I’m 45. If you're in your 20s, 30s or 40s, watch this

Most people think getting rich gets harder as you age.

That couldn't be farther from the truth.

I became a millionaire at 27, went bigger in my 30s, and at 45, I'm still scaling businesses in ways I never imagined.

And look, I know what you're thinking.

Dan, I'm 23 and I'm fucking broke.

I'm 35 and I feel super behind.

Or I'm 42 and I think it's just too late for me.

But here's the truth: you're not too young, you're not too old, and you're definitely not too far behind.

You're just playing the wrong level.

Welcome to the Martel Method.

I went went from rehab at 17 to building a $100 million empire and being a Wall Street Journal best-selling author.

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

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Today, I'll break down the exact playbook for each decade, your 20s, 30s, and 40s.

And I'll show you the next level nobody talks about, which in my opinion is the one that matters the most.

Level one, your 20s.

The main advantage that you have is your energy.

For me, your 20s is actually about one thing.

It's about trading time for money, then trading that money for skills.

Here's how I like to think about it.

I call it building your foundation.

Step one, we pick one high value meta skill.

See, a meta skill is something that makes other skills easier to learn or adopt.

If you think about coding, because it teaches you like systems thinking or sales, right?

Because then you're learning about persuasion or copywriting, content creation, project management, all of these meta skills make you better at learning another skill.

I always find the best skill is the one that you would love to do.

It's almost like, what would you naturally do to procrastinate?

If that's one of these meta skills, do that.

But I really want you to keep this in mind.

Do not diversify.

Go deep.

That intensity and focus and obsession for me, writing code, that's what's going to make you incredibly valuable within the high value meta skill.

And the best part is you can use your five to nine.

It could be 5 a.m.

to 9 a.m.

or 5 p.m.

to 9 p.m.

It doesn't matter if you're working a full-time job or you're studying, going all in for six months is going to make you a master at this meta skill.

Step two, most people won't agree with me on this, is work for free.

Because your parents are going to be like, oh, I don't think you should work for free for this person.

They don't realize that when you start doing something, you're not good at it.

You don't add value.

So if somebody that has the background and experience is willing willing to give you an internship or an opportunity to learn for free, take it.

I did this back when I moved to San Francisco.

I didn't know anybody.

I didn't have a high school friend.

I just cold emailed a bunch of folks and said, here are the three things I'm good at.

Technology, writing code, sales, persuasion, and marketing.

Really good at marketing.

And it turned out that enough of those emails eventually got responded to and two or three people gave me a shot.

They didn't pay me.

I didn't need to get paid.

I showed up being willing to do the work without getting paid because I knew it was also going to build my portfolio.

And that's what most people don't think about.

Step three is the price ladder.

See, the mistake that most people make is they just say, Look, I'll do this for like 50 bucks when normally anybody else would charge 100.

So you can just say that is normally I would charge 100 for this, but you're somebody I really admire and I want to do work with.

So I'm willing to do that at 50% off.

That shows the initiative.

And then once you do that, every five clients raise your price by 25%.

Even when I look at my journey, I mean, I was 17 in rehab and I discovered a book on Java programming.

And what happened is I became obsessed with writing code.

In many ways, it became my new addiction.

And I would stay up till 2, 3 in the morning just writing code.

By 21, I was charging $75 an hour for consulting, essentially $150,000 a year.

It blew my mind that people paid that, but it's because I had so many years of experience because I had the skills in the portfolio to prove it.

So here's my rule of thumb for those in their 20s.

Say yes to everything that teaches you you something, even if it doesn't pay well, because you'll get paid on the back end of learning it well.

And I get it.

Maybe you're on the edge and you're scared to start.

You're like, I hear what you're saying, Dan, but I don't know.

What if I fail?

Here's what I know.

Winners lose more than losers.

So in this stage, don't be afraid to fail.

Use it to fuel your growth.

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So now that we've tackled how you get rich in your 20s, let's move on to our 30s.

The main advantage at 30s is strategy.

You've got things that you've tried and failed.

You've created some systems.

All of these create leverage as you try to get richer.

