Dan Martell - April 27, 2026


The Only Skill You Need to Make Money in 2026

Topics
building relationships
Hosted by
Dan Martell
Mentioned
John Maxwell Rob Dyrdek Wild Grinders John Louis Chris Dude Josh
This is Your Last Chance to Get Rich (Before AI Replaces You) The Only 14 Ways to Make Money with AI in 2026

Episode Stats


Length

20 minutes

Words per minute

187.88

Word count

3,866

Sentence count

202

Harmful content

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode of the podcast, I sit down with my good friend and business partner, Lewis, to talk about how important it is to have good relationships. We talk about what it takes to be a good friend, what it means to have a good relationship, and why it's so important to have them in your life.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 If you want to make more money this year, there's one skill that if you master will easily make you
00:00:05.400 more money than mastering sales, marketing, or AI ever could. And I've been able to master this
00:00:10.380 skill over 30 years in business by going from broke 24-year-old to now building $100 million
00:00:15.120 a year AI Venture Studio and getting opportunities daily that I never thought were possible.
00:00:19.620 The skill is building relationships and it can make you a ton of money. But there's four reasons
00:00:25.600 why you need to master this skill that if you understand will almost guarantee your success.
00:00:30.580 Starting with reason number one, steel sharpens steel.
00:00:38.180 What I think people don't invest enough in is in relationships. I flew 3,000 miles to go meet
00:00:47.120 somebody I care deeply about for 28 minutes. Even seeing Louis, like he's a very old friend. I've
00:00:55.020 know lewis for 12 years you know he just had his twins and he's somebody i adore and like look if
00:01:01.600 he wants to do the pot i'd love to and but i just want to see lewis you know rob's the same thing
00:01:06.580 it's like last time i saw rob we were supposed to hang out for an hour and talk about his new
00:01:11.000 software company and four hours later we forgot to go to dinner and you know talk like two college
00:01:16.200 friends that hadn't seen each other in a while right and and now i'm excited to do that again
00:01:20.220 so i think the best relationships are the ones where you feel like you've got a lot to learn
00:01:24.100 and also you can contribute to.
00:01:26.020 The ways you make money, the skills you have,
00:01:28.540 get multiplied immediately
00:01:29.980 when you build the right relationships.
00:01:32.060 And I have so many stories that it's hard for me
00:01:33.920 to choose which ones I wanna share.
00:01:37.260 Someone that we really like consuming their content
00:01:39.840 is a guy by the name of Taki Moore.
00:01:42.040 And I know that you're quite close with him.
00:01:43.860 He's one of my best friends.
00:01:44.680 And we've talked about mentorship and helping people out.
00:01:49.400 And what has he helped you with
00:01:51.800 in this next chapter of your life,
00:01:54.420 the offer creation, the personal brand space content,
00:01:57.740 maybe could help one of our listeners as well.
00:02:01.580 I have a lot of love for Taki.
00:02:03.200 I wouldn't be teaching people if it wasn't for Taki.
00:02:06.300 As a software guy, I've always built software companies.
00:02:08.380 I'm a software guy.
00:02:09.220 And then the best relationships you can have
00:02:11.780 are people that not only you can learn from,
00:02:14.260 but you can also support.
00:02:15.560 And I think a lot of people, they never get those friends.
00:02:18.300 You guys have that for each other.
00:02:19.620 I can see it.
00:02:20.660 I brought Taki in eight years ago
00:02:23.480 to just help me formulate the frame.
00:02:25.780 Like I didn't know any of that stuff, the IP stuff.
00:02:28.300 How do you do the YouTube stuff and all that?
00:02:30.180 And then Taki, two years ago, he hired me to coach him.
00:02:35.180 That's hilarious.
00:02:36.120 It's hilarious, but you need to understand our relationship.
00:02:38.320 Like we're homies.
00:02:39.160 I mentioned him in my book, like steel sharpens steel.
