Dan Martell: Street Smarts, Business Acumen and How Not to Waste Your Life

Dan Martell has one of the most unique stories I’ve ever heard. I tried my hardest not be inspired, but just couldn’t help it. ;)

Dan is an award-winning Canadian entrepreneur and founder of Clarity, a venture backed startup that makes it easy to connect with top business minds over the phone. He's also invested in 33 other companies as an angel investor.

We talked about all of that as well as the amazing story of how jail time saved his life and lead to all those accomplishments.

It was truly an honor to talk to Dan and I’m really excited about this one.

Here are some of my favorite bits from the show:

On Traveling

“I think traveling could solve a lot of the problems in the world if we just get everybody to go travel and understand what they’re talking about.”

On Experimentation

“Most people could be very easily more productive, they just never strive for it. Once they’re 20 and they have a working structure, they never revisit it. And I just think that if everybody just started asking questions about everything in there life, what they change or what would they try.”

“Everything from physically how we live or where we live, or how we work or interact and communicate, those are all things that are always up for experimentation and kind of moving forward in some small way.”

“Try to break it down and chunk it down. You don’t have to be all in or nothing. Try something once and then at least you’ve tried it.”

On "Failure"

“I had a very challenging childhood, so when I was younger risk meant life or death. The worst case today is I lose it all and I’m sleeping on my brother’s couch for a month and half until I build it back.”

“You want to do these small failures so it doesn’t cripple you, but know that you’re doing them and they’re really just ways to move forward.”

“I’m only this earth for a small number of years and I just want to make sure it’s impactful.”

On Self-Education

“I took everything I had in savings and put into the company Spheric Technologies and that company is really when I changed the way I approached work. I realized I didn’t know anything about business, I read every business book I could get my hands on, I got business mentors and over a four year period we grew it to about 30 employees, about $4 million in revenue and ended up getting acquired.”

“I realized I don’t have to know all the answers. I just need to learn in real-time. In other words if you’re starting a business, then you read three books on starting a business.

“If you’re not ready to apply, then learning now is actually a very wasteful activity.”

On The Importance of Mentors

“[With mentors] you start learning at a capacity and speed that would never be possible your own, because you have all these people going out into the world and experimenting and bringing you back the results. I just think everybody can be a mentor to somebody else. It doesn’t matter where you are in your life, there’s somebody that’s trying to get there and would love to talk to somebody that’s been there.”

“I don’t do anything in life without talking to somebody that’s done it before. I just think that’s slow and irresponsible and not very fun. If everybody just started working that way little by little, I think they’d be surprised how much faster they could move in the world and how much better their relationships would be, because everybody loves to give a