I spent $1.5 million on business gurus from their cheap books to insanely expensive invite-only

masterminds. And I'm going to share with you everything I learned and if it was all worth it.

So you don't have to spend any money and still get all the value. Let's start with the cheapest investment and we'll work our way up to the most expensive.

Welcome to the gross stacking show. This is Dan Martel.

If you love to read, my new book is out, Buy Back Your Time. You can get it on Amazon or any other retailer where books are sold or buybackyourtime.com. It's going to help you build a business so you don't grow to hate. Buy back your time. If you read it, I would love, love, love a review on Amazon so it could help it get in front of other people just like you.

So let's get in this. hate, buy back your time. If you read it, I would love, love, love a review on Amazon so it could

help it get in front of other people just like you. So let's get in this episode. My first

investment was $20 and it was actually a book. And it allowed my business to go from barely

breaking even to grossing over a million dollars in my business, just from this one book. So I was 23 and I'd never read a business book ever. I was actually working as a contractor for the government. And on my lunch break, I went to a bookstore and I saw this book called Love is a Killer App by a guy named Tim Sanders. And for whatever reason, on that day, in that moment, it sounded like I hadn't walked into a bookstore before. It spoke to me.

I think it's because I'm a software guy and it said, killer app and the guy used to work at Yahoo and

just figured maybe he knows something I should learn. And that book changed everything. There's three

key lessons that I learned that transformed my whole life. The first one was to acquire knowledge

for your customers, to actually read books

so that you become more valuable to the people that you want to help, which is a crazy idea.

Like I always thought I'll read books for myself, but to read a book for somebody else,

that was a big idea. The second idea was that your network equals your net worth. You know,

the people, the relationships,

who you know, the size of problems you can solve through conversations, that's what creates

value in your life. So invest in those relationships, investing, going out, and be intentional.

And the third thing was the value of just being a good person in business. See, I believe that all your

dreams, your vision board, your goals, they sit on the other side of two things. Reach and reputation.

And if you're a person that has a great reputation as somebody that's helpful and kind and goes out

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