00:02:42.720 Like we're still like these two school kids
00:02:44.880 just being like, hey bro, what are you up to?
00:02:46.100 So look at this.
00:02:46.940 And like, we just banter.
00:02:49.020 We're gonna get him on the show,
00:02:49.860 which I'm super excited about.
00:02:50.960 This has been so much fun, Dan.
00:02:52.560 Reason number two, it pays to be intentional.
00:02:55.320 See, most people treat relationships
00:02:56.800 like it's a soft skill, something you do,
00:02:58.520 like a nice to have.
00:02:59.480 It's not.
00:03:00.220 The relationships you have shape who you become,
00:03:02.980 whether you realize it or not.
00:03:04.220 What I've always admired about Louis
00:03:06.260 that it took me a while to appreciate
00:03:08.540 and actually double down on is the personal brand.
00:03:12.020 Louis was one of the first people
00:03:13.460 that hired a professional photographer
00:03:16.020 to do photography for his website.
00:03:19.320 like 10 years ago, we're walking around Toronto
00:03:22.160 and we can't go a block without him getting stopped.
00:03:25.260 And I was like, bro, how crazy is this?
00:03:27.300 So to see him, I mean, be on talk shows
00:03:31.460 and the accolades and interview everybody,
00:03:34.880 like everybody, has been just,
00:03:38.000 I cannot be a bigger fan of.
00:03:40.480 Lewis, don't you leave me.
00:03:44.680 I was hoping to see the twins on my house.
00:03:46.840 No.
00:03:49.400 The last time I saw Louis was two years ago in 2024.
00:03:53.520 And I haven't seen him since.
00:03:55.520 And then I see him now and I'm like, bro,
00:03:57.880 we can't go another two years
00:03:59.720 without seeing each other again.
00:04:01.300 Greatness.
00:04:02.760 Dude, I was just bragging you up about the greatness.
00:04:04.600 I remember that, I remember where I was driving
00:04:07.160 when you, hey bro, I bought the domain.
00:04:09.360 Oh really?
00:04:10.200 Cause I remember thinking, that's a big boy, bro.
00:04:13.240 It was fun.
00:04:14.080 Yeah.
00:04:16.840 Look at this.
00:04:17.780 This is the green room here.
00:04:19.940 Pro.
00:04:21.460 Oh my gosh.
00:04:22.740 This is like, this is LA.
00:04:25.600 I love being around just different people.
00:04:28.420 Like, I think you asked me that, right?
00:04:29.920 Like, it's like, how do you choose the people you end up being friends with?
00:04:33.320 And I'm like, I like people that bring different perspectives.
00:04:36.120 And like, I was talking about like, you know, the personal brand stuff.
00:04:39.400 You know this.
00:04:39.960 Like, I've always been pro photos in New York City with that guy.
00:04:43.400 I was like, you were early, man.
00:04:44.540 People had blogs. 0.93
00:04:45.280 It was like bullsh** templates.
00:04:46.500 and then lewis launches his blog and it's like all right bro are you a pro model what are we doing
00:04:51.380 here man it's like lifestyle shots you don't have skills you have to think you know when you don't
00:04:56.820 have real talent right like you yeah man i'm slow to like as you i mean you you showed me for like
00:05:02.500 six seven years and i was like yeah but now you're doing it i'm doing it man i have the coolest new
00:05:08.900 best friend his name is john maxwell leadership goat wrote so many incredible books that guy from
00:05:14.980 ohio by the way people come into your life to show you what's possible i know you do that for
00:05:20.180 everybody that follows that is that is what you're here to do and you do it so well and and and it's
00:05:25.140 always funny people like is lewis the real deal the realest of deals please get into him get to
00:05:29.460 know lewis and and john's one of those you know when they say don't meet your heroes yeah unless
00:05:33.300 his name is john maxwell oh my gosh what a great human so i'm hanging out with them this is not
00:05:39.060 long ago maybe four years ago and we're talking and i'm just blown away at him at his event he's
00:05:44.340 He's just such a Christian person.
00:05:45.840 And I asked him, I said, how do you do it?
00:05:48.700 You know, he goes, oh, it's, whew, I didn't know I'd do any of this.
00:05:52.440 And then he tells me something that just shifted everything.
00:05:55.000 He talked about the biggest impact.
00:05:57.440 He says, I have goals that are God-sized goals.
00:06:01.940 And they're so big, they're beyond my ability to know how to do them.
00:06:06.280 And they're so big that it's the ceiling of his floor.
00:06:10.860 How did that impact my life?
00:06:12.380 oh I was under indexing I was thinking small I didn't have god-sized goals
00:06:18.080 oh was that like a turning point for you yeah conversation it was a core moment that I realized
00:06:25.580 that happened to get me to the point where I can have this conversation
00:06:35.960 to then take the brakes off.
00:06:39.620 Lewis and I have known each other since 2009.
00:06:42.740 Two guys still figuring it out.
00:06:44.640 And I watched him for 15 years
00:06:46.780 build the school of greatness,
00:06:48.740 write the books, build the brand, the mission.
00:06:51.160 He didn't do that by being the smartest person in the world.
00:06:53.540 He did it by being intentional
00:06:55.120 about who he was learning from.
00:06:56.960 That's literally the premise of this entire show.
00:06:59.100 That's the master skill in action.
00:07:00.880 It's not a single lesson.
00:07:02.360 It's that the right relationship
00:07:03.940 compounds across everything you're already building i always thought you were a little
00:07:07.680 taller for some reason shut up bro you're like you're telling me i'm shrinking now i am six
00:07:11.680 three no i'm not i am i'm six four no grab a grab a measure i'm six four yeah yeah but more than an 0.93
00:07:17.680 i think it's your shoulders i think i'm like i have a handball is that it yeah my shoulders
00:07:22.280 It's probably the same idea.
00:07:23.000 Is that what's wrong with you?
00:07:24.880 I'll get you around.
00:07:30.680 You think there's actual cost to not investing in relationships?
00:07:35.340 Yeah, the wrong people will take you out faster than any other decision in your life.
00:07:40.600 Being with the wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time can get you thrown in jail.
00:07:45.540 That's in a life context.
00:07:46.840 In a business context, the person that's always getting sued, guess what?
00:07:50.520 given enough time you'll be on the receiving end of that the people around you set the invisible
00:07:55.640 ceiling on what feels normal so if everyone in your circle thinks 200 000 is crushing it guess
00:08:01.160 what 200 000 feels like enough most people aren't surrounded by bad people they're surrounded by
00:08:06.360 limited people think about that i can't think of a better example of that than when we were in
00:08:10.680 dallas at the book meetup in this awesome warehouse filled with literally millions of dollars of
00:08:15.240 supercars with a bunch of ceos and high performers who didn't feel limited at that event there was a
00:08:20.200 12 year old boy who came up to me at the very end to ask this cool question and i know for a fact
00:08:24.680 that being in that circle is going to make him money not cost him you young man you're last what
00:08:30.280 do you got your name joseph uh if you were 12 years old starting from zero uh what would you
00:08:37.160 focus on for the next 12 months to be able to build an icon what are you doing here man i was
00:08:41.880 not how old are you i love that you're here i appreciate that 12 years old who is in a room
00:08:48.280 like this at 12 put your hand up yeah i was in the opposite of a room like this at 12. so the
00:08:53.720 question he asked is if you're 12 years old and you want to be successful what would you focus
00:08:57.480 on for the next 12 months the fact that he asked that question is the reason why he's going to win
00:09:01.720 it's like asking a parent that read a book on being a good parent is it because of the book or
00:09:06.120 the fact that you wanted to read the book see what i'm saying the fact that you asked the question
00:09:11.320 is all i need to know i'm buying his stock so the good news is you already made it pressure's off
00:09:17.800 If you're trying to optimize it, get around other people like the people in this room, okay?
00:09:22.220 There's a reason why everybody drove to come here instead of going, doing something with their friends
00:09:25.860 or watching a sports game or going to a bar or just deciding to lay down and scroll.
00:09:29.920 They didn't do that.
00:09:30.700 They showed up for this room.
00:09:31.680 So the people in this room are self-selecting, being driven, motivated, having vision, want to be better.
00:09:36.320 That's rare.
00:09:37.740 That makes sense.
00:09:38.120 Super rare.
00:09:39.100 But, dude, you're 12.
00:09:41.540 I want you to be so rich.
00:09:42.880 every adult in this room wonders why they sat on their hands instead of going all in on it because
00:09:47.840 trust me they will most people their mind is baked at 27 so if you're above 27 you have to work harder
00:09:56.080 he's 12 he's perfect the malleable so dude get in there be the guy they all turn to for advice
00:10:03.760 and you're gonna crush life. Does that make sense? Cool. Three, two, one.
00:10:15.600 Reason number four, it's not who you know, it's who knows you.
00:10:19.680 Networking used to be cold emails, awkward events, picking brains. The truth is that feels like work.
00:10:27.440 It's exhausting. It's slow. You waste a lot of time and it doesn't scale.
00:10:31.600 networking now is simple make content add value and relationships and opportunities come to you
00:10:37.920 the supercar warehouse that's tactical fleet in dallas texas and the reason we were there is
00:10:42.160 because the owner reached out so we're flying into dallas for a speaking thing this guy on
00:10:46.880 instagram messaged me he's like hey man see you're coming to dallas need a drive and i look at his
00:10:51.360 profile it's supercar dealership and i'm like uh i'm i think i'm good but what do you got he's like
00:10:57.760 I'm like, what do you like?
00:10:58.660 I said, I like a Rolls Royce with a Mandarin orange
00:11:02.300 interior of the green.
00:11:03.720 I don't know if you're asking, I've got some thoughts.
00:11:05.700 He goes, I actually have one of those.
00:11:07.240 I said, bet, pick me up at the airport.
00:11:09.120 And he rolled up on the tarmac.
00:11:12.060 And that's how I met Chris.
00:11:13.840 Every DM from someone who wants to work with you,
00:11:16.440 that's your platform doing the networking while you sleep.
00:11:19.440 Think about it.
00:11:20.260 Did the effort to post a video that's being seen
00:11:22.520 by 14 million people, is it any different than 140?
00:11:25.940 No, you put it out, you didn't chase the next relationship.
00:11:29.820 It came to you, not because of who you know,
00:11:32.700 because of who knows you.
00:11:34.280 That's how I ended up with a DM from Rob Dyrdek.
00:11:36.620 At the end of every year, I always look at my goals
00:11:39.700 and then I write down relationships
00:11:42.340 that I would love to create that would help the goals.
00:11:46.460 And I wrote Rob's name on there, okay?
00:11:48.740 There's several names, but Rob Dyrdek was on there, okay?
00:11:52.040 I don't know Rob, obviously I had a few mutual friends,
00:11:55.000 but I wrote his name down.
00:11:57.040 I'm in my office one day, and I get a text message.
00:12:00.560 Hey, Dan, it's Rob Dearden. 0.96
00:12:02.600 I'm like, shut up, okay?
00:12:05.540 Rob is an impressive guy. 0.86
00:12:08.080 If you don't know who he is,
00:12:09.320 he's the founder of Street League Skateboarding,
00:12:12.000 and you've probably seen him on TV shows
00:12:14.000 like Fantasy Factory, Ridiculousness, or Wild Grinders.
00:12:17.920 Wild Grinders!
00:12:20.120 On top of being a 20-some time world record holder,
00:12:23.120 He also runs a venture studio,
00:12:26.540 where he's building an app called existence.io.
00:12:30.900 He goes on, he's like, I read your book
00:12:33.980 and it really helped me with my software.
00:12:37.160 He read software as a science.
00:12:38.680 He didn't read Buy Back Your Time.
00:12:40.680 And then he said, in that book,
00:12:42.060 you mentioned Buy Back Your Time and I'm a time guy.
00:12:44.940 So then I read that book.
00:12:46.360 And then he reached, he texted me.
00:12:47.640 He goes, I got your number from my friend.
00:12:49.600 And if you're ever in LA, let me know.
00:12:51.860 love to chat i shot a video right away i just like went i have a skateboard behind my desk
00:12:58.420 and i was like hey rob i appreciate you reaching out i used to skate like there's my deck i've
00:13:03.380 never met somebody that lives in vision and refuses to come down to earth it is crazy because
00:13:10.340 like that's how the tables turn i've known about rob for two decades and then one day the tables
00:13:15.380 turned because of the content and he reached out to me so now when i'm in la we always get together 0.85
00:13:20.100 He inspires the sh** out of me, man.
00:13:21.600 His brain is awesome. 0.94
00:13:24.600 Josh, listen, I'm great.
00:13:26.280 We have to come down.
00:13:27.160 It was to spend the time with you,
00:13:29.000 but ultimately share the progress from where we were before,
00:13:32.040 but not too long, like it happened last time.
00:13:35.120 My favorite, Rob, story to tell.
00:13:37.060 I'm grateful that you would come all the way out there.
00:13:40.300 Good luck, y'all.
00:13:40.980 I appreciate it.
00:13:41.240 Thanks a lot.
00:13:50.700 And that's what it feels like when you get it right.
00:13:52.760 You lose track of time, you forget dinner,
00:13:55.100 you walk away thinking, we need to do that again.
00:13:57.640 That's what happens when the right people find you.
00:14:00.260 But here's where most people stop.
00:14:02.140 They get the connection and they don't invest in it.
00:14:04.580 Real quick, if you're a business owner
00:14:06.140 that wants to scale their business,
00:14:07.880 this year I created a scaling workbook
00:14:09.880 that you can use to get through all six phases of business.
00:14:12.540 If you want it, just message me,
00:14:14.120 scale YouTube on Instagram at Dan Martell,
00:14:16.960 and I'll send it over to you 100% free.
00:14:20.100 so here's the strategy invest in your relationship with time yes but put some money behind it buy the
00:14:25.780 plane ticket show up for the event host the dinner invite the people put yourself out there actively
00:14:32.900 intentionally you got to put people on your goals list because the relationships that will change
00:14:37.700 your life don't maintain themselves you have to choose them over and over again reinvest show up
00:14:45.220 be there nobody has shown me what that looks like better than john maxwell yeah he's my spirit animal
00:14:51.140 yeah he's the guy i look up to and i say if my life looks a fraction like that person's life i
00:14:56.340 won yeah that's cool yeah what is it like speaking on stage just like this right now for john
00:15:03.620 it's wild it's wild it's it's actually it was hard for me not to get emotional just like
00:15:15.220 So I went to the event and then after we had the opportunity to catch up.
00:15:20.060 And now I've been working on a new book.
00:15:22.360 And having John in my life has inspired me more than anything.
00:15:25.980 And when I was leaving and he offered to be helpful anyway, he's just like, hey, Dan,
00:15:29.840 just help me.
00:15:31.340 I wasn't prepared for what he said.
00:15:33.340 Hey.
00:15:34.340 How are you?
00:15:35.340 How are you?
00:15:36.340 How are you doing?
00:15:37.340 Really good to see you.
00:15:38.340 Thanks for having me.
00:15:39.340 John.
00:15:40.340 Come on, buddy.
00:15:41.340 How you doing?
00:15:42.340 How you doing?
00:15:43.180 Well, my day is, it's definitely my day.
00:15:46.340 It's awesome to see you.
00:15:47.180 It's so good to see you.
00:15:48.160 Thanks for having me.
00:15:49.000 Thanks for coming.
00:15:50.140 I used to keep relationships almost transactional, right?
00:15:52.760 Surface level, because it was safe.
00:15:54.380 I curated, I showed up, I didn't disclose too much.
00:15:57.240 But when I started showing up, fully showing up as me,
00:16:01.260 and then organizing my own trips, hosting my own dinner,
00:16:03.860 flying across the country, just to be in the same room
00:16:06.280 as somebody to celebrate them, because I admire them.
00:16:08.760 The quality of relationships and the opportunities
00:16:11.320 came from showing up that way completely changed having john as somebody that i can message and
00:16:17.400 text and ask for life advice it feels like i'm wearing a cape it gives me a superpower because
00:16:23.320 i can be more bold i can take risks because i got him as a buddy yeah two and a half years the next
00:16:28.760 book is coming out in january it's been wild it was the fall off to buy back your time on your
00:16:34.200 title i can't tell you what it is but when i see it i know it the book's written so it's the
00:16:39.800 the packaging so like i don't know i just i consider books the most um craft thing i do
00:16:47.060 a book is a picture it's just a picture it's just it's and it done right it's a piece of art
00:16:53.220 but it's a picture and it goes i mean that's the picture that's what but it stays with people
00:16:59.160 and what's amiss is the subtitle almost always is more important than the title yeah it's the
00:17:06.100 subtitle that draws them in yeah you know i think it was our first conversation i asked you about
00:17:13.080 the 21 irrefutable laws and what number book he said it was number 13 oh yeah it was way that was
00:17:21.520 like whoa okay right right right really it has to be stored up before it shows up and what happens
00:17:30.760 is oh that's good some people want to show up and they got nothing stored up and when it
00:17:36.020 shows up without it being down without it being stored up everybody says it's not any good it's
00:17:41.780 flat because you could tell you could there's no lived experience and so it has to have time
00:17:48.660 some things you just can't plan for you can't engineer them you can't time them they only
00:17:53.540 happen because you take a chance and you invest in a person genuinely consistently with no specific
00:17:59.440 outcome in mind and then one day that relationship might hand you something you could have never
00:18:05.080 prepared for? For me, that was a simple question.
00:18:35.080 yeah you just let me know what you need we're partners we kick around together i'm serious
00:18:40.760 i'm so proud of what you're doing you know how like every young man wants nothing more than to
00:18:45.740 hear their dad say they're proud of them yeah that was like times 100 for me having john offer and
00:18:51.780 wanting to do that that was like i mean i there wasn't a moment i was ever writing a sentence in
00:18:57.700 that book that i didn't think i hope if john ever reads this i hope he doesn't but if he does that
00:19:02.340 he's like okay this isn't shitty because like he's the guy the fact that he's willing to do that just
00:19:09.340 means the world but i want to tell you something book writing stay right with it because man those
00:19:16.500 are markers those are markers in your life and i probably the more that you put those markers down
00:19:22.640 it starts to compound in a different way it really does that's cool and then you're just
00:19:28.520 doing good i wish your first book was a lot better than my first book john is my spirit animal he's
00:19:34.360 written 92 books he is the goat he has more energy than most 18 year olds he's sharp he's kind
00:19:44.360 he's he's he's giving of himself to a fault some same sometimes and and i know i can be
00:19:50.660 again it's everybody's different but i always thought like before i ever met john i gave him
00:19:54.740 the power of my opinion. The people that are going to win are the ones that understand that
00:20:05.740 their relationships, who knows them, how they're talked about, their personal brand. Being out
00:20:10.780 there is the highest form of leverage. So if you're down to do this, type people in the comments.
00:20:16.660 Make sure that people is the number one investment you make this year outside of AI.
00:20:20.800 and again if you want a workbook to scale your business just message me scale youtube on
00:20:26.020 instagram at damartell and i'll send it over and if you want to learn the systems you need to scale
00:20:30.420 your business that go along with the workbook click the video and i'll see you on the other side