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This is The Art of Charm.
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Learn everything you need to know to crush it in business, love, and life.
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The Art of Charm is where ordinary guys become extraordinary men.
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Welcome guys and gals to the Art of Charm.
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I m Jordan Harbinger.
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The Art of Charm brings together the best thought leaders, teachers, and personalities to teach you how to crush it in life, love, and at work.
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Imagine having a mix of experienced mentors teaching you their expertise and packing decades of research, testing, and tough lessons into a curriculum.
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Make sure to stay up to date with The Art of Charm and get some great free content that we don t or can t share on the show by signing up for the newsletter at theartofcharm.com.
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If you like what you hear on the show, come hang out with us on the blog where we really get in-depth on some of these topics and you can further engage with the AOC team there as well.
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Or, if you re new to the show and you want to find out more about what we teach here at The Art of Charm, you can go to the website and we ll email you our Fundamentals Toolkit that covers topics like body language and nonverbal communication, dating and attraction, persuasion, business networking, negotiation, relationship management, public speaking, and a whole lot more.
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In fact, we ve got guys from all over the world, which shows that no matter where you are, you can make it here if you want to learn and grow.
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We re sold out five to six months in advance, so if you re even thinking about it a little bit, you should get in touch ASAP by phone or just email me, jordanattheartofcharm.com.
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Get some info from us now so you can plan ahead.
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Looking forward to meeting you here at AOC.
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Today we re talking with my buddy Dan Martell.
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He just got one of his umpteenth companies acquired.
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He was the founder of Clarity.fm and he also founded Flowtown, if you ve heard of that, if you re in that whole scene right now.
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taking a little bit of a work-life balance break, and we re gonna talk a little bit about that, what it s like to get your company acquired, starting off as a criminal and evolving to an entrepreneur, why it s important to hustle to help and add value wherever you can, why you should never listen to your parents, and last but not least, why motivation trumps knowledge.
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So enjoy this one with Dan Martell.
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What do you do in one sentence?
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And the answer is not a whole hell of a lot right now, but go ahead and tell us anyway.
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Not a whole, what do I do in one sentence?
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I help entrepreneurs scale.
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That s cool.
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That s a new one.
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I like the scale thing, because that s something that most people can t do or fail to do or do wrong.
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And before the show we were chatting about how he sold Clarity, Clarity.fm, which I actually use, and then
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is like, I m taking a year off and then went frickin  crazy after not doing anything aside from hanging out with the kids for six months.
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Do you think that that balance of the swing in the other direction with the pendulum of just hanging out with your wife and kids 24-7, was that a reaction from not being able to do enough of that while you were building companies, getting acquired, which I assume is somewhere along the lines of final exams times 10, but for a really long time?
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Bananas, yeah.
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I mean, most people don t realize that getting acquired is just such a open cavity type scenario where, you know, it s just a lot of work.
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But yeah, I guess it wasn t even that.
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It was more that the last, you know, I ve built five companies in my career and I didn t take any time, you know, and I sold the last three.
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And I kept saying, oh, the next one I m gonna travel more, I m gonna do something, and I never did it.
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I just had another idea or some other thing that was pulling at me, and I just couldn t sleep at night, and I kind of built it, and I figured if I didn t do something drastic, like make that claim, and tell the world, and go into my calendar, and clear it out, and we actually moved to San Francisco,
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like really just do it, I would wake up in like another 15 years going like, why haven t I spent more time traveling?
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And again, my kids are really small, they re like year and a half and two and a half.
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So I felt like it was good timing.
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But that was really the motivation was I really went back to back companies like we re talking weeks between
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So I didn t feel I got a chance to recharge.
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What happens when you get acquired?
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First of all, just to define it, because most of the people who listen are not entrepreneurs and just never will be, because they don t care.
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But I want to define acquisition, because I think most people know, but many don t.
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It s when one company buys your company, or another company, but in this case, your company, from you and your client.
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shareholders?
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For sure, yeah.
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I mean, it s essentially, there s mergers or acquisitions.
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Mergers is kind of when two companies like each other and they combine to be a bigger company.
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And an acquisition is where, you know, in my last company, Intuit, acquired our technology and our expertise.
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And essentially, we became a division within that bigger entity.
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And they usually pay either cash or stock to acquire that technology and the team and that expertise so that they can increase their revenue.
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And the reason that you do that is that you get acquired is because you get a big payday, ideally.
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Yes, I mean, especially if you re a venture-backed company, meaning you ve raised capital from other investors for shares in your company, that s really the only outcome.
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It s called a liquidity event, and either you go public, so you sell your shares on the public stock market, so like the NASDAQ,
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the New York Stock Exchange, or you get acquired, which is essentially a private transaction where they buy those same shares to kind of generate that return for your investors and your team and all the people that had essentially motivation or some kind of outcome involved with your company.
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So it s basically a proctology exam from accountants.
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When you go through the, there s kind of two phases.
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There s like the term sheet, which is like, you know, you might talk to like, you know, three or four companies that want to buy you and they all put together their offer.
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So it s called a term sheet.
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And then from that point, the term sheet to the close, that s where the, you know, the rubber gloves come on.
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And I mean, you re getting code audits, your team s getting interviewed by their team, they re talking to customers.
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It s such a crazy time in the history of your business, because for most people in the building companies, they re just heads down talking to customers and creating, you know, new features and presses releases and all this stuff.
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And then all of a sudden, you go quiet.
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and then the gloves come on and everything gets reviewed and you wonder if what you created is actually like a sacred cow or just a cow.
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It s just so funny.
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Oh dude, yeah, I ve totally been through those.
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You re basically bent over the table looking at the check on the wall saying, okay, do what you gotta do.
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Just get it done so we can move on.
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totally going, I wonder if this is gonna get posited in my hand or if it s gonna totally get ripped in front of my face.
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Because really, once you sign the term sheet, you can t shop the deal anymore and for whatever reason, if the acquirer feels like something was misrepresented, the whole thing can go south.
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And 30% of the time it does.
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Oh wow, that s a lot.
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that s high.
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Yeah, no, most entrepreneurs don t realize when they re in that, you know, that acquisition process a third of the time, and I ve been involved in companies I ve invested in, you know, one of them, I can t mention the name, but it was Yahoo.
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I can t I can t mention the acquiring company.
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Oh, okay, I was like, I can t mention the name Ford because... Sounds like Yahoo.
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Anyways, and it was an interview with Yahoo s team and their senior developer, and the guy was just a total dork.
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Oh, man.
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And by dork, I mean not a nice guy.
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Right.
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And essentially, Yahoo was like, we don t like this guy, we don t think, and he was kind of like the mad scientist that knew how the whole thing worked, and they kiboshed the deal, and the CEO was totally like, obviously upset,
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And I told him, I was like, man, you need to do interview prep.
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That s like step one.
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Your team s gonna go talk to the choir.
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You re gonna sit down with them and look them in the face and say, this is the time to not say something crazy.
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That s interesting because you never think of an acquisition as essentially job interview with much higher stakes.
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You think, oh, well, they looked at all these spreadsheets that our people made and now they wanna buy us.
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But at the end of the day,
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it s not just hiring one person like in a job interview, you re maybe hiring 150, 1,000, 10,000 people.
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That s the thing is, they re betting that the value today, like they re gonna pay a premium, right, for kind of not what it s doing today, but what it could do in like three to five years, and that s only gonna happen if the people involved stick around and there s no huge culture clash.
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So the other thing is, the truth is 70% of acquisitions go south, you know, post-acquisition.
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You know, there s a few handful of companies like a Facebook where they can buy Instagram and WhatsApp and really not screw it up.
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Whereas most acquiring companies don t know how to properly do that.
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There s a whole process behind it to do it right.
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I ve luckily been involved quite a few times now, but you know, the people part is huge.
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I m curious about that because when I go to other companies around here to speak or to hang out or see the office, you can tell a bad acquisition because the people in one area of the floor who got acquired by the parent company, maybe also Yahoo or Rhymes with it, are kind of looking depressed and they re like, yeah, maybe I m gonna get another job, I don t know.
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There s that kind of acquisition.
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And then there s the other kind of acquisition
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where it gets done and what happens is they get some new logistical resources and they get better.
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Yeah, it s like infusion of energy.
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You know, it s funny, the first version of that, we call it vesting in peace.
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So usually after your acquisition, there s like a two year vesting period where if you stick around, you get kind of like a bonus.
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And I remember the first time we got acquired, I was just having a really hard time with the acquiring company and kind of the promises they made.
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And I reached out to my investor who had sold his company to MySpace.
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And I said, dude, how did you deal with that?
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And he was like, here s what you do.
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You go in your calendar and you drag from 8.30 a.m.
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till 6 p.m.
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and you do that for every day and stay in your office and just deal with it.
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Damn, you just trudged through the shite.
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Vest in peace.
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I was like, he s like, don t cause a ruckus.
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You know, stay out of stuff, because he said, and he made a good point, he said like, entrepreneurs, like founders, we re like chaotic Ferraris.
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We just know how to build and create at speeds that just do not make sense to big companies.
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And if they invite us into meetings, most of the time we ll get frustrated or say the wrong things or piss people off.
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And that was some good advice.
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I lasted six weeks.
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Yikes.
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Yeah, and then quickly moved on to Clarity.
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It s kind of surprising because I do not consider myself like a wise entrepreneur in Silicon Valley.
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I built this business with my partners, there s been a million mistakes, it s not a billion dollar valuation, et cetera, but then I ll talk to these guys who run companies that are worth 500, 600 million dollars, maybe they get retired and sold it and stuff like that and they re onto something new, and we ll be having dinner and I m like,
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So just random question, I m sure you ve thought of this.
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How come you didn t do this?
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One example is, how come you don t syndicate your most popular podcasts on your network on the radio because you re in the radio business and you were for 40 years?
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And the guy goes, we could totally do that.
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I think we should maybe look at that.
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In fact, I m gonna write that down.
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And I m thinking, how did I think of this over potato skins appetizers?
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And this is like your whole life.
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and you re in this new business that you invested $25 million into, it s like the Big Lebowski, that had not occurred to us, dude.
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Never.
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No, I mean, I think people give us founders way too much credit for the quality of their ideas or where we get our inspiration.
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I think, if anything, we re humble and open enough to take that input and just execute like nobody s business.
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That s the one thing I feel like, I don t need to be the smartest person, I just have to not
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think myself out of a good idea, which is what normal people do.
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because whatever.
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Yeah, no, it s funny because I always joke with people I had a colorful upbringing and I just kind of air quotes that and let them think what they want.
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But I mean, the truth was is, you know, at 11 years old, I was taken out of my home because I was having, you know, I had behavior issues.
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I was an angry child, I guess you could call it.
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and I bounced between group homes and foster homes and eventually found myself in jail for drug-related charges when I was 15.
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Yeah, it was nuts.
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And it was really just because at such a young age I was surrounded.
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I was 12, 13 in group homes surrounded by guys that were 16, 17 years old that didn t have the best habits.
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Yeah, your mentorship was purely terrible.
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It was Shane, this guy Shane that was teaching me how to shave before I even hit puberty and also was there for nine months for dealing cocaine or something.
