Dan Martell - These Rules Made Me So Rich I Questioned the Meaning of Money

00:00:00.000 I'm going to share with you the rules that made me so rich that I questioned the meaning of making

00:00:04.620 money. These rules are what allowed me to go from a broke 22-year-old to a multi-millionaire today.

00:00:10.100 Some of these rules I picked up on my own during my 26-year career as an entrepreneur and others

00:00:15.060 I learned from some of the highest net worth individuals you probably know. So without any

00:00:20.060 further explanation, these are the 14 rules of money. The first rule is kind of obvious,

00:00:25.220 but it's a spend less than you make.

00:00:27.340 You know, Dave Ramsey likes to say, act your wage.

00:00:30.620 And I love that.

00:00:31.520 Think about it, it's what you make,

00:00:32.660 but you gotta act proportionate to what it is.

00:00:34.900 It's not your salary that makes you rich,

00:00:36.880 it's your spending habits.

00:00:38.600 You know, my dad used to say, it's not what you make,

00:00:40.780 it's what you keep that'll make you rich.

00:00:43.200 When I started off, I was a horrible spender.

00:00:46.120 I remember I was just trying to kind of live life.

00:00:48.420 I never thought I'd ever have money,

00:00:49.920 so when I started making money,

00:00:51.100 it was a bit carpe diem, you know, seize the day, YOLO.

00:00:54.080 remember at 21 i got a check for almost twenty thousand dollars for working a month i was a

00:00:58.920 consultant i was on contract and it all showed up in my bank account and my little brother mo showed

00:01:04.300 up and i said hey man let's go on a ski trip it's right around christmas time when we decided

00:01:08.220 to splurge over a 10 day period that he was visiting i spent thirteen thousand dollars

00:01:15.200 on snowboard gear and paying for drinks for friends and crazy hotel rooms and eating like

00:01:21.240 a king it was one of the most ridiculous weeks ever there was like everything was an option we

00:01:25.900 kept spending the money and at the end of it i talked to my dad he said dan did you put any money

00:01:30.920 aside for taxes and i said nope and that was the day that i got introduced to norm and norm was my

00:01:37.480 accountant and what he said is how about we put you on a salary but what do you need to live and

00:01:42.260 i was like well my expenses are covered let's do 60 000 a year and everything else we'll put in the

00:01:47.080 bank account. And that one decision allowed me to save the seed money I needed to eventually start

00:01:52.340 the company that made me a multimillionaire. So at the start, the most important thing is to live

00:01:56.780 off as little as possible and reinvest in yourself, reinvest in your business, reinvest in your

00:02:01.920 future. So most people would say that you want to put 50% towards needs. You know, you got to live,

00:02:06.760 you got to eat, you got 30% towards wants, right? So that brings to 80% and then 20% towards

00:02:12.300 savings. High level, think about it. So all consuming and living, you want to be at 80%

00:02:17.340 save the rest. Which brings us to the second rule, which is to pay yourself first. This one's tough.

00:02:22.880 Some people feel like all their money's got to go out first. I got to help other people before I

00:02:26.800 ever help myself. Here's what I know. You are actually the most important asset, not a house,

00:02:31.760 a car, a watch, an investment. It is you. I remember back in 2009, I was talking to my

00:02:37.840 business partner, Ethan, and we had a major issues we had to solve in the business. And I asked him

00:02:42.660 to meet me at the office and he said he couldn't. Now we had just raised a million dollars from some

00:02:47.220 of the top investors in San Francisco and we're building up the team and we ran into an issue

00:02:51.540 with our product. And I said, why can't you meet? He's like, Hey man, I've got to get some laundry

00:02:55.540 done. Okay. I know it's Sunday, dude, but you can do your laundry on any other day. And he said,

00:02:58.960 yeah, but if I don't do it, this, I got a plan. I'm like, man, on your way to work,

00:03:03.240 there are literally three different laundromats that do wash and fold. Like they'll do it for

00:03:07.340 like 35 bucks. It's like, yeah, man, I'm not really paying myself enough. I'm barely making

00:03:12.040 rent. So here's a situation where we just raised a million dollars to build the business and he

00:03:16.440 can't come work on the business because he's too busy doing laundry. The issue, he wasn't paying

00:03:20.380 himself enough to essentially invest in things that would buy back his time. So him and I could

00:03:24.380 actually go jam to solve the problem. See, most people stay broke because they're trading time

00:03:29.320 for money. What I'm going to encourage you to consider is invest time for skills to get paid

00:03:33.600 more then buy more time to reinvest in learning new skills that make you more money see most people

00:03:39.280 spend time to save money i like to spend money to save time once i've got that time then i invested

00:03:46.560 in acquiring new skills that allows me to become more valuable then i get to make more money to

00:03:51.920 then buy time to invest in more skills that is the equation i remember one time i was talking

00:03:56.640 to one of my coaching clients brad redding he had an incredible company and he was kind of burnt out

00:04:01.120 And he wanted to sell it.

00:04:02.080 I said, you could, and you know the price

00:04:03.780 and people will buy it from you today.

00:04:05.540 Or you take some of the profit you're making

00:04:08.180 instead of reinvesting in more software developers

00:04:10.460 and marketing teams and all that stuff.

00:04:12.940 Just pay yourself more

00:04:14.120 so you can enjoy life a little bit better.

00:04:16.060 I said, just make a list of things

00:04:17.220 that you would love to do.

00:04:18.240 And he put on there, you know, I'd like a gym in my house.

00:04:20.480 I'd love to be able to hire somebody,

00:04:21.980 take care of the kids.

00:04:22.720 We can get date nights.

00:04:23.520 So we were only talking a few thousand bucks a month.

00:04:25.580 And I said, if you could invest in you

00:04:28.020 to give you more time to build the business bigger,

00:04:30.460 That dollar amount today is going to turn into millions of dollars in a few years.

00:04:34.880 And that's exactly what happened.

00:04:36.600 So the way Brad bought back his time and his energy is that not only did he have time to

00:04:41.620 work on key things, spend time with his wife, but he got the energy back by not having to

00:04:46.940 worry about not spending enough time with his family, not going on date nights, taking

00:04:50.780 care of his health.

00:04:52.320 I mean, he's literally transformed his body from where he was to where he is today because

00:04:56.600 he made an investment in himself.

00:04:58.480 If you pay yourself first, you force yourself to find resources to cover other expenses.

00:05:03.640 Which brings us to number three, which is to assign your priorities.

00:05:06.980 Oprah Winfrey once said, you can have it all, just not all at once.

00:05:11.500 I mean, it's kind of like you can do anything, you just can't do everything.

00:05:14.260 When people see me today, they go, wow, Dan, you do so many things.

00:05:17.220 But if you actually look over the last 25 years of my career, I've only done one thing, and that's software.

00:05:22.900 I started off as a programmer, then I went to consulting, then I built companies, and now I

00:05:28.020 deploy capital, the four C's, coding, consulting, companies, and capital into technology, into

00:05:34.540 software. Essentially, I started off and I wrote code and I learned how to build apps. And then I

00:05:39.000 ended up starting a company and I sold people the applications that I was building. And then I did

00:05:43.580 that three times in a row. And then I decided, well, now I'm going to start investing in other

00:05:48.600 companies and i did that and now i buy companies but they're all in the software space so i want

00:05:54.280 to teach a big idea that a lot of people get wrong when they start to try to make their first million

00:05:58.840 dollars which is don't diversify except for globally or investments don't get distracted

00:06:05.160 most people end up saying yes to things they should be saying no to and know the things they

00:06:09.960 should be yes to because they don't know what is their primary aim and focus and if you do this

00:06:14.520 right then you become the tip of the spear at what you do tip of the spear means best in class i like

00:06:20.200 to say world class i think you should be top five in what you do which sounds crazy i know if you're

00:06:24.760 an editor or a logo designer or even a singer you're like that's just not me and i'm like yeah

00:06:30.600 it is it just takes a decision and if you go all in you say i'm gonna be one of the best programmers

00:06:34.920 i'm gonna be the one best designers i'm gonna be one of the best editors what you do is you start

00:06:39.080 getting better and better and better and then you get this thing called the four levels of luck that

00:06:43.640 that one of my mentors, Naval Ravikant,

00:06:45.420 talks about all the time.

00:06:46.640 First level is just dumb luck, you know,

00:06:48.620 just random moments and opportunities show up in your life 0.94

00:06:51.660 and those are just like dumb luck.

00:06:53.120 The second level is grit luck.

00:06:54.860 This is by doing the work, the luckier you get, right?

00:06:58.380 People talk about this all the time.

00:06:59.660 The third is skilled luck,

00:07:01.780 meaning that you're getting so skilled at what you do,

00:07:05.220 people know you for that,

00:07:06.780 so they ask you for opportunities

00:07:08.380 that otherwise it looks lucky to everybody else,

00:07:11.100 but to you, you're like,

00:07:11.940 oh, it's just because I'm really skillful at this thing.

00:07:14.120 And then you end up getting to others' luck,

00:07:16.280 which is the tip of the spear,

00:07:17.380 you know, like the Warren Buffett's and the Oprah's

00:07:19.600 and the Elon Musk, where they're brought opportunities

00:07:22.120 that is other people's skilled luck,

00:07:24.560 meaning that people get lucky in opportunities

00:07:26.480 and they're like, I like Warren so much,

00:07:28.280 I wanna partner with him to do this deal.

00:07:30.700 That's when things get really crazy.

00:07:32.700 Those are the four levels of luck

00:07:34.000 that most people never understand.

00:07:35.560 The key for this step is you gotta stick

00:07:37.520 to what is your unfair advantage in the market.

00:07:40.100 Invest in something you know, don't get distracted.

00:07:42.880 Some of you are really great at building houses

00:07:45.140 and you're like, I wanna go into software.

00:07:47.080 I would argue you go make a lot of money in houses first. 1.00

00:07:49.080 Or some of you guys are into software

00:07:50.180 and you're like, hey, I should get into real estate.

00:07:52.060 How about you stick to software and get really good at it

00:07:54.660 and trust me, you will find real estate investors

00:07:57.060 that will partner to build out a massive portfolio with you

00:07:59.800 if you go get rich.

00:08:01.420 I understand that it's fun to do new things

00:08:03.780 and there's excitement,

00:08:04.780 but don't make those where you make your money.

00:08:06.880 Call those hobbies and go have fun and explore

00:08:09.280 and don't put the pressure around it having to perform.

00:08:12.240 See, a lot of people get distracted

00:08:13.440 because they take their money they saved up

00:08:15.480 and they go put it on new things

00:08:17.380 and then they're freaking out

00:08:18.540 when the thing's not working out.

00:08:19.760 So they're sacrificing both,

00:08:21.040 their current business and the new business

00:08:23.100 and both suffer.

00:08:24.860 Which brings us to number four,

00:08:26.480 which is to have a ripcord budget.

00:08:28.760 Jim Rohn once said,

00:08:29.700 never begin the day until you finish it on paper.

00:08:32.460 Same in life.

00:08:34.040 You should plan for success

00:08:35.080 and you should plan for worst case.

00:08:36.760 So that way you build a plan around both

00:08:38.500 and you never have to think about it.

00:08:40.060 And when they're going great or there's an issue,

00:08:41.880 you can go back to the plan.

00:08:43.340 You could lose it all.

00:08:44.460 You could find out they changed some law.

00:08:46.780 You could get hit by a bus.

00:08:48.220 And my philosophy is that you have to plan for it.

00:08:51.060 Have a disaster recovery plan.

00:08:52.720 I learned this back when we were building data centers

00:08:54.940 with my software company.

00:08:56.320 If the power went down in the room,

00:08:58.360 you had the backup generators kick in and it took over.

00:09:01.480 The challenge is you had to have the checklist

00:09:03.340 already designed so that when it happened,

00:09:05.200 you got to stay cool, calm, and collected.

00:09:07.900 Nobody was running around freaking out like, oh, did anybody put the diesel in the generator?

00:09:11.820 You tested it every once in a while and you made sure you had the checklist ready to go.

00:09:15.740 Why is this important?

00:09:16.740 Because it allows you to move incredibly fast and even harder knowing that if at any point

00:09:21.920 of moving fast in a direction, something happens, you've already made the decision on how you're

00:09:26.200 going to react.

00:09:26.980 There's no wasted brain cycles around fear, concern, challenges, worry.

00:09:32.400 My business coach, Ed Milet, has this great saying, he says, worry is a wasted use of

00:09:35.960 your imagination.

00:09:36.560 I think most times, because we haven't built a plan,

00:09:39.000 we're always worrying about what could happen.

00:09:40.740 How about you just decide to do if it does

00:09:42.420 and you get back to building your life?

00:09:44.000 So there's two categories you wanna look at.

00:09:45.800 There's the business side and the personal side.

00:09:47.980 Most people will say in business,

00:09:49.860 you wanna have at least three months of operating expenses.

00:09:52.760 Some will say six months,

00:09:53.900 but honestly, I've never seen a scenario

00:09:56.220 where you need that much.

00:09:57.200 As long as you're fast to respond to issues,

00:09:59.580 then yeah, you might need six months or more.

00:10:01.480 On the personal side, six months of overhead

00:10:04.160 is what you wanna have ready, liquid, in cash

00:10:07.260 so that if anything happens to you, you lose your job,

00:10:09.380 your business goes to zero, the family won't be impacted

00:10:11.980 and there's no scenario I've seen

00:10:13.380 where an individual couldn't rebound within six months

00:10:16.360 if they had the fortitude and the mental focus

00:10:18.840 to just get back in there and find an opportunity.

00:10:21.500 You need to save to weather the storm

00:10:22.980 because on every economic downside that's ever happened,

00:10:26.360 there's this crazy upswing on the back end.

00:10:29.160 It's like a slingshot.

00:10:30.400 So you wanna be ready to go through tough times

00:10:33.160 because you built the plan so that you can come out like a rocket ship. Which brings us to number

00:10:36.840 five, which is give to get. Anne Frank once said, no one ever became poor by giving. I love this so

00:10:43.420 much. Literally, it's like my ethos in life. I wake up every day asking myself, how can I create

00:10:48.100 more value for other people than anybody else in their life? That is just a fun place to get to

00:10:52.600 where you wake up and you're just giving, giving, giving. So here's a funny story to give you a

00:10:56.940 little bit more color. A couple of years ago, I realized I had been hoarding credit card points.

00:11:01.580 I don't know why, it just became this fun game

00:11:03.540 that I play with myself.

00:11:04.820 I put credit cards in all my companies

00:11:06.800 for all the ads they run and all these other scenarios

00:11:09.620 and I was collecting millions of points per year,

00:11:12.540 but I never used them.

00:11:13.600 I've done this with Starbucks points as well

00:11:16.020 at the coffee shop.

00:11:16.860 I don't know why, I just got into this hoarding mentality.

00:11:19.400 And I realized that this hoarding behavior

00:11:21.140 was holding me back.

00:11:22.340 So this year, I woke up, I'm Mertel, my assistant,

00:11:24.880 and I said, we are going to spend all of it.

00:11:27.500 I'm gonna use all the coffee points,

00:11:29.740 I'm gonna use all the travel points.

00:11:31.440 Any points that I've been hoarding

00:11:33.020 is gonna get spent, and here's why.

00:11:35.700 I call this money velocity.

00:11:37.480 See, the more you spend, the more opportunities you create.

00:11:40.120 The more you spend, the more you learn.

00:11:42.200 The more you spend, the more you can get in returns

00:11:44.500 because you're making good investments.

00:11:46.020 See, I use the word spend, but don't get it confused.

00:11:47.900 It's about putting money in the market,

00:11:50.060 being part of the economy.

00:11:51.420 The more time and money exchanges hands,

00:11:53.900 the more value is created in the world.

00:11:56.240 See, money is energy, and if you hoard it,

00:11:58.500 it will find its way away from you.

00:12:00.480 If you spend it, it creates more energy,

00:12:03.120 comes back to you and allows you to do bigger things with it.

00:12:05.960 Most people think I'm supposed to save,

00:12:08.320 but they don't invest.

00:12:09.760 I know I did that for a long time.

00:12:11.080 I looked at my bank account and I just kept saving,

00:12:13.080 saving, saving, saving.

00:12:14.700 It was in a savings account, but it wasn't doing anything.

00:12:17.300 At one point I had millions of dollars.

00:12:18.700 My banker was like, hey, do you wanna do anything with this?

00:12:20.500 And I'm like, leave me alone, don't touch it.

00:12:22.100 And they're like, we could put it in a GIC.

00:12:23.800 I'm like, don't talk to me, I don't trust you.

00:12:25.780 It's because I didn't know any better.

00:12:27.040 then i realized that if i take the money i put it in the market i put it into investments i invest

00:12:31.780 in myself i invest in my team i use it i circulate it it's a resource and the more i use it the more

00:12:38.400 it's going to come back because i'm telling the world that i believe that it's a flow it's an

00:12:42.660 energy it comes out it comes back it's just like the more you give the more you get that's how it

00:12:47.320 works if you hoard it it will find its way away from you if you hoard it you're essentially telling

00:12:52.020 the world it's a scarce resource don't give me more because all i'm going to do is put it in a

00:12:56.440 bucket. But if I say, hey, there's an unlimited amount of money out there and I'm going to put

00:13:00.220 it out, it's going to come back. Then I'm kind of learning, I'm earning, I'm creating opportunities

00:13:04.540 and getting resources to do bigger things. Which brings us to number six, which is to minimize

00:13:09.260 borrowing. Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, once said the only difference between

00:13:14.160 rich person and a poor person is how they use their time in debt. I would actually change the

00:13:18.800 word debt to leverage. When I got my first apartment, I had to buy furniture for the place.

00:13:23.580 So I went down to my local furniture shop.

00:13:25.540 I sat down, I tested a bunch of different couches.

00:13:27.640 I'm kind of a tall dude, so I need like a deep seat.

00:13:30.120 And I finally found the set that I wanted.

00:13:32.440 And the sales guy's like, hey, good news,

00:13:34.260 we can offer financing.

00:13:35.620 And I'm like, what does that look like?

00:13:37.040 And he tells me this magical thing

00:13:38.620 where I don't have to make a payment

00:13:39.780 for like four years or something like that.

00:13:41.840 Anyways, I decided to take it

00:13:43.260 because there was no interest, blah, blah, blah.

00:13:45.320 And it just sounded awesome.

00:13:46.460 The problem is, is by the time

00:13:47.840 I had to start making payments,

00:13:49.380 when you actually looked at the fine print

00:13:51.100 and the interest rate kicked in,

00:13:52.660 i ended up paying four times more for the furniture than if i would have just paid for it

00:13:57.780 and the truth was is i was borrowing money to buy things that didn't make me money so this is what

00:14:02.660 i've learned about borrowing money see the banks make their money on the majority of the collecting

00:14:07.540 of the debt and paying of interest what i want you to consider is how do you borrow money to

00:14:12.340 make a return for yourself it's to increase your earning potential right so in the short term if

00:14:16.820 you make an investment in your business i want you to monitor the roi because you're still learning

00:14:21.220 how to do it. You got to take shots on goal, small bullets, little tiny bullets, take shots. You're

00:14:26.400 like, Hey, I'm going to spend some money. See if I get a return. These are ways to learn. Then if

00:14:30.700 you figure it out, you want to shoot a cannonball. See, most people, when they start off, they like 0.72

00:14:34.820 make these big investments in themselves, borrow money to go to a very expensive mastermind or

00:14:39.480 invest in education or go to university. They don't get the return that they thought they would

00:14:44.200 get. Borrow to invest in yourself. Don't borrow to invest in your lifestyle. That's where you're

00:14:49.400 to get yourself in trouble. I could have easily bought used furniture. I did not need new stuff.

00:14:54.780 I was trying to show everybody how cool I was. So my rule is if you can't afford it,

00:14:59.200 go make more money to get it. You don't need new, you can buy old. Which brings us to number seven,

00:15:05.240 which is to analyze the risk return ratios. Warren Buffett said risk comes from not knowing

00:15:10.920 what you're doing. Let me tell you about this crazy story. There's this investor named Bill

00:15:15.020 blackman back in the day he took 27 million dollars and he invested in a cds credit default 0.71

00:15:21.440 swap and that investment in i think a 12 month period turned into 2.7 billion dollars let me

00:15:27.780 tell you why this applies to you see he knew there was a chance that that 27 could go down

00:15:32.500 not necessarily to zero real estate investors do this all day long they find a property they get

00:15:37.740 it under contract they borrow money for the deposit they borrow private money to buy the

00:15:42.780 place they then they renovate it they add the value and then they go and they sell it to somebody

00:15:47.740 else and they take the difference i mean they pay off the investors they refinance it with the bank

00:15:52.460 essentially they have no personal guarantee no money out of pocket so the upside is unlimited

00:15:57.820 from a cash on cash return because they have very little of their own money in the deal so we're

00:16:02.780 always looking for deals where we have asymmetrical risk low downside unlimited upside but let me tell

00:16:09.260 you about the risk quadrant so on the left side you have risk and on the bottom you have returns

00:16:14.060 then place your opportunity that you're looking at to make an investment and say hey bitcoin would

00:16:18.300 be a high risk high return index funds would be low risk low returns and something that's a low

00:16:23.500 return high risk well that's a trick question you wouldn't want to do that one buying a business

00:16:28.700 or some real estate and improving the business or the real estate that's called value add that

00:16:33.820 deal would look like a low risk high return scenario which brings us to number eight which

00:16:38.300 which is to not fear money.

00:16:40.520 Anne Rand once said,

00:16:41.580 wealth is the product of a man's capacity to think.

00:16:45.140 I love that.

00:16:46.300 See, we all have these money stories, these money beliefs.

00:16:48.980 My buddy Ramit said he calls them money scripts.

00:16:51.300 They're blueprints.

00:16:52.040 There's the way we think about money.

00:16:53.540 See, I had a weird one that I used to think

00:16:55.240 that I needed to go bankrupt to be successful.

00:16:57.640 I know, it's crazy.

00:16:58.520 And it pushed money away from me for years

00:17:00.720 because I'd read books on Dave Ramsey, who went bankrupt,

00:17:03.760 Walt Disney, bankrupt, Henry Ford, bankrupt.

00:17:06.080 And it made me think, oh my gosh,

00:17:07.520 What if I push really hard and I lose all this money?

00:17:09.720 So it made me question decisions

00:17:11.420 and almost folded my businesses.

00:17:13.340 Some of us have stories around thinking being rich is bad

00:17:16.160 and it's only for the greedy.

00:17:17.680 Well, if you thought that and you're a good person,

00:17:19.520 would you wanna race to be rich

00:17:21.180 or would you slow yourself down?

00:17:22.840 Yes, there's bad and there's greedy people, 0.91

00:17:24.840 but most rich people I know

00:17:26.120 are incredibly generous and good people.

00:17:28.300 The more you judge people and fear money,

00:17:30.160 the more you'll push it away.

