Dan Martell - May 27, 2025


The Only Skill You Need to Make Your First $1M


Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

202.92654

Word count

3,712

Sentence count

181

Harmful content

Toxicity

8

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, I teach you how to go door-to-door and make millions of dollars from selling to strangers. If you don't know how to sell, this episode is for you! 1. Sales and Persuasion 2. Body language 3. Secure

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 .
00:00:00.000 I taught a hundred kids this one skill that if you learn it, you're almost guaranteed to make
00:00:05.480 your first million. I've gone from dead broke at 24 to a millionaire at 27. And today I help
00:00:11.380 business owners generate millions for themselves. In fact, I've helped over 10,000 business owners
00:00:16.600 around the world get rich, but I'm on a mission to make young millionaires. So I'm going to take
00:00:21.540 you behind the scenes and show you how to make millions. Even if you're starting from nothing,
00:00:30.000 Now, this one skill will make you a millionaire, but there's also three other skills that if you
00:00:35.460 stack them, it's a guarantee. The first skill is sales and persuasion. A business is started the
00:00:41.860 moment you sell something to a stranger. Not before, not getting ready, not registering your
00:00:47.700 incorporation, not setting up your Stripe account, not getting the website ready, not setting up your
00:00:52.260 Instagram. The moment a stranger buys from you, the business is started. Now, there's only three
00:00:57.420 s's of selling that if you understand you're able to get somebody to part with their money which is
00:01:02.540 wild and awesome the first time you do it the first point is that the first sale starts with
00:01:07.980 yourself you ever talk to somebody and they're saying all the right things but you know damn well
00:01:11.580 they don't believe in themselves yeah their eyes are twitchy or they're too aggressive or they're
00:01:16.140 like it's almost like they're reading from a script and it's it's it feels bull like it's not real
00:01:22.060 whereas other people when they talk they don't even have to talk fast they don't have to use big 0.97
00:01:26.380 words they don't have to be aggressive in their ass they just talk with a level of confidence 0.97
00:01:31.100 and certainty and you go oh that person believes in what they're talking about does that make sense 0.99
00:01:36.060 say yes see when i'm talking to somebody about what they sell and i look them in the eyes it's
00:01:40.700 not do i believe you it's do i believe you believe in what you're saying i can tell and if i feel you
00:01:47.020 haven't sold yourself i'm not buying the second is signal your body language how you show up
00:01:52.620 Have you ever talked to somebody and they can't even look you in the eyes?
00:01:57.220 As soon as I look somebody in the eye and they look away, especially if they're a salesperson,
00:02:01.500 I just see somebody that's not confident in themselves, hence they're not confident in
00:02:04.940 the product and they're not confident in the ability to service the sale.
00:02:07.760 Anytime you buy something from somebody, you're asking yourself, will this person take care
00:02:11.640 of me after the sale?
00:02:13.560 So if you want to go door to door, like I said, if I'm standing like this in somebody's
00:02:17.600 door versus like this, what do you think that communicates?
00:02:22.620 This feels pushy, right?
00:02:25.900 Imagine you open the door and there's a person like this.
00:02:28.560 Hey, I'm just asking about your gutters
00:02:30.540 or, you know, the painting in your house.
00:02:32.460 You're gonna be like, yo, like get out of my yard. 0.99
00:02:36.240 Versus I go knock, knock.
00:02:38.660 And as soon as I knock, knock, I take a step back
00:02:40.800 and I'm looking away.
00:02:42.960 They open up the door, I'm doing this.
00:02:45.840 And I just like, oh, I didn't even think
00:02:47.900 you're gonna be home.
00:02:49.260 Hey, my name's Dan.
00:02:50.080 I just was just noticing da da da da da. And then you got a coffee cup and they're like,
00:02:54.740 oh, this is just a person in the neighborhood. They're trying to help me out. Way different
00:02:58.460 communication. If you just show up with a coffee cup, you all of a sudden communicate to the person
00:03:04.760 that you're chill, you're relaxed, you're just walking around trying to help people out. Not
00:03:09.640 sure if you're a fit. That style with that coffee cup will make you more money. And most people
00:03:15.360 don't realize how they're signaling to a buyer that they're not serious. The third is secure.
00:03:20.540 You have to get a commitment.
