Dan Martell - I’m 45. If You’re 18 to 30, Watch This…

00:00:00.000 I became a cash millionaire at 27 years old,

00:00:02.680 but if I had to start from zero at 18

00:00:05.160 and go from broke to millionaire before 30,

00:00:07.880 these are the exact choices I would make

00:00:09.780 at every point in my journey.

00:00:11.240 And if at any point during this video, you think,

00:00:13.320 I can't do this, you might not be cut out

00:00:15.540 to be a millionaire and that's totally fine.

00:00:17.460 But if you're part of the select few

00:00:18.840 that are willing to do the work,

00:00:21.100 then this video is for you.

00:00:22.440 The first choice I would make is college or no college.

00:00:26.540 Here's the thing, the pros, you get to learn how to learn.

00:00:29.680 I can't tell you how many people finished high school

00:00:31.720 and they didn't learn the skill of learning.

00:00:34.300 College is gonna teach you that

00:00:35.420 because it gives you creative freedom

00:00:36.680 over the courses you get to pick.

00:00:38.320 It also gets you access to incredible mentors.

00:00:40.680 You know, when I think of like the professors

00:00:42.220 and the other teachers I've met

00:00:43.900 at the college or university level,

00:00:45.660 because they're gonna be getting called

00:00:46.720 by other CEOs of companies saying,

00:00:48.860 who are your top students

00:00:49.840 and recommending the people in those classes.

00:00:52.500 And the truth is, if you go to college,

00:00:54.600 you will come out with a higher pay.

00:00:57.220 If you get the degree, you get paid accordingly.

00:00:59.200 if you stay in that lane.

00:01:01.120 Not going to college?

00:01:02.200 I mean, first off, you get to start the thing

00:01:04.400 you actually wanna do.

00:01:05.800 See, college is in many ways a reason to delay just doing.

00:01:09.680 If you don't go, you get to start right away.

00:01:11.660 One of the big ones is the cost of college.

00:01:14.020 If you look at the cost of college,

00:01:15.700 it's gone up five, six, seven times.

00:01:17.600 Guess what has not gone up accordingly?

00:01:19.680 Your pay.

00:01:20.300 And then finally, how does AI change college?

00:01:23.500 What if nobody needs it because AI is your co-pilot?

00:01:26.480 and it has perfect information and PhD level knowledge

00:01:29.400 to help you do anything you want.

00:01:30.800 Is college really even need it?

00:01:32.660 That could very much be true

00:01:34.120 in the next 12 months, 24 months.

00:01:36.240 So if I was 18 again, my opinion, don't go to college.

00:01:39.920 I just don't think taking on debt

00:01:41.920 and becoming a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer

00:01:43.960 is the fastest way to a million anymore.

00:01:46.140 So now that I've decided to skip college

00:01:47.960 and save myself four years of sitting in a class,

00:01:50.760 it's time for the next choice,

00:01:52.160 getting a job or starting a business.

00:01:54.040 So pros of getting a job.

00:01:55.920 First off, jobs come with built-in mentors.

00:01:58.400 You're gonna be around other people

00:02:00.120 that are doing the thing that I'm assuming

00:02:01.980 you're gonna start in the future

00:02:03.120 if you wanna start your own business.

00:02:04.140 So you get to fast track your learning

00:02:06.060 by getting paid to learn.

00:02:08.180 The other one is structured skill building.

00:02:09.980 If you go work at the right place,

00:02:11.380 you're gonna be put in maybe into marketing

00:02:13.040 and then they're gonna move you into sales

00:02:14.560 and then you could go into operations.

00:02:16.400 In four years, you might come out of there 0.98

00:02:17.840 as a freaking weapon. 0.96

00:02:19.040 The other one is that it's low risk. 0.98

00:02:20.620 You're not putting your own money and time

00:02:23.000 into something and hoping it works out.

00:02:24.920 you're going to be learning the skills and somebody else is going to be paying you to do it.

00:02:28.020 So it's a heck of a lot lower risk than starting your own thing. On the other side, we have starting

00:02:31.720 your business. First off, unlimited income. You can literally get as rich as you possibly can get

00:02:37.760 based on your skill level and the opportunity in the market. It's up to you. That is not true in

00:02:42.820 a salaried position that you get when you do your own thing. Then you have unlimited upside, maybe

00:02:47.340 relationships or do really cool projects or travel the world doing what you love to do.

