Dan Martell - February 10, 2026


Why Being LAZY Makes You More Successful (just copy me)


Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

210.42807

Word count

3,269

Sentence count

224

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged


Summary

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

What separates successful people from those who try for years and never get anywhere? Most people think it s IQ, their talent, or some mix of strategy and luck. But the thing that actually makes the biggest difference is being lazy. Now that doesn t mean do nothing, but there are situations where doing less makes you way more successful. It s how all the millionaires and billionaires I personally know got rich. And it s how I made my first million by 27 and got to over $100 million in revenue in my 40s.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
00:00:00.000 What separates successful people from those who try for years and never get anywhere?
00:00:05.040 Most people think it's IQ, their talent, or some mix of strategy and luck.
00:00:09.520 But the thing that actually makes the biggest difference is being lazy.
00:00:14.040 Now, that doesn't mean do nothing, but there are situations where doing less
00:00:18.660 makes you way more successful.
00:00:20.940 It's how all the millionaires and billionaires I personally know got rich.
00:00:24.520 And it's how I made my first million by 27 and got to over $100 million in revenue in my 40s.
00:00:30.000 So if you want to get to that same level of success,
00:00:32.720 these are the seven things you need to stop doing.
00:00:35.740 Starting with ignore everyone.
00:00:39.240 Being always available is hurting your success.
00:00:42.780 You have to focus on what you decided you wanted to do.
00:00:45.740 Protect that, fight for your focus.
00:00:48.180 There's very few people you shouldn't ignore.
00:00:50.420 And honestly, most people,
00:00:52.280 you got to put the headphones on.
00:00:54.640 You have to put you first.
00:00:56.820 So here's what you need to do.
00:00:58.160 first. Essentially on your phone, you can create a VIP list so that all the messages and the calls,
00:01:04.020 et cetera, only go through if those people are on that list, which is kind of where I leave my
00:01:08.720 phone. The only person is my executive assistant and my wife that's on my VIP list. Second, once
00:01:13.680 you've got that, set two communication blocks per day. Essentially two times where you're going to
00:01:17.860 plug in, review things and reply. And other than that, you ignore it. For me, 1130 and 430 every
00:01:23.720 day is perfect. All these inboxes are nothing more than a public to-do list that strangers
00:01:29.560 can put requests on. And if somebody messages you, just read their message and move on. You
00:01:34.680 don't have to explain yourself. You don't have to reply to people just because they ask you for
00:01:38.960 something. Now that you've protected your headspace, if you really want to be successful
00:01:42.540 while being lazy, you need to quit doing the things that other people can do for you.
00:01:46.680 Which takes us to number two, stop running errands. See, think about a chef. A chef that's 0.95
00:01:52.660 in a kitchen, stays in one place, and he gets everything prepped around him. And as he needs
00:01:57.180 thing, it comes to him and he creates the plate. It's called mise en place, one place, a French
00:02:02.140 word. And when I look at people that think they're productive, they're just busy. If I was a
00:02:07.200 multimillionaire and I was still doing my groceries and I hated it, I need to sit down and review what
00:02:12.180 I'm doing with my time. You know, people don't put together 15 minutes there, back's 30 minutes.
00:02:16.100 You do that three or four times a day, that's a couple hours. Errands are just a small example of
00:02:20.100 I'm talking about. So here's what you need to do. First, audit your time. Look at your calendar
00:02:26.020 over a two-week period. Where are you wasting it? Figure out in your calendar what are those
00:02:31.420 little tiny tasks that add up that take big pieces of your time. Then outsource those. Use the app
00:02:37.720 for groceries. Find a meal prep service. Maybe even get a robot vacuum as a very simple example.
00:02:43.700 But once you know where you're spending your time, outsource it. You can renegotiate your
