ManoWhisper
Home
Shows
About
Search
Dan Martell
- June 24, 2025
How to Make So Much Money it Feels Like CHEATING
Episode Stats
Length
15 minutes
Words per Minute
216.71918
Word Count
3,416
Sentence Count
144
Misogynist Sentences
1
Summary
Summaries generated with
gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ
.
Transcript
Transcript generated with
Whisper
(
turbo
).
Misogyny classifications generated with
MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny
.
00:00:00.000
Do you wanna hear something crazy?
00:00:01.660
I went from 17-year-old addict straight out of prison
00:00:05.120
to selling three software companies in 10 years
00:00:08.100
and building my net worth to over $100 million today.
00:00:11.480
What some people would call f*** you money.
00:00:13.620
Trust me, no one was more surprised than me.
00:00:16.340
So I'm gonna share with you how to make so much money
00:00:18.840
that if life was a video game,
00:00:20.400
it'd kind of feel like cheating.
00:00:21.640
The first way to make so much money,
00:00:23.560
it feels like cheating the game of life,
00:00:25.620
is to not chase money, but to build skills that attract it.
00:00:28.900
When I built my first company, Spheric Technologies,
00:00:31.740
I was working 100 hours a week.
00:00:33.900
I was spinning plates,
00:00:35.240
wearing things that were gonna blow up,
00:00:36.580
and then I sold it for millions of dollars.
00:00:38.640
I did it the hard way because I didn't know any better.
00:00:41.480
Today, I make 100 times more money working half the time.
00:00:45.780
How?
00:00:46.360
I built the skills to unlock revenue.
00:00:48.700
See, you don't create success by chasing it.
00:00:51.860
You attract it by becoming an attractive character.
00:00:55.540
You bring opportunities and money into your life
00:00:58.560
by being the kind of person
00:01:00.080
that easily brings those things into your life.
00:01:02.920
So here's how you build a skill.
00:01:04.600
First off, you gotta be specific.
00:01:07.260
I mean, most people value others that can save them money,
00:01:10.360
make them money, or save them time.
00:01:11.880
Those are the skills.
00:01:12.780
So it doesn't matter if it's marketing, sales,
00:01:15.460
tax preparation, become world-class at it.
00:01:18.940
Ask yourself, who can you help?
00:01:20.580
Who has this problem?
00:01:21.820
What can you help them do?
00:01:23.340
A lot of people right now are struggling
00:01:24.780
to understand this crazy world of AI,
00:01:26.440
and all the young cats out there
00:01:28.000
probably talk and act this way naturally.
00:01:31.260
You're growing up with it
00:01:32.620
and people are struggling with it.
00:01:34.240
That's valuable.
00:01:35.360
That's a skill.
00:01:36.300
Number two is you gotta design the path.
00:01:38.100
How do you learn a new skill?
00:01:40.060
I like to ask you at GPT,
00:01:41.420
but the key is in how you ask it.
00:01:43.400
You gotta be specific.
00:01:44.500
Ask it to create you a 12-week course
00:01:46.840
on building the skill you wanna learn,
00:01:48.760
including links to YouTube videos,
00:01:50.740
one hour a day,
00:01:52.000
maybe more if you wanna be an overachiever,
00:01:54.000
but have it tell you what to focus study
00:01:56.600
and how to learn this skill.
00:01:57.700
Let me just show you how I do it.
00:01:59.980
Create me a very detailed course
00:02:02.460
on how to learn AI automation, 12 week course.
00:02:06.000
I want you to find the best YouTube videos I should study,
00:02:09.020
put the curriculum together, link up those videos
00:02:11.200
and make sure you keep it to one hour of day
00:02:13.420
because I'm gonna do it at lunch
00:02:14.400
because I still work a full-time job
00:02:15.860
and maybe some extra stuff that I could do
00:02:17.900
if I find some extra time at night.
00:02:19.460
But I want you to make it the least amount of effort
00:02:21.580
to become most proficient around the skill of AI automation.
