Dan Martell - August 05, 2025


Find Your Life’s Purpose By Doing These 3 Things

Topics
pain and purpose purpose
Hosted by
Dan Martell
Sleep Better Be Better @kopywriting My Morning Routine

Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

170.93

Word count

1,890

Sentence count

74


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about my personal story of how I went from a life of drugs and alcohol addiction, to becoming the most successful entrepreneur in all of Canada, and how I did it by turning my life around.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 I got three things that I'm gonna share with you
00:00:01.700 that I think will transform your life.
00:00:03.280 Three things, these ideas that will help you
00:00:05.980 go from waking up, dragging your feet,
00:00:09.120 not motivated, skipping workouts, lack of discipline,
00:00:12.740 to somebody that absolutely crushes their day.
00:00:16.060 Somebody that other people look up to.
00:00:19.600 Somebody that walks with a level of energy
00:00:23.000 and a pep to their step that is undeniable.
00:00:25.860 The first thing is you gotta understand,
00:00:28.420 this is built through service purpose requires you to help other people it's like when i remember a
00:00:36.500 long time ago i went to peru and i went on this retreat with my buddy philip and it was like this
00:00:44.420 you know this process that i could i did not understand i flew for two days to go down to
00:00:50.900 peru to spend 10 days without a clue of the agenda or what i'm doing but i trusted and what happened
00:00:57.060 was is part of the process was visiting orphanages and what was interesting was the way philip
00:01:05.340 introduced them to us it started with you know basic orphanages where you know the parents just
00:01:10.840 couldn't take care of the kids and they needed more support many of the kids had relationship
00:01:14.840 with their parents but they lived in this orphanage and we went and visited that one and it was really
00:01:19.400 fun and we played soccer with the kids and then it went to like the next orphanage which is you
00:01:25.480 know children they got taken from their homes and then the third orphanage which was the one that
00:01:29.680 broke my heart open the biggest was kids with mental disabilities that were just left on the
00:01:35.460 side of the road and it was really hard to watch and see and be and i remember when we were at the
00:01:46.940 first orphanage philip saw me playing with the kids in a way he'd never seen me play before see
00:01:54.600 He knew me in a work capacity my whole life,
00:01:56.780 just achievement-oriented, goal-oriented.
00:02:00.060 And I remember we were on the bus about to leave,
00:02:01.940 and he says, hey, Dan, who's that guy?
00:02:04.320 And I said, which guy?
00:02:05.160 He's pointing at the field.
00:02:06.360 I'm like, there's nobody on the field.
00:02:08.400 He goes, you on that field, who is that guy
00:02:12.980 that was playing with those kids that were cracking jokes
00:02:16.500 that you literally almost took a kid's head off?
00:02:18.500 You kicked the ball so hard, on purpose, by the way.
00:02:21.100 I kind of laughed.
00:02:22.860 I said, why?
00:02:23.640 he goes that guy's cool that guy's fun that guy very determined that guy i could see you wanted
00:02:32.920 to win but it took nothing away from you to also enjoy yourself and that was the beginning
00:02:42.040 of a conversation for me around really leaning into making it about other people but choosing
00:02:51.400 the other people choosing for me it's kids i'm on a mission i have i have a purpose it's very simple
00:03:00.840 i want to rid the world of any kid feeling like they're broken i want every kid to understand no
00:03:07.440 matter what they're going through what they've gone through what they've done what people have
00:03:11.040 said about them there's nothing wrong with them they are not broken the world is broken they're
00:03:17.120 not broken. The other thing is, and this one's a hard one. This may not, this may not be something
00:03:25.760 that you can work on right away. It might take you some time to figure this one out, but I believe
00:03:31.100 that your purpose, what you're meant to do with your time here on earth sits right next to the
00:03:37.660 worst thing that's ever happened to you. The thing that for a lot of people put in a box,
00:03:43.520 bury that box
00:03:45.640 bury it at the bottom of the ocean
00:03:48.560 they have a lot of shame around it
00:03:51.960 they don't want anybody to know
00:03:54.160 I was that person for 15 years
00:03:57.780 after rehab, after ending up in jail twice as a teenager
00:04:01.900 after getting sober, starting to find my way
00:04:05.660 even though it took me years to be successful from a business point of view
00:04:09.080 I didn't want anybody to know
00:04:12.180 I had massive amounts of shame around the things that I had done, my decisions, and we never talked
00:04:20.220 about it as a family. For 15 years, nobody knew. Even after I sold my first company, wasn't enough.
00:04:26.580 Even after I got named number one angel investor in all of Canada, wasn't enough. Even after I
00:04:33.160 built and sold another one of my companies, wasn't enough. It wasn't until I got put in a position
00:04:39.900 to help these kids, this place called Portage that saved my life. And only because of that,
00:04:47.760 that I had the courage or the drive or the desire to actually share my personal story publicly.
00:04:53.480 And man, was it hard. Did I have a face full of snots trying to share this? Did it feel like I
00:05:02.120 had just broken my heart wide open? Was I worried? You better believe it. But I also know that when
00:05:09.760 I got off that stage and I had people coming up to me, sharing with me things that they'd never
00:05:14.320 shared with another human being ever. And finally feeling understood by people that were like,
00:05:22.880 Hey, Dan, why do you think you're such a risk taker in business? You have no idea
00:05:26.440 what I've done. This, the business stuff, that's easy.
00:05:34.280 Here's what I discovered. And this is my question for you.
00:05:36.640 what pain have you experienced that you would like to help other people avoid
00:05:43.060 what pain have you gone through that you would help other people get through easier heal easier
00:05:51.500 what did you experience what part of your life that is something you don't want to think about
00:05:59.980 but if you think about why you're successful it may not be something you wish happened but you
00:06:06.100 definitely know because it happened, you are better for it. I believe this. Pain is the perfect
00:06:14.140 teacher. Pain is the perfect teacher. It is an appropriate teacher in your life to show you where
00:06:21.080 you got to go do the work. And if you've been blessed enough to do it, I actually believe that
00:06:25.780 your purpose on earth is to help other people with that. Your mess is your message. It is one
00:06:31.120 of the most powerful things you have that is unique to you. That if you have the courage,
00:06:37.620 you're brave enough to share with other people, it will save other people.
00:06:42.360 The last thing I want to share with this is intuition is shouting. It's screaming. Your
00:06:50.800 heart, your desire knows exactly what it should do. It wants you to do it. But what happens is
00:06:59.020 we have our ego, our perceptions of what other people expect of us. And it pushes back on our
00:07:07.040 decisions to follow our intuition, to follow our hearts. We know what we want to do, but we deny it.
00:07:15.400 Our purpose sits right there, but we say no. I remember a couple of years ago, I was frustrated
00:07:22.620 when I moved to Kelowna, and that's where I live now. I made a decision to get active in my
00:07:28.580 community like I had out east where I grew up. I visited the rehab center that saved my life. I
00:07:34.300 would do a lot of community projects and I had this like incredible community. So when I moved
00:07:38.540 here, I wanted the same thing. And I'd been here for a couple of years and I realized that up to
00:07:43.520 that point, yeah, I did a few talks and I went and spoke with a few organizations and my wife and I
00:07:48.000 supported a ton of nonprofit projects, but I didn't have that proximity and connections
00:07:53.580 with the kids that I had back home where I grew up.
00:07:57.800 So out of frustration one day, I said, enough's enough.
00:08:00.920 Whoever wants to come, I want us to go find four kids.
00:08:03.340 And I called the social worker and I said,
00:08:04.800 hey, do you have any kids that you think are ready
00:08:06.960 and would benefit from spending some time
00:08:09.020 learning about life and being successful
00:08:12.160 and looking at cool cars?
00:08:13.540 Because that's also a big part of my life.
00:08:15.420 And she found four kids.
00:08:17.560 And those four kids came into my office
00:08:19.600 and we sat down and we talked.
00:08:22.220 And I shared some stories.
00:08:23.580 and i shared some ideas and i shared my car and it started with four kids the next week or maybe
00:08:29.260 like few weeks later it went to eight a few weeks later 16 32 today we had to move king's club is
00:08:37.100 what it's called to an auditorium of a hundred seats there's 500 kids in my town we do it every
00:08:43.820 month and it sells out it's free doesn't cost anything but massive impact on my life my ability
00:08:54.320 to support these these troubled youth that i absolutely adore because i didn't wait my intuition
00:09:03.100 told me do something with it and i think my gut tells me it's talking to you and you know what
00:09:10.540 you've got to do and you've been putting it off because it's not big enough or you think i need
00:09:15.440 to get this person to say yes to support me in it and if i can only get this person and this person
00:09:21.720 involved then then it'll be worth doing no no no no we don't do that i need you to make a commitment
00:09:30.000 to decide to give back to support others stop making it about you see you can get anything you
00:09:38.360 want in life if you help other people get what they want. It's the cheat code of cheat codes.
00:09:43.940 You receive what you desire for others. If you want more money, help other people get more money.
00:09:48.600 If you want more love in your life, help other people find it. If you want richer relationships
00:09:52.860 and friendships, help other people. You want to get healthy, help other people get healthy.
00:09:57.400 The moment you stop making it about you, your whole life will change.
00:10:02.340 so that's why i truly believe that purpose is the most powerful thing you can have because without
00:10:10.820 it the pain is just suffering with it the pain is fulfillment it is drive it is it's an energy
00:10:19.700 that can move mountains but like i said it's built through service it sits right next to the worst
00:10:26.140 thing that's ever happened to you and that your intuition is shouting for you to do something with
00:10:31.720 it below i want to hear from you i need to know your i need you to leave a comment letting me know
00:10:39.900 what your purpose is one simple thing don't make the mistake of making this big thing just tell me
00:10:44.280 what it is why do you do what you do every day what is the reason you're gonna do what you do
00:10:49.800 every day because if you make it about somebody else you'll do way more for them than you'll do
00:10:53.640 for yourself that's why most people raise a bunch of money and train because they do it for charity
00:10:57.360 tell me below in the comments that's my request do that and you will crush it in life