00:03:22.620 Most people do all the work, literally the whole conversation
00:03:25.840 and never ask for the sale.
00:03:28.280 First sales call, I get on a sales call and I'm selling
00:03:30.960 and I've got like my outline, okay?
00:03:33.120 Start here, then I go there, then I go there,
00:03:35.420 then I go there, then I go there, okay?
00:03:37.320 So I feel like I've listened to a bunch of CDs
00:03:39.540 and I've taught myself how to sell and I'm really excited.
00:03:43.320 So I do the thing, hey, tell me about your situation.
00:03:45.780 They're talking, oh my God, they're talking, it's so great.
00:03:47.700 Okay. Then I go, well, tell me more about that pain. That sounds hard. Tell me about that.
00:03:53.180 And they're like, oh yeah, it is hard. And I'm like, okay, now they're telling me about their
00:03:55.440 problem. And then I say, well, what made you decide to reach out? Now they're selling them
00:04:00.260 on me and why they reached out. Oh my God, this is so good. And then I go, well, where do you
00:04:05.120 want to go from here? And they go, well, how does it work working with your software? And I go,
00:04:07.940 oh, geez, ask me about my software. And I tell them about the software. And I go, does that
00:04:11.620 sound good? And they sound, that's great. And guess what I do? I get too excited. I get nervous
00:04:15.900 i'm scared what do i forget to do ask for the order do you know most sales people are scared
00:04:24.940 to ask for the sale why because they don't want to know if i never ask you you never say no i can't
00:04:33.180 be rejected i have a guy in one of my companies on the sales team and every time you look at the
00:04:38.140 leaderboard this guy does three times more than everybody else and everybody that sees the leader
00:04:43.580 board goes hey what makes that guy special i'll tell you yeah he's good he follows the process
00:04:49.100 but he just makes more offers i think most people reject themselves before the buyer ever rejects
00:04:54.620 them if you don't learn the three s's you'll always be wondering what does it look like to
00:04:59.660 actually build a real business now that's the first skill but you need two more before you
00:05:04.220 get to stack it with the master skill which brings us to the second skill public speaking
00:05:09.100 in communication people see me talk and they see this confident clear concise person they go hey
00:05:15.020 man how did you learn to speak you're so good at it my first talk was a complete mess you can
00:05:21.260 literally go on youtube and search my name and find me on a dark stage i didn't even make sense
00:05:27.180 to me i'm watching that going what was i thinking i need you to understand we all start horrible
00:05:33.420 The only difference is how fast can you get good.
00:05:57.160 Your ability to communicate clearly and concisely will open more doors than your degree ever will.
00:06:03.100 When I'm teaching my friends on how to communicate and speak,
00:06:06.680 these are three steps that I teach every time
00:06:09.700 so they speak like a pro.
00:06:11.340 The first one is you gotta embrace the nerves.
00:06:13.360 I will tell you, before I shoot videos,
00:06:15.720 I shoot reels, I go on stage,
00:06:18.220 I literally get nervous.
00:06:19.780 Why?
00:06:20.200 Because I care.
00:06:21.300 I always go, hey Dan, just serve, man.
00:06:24.120 Just like be here, be with the people.
00:06:26.560 Here's the kicker though,
00:06:27.880 don't make it about you, make it about the audience.
00:06:30.500 All the hard work's done.
00:06:31.980 You know, you got invited to speak.
00:06:33.560 You're on the stage.
00:06:34.940 Maybe you got paid.
00:06:36.320 Let's just deliver.
00:06:38.380 And when you embrace those nerves
00:06:39.860 and make it about the audience and not about yourself,
00:06:41.860 all of a sudden that energy is felt by people. 1.00
00:06:44.700 The second area is know your shit. 1.00
00:06:46.860 I can't tell you the amount of times I see people 1.00
00:06:49.780 nervous, stumbling, turn red, freaking out.
00:06:54.420 Why?
00:06:55.320 They're talking about stuff they've never done.
00:06:57.620 And you don't have to be further along.
00:06:59.160 It's not like you can't teach a millionaire
00:07:00.720 how to improve their marketing if you're not a millionaire.
00:07:03.840 But there needs to be something you've done
00:07:05.880 within that area of marketing that is impressive
00:07:08.940 and that will teach that person.
00:07:10.480 Ideally, it comes on the back end of volume,
00:07:13.180 10,000 hours type of stuff.
00:07:15.380 There's reps required.
00:07:17.120 Can you imagine somebody saying,
00:07:18.440 I didn't make the NBA and I only shot
00:07:20.420 like 10 free throws a month?
00:07:23.040 Okay, Steph Curry, does anybody know how many free throws
00:07:25.400 he shoots before a game every time, 100% of the time?
00:07:28.920 Does anybody know that number?
00:07:29.660 it's 500. Okay. Like if you listen to Kobe and his practices, he would do three days. He realized
00:07:38.440 if I wake up early, I could practice at four in the morning, then go back with the family,
00:07:43.580 recover, go back, practice again at like noon, and then go back and meet up with the team at
00:07:48.260 four and practice again. Well, everybody else is doing one. He's doing three. I'm going to say this
00:07:54.700 so that you guys really understand it. Like listen to my words. Cause as I share it, you might not
00:07:59.080 hear it. So pay attention. Winners lose more than losers. And to the parents, if you're watching the
00:08:05.560 live feed, let your kids fail or they'll become losers. If you know your and you practice, it's 0.66
00:08:11.680 hard to mess it up. The last one, number three is tell stories, not facts. You've probably heard this
00:08:17.180 quote that nobody's going to remember what you said. They're going to remember how you made them
00:08:21.220 feel. What I've seen the best of the best do when it comes to speaking communication is they tell
00:08:26.200 stories they tell emotional heartfelt stories now not just any story this is the kicker they tell
00:08:32.360 the story that explains to the audience why they know that information they use the story to connect
00:08:39.240 with the audience to have them self-reflect on their journey where they're at in that process
00:08:44.520 and it's not about the facts yes you can talk about like deep ai networking like some of the
00:08:49.800 nerdy stuff i do but that's not what's going to get them to remember me what's going to get them
00:08:54.600 to remember is using my story to connect the information with the heart when you do those
00:09:00.440 things you can't lose before we get to the master skill there's one more skill you need to learn
00:09:05.960 now the third skill to stack is connecting and networking i believe that your life is a byproduct
00:09:12.280 of your environment and the people in your environment are going to dictate your success
00:09:16.600 when i was in my early 30s and i moved back to my hometown where i grew up but i didn't know
00:09:21.080 other millionaires i had to do the work to re-establish my network i was coming back from
00:09:25.480 living in san francisco where you can't throw a rock and not hit other successful tech entrepreneurs
00:09:30.360 i couldn't even tell you one successful person in my hometown other than my brother and my best
00:09:34.680 friends because i just was disconnected so here's what i did i decided to organize an event essentially
00:09:39.880 a dinner with my buddy who's a chef a great friend sha who came and spoke and then curate each table
00:09:45.400 and then I cold called a handful of entrepreneurs
00:09:49.460 that I got names for
00:09:50.500 and I tried to figure out if they were the right fit.
00:09:53.580 So it was crazy is the night it happens,
00:09:55.600 you gotta understand, there's 80 people in the room
00:09:57.980 and I've never met any of them in person.
00:10:01.360 It was almost like the world's largest blind date
00:10:04.220 and they were all like, how do you know Dan?
00:10:05.900 They're like, I've never met him, he cold called me.
00:10:07.660 It was wild, but I will tell you,
00:10:09.320 that night, that event,
00:10:10.960 having moved back from San Francisco,
00:10:12.580 not knowing anybody,
00:10:13.380 established my relationships in that city.
00:10:15.860 And those people went on to be people
00:10:17.580 I invest in their businesses with,
00:10:19.060 I partnered with in business,
00:10:20.840 I did playdates with my kids,
00:10:22.500 or traveled the world with.
00:10:24.060 And it's available to everybody
00:10:26.000 no matter how small your town is.
00:10:27.740 If you're the smartest person in the room,
00:10:30.400 you're in the wrong room.
00:10:31.240 So when young people ask me how to upgrade your network,
00:10:34.600 this is exactly what I tell them.
00:10:36.660 First off, think of events.
00:10:38.960 Why are events so powerful?
00:10:40.280 Well, one, you have a reason to reach out
00:10:42.900 to these really successful people
00:10:44.300 and bring them into your world.
00:10:45.960 When my buddy Marcel called me up one day,
00:10:47.920 he's like, hey man, I wanna get to know more people.
00:10:50.280 I said, run an event.
00:10:51.640 He's like, but I don't know anybody.
00:10:52.700 I said, that's the whole point.
00:10:53.960 You have a platform you create, which is a stage.
00:10:56.800 You invite them to speak on it,
00:10:58.320 which gives them a reason to show up.
