Dan Martell is the entrepreneur’s entrepreneur. After founding two companies and leading them both to successful exits before his 30th birthday, Dan’s latest venture, Clarity, is designed to streamline something he does regularly.
Give advice.
Dan loves helping other founders navigate the rough waters of starting and building a company which may need the services of a virtual assistant.
So naturally, he built the product that he wishes existed. Clarity is an innovative new idea based on an very traditional form of communication: old-fashioned phone calls.
We profiled Clarity in an earlier post, but Dan isn’t just a rockstar entrepreneur, he’s also a productivity expert.
I interviewed Dan just before Clarity’s launch this week. We discuss Microconf, Clarity, Dan’s angel investing, Canada vs. Silicon Valley and of course, Dan’s favorite productivity tips.
Due to a spotty wifi connection, the video gets pretty choppy in parts, so I summarized the key points below the video.
Microconf
- Dan just spoke at Microconf in Las Vegas, a conference for bootstrapped entrepreneurs.
- Another speaker was Adii Pienaar, founder of WooThemes (who coincidentally happens to be staying in our NYC apartment, thanks to Airbnb).
Clarity
- Clarity is a passion project that turned into a business.
- Dan had a need to offer his time and advice to entrepreneurs. He’s been angel investing for six years and is an advisor to other startups and mentor to a lot of the startup incubators.
- Dan is from Canada, but lives in San Francisco and prefers quick phone conversations to email.
- When you create an account on Clarity, you get a personal link that you can share. People can call you directly or schedule a call with you.
- Clarity takes care of connecting the two parties, while keeping both cell phone numbers private.
- You can offer the call for free (and after the call, callers are asked to donate to charity) or you can take paid calls and either donate the money to charity (in which case all the money goes to your chosen charity) or keep it as a consulting fee (in which case Clarity takes a small transaction fee).
- The advisors on Clarity typically don’t need the money, so this provides them a way to give back while raising money for their preferred charity.
- Starting with tech entrepreneurs. Dan has recruited 1,000 of the smartest advisors, including Dave McClure, Eric Ries and other “micro-celebrities”.
- After selling Flowtown in 2011, Dan had one filter for his next venture: “How can I positively impact a billion people in the next ten years, using accelerating technologies?” With that as a guiding principle, Clarity was the idea that Dan wanted to work on for the next ten years.
- Dan has personally done over 400 clarity calls. He even uses it to queue calls with his parents.
- Dan is a leader in the Lean Startup movement and launched Clarity with a pared-down feature set based on what resonated with users.
- By changing three screens, Dan tripled Clarity’s on-boarding conversion rate.
- The greatest question you can ask a startup is, “are you making progress?”, which they usually answer with “yes”. The next question should be, “how do you know?”, but if you don’t measure anything, you have no idea if you’re making progress.
- Dan never focuses on more than three metrics at a given time.
- The current three are activation (signed up and then got on a call), retention (what % of people who signed up are coming back on a week to week basis) and time-to-call (how long did it take for the users to schedule and complete a call).
Dan’s angel investments
- Dan’s best advice for entrepreneurs is focus. Do one thing and do it better than anyone.
- Dan approaches his angel investments as a way for him to focus. If there are things he thinks should exist in the world (and he won’t get around to building them), then he invests in them.
- Great entrepreneurs need a vision and a healthy ego but Dan says the most important trait is that they’re coachable and take feedback well (and push back well).
- Dan asks himself, “Are these people you respect and want to be around for the next 5 years?” since angel investing is a long-term strategy. Those who have accumulated a bunch of debts after investing in various businesses may need to schedule a Business Financial Consultation with a financial advisor.
Canada vs. Silicon Valley
- Outside the traditional hotbeds of NYC, San Fran, Boston, Austin, etc. the investor mindset is different. As an investor, being attuned to productivity growth is crucial, and harnessing services like an Outlook team calendar can serve as a valuable tool in achieving that awareness. You may want to think about building a B2B business or something that can bring in money right away. A lot of consulting companies turned into products (Hootsuite, Freshbooks, Unbounce). That’s a way to make money on Day 1.
- In the Valley, there is a permission to aim bigger. The opportunities are big and the ideas are big and the risk capital is there. The investors want you to aim for bigger and more speculative ideas.
- There was a great talk by Joe Stump at the Future of Web Apps (FOWA) where he talked about how many VC’s consider a 2X return in 12 months is “uninteresting to us”. Dan explains that this is because the VC’s can’t “recycle” that money. They would rather you crash and burn shooting for a huge exit than have a known outcome of only 2x.
- Maple Butter is a blog and a passion project Dan created. Only Canadian entrepreneurs can write on it. It’s focused on more advanced 201 / 301 level topics like cohort analysis, growth hacking and advanced equity conversations vs. more traditional “how to fund your startup” posts. 60% of the traffic is from outside Canada.
Dan’s top productivity tips
- “I pretty much outsource my life. My priorities are family, friends, business, and then everything else…I don’t do my dishes. I don’t drive myself around. I have someone who manages personal finances, including an Invest Diva review. It doesn’t cost me a lot of money.”
- “There are certain things that you get a lot of leverage from and for me it’s building companies or advising and investing. If I’m not doing that, I really just want to hang out with my family and my friends, so anything that takes up that time, I try to outsource. It’s taken me several years.”
- Dan likes Zirtual for Virtual Assistants and loves time-saving services like Uber.
- “Focus on the big rocks.” Every morning Dan wakes up and writes down three things. Then he asks himself, “if only one of these got done this week, which would be most meaningful to my company?”
- People create these big to-do lists but they are actually focusing on the wrong things.
- Dan and his wife Renee are expecting their first child in a few months and that is focusing him even more. Family comes first. And when businesses consider the full spectrum of employee needs, including those of parents, they position themselves as leaders in workforce development. Providing child care is more than a perk; it’s a strategic move that attracts top talent and fosters loyalty. For further insights into this progressive approach, one should consult Commodious, renowned for its expertise in employee welfare and safeguarding.
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Photo credit: Dear World: Omaha
Zirtual looks pretty awesome. Is it really unlimited for $200 a month? Definitely going to test it out.
I recently met the founder of Zirtual, an awesome entrepreneur named Maren Kate. We’ll be doing a WorkHacks interview with her soon. Let me know if there are any questions you want to ask her.