Dan Martell - How to Survive & Get Rich in the 2026 Recession

00:00:00.000 All the indicators are now pointing to a recession.

00:00:03.320 Tariffs are ripping through the economy,

00:00:05.060 markets are volatile,

00:00:06.580 and everyone's hopes to get rich are slowly dying.

00:00:09.560 The world is gonna change forever,

00:00:11.000 but this isn't my first rodeo.

00:00:12.540 I've gone through three major recessions

00:00:14.400 in 2000, 2008, and 2020,

00:00:17.600 and I was able to build wealth

00:00:19.500 despite the whole market slowing down.

00:00:22.100 And I don't want you to be left behind.

00:00:24.040 I'm gonna share the five simple steps

00:00:25.900 that I'm personally following

00:00:27.200 to take advantage of this window of opportunity

00:00:29.420 and how you can use these same steps

00:00:31.940 to get rich in this recession,

00:00:33.760 even if you're starting at zero.

00:00:35.320 Starting with step number one, run your numbers.

00:00:38.700 Don't stare at the light coming straight at you

00:00:41.480 and get hit by the train.

00:00:43.080 Most people would rather stick their head in the fricking sand 0.97

00:00:46.380 and pretend like the rest of the world isn't getting crazy. 0.77

00:00:49.380 If you take one thing away from this video,

00:00:51.800 it's control the controllables.

00:00:54.060 Hard times make hard decisions easy

00:00:56.520 because nobody's gonna be upset at you.

00:00:58.360 Everybody else sees the same stuff you're seeing.

00:01:00.400 And it might be the first time

00:01:01.680 that you give yourself permission

00:01:03.100 to do the thing you know you should probably be doing.

00:01:05.720 When you're faced with uncertainty,

00:01:07.720 you need to make precise bets.

00:01:10.080 You absolutely have to cut the fat

00:01:12.200 without damaging the muscle.

00:01:14.320 It means make decisions

00:01:16.220 to understand where your money's going,

00:01:18.420 but don't cut things that'll make it harder

00:01:20.500 for you to get reset afterwards.

00:01:22.700 So yes, continue to read books, invest in your education.

00:01:25.860 Yes, continue to invest in your health.

00:01:27.520 Don't cut those things because those make you better.

00:01:30.320 They're the engine of your growth.

00:01:32.400 But all the other stuff, these elaborate vacations,

00:01:35.180 these crazy dinners, these splurging on clothes,

00:01:38.340 like some people are paying for membership

00:01:40.320 and subscriptions to things they haven't used in months.

00:01:42.840 They don't even know they're paying for them.

00:01:44.360 It's like death by a thousand memberships.

00:01:46.300 Just pull back, understand where you're bleeding cash

00:01:49.480 that you shouldn't be, clean up the holes,

00:01:51.800 cancel the memberships and focus on you.

00:01:54.220 Just processing your credit card statement

00:01:56.540 and canceling the things that you don't even recognize,

00:01:59.100 probably a good move.

00:02:00.560 Run your numbers, create that spreadsheet,

00:02:02.700 update the spreadsheet so that you know

00:02:04.440 where the money's coming in and where it's going out

00:02:06.200 and then just make decisions

00:02:07.500 if that's the right thing for you

00:02:08.960 based on what's happening right now.

00:02:10.440 That brings us to step two, build your three-phase plan.

00:02:13.520 When 2020 hit, I had the privilege

00:02:15.440 of coaching thousands of software CEOs

00:02:17.820 through this uncertain market.

00:02:19.760 We didn't know what was gonna happen,

00:02:21.680 when it was gonna happen, how bad it was gonna get.

00:02:23.800 Many of my clients actually had their clients,

00:02:26.720 whole businesses shut down,

00:02:28.100 restaurants, gyms, retail stores.

00:02:30.620 Those were the people paying for their software solutions.

00:02:33.180 And here I was having to help guide them through the fog.

00:02:37.020 So it doesn't matter if you're running a business

00:02:38.420 or you're running a household,

00:02:39.840 make decisions without emotion

00:02:42.040 before you have to make the decision.

00:02:44.260 And that's what I taught them.

00:02:45.320 That three-phase plan allowed them to move confidently

00:02:48.520 without being wasteful and then come back swinging

00:02:51.520 once things turned around.

00:02:52.740 So this is how you build your three-phase plan.

00:02:55.160 Phase one, this is where you may not get

00:02:57.400 that bonus you expected,

00:02:58.700 and then you just gotta start thinking about,

00:03:00.420 maybe you gotta cut those nice-to-have expenses.

00:03:02.820 Phase two is maybe there's some challenges in the business

00:03:05.220 and everybody's gotta take a salary cut.

00:03:06.840 Maybe it's temporary, maybe it's long-term.

