Dan Martell - October 14, 2025


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


Episode Stats

Length

17 minutes

Words per Minute

231.64372

Word Count

3,953

Sentence Count

210


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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
00:02:17.840 as a freaking weapon.
00:02:19.040 The other one is that it's low risk.
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
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
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.