Dan Martell - How Selling My Business Almost K＊lled Me

00:00:00.200 Everything, my thoughts, my weekends, my energy,

00:00:03.360 my creativity, for a four-year period, it was everything.

00:00:06.900 It was who I was.

00:00:08.100 It's I'm Dan Martell, the CEO of Sphere.

00:00:23.600 Hi there, I'm Dan Martell, serial entrepreneur,

00:00:26.060 investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.

00:00:27.740 I mean, this episode, I'm gonna share with you

00:00:29.440 why selling my first company almost killed me,

00:00:32.520 like physically almost took me out.

00:00:35.400 Maybe you've never gone through this and maybe you have,

00:00:38.260 but here's what I've learned.

00:00:40.200 For some of you, selling your business,

00:00:42.760 even the consideration of selling it

00:00:44.620 might cause you to break out into hives,

00:00:47.560 get anxiety attacks, feel like a sense of loss

00:00:51.860 because your business and who you are, they're one thing.

00:00:55.760 They're not separate.

00:00:57.260 And anytime people that have connected their self-worth

00:01:01.080 and identity to a thing, if that goes away,

00:01:04.320 then you go away with it.

00:01:06.280 I've seen it happen in relationships with coaching clients

00:01:09.020 that were in marriages and they were dependent on their wife 0.70

00:01:12.500 and then they separate and all of a sudden their identity,

00:01:15.760 their self-worth, who they are as a person

00:01:18.440 goes with that marriage, right?

00:01:21.060 And I know for me, that story held true. 0.98

00:01:24.060 When I sold my company, Spheric Technologies,

00:01:26.160 on the day it closed, okay?

00:01:28.600 When I made millions of dollars

00:01:29.940 and I should have been celebrating and happy,

00:01:32.900 I woke up and I felt like I had a rock sitting on my chest

00:01:37.000 and I couldn't explain it.

00:01:38.260 I was like, you know, I'm 28 years old, I'm healthy,

00:01:42.760 I'm strong, I go to the gym,

00:01:44.840 why do I feel like this pressure on my chest?

00:01:48.480 And it kept going and it got to the point

00:01:50.260 where I had panic attacks,

00:01:51.960 where I started having anxiety attacks in social settings

00:01:55.180 or just even driving, just have a hard time breathing.

00:01:58.720 And I ended up reaching out to the local doctor network

00:02:03.340 to get on a call to a psychiatrist at the point,

00:02:05.340 at that time in my life, I didn't have one.

00:02:06.840 I didn't even know who to talk to.

00:02:07.820 And I went to see a psychiatrist

00:02:09.220 because it was like having anxiety things going on

00:02:13.200 in my brain and these negative thoughts.

00:02:14.720 And I thought, how crazy is this?

00:02:17.000 And when I told him what was happening,

00:02:19.080 he was like, yeah, it's super normal.

00:02:20.880 And I said, why?

00:02:21.580 He goes, because for a long time,

00:02:24.640 your business and who you are, they were connected.

00:02:27.820 And, you know, even though you're like,

00:02:29.700 hey, this is this great moment

00:02:31.780 that you've been dreaming of your whole entrepreneurial career,

00:02:34.500 you know, your body also goes like,

00:02:36.080 hey, it's almost like you lost a big part of who you are,

00:02:39.080 you know, and he said, not to the same degree,

00:02:41.460 but in the same essence, you know,

00:02:42.820 if you're a mother and you lose a child,

00:02:44.800 you know, you birth this child,

00:02:46.820 like that's a really tough place to go.

00:02:49.600 And like, when you build this business,

00:02:51.240 he asked me to explain like what went into building

00:02:53.280 the company Spheric.

00:02:54.640 And I was like, 100 hour weeks, you know, everything.

00:02:58.220 My thoughts, my weekends, my energy, my creativity,

00:03:02.900 my, the pain, the challenges, the celebration,

00:03:07.000 the highs, the lows, like for a four year period,

00:03:10.300 it was everything.

00:03:11.600 It was who I was, it's I'm Dan Martell, the CEO of Spheric.

00:03:15.420 Like it was the same thing.

00:03:17.380 And he goes, exactly.

00:03:19.420 And it was a really tough time for me.

00:03:22.120 And he made me, I mean, I remember the prescription

00:03:24.100 because I was telling a friend this yesterday

00:03:26.620 because they went through and they said,

00:03:27.620 what did the doctor tell you to do?

00:03:28.820 Because they gave my friend Valium.

00:03:31.880 And I said, well, at first he told me to walk around

00:03:33.880 with a rock in my pocket, which might sound crazy,

00:03:36.600 but for whatever reason, he's like,

00:03:38.220 whenever you feel this panic attack,

00:03:39.640 come on, just squeeze the rock. 0.73

00:03:41.480 And I don't know if it was like, you know,

00:03:43.600 a baloney story he was trying to tell me.

00:03:45.540 And maybe there was more like belief in the rock

00:03:47.940 an actual like physical reaction to it but somehow it worked you know and then he gave me i consider

00:03:54.740 some excellent advice some great medical advice which was buy a boat because you should spend

00:04:00.760 more time in the water and i lived on the ocean and i was like okay so you're telling me i should

00:04:05.240 go buy a boat and spend most of my time in the ocean wake surfing done and i mean i'm i'm joking

00:04:11.340 but that helped me a lot too there's just something about being in the sun and relaxing that kind of

00:04:16.440 helped me get through it.

00:04:17.340 And I just remember going through that experience

00:04:21.720 of having external success.

00:04:23.980 And people were like, oh, you know,

00:04:25.620 you must be so proud of yourself

00:04:27.620 and how good for you and all these things.

00:04:30.100 And at the same time going like,

00:04:31.280 you have no idea what I'm feeling inside.

00:04:34.940 And over the years, I've promised myself

00:04:37.700 learning those lessons learned, these beliefs.

00:04:40.480 And that's what I wanna share with you today

00:04:42.180 is how did I continue to build companies?

00:04:45.760 Cause I've gone on now to exit,

00:04:48.700 to build and exit two other companies after that,

00:04:51.680 Flowtown and Clarity.

00:04:52.660 And then I've built SaaS Academy.

00:04:53.920 Now I invest in companies for high-speed venture.

00:04:55.640 So how have I gone on in my life to keep playing a big game?

00:05:00.440 So not letting me be scared of that feeling again,

00:05:04.660 but not have to go through that pain.

00:05:06.280 And the three things I wanna share with you,

00:05:08.080 they're really big insights.

00:05:09.340 If you've probably never gone through this,

00:05:10.620 I wanna prepare you for it.

00:05:12.020 First one is to disconnect.

00:05:13.940 disconnect your personal value

00:05:16.420 from the success of the business, right?

00:05:19.000 You are not your business.

00:05:20.920 I am not my business.

00:05:22.300 I am who I am.

00:05:23.660 Success, failure, the value of the business

00:05:26.360 has zero reflection on the value of me as a person.

00:05:30.060 It's the same thing I tell you a lot of my friends

00:05:32.840 that have kids is your kids' success in life

00:05:37.000 should be zero reflection as you as a person, okay?

00:05:41.060 Now you might take that harshly

00:05:42.700 because you're like, well, what if my kid

00:05:44.280 doesn't do well in school?

00:05:45.280 Is that a reflection of like me?

00:05:46.980 It's like, yeah, maybe,

00:05:48.140 but who you are fundamentally as a human being,

00:05:51.460 when your kid is 18 years old

00:05:53.020 and they're making decisions out in the world

00:05:54.540 and hopefully they've moved on outside of your house

00:05:56.980 and they're starting to live their own life,

00:05:58.800 like that's on them.

00:06:00.540 You are not responsible for their decisions.

00:06:02.800 You guide them, you instill principles.

00:06:04.700 If you're thoughtful about it,

00:06:06.100 you try to create rhythms and rituals

00:06:07.800 and meanings and values and all those fun things.

00:06:09.500 Those are things that I do with my family.

00:06:11.360 But at the end of the day, my kids,

00:06:14.200 the way they show up in the world,

00:06:15.980 honestly, I don't take credit for it.

00:06:18.480 And I don't take it as a downside if they're acting out.

00:06:22.080 That's who they are, they're individual humans.

00:06:23.880 The business is a business.

00:06:25.560 I don't care how successful it is or not.

00:06:27.920 It's value in the world is not a reflection

00:06:30.520 of the value of who I am as an individual.

00:06:32.460 So that's the first thing is you gotta disconnect.

00:06:33.960 Number two is you gotta take care of you.

00:06:37.220 You are the constant.

00:06:39.520 You will take, and I tell this to all my coaching clients,

00:06:42.520 invest in yourself, be present, learn new skills,

00:06:46.420 become more.

00:06:47.380 Why?

00:06:48.080 It may not be this business.

00:06:50.100 It may not even be the next business.

00:06:51.760 It could be the next business after that.

00:06:53.940 But all I know is that you are the only constant

00:06:56.580 and through line in your story of life.

00:06:59.340 You will be the only thing that's true

00:07:01.540 in every interaction and every moment that you experience.

00:07:05.420 So, you know, taking care of you, your health,

00:07:08.860 you're putting yourself first vacations um creating the space for you to reflect and and

00:07:15.220 have like recently i shared that joy i think comes down to three daily practices a gratitude practice

00:07:21.000 a uh an empathy practice and a mindfulness practice like meditation if you do those and

00:07:27.020 you put yourself first you're going to be able to continue to grow without the externalities

00:07:33.100 affecting how you feel like your business and its success will not affect you because that is

00:07:39.580 that's not who you are and you're building and you're taking care of yourself and finally you

00:07:43.340 got to lock in the learnings like to me i don't care what happens to you right it's the meaning

00:07:50.220 you associate to that and what do you learn from it you know i like to ask my clients whenever

00:07:54.300 something bad happens and it's hard for them it's a pill they do not want to swallow i say

00:07:58.540 how did you contribute to that outcome and they're like what are you talking about my co-founder

00:08:02.700 or quit on me.

00:08:03.540 The bank called our line of credits

00:08:05.500 or our servers went down because Amazon went down

00:08:08.120 or site went down.

00:08:08.960 I was like, yeah, how did you contribute that?

00:08:10.520 They're like, how did I affect Amazon?

00:08:13.000 And I'm like, did you choose to go on Amazon?

00:08:15.560 No, my CTO chose to go on Amazon.

00:08:17.320 Did you hire your CTO?

00:08:18.860 Yes.

00:08:20.300 Then that's a worth considering.

00:08:22.660 You have to lock in the learnings.

00:08:24.640 Cause for me, whenever I go through these moments,

00:08:28.180 you know, where I feel a certain way,

00:08:29.540 where I'm like, why am I feeling this way?

00:08:31.080 You know, every once in a while I do like push really hard

00:08:34.380 and I'm like, whoa, there's some feedback.

00:08:36.520 What I learned is like that moment, okay?

00:08:39.600 That rock bottom, okay?

00:08:42.380 Feeling bad for me.

00:08:43.440 Like if I wake up, my rock bottom's different

00:08:45.580 than everybody else's, right?

00:08:46.720 But I just believe rock bottom

00:08:48.480 is a great foundation for a comeback.

00:08:50.840 I believe that for you.

00:08:51.860 If you're listening to this and you're like,

00:08:53.400 man, I'm going through this now,

00:08:54.440 I just feel like I've had this big setback.

00:08:56.300 Hey, rock bottom, great foundation for a comeback. 0.99

00:09:00.400 That is yours to create, to bring into the world,

00:09:06.000 to manifest, to make it your own.

00:09:08.080 And that's why for me,

00:09:09.880 even though I've been able to go on

00:09:11.860 and exit two other companies

00:09:13.880 and build and continue to build and invest,

00:09:17.280 I just, over the years, I've just learned who I am, right?

00:09:20.960 And to me, this is like the best quote

00:09:23.500 to just summarize what I just shared with you.

00:09:25.160 And it's from a guy named Osho, okay?

00:09:27.160 He's a famous Indian religious leader.

00:09:29.280 He actually has, I forget what the,

00:09:31.500 he has a Netflix documentary biography on it, Osho.

00:09:35.840 But he has this great quote with it.

00:09:37.280 The only thing that matters in life, check this out.

00:09:39.940 The only thing that matters in life

00:09:41.380 is your opinion of yourself.

00:09:44.020 Think about that.

00:09:45.140 It's like the best quote ever.

00:09:47.100 The only thing that matters in life

00:09:48.400 is the opinion you have of yourself.

00:09:50.880 Because from there, it will set how you feel, right?

00:09:55.160 And if, when I sold my company, I had an opinion

00:09:57.520 And that created anxiety and pressure.

00:09:59.660 And now the way I look at my life is I know who I am

00:10:02.320 and I know my relationships and the value

00:10:03.700 and I create all these things externally,

00:10:05.040 but their success has nothing to do with my personal worth.

00:10:07.920 And that is the opinion I have of myself.

00:10:10.540 And that's what I wanted to share with you

00:10:11.920 because I think if you can take that message

00:10:14.080 and put it in your heart, put it in your mind

00:10:16.880 and live from that place,

00:10:18.820 it can create a lot, a lot of joy for you.

00:10:22.440 So I hope this message finds you incredible.

00:10:25.140 and as per usual, I wanna challenge you

00:10:27.560 to live a bigger life and a bigger business

00:10:29.900 and I'll see you next Monday.

Dan Martell - October 03, 2022

How Selling My Business Almost K＊lled Me

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript