The Nathan Barry Show

[00:00:00] Dan: That was the most value added podcast I've ever done.

[00:00:05] Nathan: My guest today is Dan Martell, a bestselling author and investor with three successful software exits and a hundred million dollars holding company.

[00:00:12] Dan: Every outcome you want has a blueprint.

[00:00:15] Nathan: He's built a system that starts with auditing his time, applying what he calls his buyback loop.

[00:00:20] Dan: I've never taught this before. You get an exclusive and thinking in terms of capturing content. Instead of creating it

[00:00:26] as a creator, your job is to get better at trading your time audit. Figure out what we need to come off my plate transfer, get great people, give it to them. And then if you just do this in your life, you will be like so happy.

[00:00:39] Nathan: This is a one

[00:00:40] hour masterclass on content systems and leverage.

[00:00:43] Dan: I'll walk you through what I think is the framework that every person can use. That's called the replacement ladder. There's five rungs to this ladder. The fourth level is my favorite level, and that's. So you've technically started making money while you're not there.

[00:00:58] That is called business.

[00:00:59] Nathan: I love that,

[00:01:04] Dan. We've known each other for 10, 12 years now, even making content the entire time. But it's like the last from, at least from the outside, I'd say the last two years that things have really taken off. And what was it a couple months ago that you hit?

[00:01:20] Dan: Two, I hit a million on

[00:01:21] Instagram. We're like 4 million across all platforms now.

[00:01:23] Nathan: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:01:24] Dan: A million on Instagram. A million on YouTube. Million on TikTok. Million. I think we're on pace soon. Facebook.

[00:01:29] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:01:29] So like I've come on your show when you're talking, as we've been talking about SaaS or all of those things. Oh yeah. I dunno. Probably seven years ago, eight years ago. Like you're doing the thing like everybody else making content and it's worked for you, it's gotten connections, all of that.

[00:01:44] And then. There's just, there's a different Dan that's shown up the last two years. A hundred percent. What happened?

[00:01:50] Dan: Well, I mean, the short version of the story is my book came out. Mm-hmm. And you and I know a lot of author friends, and you know, I think when you, when you have any kind of success in life, you hope your life has impact for other people.

[00:02:05] Nathan: Right.

[00:02:05] Dan: More so than your own life. And a book is usually that format. And there was a part of me that I kept hearing from people saying, Hey, most people make the mistake of like the book comes out and then they never talk about the book after the launch. And I knew that intellectually, but I'm also a busy person running company.

[00:02:27] So it was like, I remember this moment where I was hiking and I had this like epiphany where I kind of felt like you've been asking to have impact. I gave you the book, the feedback is positive. If you go back to building another software company, you miss the whole point. And that was the, the moment where I'm on this hike going like, but I don't, I.

[00:02:55] I know what that meant because I've been in, you know, I know how to do stuff.

[00:02:59] Nathan: Yep.

[00:03:00] Dan: But I kind of rejected it for a while and, and just 'cause I had a lot of commitments to other people. It's not like my life wasn't busy. And eventually I called a lot of my business partners and I said, Hey, I'm thinking of going all in on media and it's gonna require me to restructure my whole calendar.

[00:03:15] Talk to my wife Renee. She was like, what? And what does that mean? And like the first thing she said is not my house. Which I've always had distributed teams and worked in my home office. Mm-hmm. And I knew I was gonna have people with video cameras there, and she's like, not here, so then I have to go get a space.

[00:03:32] Mm-hmm. And, but the way I explain it to people is I decided to go from having a marketing department to building a media company. And those are completely two different things. And I think, you know, it's a difference between dabbling or going pro. And I was dabbling for. Ever. I mean, I was doing it, but I was doing like the checklist version.

[00:03:52] I was doing the YouTube. I never missed a week every Monday I published. Right. Did the show with you?

[00:03:58] Nathan: Yep.

[00:03:59] Dan: But it was always just a checklist. It was never a, oh, this should get better and you should look at the analytics, like all the stuff I do in business. It wasn't applied to

[00:04:09] media.

[00:04:09] No. Zero. It was, again, it was just like a thing to be done.

[00:04:13] It's not broken, but I'm not gonna like. And I got dedicated a ton of time and resources to it. But the moment the book came out and I realized like this thing could have the biggest opportunity for me to serve and help the most people and push me outside of my comfort zone. 'cause I didn't want to do it like I have, no, I don't.

[00:04:30] I have zero need for anybody to know my name or to recognize me. I call it the facial recognition. I don't need facial recognition. But, um, people need to know who you are and understand what your values are for them to trust you, to make the decision to buy a book or do the stuff in the book. So that, that was a big thing.

[00:04:50] It was going from amateur to pro.

[00:04:52] Nathan: And so what, like if you had two or three changes that you made that, was that, that juxtaposition between amateur and pro, what were they?

[00:04:59] Dan: Well, these are just the things that I do in my life that I know work. So the first one was environment. Okay. Or the container. Okay.

[00:05:07] Most people don't realize that your container tells me about your identity. Okay. Think about it. You walk into somebody's office like, and you know, we talked about when I walked into this studio, there are people that have studios and their container for their studio is, is relegated to the back corner of an industrial park, right?

[00:05:26] For whatever their reasons are for that versus other people say, no, like this place, I want it to be in a beautiful building, street level, lake, street level, sunlight. It's a vibe. Mm-hmm. There's a difference between amateur and pro. So it's like first year environment, like if I'm a professional athlete, am I training by myself in a farmer's field or am I going to the number one facility?

[00:05:46] A pro does number one facility. So first was the environment like, and, and anybody can do this. It doesn't matter if it's like. Man, why am I, I had a coaching client. She was literally recording her videos with a, like a four generations ago iPhone, and it was, and she's trying to teach people how to be successful in business.

[00:06:04] And I'm like, there's a, there's a cognitive disconnect between. The quality of your video trying to teach, which is great content, but visually it was off. So that was the first thing, container. Second one was, um, people like having part-time contractors doing stuff to try to keep your costs down is not telling the universe, I want to be serious about this.

[00:06:28] So the first thing I did was, was call my creative director, Sam, and say, Hey, I'm gonna go build this. I would love to build this with you, but I need you to move. Okay. And at the time he lived 4,000 miles away. But to his credit, man, 10 days later, knock, knock, knock door opens and Sam's there. But there was also his best friend Matisse.

[00:06:47] It turned out it was a two for one deal. My wife were like, how long are they staying in our house? I was like, uh, a week, uh, a month later they were still there. But um, that was the people side, so Right. So like the container, then the people.

[00:07:01] Nathan: Was

[00:07:01] it really quick on the people side? This is something that I've encountered as well.

[00:07:04] Where I tried to do a lot with contractors early on when building kit.

[00:07:08] Dan: Yep.

[00:07:08] Nathan: And then it was my friend Danny in like, we were having breakfast and he said, look, great Canadian, by the way. Exactly. Uh, and he goes, if you pay for half of someone's time, you get a quarter of their attention.

[00:07:20] Dan: Yep.

[00:07:21] Nathan: And I was like, no, no, no.

[00:07:22] 'cause then you get the most vote. Oh, you're right. You're a hundred percent right. And when I shifted to like full-time core team members who are thinking about how do we solve these problems, you know. All day and all night. Like we just had a huge difference. Yeah. It sounds like you did the same thing.

[00:07:37] Dan: Yeah, and I, I think it's the concept of hearts versus hands. Like if you're just paying people for task mm-hmm. That's their hands.

[00:07:44] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:07:45] Dan: I want their heart. I. I want, I want their thinking. I want them to, to be at dinner with a friend and talk about their work in a way that might get that friend to introduce 'em to somebody that we, you know what I mean?

[00:07:56] Like that's a completely different level of, uh, of culture and team buy-in. So the, the people side was the second, and then the third was just strategy. Like, when I go to solve a problem, the first thing I do is ask myself, who in the world is doing this at the highest level? Mm-hmm. And then I personally will pay to learn as fast as I can because that's the, the speed of learning.

[00:08:22] And a lot of people are like, I mean, I, uh, what book should I read? And then they're like, Hey, I'll go read those books. I was like, you could read those books or you could just call the author, pay him for his time and get the answer you need. It all depends. Some people don't have the. Financial resources, but for me, I'm, and, and I don't care, even if I had no money when I started off, I had no money and it was scary, but I like cold, emailed 30 people to hopefully get five replies to get on a phone call with two of them.

[00:08:46] Right. And, and a lot of people don't think about that. So the, the third part was strategy of understanding. Every outcome you want has a blueprint. And if you don't pay for the blueprint, then you have to go on the journey to figure it out. And if you want to change, that's what I was before I was just doing it.

[00:09:05] Right,

[00:09:05] right. But I wasn't, I would, I didn't have like a process of refinement. See, I re, I remember reading a long time ago this concept of like 10,000 hours. Malcolm Gladwell talks about like becoming an expert takes 10,000 hours. What he should have said was, it's not just 10,000 hours. 'cause there's a lot of people you hire that have like 25 years of experience.

[00:09:23] Now you have one year of experience repeated 25 times. That's the idea of like repetition versus iteration. Repetition is just doing 10,000 hours or something. Iteration is 10,000 learnings and the people that have been doing it for a while that are world class have done those iterations. If you want to start and move quick.

[00:09:44] You gotta go learn from them. And that was the first thing we did when Sam came in. I said, Hey man, who are the people you admire? They're creating content, Ali Abdal, many others that we've talked about. Yeah, okay. Let's figure out like who, who'd they work with? What was their team structure? And some of them were kind enough to get on phone calls, other ones we paid for consulting.

[00:10:01] And that those three things were like the container of the environment, the people investing in that team. And then also the uh, strategy is what people see today. But that's what going pro means, right? Right. What's his name? Uh, Pressfield wrote a book, even Pressfield wrote the book going pro. That's all I did was made that decision to stop playing amateur hour and go all in.

[00:10:24] Nathan: Yeah. Well, I mean, you had your group of people that you went to, many of whom are friends are, you know, in, in this community and all of that. When I look at it of like, okay, what does it look like to go pro? You're the person that I'm like, you know, wanna sit down and un unpack it conveniently, we, uh, have the cameras, we just, we've got the board something to write on.

[00:10:42] We got all that. So let's jump up on the board and if you wouldn't mind teaching a couple of the frameworks. That you think are most important, and we'll start to break this down.

[00:10:50] Dan: Let's start for like, let's focus on a creator that's doing like half a million in revenue. Okay. Does that make sense? Is that the right?

[00:10:56] So first thing we need to understand is where they're spending their time to be able to get more leverage. Okay, so we'll just write buy back loop. So the buyback loop is the process of figuring out how do we get more done. So. My idea is capacity. Okay. We only have the same amount of hours in a day. Yep.

[00:11:17] We need to increase our capacity because if we want to go to a new level to attack a new devil, then we have to have the space to go do the development, to learn how to play that next level. So the first thing is, is it's is three step loop. The first part is to audit. So I just write audit. It's a TF.

[00:11:35] We'll get through the, yeah. Audit. And audit is to look at what we're currently doing. Okay. Okay. 'cause people always go like, Dan, who do I hire first? I get it. We'll get to that. But auditing is. You know, every person's unique. 'cause I don't know what your team looks like. I don't know what you focus on.

[00:11:51] Nathan: Right.

[00:11:51] Dan: For a lot of creators, they get really romantic about the creative process of what they're doing, which stops them from learning to let go. So we're just gonna start by, we're gonna start with the easy stuff. So when I've done this process, which is you take the last two weeks of your life, okay? And if it's in your calendar, that's easier.

[00:12:09] If not, you have to audit it. You gotta like log it. So every 30 minutes you write down what you did for the past 30 minutes. And if it's surfing, TikTok, or you know, messing around, calling in friend, write down. Write it out, okay? Because then what you have is you have a log of all the things that you've done.

[00:12:23] And then what I do is I highlight in green things that give me energy that I love to do. Mm-hmm. And then red things that suck my energy because. Especially for creators. Yeah. The thing that stops them from creating the best art is the dealing with the stuff that sucks their energy. Right. Dude. Like imagine trying to shoot a really good YouTube video after coming out a meeting to found out that you have to pay taxes.

[00:12:49] Yeah. See what I'm saying? Like, it's just not gonna be a great piece of content. So then once you have the, the stuff that's green and red, the next thing is to write down what do you think it would cost you to pay somebody else? To do that work. Right. The value of that work. So I always think of like $1 sign is very low cost.

[00:13:06] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:06] Dan: To $4 signs is very high cost, which is like paying somebody to do what you do as a job. It's kinda like a restaurant. Like how expensive is the restaurant? Yeah. And it works for anybody. One to two, to three to four, $4 signs. And then I just go through each task and I just write that down. The cool part is, is once I do the time and energy audit.

[00:13:25] The only thing I gotta do next is hire somebody that I can grab all the red stuff that has $1 or $2 signs.

[00:13:34] Hmm.

[00:13:34] And this is the rhythm of scaling that I've used in all my companies, specifically for the creative. So like the first thing I realize, not very efficient for me to hold a camera and edit.

[00:13:47] First call I made was to Sam the video ca capture and editor. Right, okay. And Matisse that came with him just happened to be his buddy that he, he edits with. So then we just had a two for one. Right. But that was right off the bat. When I look at my time and energy audit, well, clearly I'm not gonna hold the camera or set up the camera or edit the footage.

[00:14:07] So, and I don't wanna do that or learn that skill. So I audited that and found that person. Now the step, the second part of this is the transfer, because once you've got only that, okay, that the, that list of stuff is there another marker? Yeah. Here, there you go. Do this. Okay, so once we've got this list, these are the things that are bad, okay?

[00:14:32] That cost very little money, not, not expensive. Okay. Now the crazy part is that might be even scheduling my posts on social media and editing videos and replying to comments. So that's a bucket. So once I've got that bucket of stuff, and some people make the mistake, they're like, okay, I gotta hire a contractor for this and a contractor for that?

[00:14:51] No, I hire somebody that can do all of them.

[00:14:54] Okay. Because then

[00:14:55] you're not having to talk to conversational overhead. You know that every new person in your team is not an extra person. It's exponential to the person and the size of your

[00:15:03] team. Mm-hmm.

[00:15:04] It's a pain in the butt, so I'd rather one, one face, smiley face, happy face person.

[00:15:11] Now, the hard part though is how do I take what I know how to do and transfer it to that person in a way that doesn't feel

[00:15:18] heavy? One really quick thing, I'm realizing just as you're talking, I'm pretty good at pulling out my phone, recording some quick content or making that, or like doing a fun trip, like flying my plane from California back up here and make a bunch of content.

[00:15:30] Nathan: This feels like a dumb thing, but. That content doesn't leave my phone because I'm broke. Like this. Part of this process is it's with you. Yeah. You captured it. Is there like a very simple, 'cause I see you, you know, before we started recording right? You, you did a really quick Instagram story, that kinda thing.

[00:15:46] What's your process for getting,

[00:15:47] Dan: that's a great question.

[00:15:48] So I, what I do is I get prompted, so I'm a big fan of, like for example, I don't run any meetings. Right. I wanna participate, not be accountable for. Mm-hmm. So I can capture like I did before we started recording, but then I'm prompted by my creative director to like, Hey, go through your phone.

[00:16:07] Click, click, click and save it in a shared folder. Right? That share folder that notifies the whole media type team of what's in there. That makes sense because that's where the B-roll comes from. That's where the Instagram stories come from. So I'm, I still capture 'cause I don't need a person laying next to me in bed when I'm talking to my wife.

[00:16:21] But if I need it out there in the world, somebody else prompts and pulls off my phone. We just use a shared iCloud folder.

[00:16:26] Nathan: Yeah, that makes sense. I'm realizing you could even do something of like, you get in the car to drive to your next podcast and it's like Sam's like, Hey, gimme your phone and you're, you know.

[00:16:35] Dan: Oh yeah. He literally, oh, here's a trick.

[00:16:36] He has fingerprint access to all my devices. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Like it. That makes, makes sense. Nobody knows you can add a separate fingerprint to like your laptop and your thing because he's always like, Hey, log into your thing. Log in. I'm like, I don't wanna do this anymore.

[00:16:49] How about you just scan your finger? Dude, that was like the biggest unlock for our relationship.

[00:16:54] Nathan: That's amazing. Yeah. 'cause then he just moves. There's one other thing that you said of not having, not running the meetings, but it makes me think of, uh. Andrew Wilkinson has this line where he says, I'm Teflon for tasks.

[00:17:04] Meaning if you try to have me do something, he's like, oh, whoops. That slipped right off.

[00:17:07] Yeah.

[00:17:08] You know, leaving a meeting like action items is like nothing can be assigned to him. Yeah.

[00:17:12] Dan: I call 'em work products. Yeah. I don't do work products. And, and the other thing is, the frame that I use in all my companies is I'm the talent.

[00:17:20] Yeah,

[00:17:21] so you are the person that produces and orchestrates and I'm the talent. So you just, as long as you let me know where I need to be, and the reason why is when I used to do my time and energy audit, which I do this probably twice, three times a year right now. 'cause the more change in growth you have in your life, the more frequently you have to do it is, I notice that a lot of the energy sucking for me was worrying about.

[00:17:42] The next thing or getting back to people. Mm-hmm. And once I got to a place where the businesses were working, I had the time to have somebody else worry about that stuff. It allowed me to, to to step back and just be present with you. Yeah. Not wondering is the next thing gonna work out, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:18:00] Like you, that's where we'll talk about the people side. Such an important framework.

[00:18:04] Nathan: I like it. Alright, let's dive into the transfer.

[00:18:06] Dan: So transfer is getting the stuff that you need done off of your plate to them in a way where you don't feel like you're trained. Because like most people wanna hire somebody, have the budget to hire somebody.

[00:18:15] But then think about, I don't even have time to do my work, let alone now train somebody new. So what I do is this framework called the camcorder method. So I'm gonna cam quarter method and what's cool? Draw a little camera. Uh uh. Is I record everything. Mm-hmm. So at my desk, on my computer, I have screen recording software.

[00:18:41] Mm-hmm. Which today I just use Zoom by myself and share my screen. Uh, I have cameras recording me in meetings, and I capture the process of what I'm doing, knowing that someday I'm gonna have to get it off my plate. Now, if you didn't do that, and you're starting here and you audited your time, then you have to use.

[00:18:59] You gotta, as you do it the next time, give it to somebody else. So for example, one of my buddies, mark, he's a professional speaker, and he was freaking out because he loves to speak, he doesn't like any other aspect of speaking. Right, right. The admin, the scheduling, the travel, the invoices. The receivables.

[00:19:15] Right. So what I told him, I said, well, next time you do all your financial stuff, take the time. To like record yourself, record doing it and but talk out loud. So like what happens is the nuance gets missed. So as you're writing an email for a late receivable and you write it yes, copy, paste it as a potential template, but also talk about the philosophy I.

[00:19:36] So I'm, I'm, I am using this information from here and I'm writing the email like this, and you're talking out loud. Now what that does is it creates these videos for all these different areas that you're gonna give to somebody else. And when I hire the person, this smiley face, happy, great culture fit person, and I give them their first day, they pretty much spend the first 3, 4, 5 days just watching videos.

[00:19:58] Nathan: Hmm.

[00:19:59] Dan: And the first time I hire somebody to do this, they're the ones that create the SOPs, standard operating procedures. I. See, most people won't hire the person until they have the time to document the thing. Don't do that. Record yourself doing the work, which is net time. No extra time I get to do the work.

[00:20:14] Record it while I'm doing the work and create the onboarding for the next person I hire. So it doesn't take me any time to sit down and do this, this like, if you just do this in your life, you will be like so happy.

[00:20:26] Nathan: So a practical example, I hired a new executive assistant. Uh, she's been with me for two weeks now, and.

[00:20:32] So she's working on a presentation that I'm giving, uh, Tuesday morning. And so she put the presentation together based on what we talked about. But this is just that sentence freaks people out.

[00:20:41] Dan: You realize she's putting together a presentation for me like that, like some Pete Creative, especially the creators.

[00:20:48] Nathan: They're like, how could you ever let somebody else do that for you? Well, and so what I did is, uh. Yeah, on a call that we recorded, I, I knew the presentation was gonna be, you know, things that I've talked about before. So I pulled up the, uh, keynote given at Cody Sanchez's conference a few years ago. It's like, I think I'm gonna use these parts of this, and we like, talk through it.

[00:21:07] And she's like, all right, good to go. She comes back with a presentation. And I jump in. I care a lot about design. My whole career was in design before all of this. And so she's done a good job. But I've dive in and I, I record a loom video of me improving the design in little areas and exactly what you're saying, talking through why I made certain

[00:21:27] Dan: philosophy and notice the white space here.

[00:21:30] Yeah. Because I know it transitions it, this, that's, that is what people forget to do. Right. And you'll never be able to document an SOP to detail to capture that. Yeah. And that's, that's, I call those North Star principles. Hmm. Like there's these, these philosophies when I do my work that I ask people when they watch the videos to pull those out.

[00:21:49] Yeah, that's cool. I love that.

[00:21:51] Nathan: Okay, so then we've transferred. Actually another point I hate creating SOPs and what you just said is

[00:21:57] Dan: I never create SOPs.

[00:21:58] Nathan: You don't have to.

[00:21:58] Dan: Literally, people are like, who grade your SOP? I'm like, I didn't, my assistant, which is, this is the first time I hired them. I just gave 'em the videos and then they put it out.

[00:22:06] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:22:06] Dan: Was it accurate? No, it was good enough. And then we just kept refining it.

[00:22:10] Nathan: Yeah, that sounds good.

[00:22:11] Dan: So once we transfer, the challenge that most people have is now you start getting a lot of time back. And most people don't do good with a lot of time. They go, they keep busy with little stuff. Now we go to fill, and that's the third step to the buyback loop.

[00:22:23] And the whole point of fill is to fill your time back up with things that light you up, that make you the most money. See, as a creator, your job is to get better at trading your time, becoming a better time trader. So why would I buy back my time to go do low value things, right, that don't increase the ability.

[00:22:44] So for me, the fill is all about focusing. I call it like a ladder. There's kind of three things that we focus on. First off, there are, um, the habit side of things. Okay? Okay. So most people don't realize that you can't grow yourself outta bad habits. Okay?

[00:23:05] Nathan: Like, okay, talk about that more.

[00:23:06] Dan: Well, you know, this, it's like, they're like, I want to be a top content creator.

[00:23:09] It's like, okay, well step one, you have to be consistent. Mm-hmm. Some people are not consistent. Then it's like you have to have discipline. They're like, Ugh. You know, like, so I always say like, the ladder of success is filling your counter back up with acquiring. You know, these new mm-hmm. The kind of skills, right?

[00:23:28] So the, the second one is actually skills. So each level. Yeah. Second is skills. So one is to get the habits dialed in so that you are become the person who can climb that ladder. Okay? That's the fill part. The next one is skills. What's the next level skill you need to acquire to go be world class of the thing you wanna accomplish?

[00:23:47] So the next level skill I had to acquire if I'm the talent and Sam's the capturing it on the content side is I gotta go learn how to talk. Hmm. And it sounds funny because people see me today, but that's why I leave my old videos up. Go watch them. I was very clinical. I was very informational, but I wasn't entertaining.

[00:24:06] I didn't use metaphors. I didn't understand how to pause. I didn't diagram. I didn't visualize what I was saying. I didn't tell stories. If I told stories, maybe they were too long. Right. There's a difference between like an anecdote versus an origin story. So I made a list of the skills I had to go acquire to be great at creating content.

[00:24:28] Mm-hmm. Because. There's no amount of editing, they will fix bad talent. Your media team is just like, oh my gosh, who needs fix this? It's so, they're like, oh, Dan, you were totally not on today. And I'm like, I'm so sorry, because it's a vibe. You feel it. Yeah. It's like you're talking and you're not there.

[00:24:46] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:46] Dan: The person, and that's the difference maker, especially on a YouTube where the, the person's listening and watching and they're looking at your eyes. Hmm. And if they see you flinch and you're not confident in what you're saying or you're not into what you're saying, they're like, I'm not watching this.

[00:25:00] He's not in, I, I don't believe he believes what

[00:25:03] he's saying. That's a huge one. So on, on those skills, I'm always thinking in terms of flywheels and so, or like a feedback loop. In this case, did you have to do anything to get your media team? Or show up in a certain way. So your, your media team and, and Sam and others are saying like, all right, Dan, here are the three skills that I need you to learn or, or to give you that feedback.

[00:25:23] There, there

[00:25:24] is a feedback loop. So, so what, in the early days, Kay. 'cause I'm gonna go back to the early, not what we do today. 'cause it's more advanced. In the early days it was literally, we do 10 shots on goal. Figure out what worked, sat down as a small team of, to one or two, three of us, and, and look and then talk about here's what I think worked in that video and that, that gave me my personal, okay, I gotta go run skills and drills around this.

[00:25:51] Nathan: Right? So you're looking at the, in. Instagram reel. You know, we're 10,000 views. 10,000 views. Oh, this did 500,000 views. Yeah. What's the difference? Why do we think that?

[00:26:00] Dan: Yeah. Is it the hook? Okay. If it's the hook, what hook worked? Dan, can you go? 'cause this is the other thing about me is I don't like to create, I like to capture.

[00:26:10] Mm-hmm. I want to live my life. 'cause when I look at like time and energy. The idea of like the pressure of having to create and be on is tough, whereas if I can become the person Yep. That can just naturally do that. I remember like 2009, I'm at South by Southwest with Gary Vaynerchuk and we're walking. I go, dude, I love the fact that you've taught yourself to talk in tweets.

[00:26:32] And he go, he looks at me confused. He's like, that's just how I talk. I go, dude, you, nobody talks like that. He goes, turns out I do. And to his credit, 'cause I've seen him now do it for 17 years. Yeah, he talks that way. Where that platform was perfect. Mm-hmm. Now I knew that I didn't talk the right way to generate really powerful hooks.

[00:26:54] So I had to start studying the hooks and then learning how to integrate them. So like I've learned now that if I feel like, oh, I'm teaching something, but it doesn't have a good hook, I'll literally insert the hook for the team to edit. And then put the content. Yeah, because they need, 'cause we also split test hooks.

[00:27:10] Right? Right. So that's an example of like the feedback loop. So we do that for every part of our media pipeline. Mm-hmm. There's a meeting where I sit down with my team and they review the thing that they think, Hey, next time we need this, we need this, we need this. And the key is with this one at a time.

[00:27:27] Skills and drills like, you know the golfer. Yeah. You don't go up to a golfer and say, okay, there's 17 things wrong with what you're doing. You say, Hey, the way you're holding your club, you need to do this. Right. That grip, we're just gonna kidding. That's all we're gonna, that 18 holes, that's all we care about.

[00:27:40] Go hit with the new grip and like adjust. Right. And they also don't practice while they play. Right. That's amateur hour. Oh, okay. Oh, amateurs practice while they play a professional practices outside of the play. Hmm. And that's also a thing that I had to do. So like in the early days when you're trying to learn these skills, you might create a lot of moments where the content is never gonna be used.

[00:28:02] But the whole point was to practice. Mm-hmm. Right on purpose like, like intentional practice. The third one is mindset. We already touched upon it. I can't help you create great content if you don't believe you're great. That's a hook. See how I did that? No, I'm just kidding. Maybe. Maybe it never shows up on the internet and I'm not that good, but we're working on it.

[00:28:27] Yeah. Always a judge of that horrible fuck, like gimme something better. But the idea of beliefs shape our worldview to even give us the chance to, to improve it. Mm-hmm. Right. You've talked to people where like if you truly believe your only, like your goal is a million dollars and you're at 700,000. Like you're not gonna show up every day to really do this work 'cause you feel like you're close to your potential.

[00:28:54] But that mindset of not realizing that you'll never get a penny more than you think you're worth, and if you don't fight for it, you'll never audit your time to believe that you're worth hiring a great person to take this stuff out. Most people can't do this. Not 'cause they don't know they don't have the money or they don't know what to give, they don't believe they deserve it.

[00:29:13] And this is for your home?

[00:29:14] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:15] Dan: This is professional. This is, but the creators especially because a lot of them are creative as a byproduct of dealing with lack of resources growing up. So they sometimes have the scarcity mindset right around. Around investing in like great environments and great people because they feel like, no, I, you know, the, I gotta do it all.

[00:29:35] So to me, the mindset is like one of the biggest ones that kind of wrap the whole thing. So the latter, the rungs are the skills, and then the habits are on the left side and the mindset's on the right side because if your worldview is small, you'll never play a big game. Another hook. I just, I'm doing it in real time, just letting you guys know.

[00:29:52] 'cause that's what Nathan asked me for. Exactly. Cool. This is, but I gotta finish this thing about the loop. Okay. Yes. So visually it goes like this and in life, and I've never taught this before. You get an exclusive, it's always this and most people that don't fill. They never get the forward momentum. Most people do this and they have a bunch of people and they go chill out in Thailand or Bali, and then they're on the beach, right?

[00:30:19] And they never focus on their habits or skills and mindset for more for what's gonna be next. New levels, new devils, you know, they're comfortable playing level five. They don't realize their potential is 22 levels.

[00:30:29] So what you're saying is the, as these loops each, each loop, we've got this graph going up and to the right of, it could be revenue, it could be iterations, reach, impact, and every time.

[00:30:39] And so people just stay at the same level for the most part. Feels comfortable. Yeah. Oh man. I know a lot of people who it,

[00:30:46] and it's literally this last step of fill, right? So audit. Figure out what we need to come off my plate transfer, get great people, give it to 'em even part-time, but ideally full-time.

[00:30:55] And then fill your counter back up with the things that make you money. Things that light you up. Yeah. To keep that upward spiral.

[00:31:01] Nathan: Right. What's an example of something that you did maybe in let's say 18 months ago? Early iterations of this and that. Now you don't even do it all as you've taken on new things.

[00:31:12] Oh,

[00:31:13] Dan: I mean, just everything from like, even the, the research is probably the big one. Most people would be surprised to find out that 50% of the effort is on the research of what we work on content wise, not on the capture or the editing. Break that down a little bit. What's the research process look like?

[00:31:29] I don't know. I knew what it looked like when I did it, and trust me, it is way more sophisticated now. Like I see the teams have their meetings, but I mean, the big idea is. In any market, there's an essence for what the market wants and research has to, so like you could go to my channel and say, what's Dan's most popular videos?

[00:31:48] And go, oh, I'm gonna do my version of that. The problem is, is you don't look at the timeline. If it was the most popular seven years ago, probably not a good decision. Right? You wanna also filter, say like in the last six months. And not only that, what's an outlier for that channel? Yeah, right? So like that and a bunch of like ideation.

[00:32:06] I would say like the team that works on ideation is. Like it is a process and a system. It's just like innovation within a big company. The I, the innovation part is hard. Once it's innovated and, and then we operationalize it and, and manufacture it, then it's like, okay, there's a separate set of problems.

[00:32:24] And I didn't realize the level of focus that needed to go in. I. To the positioning of the content, the packaging. I mean, you know this with thumbnail. Oh yeah. Hundred percent. Just thumbnail design. I was walking around in Utah, my buddy Sean's company, space Station, and he opens and he was showing us doing a tour.

[00:32:38] He goes, yeah, so this is our thumbnail designer. And we kept going. I said, one second, that guy just designed thumbnails. He's like, yeah. And I'm like, you have a full-time dedicated person on just making thumbnails. He goes. Oh yeah. I say, can I see it? And he pulls up his, he has two monitors, his graphic designer, and he shows me, dude, the variations was wild.

[00:33:01] Like I think for each show he published, there was like 75 and then whittled down and whittled down, and then split tested with three. Dude. The level of opportunity for people once they go pro. Is there. It's just, it looks like work.

[00:33:15] Nathan: Okay.

[00:33:16] Dan: This is fantastic, but in this, who do I hire first? It's always a favorite question people like to ask me.

[00:33:21] So this will give you a sense of where you're at. I'll walk you through what I think is the framework that every person can use as like an audit to figure out if they're even have the right team. Because if I tell you, and I don't tell you how it works, you might think you already got that person, but you're not using them the way you're supposed to.

[00:33:37] So that's called the replacement ladder. Okay. And the whole idea after, you know, you do the audit, transfer fill is like replacing yourself out of things that don't cost a lot of money to pay somebody else, but make the most value for your business. Right. And there's five rungs to this ladder, so we'll just do like a ladder with five.

[00:33:58] I always feel the pressure when I have to draw a ladder, especially if there's like a lot of levels. How's that? Pretty good. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Perfect. Alright, so. This is the one thing I remember when I was studying, kind of like my wealthy mentors. The one thing that you will find is they all have somebody that supports them on the administrative level.

[00:34:18] So the first level is admin. Okay? Now, a lot of people say, well, I have a va. I have a virtual assistant. I have an admin. Yes, you may, but you may not be using them, right, to actually buy back the most time. And the reason why they're number one is not only. Are they the least expensive person, typically as we go up and the opportunity to get the most time back so that you can do this right?

[00:34:44] But the most important is the training ground for you to learn how to lead people. I. Okay. It's the place where you can walk that tightrope and it's not gonna kill you, right? You're in the park on a slack line, a foot off the ground, not 50 stories on top of a building going between buildings. Most people make the mistake of going too high too quick, and they haven't learned that skill, right?

[00:35:06] So for me, admin, the two areas is inbox and calendar. Okay? And the reason why is if I'm a creator, I wanna spend my time doing creative work. I don't want to be routing and I don't wanna be slowing things down. So while I'm here with you, I'm getting emails that are coming in for opportunities, changes, scheduling, logistics, and nothing slows down.

[00:35:28] Mm-hmm. It gets reviewed, audited, replied to routed, and that velocity, if you just think about the amount of value you can create in a calendar year. By not doing that and sticking to the thing that makes you the most money, that lights you up, how much opportunity or dollars do you think you're pulling into the year because of that velocity that, that like cycle time for me, I think for minimum most people would be two months.

[00:35:54] Okay. So you think about what you make per month, you'd be able to just pull in because it doesn't sit there for six days. The other thing about my, my assistant is that they don't have an emotional attachment to my inbox. And most people do. They open up an email, it hurts their feelings. They know they gotta reply.

[00:36:11] Then they start, they mark it unread, they go, I'll reply on Saturday.

[00:36:15] Nathan: Well, even that little thing, I'll pull up my inbox. This is something that I maybe three or four years ago, started to get much better at, is noticing my own emotions. 'cause often it is like I'll pull my inbox, check some things, move on, jump on a call, do this, and then be like.

[00:36:30] Man, I'm off today and I have to rewind the tape and figure out what was it that upset me. That email in that moment and 50% of the time, it was an, it was, it was a message.

[00:36:40] Dan: You know, the tax bill's gonna be, yeah, a hundred grand higher than you thought it'd, or somebody resigned or any of the, the press release went out and it was wrong, or.

[00:36:47] And the thing is, is like when you design your life, you wanna execute on the thing that you know is gonna make you happy. And if you don't audit, then you're gonna start inserting. The challenge with admin, just like on the inbox in the calendar, is most people don't know. What to give them. My brother ran into this, like, he's like, I hired an assistant, but I don't see the big, like you're like, it's a game changer.

[00:37:08] And he is like, I was not changing my life. The reason why is they don't understand how much they can give up. So if anybody listening wants to get my internal SOP, so I have my own standard operator, it's like 42 pages. Okay. The, and help me extract and sanitize. 'cause obviously there's personal stuff.

[00:37:24] Yeah. I don't need people to know all that. Um, just follow me on Instagram and message me. Admin Nathan. For you. If you don't, I'm not sending it. Okay. But you gotta follow me on Instagram. I'm trying to grow my audience and, uh, I'll send them the direct link to that Google Doc, but that'll give them visually, I even have my five North star principles of like what I expect my assistants to do and like my, and now has an assistant.

[00:37:45] I mean, it's kind of crazy when you, when you scale this up, that will happen, but. If you ask me, you know, Dan, do you want to keep one of your cool cars or do you want to keep your assistant? I will sell my cars any day of the week, period. Full. I would sell everything before this person goes outta my life.

[00:38:01] Right, right. That's the admin. What next level up is delivery or fulfillment? You can just write fulfillment or I,

[00:38:07] Nathan: yeah,

[00:38:07] Dan: yeah. We delivery. It's essentially doing the work. Right. And this is like if you're a creator, it's everything that's not the creative part, so. I don't mind you writing the email if that's what your business is, but scheduling it and testing it and doing all the other stuff.

[00:38:25] That's delivery. If you are somebody that creates informational products, that's the support email. And trust me, I had a client once, she's like, yeah, no, I've got a great team. I think they were doing like 2 million in revenue. They have a whole team. But like, I still like to go in my support email. I'm like, you're wild.

[00:38:42] No, stop it. And I'll tell you why. Because if you jump in and do this, you're telling the person that owns that you don't trust them.

[00:38:48] Nathan: Hmm.

[00:38:49] Dan: See, a lot of times our behavior. Communicate things to our team.

[00:38:53] Nathan: We don't need to way more than the words dot.

[00:38:55] Dan: You teach people how to treat you, so when you're upset that you're a support person, left an email and didn't reply right away to it.

[00:39:02] Well, she probably did that because she knew you were gonna come in and do it. And if I'm on your team and I know that you're gonna do all the stuff I don't want to do, guess what I'm gonna do? Leave it there for you to do for me. Yeah. That's just natural human behavior. So delivery for me is all about onboarding and support.

[00:39:17] Okay, this is, I got a new customer and now somebody else is gonna talk to that person. Set the expectations. Take payment, bring them into your world, like support them. After the case, I might still be the creative woodworker that does the, the building, but I'm not the one, you know, scheduling, delivery, working on shipping, that kind of stuff.

[00:39:41] That's level two, level three. Next is marketing, right? Because essentially what we're trying to do is build the business. You know, even a, you know, creators out there, they're like, I just like doing my art. It's like you have to build the business, right? 'cause art needs to be paid for. Pretty sure that all your supplies, people wanna get paid for it.

[00:39:58] So the next level for marketing for me is really understanding like. The systems and routine for generating leads. Okay. And most people, what happens? I remember my friend, uh, Rachel, she had a creative agency and she asked me to look at her business and what I saw. And for those listening, it was like, zigzags, I'm just gonna do this.

[00:40:20] Like I. This was her revenue for like five years. Just up and down, all over the place. Yeah. And I go, let me, let me take a guess what's happening. You have no customers. You do a lot of marketing. You get customers, you get money, and then you get busy delivery on those customers and you come down here and then you stop doing the marketing.

[00:40:36] Then you realize I don't have enough customers.

[00:40:37] Nathan: Right. It's the, uh, feast or famous, the teeter-totter. Yeah. It's like, are we doing fulfillment or are we doing It's new customer

[00:40:46] Dan: Yeah. Growth and it, you do one or the other and it's not good. No. And and the problem is, is that it, it, the reason why a lot of people struggle with hiring is because of their business isn't predictable enough for them to feel confident and comfortable.

[00:40:58] Right. Making a commitment. And you have a chicken and egg problem. Yeah. And they do it to themselves. So for me, marketing is all about. The system for generating leads. Mm-hmm. And that's why the camcorder method is so powerful, because there's probably things you're doing that is marketing. You just gotta document that you do it right.

[00:41:15] Like if one of the things you do generate leads is go through your private Facebook group and message people in the group that have joined privately and say, are you here for this? Or are you looking for that? Document it and have somebody else do that. You don't have to do it if it's, you know, going to an event and talking to people.

[00:41:30] Send somebody on your team and give 'em a question to prompt the people, to generate the opportunities to grab the business cards and then have follow up. There's so much systems that need to be documented and then somebody else needs to own it. Because I can't tell you, and we've been doing this for long enough, Nathan, you've probably experienced this, where something stops working and when you look through it, it's like the color of the button is white, the background color is white, and that's why the funnel broke because Yeah.

[00:41:56] Oh yeah. Happens all the time. So having somebody wake up, I say the campaigns and the traffic, those are the two things that we need to make sure that they wake up and they focus on, because then they're always looking like, where's the traffic coming from? Did something change? How do we fix the funnel?

[00:42:10] How do we improve it? And then the campaigns, what's going out throughout the year? Like we have Christmas around the corner. I have my birthday, I wanna do the birthday post. Right? Having somebody manage the content, calendar, the schedule so you can really take a step back as a the talent, right? Is the next level.

[00:42:26] Now this is cool, but I'll tell you why. The fourth level is my favorite level and that's sales. Okay? I'm in already. Oh my gosh. This is my favorite. And I call this the freedom stage because. If you truly allow yourself, and sales could be partnerships, could be brand deals, could be affiliates, could be obviously sales to enroll into your world.

[00:42:51] The, if you can step back and let's say you're like, Hey man, I know somebody should be working with you. I. And give that lead to somebody else and have them follow up, have the conversation, right, have them either make a decision or not, but then continue to follow up and manage that pipeline. The reason why, and I always say it's, it's the, um, it's the sales calls.

[00:43:12] So the calls plus the follow up are the two things you wanna focus on. Are you still doing sales calls and are you still managing follow? You need to give that to somebody else.

[00:43:22] Nathan: So in this case. I, I mean, it's a huge unlock, especially 'cause most creators are not good at follow up.

[00:43:29] Dan: No, dude, we're running companies like, this is what's funny.

[00:43:33] The fortunes are made in the follow up, right? 70% of your revenue could come from that, and you don't do it right because it's not as fun either. It's like, I like the chase of the deal.

[00:43:43] Nathan: So, uh, one thing that I think about in this. Because for Kit, as we're onboarding new creators, especially as we have the creator network, so B basically a new creator joining our platform is worth a huge amount.

[00:43:55] And so I'm doing things like, I'm looking at, alright, the New York Times bestseller list this week. Alright, I got four out of the top 10. It's customers, who else? All right, number five, all, how do we get him on a call? And so we're, we're doing that. I'm involved in that process now. I used to then be responsible for the follow-up.

[00:44:13] Now I have the first call and I bring in someone on my team, but what I'm trying to figure out is if there's a way that I can even get out of the first call, or if it's such a high value thing that I need to stay involved in that.

[00:44:26] Dan: Yeah, I mean I, there's a strong argument if the value of your business.

[00:44:31] Is is like the highest value of your time. Right. Which for, in that scenario, it would be pretty high.

[00:44:37] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:44:37] Dan: Then you stay in it until, again, you go to your calendar and you go, what am I not doing because I'm doing that. Yeah. And is my hour worth? So the, the big idea of, you know, what I teach in my book, buy Back your time is trying to increase the value production of your time.

[00:44:53] Mm-hmm. So it's always. Assessing new opportunities versus current and just being more diligent about like, Hey, I spent 70% of my time doing internal operational stuff. My next hire is somebody to take all that. So I take that 70% and I redeploy it for things that make me more money. You took a process and said, look, there's a whole, there's 10 steps to this process.

[00:45:14] Step three, I'm still gonna do. Right. That's beautiful. That's like Steve Jobs going in with, you know, back in the day with Johnny Ives and saying, look. I'm still the CEO. My job is innovation. My partner's Johnny, I come into the design studio, he presents me options. We collaborate, we talk, but then once we make a decision, everything else,

[00:45:34] Nathan: right?

[00:45:34] Dan: Is Johnny, then Tim, and then my next only job is the event, right? And that's where I add my value. So I don't like, you'd have to look at what you're not doing because you're doing that. And the vol volume. But at a certain point you might actually find somebody that can, you know, that they would also admire.

[00:45:53] Nathan: Right,

[00:45:53] Dan: right. One example is like empowering one of your customers to potentially be that person and incentivizing them financially. So they have a huge brand and people wanna talk to them and their partner of viewers.

[00:46:03] Nathan: There's different ways to solve the problem, but even that example of saying, Hey, there's 10 steps here, right in the Apple example, and Steve is gonna be involved in steps three and and 10.

[00:46:11] Yep. And that's it. That's it. And the, because those are the highest leverage things of his time.

[00:46:16] Dan: Yeah. He is like picking the right innovation. Showing that to the world. Those are the areas I'm, I'm ha it makes me happy to, right. The other thing is you gotta be careful not to give up things that you enjoy doing.

[00:46:26] Oh, that's a tough one. Enjoy doing plus make you money.

[00:46:30] Nathan: Is there, is there something that you gave up that then you're like, oh wait, I want that back. Oh, there's so much.

[00:46:35] Dan: Dude, I remember one time a team member Vanessa, so I had a very, you've spoken at that group, my very high end mastermind, right? These are like, you know, eight figure software CEOs, et cetera.

[00:46:44] And obviously it's my group, my community. I wanna do final interview. So like the, the rest of the process, the marketing is other people, the sales conference, other people. But then I do the 15 minute final check. Yeah. And we're on a call, I'm doing my one-on-one with Vanessa. 'cause she reported to me and she goes, Hey, I guess something on my list I wanna talk to you about.

[00:47:01] So what's that? She goes, I really think. You need to step back from the final call. Mm-hmm. And like I could feel my chest get warm. 'cause I was immediately wanted to be confront. I was like, no, this is, it's my curation and my community and she's really good. She goes, first off, I wanna know, we appreciate it and obviously we know you're doing for a reason.

[00:47:22] Um. You are a bottleneck in the sales process, so you're slowing the team down because of it. And then she said, I reviewed the last 60 people I sent your way and you didn't say no to anybody. And I was like, she gave heard. She hit you with data as well. Ouch. Oh yeah. Come with data. They know my love language.

[00:47:44] And I said, uh. I acknowledge that and I'm just letting you know I'm going to make a decision, but just let me sit with it. And I said, of course, take it over. Right? And then it was, but it was so funny because then it became beautiful. Every time I had an event, I got to meet new friends.

[00:47:59] Nathan: Right.

[00:48:00] Dan: It was like, it was like so fun.

[00:48:02] It actually added a lot of fun to it. And I think a lot of people admire the fact that, hey, Dan built the system is so dialed in that he wasn't even involved in the process. Right. That's kind of cool. I mean, at the end of the day, like you want to make sure the customer experience is the best experience and you, them waiting on you to get back to them.

[00:48:20] Not a good experience. Not always the best experience. No. They want people, they're like, can I,

[00:48:23] Nathan: can I join the program or not? And it's like, well, we gotta get to Dan. And he is actually on a plane, you know, that's

[00:48:27] Dan: all happened. He's on vacation for two weeks. It's like, so now you gotta wait. It's like, well, the event is in three weeks and if I'm not accepted in, how am I supposed to schedule my time?

[00:48:33] Blah, blah, blah. The reason this is the best level of my favorite level is because with four hires, this is four hires. Four people. You can go on vacation and have somebody else build awareness of your product or service. Have a conversation with that person. Enroll them into your life and take care of it until you get back.

[00:48:51] So you've technically started making money while you're not there.

[00:48:53] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:48:54] Dan: That is called business. Most people don't have a business. They have a job. Right. Okay. Level five, and it's one of my favorites leadership. Leadership is understanding once you have these four people, who's the next hire of. Of a person that's gonna manage this.

[00:49:13] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:49:14] Dan: Because when you can, this is where you get to step back as the talent. If you hire the right person and they run the operations, some people call this the integrator, an implementer, whatever it is. I just think of two things. They own the outcome a hundred percent and they own the strategy. Most people hire people to do this and then tell them how to do it.

[00:49:32] It's 'cause you didn't hire the right person. Right. The outcome and strategy, which means you hire somebody that comes with playbooks, meaning that they have the strategy and they're willing to own the outcome. Mm-hmm. And if you have to, you have to be like, Hey, where's the revenue? Where's the thing?

[00:49:47] Where's the thing? Like then that's not the right leader. A leader is, somebody can do that.

[00:49:52] Nathan: Yeah. I love that. Okay, so how do you afford to pay for this team? I love it. 'cause you got five people here.

[00:49:58] Dan: Yeah. Yeah. The easiest way for everybody listening. Go back here and realize you're not charging enough for what you're doing.

[00:50:03] Hmm. Back to the audit. You have to go and increase your price. Some people are like, well, I did the audit and then I understand what you're saying, but I can't afford to hire the person. I can only go $2 signs, not three or four. Increase your price or change your model. Mm-hmm. That's one of two options.

[00:50:16] You're either not charging enough or your business model isn't a good model. Right. And that's where you gotta go find people that have a blueprint and pay them for the blueprint to fix your business.

[00:50:24] Nathan: Okay. So what I wanna know is, and I've seen this 'cause you've shown me behind the scenes, but the business that runs.

[00:50:31] Like the, the business model that runs this whole thing, right? And that pays for the, the cars and the plane. I'm a big plane nerd, so I'm always like, which, which plane did Dan fly today? You know, like

[00:50:41] Dan: Alcon, 2000 LX is pretty cool. It's

[00:50:43] Nathan: a great plane. So in that you've got, do you have two or three group coaching programs?

[00:50:48] Dan: Uh, so I have SaaS Academy, which is a coaching program for software CEOs. Johnny's the CEO of that company. He runs that. And then within Martell Media, we are a media company that just happens to have education, which, because people that bought the book wanted to learn how to implement the book.

[00:51:03] Nathan: Right. And I have one program, and that's okay because I know how those programs worked.

[00:51:08] You're making a significant amount of money off of that. Yeah. Uh, like your revenue per follower, per subscriber is probably 10 or a hundred times. Someone who's making money off of influencer deals, bringing deals, that kind of thing. Oh, a hundred percent.

[00:51:20] Dan: I think, you know, because I understand business, we have the highest revenue media company out there, period.

[00:51:27] Mm-hmm. Like multiple eight figures a year.

[00:51:29] Nathan: Wow, okay. And so when you have those programs, people are paying, uh, it's in the five to $8,000 a year range to join the program, is that right?

[00:51:37] Dan: Yeah, it's in that bucket. Um. And the, the reason they're investing that is because they want the accountability. They want the strategy.

[00:51:46] Mm-hmm. See, most people that create content think like, you know, I was just talking to my buddy John about this. He does woodworking and all of his revenue right now is tied to brand deals or or revenue from YouTube. And the problem is, is that YouTube's unpredictable and the brand deals are cool, but it just feels like he's capped.

[00:52:03] Nathan: Right. Where I'm like, and you're doing that

[00:52:04] work for

[00:52:04] the brand deal every time.

[00:52:05] Dan: Yeah. And it just feels like I'm selling my soul and trying to do the integrated content. Whereas I think if you have an audience and there's a way for you to support them through education, through information, and create either a course, which is a lot, a lot of the YouTubers do this or a group coaching program.

[00:52:19] Mm-hmm. Or even some people do agency a done for you, which is fine, um, is a way more lucrative business model than being independent on advertising and brand deals.

[00:52:29] Nathan: One thing that you do all the time that I see is. Flying down for a specific podcast interview or all of that, right? You're in here in Boise, you're going on doing these other, other podcasts.

[00:52:40] What makes it so worthwhile to go fly out for, you know, one podcast or three podcasts?

[00:52:46] Dan: The biggest thing, if you, if you, and again, there's a whole strategy behind this called the Media Tour. Okay. Is it always anchored with the keynote? Mm-hmm. So I always get paid to do the keynote. Once I have that, that funds the rest of it, then I do the media stuff for content.

[00:53:02] But the reason why it's valuable is because the whole point of trying to build your audience is to figure out who, who has. Pools or pockets or ponds of other audiences that you can get in front of, right? Right. So I always say, first off, get your social figured out. Like figure out, like some people don't even tell people what they do on their social media.

[00:53:21] So like make it clear, here's what I do, how I do it, and message me if you want help or whatever. Whatever the funnel is. Dial that in. And then the second part is stages. Stages are virtual or in person. Mm-hmm. On this trip, I'm doing all of them. I mean, I'll probably combine, get in front of a couple million new people that didn't know who I was before in literally 36 hours.

[00:53:44] Nathan: So you've got the keynote that you're getting paid for.

[00:53:46] Dan: Yep. And then that funds the reason to take the time. Right. But then as I travel, I reached out to a bunch of people for media stuff. Mm-hmm. We capture content, we create the vlog. We're, we're literally creating a content piece from the two days for YouTube.

[00:54:02] Again, it's capture, not create. I don't, I just wanna live my life.

[00:54:05] Nathan: Right.

[00:54:05] Dan: But I'm always looking at where's the biggest leverage. And I also have seven CEOs on the plane with me that I'm pouring into. Right. Because that's a good use of my time. Yeah. So I'm always trying to say like, how can I get the most capacity outta my day?

[00:54:19] Nathan: And then one thing that I see you doing a lot is it almost feels like. You care about the audience of the podcast, but you care more or as much about the content that you're able to create on it, where you're like, Hey, give me the footage, give my team the footage I travel with my team to capture the footage.

[00:54:37] Dan: Right? Even if you have clearly 17 cameras in this room, it's a little intimidating, but it's because it, it's, that is where the best content's created, right? See, when you talk to somebody like your video person in a room that knows you really well, you don't explain things the way you would with somebody that you don't know well.

[00:54:54] Right. Right. It's that beginner's mind. A lot of us, once we've been doing something for a long time, it's hard to go back to remembering.

[00:55:00] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:00] Dan: And that's what you did so well on this. This conversation was like, yeah. But when you started, what was it?

[00:55:05] Nathan: Right,

[00:55:06] Dan: right. So I think that it's really important to figure out the containers that you can create your best work.

[00:55:12] Mm-hmm. And make sure that you capture it in those moments, and then just do more of that. So it's both stages and then also more content for the social.

[00:55:20] Nathan: Yeah. Speaking of social, what platforms are you going all in on and why?

[00:55:25] Dan: I would say the two that are top right now that we're dialing in continuously, 'cause it's uh, it's really still so much opportunity is YouTube and Instagram.

[00:55:34] YouTube, because that's where people that invest have the most trust built. Mm-hmm. They get to know you. It becomes a routine. They expect the publishing time, they watch the videos and a lot of times it's entertainment. They'll put it on the background. They'll put it on repeat, they'll get YouTube subscription and download it for a flight.

[00:55:51] Instagram, because Instagram has the best messaging platform to build audience and have conversations with them. Right. And for us, that's the way I like to talk to people.

[00:56:01] Nathan: Well, and that's also your whole sales conversion process. A hundred percent. Like something that you do remarkably well is have people dm you reach out, you have these conversations.

[00:56:10] Dan: Yeah. Like I did right here. Right. Like, and do it in a way that's value added. Mm-hmm. That's organic. Like there, and, and even that word sales, like it's not sales. It's like, do you have a problem? Yes or no? No. Right. Cool. Yes. Let's talk.

[00:56:24] Nathan: So when we were hanging out in Charleston, it was probably, uh, a year and a little over a year ago.

[00:56:30] You were showing me, I think you had 200,000 followers on Instagram at the time. So we've probably five x uh, since then, you were showing me the conversations that you were having just DMing. Either people who responded to your reels come to any way to start a conversation and then, yeah, I think you were even DMing maybe every new follower

[00:56:48] Dan: I was DMing every new follower, people that viewed my stories and people that liked or commented on my post

[00:56:53] Nathan: and just starting conversations and that, I believe is how you kickstarted the entire, the whole thing, the whole flywheel and everything.

[00:57:00] Yeah.

[00:57:00] Dan: It blew my mind that people would reply and that I could help them, and then they would show up in my program. Wow. It was the coolest thing ever. I think people don't do social. They do social, but they're not social. They're just broadcasting. The whole point is to be social. It's called social media.

[00:57:15] Like when I grab their phone and I go on their Instagram and I just keep, I, I literally do this. I did it, I think at the event. I was like, gimme your phone. And I went through and I just started chatting with people and like the people replied and they're like, oh my God, is it really? Yeah, it's me. Let's talk.

[00:57:27] And they're like, this is so crazy. But that's the whole reason. And most people don't understand that Instagram has decided to compete against Snapchat. Mm-hmm. To make their messaging platform one of the most powerful platforms out there. So as of today, YouTube, Instagram can't go wrong.

[00:57:42] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:57:42] Dan: Alright, last question.

[00:57:44] Nathan: We've known each other for a decade. You've watched me build a SaaS company that 45 million in revenue. I feel like I am right on the edge between the old you of creating content for a long time, being consistent, all of that learning and iterating and the like, fully going pro. What are the things, like the specific advice you would give me for stepping over into that world and be like, alright, it's time to go pro.

[00:58:07] Dan: Well, there's the, there's there, there is the strategic and and tactical stuff, which would, you know, I'd have to look at the videos to see where the opportunity is, right? But for everybody listening and for you. It's two things, and this is what I looked at for myself. How much of my calendar was I committing to this?

[00:58:23] Mm-hmm. And what percentage of my bank account. Was I committing to this because I can't say it's important and then deploy 2% of my income to it, or 5% of my calendar.

[00:58:35] Nathan: Hmm.

[00:58:35] Dan: If it truly is something you wanna be pro, you're gonna have to figure out how to buy back your time from other areas and then deploy that capital into that thing.

[00:58:45] And that's always how it's been. Everybody it's ever won and been massively successful, it's literally what do they spend time on? You show me your bank account and your calendar and I'll tell you what's important to you.

[00:58:55] Nathan: Yeah. I love that. Okay, so everyone should go read, buy Back Your Time, please. It's a fantastic book.

[00:59:00] Thanks. I've bought literally hundreds of copies of this book you have, man.

[00:59:04] Dan: I super appreciated.

[00:59:05] Nathan: And uh, so read that. But also where should people go to?

[00:59:08] Dan: I follow you Instagram. Find me on Instagram. But the truth is, is every platform's different. So if you're, if you're a LinkedIn person, go on LinkedIn. My LinkedIn I think is pretty awesome.

[00:59:17] TikTok, I love TikTok. Completely different content. Um, but the big thing is that if you feel called to want to get support in what I'm teaching, just find me on Instagram.

[00:59:25] Nathan: Sounds good. Thanks for coming on.

[00:59:26] Dan: Awesome. Thanks Nathan. That was the most value added podcast I've ever done.

[00:59:31] Nathan: If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search the Nathan Berry Show.

[00:59:36] Then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were, and also just who else do you think we should have on the show. Thank you so much for listening.