00:02:48.820 relationship with time at any point. And finally, reinvest that free time into money-making
00:02:54.420 activities. I'm not here to tell you to buy back your time to then go hang out on the beach.
00:02:59.300 I want you to up-level your life, up-level your skills, be selectively lazy so you can be rich.
00:03:06.220 You just have to stop trading dollars for pennies, okay? That two cents of gas you saved by driving
00:03:11.960 20 minutes out of the way, your time is worth more than you think. Now that your errands are taken
00:03:16.480 care of. If you really want to be successful and lazy, you need to stop doing more. Which takes us
00:03:22.200 to number three, stop managing logistics in your life. Booking travel, scheduling meetings, doing
00:03:28.860 laundry. It all feels productive. It feels like motion, but it's kind of like riding a rocking
00:03:33.760 horse. Like you're moving, but you're not moving anywhere. If you want to be successful, you need
00:03:38.620 to learn to let go. So here are three steps to make it easy for you to stop managing your own
00:03:43.760 logistics. The first one is we have to build a preference doc. In programming, my world software,
00:03:48.620 there's this concept called dry. Don't repeat yourself. So I've always looked at every decision
00:03:53.140 I have to make through the lens of, can I create a rule that I can empower somebody else to follow
00:03:58.140 that would get them to make the exact same decision I would make? If I invited you to an
00:04:02.400 event and there was an intake form, how much of that intake form could somebody else answer on
00:04:07.040 your behalf? That actually could be your to-do list to create a preference file. And if you're
00:04:11.300 still stuck, go ask AI. Trying to create a preference file for everything that somebody
00:04:15.740 else can make decisions for me. So I don't have to make decision again. What are those questions?
00:04:19.340 It'll ask you, poof, preference file created. Once you have that, then we have to go number
00:04:24.680 two, which is delegate. In today's world with AI tools, Fixer.ai or other inbox management tools
00:04:30.180 are really great to actually help you take that. But guess what? It needs to be trained
00:04:34.060 on the preference file. Make sure you do that work first so the tools or the people can do
00:04:38.540 the work the way you want it. But if you're a business owner, hire an assistant to buy back
00:04:42.780 your time. I mean, this is a no brainer. Learning to work through somebody else is a meta skill
00:04:48.160 that if you learn now will apply in all areas of your life going forward. And once you've delegated
00:04:53.780 now you have to fill again. Being lazy isn't about doing nothing. It's about doing less of
00:04:59.500 the stuff that doesn't make you money and more of the stuff that does. Learning, getting around
00:05:04.320 people that inspire you. Working on activities are going to generate more income. Those are the
00:05:08.960 things that make you money. So not doing them because you're busy, that's the problem. So if
00:05:13.060 you have an assistant and you want my internal playbook for how I work with my assistant,
00:05:17.060 just message me on Instagram, YouTube, EA, or click the link below and I'll send you a copy.
00:05:21.800 So now that you've let go of the logistics, there's still more things in your business
00:05:26.080 holding you back from being successful. Number four, stop taking every freaking meeting. 0.82
00:05:33.040 Most meetings exist because someone won't make a decision. 0.84
00:05:37.200 Having a calendar full of meetings
00:05:39.120 keeps you from creating value.
00:05:41.540 The worst example of this was at a company
00:05:44.360 that had just bought our company.
00:05:45.980 And I'm walking down the hall
00:05:47.220 and there was 80 people in that room.
00:05:49.560 And I saw the guy,
00:05:50.440 he was a search engine optimization expert.
00:05:53.080 But the 80 people in the room were software programmers.
00:05:56.100 When I started to do the math of the amount of money
00:05:58.980 that was being wasted was crazy.
00:06:01.200 The truth is an email could have explained SEO
00:06:04.420 to every one of those engineers
00:06:05.680 that they could decide to read or not read
00:06:07.180 on their own time.
00:06:08.300 So here's how our lazy but successful selves
00:06:11.100 can make sure that we don't have to be in every meeting.
00:06:13.640 One, default to async.
00:06:16.240 Asynchronous means not connected at the same time.
00:06:19.120 Do it on their own time.
00:06:20.640 So I'm a big fan of, hey, don't have time for a call.
00:06:24.000 Feel free to send me an email.
00:06:25.220 Hey, appreciate the email.
00:06:26.460 What do I need to know to make a decision?
00:06:27.820 I don't want to have to schedule time in my calendar.
00:06:31.200 Then we have to use a simple decision framework.
00:06:34.220 Jeff Bezos made this famous.
00:06:35.680 He calls them type one versus type two decisions.
00:06:38.360 Type one decisions are like a revolving door
00:06:40.440 that only goes one way.
00:06:41.640 You go in, it goes that way.
00:06:43.320 They're really hard to reverse.
00:06:44.980 Type two is ones that you can go into and out of.
00:06:48.320 Everybody needs to understand the difference
00:06:50.140 because you can't treat them the same.
00:06:51.780 Make the best decision with the information you have
00:06:53.620 at the moment you have it and move on.
00:06:55.180 And if you end up finding out that wasn't a great decision,
00:06:57.820 back up, new decision, move forward.
00:06:59.920 Next, we have to institute a no meeting morning
00:07:02.720 for the deep work.
00:07:04.260 For me personally,
00:07:05.260 I think everybody should fight for their mornings.
00:07:07.900 I wanna create in my mornings.
00:07:09.680 I wanna do the deep work.
00:07:10.820 I wanna invite you to consider something.
00:07:12.520 You're allowed to negotiate with people.
00:07:14.480 Hey, would it be too much
00:07:15.980 if we have the meeting at four o'clock instead of 9 a.m.?
00:07:18.900 And the other thing I have is it has to have an agenda.
00:07:21.480 If there's no agenda in a calendar invite,
00:07:24.040 I will just delete the calendar invite.
00:07:25.940 Part of my morning process
00:07:27.240 is before my day starts in meetings
00:07:29.160 that hour before, I'm going through all the stuff to prep
00:07:32.100 so that I show up ready to go to make a decision.
00:07:34.700 So if you don't give me the material to do that,
00:07:36.620 then how am I supposed to show up the best way?
00:07:38.480 Again, these are things you can ask for.
00:07:40.480 And then finally, if a meeting is actually required,
00:07:43.220 I will encourage you to make it as short as possible.
00:07:46.300 If I can go 10 minutes and get the decision made, cool.
00:07:49.000 If I gotta go long, five minutes longer, great,
00:07:51.460 but I didn't schedule 30.
00:07:52.760 Here's what I know.
00:07:53.820 Meetings are the biggest waste of time in every company.
00:07:57.340 The worst part, it's the people who don't value their time
00:08:00.560 that will waste your time.
00:08:01.860 It's like my buddy Chris said the other day.
00:08:03.480 He said, thinking about doing the thing isn't doing the thing.
00:08:06.380 Talking about doing the thing isn't doing the thing.
00:08:08.920 Meeting about doing the thing isn't doing the thing.
00:08:11.500 The only thing that's doing the thing is doing the thing.
00:08:14.320 So just do the thing.
00:08:15.500 Now that your meetings are cleared,
00:08:16.620 if you want to be successful,
00:08:17.820 there's more things that you need to be lazy about.
00:08:20.680 Number five, let it go.
00:08:23.240 The I'll just handle it,
00:08:24.940 or hey, come back to me when you're done
00:08:26.860 so I can review it.
00:08:27.820 Those are those little tiny quips that you say
00:08:30.900 that will keep you in stock.
00:08:33.120 Let it go.
00:08:34.420 Learn to build a system where other people
00:08:37.500 can accomplish things without you having to be involved in it.
00:08:40.280 If you can't do that,
00:08:41.460 that's just defining what I call your complexity ceilings.
00:08:43.920 If you're trying to be both the conductor
00:08:46.540 and the person playing every instrument, 0.99
00:08:49.560 that orchestra is gonna play shitty music. 0.96
00:08:52.600 You need to choose the one that you're great at 0.98
00:08:54.840 and you should be the conductor.
00:08:56.040 So here's how you do this without going crazy.
00:08:59.000 The first one is we have to apply
00:09:00.340 what I call the 10-80-10 rule.
00:09:02.120 When I'm sitting down with my team
00:09:03.380 to come up with ideas for this video or others,
00:09:05.740 we're sitting down for that 10% looking at ideas
00:09:08.400 and then we define it together.
00:09:10.160 Then the 80% is execution.
00:09:12.400 I give all the production, the responsibility to the team.
00:09:16.100 And that last 10% is the integration,
00:09:18.420 which is you and I sitting here doing this video.
00:09:20.820 Then I want you to consider the camcorder method.
00:09:23.480 So imagine if every time you have something
00:09:25.180 for somebody else to do, they get a video of you doing the work, talking out loud why you did
00:09:31.080 certain things the way you did it, and then they can use that to do the work for you. See, most
00:09:36.100 people don't hire folks because they think to themselves, it'll take me more time for them to
00:09:40.280 get trained up than me just doing the work myself. I just use camcorder method to record myself doing
00:09:45.000 the work the first time and then give it to somebody else so they can get trained themselves.
00:09:49.520 And if you want a tip, take that video, drop it into AI and ask it to create an SOP, a standard
00:09:54.540 operating procedure and watch it blow your mind. And last, we have to understand the replacement
00:09:59.820 ladder. In your life, there's types of tasks that cost very little, that have low stakes to have
00:10:05.280 somebody else help you on, that should be done first before you go to more complicated. So first,
00:10:10.300 you replace yourself in admin, then delivery, then marketing, sales, and eventually leadership
00:10:16.360 layers. There's a whole lot I can teach, but it's a complete chapter in my book, Buy Back Your Time,
00:10:21.300 So just check that out if you wanna go deeper.
00:10:23.300 And just remember, letting go is scary,
00:10:25.780 but here's my philosophy.
00:10:27.140 80% done by somebody else is 100% awesome.
00:10:30.860 And if it's not, go be better
00:10:33.040 so that their 80% is your 100% today.
00:10:35.840 So now that you've stopped doing everything yourself,
00:10:38.740 if you really wanna be successful,
00:10:40.840 you actually need to spend less time
00:10:42.820 tracking every single penny.
00:10:45.140 Number six, don't worry about the money.
00:10:48.460 I've seen time and time again,
00:10:50.040 people step over dollars to pick up dimes
00:10:53.100 when they should focus on making more money.
00:10:56.220 You know, my dad always asks me in my businesses,
00:10:58.080 he's like, what about this?
00:10:59.100 How many employees you have there?
00:11:00.140 What's your revenue there?
00:11:00.960 And he gets mad at me because I don't know the answer.
00:11:03.600 And the reason why is that if I had to track
00:11:05.880 every single transaction and every decision
00:11:08.480 that's made in my business
00:11:09.380 so I can answer some random question from my dad,
00:11:11.860 then I wouldn't have the time to shoot this video.
00:11:14.000 You need to not focus on all the little things.
00:11:16.520 So here's how you get your mind off the money
00:11:18.540 and actually doing the stuff that makes you the most money.
00:11:20.780 First off, you have to set up a financial dashboard
00:11:23.560 that shows you the week of cash, your expenses,
00:11:26.300 how things are flowing,
00:11:27.300 and then review it for 15 minutes every week.
00:11:30.380 Next, we wanna schedule a monthly 60-minute money meeting
00:11:33.320 to review high-level profit and expenses.
00:11:35.680 So I do this across a portfolio of companies every month
00:11:39.220 where I have the CFO and the CEO on a call.
00:11:42.160 That meeting is my dedicated time
00:11:43.940 to make sure that the business is running
00:11:45.700 in the direction I expect it to.
00:11:47.060 And finally, you want to focus
00:11:49.280 on income-generating activities.
00:11:51.640 My buddy Dane actually said it to me this morning.
00:11:53.660 He was like, last year I had a really tough year
00:11:55.780 and a buddy of mine said I had to cut all my expenses
00:11:58.020 and I said, you know what?
00:11:59.200 I could do all that work or I could get on the phone.
00:12:02.680 And that's what he did.
00:12:03.700 He called all his past customers and he said,
00:12:05.420 is there anything I can help you with?
00:12:06.820 And that generated income.
00:12:08.480 Why?
00:12:08.860 It's abundance, it's opportunity.
00:12:10.980 You wanna be an expansive mindset,
00:12:13.000 not a contraction mindset.
00:12:14.700 And if you find like this even sounds like a lot,
00:12:16.720 you can use tools like hellofrank.ai to manage all this stuff, to produce a report, to give you
00:12:21.600 the CFO conversation. So you don't even have to hire somebody. You can use AI to do it for you.
00:12:26.220 And I always think of this philosophy. You don't win by spending less. You win by building something
00:12:31.580 so valuable that people beg to pay you for it. And if you're focused on the pennies,
00:12:37.120 that's just never going to happen. Number seven, stop working when you're not working.
00:12:43.060 Checking slack at midnight feels like you're dedicated.
00:12:46.340 It's actually incredibly destructive.
00:12:48.340 You need to protect your energy.
00:12:49.540 In my first company, I used to work 100-hour work weeks.
00:12:53.080 It almost killed me.
00:12:54.520 It cost me my relationship, me some friendships, my health.
00:12:57.900 You think that hustle is a badge of honor?
00:13:00.580 No, it's a demonstration of where you lack capability.
00:13:04.020 The muscle actually only grows when it's recovering,
00:13:06.520 when I'm sleeping.
00:13:07.580 If all I did was lift heavy
00:13:09.280 and didn't give it time to recover,
00:13:10.920 then I wouldn't grow the muscle.
00:13:12.720 Most people just don't work hard enough when they work
00:13:15.180 to have the time off actually be helpful for them
00:13:17.520 because they're always busy thinking about work
00:13:19.700 when they're supposed to be off
00:13:20.860 and they're not recharging.
00:13:22.000 So here's how you can make it
00:13:23.160 where you can stop working without losing your life.
00:13:25.960 First thing is you have to set hard stops and starts.
00:13:30.280 When you are at work and you have stuff to do,
00:13:32.780 make a list, attack the list.
00:13:34.580 These little systems for when you start
00:13:36.800 and when you stop
00:13:37.620 will change your whole relationship at work.
00:13:39.400 Then you have to build a system that earns while you sleep.
00:13:43.340 Most people are still stuck in selling their time.
00:13:45.780 You need to get to a place where you're selling outcomes
00:13:48.200 because then it's on me to be more effective
00:13:50.680 so I can get you that result on the lowest cost to me.
00:13:53.840 And the last one, schedule reset time.
00:13:56.320 Disconnect to reconnect.
00:13:57.880 Most people just schedule their work stuff,
00:14:00.080 but I would encourage you to schedule your life stuff.
00:14:02.460 It's like my buddy Brad always says,
00:14:04.020 I have a life plan first, then a business plan.
00:14:06.860 If you can't unplug, you haven't built a business.
00:14:09.940 You just built a high-paying job.
00:14:12.100 And the truth is, great leaders rush as fast as they can
00:14:15.460 to get to a place where they're not needed.
00:14:17.800 So all that being said,
00:14:19.480 here's what I want you to think about.
00:14:21.200 The other day, I was on a boat
00:14:22.960 and I was talking to a female entrepreneur 0.99
00:14:24.560 and she says this sentence,
00:14:26.720 I can't take time off because it makes me feel guilty.
00:14:30.220 This is a person doing 12 million a year in revenue.
00:14:32.580 And I thought to myself,
00:14:33.700 What level of business success would you have to get to
00:14:37.660 to give yourself permission to enjoy?
00:14:40.200 Do you know some of the most beautiful moments
00:14:42.020 of my life came from just deciding to not decide
00:14:45.760 to just following my intuition?
00:14:47.820 Because it's in the nothingness that I get the inspiration.
00:14:51.540 It's in the wandering that I get exposed to new ideas
00:14:55.440 that I can apply to my life.
00:14:56.920 It's in those moments laying in the sun
00:14:58.700 that I get inspired for some big new adventure.
00:15:01.600 And if you can't even find the time to do that because you feel anxiety and guilt, that's a
00:15:07.460 problem. And if you have to convince yourself that you need to be more lazy to be more successful,
00:15:12.520 I hope that message is what you heard. Now, if you want access to my complete
00:15:16.860 executive assistant playbook, just message me on Instagram, Dan Martell, two L's Martell,
00:15:21.020 the word YouTube EA, or click the link below and I'll send it over to you.
00:15:24.900 That's how being lazy can make you more successful. But if you want to learn how being
00:15:28.580 fast can also make you more successful, click the video and I'll see you on the other side.