I became a millionaire in my 20s and it sucked lol

I became a millionaire at age 27 and actually sucked. I'm going to share with you all the mistakes I made through building and selling three multi-million dollar companies and how to avoid them.
This is everything from losing all my friends to some controversial opinions that most business owners shy away from. So these are the six reasons why making millions can actually suck.
Welcome to the Martell Method. I went from rehab at 17 to building a hundred million dollar 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 reason is money doesn't make you happy, but this will. So when I became a cash millionaire at 27 years old, I was working 100 hours a week.
My health was at risk and I got to a point where my relationship disintegrated in front of my eyes. I felt like a freaking loser.
My whole world imploded in on itself. It got so bad.
A doctor told me I had to walk around with an anxiety rock that I would squeeze anytime I felt the pressure of the situation on my chest. It was like an elephant was literally standing on my chest and I couldn't fix it.
People think it's about making money, but having all the money in the world will not make you happy. I know it's easier said than done.
Some of you guys are like, well, test me out. Wire me the money.
People say, if I won the lottery, I would go on a beach and drink Mai Tais. Trust me, I've done that.
And it gets old really quick. It's been long proven that retirement actually increases the risk of mortality.
Interesting, right? Humans are built to create, not stagnate. Our default being is expansion.
A child is born and grows. Seeds are planted and grows.
People go, I just want to be happy. You know what happiness is? Happiness is progress.
That's why today I live by the five F's framework to build a life of unlimited creation. I never have to retire from.
The first one is fortune. Yes.
Having wealth allows you to have optionality. It gives you resources.
It's required because without that, you're always stressing out about not being able to just live, but the rest of them are actually more important. Number two is family.
Having people around you that love you for who you are, that you feel like you're investing in, that you can spend time and go on these experiences with. What's the point of going on a beach all by yourself, not being able to share any of it? Number three is fitness.
And I've learned this unfortunately the hard way. I used to weigh 265 pounds.
I struggled with my weight my whole life. And I know that anytime I was sick, I might've had the day before a thousand dreams and goals, but the moment I was sick, I had but one.
And having my fitness, my energy, my health, it just changed everything. Number four is faith.
And I believe that every human is born to have faith. We're here to believe in something way bigger than ourselves.
And if you do everything for yourself and it's all driven by ego, ego stands for edging God out. Not having a relationship with a God actually makes life really hard.
The fifth F is fun, which we'll talk more about later in this video. But my whole life is designed around making money in the funnest way possible.
So at 27, I became a cash millionaire. I was very successful, had all the accolades.
People were looking up to me, asking me for my advice, but I wasn't happy. My life was actually in shambles, which brings us to number two, which is money exposes your real and fake friends.
When the news broke out on the local paper when I sold my first company, I had friends from high school reaching out for help, current friends dissing themselves for me because I'd change, you're different. I mean, honestly, it took a real toll.
I didn't know how to say no to some stranger that I just happened to sit next to in math class. I was like stressing myself out, like why are they asking me for money? Don't they have parents? Do they have friends that can help them out? And then the people that I thought were my real friends, they ended up like talking crap about me.
Why? Because I did the thing that they all wanted to do and had success and all of a sudden now I'm different than them. So I wanna give you a tool that I use today.
They're the five signs that I look for that tells you if you have fake friends. Number one is they only talk to you when they need something.
I have a friend that I grew up with. Some would have called him my best friend.
And it was really tough for me because he would only text me or call me if he needed something. Other than that, he never checked in.
He never asked me how I was doing. And I realized for myself, I had to create some space.
This is not somebody I want in my life. Like you just gotta ask yourself, is this a good friend? What do you consider a good friend? Do they have these habits, these traits, this character? If the answer is no, they gotta go.
Number two is they make you feel inferior. It's an interesting one because I've had friends over the years where initially I might've looked at them as like peers or mentors, but the way they spoke over me never felt good.
I felt like every time I talked to them, they looked for the thing I was doing wrong and would criticize me. It was almost like they were trying to peg me down and I couldn't figure it out.
It's like, why are they doing this? The truth is once I just decided to stop talking to them, stop seeking their advice, stop spending time with them, my whole life felt a lot better because I didn't have that negative energy of somebody that was almost like jealous of me. If they make you feel inferior, they got to go.
Number three, they don't celebrate your success. I got to tell you, I've had friends over the years that for whatever reason, when I have a win and they ask me what's new and I just tell them, they get really awkward.
They get really weird. Some of them make this face.
I can't even explain it. It's kind of like a confused face and I'm not trying to confuse them.
It's almost like they don't understand like how are you having this success? And then I have other friends like my best friend, Marty. The day I interviewed Dana White, I have it all on video, because we recorded it for the vlog.
He was the first person I called as soon as I got off stage. And that guy has been my biggest cheerleader since day one.
He's eager to hear what I'm up to so he can celebrate it with me. He tells me, I can't believe where you come from, what you're doing now, Dan.
Did you ever believe this? This is so great. What are you gonna do next? That's somebody you want in your life.
If they can't celebrate your success, they gotta go. Number four is they talk shit about you behind your back.
Now, this one is a big no-no. And I'll be honest with you, the first time this happened to me, it hurt my heart.
I remember a friend of mine called me up and he says, hey man, I don't even know how to tell you this, but your friend was at a dinner and he was telling other people about you and he was saying things that honestly i don't understand why he would say those things about you and i didn't know how to approach it like my heart sunk into my stomach and i knew i had to say something and i reached out to him we had a conversation the crazy part he admit to doing it but he actually admitted it to a completely different dinner so he thought i was talking about this other dinner and i was talking about this one so it told me that it wasn't the first time. Here's the thing.
I'm all about redemption and giving people a second chance. But if it happens twice, you can't be around me.
Do those people talk crap about other people to you? If your friend is talking crap about your other friend when they're not around, they're probably doing it to you. If they do that, they got to go.
Number five is they had falling outs in the past. This one's fun.
I remember Naval Ravikant, one of my mentors, he said, if somebody is always getting into legal issues, give it enough time and their litigious ways will eventually end up on you. Your past history is a great predictor of the future.
So if you're somebody that has a history of falling out with friends from the past, there's probably a good chance that they're going to do it to you. What I've learned over the years is that some people come into your life for a season, a reason, or a lifetime.
And if it's a reason, teach it to me and I'll move on. If it's a season, I'm okay and I won't stress.
If it's a lifetime, that's beautiful. Let's invest in it.
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Find it at martellmethod.com. Which brings us to number three, which is it's easy to make money, hard to keep it.
When I sold my first company at 28, I became a multimillionaire. Now I had something to lose and I started to invest in other startups thinking that, hey, I know what I'm doing.
I made money in the past. And very quickly, I lost over $850,000.
And that's when I reached out to one of my mentors who explained to me this simple concept. When you make money, the goal is to take 50% of what you make and put it in low risk, very safe money vehicles like the S&P, index funds, low risk real estate, bonds, things where you know, for the most part, you're not going to lose all your money.
The other 50% is what you use to invest in your next thing, but you got to do it in a way that's fun, which I'll talk to you about in the next step. When you build a new thing, it may fail because it's not guaranteed, and you don't wanna lose it all.
Making money is actually very easy. It's keeping it that's hard because some people are risk takers and they just keep throwing it into the next thing, the next thing, and they keep resetting.
Warren Buffett said it best. He said, rule number one, don't lose the money.
If you just keep resetting yourself, there's no compounding growth that's gonna happen. Entrepreneurs do this all the time because they don't go all in, then are they really taking risks? They read these stories like Elon Musk putting 250 million into Tesla and SolarCity and SpaceX.
And they think, well, I need to be an Elon Musk. If I'm not investing all of it, then do I really believe in the idea? I'm not saying you don't believe in it.
It's just don't be stupid. Just understand there's risk.
You could lose it all. Would you be okay losing it all? Probably not.
So don't do that. 50% goes safe.
50% goes into the next thing. Before we get back to this episode, if you prefer to watch your content, then go find me on YouTube.
I 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 got a new episode so you'll never miss anything now let's get back to the episode which brings us to number four which is it's not how much money you make, it's how you make your money. At 31 years old, I sold my second company, Flowtown, but I had to keep working there for 12 months to get my final check, what's called your earn out.
But honestly, I hated showing up to work every day. It sucked the energy out of me.
It was like this soul-sucking work. Nobody wanted to create anything.
Everything worked really slow. And even though I pretty much blocked out my calendar to vest in peace and just go to coffee shops to visit friends, it was tough being there.
And then I had this new idea for a new company that I really wanted to pursue. And I felt like a fraud.
And after some soul searching and some tough love for my wife, I decided to walk away. I'll tell you what happened in a sec.
But here's the big idea. It's not how much money I make.
It's how I make my money. So here's my core framework on how to build a life you don't grow to hate and makes you more money.
Number one is you got to audit your activities. Look at everything you've been doing for the last two weeks and ask yourself, does this give me energy or does it suck my energy? It's why I wrote a whole book called buy back your time to understand how to reinvest your time.
Number two is renegotiate your commitments. If you have things in there that you don't want to do anymore, that you should have said no to put yourself first and have those conversations at your job, at school, wherever it is.
Number three, do more of what lights you up and makes you more money. Think about it.
If there's something that you love doing that you would do for free, but yet people pay you the most for, stop doing the other stuff and double down on that. That's how you end up building a life that you don't grow to hate.
A second ago, when I talked about walking away from my earn out in the company that acquired us to pursue my new idea, it wasn't guaranteed that any of it was going to work out. But I just made a commitment to myself that i'd rather bet on me than stay for a guarantee 12 months later it paid off not only did i raise 1.6 million for my new startup at a 6 million valuation but the company who bought my company got acquired for 600 million dollars which meant that everybody who had stock accelerated and I got my earn out.
In essence,

I got both. Here's the big belief that I now have since that happened is the world rewards

courageous decisions. So focus on building a life you love.
Which brings us to number five,

which is don't be a prisoner to your wealth. It wasn't till age 36 that I finally allowed

myself to buy a supercar. Even though I was a millionaire at a