00:03:08.380 That's when you start cutting anything

00:03:09.980 you don't need to live.

00:03:11.300 Phase three is you lose your job.

00:03:13.640 And at that point, I call that the ripcord method.

00:03:15.860 That's where we have to decide without delaying

00:03:18.340 what we're gonna do in that moment.

00:03:20.100 And it might not be pretty,

00:03:21.160 it might mean moving in with your parents

00:03:22.660 or some other decisions, but you have to make the decision.

00:03:25.560 The key is to make the phase plan

00:03:27.060 so that you can make the decision without the emotion

00:03:29.440 because in the moment you might decide to hold on

00:03:31.980 and that's gonna create a lot more pain

00:03:33.680 when you just have to acknowledge what it is

00:03:35.500 and already have made the decision.

00:03:37.000 These are the steps that were taken now that this happened.

00:03:39.760 So for example, my brother and I,

00:03:41.180 we made an agreement a long time ago

00:03:42.540 that if one of us goes crazy

00:03:44.520 and for whatever reason goes bankrupt

00:03:46.100 and they have no more money,

00:03:47.340 essentially we're allowed to sleep

00:03:48.280 at the other person's house.

00:03:49.480 I mean, we used to joke on the couch,

00:03:50.680 but now obviously we all have guest rooms

00:03:52.300 that decision allows both of us to absolutely push as hard as we can because we know worst case

00:03:59.140 our kids get to hang out with their cousins we get to full reset to build it'll take probably

00:04:03.540 six months to get back where we're at and from that we get to learn the lesson and move forward

00:04:07.820 and then the best part about this is it allows us to build without fear that brings us to step three

00:04:13.020 monetize your assets recessions don't kill businesses ignoring the untapped value does

00:04:19.740 You really only have two things.

00:04:21.260 You have your time and you have your resources.

00:04:23.520 I'm talking about looking at all the things you own

00:04:26.100 and saying, how can I make this make me money?

00:04:28.300 Like I said, you might decide,

00:04:29.940 hey, I'm gonna move in with my parents

00:04:31.160 and rent out our house.

00:04:32.460 You might decide to put one of your extra cars on Turo.

00:04:35.000 It's your call what level of cutting

00:04:36.920 or resourcefulness you get.

00:04:38.340 I met a guy the other day who is a mortgage broker

00:04:40.660 and he was driving our Uber and he had no problem saying,

00:04:43.380 hey, things are slow right now, I'm driving Uber.

00:04:45.900 It helps me have a little extra money

00:04:47.640 so we can pay for our vacation

00:04:48.920 to go visit the family once a year

00:04:50.220 and also gets me out of the house

00:04:51.600 and my wife is really happy, you know?

00:04:52.840 And he kind of joked about that,

00:04:54.000 but you might decide to do the same thing.

00:04:55.660 You might have a business

00:04:56.540 and you have a pretty big team

00:04:57.640 and you're worried about having to lay people off.

00:04:59.340 Well, what if you allowed people

00:05:00.520 to consult with your team?

00:05:02.120 What if you monetize their knowledge?

00:05:03.740 What if you created workshops with those people?

00:05:05.620 You could work on an arrangement

00:05:06.620 where you get some income, they make some money.

00:05:08.460 You might decide to rent some space.

00:05:10.320 I don't know what it is,

00:05:11.720 but there's something about your life,

00:05:13.480 either your time, you might start moonlighting,

00:05:15.560 you might start focusing on online

00:05:17.060 or your resources, you might decide to do a yard sale

00:05:20.120 that'll allow you to stay in it without having to reset.

00:05:24.520 When bad things happen to people,

00:05:26.260 it's not that the bad thing happened,

00:05:27.940 it's how they reacted.

00:05:29.280 The ones that did a full reset to try to build from zero,

00:05:32.400 they lost all that momentum.

00:05:33.760 The ones that decided to say,

00:05:35.080 hey, we're gonna protect what we've created so far.

00:05:36.900 It may not thrive, it may not grow,

00:05:39.040 but we're not gonna get kicked out of the game.

00:05:41.080 And then from that place, once the market comes back,

00:05:43.840 you get to ride it up.

00:05:45.100 that's what differentiates the winners from the losers most people think having courage means

00:05:50.120 making decisions when you're not scared the truth is is courage requires you to be scared and make

00:05:54.140 a decision either way that brings us to step four sharpen your axe in 2020 when everybody was looking

00:05:59.620 at the world and wondering what was going to happen a lot of people retreated all the way back

00:06:04.360 and what i did instead is said hey what works what do i know will be true in the future i may not be

00:06:09.640 able to grow but i can prepare i can get stronger so i got ready i sat there and said okay how do

00:06:15.080 do I invest in myself? How do I personally get better? How do I ensure that I'm building a strong

00:06:20.440 foundation to be able to build from? The reason this works is that compounding growth only works

00:06:26.000 if you have something to compound. So that's why you have to get better so that you have a stronger

00:06:29.940 foundation to be able to push from. You've never gotten better when things were good. I've never

00:06:34.780 gotten better when things are good. I've only experienced real growth when there was pressure.

00:06:39.500 In my kid's room, there's this poster with a diamond. It says no pressure, no diamonds. It's

00:06:44.680 kind of like the butterfly. Did you know when the caterpillar goes in the cocoon and it's struggling

00:06:49.220 to get out of the cocoon, if you came along, you tried to help it out, you would actually deform

00:06:53.100 the butterfly. It would probably kill it because it needs to go through that process of struggle 0.68

00:06:58.580 and challenges so that it can come out as a butterfly. So right now, the best thing you could

00:07:03.820 do is actually embrace the challenge and understand you're just solidifying the foundation. You're

00:07:09.140 sharpening the saw. You're getting ready for the next step. When it gets tough, you got to get tough.

00:07:14.260 most people will just go through challenges.

00:07:17.440 I want you to grow through challenges.

00:07:19.520 The idea of saying, look,

00:07:20.800 I can't help that this world is doing what it's doing

00:07:23.360 and these situations are happening

00:07:24.700 and this decision was made and it affects me

00:07:26.980 and I can go through that challenge and change

00:07:30.280 or I can grow through it

00:07:32.380 so I can come out the other side better.

00:07:34.240 And that brings us to step five.

00:07:35.920 When skies clear, strike hard.

00:07:38.460 The greatest returns come from the biggest downturns.

00:07:42.240 When crowds retreat, wise men advance.

00:07:45.620 It's just like this time I went rally car racing

00:07:47.600 and the instructor said,

00:07:49.100 in like a lamb, out like a lion.

00:07:51.100 And I was like, what the freak does that mean?

00:07:52.880 Turns out when you come into the corner,

00:07:54.620 you wanna be super slow, super calculated,

00:07:57.060 and then turn into the turn.

00:07:58.520 But as soon as you get the apex,

00:08:00.380 you power on aggressively.

00:08:02.720 So you have your plan, you adjust.

00:08:04.420 As soon as you see the clouds part

00:08:06.280 and the sun shines through, you attack it.

00:08:09.080 You move full force.

00:08:10.040 You take advantage of the opportunities.

00:08:11.540 you ask for a raise, you ask for new opportunities, you push. You got to get in the jet stream. I

00:08:16.980 don't know if you know this, it's faster to go from one side of the country to the other side

00:08:20.400 because you're in the jet stream, you're in flow. This has always been true. And Warren Buffett

00:08:24.320 talks about all the time is that markets are markets. They go up, they come down. If it's

00:08:28.360 down right now, trust me, it will go up and you want to be the person ready to take advantage of.

00:08:33.120 Think about it. You take a world-class entrepreneur, you take everything away from

00:08:36.500 them. You drop them in the middle of the Amazon jungle. You come back in five years,

00:08:40.320 I know what you'll find. You'll literally find a person with a team and they built this whole

00:08:44.600 temple and the whole thing's going. Why? Because winners win. I want you to be one of those people

00:08:49.640 that come in like a lamb prepared and out like a f***ing lion. You want to be cautious because 0.99

00:08:54.860 the key is you got to protect your psychology. You don't want to be scared. You don't want to

00:08:58.680 get on the defense. You don't want to be thinking that the whole sky is falling. And the same thing

00:09:02.540 when things turn around, you don't want to be too quick to react. So I always try to find two data

00:09:07.620 points, three data points of positivity that tell me now's a good time to move forward. If you wait

00:09:13.420 too long, everybody else saw the same thing and they've already taken advantage of it. So you have

00:09:17.140 to be early. That's why I'm so excited to share this with you because I know it could absolutely

00:09:21.780 transform your life. But all that being said, this is the key. Don't freeze. Make decisions.

00:09:29.300 Control the controllables. Control when you work out, what food you put in your mouth,

00:09:33.300 what you focus on. Those are things, not the news, not your social media, not eating for comfort.

00:09:39.420 You can control the things only you control. Make the list. Dump it out. What can you do to attack

00:09:44.400 the list? Hit it hard. Progress in any part of our life equals fulfillment. Forward movement.

00:09:51.060 There's trillions of dollars exchanged every day in this economy. My invitation to you is go get

00:09:55.960 some. So if you want to learn how to build a business from zero to a million, click the link

00:10:00.320 and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - May 23, 2025

How to Survive & Get Rich in the 2026 Recession

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