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

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.

Dan Martell - February 10, 2026

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

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