If I Wanted to Go From $0 to $1M in 2025, Here’s What I’d Do

I'm going to share with you the blueprint to make your first million dollars. These 10 steps are what the top 1% use to build businesses that generate millions.
They're the same steps that I use to go from a broke 24-year-old to building a $100 million empire. So without further explaining it, these are the 10 steps to make your first million.
Welcome to the Martell Method. I went from rehab at 17 to building a $100 million empire and being a Wall Street Journal bestselling author.

In this podcast, I'll show you exactly how to build a life and business you don't grow to hate.

My bestselling book, Buy Back Your Time, is out now.

Grab a copy at buybackyourtime.com

or at any of your preferred online retailers.

Which brings us to step number one,

build a six-figure skill.

See, I've watched people try to make money for years,

and I've learned that interested people watch obsessed people change the world. Obsessed people make money.
Obsessed people develop skills, and those skills will get them paid. So I spent the last six months researching, analyzing the most in-demand skills that are gonna get you paid that are the easiest to learn right now in 2025, starting with number one, AI prompt engineering.
What you do is you go learn how to communicate with AI. And that's why the best companies are going to pay you top dollar to help them develop prompts that are going to improve their business.
Number two, coding. This is actually what I went deep on back when I was 17.
And back then, it took me literally two years to get any good at coding. Whereas today with the new technology, you can figure this out in the next few months.
So go on YouTube and study programming languages. These are ways that you can get paid money to build them applications that are gonna improve their companies.
Number three, video editing. This one's my favorite because it's the most creative.
We hire video editors, many of them who taught themselves how to edit. We pay them top dollars because they take the content that I put out and clip it in a way that creates engagement, which gets me views, which I will pay a lot of money for and people will pay you.
Number four, ghostwriting. Most people don't know this because it's kind of this skill set that's behind the scenes.
But when I wrote my book, I had a ghost writer and I paid him six figures to help me work on my book because it was that important. And there are people and entrepreneurs out there that will pay you top dollar to help them work on their creative projects.
Number five, chat sales. This is a fun one because we've gotten to a world where you can build a very big company with no ads, no funnels, and no phone calls because people are taught how to sell things over chat, social media, chat, text message, chat, emails, consider chat.
I have one of my top sales guys that makes a million dollars a year in commissions over chat sales. Number six, cybersecurity.
If you think about it in 2025, with the rise of AI, the biggest problem that's happening for all business owners is getting hacked. If you can help other businesses protect themselves from security attacks, you're going to be incredibly valuable.
Number seven, large language model SEO optimization. So if you think of chatting with AI, there are people that specialize in search engine optimization or essentially AI engine optimization to become the recommendation by the AI.
And this is a technique and a skill you can go learn and get paid top dollar to help these businesses become discoverable on these AI chat platforms. Now that you've got your skills locked in, sharpen your saw, which brings us to step number two, learn, don't earn.
When I moved to San Francisco, one of my mentors told me, go find the best companies and offer to work for free. Why? He said, you will learn more than you could ever get paid to do the work by just being around these people.
Offering to work for free for all these startups for the first year that I was there taught me way more than I could ever learn on my own. But most people do it wrong.
The key is you want to get someone a result as fast as possible, even before you start working with them. People message me every day and they're like, I can be an editor.
I can be a copywriter. I'm like, why don't you just do it? Do the thing that you tell me you can do and show me.
So in your learning, not earning phase, here's the three steps to learn even faster. Number one, find a mentor.
My role for a mentor is somebody who's at the top of where you want to be and is willing to give you the advice and give you the opportunity so you can demonstrate your eagerness to do great work. Number two is do great free work.
As I mentioned, a lot of people reach out to me to want to do things for me. And the problem is, is their free stuff isn't very good.
So go spend the time learning the skill and then do the projects before you're ever asked to do it to show them that you're the person. Number three, and this one cannot be missed.
You have to ask for feedback. The only way you're going to learn and get better and not lose is get feedback so you can take that and implement it in the next iteration.
But getting to your first million is going to take more than just free projects. Which brings us to step three, sell it before you're ready.
Before I start any business, I actually sell it before I know exactly what it's going to be. When I started my elite coaching business, I was on a hike.
I was inspired by a conversation I was having on Instagram and I just decided to start this group. I sold it before I ever held my first call.
Why? I wanted to know if anybody else wanted to buy what I had. So I want to tell you five hacks that I use to sell more stuff, even when I'm not ready.
Number one is start warm. These are your opportunities.
These are your people, usually found in your network, through referrals, friends. You want to get somebody to introduce you, or ideally they know of you prior.
Number two, SPEAR message. SPEAR stands for short, personal, and expects a reply.
And usually it's like nine words. You can do it over email or text message.
And what happens is that it's so short and personal, the person feels obligated to reply and that will help you sell. Number three is simple offer.
Most people complicate things because they think they need ads and a funnel and a bunch of copy to sell anything. And I'll be honest, when somebody goes like, how does it work? I just grabbed a bulleted list of things and I just send it to them.
I keep it short and sweet. And most of the time I put it on my notes file on my phone so I can make it copy paste because I'm just looking to test and I don't want to over complicate it.
Number four is obstacles versus objection. See, most people deal with objections because they wait until they present the price to then have the person object.
I like to bring those up early and test the objections. Those become obstacles so I can deal with them early in my chat or my sales conversation so that when I finally get to the price, it's either a yes or not now.
Number five is take the money. If somebody says, sounds awesome, I'm in, say great.
Do you want to put that on a credit card or you want to wire me the money? Make the assumptive close and go straight to payment and get paid. But now that you've got the sale, it's time to deliver.
Before we get back to the episode, if you want to jumpstart your week with my top stories and tactics, be sure to subscribe to the Martell Method newsletter. It's where you'll elevate your mindset, fitness, and business in less than five minutes a week.
Find it at martellmethod.com. Which brings us to step four, under promise and over deliver.
When somebody buys something, they have an expectation for what it should be like. And that's totally cool.
You should get really clear about what they expect. But then I would write down all the other things you can do that would make wow factor.
So for example, when somebody comes to my event, what they don't expect is the fact that we create a WhatsApp group with all the other attendees and then prompt them to connect with each other. They don't expect that we give them a full documented handout with all of the resources that are going to be mentioned on stage, including some internal playbooks, so they get massive amount of value.
My philosophy is simple. If you want your business to be extraordinary, you need to be extra.
So here's how to over deliver. Number one is promise as little as possible that gets them a result and nothing else because step number two is go above and beyond.
So it's really hard for me to do that if I gave away all my best stuff in the offer. And number three is make it right.
When things go wrong, it's my favorite part because now I get the opportunity to show you how good I said I was. But after that foundation, most people can't scale because they're still doing everything.
Which brings us to step number five, hire to buy back your time. Every time I meet somebody for the first time, they go, how do you run multiple companies and get everything done and travel the world and all that stuff? The truth is, is I don't run every company.
At my level, I've bought back my time so that I can be the talent in all these companies. I can be the problem solver without being responsible for any work products.
See, I believe your company will only scale to the level of your ability to work through people. So if you're always the person that's dependent for something to get done, then you'll always be needed inside the business and you'll have time to work on the business.
So follow the buyback loop to buy back your time. The first step is to audit your calendar for all the things that would cost you very little to pay somebody else.
If you take all of that, put it into a bucket, and then do step two, transfer, give that to somebody else, that changes your whole life. The best way is to record yourself doing the work so that when you hire the person, you can transfer it without having to take time to train them.
The third step, fill, is the most important and most people miss it because we want to now add things to your calendar that makes you the most money, that gives you the most energy. If you implement these steps, you will build a business that you don't grow to hate.
For most people, their first hire should be an executive assistant. Most people get stuck because they don't know what to get that person to do.
So if you want to get my internal document on my standard operating procedure for my executive assistant, just find me on Instagram, message me YouTube EA, and I will send you my doc directly with no opt-ins, no nothing. But now that you have some time back, what do you do? Which brings us to step six, upgrade your circle.
One of my favorite things to accelerate my learning as fast as possible is to get around other people doing the same thing I'm doing. So twice a week for the last two months, I've been doing lunch meetings with five to six other incredible AI people that I found on YouTube or TikTok or that people introduced me to.
And then that way I'm starting to build a peer group of other folks that are building similar type tools and going in the same direction as I am. And as my buddy Cole says, I'd rather have four quarters than a hundred pennies.
I'd rather have less people that are incredibly valuable to my goals and my dreams than have a lot of people that just cost me a lot of time. So here are a few ideas that you can use to upgrade your circle today.
Number one is join a mastermind. I just found a lot of people that are also interested in AI and organize these lunchtime calls where we'd all share what we're up to and how we can help each other and it creates a mini mastermind.
You can join one if you don't have one, but you can create your own just as easily. Number two is join a coaching program.
There is literally a person out there that is the expert at the industry or business you want to be in. And they have a group that you can join and not only learn the best practices from them, but also meet other people just like you that are working towards the same goals.
Number three, hire a private coach. My whole philosophy is I have an unlimited budget for my health and my mind.
And a private coach will get you to accelerate even faster towards your dreams because they're going to be able to show you how to do what you need to do to be successful. But if you actually make it to a million, it won't be random.
Before we get back to this episode, if you prefer to watch your content, then go find me on YouTube. I have this episode on YouTube.
I'm Dan Martell on YouTube. Just subscribe to the channel.
Turn on the notification bell because then you'll get notified in real time. It'll tell YouTube to tell you.
I got a new episode, so you'll never miss anything. Now let's get back to the episode.
Which brings us to step number seven, scale with systems. It's crazy because a lot of people can be winning but still be making massive mistakes.
It my buddy, Peter, who owns a plumbing company. He was growing really quickly, but then he was forgetting to invoice and all of a sudden he couldn't make payroll because he didn't have a system for invoicing.
What I want to share with you are four core systems in your business that are going to help you avoid going broke. Number one is playbooks.
These are documents that contain the outcome for a department, the Northstar principles that a department would use to make decisions, and then the processes they use to get the work done. Just like my executive admin playbook that I shared with you earlier.
Number two is checklist. This could actually be a checklist app, or it could be a checklist at a document, but those are different because those are kept short and are always used when the person's doing the work.
Number three is stencils. And stencils are one of my favorite because they act like blueprints for doing repeatable work.
Think about if I was painting a wall and I had to put a bunch of birds on the wall. If I did it by hand, it would take me all day.
But if I had a stencil and I could just spray some paint, I could get that done in an hour. Stencils help you do the work faster over and over again.
Number four is sensors. And this is essentially ways for you to delegate a whole outcome like marketing or sales, but then check that the activities are being done right.
So maybe after a sale, there's a survey that goes to the customer asking them if they're happy. And if you get the report, the sensor, then you can get involved if people are upset by the service they just bought.
But now that you're getting the machine running, it's time to give it some fuel, which brings us to step eight, build demand. I used to brag about batching all my content.
I went the studio two days every quarter and I would batch all these videos, change t-shirts. Problem was for nine years, all it got me was 100,000 followers on YouTube with videos that might get two or 3,000 views.
Two years ago, I decided to go pro and in the last 18 months alone, I've added close to a million followers. And today with those million people, I get more demand for speaking and business opportunities that I know what to do with, because it's not who you know, it's who knows you.
See, organic content, you control all those links and those pages that people click through to learn more about who you are, what your business is about. That's how you generate authentic trust and demand for your business.
See, it all comes down to reach and reputation. If you have the reputation of being awesome, which I'm assuming you are, but nobody knows who you are, then you're not going to generate demand.
That's why you have to create content. So these are the four C's of viral content.
Number one is capture. My philosophy is simple.
The energy that you create your content in is felt by the viewer. So you have to ask yourself, when do you create content easily that's fun, that's exciting for you,, where you feel like you're just capturing something else and it makes it very natural to put out on the internet.
When you do that, people are going to feel the authenticity and they're going to want to learn more about you. Number two is create.
So if you've captured a lot of great content, now you've got to edit it and tweak it for the different platforms. So for example, YouTube video is completely different than an Instagram reel.
So the different platforms have different formats that you're going to have to craft so that it gets the most reach. Number three is collaborate.
This one is fun because you can collaborate with other creators and ask them to do collabs, but you can also collab with your audience by asking them to ask you questions. Number four is consistency.
This one, most people mess up and it's why they'll never grow their audience is because they do it for a week and then they stop. My philosophy was very simple when I started.
Can I do this every week and never miss for a decade? If I do that, then it makes my goals inevitable because I keep showing up every week and I don't miss. So if you do those four, you'll build massive demand.
Now that you got demand, this is how to really scale your business. Before we get back to the episode, if you actually want to know what my real life looks like and see the people and the businesses and the companies I buy and my family and just like how I make it all work, go follow me on Instagram, Dan Martell, 2Ls and Martell on Instagram.
It's where I show the behind the scenes, the real deal, real time. I'd love to see you there.
Have an amazing day. Which brings us to step number nine, hire drivers.
Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs build a prison of their own creation. They're the genius with a thousand workers because nobody does any work without verifying that it's the right work.
You don't want to do that. Instead, you want to do this, hire people that make the business better behind your back.
This is how you identify and hire drivers. Number one, offer the opportunity.
The truth is people who can grow your business without you being there are already employed. So you're going to have to pull them from other companies.
If you're just putting up a job spec and having people apply that are looking for a new job, these people have very low probability of being a driver. Number two is you got to align the upside.
The people that can come in and build your business and help you achieve your goals, they're going to want to get paid based on their performance because they trust themselves. So you have to build a comp structure where they get paid based on performance.
Number three is give them the challenge. See, drivers like big problems.
They like big visions. They love trying to create stuff that very few people have done before that for them, it might be the first time, but you have to give them full ownership.
If you say, Hey, I'm going to give you a tough challenge and then check in with me every time you make a decision, drivers are going to leave. Now that you've got those drivers, how do you keep them on your team to build your million dollar business? Which brings us to step number 10, craft your culture.
So a few years ago, I woke up to an HR nightmare. I had built a business with a bunch of people to the point where I didn't want to work with these people.
I built systems and I thought that I managed things right, but I wasn't a leader. I didn't set the standard.
I didn't communicate my expectations. And the truth was I wasn't being intentional about the culture I wanted in my business.
Your culture should make some people uncomfortable. So here's how to build a high performance culture.
Number one, implement standards, not only for your team, but most importantly for yourself. See, most leaders ask other people to do things they're not going to do for themselves.
And the truth is, is you teach people how to treat you. Your standards aren't what you say they are.
They're what you accept from other people. So if you're not hiring and firing and inspiring against your values and your standards, then you don't have any.
Number two is train, don't tell. See, when something goes wrong, most people blame the people because it's the easiest, but I always default to the process.
Did I have a checklist the person should have followed? If I do, did I train them against that process? See, without that, I can't really blame the person because I didn't properly equip them with the process and the training to be successful. Number three is connect to vision.
My philosophy is very simple. If I want somebody to be bought in, I just got to do one simple thing.
I need to understand what their five-year goals are and have my vision big enough so that their dreams and goals fit inside of it. If I can't connect what they want for their own life to the things that we're creating in the business, then why would I get them invested in trying to show up to help me achieve my goals? So that's how you build a million dollar business

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