Everything.
My thoughts, my
weekends, my energy, my creativity.
For a four year period,
it was everything.
It was who I was.
It's it's I'm Dan Martell.
The CEO is here.
And
hi there.
I'm Dan Martell,
serial entrepreneur, investor
and creator of SaaS Academy.
This episode
I'm going to share with you
why selling my first company
almost killed
me, like, physically almost took me out.
Maybe you've never gone through this,
and maybe you have.
But here's what I've learned.
For some of you selling your business,
even the consideration of selling
it might cause you
to break out into hives,
get anxiety attacks,
feel like a sense of loss
because your business and who you are,
they're one thing.
They're not separate
and any time people
that have connected their self-worth
and identity
to a thing,
if that goes away,
then you go away with it.
I've seen it happen in relationship ups
with coaching clients that,
you know, we're in marriages
and they were dependent on their wife
and then they separate
and all of a sudden their
their identity,
their self-worth, who they are
as a person goes with that marriage.
Right.
And I know for me,
that story held true
when I sold my company
Fabric Technologies on the day it closed,
when I made millions of dollars
and I should have been celebrating
and happy.
I woke up
and I felt like I had
a rock sitting on my chest
and I couldn't explain it.
I was like, I'm,
you know, I'm 28 years old.
I'm healthy, strong.
I go to the gym.
Why do I feel like
this, this pressure on my chest?
And it kept going
and it got to the point
where I had panic attacks,
where I started having
like anxiety attacks
in social settings or,
you know, just even driving,
just have a hard time breathing.
And I ended up reaching out to like
the local doctor
network to get on a call,
a psychiatrist at the point
at that time my life, I didn't have one.
I didn't even know who to talk to it.
I went see a psychiatrist
because it's like having like anxiety
things going on in my brain,
these negative thoughts.
And I thought, how crazy is this?
And he, when I told them was happening,
he's like, Yeah, it's super normal.
And I said, Why?
He goes, Because for a long time
your business and who you are,
they were connected.
And, you know,
even though you're like,
Hey, this is this great moment
that you've been dreaming
of your whole entrepreneur career.
You know, your body also goes like,
hey, it's
almost like you lost a big part of who
you are, you know?
And he said, not not to the same degree,
but in the same essence.
You know, if you're a mother and you lose a child,
you know, you birth this child.
Like, that's a really tough place
to go in.
Like when you build this business
and you ask me to explain
like what went into building
the company spirit
and I was like 100 hour weeks,
you know, everything.
My, my thoughts, my weekends, my,
my energy, my creativity, my the pain,
the challenges, the
the celebration, the highs, the lows.
Like for a four year period,
it was everything.
It was who I was.
It's it's it's I'm Dan Martell,
the CEO was here like it was
it was the same thing. He goes Exactly.
And it was a really tough time for me.
And he made me
I mean, I remember the prescription
because I was
telling a friend this yesterday
because they went through
and they said what the doctor
tell you to do
because they gave my friend Valium.
And I said, Well,
first he told me to walk around
with a rock in my pocket,
which might sound crazy,
but for whatever reason, he's like,
Whenever you feel this panic attack,
come on, just squeeze the rock.
Now, I don't know if it was like,
you know, a baloney story
he was trying to tell me.
And maybe there was more like belief
in the rock than actual, like,
physical reaction to it.
But somehow it worked,
you know,
and then he gave me,
I consider some excellent advice,
some great medical advice,
which was Buy a boat,
because you should spend
more time in the water.
And I lived on the ocean
and I was like, okay,
so you're telling me
I should go buy a boat
and spend
most of my time in the ocean wake surfing
done.
And I mean, I'm joking,
but that helped me a lot too.
There's just something
about being in the sun
and relaxing
that kind of helped me get through it.
And I just remember
going through that,
that experience
of having external success,
and people were like,
Oh, you know,
you must be so proud of yourself and
and how good for you and all these things
at the same time going
like you have no idea
what I'm feeling inside.
And over the years
I've promised myself learning those
those lessons learned, these beliefs.
That's why I want to share with you today
is how did I continue to build companies?
Because I've gone on now
to to exit
to build an exit to other companies.
After that
flow town and clarity
and then I've built SaaS Academy
now I invest in companies
for high speed ventures.
So how have I'd gone on in my life
to keep playing a big game?
So not letting me be scared
of that feeling again,
but not have to go through that pain.
And the three things
I want to share with you,
the really big insight.
If you've probably
never gone through this,
I want to prepare you for it.
First one is the disconnect.
Disconnect your personal value
from the success of the business, right?
You are not your business.
I am not my business.
I am who I am.
Success, failure.
The value of the business
has zero reflection
on the value of me as a person.
It's the same thing
I tell do a lot of my my
my friends that have kids is your kids
success in life
should be zero reflection
as you as a person.
Okay now you might take that harshly
because you're like, well,
what if my kid doesn't do well in school?
It's not a reflection of like me.
It's like, Yeah, maybe, but
but who
you are fundamentally as a human being,
when your kid is 18 years old
and they're making
decisions out in the world
and hopefully they've moved
on outside of your house
and they're starting
to live their own life
like that's on them.
You're not responsible
for their decisions.
You guide them. You instill principles.
If you're thoughtful about it,
you try to create rhythms and rituals
and meanings and values
and all those fun things.
Those are things that I do
with my family.
But at the end of the day, my kids,
the way they show up in the world,
honestly,
I don't take credit for it and I don't
I don't take it as a downside.
If they're acting out,
that's who they are.
They're individual humans.
The business is a business.
I don't care how successful it is
or not,
it's value in the world
is not a reflection of the value of who
I am as an individual.
So that's the first thing
you've got to disconnect.
Number two is you got
you got to take care of you.
You are the constant you will take.
And I tell this all my coaching clients
invest in yourself,
be present,
learn new skills, become more Y.
It may not be this business.
It may not even be the next business.
It could be the next business after that.
But all I know
is that you are the only constant
and through line in your story of life,
you will be the only thing that's true
in every interaction
and every moment that you experience.
So, you know, taking care of you,
your health,
your putting yourself first vacations,
creating the space for you to reflect
and have.
Like recently, I shared that joy.
I think comes down
to three daily practices
a gratitude practice, a
empathy practice,
and a mindfulness
practice like meditation.
If you do those
and you put yourself first,
you're going to be able
to continue to grow
without the externalities
affecting how you feel like your business
and its success will not affect you.
Because that is
that's not who you are
and you're building
and you're taking care of yourself.
And finally
you got to lock in the learnings.
Like to me,
I don't care what happens to you, right?
It's the meaning you associate to that
and what do you learn from it?
You know, I like to ask my clients
whenever something bad happens
and it's hard for them.
It's a pill they do not want to swallow.
I say,
How did you contribute to that outcome?
And they're like,
What are you talking about?
My co-founder quit on me.
The bank called our line of credits
or our servers went down
because Amazon went down,
our site went down.
I was like, Yeah,
how did you contribute that?
They're like, How did I affect Amazon?
And I'm like,
Did you choose to go on Amazon?
No. My CTO chose to go on Amazon.
Did you hire your CTO? Yes.
Then that that's a worth considering.
You have to lock in the learnings
because for me,
whenever I go through these moments,
you know, where I feel
a certain way where I'm like,
why am I feeling this way?
These, you know, every,
every once in a while
I do like push really hard
and I'm like, whoa,
there's some feedback.
What I learn is like that moment, that
rock bottom, okay, feeling bad for me?
Like, if I wake up,
my rock
bottom is different
than everybody else's, right?
But I just believe rock
bottom is a great foundation
for a comeback.
I believe that for you,
if you're listening to this
and you're like, man,
I'm going through this now,
I just feel like I've had this
big setback.
Hey, rock bottom,
great foundation for a comeback
that is yours to to create
to bring in to the world, to manifest,
to make it your own.
And that's why for me, like,
even though I've been able
to go on and exit to other companies
and build and continue
to build and invest,
I just and over the years,
I've just learned who I am. Right.
And to me,
this is like
the best quote
to just summarize
what I just shared with you,
and it's from a guy named Osho.
He's a famous Indian religious leader.
He actually has.
I forget with the
he has a Netflix documentary, a
biography on it,
Osho, but he has
this great quote,
the only thing that matters in life.
Check this out.
The only thing that matters in life
is your opinion of yourself.
Think about that.
It's like the best quote ever.
The only thing that matters in life
is the opinion you have of yourself,
because from there
it will set how you feel right?
And if when I sold my company,
I had an opinion
and that created anxiety and pressure.
And now the way I look at my life is
I know who I am
and I know my relationships and the value
and I create all these things externally.
But their success has nothing
to do with my personal worth,
and that is the opinion I have of myself.
And that's
what I want to share with you,
because I think
if you can take that message
and put it in your heart,
put it in your mind and live
from that place,
it can create a lot,
a lot of joy for you.
So I hope this message finds
you incredible.
And as per usual,
I want to challenge you to live
a bigger life and a bigger business.
And I'll see you next Monday.