00:02:24.980
Boom, watch this.
00:02:26.160
takes my voice prompt transcribes it starts building out the course it's researching because
00:02:31.240
i said some youtube videos it's like oh i gotta go find some youtube videos it literally says
00:02:34.280
here's a 12-week ai automation course week one introduction week two links to all the different
00:02:40.260
videos it built out the whole thing the full detail do you know how many people are running
00:02:44.400
around the world going like oh i don't know how to do that no it's been solved by thousands of
00:02:49.700
people documented crystallized and presented to you in a simple format and guess what if it's not
00:02:54.160
simple enough, make it simpler. That's how easy it can be. Then the key is to execute. Learn that
00:02:59.280
skill. The third thing is to master your craft. The top people that you want to collaborate with,
00:03:04.460
that you want as clients, they want to be around the folks that have decided to become the best
00:03:09.020
in the world at what they do. They don't want a dabbler. They don't want some people that are
00:03:12.740
kind of interested. They want folks that can demonstrate to them that that is their mastery,
00:03:18.480
their area of perfection. It doesn't matter what you decide. It's more important that you decide
00:03:23.740
and go deep. And what's crazy is when I say that, I know that for a lot of people, they don't want
00:03:28.280
to hear that because it sounds like work. It sounds hard. It sounds like it's going to take
00:03:32.380
a lot of time. And the answer is yes. That's the point. You have to build the skill that other
00:03:38.220
people find valuable. Nothing valuable has ever come easy. That's what makes it valuable. If I
00:03:45.320
could buy any watch, any purse, any car, then it's not valuable because it's not hard to get.
00:03:51.080
If anything, when I look at new skills
00:03:52.660
I gotta develop to get to my new level,
00:03:54.580
because new levels, new devils,
00:03:55.980
the harder it is, the more excited I get
00:03:57.840
because it tells me how few people
00:03:59.460
are actually gonna do the work to learn that thing.
00:04:01.520
If you wanna make so much money that it feels like cheating,
00:04:04.320
you're gonna have to put a lot of time
00:04:06.100
into the skill to master your craft.
00:04:08.160
Which brings us to the second way to make so much money,
00:04:11.300
it feels like cheating the game of life.
00:04:13.180
Never charge for your time, always charge for the result.
00:04:16.480
It's interesting to me because people may pay me
00:04:18.780
six figures for one hour of my time,
00:04:21.080
They're not paying for the message I'm delivering.
00:04:23.900
They're paying for the value that they'll get.
00:04:26.000
They're paying for the brand association.
00:04:27.620
They're paying to sell tickets for people in the room.
00:04:29.340
They're paying for building a relationship with me,
00:04:31.580
getting advice on their business.
00:04:33.060
It's my 28 years of entrepreneurial experience
00:04:36.080
condensed not only into the one hour keynote,
00:04:38.400
it's the time we get to spend together
00:04:40.560
working on their event.
00:04:42.500
That's what I get paid for.
00:04:44.020
Imagine you're a factory owner.
00:04:45.680
A machine breaks down.
00:04:46.860
You call an electrician to fix it.
00:04:48.460
The electrician walks in, inspects the machine,
00:04:51.080
for five minutes, takes out a small hammer and taps a very specific spot, fixes the machine.
00:04:57.680
He hands you an invoice for $10,000. And the owner, your boss is surprised. $10,000 for five
00:05:03.920
minutes of work. That's insane. The electrician goes, it's a hundred dollars for the time in the
00:05:08.460
tap. It's $9,900 for knowing where to tap. See, the mistake is to have people pay you for your
00:05:14.140
time. You want them to pay you for the outcome, the result, the impact of your work. If you're
00:05:19.380
not getting paid what you feel you deserve you gotta go become more valuable you're not solving
00:05:23.980
big enough problems if you charge for time you punish your own efficiency because there's no
00:05:29.080
incentive to get better or be more effective in that time frame because that's what i get paid
00:05:33.740
so if anything being slower means i make more money that's a bad place to get to because i want
00:05:38.960
you to consider hey how do i use ai to automate this how do i hire better team members how do i
00:05:43.540
become a better leader so that i can get everybody producing more in a shorter amount of time because
00:05:48.640
I'm getting paid the same thing and still get results from my clients. But how do you get people
00:05:52.620
to pay for the outcome? First off, define a clear and specific problem. Ideally helping them with
00:05:57.940
one thing, not 10. Some people are like, I can do everything. I can be everything to everybody.