So here are three things that you need to utilize in your 30s to be able to get rich.

Step one, the ATF framework.

ATF stands for audit, transfer, fill.

This is where we look at our time to make sure we're working on the right things.

I have a guy on my team.

He works really hard, but he's not getting near the financial results as the other people on the team.

The reason why is he doesn't look at his calendar through this lens.

See, audit is about understanding where are you spending your time and is it producing revenue?

And is it lighting me up?

Things that don't make you money that you hate to do that suck your energy, those have to get off your plate.

Then we go to transfer.

Transfer is about taking those things and giving them to somebody else.

So this could be outtasking, a task from like grocery shopping to running errands to cleaning your home, those little things you can start in your 30s, but it could be as advanced as hiring a full-time virtual assistant to help you with your email and your inbox.

Then the last part is fill.

This is about once you've got that time back, what do you do to reinvest it to get higher leverage?

So for me, it's about things like my habits, my belief systems in the world, or more importantly, my character traits.

If you're easily upset all the time because there's a little problem that happens, then guess what?

You'll never get big problems.

And if you don't have big problems, you don't have a big life.

So now that you've audited your time and we have a framework for improving your time, now we gotta go step two, the replacement ladder.

This for me is looking back on my life and saying, if I'm trying to get rich and build my team, what's the order of hiring that makes me the most money for the least amount of cost that buys me back the most time.

So the first hire at the bottom is an executive assistant.

This is somebody dedicated to understanding your needs and your life and your rhythms that can take over 100% of your inbox in your calendar.

Second, you got to hire someone to help you with the delivery of your service, the fulfillment of it.

Think about it.

If every time you sell something to somebody, it creates a bunch of time taken up in your calendar, then you're not going to push as hard to sell.

So I like to recommend people hire somebody to help with the support and the onboarding.

You still might do the work, but all those questions and scheduling and all that can be done by somebody else.

Incredible amounts of value.

The third hire is someone to market your service.

I can't tell you the amount of times I've worked with entrepreneurs.

The revenue is up and down and up and down.

The reason why is because they do marketing and then they get busy.

and then they stop doing marketing.

And literally, it's this feast or famine all the time.

If you bring somebody in, even part-time, to always be marketing your business, then you'll create a steady flow of leads and customers.

So you're never wondering where your next deal is going to come from.

The fourth hire is someone to sell your service.

And this is a beautiful place to get to.

And I know nobody sells as good as me.

You know, you better than you.

You know what you do better than you.

How could somebody possibly do this for me?

Trust me.

I used to think that until I hired a guy named Michael.

And on the first day, Michael sold better than me.

And when I asked him, how the heck did you do that?

He goes, hey, Dan, I think it actually makes you look like a real business if I'm selling you instead of you selling yourself, because that's kind of why they're coming to you.

And I was like, oh, interesting.

Now think about this, four hires and you could be on vacation and somebody else will create the opportunity.

Somebody will bring them into your world and somebody else will bring them on board in your business without you being involved.

That is freedom.

So once you implement the replacement ladder, step three to get rich in your 30s is focus on one thing.

This is going to break some people's hearts, but we have to pick one business model.

See, focus stands for follow-on course until successful.

Most people fail in their business because they can't focus.

When you pick one business model, one niche, one target customer, then you become lethal because all the energy, all your creativity, all your focus goes down on that one strategy.

But it's scary and I'm going to encourage you to say no to everything else for three years minimum.

I know.

What if I get an opportunity to invest in the next Facebook, Dan?

What if my cousin comes to me with a sure thing?

When you say no to something else, you're saying yes to your goals.

So the rule of thumb for your authorities is stop trading time for money and start building systems that make money without you.

Essentially, build the machine that let the people run the machine.

That's how you let your money make you money.

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Level three, your 40s.

See, the main advantage is experience.

Also known as the gray hair advantage.

My designer, Rich, said, hey, man, you look like that guy in Spider-Man that manages the newspaper.

But guess what?

The grayer my hair gets, the smarter I sound.

So if you're in your 40s, dig in.

This is where you can actually make the most money because you have all the know-how.