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It was just bananas, the kind of conversations I was having at such a young age.
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So yeah, my life spun out of control.
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And then at 17, even though the first time I went, I said, there s no way I m going to be back here.
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I think it was day one, I got out.
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I was just back at it with the same group of folks.
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and things just spun out of control.
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At 17, I got in a high-speed chase, told myself I wasn t going back, had a gun in a bag, crashed into a house, pulled the gun, it got stuck, and luckily the cops pulled me out of the car, my feet didn t even hit the ground, and woke up the next day sober, and that was the beginning of the new life.
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Jeez, so anybody out there who s thinking, I didn t have the advantages of a good upbringing or whatever else, just remember, at least you didn t get pulled out of a car armed in Canada, hammered, or whatever the hell was going on.
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Exactly.
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No, I mean, it s crazy to think about it, because I almost feel like it s like watching a movie today.
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You know, I m 35 now, so it was about like 15, 16 years ago, and I feel really blessed to kind of gone through and have the success in business that I ve had in the family life I have today.
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It s just kind of two different worlds, you know?
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Even relationship with my family and my brothers and sisters are just amazing, you know?
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We re all entrepreneurs now, which I think actually plays to that strength.
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I think at a young age, I learned to take care of myself, and it turns out that being an entrepreneur is a great place to be if that s kind of your mindset.
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Yeah, I think you re onto something with that, with taking care of yourself, and in addition, I hate to say this, but you were way ahead of your time in that you were exposed to a lot of stuff at a young age, so to start businesses and go all in was not necessarily that, I shouldn t say difficult.
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Yeah.
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It wasn t even all in.
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I mean, when people say like, I remember I was speaking at Waterloo, like a bunch of tech nerds, I shouldn t say that, but.
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Of which you are one of them.
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A bunch of really smart, intelligent engineers, yeah.
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That s how you get beat up at Yahoo.
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But this guy asked me, where do you think you got your business risk acumen, and I was just laughing inside.
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I didn t want to go into that story, but it was kind of funny, because today, worst case, I ll lose everything, sleep on my brother s couch for a few months, and build it back up, whereas back in the day, it was like, I could end up with dead shots.
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It was just two levels of risk that don t even compare.
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I feel lucky that it s kind of,
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what I learned at a young age.
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I wouldn t change a thing.
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People always ask that.
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I am who I am today.
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I m pretty happy with that because of what I went through.
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Hey, Art of Charm listeners.
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I m excited to share a new podcast.
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I ve been absolutely binging.
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Winning is an everyday mindset, and Craig Robinson and John Calipari are here to help.
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You ll hear from prominent athletes, business leaders, and celebrities who reveal insights that made them into the leaders they are today.
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And don t miss President Obama sharing how he deals with pressure by projecting confidence, believing in your team, and taking criticism.
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Listen to Ways to Win wherever you get your podcasts.
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Now, back to Dan Martell.
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It must be kind of interesting, I mean, I assume your wife and the mother of your children and stuff is not like, put it this way, she wouldn t have dated 20-year-old you, because you were a freaking criminal.
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No, no.
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I mean, the funny part is none of my friends would be friends with 20-year-old me.
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I really had a different set of beliefs and values that kind of drove my actions that are just ridiculous.
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What s cool is that three or four times a year, I go and I visit the rehab center.
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I went to this great place called Portage, and I talk to the kids, the 12, 13-year-old versions of me, and I kind of share my story because I know that when I was that age, I wasn t listening to anybody that showed up with a degree or some business or some book knowledge.
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I needed to talk to the guy that had been through it before, so it s really cool to kind of go back and kind of be reminded what that was.
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that part of my life look like, and if I can help one kid just by sharing that story, I ve been doing it now for 16, 17 years.
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How did you evolve past those belief systems?
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Because I ve gotten letters here at AOC like, hey, I just got out of jail for homicide, I found your show.
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I m 35, like this guy s our age, whatever, 35, 37, I m starting over, I don t wanna be around the people I was around, I don t know anything else other than that, and then jail, and there s other guys that write in and say very similar things, like, hey, you know, I ve, my whole childhood was spent in the ghetto, my dad never knew him, I had a really crummy upbringing, they turned to like religious stuff, which was even more weird, so I have a choice between super culty religion and gang members, and so I moved out of the country and now I m working in,
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Burma or whatever, and I can t imagine the difficulty involved in going from not knowing anything of success, not being around it, not having any real role models to do with that at all, and no upbringing in that area, and then going, alright, I ve got, because you knew you had to learn this from scratch.
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And I didn t even know what this was, right?
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It was this belief in a process.
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And I gotta say, when I ask people, because I ve had a lot of time and a lot of therapy to kind of think through all this.
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And for me, it was one of this guard named Brian, where the second time I was in jail, I got in a fight and I was in solitary for three days.
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And he came back from, he was on vacation, he comes back.
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pulls me out of solitary, sits me down and says to me, he goes, why are you here?
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And I kind of looked around, you know, I was in like the, the guard unit to kind of overlook the different cell blocks.
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And I was like, you know, I got in a high speed chase, you know, I m not a good person.
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And he goes, no, he goes, why are you here?
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And I was like, what is he talking about?
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Like, is he crazy?
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And he goes, you know, I ve seen the other kids around you, and you re not like them, you re different.
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And I just believe you shouldn t be here.
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And that was, I was 17, that was the first time in my whole life that anybody had ever said that.
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And I can t tell you that that was the only thing, but it was definitely a moment where somebody else saw something in me that I didn t even see in myself, and they communicated that.
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And I can t tell you how, I don t take for granted every small opportunity as I go throughout my day, or talking to entrepreneurs when I m speaking at universities or on stage, that if I feel that, and I should say it, I have a responsibility to say it, like, I know you can be great, because Brian did that for me,
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and my life became different.
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And I don t know if people that are listening to this have that person or they feel that way, but that to me is, when I ask entrepreneurs, who is that person that did that for you?
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They can all point to that person.
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SPEAKER_00
It could have been a mentor, it could have been a phone call, it could have been just this one in passing, somebody, they did something at a job and somebody said something that made them feel like, hey man, I better not, you know, this person sees something that I don t even see, I better kind of step up to not feel guilty for not kind of honoring his kind of thoughts.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think that s the first step is to find somebody else in the world that believes in you more than you believe in yourself because that ll set you on a path that I think will start that kind of healing process.
2
SPEAKER_00
Why do you think your parents didn t do that?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s kind of a weird situation today because my mom was an alcoholic and who knows if she still deals with it.
2
SPEAKER_00
We kind of don t talk about it.
2
SPEAKER_00
She s still a part of my life.
2
SPEAKER_00
My dad was in sales, so he was always on the road and never really saw the home life.
2
SPEAKER_00
I had two other brothers and a sister.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, I just think it was like kind of a different time.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I feel like this could be still happening today.
2
SPEAKER_00
So if you re a parent and you think just because you re nice to your kids, that s not enough.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, like, I really feel like you ve got to tell them you love them, you got to tell them what they re good at and be supportive and be present.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I just feel like maybe it s a cultural thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s less now and people are a bit more open with their feelings.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I know for a fact, it still happens.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s not about like,
2
SPEAKER_00
I wasn t physically or sexually abused growing up.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was diagnosed with ADHD at eight years old, put on medication, which told me I was broken.
2
SPEAKER_00
Turns out I have a superpower, so.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I have that too.
2
SPEAKER_00
Screw them.
2
SPEAKER_00
But for a while, that s what I thought, which made me freak out and get angry.
2
SPEAKER_00
And growing up, it was just a different world.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s the thing, it s like I don t blame anybody for kind of what I did, because I know that I m responsible for my outcomes.
2
SPEAKER_00
The biggest thing for me is just make sure I didn t repeat that behavior as a father now, because I know how easy that could have been.
2
SPEAKER_00
I put a lot of time in to make sure that didn t happen.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s funny, because I get along really well with my parents, and my dad s an amazing guy now, but when I was younger, he was kind of a tyrant, so one of the worst things somebody can say is, you re just like your dad.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, well, I hope you mean in the good way and not in the way that drove me crazy until I was 30.
2
SPEAKER_01
That would be nice.
2
SPEAKER_01
But I gotta say, though, I don t know if it was a different time, maybe for you personally, but you re 35, not 135, you know?
2
SPEAKER_01
So generationally, it s not that, but I m just wondering if you have tips for, or advice, it wouldn t even be tips, for advice for somebody who s listening to this right now and going, my parents are no help,
2
SPEAKER_01
And not necessarily because they re alcoholics or absent, but maybe they work blue collar jobs and you know that that s not for you, but you don t have a way to kind of get out of that.
2
SPEAKER_01
You don t have to be like a criminal to take this advice.
2
SPEAKER_01
Any type of mindset or evolutionary advice that you can give when it comes to figuring this stuff out would be greatly welcome.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, I think the big thing and that s what I learned, you know, out of all places was is in rehab was just be around other people that are on the journey that you want to be on.
2
SPEAKER_00
So and that s the thing is most of us have aspirations that have kind of a more impactful life or fuller life or whatever kind of life than their parents had.
2
SPEAKER_00
So if you turn to your parents for your big life decisions, which most kids do, don t be surprised in 20 years if you have the exact same life your parents have, because
2
SPEAKER_00
you did what they would do, which is gonna get you what they got.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I was lucky that once I got into entrepreneurship, and I say once I got in, it took me seven years of failing.
2
SPEAKER_00
So even though we talked about a lot of the success I ve had recently, there was a couple shitty starts.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it was really finding other people that were on that journey and that path that were kind enough to kind of essentially be my mentor and advisors and spend time with me and talk to me.
2
SPEAKER_00
I just learned that behavior of being around good people when I was 17 getting clean and that transferred into business.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I think that s like the biggest thing is you can t, we re such a reflection of our peer group that if you could just try to find some way to spend more time with better people, it ll rub off.
2
SPEAKER_00
You don t even have to do anything.
2
SPEAKER_00
You just spend time with them.
2
SPEAKER_01
This is kind of back to something that s very commonly taught at Art of Charm, which is you only go as high as your five closest friends, or some variation thereof.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s kind of what Clarity was designed to attack in a lot of ways.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, my vision for the product, which was a network for expert advice, you know, as he went through life, I built it for the 17 year old entrepreneur that again, failed a couple times before I finally figured it out.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because I grew up in a small town of 100,000 people in Eastern Canada, and there were no other tech entrepreneurs.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, the best thing I had was my friend Nick, who owned a sign shop.
2
SPEAKER_00
And his business acumen was, you should be late for every meeting with a customer because it shows them you re busy.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you must be good.
2
SPEAKER_00
So real high quality business advice.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, so clarity was just this really neat idea that if you had a way to connect to people that have been through it or have expertise that you need over the phone in real time, how would that change your outcome for your business, your day or whatever?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s kind of following that same paradigm.
2
SPEAKER_00
The reason why we raised 1.6 million in venture capital and guys like Mark Cuban and we re investors was that we thought there was an opportunity and it continues to, we keep growing every week as record weeks right now at Clarity around indexing people s expertise and making that available to the rest of the world.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s kind of like Google did that with webpages and we wanted to do it for people s knowledge.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m on Clarity, I use it as a way to, when people ask me for business advice, which is literally every day, I hate to say it, I send them to the Clarity page, and 99 out of 100 are like, oh no, I don t actually want it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, they wanted the free coffee pick your brain version, but when it comes to respecting your time, they re kind of like, maybe I can get that from somebody else.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right, yeah, like no, I ll keep asking until I get the free advice, and it s like, go ahead, but,
2
SPEAKER_01
sometimes you get what you pay for.
2
SPEAKER_01
Somebody who doesn t have time to do this stuff for free, and bear in mind, I donate a lot of this stuff to charity, and now you can actually do that automatically on Clarity, is just click a charity box and it automatically goes to charity, but if you won t even pay charity money or cash to get the advice, I know that you won t use it, so I m wasting my time, and you know that you don t value it as well, so.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, no, and the cool part is, you know, from a price point of view, we have, you know, 70 80% of our experts are dollar a minute.
2
SPEAKER_00
So if you know, it s not like you want to talk to Mark Cuban, yeah, he s 10 grand an hour, but he s 10 grand an hour, because for the right person with the right business, you know, that hour will turn into a 510 million dollar return, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s not Yeah,
3
SPEAKER_01
But if you re just getting started, you may not need to talk to Jordan or Dan.
3
SPEAKER_01
You could start with like 100 other people that ll get you through the quit your job, start the business phase, and then when you really want to scale it up, then you reach out to people that are at that level.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I feel like that was why we built it, is both a way for experts to make themselves available, because the cool part about Clarity is we have 50,000 experts from around the world, and these are not people that normally, like yourself, do consulting.
3
SPEAKER_01
They re good at what they do and because of that they have a profile and people reach out to them and they just needed a more efficient way to make themselves available versus saying no all the time or archiving the email, not even responding.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s what I found I was doing.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was giving these categorical replies that were basically just polite no s.
3
SPEAKER_00
and or a direct no, and or fluff advice, which I personally hate, combined with like, here s a bunch of other resources, which they probably already Googled, and if they hadn t, then they re not supposed to be talking to me about that anyway.
3
SPEAKER_00
So now I can go, yeah, if you re willing to pay for this, then you can get it, and it s such a useful thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
A friend of mine is on their,
3
SPEAKER_00
and he had called Tucker Max, who s another buddy of mine, about some branding and positioning, and he spent like 600 bucks on the phone with Tucker Max, and he s like, my whole business is based around that advice, and he s successful.
3
SPEAKER_00
So.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I call, I mean, I ve done 1,300 calls as an expert, so it s way, a lot crazy.
3
SPEAKER_01
My wife s like, why do you do something crazy?
3
SPEAKER_01
But again, I want to be helpful and available, and I m obviously the founder and CEO, so I feel responsible to do that.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I probably spent $10,000, $15,000 on other experts.
3
SPEAKER_01
Guys like, never Tucker, but Ryan Holiday.
3
SPEAKER_01
Ryan gave us our press and PR plan.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I might have spent $1,000 in an hour on a phone call with Ryan, and he mapped out the next 12 months of our business marketing strategy.
3
SPEAKER_01
Brilliant mind.
3
SPEAKER_01
Guys like Clay Abair.
3
SPEAKER_01
quality of the experts that I just feel so grateful that are making themselves available on Clarity really allowed us to build the business because if you re struggling with like trying to understand Google Analytics, you know, we ve got some of the people that wrote the books on Clarity.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you could read the book for 15, 20 bucks, or you could just get on a 30 minute phone call and have the person tell you exactly what you need to do for your business.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I find that s fascinating.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think it s deceptively simple and yet brilliant at the same time because, like you said, yes, 10 grand is a lot if you just want to say you called Mark Cuban and put it on your Facebook profile, but if you ve got an idea of some kind that you need vetted by somebody who s crushed it and done a bunch of different things that you can t just read about online, it might be worth 10 times that.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, there are legitimate like people using clarity.
3
SPEAKER_01
These are people that value time and money as well.
3
SPEAKER_01
So like, these are very successful eight figure year business entrepreneurs.
3
SPEAKER_01
And they have no problem spending a couple $1,000 an hour to talk to that guy, that s going to save them months or worse, or best case and save them from making a decision to go down a path that would just be a waste of time.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, like they get it.
3
SPEAKER_00
I wish I d had it years ago because if you look at all the money we wasted and you look at the ways in which we may have avoided it by talking with people not as who market themselves as experts, which are the guys we hired and got screwed, but the guys who actually have done it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes, exactly.
3
SPEAKER_01
Again, when I was 17, I went to this place called Portage, and what was unique about this rehab center was that all the staff there were ex-drug addicts.
3
SPEAKER_01
So really great people giving you advice to tell you kind of when you feel like you re in that hole, where to put your hands and your feet to climb out, versus somebody who just read the book or was saying they were an expert trying to tell you how it s supposed to work.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that lesson just continued with me my whole life and was really the genesis for Clarity.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now back to Dan Martell.
3
SPEAKER_00
You ve learned a couple of powerful lessons, and we talked about that before the show.
3
SPEAKER_00
I would love to get into that, one of which is never listen to your parents, which I think is funny, because no matter how good your upbringing was, sometimes, I don t know anybody that s like, I definitely should have done more of this, unless it comes to personal stuff, in which case your parents probably have good advice, but when it comes to business stuff,
3
SPEAKER_00
There s your version, which is like, you had a rough, rocky road upbringing, don t listen to your parents.
3
SPEAKER_00
And there s other people who had the leave it to beaver upbringing, and they still come away with that same conclusion if they re paying attention in a lot of ways.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, the philosophy, I guess we kind of touched on it was, if you look at what your parents have accomplished in life, and that s what you want, like if your dad s Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, yeah, okay, cool, of course, get their advice and suck it up.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I know you don t want to hear it.
3
SPEAKER_01
But that s some good sources.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you have aspirations to do more, and it s not and I don t know why people have this hang up about like, is that bad that I want to be wealthier than my parents like no,
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, I think as a parent or a human being, our responsibility to the rest of the world is to have each generation be better.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, that s what makes us human.
3
SPEAKER_01
So, you know, aspire to do bigger, better things than your parents, and if that s the case, then go get advice from the people that are doing it that way.
3
SPEAKER_01
or you ll end up doing exactly what your parents have.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s not a bad thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
I love my dad.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was just having dinner with him last night, and he is the coolest dude to ask for business advice because he s got so many crazy interesting stories, but the truth is is I don t internalize and I don t execute on a lot of it because he never started his own company and he never really went through the motions and there s just so much context that s lacking.
3
SPEAKER_01
I listen to them in the sense that we have conversations.
3
SPEAKER_01
I just don t internalize their criteria or criticism of my ideas because those are the people that I look up to.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think choosing who you look up to is probably just as important as who you spend time with.
3
SPEAKER_01
Did you go to college?
3
SPEAKER_01
Did you get a bunch of formal education as well?
3
SPEAKER_01
No, self-taught, man.
3
SPEAKER_01
Honestly, I discovered a yellow book on Java programming in one of the rooms in this place called Portage.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I actually learned to code while I was in rehab and changed my life.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then I discovered the internet, which was kind of freaking awesome.
3
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, learn how to program computers is kind of cool.
3
SPEAKER_01
But then once I got on the online, it was on like Donkey Kong, like websites, web apps.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I built my first app was actually this programming language called Visual Basic is like the first kind of object oriented visual programming.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I built this way for people to build burnt CDs at home using my mp3s that I download and build the CD and then order it.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, they would just like submit their order for their CDs.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was like one of the first kid on the block with him.
3
SPEAKER_01
CD burner.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right, which paid for itself in a week because you sold CDs for 20 bucks that were custom.
3
SPEAKER_01
I just didn t want them to be on my computer building their friggin  girlfriend s mixtape, you know?
3
SPEAKER_01
So I built this little app that would synchronize with my MP3s and they could build it at home and then submit it.
3
SPEAKER_01
That was the first kind of commercial type app that I built that was totally illegal.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was kind of, it was neat, man.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know, I ll still never forget and why I feel so grateful to be in this industry that we live in a world where if I build something, a web app or an iPhone app, that anybody with the internet can see it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think we take it for granted that we get to do that, where our creations are accessible by anybody, whereas when I grew up, my dad, he worked on electrical mortars.
3
SPEAKER_01
I have no clue what he did.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t even know what that is.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like you just big engines and generators, but whereas, you know, everybody on this call can go check out Clarity.
3
SPEAKER_00
One of your mottos is hustle to help, and I kind of, I love that because our motto is leave everything better than you found it, which is kind of similar in a lot of ways, at least from what it sounds like.
3
SPEAKER_00
Can you speak to that a little bit?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, to me, I just I believe like first principles in the world is you should give back to others before you ever expect, you know, I think the world would be better if we all went out of our way to kind of try to Yeah, and it s funny, because it s counterintuitive, you know, so like, when I grew up,
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know what it was in me, it was kind of just my DNA, I guess, that I grew up this way, where I would walk by somebody homeless on the street and I would empty my pocket.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I was 12, 13 years old, I had no clue what that meant.
3
SPEAKER_01
I didn t know that they were gonna go get drunk, or not, I don t know.
3
SPEAKER_01
But it was always in me to give, and then when I got into business, I kept that approach up.
3
SPEAKER_01
which was I would never ever ask for anything until I felt like I could create value for somebody, and I still believe that today.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that s why the hustle to help is really just go out of your way to help other people first, then great things will happen.
3
SPEAKER_01
But it s kind of weird because most people will be like, well, if you don t have money, how can I give money?
3
SPEAKER_01
It s like, well, you can give other things.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can create other value for people, and it ll come back, and you don t know how.
3
SPEAKER_01
Recently I got invited to spend a week with Richard Branson at his house in Switzerland,
3
SPEAKER_01
And people ask me like, how did you get invited to spend a week at his house?
3
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, you know what, the truth is four years ago, I invited a guy that moved from New York City, San Francisco to a dinner.
3
SPEAKER_01
He happened to have such a great time and thought it was amazing that he was a stranger to me at the time.
3
SPEAKER_01
I d invite him to this dinner and introduce him to all these people.
3
SPEAKER_01
We stayed kind of internet friends, and it turns out he s friends with Richard Branson.
3
SPEAKER_01
And when Richard said, hey, I d love to get a group of entrepreneurs that are helping other entrepreneurs together to talk about how we can have a bigger impact in the world, he remembered my name and he extended the invite.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you never know how it s gonna work out, but I just believe it s a really great model.
4
SPEAKER_00
motto to live by, and just makes things better.
4
SPEAKER_01
I ve got some fear of missing out when it comes to hearing about a lot of those different events, and the more I go to high-level networking type, or not networking, they re not actually, the worst place to meet people is networking events, but I digress.
4
SPEAKER_01
The meet and greet type of, or mastermind talks, those types of really high-quality events, the more I m like, wow, these are really amazing.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I have to wonder at some level what,
4
SPEAKER_01
What was it like going over to a billionaire s house in Switzerland and hanging out?
4
SPEAKER_01
Is it like, oh my God, this is amazing, holy grail, or is it like, yeah, this is cool, but Mastermind Talks is fun, too, and they re all kind of, at some level, very similar?
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, I m not gonna lie.
4
SPEAKER_00
I thought, when I got the email, it was like May, and I thought for sure it was like April 1st, and he was gonna be like, gotcha!
4
SPEAKER_00
Sucker, right, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, that s just bananas.
4
SPEAKER_00
Let s not kid around here.
4
SPEAKER_00
I read Richard s books.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was a crazy scenario.
4
SPEAKER_00
Honestly, till I was at his house and he showed up, did I even think it was really gonna happen?
4
SPEAKER_00
But the big thing that I took away from that is the people there were very similar that you would meet.
4
SPEAKER_00
So Tim Ferriss was there, and the founder of Braintree, Brian, who sold his company for 800 million.
4
SPEAKER_00
I totally felt like, okay, I m not worthy,
4
SPEAKER_00
you know, somehow I got invited, so I gotta kind of do my part.
4
SPEAKER_00
Again, create value, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
So like, I had Clarity, it was neat, because a lot of them had Clarity on their phone.
4
SPEAKER_00
So they were like, oh, you built Clarity, I use Clarity.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m like, oh, that s frickin  awesome.
4
SPEAKER_00
So.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, no kidding.
4
SPEAKER_00
I remember one night for dinner, I sat next to Richard, and you know, he asked me about my business, and dude, he said something that, to this day, touched me so, like, my heart.
4
SPEAKER_00
He just, he asked me what I did, and I told him kind of my history real quick, and what I was doing with Clarity, and he goes, your parents must be proud.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t know why him saying that to me.
4
SPEAKER_00
As a kid, we always hoped that we make our parents proud and maybe they don t tell us enough or we don t hear it, but that was pretty cool that somebody like him said that.
4
SPEAKER_00
But in regards to the lessons learned, there was three big ones I took away from that week.
4
SPEAKER_00
One was that brand is everything.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ve been the kind of guy that builds companies and tries to impact a lot of people, but then
4
SPEAKER_00
I ve always sold them, so I ve always started and created brands from scratch.
4
SPEAKER_00
Obviously, my take from Richard s feedback to me was, hey, maybe you should try to build a brand.
4
SPEAKER_00
And even if you build and sell, try to do it within the same company.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I thought that was really interesting.
4
SPEAKER_00
So that was a big takeaway.
4
SPEAKER_00
The second one was,
4
SPEAKER_00
that life is integrated.
4
SPEAKER_00
So business and life, I ve always felt guilty, I think, and less and less now, but I always felt guilty about kind of mixing both, where talk shop at dinner tables or whatever, my brothers, because we re all entrepreneurs, I always felt guilty about that.
4
SPEAKER_00
And here s a guy that not only is his wife there and he travels with his family, invites people, it s all just one thing, it s his life.
4
SPEAKER_00
And he made me feel okay to do that, and since that moment, and it s been a little over a year, I ve invited people to my house for lunches, I ve hosted events at my house, I ve really tried to just make it just one thing and not try to separate it and feel guilty about that, so that was pretty cool.
4
SPEAKER_00
And the third thing was that people is everything for him.
4
SPEAKER_00
Essentially, the way he builds companies is he ll see an opportunity or somebody will bring it to him, and then he asks who s number two at the number one company.
4
SPEAKER_00
So like, you know, while we were sitting there having breakfast, he s out on the patio having a meeting, and in walks in the guys meeting with he introduced us, it s the CEO of Virgin Atlantic.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, so he introduced us and we start chatting.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, So how did you get involved with Virgin Atlantic?
4
SPEAKER_00
He says, Well, I was VP of whatever at United.
4
SPEAKER_00
And Richard asked me if I wanted to run his new airline.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then I found out that s his mo that s how he builds companies, which was so obvious in hindsight.
4
SPEAKER_00
So trust me like my caliber and filter for for a players is really come to a new level because I will definitely be borrowing from that inspiration because
4
SPEAKER_00
Because he does that, he doesn t have to sit on boards.
4
SPEAKER_00
He has like 200 companies or 300 companies.
4
SPEAKER_00
He has co-CEOs of the Virgin Group of Companies, multiple billion dollar companies, publicly traded companies, doesn t sit on any boards, doesn t go to any meetings, and essentially all he is is their marketing outlet.
4
SPEAKER_00
So anytime they need him to jump out of a plane or wear a dress or do what he does, that s kind of his role in the company.
4
SPEAKER_01
His role is to, that must be a nice role.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s to get press.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s to be Richard Branson.
4
SPEAKER_00
Somebody said it best, they said he s the billionaire every other billionaire wants to be.
4
SPEAKER_00
Got it, awesome.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, he is.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s like, if Elon Musk had way more fun in public, right, then it would look like that.
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You d have the Tony Stark thing going on, for sure.
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Last but not least, you know, you believe, or at least you said you believe, that motivation trumps knowledge.
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Speak to that, if you would, because that s kind of a constant debate on
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My Facebook wall, our Twitter, the Art of Charm page, inside the Art of Charm family forums, in my email inbox, you know, what s more important, this or that, and everybody s got a different opinion, usually based on their level of education or experience.
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Yeah, no, I mean, it s a no-brainer kind of analogy that I like to use is if we were standing on one building and there was another building like 300 feet away with kind of a skinny plank to walk across, and I said there s 50 bucks on the other side if you walk across, most people aren t even gonna take the first step.
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They re not even gonna consider it.
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They re gonna be like, yeah, my life s worth more than that.
