These Rules Make It Impossible To Fail In Life

I've met and spent over 100 hours with four billionaires, and one thing that's always struck me, they've set their life up so it's impossible to fail. So I've put together rules I've learned that you can apply to do the same.
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. Rule number one, invest in your skill set, not your lifestyle.
If you spend your time and money on things, you'll never be able to build your skills like a billionaire. And these are the highest leveraged skills you should learn first if you want to make it impossible to fail.
Number one, sales. Every billionaire has mastered this first.
They learn the skill of persuading somebody to give them money. It's not tricking them, it's not convincing them, it's not taking advantage of them, it's communicating value.
Everything you want from hiring somebody, convincing a bank to give you money, a customer to buy is going to require you to learn how to sell, how to communicate, how to persuade somebody to part with their hard earned money. If you don't know how to do this, you're always going to be at the mercy of somebody you hire to be the salesperson.
You're going to sit back, pass it over and be like, I hope you can sell the thing I built. That's not how you move forward.
You want to make it impossible to fail? Learn how to sell. There's actually new techniques like sell by chat that my team uses to make millions of dollars per year.
If you actually want my full script, my team uses to generate over 2 million a month, just go over to Instagram and message me the word script and I'll send you the full Google doc on how they do it. Number two, networking.
In 2008, I moved to San Francisco and for the first three weeks, I struggled. Nobody wanted to talk to me and I realized it was the way that I was answering this one question.
So what do you do? And my original response was, well, I just sold my company. I just moved here and I actually don't know what I'm going to do.
And I'll be honest, people would stop talking to me and turn around and talk to another person at a networking event or at a coffee shop. First, I just thought people were rude.
And then on reflection, I got some advice from one of my mentors. And he said, it's because you don't tell people how you can be a value to them.
All I shifted was this one thing is I went from new here, don't know what I'm going to do to I help startup founders with marketing. I help X with Y change the game for me and allowed me to start connecting with people, add value and then meet other very successful people.
What I've learned is you can't be a billionaire without meeting other billionaires. You need to see that it's possible.
And if you lost it all, as long as you didn't lose your reputation, you got to keep your relationships, you could literally build it right back up two to three times faster because of those relationships. Number three, leadership.
The difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is that billionaires build people, not systems and processes. And I know a lot of entrepreneurs, when they start off, they just build processes, they build checklists.
And what they don't realize is that developing your people, developing their skills, helping them see the world differently to wanna grow, that's where the real ROI is, the return on investment. They build their people and the people build their business.
Number four is vision. The number one skill that I've learned from so many incredible billionaires is that you have to have a vision for your life.
And it's three parts. It's 100% clarity, what do you wanna build? 100% belief that you can build it and holding those two true 100% of the time.
If you can build those four skills early, sales, networking, leadership, and vision, you'll set yourself up for success and make it impossible to fail in life. But skills alone won't make you successful.
Timing and strategy is also involved. Before we get back to this episode, if you prefer to watch your content, then go find me on YouTube.
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Which leads us directly to rule number two, which is be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful. This is one of Warren Buffett's most famous quotes, but I actually saw it firsthand with billionaires like Mark Cuban doing it at scale.
I mean, he sold his company to Yahoo back in the day, and he saw everybody getting super greedy in the tech stock internet market. And he said, this thing is going to pop.
So he called his financial advisor and said, hey, we need to buy options, essentially a bet against the market going down. So he took some of the money he had to buy those options.
And when the whole thing crashed, he got to remain a billionaire. And that's the whole thing.
Billionaires go left when everybody's going right. And then they go right when everybody goes left.
The late Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's business partner would say all the time, when the tide goes out, you'll see who's been swimming naked. As an example, back in 2012, I'd been exposed to Bitcoin and I decided to run the largest event in my hometown,

got an ATM machine so people could put their dollar bills in

and get a little QR code for their Bitcoin.

And it was trading at 12 bucks.

They all thought I was literally wearing a tinfoil hat

and nobody bought.

I think my buddy Denis bought.

And guess what?

He bought himself a brand new Ferrari.

Then everybody got into it and it got overinflated

and then crashed.

So then I went over and started looking at AI. And AI, now, today, everybody's talking about it.
It's still a huge opportunity. But again, you have to figure out where's everybody focusing and where's the new opportunity.
If everybody's there, then you're in the wrong spot. But I wasn't going all in on a new idea, which leads us directly to rule number three, which is diversify your risk.
So a lot of people will say the best way to get rich is you have to have multiple streams of income, which is true once you're rich. But what happens is most people diversify when they're just starting.
It's called diversification, not diversification. And the truth is, is when you finally get a payday, you then want to have a completely different strategy.
I've learned this from the top billionaires. Anytime they've made big buckets of money, they take 50% and they put it off to the side and they say, this is going into boring investments.
I'm talking ETF, index funds, stuff where it's like, don't lose my money. And then they take the other 50% and they pour it into new ventures, new opportunities, risky investments.
That way they don't lose the bucket of money that they just made. And they take the other half to actually go add to it without putting their whole new portfolio at risk.
And this was the exact advice I got from one of my billionaire mentors when I was 27. I made a bunch of money.
I was worried I was going to mess it up. I said, what should I do? Set 50% lock and load.
Don't lose it. The other 50% use that for angel investing to invest in your next startup, but that is all you got.
So you gotta make it work. If you wanna make it impossible to fail, you need to spread as many chips as possible on the poker table so that taking a risk isn't really risky.
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 leads us directly to rule number four, which is be long-term greedy, not short-term greedy. I first heard this concept from one of my mentors in my 20s, who's one of the world's top investors in Silicon Valley.
And I tell it to my team all the time. When they're trying to build their world, their wealth, their opportunities, I always say, be long-term greedy.
Don't be short-term. Don't try to take advantage of all the situations in front of you.
The most successful billionaires I've met, all were greedy for the long term. We're talking 10 to 20 years.
They're focused on the future because they want to build momentum. They never get greedy in the short term.
Short term is actually silly because the numbers are so small. They get really big the further out you project.
What's unique about them is they were actually extremely generous in the short term, which creates a massive amount of goodwill in the market. People want to see them win because they know they'll also win with them.
If you want to set yourself up for guaranteed success, extend the time horizon to hit your goal. Most people mess this up because their time horizon is six months, 12 months, two years.
And when you're in business with people that play small games, you get small returns. You want to decide to dedicate a decade, 10 years, partner with somebody, build people over the long term, show them how the short term goals and focus you're asking of them is going to set them up for the long term big goals.
Thanks for listening to Martell Method. If you like this episode, could you do me a huge favor and go leave a review? This helps us get the podcast more ears and helps more people get unstuck, reclaim their freedom, and build their empire.