You have the resource, you have the experience, you have the relationships, you have the pattern recognition.

You can build the machine very quickly.

Now it's time to scale it.

See, there's three ways that I recommend doing this.

The first one is in a portfolio approach.

Essentially 70% in what you know.

See, most people diversify into things they have no idea about.

I don't understand why they do this.

Maybe it feels mature or smart, but I learned a long time ago from my mentors, if I know what I'm doing, investing in me guarantees an outcome.

Investing in somebody else, question mark.

So 70% of what you know from a portfolio approach is saying, okay, if I'm a real estate guy, if I build homes, maybe I should invest in multi-unit.

Essentially, whatever you're good at, that skill, wherever you made money, invest in other things as a portfolio that you know very well, because it's that information advantage that's going to make you rich.

So that's 70% of what you know.

20% is into adjacent opportunities.

For me, that's technology.

Like I angel invest in a lot of things like 3D printing, Endrone.

And then the 10%, those are the moonshots.

Those are, you know, these crazy ideas.

One of my friends is building this massive restaurant franchise.

I love it.

Brasa.

So awesome.

We eat there all the time.

Or another friend of mine is doing Laundry Sauce, which is a company that's like trying to bring a millennial approach to laundry detergent.

Crazy stuff that could be massive, but it's not my core competency.

The second area is become a mentor investor.

Now, I kind of touched on this, but let me really dig in.

Think about it.

If you're in your 40s, now you got to find some other people that are in their 20s that are willing to learn the skills that are going to grow and you can mentor them.

So finding three to five other entrepreneurs in your space who are two or three years into the thing that you have experience and you can support them on, I think that is a massive amount of leverage.

And what do they need?

Well, yes, they probably need capital, but more important, they probably need experience.

And an opportunity is becoming an advisor where you exchange your experience, your time for equity in their business.

Now you've got shots on goal that could turn into bigger outcomes than your current thing you're working on now.

The third is compounding your wisdom.

See, too many people live a life that's unexamined.

I'm a big fan of doing and then reflecting, documenting every single pattern I've learned.

I've been doing this for almost a decade.

Been posting on here for 10 years.

I've been sharing everything I've learned for about seven.

Because I had to document and codify it, then I got to learn it better.

But the coolest part is those frameworks became the tools that I could share with other people to help them move faster.

What makes you valuable in your 40s is the experience to come into a situation and see in 30 minutes, identify the three things that that founder, that entrepreneur, that business owner can do to change to 10x their growth because you've seen it so many times before.

But as a rule of thumb in your 40s, let your money work harder than you ever did.

Your job is strategy, not execution.

At this point, a lot of people go, but what about after your 40s?

What then?

Well, here's how many of my mentors have gone about it and how I plan and already am doing it too.

The final level, your legacy years.

Here's what nobody tells you about getting rich.

There's actually a level beyond the money.

This is where you use your money and your success, your relationships, everything you've learned as a tool for impact, not accumulation.

That's why it's another level.

It's understanding that when you decide to teach everything you've ever learned to the next generation, then you'll feel fulfilled.

It's why for me, I do a lot of things.

I run a program called Kings Club in my community where I personally mentor 100 kids every month that are 15 to 21 that want to show up and be better.

I go and I visit troubled youth at crisis centers.

I go inside prisons to speak as I travel just to share my story to help empower them because I know that I'm here to be an example for other people because people were that for me.

So the rule of thumb once you're past your 40s is to move to another level where this isn't about you getting richer.

It's about making others rich in more ways than one.

Here's the truth.

This game of life was never about the money.

It's about becoming the person along the journey.

When I say the world will show you where you're not free, the ability to do the work, being paid with money to improve your quality of life, to get to a place where what you've done is so impressive that other people want to learn from you and you share that with them.

That is what wealth is.

So now that you know this, I want you to ask yourself, is my skill really next level?

Am I really world class at what I do?

Have I found ways to leverage that within my existing business with my team?

Have I found people I can partner with to create more without having to work harder?

And most importantly, have I even considered that maybe sharing myself with the world is actually what it's all about?

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