00:11:00.420 You're the one that coordinates the conversation
00:11:02.480 with that person so you get to know them.
00:11:04.120 Then you use that person speaking
00:11:05.740 to go recruit people to come listen,
00:11:08.000 which is a wildly productive strategy.
00:11:10.460 See, when I moved to San Francisco and I was asking myself,
00:11:12.540 of who is the person that knows all the people I want to meet,
00:11:15.600 it occurred to me that the event organizers,
00:11:17.780 they were the center of the hub.
00:11:19.660 They knew all the speakers, they knew all the people,
00:11:22.820 and they weren't being harassed every day
00:11:24.900 by people on social media because they have big audiences.
00:11:27.220 Most of these organizers didn't have a lot of people
00:11:29.620 who even knew who they were.
00:11:30.780 So that's who I built relationships with.
00:11:32.720 The second is hyper-personalized email.
00:11:35.300 Now, this one requires work
00:11:37.580 because you can't cold email somebody
00:11:40.120 and expect them to reply if they don't think
00:11:42.160 you've done a little bit of work to get to know who they are.
00:11:44.700 The amount of people that send me,
00:11:45.760 Mr. Martell, Dan Martell, comma,
00:11:48.400 like literally cold email templates gone wrong.
00:11:51.560 When my buddy Chris messaged me years ago
00:11:55.080 and not only referenced something he saw
00:11:57.300 on my stories on Facebook,
00:11:59.180 but he also mentioned a recent video
00:12:01.200 I had just uploaded on YouTube.
00:12:02.900 And he was very clear that he doesn't know me
00:12:05.600 or anybody that knows me,
00:12:07.120 but he has a way to help me support my business.
00:12:09.720 And that if I'd be open to it,
00:12:11.260 that it'd be really quick and it would take three minutes.
00:12:13.500 I replied and said, shoot the video, send it over.
00:12:15.940 These hyper-personalized emails are so powerful.
00:12:19.220 Chris not only delivered on his promise,
00:12:20.960 he's made me tens of millions of dollars
00:12:23.280 and is still somebody that is in my life.
00:12:25.260 He actually helped me edit my book, Buy Back Your Time,
00:12:27.660 which is wild.
00:12:28.500 How are you gonna stand out amongst all the emails?
00:12:32.140 What are you gonna do to make it seem like
00:12:34.460 you took the time and the effort
00:12:36.020 to actually get to know the person you're messaging?
00:12:37.860 If you want my email template for cold emailing people,
00:12:40.460 just find me on Instagram and just message me the word YouTube cold email and I'll send it to you
00:12:45.300 because in it talks about how do you mention something recent in their life that makes it
00:12:49.180 look hyper personalized and relevant and the second thing is how do you do an ask that is so
00:12:53.320 simple that gets the person to almost guarantee they give you a reply now the third is similar
00:12:57.600 to one which is host the meetup but I do these all the time virtually so for example I'm building
00:13:02.540 out my AI venture studio Martell Ventures and my only goal is to connect with other people in the
00:13:08.440 AI space. So all I do is I scroll on Instagram, scroll on TikTok, identify people talking about
00:13:14.380 this stuff, and I invite them to a meetup. It's essentially a Zoom lunch meeting. I call it the 0.92
00:13:18.960 AI expert roundtable. Everybody introduces themselves. They talk about what they're
00:13:22.540 working on, what's good, what's bad, and everybody else tries to just be helpful. It's super informal,
00:13:27.680 super easy, and anybody can run them. I actually have my team run them. I just show up as an
00:13:32.200 attendee. It makes it a lot of fun for me, and I can do it no matter where I'm traveling.
00:13:35.800 Now that you've learned sales, public speaking, and networking, there's one master skill that if
00:13:42.140 you learn, you're guaranteed to make millions. The final most important skill is content creation
00:13:48.180 and storytelling. What's wild is most people are new to me in the last 16 months, but I've been
00:13:54.220 doing YouTube religiously for almost 10 years. And I finally hit a million subscribers. It took
00:14:01.000 eight years to get to 100k and then things ramped up because i realized content creation building
00:14:07.880 my personal brand and learning how to communicate better tell stories is the future you've probably
00:14:13.380 heard this but attention is the new oil you have to learn to tell stories so well that people stop
00:14:19.380 scrolling and actually lean in there are only two bets that i think are worth making on the future
00:14:24.140 one is ai and the other one is personal brand so understanding this fourth master skill takes the