00:17:31.440 A lot of people self-sabotage themselves to being rich

00:17:34.700 and I'll tell you why.

00:17:35.500 Let's say your goal is to be rich.

00:17:36.900 I'm just curious if we just played a game and said,

00:17:39.180 what are some of the negative beliefs

00:17:40.540 people might have around being rich?

00:17:42.820 Well, they might say, well, rich people don't pay taxes

00:17:45.020 and rich people steal from people

00:17:46.320 and rich people are greedy

00:17:47.320 and rich people are self-centered.

00:17:48.720 And you could just list all these beliefs in order

00:17:51.020 and just ask yourself, have I ever thought that?

00:17:53.000 Because what I've discovered is that

00:17:54.340 if we don't work through all the negative beliefs

00:17:57.120 we have about being rich,

00:17:58.800 then we'll fear money and we'll push it away.

00:18:01.740 So you don't actually have money problems.

00:18:03.720 You have a mindset problem

00:18:05.300 that just happens to be reflected in your bank account.

00:18:08.100 I want you to invite more money into your life

00:18:10.720 by believing you deserve to be rich

00:18:13.740 and that rich people are great people

00:18:15.820 and create from a place of abundance

00:18:17.580 and literally watch your life transform.

00:18:20.080 That is the key.

00:18:21.140 Which brings us to number nine,

00:18:22.560 which is to avoid lifestyle creep.

00:18:24.720 I once had this buddy, I met him at an event

00:18:27.000 and I watched him make a lot of money very quick.

00:18:30.200 And as he was playing this game

00:18:31.800 of trying to keep up with the Joneses,

00:18:33.860 his lifestyle just kept growing he bought a new car he upgraded his house watches pretty much

00:18:40.500 everything and eventually everything backfired on him and his business really suffered and

00:18:45.700 unfortunately he was over leveraged and he didn't have the money to cover all of his payments so he

00:18:50.900 had to file for bankruptcy you see once you start making money the game is here to try and live off

00:18:56.980 as little as possible for as long as possible not to suffocate your ability to reinvest in yourself

00:19:02.980 to make more money but to just not be wasteful instead of buying the new bmw invest in yourself

00:19:09.340 or another business vehicle that could buy you 10 bmws in the future some people think that

00:19:15.120 compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe but delayed gratification is

00:19:19.380 even stronger and that's why this money rule will make you rich if you're able to delay

00:19:25.140 trying to reap the rewards too soon you should get used to playing this game of spending as

00:19:30.440 little as possible for as long as possible like all the the gucci and the fancy stuff and look i

00:19:36.440 know a lot of people see me today with the jet and the cars and the house and all that stuff

00:19:40.440 but even today i live off about 10 of my income because i'm reinvesting in other things that are

00:19:46.040 going to make me money in the long term and then over time i just i live off of that cash flow and

00:19:52.040 i think everybody has the opportunity to do that if they learn how to play this money game which

00:19:56.760 which brings us to number 10,

00:19:58.280 which is to build a personal P&L.

00:20:00.460 So I was talking to one of my friends once

00:20:01.940 and he was telling me how he wanted a simple life.

00:20:04.660 And this guy was wealthy.

00:20:05.720 He didn't want too much stuff, too many things to manage.

00:20:08.500 But here's the secret.

00:20:09.540 And this is what I told him.

00:20:10.360 The wealthiest people aren't managing their own estates.

00:20:13.660 Dude, you can invest in having somebody to help you out.

00:20:17.060 So I explained to him,

00:20:17.920 when you have two or three or four homes like I do,

00:20:21.000 then you have somebody manages it.

00:20:22.400 I have a house manager named Betty. 1.00

00:20:23.860 She is the CEO of everything in my personal life.

00:20:27.480 Like any money that comes in, she manages the income,

00:20:30.180 she manages the expenses that go out

00:20:32.260 and she manages the forecast and the budgets for all of those.

00:20:35.280 So if anything gets out of whack,

00:20:36.820 she's the first one to say like,

00:20:37.920 hey, why is the landscaping for, you know,

00:20:40.440 the property is more expensive than it should be?

00:20:42.500 So I wanna teach you this cool idea

00:20:44.460 that most people have never heard when it comes to money.

00:20:46.820 Just like in a business,

00:20:48.240 your personal life should have its own profit

00:20:51.200 and loss statement.

00:20:52.460 I know, I know.

00:20:53.440 This is some people are like, what are you talking about?

00:20:55.300 If you think about it, your life is a business.

00:20:57.520 You have a salary, you have income, and you have expenses.

00:21:00.420 And I know most businesses have a CEO, a CFO, a COO

00:21:04.080 to manage all this and financial projections and planning.

00:21:06.900 And most people with money would maybe call this

00:21:09.020 a financial planner or a family office,

00:21:10.900 but I like to think it at a high level.