00:02:51.940 And the last is faster decision cycles.

00:02:54.420 I can't tell you how soul sucking

00:02:56.540 working for somebody else can feel

00:02:58.020 if you're in the wrong place.

00:02:59.240 When you're doing your own thing, guess what?

00:03:00.860 You decide what you wanna work on.

00:03:03.440 It's incredible.

00:03:04.340 That may not come if you're working for somebody else

00:03:06.220 because you're gonna be stuck in their vehicle

00:03:08.260 instead of building your own.

00:03:09.780 So if I was 18 again in this world, I'm doing my own thing.

00:03:13.600 Why?

00:03:13.920 Because the world has never been ready

00:03:15.720 for people to decide to do their own thing than right now.

00:03:18.380 All the tools that didn't exist,

00:03:19.760 all the opportunities, the people,

00:03:21.000 the customers are all available for you to talk to.

00:03:23.140 There's no lack of places to go learn.

00:03:25.460 If anything, you're going to be overwhelmed,

00:03:27.260 but that's the beauty.

00:03:28.180 So now that you decided to do your thing,

00:03:29.920 the next choice I would make is co-founder or go solo.

00:03:33.240 Both are awesome.

00:03:34.620 Having a co-founder,

00:03:35.820 the first thing is it has built-in accountability.

00:03:38.120 See, when you're doing everything yourself,

00:03:39.820 it is easy to decide to go down a path

00:03:42.360 that to any other person, if they're actually watching you,

00:03:45.060 would stop you from going down that path.

00:03:47.300 Having a co-founder can fill in the gaps around skill sets

00:03:50.000 that you don't naturally have that they bring to the table

00:03:52.300 and can be world-class at.

00:03:53.560 The other thing is having somebody else

00:03:54.980 that also believes in your crazy idea

00:03:56.540 sets you up in case you wanna raise money

00:03:58.220 because an investor's gonna go,

00:03:59.400 okay, if you convince one other person

00:04:01.020 that what you're doing could work,

00:04:02.640 then that's a good sign.

00:04:03.720 But then you could also go solo.

00:04:05.520 There's a lot of reasons why you'd wanna do this.

00:04:07.300 First off, it's a lot faster.

00:04:08.920 You don't have to build consensus when making decisions.

00:04:11.360 The other thing is you get to keep the whole business.

00:04:13.340 If I bring on a co-founder,

00:04:14.520 I might have to give up 50% of my business,

00:04:16.260 even more if they've got more skills and more capital

00:04:18.640 that they're bringing to the table.

00:04:19.620 and that might create more risk in my business.

00:04:21.520 The other one, the truth is, is it costs less.

00:04:23.540 You might have to pay yourself a little bit to get started.

00:04:25.540 And if you bring another person

00:04:26.460 that also needs to take a salary 0.98

00:04:27.760 and you've saved up some money,

00:04:28.900 all of a sudden those savings

00:04:29.940 start to dwindle really quick.

00:04:31.580 If I was starting over today,

00:04:32.900 the decision I would make is neither.

00:04:35.280 Because the truth is,

00:04:36.080 is I think you should look at a third option,

00:04:38.220 which is finding somebody could be a partner.

00:04:40.220 It doesn't mean a co-founder.

00:04:42.080 Language aside, a partner means

00:04:43.920 that they're involved in the business.

00:04:45.360 They might have a little bit of equity,

00:04:46.860 but you're still driving things forward.

00:04:48.960 I've been doing this for 28 years and I'll tell you,

00:04:51.360 everybody is in until it starts to hurt

00:04:53.840 and then we'll see who actually shows up.

00:04:57.000 So I like to use the word partner.

00:04:58.900 So there's two benefits to this strategy.

00:05:00.600 First off, you don't give up

00:05:01.860 one of the most expensive things, which is equity,

00:05:04.500 meaning the ownership in the business.

00:05:06.080 If somebody buys your business for $10 million

00:05:07.880 and somebody else owns 50%

00:05:10.320 and they're no longer part of the business,

00:05:12.540 trust me, when you write that check

00:05:13.900 for $5 million to that person,

00:05:15.460 it's gonna eat you up inside.

00:05:16.900 So to fix that, and this is the second part,

00:05:18.620 you need to use vesting what that means essentially saying like i'm willing to give you 10 of this

00:05:23.820 business as a partner but i'm only going to give you pieces of it over time most lawyers know how

00:05:29.340 to set this up and it's absolutely normal the reason why this works the best is you get the

00:05:33.420 benefit of having a co-founder aka partner that helps you to grow to be accountable to to pull

00:05:38.780 you up when you're feeling down and you're still driving the business and have the most ownership

00:05:43.100 in the company now that we have established that this next step could make or break your business

00:05:47.740 bootstrap or raise money? Bootstrap, which means you start the business through sweat equity. You're

00:05:53.420 doing the grind, you're borrowing resources, you're trying to sell to customers, you got no money.

00:05:58.080 The other one is you raise money from somebody else, which means they get a piece of your

00:06:02.160 business and some profit in the future. So my first successful company that I ended up building

00:06:06.660 and selling completely bootstrapped. I own 100% of the company after I bought out my partners.

00:06:11.600 The other two companies, I raise venture capital for both of them. So I have experience in both

00:06:16.620 sides of the equation. So the pros of raising money, first off, fast scale. You literally can

00:06:21.420 get the money, execute, buy the stuff, find the customers, hire the team. It is very fast. You get

00:06:27.460 a built-in investor network. Think about it. Having somebody give you money, well, now they're

00:06:31.180 incentivized to see you win. So if you need an introduction to somebody that you otherwise

00:06:34.900 wouldn't get to know that they know, they'll make that introduction. The doors open faster.

00:06:39.260 And the last one is validation. If you can sell investors to part with their hard-earned dollars

00:06:44.520 To invest in your company, it's a good sign you can sell customers.

00:06:47.920 Think about it, Shark Tank.

00:06:49.280 If an investor is investing in your company, they're going to want to see you win.

00:06:52.200 So like Mark Cuban was actually an investor in one of my companies.

00:06:54.680 So when I was hiring a CTO and I knew that they really like Mark's work,

00:06:58.280 I could ask Mark to send him a quick message to nudge him along the way.

00:07:01.680 That is powerful.

00:07:02.600 So not only did I get his resources, his money,

00:07:05.040 I also got his time and influence to help move the business forward.

00:07:08.280 Now, if you look at bootstrapping, here are some of those pros.

00:07:11.100 First off, you keep the ownership.

00:07:12.580 When you go exit your company for $10 million,

00:07:14.820 you get all $10 million.

00:07:16.420 And the most expensive equity is the early equity

00:07:18.940 you might have to give to an investor.

00:07:20.560 You also have no vision drift,

00:07:22.480 meaning that you have nobody else's agenda

00:07:24.740 or ideas steering the ship.

00:07:26.800 You get to make the decision with your vision in mind

00:07:29.400 and the only one that gets to decide that.

00:07:31.420 You also get to grow it at your own pace.

00:07:33.240 I mean, if you have investors,

00:07:34.360 they've got a window where they wanna see a return.

00:07:36.700 And if you're building for them,

00:07:38.160 then you gotta push and you might not wanna do that.

00:07:40.420 I mean, at the end of the day,

00:07:41.280 when they say lifestyle business you can still become a multi-millionaire creating a lifestyle

00:07:46.160 business that's incredible for your lifestyle. So if I was starting over today the choice I would

00:07:51.280 make is technically neither. I would do a thing called customer financing. Essentially I would

00:07:56.640 pre-sell to customers and have them invest without giving up equity to pre-buy my product or service

00:08:02.760 so that I could get their capital to start the business. If you want to start a lawn care company

00:08:07.140 go get 25 customers to prepay you for the season,

00:08:10.360 then go buy the lawnmower,

00:08:11.600 show up and start cutting their lawn.

00:08:12.880 See how that works?

00:08:13.600 This is my version of bootstrapping that works even better

00:08:16.320 because you get customer validation

00:08:18.360 or validation from the market

00:08:20.040 and you get the capital you need to go faster.

00:08:23.060 So this way, again, you get the best of both worlds.

00:08:26.060 So now that you got your plan for ownership,

00:08:27.580 it's time for the next step,

00:08:29.020 which is making the choice of niching down or going broad.

00:08:32.280 People often say the riches are in the niches,

00:08:35.940 but are they really?

00:08:37.140 So when I started my first company that finally made me money, I had to niche down from just

00:08:41.840 building software for everybody to only Fortune 500 companies. We're talking Procter & Gamble,

00:08:47.400 Dole Foods, Johnson & Johnson, these big companies, because that's what I knew really

00:08:51.400 best. And it turns out they were willing to pay the money I needed to invest in my team.

00:08:55.600 With that being said, there are a lot of pros to keeping it broad. So first off is that it's

00:09:00.240 easier to find them. I mean, you can literally like sell to a small business and run into about

00:09:04.480 dozen of them in a day at the mall. And lastly, it's just easier to start when the market is broad.

00:09:08.920 You don't have to have so much experience in the specific niche. You don't have to spend so much

00:09:13.000 money on like a specific solution for a customer type. You can essentially just get started and

00:09:17.880 find the customers easier. So now that we've addressed the pros of staying broad, now we got

00:09:22.400 to talk about why there's a benefit of going niche. First off, cheaper acquisition. When you're

00:09:27.080 creating ads and you're being super specific, you're essentially spending less money because

00:09:31.740 the ad platform doesn't have to try to find the customer. You can literally tell it that I only

00:09:36.680 want to sell to this type of person. And it's only going to show the ad to those people. It also

00:09:40.800 comes with higher close rates. If you think about when you're having a conversation about fitness,

00:09:44.440 if I specialize in helping menopausal women with specific fitness goals, that's a lot more

00:09:50.440 interesting than just saying I'm a personal trainer and I help everybody. So the women are 1.00

00:09:55.040 going to buy quicker because I specialize in their specific pain. The last one is the word

00:09:58.920 of mouth flywheel. Because you're so specialized, people that buy from you, you get them results a

00:10:03.480 lot quicker. They're going to tell everybody. It's like the wind that you get them infects the whole

00:10:08.240 market and everybody starts referring to you because you only do that thing and you're not

00:10:12.620 broad for everybody. So with all that in mind, if I had to make a choice today between going broad

00:10:17.600 or staying super niche, I would niche down as soon as possible. The reason why is that when you start,

00:10:23.720 It is so hard to get traction

00:10:26.140 that if you try to be everything to everybody,

00:10:28.560 you won't be anything to anybody.

00:10:30.340 I'm telling you, the marketing is harder,

00:10:33.080 the sales conversation's harder, the product is harder.

00:10:36.020 I mean, I see people literally going out of business,

00:10:38.400 not because they don't have enough opportunity,

00:10:40.220 it's because they sell too many different things

00:10:42.080 to too many people and they get overwhelmed

00:10:44.240 and then there's bugs and issues

00:10:46.020 and complexity in their business.

00:10:47.600 Picking a niche will make you rich.

00:10:49.820 So now that you've decided to go niche,

00:10:51.540 the next choice you gotta make is,

00:10:53.360 do I get a coach or do I do it myself? When I started, I went at it alone and I struggled.

00:10:59.300 I had two failed companies before I ever made my first dollar. And the truth was,

00:11:02.740 is I eventually had to hire a coach, this guy named Bob, who taught me how to do it.

00:11:06.920 And it was crazy because I was paying him 1500 bucks a month and it completely changed my

00:11:10.860 business. But I've also started businesses and I didn't have a coach and that had a completely

00:11:15.160 different outcome. So let's talk about the pros of either doing it yourself or hiring a coach.

00:11:18.880 If you do it yourself, first thing, simple, you save the money.

00:11:22.320 I mean, when you start, cash is tight

00:11:24.000 and every dollar that goes out is a dollar you don't have.

00:11:26.780 The other pro is that you get to build the business

00:11:28.640 through your vision, not tainted through somebody else

00:11:31.000 that might've done it five years ago

00:11:32.380 because the world's completely changed.

00:11:33.860 On the other side, getting a coach is like a mentor

00:11:35.920 and mentors bring the map.

00:11:37.780 Having somebody that you could pay

00:11:39.460 to give you access to the map

00:11:41.120 to show you exactly how to build your business

00:11:43.420 is incredibly fast.

00:11:45.300 The other benefit is you have somebody else

00:11:47.080 to give you feedback.

00:11:48.240 And the cool part is they've been there before.

00:11:50.220 And so you get to avoid giving up equity

00:11:52.280 or raising money from investors

00:11:53.640 so you get all the benefits without losing control.

00:11:56.220 It also comes with accountability.

00:11:57.980 You know, when you spend money to get advice,

00:12:00.700 trust me, you will pay attention.

00:12:02.200 When we pay, we pay attention.

00:12:03.640 And oftentimes I say transformation for ourselves

00:12:06.280 happens at the transaction.

00:12:07.960 So again, if I was starting out from scratch

00:12:09.960 and I had to make that choice today,

00:12:11.440 I would 100% get a mentor.

00:12:12.940 I personally have an unlimited budget

00:12:14.820 for my health and education.

00:12:16.980 I mean, think about it for yourself.

00:12:18.280 If you've gotten good at something,

00:12:19.800 maybe it took you 10 years to learn an instrument,

00:12:21.920 knowing what you know now,

00:12:22.960 if I took everything away from you,

00:12:24.240 how much faster could you have gotten there?

00:12:26.380 That's the benefit of having a mentor in your life

00:12:28.660 is they'll save you literally decades of time.

00:12:31.540 So these choices will help you get to your first million,

00:12:35.000 but we don't wanna stop there.

00:12:36.560 How do you multiply it?

00:12:38.060 The final choice you need to make is do you scale or exit?

00:12:41.940 Exit the business, make a bunch of cash

00:12:43.720 or keep scaling it to generate more profit.

00:12:46.060 I get the call all the time.

00:12:47.580 People going like, man, I'm burnt out

00:12:49.500 and I think I wanna sell.

00:12:50.860 Or others going like, man, I'm getting calls

00:12:52.540 from people who wanna buy my business.

00:12:54.440 Should I keep building or should I exit now?

00:12:56.160 I don't know.

00:12:56.880 When I was 28, I was getting those emails, those calls.

00:13:00.280 Hey, Dave, we wanna buy your business.

00:13:01.480 Hey, Dave, we wanna buy your business.

00:13:02.420 But you gotta understand, I just built this thing,

00:13:04.780 struggled for two, three years.

00:13:06.820 Finally, it was getting some momentum.

00:13:08.960 And I didn't have anybody to turn to

00:13:10.800 who had gone through this,

00:13:11.900 trying to wrestle with the pros and cons

00:13:13.560 of selling or keep building.

00:13:15.000 So because of that, I had to think like,

00:13:17.180 what are the pros to each decision?

00:13:18.840 Selling gives you cash in the bank.

00:13:20.660 Essentially, it reduces the risk of being in the market.

00:13:23.500 It gives you liquidity

00:13:24.300 and you can take that money and invest it.

00:13:26.000 And if you do it right,

00:13:26.900 you may never have to work another day

00:13:28.340 for the rest of your life.

00:13:29.140 The other benefit is getting that capital

00:13:31.240 creates an opportunity for you to reinvest

00:13:33.360 and have ammo to do bigger deals.

00:13:35.360 I mean, now you can transition from being an operator

00:13:37.780 and just stressing under the build of the business

00:13:39.740 to investing in other people

00:13:41.560 and creating diversity in your investment

00:13:43.720 so you don't have all of your personal net worth

00:13:45.860 tied up into one company.

00:13:47.480 On the other hand, you have the option

00:13:49.140 of keeping the business, which the truth is, check this out.

00:13:52.000 If you actually ask yourself how much money per month

00:13:54.500 you would need to live this wildly awesome life,

00:13:57.360 it's not that much.

00:13:58.540 For most people, it's like $100,000 a month,

00:14:00.980 which I know sounds wild.

00:14:01.940 But if you think about that potential

00:14:03.720 of building the business to that level,

00:14:05.700 then you have the beautiful home,

00:14:07.500 a couple of really cool cars,

00:14:08.940 the ability to travel the world,

00:14:10.340 and that monthly cashflow becomes consistent

00:14:13.220 the bigger the business gets.

00:14:14.500 There's a lot of benefits to keeping the business.

00:14:16.500 First off, you don't have to worry about

00:14:18.300 what are you gonna go and do with all that money?

00:14:20.300 Trust me, most people that exit their business,

00:14:22.420 they can't find a safe, reliable thing to invest in

00:14:25.900 that was as predictable as their previous business

00:14:28.300 they just exited.

00:14:29.280 Having that company just creates consistency in your life

00:14:32.360 so it makes it less stressful.

00:14:33.620 You also get more upside because you take that money,

00:14:36.040 you reinvest it in your existing business,

00:14:37.880 which you know really well, and it keeps growing

00:14:39.980 so you have more upside later.

00:14:41.740 I mean, somebody might give you 10 million today,

00:14:44.040 but they might give you 50 million in three years.

00:14:46.200 And that path is a lot more predictable than selling today.

00:14:49.260 So if I was starting over today,

00:14:51.040 my choice would be to sell.

00:14:53.620 Specifically when growth plateaus or passion fades.

00:14:56.120 I mean, when I think about selling my companies,

00:14:58.060 when I felt that either,

00:14:59.780 hey, I didn't love to sell to this customer anymore,

00:15:02.140 it kind of grew into something that I didn't enjoy,

00:15:04.140 or the opportunities to keep learning and growing

00:15:06.960 was not found in my current business.

00:15:08.760 So the passion faded for the thing I was doing.

00:15:11.300 and then exiting made a lot of sense.

00:15:13.740 The key here is to call it before it's too late.

00:15:16.280 If you look to sell,

00:15:17.700 once you're like absolutely burnt out and tired,

00:15:20.200 the buyer is gonna have the advantage.

00:15:21.960 You wanna get that decision made

00:15:23.700 before you get to that place.

00:15:25.160 Think about like a UFC fighter.

00:15:26.900 Them deciding to retire is always best to do it at the height,

00:15:30.240 not after they got completely knocked out on the last fight.

00:15:33.100 But there's an asterisk.

00:15:34.240 If you really enjoy your business,

00:15:36.280 then maybe you keep building and here's why.

00:15:38.660 If you're buying my business,

00:15:39.820 you're essentially buying years of perfect execution.

00:15:43.460 So if you're only buying one year of perfect execution

00:15:46.480 in regards to what you're gonna pay me for,

00:15:47.820 then I'm probably just gonna keep building.

00:15:49.320 Like when I look at my life today,

00:15:50.700 I've got Martell Media and Martell Ventures

00:15:52.600 and both of them have actually been built up

00:15:54.340 so I could exit them today.

00:15:55.960 I think it's just a great way to build a company,

00:15:57.760 but I wouldn't because if I sold them,

00:16:00.100 the first thing I would do

00:16:01.020 the day after the transaction completed

00:16:02.840 was to do it over again

00:16:04.220 because my life that I'm living

00:16:06.160 is literally the life that I wanted to design.

00:16:08.100 that is the thing that you want to get right so that you don't struggle with these decisions

00:16:13.120 so those are the choices i would make if i wanted to go from broke to millionaire starting at 18

00:16:18.740 years old and that's essentially the advice i gave my friend josh he was 18 struggling life

00:16:23.620 parents wanted to go to university he's like i just want to start and i said bro if you know

00:16:28.520 it's on your heart to start a business in the future you don't have to go to university to

00:16:32.460 start just make a commitment to yourself bet on yourself go all in on you it won't be easy you

00:16:39.580 won't have your parents support you will have a lot of people misunderstand you you got to be

00:16:43.820 willing to go long periods of time being misunderstood before you win but guess what

00:16:47.500 will happen the day you win your parents will tell all their friends oh my god my son is so successful

00:16:53.260 there's going to be a period where you're going to have to go through it and make these decisions

00:16:56.700 but trust me on the other side it'll all be worth it now if you want to learn how to build a business

00:17:01.580 that runs itself, click here and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - October 14, 2025

I’m 45. If You’re 18 to 30, Watch This…

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