Dan Martell - How to Make So Much Money it Feels Like CHEATING

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. 0.96

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. 0.82

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 0.79

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 0.96

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.

Dan Martell - June 24, 2025

How to Make So Much Money it Feels Like CHEATING

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript