Dan Martell - If you don’t understand these money laws, you’ll never be rich

00:00:00.000 You can follow all of the money rules and still end up broke.

00:00:03.280 You can save more, you can invest more, you can work more.

00:00:06.280 But in today's world, that just doesn't cut it anymore.

00:00:09.480 I went from being a broke 22-year-old to being a $100 million CEO.

00:00:13.200 And what I've learned is money isn't about rules, but it's actually about laws.

00:00:16.720 Rules can be broken. Laws can't.

00:00:19.540 So in this video, I'm going to give you five laws of building real wealth.

00:00:23.360 Starting with law number one.

00:00:25.820 Wealth is not a number, it's a ratio.

00:00:28.200 Wealth isn't about what you own.

00:00:30.320 It's what your life costs.

00:00:31.800 I know a lot of people that got really fancy.

00:00:34.320 They got the boats and the cars and the planes

00:00:36.180 and the pools and all the cool stuff,

00:00:37.860 but their life costs them a lot.

00:00:40.360 Someone making 80 grand a year spending 50K

00:00:43.420 feels way wealthier than someone who's making 300,

00:00:46.760 but they're spending 290.

00:00:48.340 Some people may not wanna hear this

00:00:49.980 because they wanna front load their lives.

00:00:51.820 They wanna YOLO, you only live once.

00:00:54.140 So I'm gonna lease the BMW and buy all the furniture

00:00:57.580 and get the coolest pat.

00:00:59.140 I know this doesn't sound fun

00:01:00.660 and I know it might sound dumb to some people,

00:01:02.740 but I wanna make it crystal clear.

00:01:05.220 You need a bigger gap between what you make

00:01:07.720 and what you spend.

00:01:09.000 If it's not there, you can't outwork the gap.

00:01:12.080 I got this from my incredible dad

00:01:13.720 and he used to say this all the time.

00:01:15.280 It's not what you make, it's what you keep.

00:01:17.820 The first law is just the beginning,

00:01:20.000 but how do we tighten up the wealth ratio? 1.00

00:01:22.860 Law number two, stop buying shit. 0.99

00:01:25.980 it. Now, I want you to spend money on cool things. I have amazing stuff in my life, but you got to be 0.99

00:01:32.000 intentional about it and you need to understand what you're paying for. See, most people spend

00:01:36.140 money on dumb to make themselves feel good. The worst part is often people buy stuff to impress 0.98

00:01:41.460 people they don't even like. They upgrade their lifestyle that they can't afford. They buy jewelry,

00:01:47.160 they buy cars, they pay for these cool pads. And look, there's nothing wrong with the stuff,

00:01:51.400 but you need to buy leverage first

00:01:53.560 so you can create real wealth.

00:01:55.000 I don't want you to kind of have some money.

00:01:56.860 I want you to have a lot of money.

00:01:58.640 The wealthiest people you know,

00:02:00.320 default to spending money on leverage first over things

00:02:03.920 because the most valuable thing you can buy,

00:02:06.620 the ultimate flex, is your time.

00:02:09.080 Broke people buy stuff, rich people buy time.

00:02:12.140 And the reason why is you never pay for things with money.

00:02:16.620 You pay for them with the time it took to make the money.

00:02:19.540 And I get it.

00:02:20.180 when you start making money you want to start buying things when i was 26 i started making two

00:02:24.980 three hundred thousand a year and i'm driving a 12 year old car people thought i was being cheap

00:02:29.620 and instead of buying more stuff and i could have i knew that a better decision investing in my team

00:02:35.860 my business my time that decision made me 10 times more money later than buying the new car

00:02:43.140 then like i'm not saying forever i'm just saying in the short time reinvest in getting leverage

00:02:49.060 to make more money, increase the gap.

00:02:51.600 Then you can buy the cool stuff.

00:02:53.200 So three things you need to do

00:02:55.000 in order to complete what I call the buyback loop

00:02:57.800 to buy back massive amounts of your time.

00:03:00.140 First thing is we have to audit.

00:03:01.860 Just look at your calendar.

00:03:03.180 The last two weeks,

00:03:04.500 highlight the things that give you energy in green,

00:03:06.920 the things that suck your energy in red.

00:03:09.580 Two, transfer the stuff that's red

00:03:11.460 that you don't wanna do to anybody else.

00:03:13.960 So these are the cheap tasks.

00:03:15.340 These are the repetitive tasks.

00:03:16.460 These are the simple stuff like meal prep,

00:03:18.380 cleaning, process your inbox, car wash, stuff that you don't have to do that you can pay very

00:03:23.240 little money to somebody else to help you. That's creating leverage. The more time you got back,

00:03:27.260 the more time you can enjoy life. Better yet, go do things that are going to make you more money

00:03:31.060 to increase the gap. And my pro tip is record yourself doing the task using any kind of screen

00:03:37.000 recording software like Zoom, and then give that recording to the person that's going to do it for

00:03:41.260 you so that they can learn how you did it so they can do it right the first time. And in today's

00:03:45.440 world, you can even transfer it to this beautiful thing called AI. The third step is you have to

00:03:50.000 fill. You have to take the hours that you bought back and reinvest them into things that are going

00:03:55.100 to make you more money to grow that gap. So I always look at sales activity, strategy,

00:04:00.300 relationships, growth, skills that I got to acquire, hiring and managing people. The more

00:04:05.220 people that you can easily hire and manage, the bigger your business will be, the more money you'll

00:04:09.560 make, the bigger the gap gets. It's a super important step because if you don't fill your

00:04:14.440 time back with things that make you more money all this is a waste so instead of buying a lambo

00:04:19.320 go buy some time that makes you more money to easily pay for the lambo i wrote a whole book

00:04:24.500 on this concept called buying back your time and i even built an entire workbook to take you through

00:04:29.060 the process step by step so if you're a busy entrepreneur and you're fighting to buy back

00:04:33.320 some time just go find me on instagram and dm me the word youtube workbook and i'll send it over

00:04:38.280 so now you've stopped buying dumb this next law will teach you how to print money law number three

00:04:44.420 own money machines. You need to own the machine that makes you money. You have to get in the 0.92

00:04:51.780 river of the money. Some people are scared to jump in the river. If you don't get in the river,

00:04:55.460 how are you supposed to make some money? Money machines are essentially assets that make money

00:04:59.700 when you're not around. The wealthiest people in the world own assets, not liabilities. All the

00:05:06.580 cool you want to flex with, those are liabilities. The things that have made me a lot of money,

00:05:10.800 it was assets that I own. All the wealthiest people don't make money by the work they're

00:05:16.180 doing today. They're making money by the work they did in the past that they bought assets with

00:05:21.160 that pay them today. Think about the real estate folks. They buy a building, the building property

00:05:25.420 goes up, they make the cashflow, it pays the mortgage. Over time, 30 years, they have an

00:05:29.560 asset that makes them a lot of money every month. Simple question. Will you make money if you stop

00:05:34.700 working? Most entrepreneurs, the answer is no. I know people that have been in business for 32

00:05:39.640 two years and still have not figured out the laws. So if you're here, you're my person. You're the

00:05:44.820 person that wants to learn this. The biggest form of having a lot of assets is owning equity,

00:05:49.840 shares in companies, in entities, because that's the only way you're going to get really rich is

00:05:54.580 to own equity. Equity pays you whether you show up or not. Most people, it's the equity in their

00:05:58.900 own business, but that business is tied to them. Having equity in other businesses, buying into

00:06:03.240 the stock market, that's an example of it. So right off the bat, if you have a business that

00:06:07.540 nobody else would ever buy, then the equity in your business isn't worth a lot. When I started

00:06:11.620 my company Spheric at 24, I had the vision somehow someday, maybe I could sell it. So I built the

00:06:17.860 company in a way that I could sell it. I didn't take a salary because I was deferring what I knew

00:06:23.420 I could get in the future. Why would I take money out of the business that I could use it to grow

00:06:27.500 knowing the value of the business would be more in the future when I exited. So when I sold the

00:06:33.120 company. The amount of money I made from that equity was way bigger than the salary I could

00:06:39.020 have took combined. That's the power of equity. Equity is kind of cool for a lot of reasons.

00:06:43.420 Equity compounds. Equity is valuable to others. In some ways, it's liquid. No billionaire has a

00:06:49.620 billion dollars in cash in a bank account. Their equity value is worth billions of dollars. And

00:06:55.500 then they can borrow against that equity and not pay taxes and use insurance to cover that loan

00:07:01.360 so that they can live a life off of the equity

00:07:03.960 that just keeps compounding.

00:07:05.500 Now, this is not financial advice

00:07:06.660 and that is an advanced move.

00:07:08.180 Let's just start by creating equity.

00:07:10.620 Here's what I want you to do.

00:07:11.720 Draw a T-chart.

00:07:13.160 Essentially on one side, I want you to put time.

00:07:15.040 On the other side, you put equity.

00:07:16.360 Now list everything that you do to make money.

00:07:19.000 Could be a salary.

00:07:20.220 It could be your business.

00:07:21.460 It could be you lent somebody money.

00:07:23.580 You gotta put it in one of those categories.

00:07:25.160 Is it dependent on time?

00:07:27.000 Because if you stop working, the money stops.

00:07:28.920 Or is it equity?

00:07:29.640 Does it pay you whether you show up or not?

00:07:31.580 Does the money keep coming regardless?

00:07:33.160 The goal is to have a lot more things on the equity side.

00:07:36.520 And what you do is you take the income from the time side,

00:07:39.960 you try to increase how much you make with your time

00:07:42.240 and then invest it over on the equity side.

00:07:45.040 That could be real estate,

00:07:46.080 that could be investing on their business,

00:07:47.380 that could be putting in the market,

00:07:48.660 that could be lending your money through other people.

00:07:50.640 Some people think they have assets,

00:07:52.260 but those assets are tied to their time.

00:07:54.600 No time, no asset.

00:07:56.260 It's like your primary home.

00:07:57.500 I know people say to put it on the personal net worth sheet as an asset.

00:08:00.800 It's not an asset because you need to live in a home.

00:08:04.220 Are you paying yourself rent, paying for the property tax,

00:08:07.180 you're paying for all the maintenance, you're paying the mortgage,

00:08:09.740 you're paying whatever you're doing.

00:08:11.220 So this is where a lot of people get this wrong.

00:08:13.520 I think an asset is something that makes me money while I sleep

00:08:16.480 and I bought into it and I've got equity.

00:08:18.840 Businesses might start off as time bound,

00:08:20.940 but if you do it right, you can get over to equity bound

00:08:23.040 where you're actually the value of that asset.

00:08:25.140 if other people want to buy shares in it is worth a lot more than what you can make from a cash

00:08:29.420 point of view. Okay. So you understand how real money is made when you own assets, but there's

00:08:33.900 something you already have that can make you more money than anything else. Law number four,

00:08:40.380 your unfair advantage. Every person has this ability to do something that other people admire.

00:08:47.500 You have specific knowledge. You have different experience in different markets. You have work

00:08:52.640 experience. You have life experience. You have leverage in the way you look at the world. See,

00:08:57.040 what I think is the best thing for you to figure out is what is your unfair advantage? What are

00:09:02.320 the things that you've invested in that you understand more than other people? It sounds

00:09:06.540 crazy, but once you figure out what makes you you and what does the world want and value and you

00:09:12.740 figure out how to put yourself into that place and monetize it to create opportunities to not

00:09:18.260 only get paid, but to get equity and have that equity be worth a lot of money. That's how you

00:09:23.100 create wealth. And my role is I only like to invest in things I understand. My unfair advantage

00:09:28.800 are things that I have deep, deep experience in because that's where I can see opportunity. I can

00:09:33.860 see where other people's luck, they bring me that luck. I go, is this any good? Most people lose

00:09:38.160 their money when they start investing in things they have no idea about. Their cousin comes to

00:09:42.060 them with a restaurant idea. They're like, I got money. I want to invest in your restaurant.

00:09:45.520 Another guy comes to him with a software idea

00:09:47.960 and they're like, I got money.

00:09:49.060 I don't know anything about software.

00:09:50.200 Let me do some software stuff.

00:09:51.540 And look, I'm speaking from experience.

00:09:53.720 Almost 20 years ago, a guy named Bryce came to me

00:09:56.460 and he's like, hey, I know the banks.

00:09:58.640 The banks are selling homes in Detroit.

00:10:01.300 I can get them locked and loaded,

00:10:02.780 sealed in deals for 10 grand

00:10:04.640 and we can buy a hundred at a time.

00:10:06.520 I'm like, a $10,000 home,

00:10:08.600 how much do you think it'll be worth in a few years?

00:10:10.120 He says, hey man, once we get it rented

00:10:11.980 and we get it managed and it's all done,

00:10:14.020 The market's gonna come back up three, four years.

00:10:16.220 We'd probably sell them for like 80 to 100,000 a piece.

00:10:19.000 Take my money, man.

00:10:19.960 This sounds great.

00:10:20.940 I'll take 10.

00:10:22.200 I'm Canadian.

00:10:23.300 I've never done real estate.

00:10:24.540 I have no idea what I'm doing.

00:10:26.060 Let me skip to the end.

00:10:27.260 Two years later, my brother,

00:10:28.840 who went in on the deal with me,

00:10:30.160 decides to go visit these homes.

00:10:31.740 The day he landed, that afternoon, he called me.

00:10:34.320 He said, bro, we gotta get out of this as fast as possible.

00:10:36.600 They're boarded up.

00:10:37.660 They're about to burn down.

00:10:38.860 We're responsible for them.

00:10:40.120 We own these things.

00:10:41.160 I don't even know how the heck they got to this place.

00:10:43.060 get out of this deal. So we found somebody that would take them, but we lost all of our money.

00:10:48.080 The good news is we got out of the liability of owning them in the first place and we moved on.

00:10:52.200 And I've continued to come back to that lesson. Stick to your lane, stick to your lane,

00:10:56.100 stick to your unfair advantage. You have one, you know what it is. Double down on it. You will

00:11:01.640 always make more money doing the thing you know how to do more than anybody else. It's why Warren

00:11:05.480 Buffett says, Hey, if you love Dairy Queen, buy a Dairy Queen stock. If you love Coca-Cola,

00:11:12.840 Buy Coca-Cola stock.

00:11:14.640 You know, I tell my kids all the time,

00:11:16.000 you wanna invest in the market,

00:11:17.180 what are the products you use every day?

00:11:19.100 Lego, go buy some stock.

00:11:20.580 Because at least now you are interested

00:11:23.640 and you know about the product.

00:11:26.340 You're reading the news,

00:11:27.300 you're telling your friends about it.

00:11:28.520 So many people literally spend all their money

00:11:31.240 buying products that they don't own the company.

00:11:33.840 Look at my car collection.

00:11:34.940 You don't think I own stock in the companies

00:11:36.880 that build the cars?

00:11:37.940 Why wouldn't I?

00:11:38.940 That's the first place you buy. 0.99

00:11:40.780 Equity, not the sh**. 0.95

00:11:42.080 liability. I've invested in 70 plus tech companies, AI companies. I'm currently working 0.79

00:11:48.940 on a billion dollar portfolio of AI software. And all I've done my whole life for 30 years is

00:11:54.680 software, software, software, software. I have an unfair advantage in that space. I stick to my lane.

00:11:59.780 It's what I do better than everything else. So here's two things I always ask myself before I

00:12:04.200 invest in anything to get equity. One, is the investment something I have specific knowledge

00:12:09.400 in? Is it something I've felt the pain in? Is it something that I'm interested in? Is it something

00:12:14.000 that I know about? And it's just like the real estate investment. Like I didn't understand how

00:12:18.140 it would go. I just trusted it. And I mean, trusting without knowing is not a great way to

00:12:23.280 invest. Even in software, if you came to me with like some deep medical software that have no idea

00:12:29.140 about, I just wouldn't do it. I don't chase like, oh, you can make a bazillion dollars. It's like,

00:12:33.620 I get it. Let somebody else make that. There's no lack of opportunities in this world.

00:12:37.640 I got to be better at saying no to the things I don't understand and saying yes to the things

00:12:41.900 that I know cold. Number two, can I explain the investment in one to two sentences? Because

00:12:47.320 usually I have to explain it to my beautiful way in one to two sentences. She needs understanding.

00:12:51.340 If I try to explain to her quantum mechanics, because it took me three years to finally

00:12:55.960 understand qubits, she would probably be like, I don't get it. How can it be in the same place

00:13:02.020 twice. How is it possible that this is a computing class? Like I get it. So I don't do it. If the

00:13:08.420 answer is no to either of those questions, then I just don't invest. Quick recap. So you're spending

00:13:13.440 less than you make. You're buying back your time. You're building some equity and you're using your

00:13:18.680 unfair advantage to stick with what you know. Yeah. Now this last law most people forget about,

00:13:24.300 but is by far the most important. Law number five, give back. Money is a flow. It's not like

00:13:31.120 a storage place. I used to do this. I used to save all my points at a coffee shop. I used to hoard

00:13:37.380 them. My travel points, oh my God, I had a bazillion points. I spent more money trying to

00:13:42.460 optimize my points than I could have made 10 times more actually just focusing that time on my

00:13:46.880 business. I'm speaking from experience because what happened to me is I realized that if all I

00:13:51.400 do is I hoard and I pull in and I put in the bank account and I like protect it, that it doesn't

00:13:57.600 grow. The more it comes in and you redeploy, it comes in and you invest, it comes in and you give

00:14:03.380 to other people. You start sending the elevator back down. You start helping other people, your

00:14:08.080 team through growing businesses and equity, but your community by some of the contributions you

00:14:12.680 make. That's when my whole life changed. The moment I stopped making it about myself and I started

00:14:18.500 making it about other people, that's when my life expanded 10x because nobody has ever shown up day

00:14:25.020 after day to help other people and ever felt poor. Making a lot of money, having a lot of stuff is

00:14:30.380 cool, but you know what's even cooler? Giving it away. Helping other people. When I gave Sam his

00:14:36.000 dream car, that's cool. When I gave away the book, Thinking Grow Rich, to over 10,000 kids in my

00:14:42.280 local community, that made me feel wealthy. The more you give, the more you get. It's the law of

00:14:48.140 the universe. It's how it's always been. And I see so many people focus on making money that they

00:14:53.420 forget that it is a flow. It is a river. It comes in, it goes out. And I know you want like guaranteed

00:15:01.360 returns on your advice. You know, these tactics that make you lots of money. You're going to have

00:15:06.760 to have some faith. And it's why most faith has some component of tithing, which is giving. And

00:15:13.720 it's not just your money. Tithing is actually time. If you don't have money, give your time.

00:15:18.440 If you have money, give both.

00:15:20.740 Give your influence, give your strategies,

00:15:22.860 give your assets, help other people.

00:15:24.700 It's why Renee and I are so big

00:15:26.140 on contributing to our local community

00:15:27.680 through our foundation.