00:21:12.800 I actually have my personal family affairs

00:21:16.300 in my accounting software.

00:21:18.780 I know, crazy idea, but why wouldn't you?

00:21:21.660 It just makes it so much easier to manage.

00:21:24.680 I want you to consider if you get really good

00:21:26.360 at managing money, you'll be able to make more money.

00:21:29.440 Most people that are loosey-goosey on their financials,

00:21:32.520 they'll never have the rigor and the maturity

00:21:34.840 to be able to grow their personal net worth.

00:21:37.080 Which brings us to number 11,

00:21:38.900 which is high tides rise all boats.

00:21:41.640 When it comes to making money, it requires a team.

00:21:44.680 And I used to have a belief that if I trained a team,

00:21:47.860 that eventually they would leave.

00:21:49.200 I have my buddy Cameron Harreld,

00:21:50.780 incredible author, you know, people would say to him, like, what if you hire a bunch of people

00:21:54.660 and you train them and then they leave? And he would joke, well, what if you don't? And they

00:21:57.880 stay. So what most people do is they hire less competent people because it feels more secure

00:22:03.460 because they are insecure about people leaving them. The challenge with that is this B's and

00:22:08.060 C's risk your A's. So think about anybody on your team today that might be great. If you hire

00:22:12.480 somebody that makes them work harder, they're going to get frustrated and they'll eventually

00:22:16.760 leave. So if you're trying to rise the tide, if you're trying to increase the average of the

00:22:21.640 people on your team, then you have to invest in your people. I mean, I know when things are good,

00:22:26.360 it's easy to invest in them. The economy is good. I invest in my people. But honestly,

00:22:30.240 even when they're not doing so well, just don't stop. It could be you training them,

00:22:34.680 buying some training, making sure they feel supported. So the best way to keep people

00:22:39.220 is to understand what their dreams and goals are. And my rule is your dreams and goals for

00:22:43.820 your life have to be big enough for everybody else's to fit inside of so that you can raise

00:22:49.180 the tide and it brings them with you and they'll want to stay with you you got to fix that mindset

00:22:54.540 and watch your life transform which brings us to number 12 which is money is a tool not the goal

00:23:00.940 henry ford once said money is like an arm or a leg use it or lose it you know i once heard this

00:23:07.340 that money is a tool it's like a fork it can either be used to nourish you or it could be used

00:23:12.380 to take somebody's life, but it is not the goal of life.

00:23:16.080 See, I became a multi-millionaire at 28

00:23:18.180 and then drifted for almost two years.

00:23:20.880 I thought I had made it.

00:23:22.200 You know, I sold my company, I kind of retired.

00:23:25.080 And then I realized that financial freedom means nothing

00:23:27.960 because the point of life

00:23:29.540 is not actually about making money.

00:23:31.940 It's about having a richer life.

00:23:34.060 Money is just a tool that can do that.

00:23:35.840 It can also not do that if you stress yourself out.

00:23:38.840 If money is a primary reason that you make any decision,

00:23:41.480 then you'll always make money the master but if money is just a consideration then you'll feel

00:23:47.480 free at the end of the day it doesn't matter if you have a million dollars or a hundred million

00:23:51.620 dollars money is a store of value and needs to be put to work the work is to buy you time so you

00:23:57.740 have options about how you want to spend it to become more valuable ideally so you can reinvest

00:24:03.340 it in making more money to buy more time to feel useful i mean at the end of the day people talk

00:24:08.480 about happiness, I'm not about being happy. I think that's a moment in time. What I want to

00:24:12.580 feel at the end of the day is I want to feel useful. I want to feel like I created something.

00:24:17.660 I want to feel fulfilled. And when I look back at the days where I felt that way, it's usually

00:24:22.540 spent with people I really admire, creating something really cool that was kind of hard

00:24:27.060 to do things that were going to impact a lot of other people. Don't make money the primary goal,

00:24:31.680 but a tool to get to your goals. Which brings us to 13, which is your network is your net worth.

00:24:37.780 oprah famously said surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher if you

00:24:44.400 think about it you got to look around your peer group and ask yourself are these people that are

00:24:49.040 gonna lift me up to achieve higher levels my friend jokingly asked me because i was saying

00:24:54.100 that you know i'm trying to upgrade my network and he said how many of your friends have private jets

00:24:58.660 or gatecoats and at the time i was like none he's like look it's not about the money but that's

00:25:04.260 usually a good filter because people that are kind of vibing at that level typically have a lot of

00:25:09.540 cool stuff going on in your life. And if you want to get in a room where you're going to feel like

00:25:13.300 an imposter, which is the key, then you got to make sure that those people are doing really big 0.98

00:25:17.960 things. Most people make the mistake. They say you become the average of the five people you

00:25:22.180 spend time with. I would actually, you become the average of the five people that you let influence

00:25:26.980 you. I upgrade my relationships all the time. I look at my goals. I look at where I spend my time

00:25:32.920 and I gotta ask myself if these people

00:25:34.800 are gonna help me and support me with my goals.

00:25:37.280 If I feel like they'll slow me down

00:25:38.840 or they'll always talk down on me

00:25:40.860 or they're just not wanting to create a life at that level,

00:25:44.460 unfortunately, I have to do a friendventory.

00:25:47.060 I have to evaluate where I'm at and find some new people.

00:25:50.180 I can love people.

00:25:51.460 I can just figure out where I can spend time

00:25:53.520 with other folks that might get me

00:25:55.260 to where I'm going a lot faster.

00:25:57.040 So if you're fast growing,

00:25:58.440 you need to look at who you're spending time with

00:26:00.660 and cut anchors holding you back.

00:26:02.740 Which brings us to number 14, which is define your why.

00:26:06.340 When I started out,

00:26:07.420 I used a lot of dark energy to build my life.

00:26:10.560 I had a lot of people I wanted to prove wrong,

00:26:12.240 like my buddy Mike's mom,

00:26:13.880 who said I couldn't play together,

00:26:15.340 to my dad, who I didn't think at the time he believed in me,

00:26:19.220 to everybody that ever doubted my ability to win.

00:26:23.300 I know I didn't give him a lot to go off of,

00:26:25.240 but that was the energy, to prove people wrong.

00:26:27.840 But then once I achieved success

00:26:29.620 and I became a multimillionaire,

00:26:31.120 this actually needed to shift to light energy and the reason why is that dark energy can work it's

00:26:35.840 just heavy so to go bigger you got to figure out your why because that'll pull you forward not push

00:26:41.360 you forward using dark energy it's more of a light energy pulling you forward my why is huge it's

00:26:46.400 very simple i want to become the person i needed most of my darkest days and i want to teach

00:26:51.040 everything i've learned that worked for me along the way you know my friend coach bert says you

00:26:55.520 know you should go to bed tired wake up hungry a lot of people see me get up at four in the morning

00:26:59.600 go back, back, back, back and do everything

00:27:01.800 with the kids, the family, the workouts,

00:27:03.580 the team meetings, the podcast tours,

00:27:05.520 the media stuff, flying around, all this stuff.

00:27:07.900 What they don't get is my work ethic

00:27:10.080 is a reflection of my gratitude.

00:27:12.140 My gratitude for the opportunity,

00:27:14.160 my creator giving me this chance.

00:27:16.160 I just wanna show up and give as much as I can

00:27:18.260 towards my why.

00:27:19.560 So I'm gonna ask you,

00:27:20.700 what are you optimizing your life for?

00:27:23.000 Essentially, what are you trying to do?

00:27:24.560 Are you just trying to get rich?

00:27:25.660 That could work.

00:27:26.500 If everything you do is to make more money,

00:27:27.940 you could become really great at that.

00:27:29.600 At some point, you might ask yourself,

00:27:30.700 what's the meaning of it all?

00:27:31.780 Because I know if that,

00:27:32.860 I found out that tomorrow at five o'clock was my last day,

00:27:35.420 I'm not rushing to the office.

00:27:36.940 I'm not rushing to go snowboarding.

00:27:39.460 I'm gonna grab my family members that I can grab.

00:27:41.800 I'm gonna sit down.

00:27:42.560 I'm gonna hang with them.

00:27:43.220 I'm gonna pour into them.

00:27:44.740 And in the last breath,

00:27:45.920 I gotta leave this earth with a smile

00:27:47.440 because I spent the time with the people I wanted to most.

00:27:50.860 So there's opportunities all day to make more money.

00:27:52.920 I get hundreds of investment opportunities every day.

00:27:55.980 I could spend a lot more time looking at them.

00:27:57.800 but i say no to most opportunities speaking gigs traveling the world free vacations dinner requests

00:28:04.760 everything because the last thing i want to do is get really excited about a new opportunity

00:28:09.400 actually be successful climb this ladder of success only to find out that that ladder that

00:28:14.840 future is leaning against the wrong wall and look across the room and see the ladder on a different

00:28:20.040 wall which is actually where i want to be so we have to begin with the end in mind we have to know

00:28:25.160 what our why is what our purpose is that's really cool having a big why just makes the whole process

00:28:30.680 easier and will make you more money if you want to learn how i would go from

00:28:34.280 broke to millionaire then click the link and i'll see you on the other side

Dan Martell - May 31, 2024

These Rules Made Me So Rich I Questioned the Meaning of Money

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript