Watch these 25 minutes if you want to grow your business in 2026
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Summary
Every entrepreneur will eventually hit what I call the pain line. This is a complexity ceiling. And it doesn t matter if you hit it now, or in the future, you will hit the exact same complexity ceiling that you re dealing with today. So you can either decide to become the person today who can deal with more, or punt it to the future.
Transcript
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Here's what I know. Every entrepreneur will eventually hit what I call the pain line.
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And write this down. No entrepreneur will grow into pain. The pain line usually shows up in
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businesses. I call them factors of three. 300,000 in revenue. 900,000 in revenue. 2.7 million. Why?
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Because at each level of growth, it requires you to learn a new skill to scale. And you won't have
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the time in your calendar to develop those skills if you don't learn to buy back. It's not about
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working harder. If it was working harder, then a lot of hustlers would have great businesses.
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When you feel your pain line, there's one of three things you got to do.
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How many guys want to learn how to buy back your time? Yes or yes? All right. Let's get into it,
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guys. I've got a lot I want to share. Everybody's got notes. Open up your workbooks, your notepads.
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have something to write down. I'm going to give you guys the keys to the kingdom. Here's what I
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know. Every entrepreneur will eventually hit what I call the pain line. And write this down. No
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entrepreneur will grow into pain. No entrepreneur will grow into pain. If growing your business 10x
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next month means that you will kill your calendar, you will do one of three things. You'll either
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stall right some people you ever grow your business and make some money and
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then it got really crazy and you decided you know what maybe I just want to go
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back to last year where I made more money worked a little less problem is is
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your team's not gonna allow you to stall here's my rule if your vision isn't big
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enough for every person on your team's dreams and goals to fit inside of they
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will leave write that down your job as an entrepreneur to create wealth is to
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create a vision that's big enough for everybody around you's dreams and goals
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to fit inside of or they will find somebody can do that stallings not an
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option the other one is sabotage so many times I'm working with great
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entrepreneurs and I'm like why did you decide to take three weeks off and go to
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Europe and not check your email well I wanted to test my team no you threw a
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hand grenade in your business you think that's a normal thing to do to just like
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let everybody drive blind? That's sabotage. So many of you have opportunities sitting in your inbox
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right now that you've dragged your feet, right? Think about this. Partnerships, speaking opportunities
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that you've punted to other people, that you think it's because you're too busy or didn't have enough
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time or weren't good enough. You're sabotaging your own success because you hit the pain line.
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Or, you know, you call somebody to ask them how to sell. I'm done. I've heard this opportunity is
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better. That opportunity is better. This thing is the grass is greener. Here's what I know.
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When you hit your pain line, it's called a complexity ceiling. And it doesn't matter if
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you hit it now in the current business or you start a new company, you will eventually hit the
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exact same complexity ceiling that you're dealing with today. So you can either decide to become the
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person today who can deal with more or just punt it to the future. How many of you guys would
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absolutely love to crush your pain line? Next level. How many of you guys? Show of hands. Hold
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them up. Perfect. That's what we're going to do today. This is the buyback principle. Write this
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down. You don't hire people to grow your business. You hire people to buy back your time. Okay. I call
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it calendar over capacity. Most people get this wrong. Why? If you do the second, you'll get the
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first. If you do the first, you won't always get the second. The pain line usually shows up in
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businesses, I call them factors of three, 300,000 in revenue, 900,000 in revenue, 2.7 million. Why?
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Because at each level of growth, it requires you to learn a new skill to scale. And you won't have
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the time in your calendar to develop those skills if you don't learn to buy it back. Does that make
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sense? It's not about working harder. If it was working harder, then a lot of hustlers would have
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great businesses. Kent talked about it. If you want to build an empire, write this down. This
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is my definition of an empire. A life of unlimited creation we never have to retire from. Clap that
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up. A life of unlimited creation we never have to retire from. I want you guys to build empires.
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Every person. Here's how it works. It's called the buyback loop. When you feel your pain line,
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there's one of three things you got to do first off you have to do a time and
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energy audit look at your calendar and figure out where is it ask yourself what
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am I doing today I want everybody to think about this what are you doing
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today that is sucking your energy that you could pay somebody a little bit
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amount of money to do for you write down the answer I want everybody to write
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down that answer what's one thing that you're doing today that you know see
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some of you guys laughing and giggling, that you're doing that takes your energy, that you
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could pay somebody a little bit of money to support you. Do I got some answers? Everybody write that
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down? Perfect. Throw some out. I'm curious. Give me some answers. I want to hear them loud. You
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know what? I'm jumping off stage. Let's do this. All right. You got an answer? Because I know you,
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I saw you laugh. Do you have anything? Who's got an answer? Show of hands. Right here. I need your
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name? What would you do? Yeah, what? Laundry at home. Awesome. Love that. Who else? Yeah.
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Bookkeeping. Your name? Dude, love that. Bookkeeping. Anybody else? Yes. Name?
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Danae? Nice to meet you, Danae. Admin stuff. So good. Anybody else? One more. Over here.
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Right here. Name? David. Ed? Video editor. How many of you guys are sitting there doing all your
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social media posts. Show of hands. No judgment. I'm curious. Awesome. Cool. Once we do the time
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and energy audit, then we got to go look at transfer. How do we take that work, admin,
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laundry, et cetera, and give it to somebody else? Okay. I have a framework called the camcorder
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method. We'll dive into this. The third is fill. What do we do with that newfound time?
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Most of you, if I gave you a full day back on Friday, you wouldn't even know what to do at
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Friday. Most people that I teach this framework to, I'm gonna share with you
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guys today, they buy back 30-35 hours a week and they sometimes make the mistake
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I'm not doing anything productive with that time. You ain't growing your
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business. We're gonna dive in what to do with that. Okay but write these three
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things down. Your beliefs, how do I develop my beliefs, my skills, what's my
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next level of skills to grow, and third my character traits. Who do I need to
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become? Confident, resourceful, consistent. What are the character traits? Here's the big idea.
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Million dollar companies were not built off $10 tasks. There's not enough hours in the week.
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You can't outwork this problem. The replacement ladder is the framework. I want to ask you a
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question. You all know when you start a business is we got to build a team. Yes or yes? Perfect.
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Maybe you have a team, but you would do it differently.
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Guys, I will jump back down and air myself out all day long.
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And sales. Awesome. Yes. Your name? Sal. COO. Mike. Mike says full-time assistant. I want to give you guys the keys to the kingdom. Do you guys want this? Yes or yes? All right. Let's do this. Awesome answers. Here's what I've learned. Most people hire in the wrong sequence and they spend too much money learning how to lead. Write that down.
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Most people hire in the wrong sequence and spend too much money learning how to
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lead. Some people hire COOs but don't have an executive assistant. Which one
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do you think is more expensive? Think about this. I'm gonna show you the
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pattern. This is Richard Branson's house. About five years ago I had the
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privilege of spending a week with him in Switzerland. Trust me, I grew up in East
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Coast, Canada. Went to prison twice. I thought it was an April Fool's joke. You
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want to talk about imposter syndrome? I show up at his house, which is
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essentially the 20-bedroom frickin' lodge in the mountains of Verbier,
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Switzerland, and other people that are there, Tim Ferriss, co-founder of Square,
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the payments company, Brian Johnson, who just sold Braintree, you guys all know
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maybe on the internet as the biohacking guy, you know that guy that spends
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millions of dollars, try to look younger. He was there. Dude, I was like, I just got to not say
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anything stupid. Like I can only mess it up. Somehow somebody thought what I was doing with
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my company at the time was interesting and invited me. And all I wanted to learn is how does the
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billionaire, who is the billionaire that other billionaires want to be like, how does he manage
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his life? That's it. That's all I wanted to know. I watched. I sat back and I saw a guy operate
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completely different than the way I was, and honestly different than the way I
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thought, different than the way my mentors did. He figured it out. I want to
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show you guys exactly how it works. It's called a replacement ladder. Draw this
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grid out, take notes. This is where it's at, okay? Number one is admin. Who said
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admin in your head? Hands up. If you said admin in your head, you got it right. Why?
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Least amount of cost, highest opportunity to buy back time. You can't dispute that.
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this is called a first principle this is math you can't hire anybody for cheaper
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to do meaningful work to buy time out of your calendar other than administrative
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assistant the key is is you got to focus on the outcomes so if you're feeling
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stuck we want to go level one the two primary outcomes inbox and calendar the
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inbox isn't having somebody you CC on emails to do work for you it's somebody
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you give complete access to the inbox they do first filter why your inbox is
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nothing more than a public to-do list of strangers on the internet. Your inbox is
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nothing more than a public to-do list on your time from people you don't even
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know asking you to do stuff. If you had an office on Main Street USA, would you
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allow people to walk off the street into your office and bug you every 15 minutes?
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But you do it in your inbox. Richard doesn't do email. He has Helen and what
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What Helen does is every morning they sit down for breakfast and she only brings things
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to his attention that she doesn't know how to deal with.
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It was the most beautifully elegant system ever.
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How many of you guys want, I get asked this all the time, I'll just give it to you guys.
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How many of you guys want the SOP, the standard operating procedure for how I manage the inbox
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Follow me on Instagram, Dan Martell, 2Ls of Martell.
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So you get to see how I can be here with all of you
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and even though you'll send hundreds of messages,
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I get to move on to my next meeting, my next meeting,
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I never get out of flow because I've built a team around me.
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That's what I want to show you through example.
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and I'll send you my complete, literally my Google doc link directly, no opt-in. You can just have
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it. Cool? That's level one. Level two, you feel stalled. What do you got to do next? This is the
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most effective way to spend your money to buy back your time. We need to get rid of anything that
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isn't doing of the work. If you're a designer, design more. If you're a podcaster, podcast more.
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If you're a coach, coach. Anything that does not look like that type of work, hire somebody and
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give it to them in pieces have somebody support I call it customer success help
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somebody support the account management side some of you guys think your magical
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snowflakes then only you can do the work trust me there's people that love to do
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the things you hate to do and when you bring them on your team it changes
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everything level 3 marketing once you build the ability to grow because you're
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not doing things that take your energy that cost a little to pay somebody else
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now you have capacity go build the marketing system document it build
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repeatability hire somebody to own it the key is is make sure that they
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monitor all traffic on all sources and they're creating campaigns most of you
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guys don't do Christmas campaigns summer campaigns you're not thinking in
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marketing in a campaign strategy you guys are here because this is a campaign
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there was an event there was a moment there was a reason for you to stop
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sitting on your hands and take action that's level three that's marketing
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this is the most efficient way to deploy capital to hire labor to buy back your
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time to grow your business number four this is the freedom level I'll tell you
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why this is where we introduce a sales team prior to this you're still doing
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the sales calls because you need enough sales calls to be busy so you hire a
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salesperson that can make you money because if they're not making money
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here's what happens if you hire a salesperson too soon in three months
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they're either gonna quit because ain't making money because you haven't built a
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marketing system or you're gonna fire them because they're not doing enough
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swings at bat and they're not winning they're not selling they're not their
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win rates are too low and you're gonna go back to selling because you don't
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want to lose money how many of you guys have been there before I've done it so
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many times personally exactly so the reason is called freedom because four
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hires four people you now have a business that somebody's responsible
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for getting you new opportunities somebody enrolls those people into your
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business and somebody else takes care of taking payment, on boards them to start
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working with you. Four hires. It's gonna change your life. Level five, this is where
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I do most of my coaching, it's all about leadership and it's about getting into
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flow. It's about creating a life of unlimited creation you never have to
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retire from. That is a replacement ladder. The big idea, if you don't have an
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assistant, you are one and guess what? You kind of suck at it and you're overpaid.
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It's just true. Anytime you're doing stuff somebody else could do for you, if
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you're the CEO of the company, you're working against yourself. You're swimming
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upstream. Cool? How many would like to learn how to stop working against
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themselves? Yes or yes? Cool. Let's do it. Number two, transformational leadership.