00:15:28.900 It's our favorite day of the year, the giving day,

00:15:30.900 where we go around and we bless people, we surprise them.

00:15:33.720 And for us, we focus on at-risk youth.

00:15:35.840 My biggest mission in the world,

00:15:37.420 my driving purpose in life

00:15:39.000 is to help young people not feel broken.

00:15:41.180 That is where I give a lot.

00:15:43.260 And it turns out when you do that, you get a lot.

00:15:47.400 Here's how you start this today.

00:15:48.780 First thing, pick a charity.

00:15:50.620 Find the one that helps the people

00:15:53.120 that solves the problem that you most felt pain around.

00:15:57.180 The person who aligns themselves

00:15:58.880 with helping other people avoid

00:16:00.960 or get through challenging times in their life

00:16:03.200 from whatever they felt,

00:16:05.140 that is why you're called to that charity.

00:16:07.520 And I know you might be compelled by other people's stories,

00:16:09.680 but if you don't resonate with those stories,

00:16:11.040 it's a different level of connection.

00:16:13.020 So I would truly ask yourself to be honest,

00:16:15.460 and you don't have to tell anybody what you've gone through.

00:16:17.380 But there might be something that was really painful

00:16:19.380 that you know there's organizations

00:16:20.960 that help people that were like you.

00:16:23.280 And by showing up and giving, that is alignment.

00:16:26.220 And then you also have to give before you're ready.

00:16:28.120 Don't wait till you got a lot of money.

00:16:29.820 If you don't give when you have a little,

00:16:31.940 you won't give when you got a lot.

00:16:33.600 Number three, let go of scarcity.

00:16:35.780 The first time you give money away

00:16:37.480 and it's uncomfortable and it's awkward

00:16:39.680 and you're like, should I tell people I did it?

00:16:41.780 Should I allow them to talk about the fact

00:16:43.460 that I just donated to this?

00:16:44.560 Do I do it anonymously?

00:16:46.220 That is your scarcity mindset kicking in.

00:16:48.920 The one that says, well, I could give them money,

00:16:50.720 but they'll go buy drugs, scarcity mindset.

00:16:52.920 Your job is not to judge.

00:16:55.020 I dare you to just give from a place of pure contribution

00:16:58.880 back to this beautiful world we live in.

00:17:00.700 Like I know the first time you give,

00:17:02.460 you might be thinking to yourself,

00:17:03.420 but I could use this in my life,

00:17:04.980 or like, I don't really have a lot.

00:17:06.680 That's your scarcity showing up.

00:17:08.400 Have that abundance mindset.

00:17:09.600 If you can flip that from scarcity,

00:17:11.800 I don't have a lot to abundance,

00:17:13.300 I can create more and give more,

00:17:15.220 it'll change your whole relationship with wealth.

00:17:17.500 Now, most people are gonna watch this

00:17:18.600 and they're gonna be like, yeah, that's so good,

00:17:20.340 but then they're gonna do nothing.

00:17:21.600 That's not you.

00:17:22.480 The ones that win actually take action,

00:17:24.940 any action right now.

00:17:26.340 The rules are meant to be broken,

00:17:27.800 but the law is we take action.

00:17:29.780 Leave a comment below and let me know

00:17:31.080 out of everything I shared,

00:17:32.100 what's the thing you're gonna go double down on?

00:17:33.740 What's the thing you needed to hear today?

00:17:35.120 What's the thing that meant the most?

00:17:36.740 Leave a comment.

00:17:37.880 And remember, DM me the word YouTube workbook

00:17:40.340 if you want my internal playbook

00:17:41.800 for how to audit my time.

00:17:43.300 to buy it back to get more leverage now if you like this video you'll love the next video where

00:17:47.860 i talk about why dumb people might be making more money than you and how to fix that so click here

00:17:52.580 and I'll see you on the other side. 0.90

Dan Martell - May 18, 2026

If you don’t understand these money laws, you’ll never be rich

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