These Rules Made Me So Rich I Question the Meaning of Making Money

I'm going to share with you the rules of business that have made me so rich, I actually question the meaning of making money. These rules are what allowed me to go from broke 22-year-old to a multi-millionaire today.
Some of these rules I picked up on my own during my 27-year career as an entrepreneur. In others, I learned from some of the highest net worth individuals you probably know.
So without further explanation, these are the 13 rules of business. 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 rule is to take the credit card.
Get paid. Had a kid ask me on this hike I host every Tuesday, how do I start a business? And I just replied, take the credit card.
A business is started when money exchanges hands. Essentially, a stranger gives you money for your product or service.
And it's not hard. You can either take cash, you can use Stripe, you can use PayPal, you can use Venmo.
Just figure out what you wanna sell and ask for it. The payment validates that they actually have a problem they want help with.
See, a lot of people will tell you like, hey, go start that business. That sounds great.
And you'll go off and build a bunch of stuff, come back and guess what? They're like, cool, I don't need it. And you're like, you were saying you're going to buy.
Don't abuse this. Get them value.
Deliver the thing you sold, but don't go running around doing free work for everyone hoping to get ahead. So the truth is, without charging, you don't know if the person actually wants what you have you don't know if they're the right customer you're just going to waste a lot of time which brings us to number two which is the under promise and over deliver a lot of people start companies as like agencies freelancers selling smma or some other kind of service and the challenge is that sometimes you say yes to everything so that you can get the business and then you don't realize how much work it's gonna be.
What happens is then somebody that gave you the work get pissed off because you can't deliver, but you're not able to do everything. So here's how we solve that.
First off, find one clear problem somebody has, then offer a simple but incredibly effective solution. And then when you deliver it, go above and beyond.
That extra 10% will set you apart from everybody else. For example, I've got a guy that details my supercars.
His name's Dayton. He is awesome.
I've had several people show up. They leave cards on my window.
Three other people showed up and couldn't do basic things. Dayton's never asked me for a single thing.
And because he's always shown up and left the car better than i expected

i was so impressed by him going that 10 above and beyond everybody else but doing the basics like showing up on time doing the work as he said he would do that i thought enough that i wanted to give him a gift to thank him for his work that's how we over deliver which brings us to number three which is simple scales and complex fails the biggest mistake first-time entrepreneurs make is they overcomplicate what they do.

It's hilarious to watch.

They could have a working thing, a business, a product, a service, and totally mess it up. I always go back to what Elon Musk used to say about his engineering approach.
He's always looking to remove parts from the requirements, from the product, because a part that is in the product that doesn't need to exist is one more thing that needs to be managed and Q and A'd and could break and could cause other issues so he's always looking at the requirements and he's always pulling so much stuff out of it that it should not work and then he says then I added it back to make the part work again and that's probably the right answer teach your team's easy to make something complex. It's actually hard to keep something simple because everybody that joins your team or even yourself, you're like, I wanna make it better.
And then you do something else, how can I make it better? You add it all back up. And the problem is at some point, you create this complexity ball.
It didn't solve a problem. So you just keep adding and adding and adding.
My approach in business is every time I add something, it starts with negative value. Sometimes you need to think about before you add anything, what can I remove? So if you wanna keep this simple, I always say start with one clear customer you wanna serve, one clear product or offer, and some people call them godfather offers because they're so good, they can't say no.
Then one clear way of getting attention, marketing, then one clear way of selling them, and then focus on those four for one year. Those are the five ones.
If you put all that into your focus, which stands for follow one course until successful, don't complicate it, you'll get rich. 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 number four, which is to give to get.
And this is a cool one because I learned this back when I was in rehab. I struggled with addiction, ended up in rehab as a teenager.
And what I learned through this 11 months process, obviously becoming a better version of me and dealing with some of the pain that I experienced, is that in therapy, they talk about, if you wanna be sober, you gotta help other people be sober. It's this whole idea is that you can only keep what you give away.
When I started in business and I thought about like, how can I be valuable in business? I realized that if I want more money, I gotta help other people make more money. If you think about it, that all your income is probably about 10% of the value created in the world.
I call this a 10% rule, that whatever value created in the world, you're getting 10% of that. So if you're making a million dollars, you've made other people $10 million.
So the more you give, the more you get. See, most people have a scarcity mindset, so they don't wanna give anything away.
They're just like, if I give that, then I don't got it. But that's actually flawed.
So resources are unlimited. If you can be resourceful, there's unlimited money that's gonna come into your world.
So the more you give, the more you'll attract. The scarcity mindset will keep you small.
The abundance mindset will make you rich. If you want more, you have to become more.
So your personal income will never exceed your investment in your personal development because you won't be as valuable to the rest of the world as you could be to make more money. Which brings us to number five, which is to be impeccable with your word.
If you say to somebody else, you're going to do something, do it. I can't tell you, your life will absolutely change.
Your bank account will fill up if you just went 90 days and did what you told other people you would do. People either trust you or they don't.
And if they don't, it's because you taught them that you can't be trusted. The idea of being impeccable with your word to me is be the kind of person that when you talk, you actually don't have negativity.
It's not only when you make a commitment, you show up. So if it's a no, just say no.
You don't have to say yes. And then also just be impeccable with your word with others.
You realize that when you complain about other people, that person's thinking, I wonder if they say that stuff about me when I'm not around. So this is the way I would encourage you to think about it.
Everything you say is cataloged and published on the front page of your local newspaper. I personally live my life pretty much on video.
So everything I say is recorded and I do have to be accountable for every word. So the truth is if you don't have something nice to say about somebody and you wouldn't feel comfortable saying it in front of them, you probably shouldn't say it.
And the cool part is, is that makes you an attractive character to be around. And what I've learned over the years is that you don't create success, you attract success by being that type of person, by being someone others can trust, their word of commitment is strong and they don't talk crap, they don't complain, they don't bring negative energy into their life.
They'll wanna have you around. They'll wanna go out of their way to help you achieve your dreams.
You will be so rich because other people's success will come into your life and impact your business because of your word. Which brings us to number six, which is you win or you learn.
Most people see me and they go, Dan, when's the last time you had a big L? It happens almost on a weekly basis. I'm swinging massively.
Less than a couple of years ago, I lost a million dollars on a company that I bought. Some people would be like, that sucks.
And I went, cool. I learned.
Well, I learned I didn't have the team and the infrastructure to support it. I learned what kind of companies I should and shouldn't buy.
I learned the process that I need to install to make sure that situation happened again. And then what was the upside from that is that I found my business partner, Kevin, who I then built big band software with.
And now we buy a company every month. So yes, did it hurt in the moment? Uh-huh.
But did I use that setback to ask myself, what can I learn from this? A hundred percent. And what you'll learn from some of the richest people in the world, they're pushing to learn so that they can earn this always brings me back to napoleon hill's quote from thinking grow rich which is every adversity every failure every heartache carries the seed of equal or greater benefit every setback every challenge instead of it being like something that scares you annoys you bugs you is actually, I'm gonna learn.
Sometimes when I'm dealing with something really meaningful, the language I say to myself is, great, worthy adversary. It's been a while since I've been exposed and stretched and had an opportunity to learn something massive.
Regardless of the outcome, there's always something to gain from the experience. There's never been a situation where I, and I'm assuming you, have learned something when things went well.
So in many ways, the setbacks are valuable learning experiences. Stop, reflect, dialogue, contemplate, lock it in, and move on.
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Now let's get back to the episode. Which brings us to number seven, which is you don't manage time, you manage energy.
Back in my 20s, I would wake up, alarm goes off and I would work, I would crush. I would just go 16 hours a day, 100 hours a week, and it went on and on for four years.
And what's crazy is the longer it went on for, the less and less I got done. Why? Because I didn't have a process for getting things done.
I had all these plates spinning. I was running around making sure they kept moving because I was so scared that one would fall because I actually didn't know why I was being successful.
I just know that the more I worked, it feels like it's going to keep going. What I've learned since then is that my calendar is essentially a map to getting things done.
That calendar needs to map to my energy so I can get the best work done in the right spots. So over the years, before I had kids, my life looked completely different.
I used to stay up till two or three in the morning, sleep until eight or nine, and that was my rhythm. Then I had kids and I had these human alarm clocks.
And all of a sudden now I got to wake up at 530 in the morning. So I changed my whole life to map to my energy.
So for example, first thing in the morning, I create connected to my creator. I literally sit down and I say, okay, here's the big problems I'm faced with.
I've got to create these new outcomes. How do I tap into that early morning energy to build something new, to strategize, to think differently so that I can come up with the solution to the problems that otherwise I'd be too close to it.
So the mornings for me is really my opportunity to tackle big, meaningful projects. In the afternoon, I will schedule all my in-person meetings.
All my meetings are typically after lunch where I can really get into the zone of having conversations and it just flows with my energy. You can get more done in those four hours than most people do in 12.
There's no distractions, there's no concerns, there's no notifications popping off all over the place. I'm dialed in, I'm in flow and I'm getting the best work done connected to my creator, which brings us to number eight, which is to play to win.
Don't play not to lose. When you work, are you working to expand or are you working to contract and protect? Are you in wealth creation mode? Are you in wealth preservation mode? Because it's interesting, when you start off, you're like, I'm poor, I wanna be rich.
So you go and you build. Then eventually, potentially, you get to a place where you now have something to lose, so you change the way you approach your day and specifically your finances.
People that spend more time trying to protect the amount of money they pay on taxes versus saying how can i create more money as a percentage i want to pay the least amount of taxes but i want that dollar amount to be massive and too often people are working in business trying to protect themselves from the downside instead of trying to create more the reason they do this is because they're shrinking themselves to save instead of asking themselves how can can I focus on creating more value? How can I help more people? How can I expand? How can I build cool new things? What are my goals and do they grow me? How can I create opportunity for everybody on my team where my vision is so big that everybody's goals and dreams can fit inside of it? Your inner conversation creates your outer world. And today's energy will literally shape tomorrow's reality.
So you have to be on the creation mindset, not on the preservation mindset. It's actually 100% the difference between rich people and broke people.
Which brings us to number nine, which is to spend money to save time, not time to save money. This is what broke people get wrong that the rich have understood for a long time.
Broke people prioritize saving money, not saving time. I've seen people drive 36 minutes out of their way to get gas at Costco to save 10 cents on the gas per gallon.
They don't value their time. Wealthy people, the ones that have the most success in business, are always looking to invest money to buy back time because they know time is the most precious resource the richest people protect their time they value it they put a dollar amount is it a hundred dollars three hundred dollars five hundred dollars and then every request on their time they ask themselves is this yes worth the investment or should i default to a no they spend money to buy back their time they get that time back, then they're reinvesting it in a few different ways.
They're going, can I do more of the thing I'm doing to make me money? That's a good start. Who do I need to become? Some people, their beliefs are what holding them back.
And they think, if I go get some sales training, I will make more money. No, you literally have to ask yourself, what do you believe about the world that's holding you back? Do you have money blockers? Do you have people blockers? Do you have productivity issues? Choosing goals in your life to grow you with the time you bought back is exactly how you should reinvest it.
If you want my internal playbook, how I've done this, my whole life built my empire, then go check out my book, Buy Back Your Time. It's available on Amazon, at retailers, at buybackyourtime.com.
And it's not only a Wall Street Journal bestseller, it continues to sell more copies every week than the previous week because people are getting so much value from it. And it's dedicated to this specific problem, which brings us to number 10, which is 80% done by somebody else is 100% freaking awesome.
Some of you guys are like, I keep hearing you talking about hiring people and delegating to people it's just like how do you find great employees and i mean every time i give them something to do they mess it up it's like i might as well just do it myself because it takes less time to do it than to have to teach somebody else and then fix it because they don't do it as good i get it but my employees can't do it as good as me see there's all these reasons that you believe that and the only person that can fix that is you you'll only scale as fast as your ability to delegate which means you're gonna have to learn how to lead people it means you're gonna have to learn how to communicate it might mean you're gonna have to learn a skill called documentation and creating checklists because having somebody else follow a process that doesn't exist and blaming the people is not fair anytime there's an issue in my company i go is this a people problem or a process problem nine Nine times out of 10, it's a process that doesn't exist and blaming the people is not fair. Anytime there's an issue in my company, I go, is this a people problem or a process problem? Nine times out of 10, it's a process problem.
And some of you are like, well, Dan, my work is very creative. I create content.
I write books. I design things that nobody else in the world knows how to design.
That's where the 10 80, 10 rule comes into play. So the 10% upfront is the ideation.
How do I collaborate with my team to get them on the right track? The 80% is the execution, them doing the work to actually go and do research and create first draft. So you want to be an editor, not an author.
And then the last 10%, that's integration. That's where you take what they've done and your ability and you kind of tweak things, but you weren't involved in 80% of all of that.
So you get that time back to go become better. Could you clean your house? Yeah, but having somebody clean your house to buy back that time, even if it's not as good as you could have cleaned it, I know I'm not as good as my cleaner, you then get to reinvest that time on things that are gonna make you more money.
So stop taking the prideful route of like, I like to clean my car and I like to mow my lawn and I like to run my own errands. the apps think about meal prep look at wash and fold there are so many opportunities for you to get leverage in your life before we get back to the episode if you want to jump start 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 number 11, which is to be incompetent.
Most people hire people and then do their work. I had a short go viral where I said, if you want to be rich, be lazy.
But if you want to be wealthy, be incompetent. Why? Because you have to stop doing the work.
For example, if I owned a restaurant and the chef quit, I'm not gonna jump into that kitchen and start cooking people's meals. I mean, nobody wants that.
I haven't cooked a meal for myself in a long time. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go find another chef.
I'm going to solve the problem, not by me putting my time in there, but to actually solve the thing that's broken. See, oftentimes as entrepreneurs, instead of building the machine that runs the machine, we start operating in the machine.
That's not what we're supposed to be doing. We have to learn the skill to work through people.
If we don't, then we'll always be dependent by our business and we won't create something that other people would value. So every time I build a business, I'm always trying to build it in a way that it could be sold because a company I can sell is actually an incredible company to own.
And the is you don't need to have all the answers some of the smartest people in the world aren't rich if it was iq or know-how then all these phd professors would be multi millionaires but they're not because they don't understand that by being incompetent is actually a superpower because it empowers your people around you to step up and own things remember one time I was sitting in my office and all these shelves were empty and my general manager who runs this company came in. He's like, Hey, what are you going to put on those shelves? And I just looked at him and he was confused for about half a second.
Then he goes, Oh, got it. I was like, exactly.
Like, I don't know. You figure it out.
Work with the team. I like to talk to you.
All the other stuff, the people that own it, they own it. I train them.
I don't teach them. Focus instead on helping other people get rich.
Invest in them. Build the people.
The people build the business. One of my big rules that will help summarize all this is train them.
Don't tell them. Teach them how to be awesome.
Don't tell them how to do their job. Which brings us to number 12, which is be patient with results, but impatient with action.
I get business owners all the time that come to me and they say, I just can't figure it out. I've been trying and it's just not working.
And I'm like, for how long? And they're like, for two months, four months now, probably. I'm like, you have to go all in and attack it for like six months, a year, two years.
Most people are so impatient. And then they get down on themselves and they stop doing the thing that could have had some potential to become the big thing because they're not attacking the activity.
Here's the way I think about it that makes it completely different from what everybody else does. I am patient with the timeline.
If I say 10 years, I'm cool. We're gonna do this for 10 years.
However, daily, many times, every hour, we're ruthless on effectiveness. We are focused on the activities that lead to the outcome.
We're always asking ourselves, like, what are the steps today that I can be impatient about getting done that will stack up and lead to that outcome to make it inevitable? And that's the language, it's inevitable. That if I just am patient and I keep doing it and I keep doing it, I keep showing up and I keep iterating and I keep getting feedback that over time, just by being consistent every day, that eventually it'll get better and hit the mark and something will work.
This is the frame that I think about when I share this is the man who loves walking will walk further than the one who loves the destination. Too many of you guys want to be rich, but you don't want to do the work.
I mean, one of my mentors, John Maxwell said, a lot of people want to do what I do. They're just not willing to do what I've done.
And what he's done is 57 years of showing up every day and writing and speaking and 90 books later, he's the leadership goat, which brings us to number 13, which is to protect your reputation. I remember one time I was sitting down and I was redesigning kind of my vision for my life and being very detailed of all the things I wanna accomplish.
And I've done some cool stuff, but trust me, I'm just getting started and I wanna do some bigger things. And it occurred to me that all of those things on my vision board, all the things that I outlined, the goals, the dreams, the impact I wanna have, sits on the other side of two things reach and reputation that's all brand is if you think about it brand is association with other things so that people can build trust with you around whatever you do really well and then from a kind of pricing point of view your brand dictates the pricing power think about something that's cheap it's got no brand it's cheap it's like two bucks for a t-shirt however you put a logo like a nike logo and all of a sudden that's a 60 shirt why can i achieve that if i have those things reach and reputation why can i achieve my goals if i have that is because now i can move really quick if i want to connect with people then they'll say yes i could go and try to create all this stuff but a lot of them would only ever happen if the people involved would know about me and want me to be participating in those projects.
Some people make the mistake of saying, oh, I wanna be well-known, I wanna be well-known. It's like, mm, you wanna be known well.
You want people to have a positive response. You could be really famous and everybody think you're a ding-dong, or you could be known well to the right people because of your reputation the only way you do that is a few key things number one you got to deliver when you make a promise to somebody else you have to show up and you got to deliver second thing is you got to make a decision to go all in and some people feel called and what I learned a long time ago is your call-in in the middle of that is all in and it's deciding to go pro if you do, if you want to be world-class like a Warren Buffett, then what's crazy is all the other people around Warren that's in his space will go to him because of who he is and his reputation.
So they'll have big opportunities, big luck that just shows up in their life and they'll bring it to Buffett. Then to make decisions, you have to have the values.
You need to know what you stand for, because if you don't stand for something, you're gonna fall for anything. People wanna know that they can trust your response because they know how you act.
Values for me is making decisions when I'm not around. So I want everybody to know what my values are.
So even if I'm not around to speak up, they'd be like, oh, Dan would probably want you to do this. And if they know how they can expect you to act, then they have consistency.
It's huge. Values, I've got them for my businesses.
I've got them for my family. And it all leads into integrity.
Integrity is how you react when things go wrong. It's easy to be all like sunshine and rainbows when everybody's making money and all is good.
But what about the moment something goes wrong? How do you respond? Because I believe that in those moments, you actually have the opportunity to show your customers how good you've been saying you are last thing is to shine your light you have to decide to be authentically you you are the original you want to focus on a niche until you become the niche so don't focus on a niche become the niche become the best in the world become the person that has values and integrity you are the original and that is something that you can express you can own nobody can take it the cool part is it doesn't feel as heavy trying to be somebody else versus just being who you are and there's enough people in this crazy world that they'll want to do business with you they'll want to have you around your tribe is attracted by your vibe you just have to shine your light thanks for listening to Martell Method you liked this episode, could you do me a huge favor and go leave a review?

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