Dan Martell - August 15, 2025


How to Make So Much Money It Breaks Your Bank

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Mentioned
Education Means 3 Things #podcast #dothingsyoudontwanttodo #yourbusiness Business Partner #podcast #dothingsyoudontwanttodo #yourbusiness

Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

203.69

Word count

2,623

Sentence count

145

Harmful content

Toxicity

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, learn how to go from a broke 17-year-old who couldn t even open a bank account to selling 3 tech companies in 10 years. I'll show you how to make so much money that your bank doesn t even know what to do with it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Do you want to hear something freaking wild? I went from a broke 17-year-old who couldn't
00:00:04.760 open a bank account to selling three tech companies in 10 years. I made so much money
00:00:09.320 that my bank froze all my accounts because it looked suspicious. Trust me, no one was more
00:00:14.400 blown away than me. Since then, I've built my net worth to over $100 million and I've helped
00:00:19.300 thousands of entrepreneurs scale their businesses. So I'm going to show you how to make so much money
00:00:23.880 that your bank doesn't even know what to do with it. So the first thing you need to focus on to
00:00:28.580 makes so much money, it breaks the bank is focused on skills, not stuff. It's too many people come
00:00:34.160 out, Mr. Flashy Pants and the cars and the watches and all the stuff. And I get it. Those are cool
00:00:38.420 things. The challenge is that when you make those the priority, you don't build the person, the
00:00:42.600 person creates the wealth, not the things you have. This is the blueprint for how to start building
00:00:47.500 skills. First, we identify the one high value skill that you want to develop. It could be sales,
00:00:53.140 It could be code, today, AI automation, video editing, and really understanding how to collaborate
00:00:58.600 with very high level people building their brand.
00:01:00.880 Then we have to commit to one hour a day, one hour of focus, attention, learning that
00:01:06.480 skill.
00:01:07.140 One of my team members the other day, he actually sent me a spreadsheet.
00:01:09.980 He used ChatGPT to create an outline with links to videos, 45 minutes a day to teach
00:01:14.820 him how to become master level AI expert in 90 days.
00:01:18.720 This person's gonna walk away having a skill
00:01:21.240 that's gonna produce massive income for him
00:01:23.660 because he can create value in my life
00:01:25.320 for less than an hour a day.
00:01:26.900 If you wanna go hardcore, give yourself two or three.
00:01:29.860 Depends how driven you are.
00:01:30.980 Here's a hack.
00:01:32.180 Get ChatGPT to be your free tutor.
00:01:34.840 You can ask it, write this prompt.
00:01:36.380 I want to learn this skill of X.
00:01:39.020 Give me a specific learning path.
00:01:41.080 Detailed plan with link to YouTube videos
00:01:42.940 that I can watch for less than an hour
00:01:44.460 first thing in the morning.
00:01:45.660 I wanna go from beginner to pro.
00:01:47.860 hit enter, pow, and it will build the plan for you. Finally, dedicate a thousand days. Most people,
00:01:54.760 their whole life, the dream, the vision they have for what they want to create exists on the other
00:01:59.940 side of a thousand days of dedication. Not five days a week, two days off for the weekends. I'm
00:02:05.280 talking day after day after day because momentum is contagious. Not doing the work. It's building
00:02:11.040 the confidence by proving to yourself that you're willing to do the work day after day.
00:02:15.560 When I was 17, I got out of rehab. I was in a bad spot. I felt like I was behind. I felt like I
00:02:21.580 needed to make some progress. So I worked my freaking ass off and I started to make some 0.97
00:02:25.620 money. So I bought a bunch of I bought the couch. I bought the car. I got the cool apartment and I 0.96
00:02:30.680 quickly realized the things that I own owned me. I do not get rich by the stuff I have. I got rich
00:02:37.420 by the skills I developed. Your ability to create value is what people are going to pay you for.
00:02:42.280 That value is on the other side of developing a skill that people value, but skills alone
00:02:47.100 won't get the bank account to raise red flags. So next you need to stop selling a product and
00:02:52.240 start solving a problem. I started 10 plus companies from 17 to 24 and failed at every one.
00:02:59.260 Some of them were meaningful where I incorporated and I had customers and revenue and other ones
00:03:03.040 were just projects, but I tried no side hustle, literally dedication and focus. Why did I suck? 0.96
00:03:09.620 why did I fail? I'll tell you. I cared more about building technology than actually working 0.99
00:03:13.860 backwards from the customer, asking them, what is your problem? Nobody's going to give me feedback
00:03:18.500 because I wasn't trying to sell anything to anybody. I was just getting off on just building
00:03:21.940 and too often we play this fake game of entrepreneurship, which lacks the execution
00:03:27.380 of talking to the customer and focusing on them. Oftentimes at Martell Ventures, my AI venture
00:03:32.600 studio, when we partner with founders, we look for people that understand the problem. They may
00:03:38.100 not know how to solve it, that's okay. I'm really good at that. But I want people that have got 18,
00:03:43.160 25 years of being in an industry and just see massive opportunities of transformation. That's
00:03:49.980 what you got to focus on. When people go to buy a drill, they're not looking to buy a drill. If
00:03:55.040 they go to Home Depot and get this hardware, they're not like, oh my gosh, look at this drill.
00:03:58.440 It's electrical and it does this cool thing and it's got a battery pack. It's orange, it's green,
00:04:02.760 it's blue no they go i need a hole in the wall it means i need a drill to create the hole and if
00:04:09.580 somebody could come for 10 cents and drill that hole in the wall i don't want to go buy the drill
00:04:13.540 so what do they really buy they buy the solution not the tool results sell products don't this is
00:04:21.220 my simple framework for identifying a core problem first i ask the customer what problem are you
00:04:27.100 having right now that you're actually paying to solve is it cleaning your clothes is it getting
00:04:31.380 your lawn mode? Is it having somebody do lead generation, create content for you? Then I know
00:04:36.520 it's painful enough for them to part with their dollars. Finally, you have to charge based on the
00:04:41.780 outcome, not the effort. Too often we underprice the problem that we're solving for because we
00:04:47.080 think, well, it only takes me 15 minutes. At the end of the day, if the customer feels that pain
00:04:50.940 is massive and they're willing to pay for it, bring it up a little bit and charge for the outcome,
00:04:55.540 not your effort, because then you can get better and there's a motivation for you to improve and
00:04:59.540 be more efficient and productive because you get to keep more of the money that you charge,
00:05:03.000 not focus on the amount of time you took. So with your skills figured out and a problem identified,
00:05:07.920 the next big step is to prioritize leverage over labor. Leverage is awesome. Labor is expensive.
00:05:15.440 My first company, I thought I've got one gear, get things done. 100 hours a week, running around. I
00:05:21.980 felt burnout and chaos. Today, 25X the revenue in a third of the hours. Why? Because I hired help,
00:05:30.420 because I automated, because I delegated. I built leverage. If hard work was the answer,
00:05:35.900 then roofers would be billionaires. When you distill it, leverage is tools, capital, systems,
00:05:42.520 and people. Wealthy people work through things, not on them. They use those four areas of leverage
00:05:48.600 to get things done, they don't use their time
00:05:51.240 because that is finite.
00:05:52.960 Here's how you build leverage fast.
00:05:55.260 First, you have to buy back your time.
00:05:57.380 Understanding what your time is worth
00:05:59.220 and figuring out ways to buy back that time
00:06:01.600 from things that suck your energy in the first place.
00:06:03.680 You can't work enough hours
00:06:05.260 to build a million dollar company.
00:06:06.560 You can't build a million dollar company off $10 tasks.
00:06:09.560 You have to learn to buy back your time.
00:06:11.420 Then you use the tools to your advantage.
00:06:13.860 When I think of the world we live in
00:06:15.600 with AI automation and tools like make
00:06:18.380 and notion being able to come in and take care of full business processes so you don't have to
00:06:23.980 touch them and you're sitting there pretending not to know they exist not wanting to learn them
00:06:28.520 go back to step one to skills you have to invest in becoming more valuable which means learning
00:06:33.860 the tools of leverage finally build systems not habits systems scale people don't people come and
00:06:41.740 go systems stay and grow system stands for save yourself time energy and money if you
00:06:48.180 understand this, then you'll make sure the checklist is being followed. It's created in
00:06:52.260 the first place. You build the training towards the checklist, and then you build the people.
00:06:56.660 When you build the people, the people build the business. And that's how you build leverage,
00:07:00.680 which if you master will lead to that phone call from the bank. So now the key is not doing a lot
00:07:06.900 of stuff. It's doing less, but understanding what to measure, which leads us to the fourth way to
00:07:11.420 make so much money. It breaks the bank, measure what matters most and ignore the rest. The way
00:07:16.700 we create value from measuring is understanding what's that one number that if it goes up the
00:07:22.040 rest of the business does well which leads to the concept of the one metric in every one of my
00:07:27.360 companies i have one number one ratio that everybody knows in real time it's on the dashboard
00:07:32.160 out there that they look at to make decisions for example martel ventures is enterprise value
00:07:36.940 created per dollar spent very simple metric martel media it's revenue per follower why followers is
00:07:42.880 an indicator of a lot of things, quality, interest, desire to follow along. A lot of people talk about
00:07:47.760 revenue per thousand views. Who cares? I'll get the thousand views. I want to get revenue per
00:07:52.720 followers because I want the followers to go up so that I know that I'm creating value enough that
00:07:57.060 people decide to click the button. Social media algorithms change, but the idea of a follower
00:08:02.240 being a lead, which is a lot more of an intent to show you they want to stick around and make money
00:08:07.000 from that, that's powerful. Which is revenue per follower because I know it's that one thing that
00:08:11.620 drives all decisions within the business. And I know what you're thinking. I got a lot of stuff
00:08:15.460 I want to measure, Dan. But here's what I believe. The wrong metric will keep you busy. The right
