Don't Waste This Year - 15 Principles of Success

I started out as a broke 17-year-old struggling with bad decisions, addiction, and ADHD. But I'm going to share with you the 15 principles of success that took me from that to selling three companies, writing a Wall Street Journal bestselling book, and building a $100 million empire.
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. Principle number one, use fear as a compass.
I used to think working hard meant grinding. My first company, I would do 100 hours a week, almost burning myself out.
And it turns out that working hard and doing the right thing are not connected at all. Working hard doesn't mean hustling.
Working hard means doing the thing that scares you. I always think of this awesome quote by Joseph Campbell that says, the cave that you fear to enter most holds the treasure that you seek.
Meaning the thing that you don't want to do, that conversation, that decision, showing up to that place that gives you anxiety, that freaks out a little bit, that's actually hard work. That's fear.
And the fear is the compass in that situation. A lot of people get imposter syndrome, but it just means you're stretching your identity.
If you're actually in a room when you're the bottom person in the room, you're in the right room. You just have to rewrite the story that you're telling yourself.
It's crazy because fear is the path. The obstacle is the way, as Ryan Holiday would put it.
Fear just stands for false evidence appearing real. So even though you're scared, that's what courage means.
Courage isn't taking action towards the thing you want because you're not scared. Courage means in the face of fear, you make the right decision and fear acts as a North Star.
You have to take action before you convince yourself not to do it. I would argue in that moment, do something quick because if you let your left brain convince you out of it, you're gonna wake up one day wishing you would have made that decision.
Regret minimization is acting in spite of fear, which brings us to principle number two, play to win, don't play not to lose. I have so many rich friends that are always focused on not paying taxes.
They'll go so far down that strategy as they'll go and move to another country. How about go make more money? How about go try to be better? The world rewards those who make courageous decisions.
Even though you know it's going to be hard, if you make a decision that is forward movement, not away from pain, not away from a bad decision, moving towards it is going to come with so much positive energy that that momentum will actually help you get there a lot faster. So stop trying to act by reducing the downside, getting rid of all of it.
They'll always be there. Risk is taking decisions with imperfect data.
If you wait for everything to be perfect, trust me, the market would have moved on you. You're not going to make any money.
Here's something to consider. You will lose.
I believe that every time I have a business idea, I'm probably wrong about some aspect of the business idea. And what I do is I move really quick to figure out what aspects I'm wrong about.
You just have to lose in small amounts enough so that eventually you find the win. Which brings us to principle number three, make your old high, your new low.
A long time ago, I was helping one of my buddies with his business. And in a 12-month period, he followed everything I showed him and he made over $2 million in revenue.
Now,

here's the deal. I told him, now don't go give it back.
You have a belief around what you're

worth. And if you go above that, then you start giving things away or creating situations where

you lose. Think of it like your bank account.
If you're used to having $1,000 in your bank account

and it goes down to 50 bucks, you're probably going to make a different series of decisions

today to make sure that that balance goes up to 1,000. Eventually, you might get it up to 1,500 and then you might decide to make some decisions to bring it down to 1,000.
See how the old high has to become the new low because I need you to operate like it was 50 when it's at 1,500 so that it keeps going up and up and up. See, most people have these challenges around what they believe they're worth or what they believe should be there.
And they will make decisions to go back. One of my business mentors, Ed Milet, talks about having a thermostat of your life.
And you might believe you're an 80 degree type of person. And if all of a sudden the room heats up to 110 because you get around a bunch of high net worth people, you'll inadvertently cool the room down back down to 80.
And if it drops down to like 60 or 50, you'll heat up that room to get back to 80. It's a thermostat on your life in regards to what you think you deserve from health, wealth, finance, your physicality, your weight.
If you don't work on your identity, what you think you're worth, you'll always be cooling yourself back down. And that's why I say you got to make your old high, the new low.
So you operate as if the money's not there or the weight is more than it says so that you keep losing or gaining whatever it is you're trying to go after. If you don't build that identity, you won't fight for what you think you're worth.
It's actually being sick and tired of being sick and tired. That's going to change the whole game.
So build your identity to change your life, which brings us to principle number four. Permission is taken, not given.
I had a client the other day say to me that he wants to make it before he starts making content. In many ways, he's saying, I need to wait to give myself permission to create content because I don't feel good enough yet.
By whose standard? By whose definition of capable or successful or made it are you defining yourself? And why would you not want to share what you've learned

that's helped you so far with other people?

Why wait until everything's figured out?

Your dreams don't need anyone's signature of approval.

Most big businesses know less about their business

than people just starting off.

And people starting off look at these companies and go,

man, they must have it all figured out.

No, they don't.

They're still trying to figure it out.

They're still trying to figure out their next growth,

their next product, their next opportunity,

just like everybody else. The difference is, is they're not waiting for anybody's permission to figure it out.
They're still trying to figure out their next growth, their next product, their next opportunity, just like everybody else.

The difference is, is they're not waiting

for anybody's permission to make a decision.

You should be looking for forgiveness, not permission.

Too often, I see people going like,

if I can just get on this podcast,

then my life will change.

What if they say no?

You don't need anybody to say yes for you to win.

You can decide.

It's like people that work on teams

and they think I need a title to give myself permission to even do that. What I've learned is a leader is somebody has followers.
A leader is not a title. A leader is not something that somebody blesses you with.
You either show up as a leader and have people that admire what you're doing and want to follow you and learn from you, or you don't. You don't need anybody else's permission to take action.
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 principle number five, measure what matters. To the degree that you measure with precision, you will get a result.
Earlier this year, I had a goal. It was a crazy idea to get visible abs.
I know it sounds trite and egotistical, but the truth was I heard somebody say in the US, there's 22 million people with visible abs. And I thought, why not me? I've been going to the gym my whole life.

I've been working out, doing ultras, doing Ironmans,

but I didn't have visible abs.

The way I ended up getting there is by tracking everything.

I measured everything.

My macros, my workouts, my calories burned per day,

making sure I was in deficit,

my weight every morning, every night.

In 90 days, I went from 17% body fat, no visible abs,

to about 6% body fat, absolutely shredded. Peter Drucker is one of my favorite business minds.
And he has this great quote that says, what gets measured gets managed. Here's the way I do it.
First thing is, I need to know where I'm going. I need to have that clear vision of what I'm trying to build.
Most people, unfortunately, don't know. They just say, well, I want a better life, more money.
I want to look better. I want to feel better.
But those things aren't specific. See how there's no way to measure that.
So if I know where I'm going, what I'm trying to create, then I start by writing down those goals. Then I review them frequently.
Things like my bank account. I look at my Stripe login.
I get emails every day with daily cash positions. I stand on a scale to make sure my weight and my body fat percentages are in line with my goals.
The more I measure the daily, I set up a standard that makes my goals inevitable. If I follow a process and I measure these numbers and they're going the right direction, the end state of where I want to end up just happens to happen.
It's a byproduct of making that decision. Which brings us to principle number six, your network is your net worth.
When I moved to San Francisco, I didn't know a soul. So I decided to do something a little crazy and organize a founder's dinner.
Essentially, I would just invite founders that I met to dinner. And I did this every week for months.
Eventually getting introduced to a guy named Alex and introduced me to one of my first investors in my company, Clarity, Mark Cuban. Most people do networking wrong.
I'm gonna share with you the best way to do it, to connect with people that wanna see you win. First off, the fastest way to create value for other people is to connect them with each other.
So I just got off a meeting today at lunch where I brought six of my friends that don't know each other on a Zoom call, did some quick intros, had everybody talk about their latest projects, see if there's anything I could help them with, and then make sure that they connected with each other. In the valley, the currency is introductions.
If you know a good person and another good person and that one person can help the other and they need the help, make the intro. The other point is you always want to remember people's names.
There's nothing worse than seeing somebody that you know and calling them buddy. Trust me, as a person that gets called buddy quite a bit, I'm like, you don't even remember my name.
And they're just like, well, you know, I kind of remember meeting you at this dinner. It's like, it's all good.
But if you want to make an impression, use it and remember it because it's worth everything to them. The other part is you need to know what people want.
When you're talking to somebody, your job should be asking questions to figure out where they're stuck, what they're having trouble with, what are some of the big opportunities they're trying to execute on that they might need some support. And then think to yourself, how can you help? Maybe you have a skill.
Maybe you've seen a reference. Maybe an article that you read recently you could share with them.
You being that value-added person in their life is going to create the opportunity for them to think fondly of you. And it's all about reach and reputation.
Who knows you and what do they think of you? But you won't really get rich unless you learn principle number seven. Spend money to save time, not time to save money.
Remember this one time I was working on a startup with my co-founder. We just got ourselves into a pickle and I call him up and I'm like, hey man, let's meet at the office.
And he says, I can be there in three hours. I just got to get some laundry done and then I'll be in.
And I thought to myself, you make a hundred grand a year and you're going to go wash your laundry instead of just dropping it off at the wash and fold. And you walk by three of them on the way to the office.
He's like, yeah, you're kind of right. And I said, man, I'll see you in an hour.
You have to go solve bigger problems right now. Hire to buy back your time, not to add capacity.
Most people just keep adding staff to start new projects instead of getting their time back to execute on the ones they know are going to make them money because they're involved. To do that, you need to understand your buyback rate.
So you just take the amount of money you make per year divided by 2000. That'll give you a dollar amount.
So if you make $40 an hour, you should try to find anything you do in your life where you can pay one quarter of that to somebody else to do it for you so that you can reinvest that money. And you can pay someone $10 an hour to do something, do it.
Before we get back to the episode, if you're enjoying it so far, could you go ahead and do me a huge favor and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify? Reviews help us get up in the rankings, which gives us credibility to reach out to bigger and bigger guests. We can bring them to you.
It would mean so much. Let's get back to the episode.
Which brings us to principle number eight, default to action. This one drives me crazy.
The amount of times I've seen 40 page business plans from people talking about strategy this and process that and hire this. And I'm just like, the only thing you should be doing right now is selling something to a stranger to start the business.
When I started Martell Media, which is a multi eight figure business today, I was on a hike with a buddy and I had this idea to do something completely different. And instead of talking about it, I pulled out my phone and I texted a friend and got the whole thing started.
I sold almost $100,000 of what I wanted to sell without talking to one person, made the offer, figured out how to take payment right after I sold it, and then move the business forward. What your first move is matters less than just making it.
Too often people try to make the right decision in business, make a decision, try to make it right afterwards. You know, Jim Collins calls these bullets.
We want to fire bullets towards the target because we don't even know if we're close to hitting it. Once we nail it and we're getting towards the center, that's when we load up the cannonball and we take a big shot.
Maybe, and I hate them, business plans or hiring a bunch of people or getting an office or raising a bunch of capital. But doing that before you know that you've got a there there that the dog will hunt makes no sense.
You want to be patient with results, but impatient with action, which brings us to principle number nine, which is simple scales, complex fails. One of my favorite examples of this is Steve Jobs.
After he sold Next to Apple and he came back, he looked at all the products and decided to cut almost 95% of all products down to a single product line. They had built 15 different desktop models and he cut them all except for one.
If you want to grow something fast, if you want to grow things with ease, you have to focus on simplicity because complexity is easy. Complexity is human.
Complexity is the default. Focus is everything in business.

Follow one course until successful.

If you're an entrepreneur, you get to choose the rules of business.

Instead of adding things, think about how you can remove.

What could you take away and it wouldn't break the system?

That is a simple version of what you've got.

Which brings us to success principle number 10, make people rich.

It is the first thing I think about every time I start a new business.

I want to figure out how do I make somebody else rich? Every one of my executive leaders have a compensation strategy where they have unlimited upside. I don't want to tell somebody, you can only make 300 grand a year.
I want you to make 3 million a year. I want you to make 30 million a year.
If you go and execute and create value that the whole team can celebrate in, I don't want them to be capped. I had a friend that fired his top sales guy because he was making too much money.
Do you know how silly that is? Because if you paid him 400,000 a year, that means he made you 4 million, and you fired him because he was making more than you. That's not a winning strategy.
You receive what you desire for others. If you don't want other people to be rich, you won't be rich.
Get obsessed with people's goals and problems. Figure out what they want to achieve in life in regards to their personal goals and figure out what problems you have in your business that you might offer them to go help you overcome.
And if they do, you help them achieve their goals. That way they're aligned with what you need done.
You have to have a big enough vision for your business so that your team's dreams and goals can fit inside of them. Because if not, they'll find some other place where it will.
Which brings us to principle number 11, change your words and you'll change your world. I've coached tens of thousands of people all over the world.
I can tell immediately if someone's going to succeed or not just by the words they use. When you use the words like should, could, would, you're already expecting failure by just the language you're using to describe your situation or the future you want to create.
Language you use isn't just about communicating to other people. It's a signal to yourself.
If you don't talk with confidence about the world you want to create, then your ability won't come across as confident and nobody's going to want to jump out of their seat to help you with it. The way you describe your situation will either give you hope or fear.
You don't think words matter? Trust me, your language matters. I remember one time listening to a guy and I really wanted to record that conversation and transcribe it and ask him to read it back to himself and say, do you think that person is confident? Do you think that person is certain about themselves? Do you think that person is somebody you'd want to bet on? I don't think people hear themselves enough or don't pay attention to their words.
And if they did, they would shape their whole reality completely different because certainty comes from language. Today's energy shapes tomorrow's reality.
Those words will shape that energy and your reality of tomorrow. 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 success principle number 12, actions prove your priorities. There is a huge difference between what people say they want and what they actually do.
A lot of people might say they want to lose weight, but then you watch them and they go and eat at a buffet. They go to the gym maybe once a month.
They want to get rich, but they never look at their bank account. I don't care what you say you want.
I care what you do. If you tell me something's important to you, show me your calendar and your bank account and I'll show you your priorities.
What you invest your time and money on is your priority. People say, oh, my family's important.
Well, show me where date night is. Well, I'm busy with my business.
Okay, what's important in your business? Well, I need more customers. Show me how much time you're spending on marketing.
How much money are you spending on marketing? How much time are you spending on sales calls? All your time spent building product or doing the service. It's like, yeah, well, I have to build the thing so I can sell it.
No, you don't. Most people lie to themselves about what's important to them.
Your priorities is all about saying no to something so you can say yes to something else. Which brings us to principle number 13, ask better questions.
Anytime I coach a CEO or founder, I always ask them a simple question. If somebody bought your business tomorrow, what's the first thing they would change? Then it's a follow-up of why haven't you made that decision yet? That simple question will program their mind because an uncreative mind can spot the wrong answer, but it takes a very creative mind to spot the wrong question.
And the wrong question will drive you down a path that you can't come back from. Here's one of my favorite questions to ask somebody.
What are you pretending not to know how to do? Why are you pretending? Who would you be without that story? A properly placed question can just shift your whole point of view and get you crystal clear on the next steps to move your dreams forward. The coolest part is the best leaders in the world, they don't give feedback.
They ask questions. They coach through their questions.
They help people realize what they should see, but they can't see because it's right in front of their face. There's a question I ask myself every day as an example to get me on track, to keep me focused, to bring the right energy.
And it's how can I appreciate even more God's grace and guidance in this moment? And I can ask myself that three, four, five, six, seven times a day, and it just gets me back on track. So what's your question? How do you get back on track after having a hard time? Tony Robbins has this great quote, and he says, the quality of your questions will dictate the quality of your life.
Ask better questions, live a better life. Which brings us to principle number 14, learn, do, teach.
Eight years ago, I was speaking at an event in a prison and I met a guy that absolutely blew me away. Two months ago, I get off stage.
Who do I find there? This gentleman. He wanted to say hi.
He'd been out for a couple of years and he's now the executive director of a nonprofit helping people transform their lives who were recently incarcerated just like him. I came from that environment as a teenager.
See, you'll never know the impact you can make if you just follow this simple rule. Work harder on yourself than you do on your job.
Become more so you have more to give other people. Have more to serve with other people.
If you get out of your situation, it's your responsibility to send the elevator back down and help people come out of that hole. The philosophy of integrating your learning comes from nursing school.
When they talk about it, they say, you got to learn it, you got to do it, and you got to teach it. If you learn, do, and teach, you integrate that knowledge into your life, it becomes who you are, not just information that you can memorize and recite to somebody else.
It impacts your life. And if you become the example, then other people will feel that energy and be inspired by you.
And that's why having that gentleman come up to me after I got off stage to tell me that I inspired him and now he's inspiring thousands of people just like we were. That's crazy.
You can do the same thing. Which brings us to the last success principle, number 15, define your why.
2024 was a crazy year. New businesses, big opportunities, stages, books, just everything was bananas.
And I was already maxed out, but I had something on my heart I needed to do. And it drove me my whole life.
It's been a big part of my life working with at-risk youth, but I started a new program called King's Club. It's a free youth program that I mentor a hundred kids every couple of weeks personally in this building.
And it's a passion project that's kind of become a movement in our local community. It's bananas.
I get to sit down and have a personal connection with these kids. I get to mentor them.
I get to show them my supercar collection. We get to talk about real life challenges that are facing them now.
And my favorite part is I give every one of them a book, Think and Grow Rich. My why has been clear from the day I got sober out of rehab.
I believe that your purpose sits right next to sometimes the worst thing that's ever happened to you. And for me, clearly being incarcerated as a teenager really affected my soul.
And if I can do that for other people, that is my everything. If you have a why that's bigger than your fear, then you'll do it.
You won't second guess yourself. You won't put it off.
Your why has to be so powerful that it makes the how seem small. It doesn't have to change the world.
It just has to change your world. Start with your community.
Start with your backyard. So many people want to get up and it's like, I want to change the whole world.
How about you just start with your world? How about you start with your community? You have people that are in need all around you. You don't have to make it this big thing.
You just have to start. If you have a why attached to your do, it'll propel you forward with more energy and faster than you could ever imagine.

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