00:14:29.860 rest of them and amplifies it. So when I'm teaching this to young millionaires, I always start with
00:14:34.180 study the best so that you can make your social media feed a masterclass and a university of
00:14:40.020 growth. I want to learn about AI. Oh, my favorite topic. What passion topic do you like? What are
00:14:45.360 you passionate about? Okay, look at this. AI, UFC. Look at that. This guy's using AI to create UFC
00:14:53.740 fighters so now what you do is you go and you go f-y-p f-y-p by doing that i told the algorithm i
00:15:00.700 like that send me more you're gonna do it pick this guy this guy looks like he's talking about
00:15:05.020 stuff what's he talking about chat should be predicts ufc that's cool that's cool wouldn't
00:15:09.180 you want to know how to do that okay now go to his comments and then type f-y-p for you page so what
00:15:15.340 that does is it tells the algorithm that you want to receive more content like this so next time you
00:15:21.180 you go on TikTok, guess what you're going to get? You're going to learn AI by going on social media.
00:15:26.100 Do you like going on social media? So do I, but I don't like to waste my time. I want to learn
00:15:30.580 stuff that's going to help my future. So now you go do a thing you like to do. And while you're
00:15:33.980 doing it, you're learning cool stuff. Cool. Awesome question. The second is you got to create
00:15:39.500 daily. Most people can't be consistent. So just creating daily sets you apart from everybody else.
00:15:45.880 It's about volume over perfection.
00:15:48.280 And the more you iterate and learn,
00:15:50.820 not just repeat, because that's what most people do,
00:15:53.180 is how you will learn faster than most.
00:15:55.300 Trust me, it doesn't take a long time to get good.
00:15:57.800 You just have to start to get good.
00:15:59.840 The third area is about getting feedback.
00:16:02.280 Does anybody know Jimmy's YouTube name?
00:16:04.620 There we go.
00:16:05.760 You guys all know Jimmy, that's good.
00:16:07.680 Mr. Beast today, I think is mid-20s
00:16:11.300 and is one of the first billion dollar YouTubers.
00:16:15.400 If you didn't know that, he's a billionaire.
00:16:16.920 He's a YouTuber.
00:16:18.520 What I love about Mr. Beast is the fact that he started,
00:16:23.840 I think, at 11 years old and posted 100 videos.
00:16:27.860 What's up, guys?
00:16:28.680 What's up, guys?
00:16:29.160 I'm recording on my phone.
00:16:30.180 Anyways, but he literally published and published and published
00:16:34.720 and didn't have any traction.
00:16:36.680 Didn't have, like, some of the people today come out of nowhere
00:16:39.320 and all of a sudden they have 100,000 subscribers, right?
00:16:42.360 Sam Sulek, if anybody's in the fitness space, literally.
00:16:44.760 blew up, million subs, million views per video. Mr. Beast doesn't have that story. He has the
00:16:51.140 normal story. So you might see me today and go, damn, that's cool, bro. Million. Wow. But are you 0.96
00:16:57.820 willing to do what I've done? Are you willing to do what Mr. Beast did? He published, he published,
00:17:03.740 he published, he tried things. It didn't work. He kept trying. He became addicted. He became obsessed.
00:17:08.300 He went all in. And if you're not willing to do the reps, you're not going to get the results.
00:17:12.780 okay reps equal results does that make sense say yes what he's saying is do a video iterate something
00:17:21.200 to make it one percent better post it do it again post it look at the analytics look at your
00:17:26.160 retention graphs look at the tweaks ask for feedback if you're just posting and ghosting
00:17:30.760 and not getting anybody else in your life to review what you did and give you feedback or
00:17:34.580 reading the comments or looking the fact that nobody watched then you're never going to get
00:17:37.900 good at this the fourth is pick one format most people make the mistake of doing all things at
00:17:43.220 the same time and they get overwhelmed and they can't be consistent and they can't find the time
00:17:47.140 to edit the videos and tweak the content it's crazy just pick one format long form short form
00:17:52.840 carousel posts podcasts it could be tweets just choose the one that you know you would love to do
00:17:59.160 and you would do it for a really long period of time my philosophy is dedicate a decade if you
00:18:03.660 give me 10 years of posting, learning how to tell stories, being a content creator, and you go all
00:18:08.580 in, I guarantee on the backside of that, you will have a million dollars in your bank account.
00:18:13.240 Now, if you want to learn how to build a business that runs itself,
00:18:16.080 click the video and I'll see you on the other side.