The 7 Wealth Killers That No One Talks About

I'm going to share the seven wealth killers that no one is talking about. Most people think it's credit cards and caramel lattes.
It's not. 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.
And make sure you don't miss anything by subscribing to my newsletter at martellmethod.com. The first wealth killer keeping you broke is saving money.
Rich people have learned to let money flow through them. They don't hoard money.
They don't collect money. They use it to reinvest in themselves in their business.
That is the big mistake that most people make. They don't want to spend on the right things because they're so worried they're going to make the wrong decision.
So they make no decision. When I was 23 building my first company, I spent all my extra money paying for speed.
I needed to move faster. It's why I hired my first coach, Bob.
He was a certified e-myth coach and he taught me how to build the business. I could have learned it.
It would have took me 10 years. Instead, he took 35 years of experience building and exiting his company and put it into a blueprint and gave it to me.
I moved very fast. Broke people use money to impress.
Rich people use money to invest. Invest in their skills to become more valuable, their business so they can get more customers, their team so they can get more time back.
When you invest, you show the universe that you're not here to hoard. A couple years ago, I was talking to my assistant and I realized I had millions of loyalty points.
And it occurred to me that I knew better. So I told her, I said, in the next 12 months, we're gonna take those 30 million points across all the different programs I had and use them to bless people, to bless my team, to bless my family for my own travel if I need them.
But to keep them to myself, because I was playing this weird game of collecting points was not gonna serve or tell other people that I was participating in the economy. But once you started investing in yourself, most people get lost on direction.
Which brings us to wealth killer number two, diversification. One time I was on a call with a client and they were having a hard time progressing in their business.
And when I dug deep, I found out not only did they have one business, they actually had three businesses. The worst part is the one business was the rich uncle to the two others that were sucking all the profit from the first one and creating the most distraction.
Most people think that wealth creation requires diversification. The problem is that it actually takes concentration.
See, diversification is diversification. The mistake most people make that kills wealth is starting multiple businesses at the same time because they have a fear of failing in any one of them and they don't know which one is actually going to be the winner.
This morning, I was wrapping up a hike with a bunch of founders and as I was leaving, one of the entrepreneurs ran after me to ask me a question. And just by the way they were asking about, should I partner with this person? Should I do this? I was just like, what's your revenue at? Top line for the year total.
And I thought he was going to say like three or 4 million. He said 90,000.
If you're at 90,000 and you're talking to me about multiple businesses, you don't even have a company. You probably barely make enough money to live.
You're distracted by multiple businesses and you think you're an entrepreneur. You're not.
You're using diversification. Stop it.
But being broke isn't always about your behavior, which brings us to the third wealth killer, stagnant friends. I grew up in a small town, east coast of Canada, 100,000 people.
And at the time, everybody was nice. I really loved everybody around me.
I felt like they were friends and they were supportive. The challenge was, is that as I continued to want to be better and grow, I noticed that they weren't on that same path.
What used to be them cheering me on because they wanted to see me try, as soon as I actually started succeeding, all of a sudden now what I was doing was too much. And what I discovered is you're not the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
You're the average of the five people you allow to influence you. If your friends don't have what you want, don't do what they do.
So what I suggest to people that want to create real wealth is to do a friendventory. At the beginning of the year, look at the list of your goals that you want to go achieve and ask yourself of your friends that you spend time with, or you allow to influence you, who've achieved those goals? Are these people closest to you or closest to the goal? If you don't have anybody in your corner that's done the thing you want to do this year, you got to go find those people.
My buddy, Cole Da Silva, had this great talk he gave at my King's Club program, and he shared with these kids a simple premise. He said, I'd rather have four quarters than 100 pennies.
He was talking about people. He was talking about friends.