00:06:02.740
The problem is if you're everything to everybody, you're nothing great to any one person. Pick one
00:06:07.120
specific thing that you can do and knock their socks off. The second is design a process that
00:06:12.000
guarantees an outcome. For example, when I coach people, I sat down and created a system where I
00:06:17.040
ask myself, if they only follow certain pieces, will they get results? And the answer is yes.
00:06:22.560
I have this thing called the five daily non-negotiables. These five steps that if you
00:06:25.580
follow, you guarantee to grow your business. Think of it this way. Ask yourself the question,
00:06:30.380
if you only got paid, if your client got the result, how would you design the process?
00:06:35.400
Number three is you got to sell value, not the price. Value isn't always the cost, okay? Value
00:06:41.700
is the time invested from their end,
00:06:44.380
how fast you can get it to them,
00:06:46.020
how big of an impact you can have,
00:06:47.820
the experience that they're gonna have working with you,
00:06:50.860
what it tells them about themselves hiring you
00:06:53.680
if you've got a brand and a reputation.
00:06:55.320
It's interesting how value is very subjective to the buyer,
00:06:58.520
but you as the seller can position yourself
00:07:01.480
to actually increase the perceived value.
00:07:04.020
Which brings us to the third way to make so much money,
00:07:06.460
it feels like cheating the game of life.
00:07:08.560
Cashflow is more important than cash piles.
00:07:11.060
you know what's crazy is i know a lot of crypto millionaires that made a lot of money back in the
00:07:16.580
day when they bought cheap and the price has gone up and it comes down and they're sad and they make
00:07:20.180
more money because it goes back up again but what happens is they created this cash pile that they
00:07:25.220
think is going to make them happy but now they are a prisoner of their own creation because not only
00:07:30.100
do they not want to spend it because they're worried about what that's going to really be
00:07:33.300
worth in the future they haven't figured out how to develop the skill to become rich this is not
00:07:39.940
a moment in time where you just get an influx of money making money is actually quite easy it's
00:07:44.820
keeping it that's hard and trusting yourself that you've become the person who can easily attract
00:07:49.860
that kind of money it's not about how much you made it's about how consistently you can make it
00:07:56.340
if i've developed the skills to make money and you take everything away from me i can get right back
00:08:02.100
to where i was i don't have to worry or be dependent on anybody else that's why it's so
00:08:06.340
important to focus on value creation over time, not these points in time. A lot of folks that can
00:08:13.220
sell a thing once for a lot of money, they run to that. And I get it. Sometimes you need to do that
00:08:18.140
to fund your business. What's more valuable when you think of business models is getting paid every
00:08:23.440
month for long periods of time. Why? It creates predictability. I can predictably hire, predictably
00:08:28.820
invest, predictably plan, predictably save my money if there's a subscription component. That's
00:08:34.760
my background in software taught me that at 17 years old. It taught me how to build businesses
00:08:39.740
that I didn't know at the time that allowed me to create real value in the world, not just get
00:08:44.140
one time rich. And that was the reason why I was able to sell those three companies in 10 years for
00:08:49.140
so much money is because I understood how to create long-term cashflow. It's so crazy, but
00:08:53.620
a business doesn't fail because of low profits. It fails because it runs out of cash. I can't
00:08:59.340
pay people with profits people talk about ebitda ebitda ebitda ebit like literally those are the
00:09:04.540
private equity folks that's their favorite language in the world why because they use
00:09:08.300
that to fund debt and that's where the cash flow needs to be and i'm telling you you don't fail in
00:09:13.580
business when you run out of profits if you can't make your payments then you're out of the game
00:09:18.300
what i found interesting about my billionaire mentors is that they think in flows not totals
00:09:23.340
They could care less about total assets.
00:09:25.640
They care about how much that asset produces in cash flow
00:09:29.320
that they then can use and do other things with it.
00:09:32.280
See, 100K per month is more impressive than a millionaire.
00:09:35.360
Some people that made a million
00:09:36.540
and just sitting on a million,
00:09:37.840
they don't know how to spend a million.
00:09:39.060
If you make 100,000 per month,
00:09:41.140
you're making a million every 10 months.
00:09:43.320
And if you know how to repeat that and create that,
00:09:45.820
that's what made you a millionaire,
00:09:47.320
not the money in the bank.
00:09:49.000
Which brings us to the fourth way to make so much money.
00:09:52.060
it feels like cheating the game of life stop counting other people's money the kids these
00:09:56.600
days call it counting people's pockets let's stop that i remember one time i went to my buddy's event
00:10:01.380
and i met a guy named rob and it was like within 36 seconds he wanted to tell me about how much
00:10:06.720
money that guy was making and that guy was making and oh did you hear about this person online i
00:10:11.120
heard he did this much in his launch and this person's making this much money per month he
00:10:14.760
knew more about how much money everybody else is making than his own freaking business he couldn't
00:10:19.880
tell me how much money he made that day, that week, that month. He wouldn't even be able to tell me
00:10:23.600
what his trends line are for the year. Isn't it fascinating? Looking around, counting everybody's
00:10:28.460
success instead of asking, how much did I make today? How much am I making this month? What do
00:10:34.480
I need to do to increase my profit? The focus on your own financials is how you get rich. What's
00:10:41.180
interesting to me is the people that you're jealous of, that you're counting their money,
00:10:45.000
used to be just as broke as you, what changed?
00:10:47.840
They decided to put their understanding
00:10:49.860
of financials first.
00:10:50.980
See, you don't win by wishing or hoping,
00:10:53.620
you win by working,
00:10:55.280
you win by doing the rhythm of success,
00:10:57.960
specifically when it comes to money.
00:10:59.700
And the key is, is don't compare your chapter three
00:11:02.720
to somebody else's chapter 13.
00:11:05.000
It doesn't matter if they're 20,
00:11:06.280
they could have started when they were 10
00:11:08.320
and they got 10 years, chapter 10
00:11:11.420
in their entrepreneurial journey.
00:11:12.620
and you're starting at 45 and you're three years in
00:11:15.700
and you think that they're doing better than you,
00:11:17.640
you're only three in, they're into 10.
00:11:19.860
You can't, it doesn't work like that.
00:11:21.920
So if you wanna make so much money,
00:11:23.660
it actually feels like cheating, check your own money.
00:11:26.220
It's one, check your bank account daily.
00:11:28.640
I get a daily cash email for every one of my companies
00:11:31.760
into my inbox with the subject line
00:11:33.880
telling me the cash position of where it's at,
00:11:36.260
even my personal.
00:11:37.160
I literally have somebody that manages,
00:11:38.860
I'm talking my home assets and revenue and income.
00:11:41.600
I mean, it works just like a business and I track all of that. So I know where every penny is now.
00:11:45.920
I don't have to do it because I pay somebody to do it, but you want to make sure that you
00:11:49.440
personally log into your bank account and look at the numbers, look at the credit card statements,
00:11:53.380
look at your cash position, look at your savings and make sure that you can keep a pulse on what's
00:11:57.540
happening. The second thing is you have to have weekly pillars. I measure myself every Friday on
00:12:02.220
seven key pillars. One of them is money. What does money mean for me? I asked myself the question,
00:12:06.920
one out of 10, how did I do on the money side? Did I make some money? Did I save some money?
00:12:11.320
Did I do some strategic planning around my investments?
00:12:13.640
Did I look at a bunch of deals?
00:12:14.800
Like I just asked myself,
00:12:16.000
am I at a nine or a 10 or am I at a four or five?
00:12:18.600
And if I have a low score,
00:12:19.840
I do one thing to increase my money score for the next week.
00:12:23.240
And if you wanna learn the other six pillars,
00:12:25.120
it's at the end of my book,
00:12:26.480
Buy Back Your Time in the bonus section.
00:12:28.360
It's a weekly process that I've been doing for decades
00:12:30.660
that helps me stay focused
00:12:31.880
on the most important parts of my life.
00:12:33.540
Number three is monthly P&L.
00:12:35.320
Like actually sit down and do a profit and loss statement
00:12:38.240
for your own personal account.
00:12:39.720
It's not hard.
00:12:40.360
you can google a simple template but putting everything in there and honoring that process
00:12:45.240
of counting your own money which sounds super not fun is how you're going to get rich which brings
00:12:49.800
us to the fifth and last way to make so much money it feels like cheating use money as a tool not the
00:12:55.320
goal this one's fascinating i grew up with a kid and his dad had a food truck and he did everything
00:13:01.640
in cash now he came from another country and he didn't trust the banks but essentially he worked
00:13:06.680
every saturday and all week long for this food truck to make all the money to support his family
00:13:11.640
but he did this for decades i think he's still doing it now 42 years later he worked all week
00:13:19.080
prepping driving selling he hardly saw his family he would drive two hours away four hours away to
00:13:25.560
special events just to sell his food and i remember my friend telling me that all the cash because
00:13:30.360
the cash business he saved in the house and he hid it all over the place and he thought his dad
00:13:35.000
was so rich and i was like oh no the key that he didn't understand is you got to use money as the
00:13:40.440
tool not the point it's not about saving a bunch of money it's about improving your life and your
00:13:45.880
life situation it's understanding how to use it as a tool for leverage see he could have took that
00:13:51.400
money and hired somebody to buy back some time so that he could start being more efficient and
00:13:56.040
thinking through how he works instead of just creating himself a low-paying job if you actually
00:14:01.160
look at the total hours he worked per week and what he generated sure he provided for his family
00:14:06.380
but he could have been so much further ahead if he understood how to use it not just hoard it in
00:14:10.860
his house you see money doesn't change you it just amplifies who you are and the truth is if you're
00:14:16.420
looking for freedom freedom isn't found in your bank account it's found in your calendar the goal
00:14:22.040
of money is to buy back your time so you can spend more time doing the things you love that's why i
00:14:27.060
spend so much money hiring people to support my life i want to do two things i either want to spend
00:14:33.160
time with the people i love or create in a way that's unique to who i am anything else i would
00:14:38.380
rather deploy money to get leverage so that i can be more me and that's why i have people like ann
00:14:44.760
and betty and sam and todd it's essentially team martel that give me back literally 40 50 60 hours
00:14:52.440
a week each so I can be here helping you. It honestly breaks my heart when I see really
00:14:57.120
well-meaning entrepreneurs working themselves literally to death because they don't know
00:15:01.740
how to have people support them, especially the assistant role. They're like, if I hired somebody,
00:15:06.480
what would they do? If you want my internal document on all the things, it's 42 pages of
00:15:11.620
tasks and projects and templates and best practices for my executive assistant, just find me on
00:15:16.540
Instagram, message me the word YouTube EA, and I will send you the direct link to that document.
00:15:21.240
The only way you'll end up making so much money
00:15:24.040
that it feels like cheating
00:15:25.260
is by making the process fun and exciting.
00:15:28.620
You have to do what feels like play
00:15:30.900
that other people see as work.
00:15:34.200
Feels like play, looks like work.
00:15:36.500
Feels like play, looks like work.
00:15:38.940
Do that and it'll change your life.
00:15:40.860
Now, if you wanna learn how to build a business
00:15:43.040
that runs itself, click the video
00:15:44.720
and I'll see you on the other side.
Link copied!