00:08:20.080 ones will make you rich. If you think about it, data is only useful if it drives better decisions.
00:08:25.860 When you think of the 80-20 rule, that's cool. I like to go 95-5 rule. What's the 5% that if I
00:08:32.420 focus on and I ignore the rest will achieve my goal? Business is about focus, following one
00:08:37.960 course until successful it's not getting overwhelmed with a thousand things that's why i have a hard
00:08:42.680 time with people they're like hey i got three businesses five businesses no you have one
00:08:46.360 business that makes profit and two other ones that suck all the resources from that one and you're
00:08:50.360 too busy to actually push it forward because you don't know what one number you need to metric to
00:08:54.360 build the business so here's what you should actually be tracking first we need to understand
00:08:58.520 the leading indicators what are the activities if i measure on a daily basis have high probability
00:09:04.200 to correlate to that one metric going up.
00:09:06.740 So for example, what are the click-through rates on the ads?
00:09:08.920 How many calls were made?
00:09:10.040 How many emails were sent?
00:09:11.220 It's all the activities you can control today
00:09:13.580 that will correlate to the number going up.
00:09:16.440 These are inputs rather than results.
00:09:18.460 See, I'm patient with results
00:09:20.200 and impatient with actions to the inputs.
00:09:22.780 Then the lagging indicators, the followers added,
00:09:25.900 the revenue collected, the happy customers.
00:09:28.080 If you think about it,
00:09:28.940 I can develop a black box of inputs and outputs,
00:09:32.080 and I may not even know how the machine works.
00:09:34.200 But if I focus on changing the input and it changes an output, then I can improve the velocity
00:09:39.140 of the value on the outside to get the results I want. To keep it super simple, leading indicators
00:09:45.260 are inputs, lagging indicators are results. Finally, my favorite word, it's a sign of DRI,
00:09:51.800 direct responsible individual. I got this from Steve Jobs 17 years ago. He's famous for saying
00:09:58.520 if nobody owns an outcome, then nobody owns an outcome. Like you can't move the business forward.
00:10:04.200 so he had a name next to each project each product each system there was a name it wasn't like oh
00:10:09.800 this department owns this no who is it is it betty is it john is it marty give me the name
00:10:16.440 well technically it's betty perfect betty do you know you own this i didn't really but i guess it
00:10:21.960 makes sense today now as a person leading a team you can get results and if you want the example
00:10:27.320 of how i do this dm me the word scorecard on instagram damn martel to elza martel and i'll
00:10:32.520 I'll send you the exact template I use in my businesses. Okay. So if you really want to make
00:10:37.060 amounts of money that your bank gets concerned, there's one last step. That's absolutely crucial.
00:10:42.560 Stop waiting for permission to play a bigger game. Four years ago, I played small waiting for
00:10:49.040 somebody else to validate me. Then I realized that nobody else was coming. Nobody else was going to
00:10:55.240 step in and build something. Nobody else is going to step in and tell me nobody else was going to
00:10:59.020 hold me accountable because the higher you go you realize that very few people can understand where
00:11:04.620 you're operating i built it anyways i launched the company martell ventures is that company
00:11:10.380 i pitched the team i brought in a ceo i hired the people i jumped before i felt ready i knew
00:11:18.380 i was playing small i knew there was a bigger game i pretended not to know and i had to stop
00:11:24.860 I had to be honest with myself.
00:11:26.560 My gut tells me that you're watching this
00:11:28.260 and you know you've got the same decision to make.
00:11:30.460 Here's what's crazy.
00:11:31.760 No one believes in you until you win.
00:11:34.380 So just go win.
00:11:35.520 Think about it this way.
00:11:36.900 Every person you admire
00:11:38.500 started before they ever felt qualified.
00:11:41.120 So here's how we start playing bigger.
00:11:42.780 First off, write down the thing you've been avoiding to do
00:11:46.060 because you feel underqualified.
00:11:48.220 Nobody needs to qualify you, okay?
00:11:50.740 When you feel called, you are qualified.
00:11:52.920 then break it into one small move you can make today it's called min's most important next step
00:12:00.900 write it down start to take action build momentum finally do it before your brain talks you out of 0.97
00:12:07.540 it jfdi style just fucking do it it's the license plate on my car it's my default operating mode 0.98
00:12:14.100 on top of my office it literally says default to action because i know when my heart says jump 0.98
00:12:20.800 I can't let my brain convince me out of it.
00:12:23.580 I gotta go.
00:12:24.660 If you commit to this, I can promise you
00:12:26.480 the chances of you becoming wealthy and successful
00:12:28.880 will skyrocket, enough to make your bank
00:12:31.280 look twice at your account.
00:12:33.100 You don't get that phone call from the bank playing safe.
00:12:36.080 You do it by going all in on your growth,
00:12:38.540 solving a big problem, a massive problem,
00:12:41.160 measuring the right things and refusing to wait.
00:12:43.800 You got this.
00:12:44.840 This is your chance.
00:12:46.020 Take a step.
00:12:46.900 Now, if you wanna learn how to build a business
00:12:48.780 that runs seamlessly without you doing it all,
00:12:51.160 click the video and I'll see you on the other side.