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When I moved to San Francisco when I was 28, after I sold my first company, I was
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a workaholic. It was so bad that I was engaged to a woman and I came home one
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day, and she was in tears in the kitchen. And when I walked into the house, she just looks at me,
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can't even speak, pulls a ring off, drops it on the counter, and says, I can't do this anymore.
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And goes and stays with her parents seven weeks before the wedding.
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I didn't know any other way to be me. I'm a driven dude. A lot of you guys can relate to that.
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I just want to create. And I was worried for the rest of my life I was never going to be a
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be a good partner to any person because of that drive. I had an edge that I
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thought gave me the thing that made me successful and turns out sometimes that
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edge isn't the thing that makes you successful. You're successful in spite of
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that. So I moved to San Francisco to see if any of my crazy software ideas would
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work against some of the smartest software folks in the world, right? The
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Googles, the Instagrams. And while I was there I met a guy named Naval. Naval
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Ravikant's his name. A lot of people know him today. AngelList was his product. And Duval became
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an indirect mentor. You know, I'd see him out at events. When we were raising money, he'd always
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helped me with our fundraising. And just being around him, like he became a mentor of mine just
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by his lighthouse, how he was showing up. And Duval taught me that there's only four ways to get
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leverage. How many ways? Perfect. The first way, write this down, through capital. Capital. It's
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the first C. There's four C's. First C is capital. Money helps you buy leverage. Number two, code.
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Code is automation. Code is data. Code is reporting. Code is AI. Okay, second form is code. Third
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is content. But what does content mean as it relates to a business? It's not just marketing.
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It's the standard operating procedures. It's the checklist. It is the marketing as well.
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Huge leverage. Think about this. I do a podcast. Takes me 35, 40 minutes of my time. That can be
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seen by 10 million people. No extra cost to my time. Isn't that fascinating? Huge leverage. The
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fourth one which I'm going to talk about is collaboration. Fourth C is
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collaboration. Collaboration is how do I work with other people? How do I buy back
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my time using the replacement ladder? And this is why when in the San Francisco
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you hear these people they raise a hundred million dollars. You know what
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they do with a hundred million? They go and hire 5,000 people. Huge leverage. Okay
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so Naval teaches me this but he shared with me the difference not only with
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leverage but how you have to show up as a leader because most of you guys are
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doing transactional management. How many of you guys would like to learn transformational
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leadership? Completely different. You guys ready for this? Yes or yes? Awesome. Here's what most
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people do. Hire somebody, tell them what to do. And this is super normal. I'm not judging. When
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I started off in business, I did this for five or six years. Tell them what to do. What do I do next?
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I check that they got it done. And once they get it done, I tell them what to do next. It's the
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tell check next loop. And it sounds super normal. Like I was like when he's, well of course this is
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how you do it. Nope. Why? Because you'll hit a bottleneck. About 12 employees where you wake up
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every day. Some of you guys are there. You wake up, you get everybody busy, and then you think you're
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going to work on your projects. And by the time you actually deal with all the stuff, it's eight
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o'clock and you got to sit down to your inbox. And then you only get your work done between midnight
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in one or two it's a tell check next it's literally the ceiling that happens
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transformational leadership is totally different we start with the outcome you
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don't delegate tasks you delegate outcomes think about for you when I the
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last thing you ask somebody else to do for you did you ask them to focus on the
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outcome the thing that you wanted to produce or did you tell them what to do
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What was that for you? Think about that. It's subtle. I can see it in language,
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but some of you guys may not see it. So when I delegate something, I delegate,
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you know, Instagram. You own Instagram. What does that mean? You tell me. You tell
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me. What does it mean for you? Well, it means we're growing. It means we're
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publishing. Perfect. Tell me more. What does it mean for you? I want you to own
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Instagram. I'm not going to tell you the schedule. I want you to own it. Tell me
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what it means to you. Boom. We start with the outcome. Number two, we go to measure.
