOPs? Well here's the

Resources: Assistant SOPs and Buy Back Your Time Book

Dan Martell

30:44deal, I'll give it all to you. I literally put together my job posting for my assistant, the test projects that we use for my assistant, and the SOPs, my personal SOPs. I had her sanitize it, put it together only for this room. So if you want to get that, just go to the URL, download that copy for yourself and afterwards, I'm gonna be doing a book signing. This is my new book called Buy Back Your Time.

31:08If you like some of the content I just shared, I'd encourage you to go check it out. The audio book is read by me with bonus content and I just want to share this. I believe every one of you guys are here, here in the world to do two things. Number one, become the best version of yourself. Wake up every day and grow and develop and just be the best version of yourself. And two, share that

31:33person with the world to your community, to your family, to the people on the internet. I don't care who you share it with. I really encourage you guys all to keep going on your journey of growth and sharing those lessons with people around you. Thanks for having me.