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But you take somebody s family member or their child and you put them
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on the edge of that plank, in the middle of it, and you ask them what s the willingness to kind of walk across it, they re gonna do it.
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They re gonna figure it out, right?
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And that, to me, is the motivation side of it, because I really believe that people think they need to get all their ducks in a row and figure out all this stuff, but more than anything, they need to be committed.
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Their why needs to be stronger than their how, because the how doesn t matter.
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And I honestly, I work with high-performing entrepreneurs.
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That s kind of my world.
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I ve been fortunate enough to be invited at the table of those types of people building companies to scale.
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And one of the first things I need to assess with people is have they claimed their role as the CEO?
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Like most founders are kind of like technical people or designers or practitioners that kind of stumble their way into becoming a business owner.
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But for some reason, they haven t like said, I will claim my role as CEO and I will act and create a business.
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And I don t need to know how to do that.
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I just need to have the motivation and the vision to pull that off.
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And I think
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You know, if you ve read recently, Elon Musk book is such a great book, because the whole book is essentially stories of him setting unrealistic expectations on everybody else in the world.
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And just somehow through force of luck and hard work, it s all come together.
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But it was really through that motivation, not knowing how to build rocket ships.
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And actually not knowing how is probably to his benefit, it was a change in thinking for how to solve the problem versus assuming that it s already been solved and it s an incremental improvement.
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Everything that, he calls it first principles, everything that he s created, not knowing how to build a car, allowed him to say what would be the best way to build a car.
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Or recently with the Hyperloop, where he s designed a way for essentially cars to travel from like LA to New York in 45 minutes through this kind of pneumatic tube on magnets, he said, you know,
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if we had to go from point A to point B, what would be the fastest way?
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And it turns out airplanes are actually very inefficient.
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Cars are very inefficient, but this Hyperloop technology would be the right way.
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So he just kind of built it for fun on a weekend, almost like we go to like these hackathons.
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He like sat there with his rocket ship buddies.
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They designed this reference document for this thing called a Hyperloop.
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And that has nothing to do with how to do it, more the motivation on what is the possibility for the outcome.
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And to me, that s something I like to get straight with entrepreneurs when I m working with them, because that matters more to me than talking about, oh, you gotta go hire this type of person, or you gotta figure out these things.
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That ll all figure itself out and unfold if you get the why right.
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Where can people connect with you online?
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What are you doing these days besides hanging out?
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Yeah, so the best way is through my website, DanMartell.com, and I actually have a newsletter I started about six months ago.
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It s actually built about 10,000 people so far, and I started doing these weekly videos.
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So if you go to DanMartell.com slash newsletter and sign up for that, I m doing kind of exclusive video training.
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I just set up a studio.
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I feel like I m slowly catching up to what you and others have seen for a long time, Jordan, just the ability to create content and to kind of teach and help other people at scale.
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It s been super fascinating, and again, a new journey for me, but one that s just been so rewarding, and the ability to scale my time.
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I really want to have a bigger impact on the world, and I feel super blessed for having learned a lot of the things I ve learned so far, and that s what I m doing.
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I m doing it just through my newsletter.
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Excellent.
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Well, you can do what the 10 bajillion other entrepreneurs are doing now, which is start a podcast, find out how much work it is, and then quit.
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You know, what s funny is like I ve held people, you know, Lewis house is a friend and John Lee Dumas.
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And I just feel like the video one is the one that scares me the most.
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So that s where I m going to go all in.
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But I totally don t underestimate how much time doing anything at your guys s level is like the test.
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And I think you ve been at it for
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for 10 years, which is a true testament to your why and your passion for doing it.
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Yeah, close to it, eight and a half.
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Bananas.
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Let s just round it up.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Well, thank you very much, man.
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I really appreciate it, and so does the audience.
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Jordan, it s been great.
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Thanks for having me.
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Great stuff.
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I definitely understand maybe taking off too much time and then going crazy.
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If you re already an entrepreneur and you re already a little bit hyper, taking too much time off would drive me nuts, too.
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Fascinating insight on the molding of the mind from criminal to evolving all the way to entrepreneur.
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I think those things probably have more in common than maybe some of us would like to think, and I love the concept, of course.
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hustling to help, adding value wherever you can, one of the core concepts here at the Yard of Charm, not a show goes by where we don t mention and discuss that as well.
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So hopefully you guys took a lot out of this as I did, and remember guys and girls, this show is about you, it s run by you, it s a fanarchy.
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I rely on you to keep my finger on the pulse.
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So if you know someone who s a good fit for the show, let me know.
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Jordan at theartofcharm.com.
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If you enjoyed this, don t forget to thank Dan on Twitter.
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We ll have that linked in the show notes as well as the other resources mentioned on the show.
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And I m on Twitter as well, at theartofcharm.
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That s at theartofcharm.
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I post articles, insights, and other stuff that just never makes it to the show.
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Our live bootcamp details at theartofcharm.com slash bootcamp.
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And remember, we re sold out six months in advance, so if you re thinking about it even a little bit,
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Get in touch ASAP, get some info from us so you can plan ahead.
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And on the website is not only the blog with tons of amazing articles, but our bonus episodes that aren t released in the iTunes feed for those of you who just can t get enough Art of Charm.
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Subscribe on iTunes, write us a review, I ll love you forever.
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Special thanks to the Jasons for their help in production of the Art of Charm podcast.
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Now tell your friends, because the greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to someone else, either in person or shared on the web.
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Now have a great week and leave everything and everyone better than you found them.
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Thanks for listening to The Art of Charm.
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Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and everything for the extraordinary man at theartofcharmpodcast.com.