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how do we know we're being successful what are the numbers so we define what
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data points gonna tell me that you're making progress so if it's Instagram
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maybe it's engagement maybe it's followers whatever you decide with the
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person one number every person needs another one number and three you got to
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coach them to success meaning that when they fall back that you show up and you
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say hey what are you struggling with how can I help nobody in my company works
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for me write this down nobody in your company works for you you work for them
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some of you guys got it backwards and it's why you're frustrated with your
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team I show up and I say I am here to support you what do you need and I
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unblock them that is how Silicon Valley builds some of the fastest most
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important companies of our time right now all the tools on your iPhone and the
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iphone it's run this way nobody taught this to me i was 28 two failed companies finally had some
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success failed engagement and finally had a completely different way of doing it here's
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what i believe you delegate the outcome not the task write that down stop telling people what to
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do just tell them what it looks like when it's done in my book i call it the definition of done
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tell them what it looks like when it's perfect don't tell them go post the blog say let's go
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create a content strategy tell me what it looks like you own the outcome the
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third this one is gonna blow your minds okay this is the thing they could
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literally unlock 3x growth in your business without doing anything new you
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guys want to learn how to do that yes yes perfect one three one rule my buddy
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Adam he was a HR director for me we just finished quarterly planning and we had
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to hire 13 people in the next quarter and after the meeting he's like super
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stressed out. He comes to me and he goes, Dan, I don't know what to do. I said, what's up? He goes,
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we've got to hire 13 people. I go, cool. Well, it's not cool. Why isn't it cool, Adam? Well,
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I've never done that before. I know. Well, how do I do it? I don't know. I mean, Adam, I don't want
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to be rude, but I hired you to be the director of people. Like if I have to tell you how to do your
00:21:56.620
job, then I'm doing your job. Steve Jobs says it this way. It's easy to hire people and tell them
00:22:02.100
to do it's hard to hire people and tell have them tell you what to do big shift i was like so i tell
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adam i said what's your 131 he smiles he knows what i'm talking about he goes give me a day 131
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is this simple method okay by the next morning he texts me and he's like we're good i don't need to
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talk to you anymore i'm like i knew dude you're super smart man you don't need me here's how it
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works anytime somebody comes to you with a problem invite them cajole them empower them to do this
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number one let's let's talk about one specific challenge a problem well defined is a problem
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half solved so sometimes people are freaking out because there's 13 things going on tell me what's
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the one thing we're talking about right now number three is what are the three viable options think
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about it even for you. Entrepreneurs in this room, you do this in your mind. How many times a day do
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you do this in your mind? You have a problem, you start thinking about these options, who could I
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call, systems, processes, courses, trainers, coaches, and then you decide the one that you want to do.
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So literally ask them to do the same work. Go do the research. I just told Adam, like, how much time
00:23:10.740
are you going to need to figure out the three? He's like, give me a day. Perfect. Three viable
00:23:14.660
options. Have them present them to you. And then three, one, recommendation. What is the thing that
00:23:22.260
you think we should do out of your three viable options? Here's why that's powerful. You're going
00:23:28.360
to push decision-making down to the individual contributors in your company. You're going to
00:23:33.700
push decisions down to the teams who have the most context about the problem to make the decision
00:23:40.340
anyway, and you will, guess what? Buy back your time. You're the bottleneck. They call it a
00:23:50.900
bottleneck because it's at the top. It's you. Every person in this room, if you're not where you want
00:23:55.560
to be, don't wish it was easier. Wish that you showed up and learned this stuff and become a
00:23:58.880
better leader. That's what I want for everybody in this room more than anything. Here's the big idea.
00:24:04.620
completely different shift. If you're not spending time every week training, coaching,
00:24:11.140
one-on-ones, your team, and instead you just say, I hope you know how to do the thing I told you to
00:24:16.040
do, you told them, you're missing the opportunity to unlock all this beautiful power amongst your
00:24:22.420
team. So with that, I want to lead you with this. I know every person in this room, and if you guys
00:24:31.620
don't follow me on social. Find me. I will be your biggest fan. I'll be honored to support you in
00:24:35.260
that journey. I know you're going to be successful. My question that I want you to consider
00:24:41.460
is will you matter? Your team is the biggest opportunity for you to matter to a group of
00:24:49.320
people and transform lives. But it's going to require you to find the space in your calendar
00:24:54.700
to do that work. So this is my book. It's been awesome being here. Appreciate you guys all.