556: From Broke to $100M+ in SaaS – Dan Martell (Best of Foundr) [VIDEO]

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan

Nathan Chan

Marketing, Business, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 662 Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Dan Martell shares his journey from troubled youth to building and exiting multiple SaaS businesses. Dan reveals the strategies behind his Buy Back Your Time framework, showing entrepreneurs how to scale efficiently without burning out. He also discusses his early business failures, the lessons he learned from selling companies, and why understanding leverage is the key to sustainable success. This conversation is packed with insights on hiring, leadership, and building a high-growth SaaS company while maintaining balance. Listen to Nathan and Dan discuss: - Dan’s journey from rock bottom to building successful SaaS businesses - The Buy Back Your Time framework and how to scale without burnout - The 1-3-1 method for decision-making and empowering teams - The four types of leverage every entrepreneur needs to scale - Bootstrapping vs. raising capital: when and why to take funding - How SaaS founders can optimize pricing, retention, and customer success - And much more business advice… Click here to start your business for $1. You’ll get all-access foundr+, where you’ll find more in-depth, proven strategies from founders like our guest today and support and advice from our global community of 30,000 founders. If you loved this conversation and learned something new, rate and review this episode. Stay in touch with us, follow foundr on your favorite platform: Foundr.com Instagram YouTube Facebook X LinkedIn Magazine

Transcript

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0:00.0	So I got a crazy story. Group home, foster home, crisis center, high-speed chases, prison.
0:05.4	I ended up in rehab. At the end of that program, I was clean out one of the cabins in one of the rooms was an old's computer and a yellow book on Java programming.
0:12.6	Within 20 minutes, I got the computer to say, hello world.
0:16.0	He's a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and SaaS growth expert.
0:19.8	He's built and sold multiple tech companies, raised millions in funding, and now coaches
0:23.6	SaaS founders on scaling fast.
0:25.3	His book, Buy Back Your Time, teaches entrepreneurs how to reclaim their time and scale smarter.
0:29.8	Damn Martel.
0:31.2	Once I started to get a taste of success, I was so scared of losing it that I just allowed my
0:36.9	work to absorb me. I felt like there was an elephant on my chest. I had to go see a therapist because I was so scared of losing it that I just allowed my work to absorb me.
0:38.2	I felt like there was an elephant on my chest.
0:40.0	I had to go see a therapist because I was having anxiety attacks.
0:42.5	People don't understand that the game they're playing is not the business model.
0:45.8	It's themselves.
0:46.9	Richard Branson had a rocket ship blow up.
0:50.0	His $50,000, $100,000 problems don't even register on his radar because he's become the person who can deal with a higher quality problem.
1:00.2	Hear the stories. Learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship.
1:07.9	Welcome to the founder podcast with Nathan Chan.
1:13.9	All right. So the first question that I ask everyone that comes on is how did you get your job,
1:19.6	aka how did you find yourself doing the work you're doing today? So I got a crazy story. I'll give you
1:25.9	the short version because I want to get into the meat of our
1:28.9	combo. But so what I do today is kind of software. So I run the largest coaching organization
	...

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