He said, I could have 100 friends, but if they're worth one penny because they're not there to support me, they're not going to encourage me, they're not going to inspire me, versus I could have four people of high integrity, high value, high support, I'm taking the four quarters. That idea encapsulates the whole concept that stagnant friends is a huge wealth killer.
But it's not just about being around the right people. Before we get back to the episode, if you actually wanna 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 wealth killer number four, doing everything yourself.
I'm like 29 and I have a business partner, Ethan, and we have a major issue at work and we had to go in and start working on the strategy to resolve it. And it's a Saturday and I call him up and I was like, hey, let's meet at the office.
And he says, I'll be there after I'm done doing my laundry. This is a CEO of a venture-backed company that tells me he can't meet with me because he has to do laundry.
Ethan, you walk by three or four wash and folds on your way to the office. Can you please pay somebody $12 so that we can get to work on this? Most people spend time to save money.
You have to spend money to save time. You can always make more money.
You can't make more time. Growing up, I watched my dad.
He had a couple of rental properties and every Sunday he would mow the lawn. And I remember asking him, why do you mow the lawn? You can pay somebody else to do this.
Most people do. He's like, I enjoy doing it.
Problem was, is he didn't realize that instead of paying somebody to get that time back to look at more real estate deals, he was occupied by doing something that was low value. He didn't understand the value of his time.
In many ways, that inspired me to write the book, Buy Back Your Time, because I wanted to inspire entrepreneurs to understand how to get leverage in their work. It's why I teach this concept called the buyback loop, which is auditing your time for energy and what makes you money, transferring the things that takes your energy and doesn't make you money to somebody else, and then filling it up with activities, skills, investing in yourself that makes you more valuable.
And you can start as simple as looking in your home, having somebody clean a couple of times a week or do meal prep for you or hire somebody to run errands. The key idea is learn how to delegate and have somebody else support you so that you can become more valuable to your business.
Wealth follows those that invest in themselves. When you start off, you might spend dollars to make $10 and then you spend thousand to make 100,000.
Eventually, you're gonna have to invest 100,000 to make a million. It's always been that way and it's always gonna be that way.
And if you understand how wealth is made, there always has to be an investment to get a return. But you might ruin your chances of success if you don't watch out for this.
Which brings us to wealth killer number five, being humble. As a Canadian, I can tell you I was humble to a fault.
I was so humble, I didn't tell anybody about anything I was up to. I was scared to come off as braggadocious and I kept all my goals to myself.
How is somebody else in my life, next to me on a plane, in a meeting, at a conference, supposed to maybe help me for me to potentially get them as a customer. If I don't tell them what I've done that I'm proud of, if I'm hiring a real estate agent and they didn't do anything impressive out of 100, who am I gonna pick? The one that I feel is the most talented.
Keeping your dreams, your goals, your accomplishments to yourself doesn't impress anybody and will hurt your ability to create wealth. I believe everyone is one conversation away from achieving their dreams.
Most people have vague goals in their head. That's why they don't express what they are.
I want to invite you to consider to be very specific around what you want to accomplish and write them down. Once you've got them written down, you have to tell people.
Tell people that'll support you. Successful people talk about their goals.
It's how it's always been. When you actually sit down at a dinner with multi-millionaires, they're not talking crap about other people.
They're not talking about the news. They're not talking about other things in politics.
They're literally sitting down saying, here's what I'm up to. What are you up to? How can you support me? I want to support you.
It sounds so crazy, but the more specific and big your dreams and goals are, the more you'll notice other people will want to help you. My favorite thing to do is once I know what my goal is, give it a mantra.
So for example, last year when I wanted to get abs, I called it Project Visible Abs. I went from 16, 17% body fat down to 4 or 5% absolutely shredded, gave it a mantra, repeated it, told everybody about it, documented it, and I achieved my goal.
90 days. Am I surprised? No.
When you talk to successful people, being humble is actually a massive wealth killer. And there's a difference between coming out of the gate in a new relationship with a person you never met before and telling them all the things you've done.
Be curious first. Ask more questions about the other person.
Through that, they'll ask you what you do. In that moment, tell them, be proud of yourself.

They asked, they gave you the floor,

share your achievements.

Holding back is holding you back from achieving wealth.

But talking about your goals won't be enough

if your beliefs get in the way.

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Which brings us to wealth killer number six, low self-worth. I have a friend that is so talented.
Every time he interacts with friends of mine or even myself, he creates so much value. He's one of the smartest guys we all know, yet I've watched him year over year over year.
Never ask for a piece of the action. Never insert himself into the project.
Why do you think that is? It's because he doesn't feel worthy of it. He doesn't believe he deserves it.
And that's what I believe holds most people back from being wealthy. Unworthiness fuels self-sabotage.
If you took everything you know, everything and knowledge that is you, and you put it into a pile that's outside of yourself, all the relationships, all the knowledge, what would you pay for that? Is it a hundred thousand? Is it 500,000? Is it a million dollars? For me, it would be a crazy number. That number is your value.
And I bet it's way more than what you've been asking for. And it's way more than you think you deserve.
And you should ask for it. There's this one strategy I teach my clients when I coach them to create an achievement list.
The reason why is I want them to have a place that they can reflect on all the incredible accomplishments that they've done that they're proud of. And they could be small.
It could be the first time they landed a kickflip, like one for me, or the time they graduated from university, or maybe the first sale they ever got in their business. It doesn't matter what it is.
If you felt proud of it, you write it down. And then what you do is when you're about to go into an important meeting, when you're about to have a really important conversation, when you feel a little beaten up and your self-worth is really not there, just open up that achievement list and just review all the incredible things that you've done.
It doesn't matter if you're in your early twenties, you're in your sixt. You've probably done some things that to other people, if you reminded yourself, would be so impressive.
Read that list and get energized by it. Now, this is what my friends should be doing to participate.
And it'll change everything for you if you start doing it. It's called just freaking ask.
If you're in a deal or you have a potential customer, just ask them, would it be unreasonable to get a piece of the deal? Would it be unreasonable for me to ask to get some equity in that? Would it be unreasonable for us to work together? Would it be unreasonable to get paid for that work? Or another one of my favorite questions is what would need to be true? What would need to be true to get paid for that work? What would need to be true to get equity in that deal? What would need to be true to be partners with you? Asking the question, even if they say no, at least puts you in a position to participate. Your self-worth comes down to your internal belief of you doing the work.
Consistency to the commitments you make in private builds your self-confidence. And I learned that the more you work, the more it instills the worth.
So if you want to become more worthy and have self-worth, you got to do the work on a daily basis, even if you don't want to, because that's going to build that self-worth. But the hardest part is actually when you have a little bit of success, which brings us to wealth killer number seven, fear of loss.
I lost 3 million in my first couple of years as an angel investor. What I learned is that losing was part of the game.
Was I proud of that? No. Did I have shame? For sure.
I thought I sucked, but it turned out that investing in losing was how you got the spins on the wheel to figure out what worked. See, most people that have had success, they go from playing to win to playing not to lose because now they have something to lose.
I know I have a lot of friends that are the big dogs in their communities where they have the house and the toys and all the accolades from their friends. And they're the person that hosts the barbecue.
And they always have the people over because they get the nice place. The problem is they wake up every day wondering what could be.
See, to make 100K when you started off, you needed to risk like $10,000. If you want to make 100 million, you need to learn to risk 5 to 10 million.
There's a ratio for investment, not an absolute dollar amount. The more you want to go create, the more wealth you want to create, the more you're going to be willing to take risks.
It's never been any other way and it's never going to change, except most people change why they're playing the game. Most successful people have been broke multiple times.
Eventually, they learn how to win and the ones that really create wealth learn how to reinvest and take risks and they never stop. You've got to get to a place where you're willing to take more risks.
The world rewards those who make courageous decisions. I have so many examples throughout my career where most people said, I'm dumb.
Why would you do that? And I had it in my heart. I made one of those decisions today.
I literally passed on an opportunity that didn't feel aligned. It made me feel sick in my stomach doing it.
But when I asked my heart, what do I really want? I knew it was the right decision. On the back end of that, like every other time I felt this way, that's where the reward comes from.

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