17 Rules of The Top 0.01% Earners

I'm going to share with you the 17 rules of success. These rules are what make the top 0.01% of people successful. Some of these rules are what I use to make my first million before 27 years old. And others are, from what I've observed, rubbing shoulders with some of the richest people in history. So, without further explaining it, These are the 17 rules of success. Welcome to the Martell Method. I went from rehab at 17 to building a $100 million empire and being a Wall Street Journal best selling author. And in this podcast, I'll show you exactly how to build a life and business you don't grow to hate. And make sure you don't miss anything by subscribing to my newsletter@martell method.com the first rule is to ignore advice from the bottom 99.9%. If you want to be rich, don't listen to broke people. The truth is, if your parents, your friends, your teachers have achieved the thing that you want to achieve, then great advice. If they haven't, then don't internalize it. Don't respond to it. At the end of the day, a lot of people in your life, your parents, your friends, your te, all want to see you not hurt. They don't want you to go through pain, so they're going to give you advice. It's going to help you avoid that. But the truth is, if you want to be successful, you actually have to go through pain. You have to look forward to challenges. You have to do things that other people aren't willing to do so you can live a life that very few people can. There's this concept called crabs in a bucket and oftentimes people don't want to see you do better than them, because if you do, then essentially you're showing them the truth of where they've been living a lie. So what do they do? They pull on those crabs, pull them down the bucket. They stay stuck. This is what happens oftentimes in small communities, in small towns, in certain countries. That is just the default behavior towards people that are trying to win and be successful. So don't be upset, just don't pander to it. Find people that have done it before and ask them for the advice. Get the support from them. Asking people that have never done the thing you want to do, what you should do with your life, is not a winning strategy. Which brings us to number two, which is the results you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding. Before we get back to the episode, if you Actually want to know what my real life looks like and see the people and the businesses and the companies I buy and my family and just like how I make it all work. Go. Follow me on Instagram Dan Martell, two elders and Martell on Instagram. It's where I show the behind the scenes, the real deal, real time. I'd love to see you there. Have an amazing day. A long time ago, I decided to do this crazy thing called the 12 hour challenge. Essentially what you do is you start in and you walk for 12 hours in a row. Some people might hear that and go like that doesn't sound too crazy. Let me tell you what happens around hour 8, 9 and 10. Your body was not designed to walk for that long, to stand up straight for that long and your muscles start to fatigue and wear down. And the pain and the muscles and the tension, honestly, almost like doing a full distance marathon or a half ironman. I've done both and it hurts, hurt. But here's what's crazy. During that walk, I'd given myself a bunch of prompts. And one of them was the cave you fear to enter most holds the treasure that you seek. It's a Joseph Campbell quote. And I was thinking about this the whole walk. And I would just meditate around. What cave do I fear to enter most? What conversations do I fear? What work do I fear? What decisions do I fear? What strategies scare me? What am I worried I'd have to sacrifice on the back end of a decision? I just kept meditating and thinking about this question and all of a sudden I started getting all these INP flashes of like, you need to talk to this person and close down that thing. You need to make a decision around this. And I just started writing everything down in my journal. That 12 hour walk, even though it was grueling physically, it was some of the most enlightening thoughts and energy and work that I'd done on myself. Because it was kind of crazy. For the first time in my life, I took a day to myself to just walk and be with my thoughts. And that was a beautiful experience. So pains and challenges are actually meant to shape you. You don't walk away from them, you don't fear them. You don't pretend like they're not there. You actually want to enter that cave because here's another big idea. No pressure, no diamonds. If you don't do the work, you don't become special. Most people avoid the hard work because they're scared at what it's going to require. Most people don't want to do or make those decisions because they've made up stories about the sacrifices that they would have to make to achieve in the achievement. There's a new level of success that they're scared they're going to have to uphold. And they would rather stay small where it's comfortable and there's nothing scary about that than actually expand and achieve stuff that's bigger and be more successful. Because then now you have something to lose that scares people. Most people are more afraid of their power and their potential than they are of staying the same. Which brings us to number three, which is simple scales, complex fails. It's one of my favorite concepts in business because what's easy is adding a ton of complexity to a business. You know, Elon Musk talks about this all the time when it comes to engineering. He says you should be removing so many parts when you're building the next iteration of your product that it doesn't work and you'll have to add 10 to 20% back to actually make the solution. Because what's easy over time is to create complexity. It's interesting because I see people lie to themselves in life all the time. You know, I have a friend that is a homebuilder and you know, he was like, you know, I'm trying to scale my home building business. And I said, well cool, you just sell more houses. And he's like, yeah, but it's not that easy because I got a team and I've got all these different demands on my time and I'm trying to find ways to get my time back to scale my business. And I said, what do you do? I mean, you sell houses. So you just build houses like well, we also do lease build outs and we do renovations for people and oh, and we're working on some new multi unit projects. And I laughed. I said, hmm, you think you're being simple by focusing on construction, but you actually have four different businesses that you're pretending are just one. Each one of those businesses could be a 10 million plus a year business. But because you have all four, you don't have time to make any one of them a great business. So understand this. It's so easy to make something complex. It's hard to keep something simple. Every time you add something, it starts with negative value. Meaning that just having it in your business, it has a negative impact. The customers are confused because it's another option. It's another thing your finance team has to manage. Your customer support team needs to know about it. You Got to deliver it, the salesperson selling it. So every time you add something, it starts with negative value, which means it has to be so important, so valuable, that it overcomes that negativity. So think about what you can remove in your business. You'd be surprised how you could probably get rid of about 60 to 70% of the things you sell, the services you offer, the features and benefits, and most customers wouldn't even notice. But you'll make more money. Which brings us to number four, which is a spend money to save time, not time to save money. See, growing up, I watched my dad do this all the time. He would drive around and mow lawns at different apartment complexes he owned because he'd rather do it himself. He knew it got done right, and he saved the money by paying somebody else to do it. The challenge was, is then he didn't have the time to actually go look at more real estate deals. He didn't have the time to be there with his kids, especially on a weekend when he was doing this kind of work. Looking back, I understood why he did it, but I also saw opportunities for him to have done more. Broke people spend time to save money. I mean, I've seen people, you know, drive for 20 minutes to go to Costco to save 10 cents on gas, not realizing how valuable their time is. And they could have just paid a little bit more, got that 20 minutes back, and then use that to go become more valuable. The most successful people I know protect their time. They spend money to buy back their time, invest that time to become better, choosing goals to grow them with that new time. Business and life is all about trying to find ways to create leverage. If you're too busy doing it, doing it, doing it, you're not going to have the time to expand and grow who you are. Which brings us to number five, which is 80% done by somebody else is a hundred percent freaking awesome. I talked about this so many times in my book, buy back your time. Here's the big idea. Anybody else that does something for you, Even if it's 80% as good as you, saves you that time that you can go do things that light you up that only you can do. And I hear this all the time. I coach a bunch of entrepreneurs and they say, but, Dan, my employees can't do it as good as me. And I don't disagree. They probably can't because they're not you. But they can at least do it to a level, level that gets the job done. And then you take that time and go spend it on things that make you way more money than paying that person that hour to do the thing you didn't want to do in the first place. Because you will only scale as fast as your ability to delegate. Most people with small businesses don't know how to delegate. They need to do everything. They need to have their finger on the pulse. They're double checking everybody's work, they're hiring people and telling them what to do, essentially doing their job. What's the whole point? So I came up with this thing called the 108010 rule, especially for the creatives. The philosophy I have is the first 10% of a new project. I want to be involved, I want to provide some input, some strategies, some resources. That's the first 10%. The next 80%, the person is going to go do the project, they're going to start creating, they're going to go do some research, they're going to learn, and then once they actually get everything kind of done, then they bring it back to me for the last 10%. That 10% is where we really refine it to make sure that it really delivers on the promise we're making to our customers or to whoever asked us to do this thing in the first place. And then that way I get to buy back 80% of the time from doing the work that somebody else can do. And I see people mess this up all the time. They clean their house before the cleaner shows up, or they're mowing their lawn when they should be working with a client making five times more money than they could than mowing their own lawn. Or they're running around spending 30, 40% of their week just running errands when they could have used an app to buy stuff, or they could have hired somebody to do meal prep so they're not spending an hour for every meal or washing their own laundry. I mean, even simple stuff like that with wash and fold will save you so much time. So this is something you can do at work for sure, but even more importantly, in your home. Before we get back to the episode, if you're enjoying it so far, could you go ahead and do me a huge favor and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify reviews help us get up in the rankings, which gives us credibility to reach out to bigger and bigger guests. We can bring them to you. It would mean so much. Let's get back to the episode. Which brings us to number six, which is worrying, is a wasted use of your imagination. I got this from my coach, Ed Milet and I love this saying, if you just think about it, that anytime you worry, you're worshiping the problem, you're literally looking at the thing that could go wrong and you're making it the most important thing of a future that is as likely as happening, the bad as the opposite, which is something awesome. You know, one of my clients, when I talk to them, they always think about the worst case scenario. It's a normal default behavior. The problem is in situation. They're playing defense, they're not playing offense. Here's the big idea is the negative outcome is as likely as a positive one. Meaning that your ability to imagine a future that is negative is as probable as imagining a future that is positive. What you focus on expands. So if you want to play a game where you're playing defense all the time and worried all the time, you're just going to be in a negative space that is not going to let you hit your goals or achieve your dreams. Whereas if you focus on offense where you're pushing, you're expanding, expanding, worrying about what could go awesome. You're planning for success. So use your imagination for positivity, not worry. One concept I like to focus on is API. Assume positive intention. Assume that no matter what happens, that there was a positive intention behind it. You're not worried about it. Somebody cut you off in traffic. Assume they got to get to the hospital, somebody didn't reply to your email. Assume something important is going on in their life and they'll get back to you eventually. It is as likely the reason as the opposite. And you're making it all up. It's in your head. It's not even true. It's as likely to be true as the opposite. You understand how crazy this is, so don't let worrying take over your imagination. Which brings us to number seven, which is patient with results, but impatient with action. I get business owners coming to me all the time saying, dan, I'm trying. I'm doing the stuff. I watch your videos, I listen to your coaching, and I'm doing it, I'm doing it and nothing's happening for six months. If everything magically happened in six months, then I would be way further along. The truth is, is most people aren't pat enough to dedicate a decade or effort to what they want to create. They said, if I'm not a millionaire within six months, there must be something wrong. And the truth is, is you can't make a baby in one month with nine women. Some things take time, some things require consistency. Over long periods of time. And most people are just not willing to be dedicated for that long. That doesn't mean you should slow down. I want you to take action consistently. Be impatient with your action, but be willing to go long periods of time without seeing any results. It's the people that can do that that win the biggest in life. Which brings us to number eight, which is begin with the end in mind. I first read this in an incredible book called Good to Great by Jim Collins. It's like if you're climbing the ladder of success and you actually got to that destination, if you didn't plan for what it looked like, you might find out that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. And I see this happen all the time, where people give up their relationships, their health, their mental stability, all for this achievement of success, not realizing that once they get there, it doesn't feel good. They're climbing a la ladder, leaning against the wrong wall. And then what do you got to do? You literally have to climb all the way down that ladder, grab it across the room, and lean against a new wall so you can start that process all over again. The most successful people I know start with the end goal. They literally say, what's the outcome we want to achieve? And then how do we work backwards to achieve that goal? They break it down into very clear projects that will allow them to hit that outcome. Which brings us to number nine, which is to be blissfully dissatisfied. I also got this from my coach, Ed, because it's one of his fav things to teach his clients the idea that you can't be incredibly grateful for what you have and in the same breath know that you are here to create more, to do more, to become more. That's just silly. Some people say to me, they go, I want to do this, but I feel selfish if I go after this goal. And I go, interesting. Are there people in the world that have more money than you? Yes. Do you think they're evil? Absolutely. You can get mad at them, but if they're not doing good with their money and you think there's better ways for them to use that money, go make money, go be rich. You know, wanting more isn't bad. And I think what holds people back, most people are scared to want more because they think in wanting more that they don't appreciate what they have. Separate those things. Those are completely different. I can be ridiculously grateful for everything right now. I can say, I get to. I don't have to. I can have that mentality. And in the same moment, understand that I'm here to do great with my life. Which brings us to number 10, which is to invest in your skill set, not your lifestyle. When I was in my early 20s, I realized after two failed companies that I needed help. I was reading books, but they were computer programming books, which is the skill that I had developed. But I hadn't learned the skill of building a business. So I found this business coach, this guy named Bob, and I wasn't even paying myself. I had saved just a few thousand bucks to be able to even hire him. Even though I made a commitment for the year, I only had two months. So I figured if I could pay him for two months and he taught me how to grow my business, then that would allow me to make more money to be able to pay him for the rest of the year. And luckily, the bet paid off. Within the first 12 months, I made almost a million dollars working with my coach. And that's when I really solidified the philosophy that I have to invest in myself, in my skill set, to learn the things that are the gaps. Because if I already knew what I needed to know to be successful, then that success would be in my life. The fact that is not is the reason why I have to continue to acquire the next level of skills to allow me to grow. See, I choose goals that grow me. And I often say to my team, if the only people that can help us are within these four walls, we're all in trouble. More times investing in you more than you invest in your job, because I actually know that that investment, those skills in yourself will actually make you a better person to be on our team. So don't try to keep up with the Joneses by buying the BMW and the. The nice furniture and the new condo. Instead, take all that money, invest it in yourself so that you can create more value, you can make more income, and live a life that very few people will ever be able to dream about. Before we get back to this episode, if you prefer to watch your content, then go find me on YouTube. I have this episode on YouTube. I'm Dan Martell. On YouTube, just subscribe to the channel, turn on the notification bell, because then you'll get notified in real time. It'll tell YouTube to tell you got a new episode, so you'll never miss anything. Now let's get back to the episode. Which brings us to number 11, which is to never rush decisions. You know, back in the day, I was looking at a investment opportunity. Essentially, I could buy these homes in Detroit and A guy approached me at an event and said, hey, minimum purchase is 10 homes. It's a hundred thousand dollars. Called my brother, he was into real estate. I was like, hey, man, you want to buy these homes? He's like, sounds crazy. But sometimes things that look too good to be true aren't. So I decided to say yes. And it happened within a matter of hours. We wired the money, we became owners. They managed the property. We didn't think too much about it. A year later, we hadn't gotten any checks from these homes. Well, essentially, they ended up being condemned homes. We move way too quick to make a decision. Here's what I've learned about that since then. Anytime you have a big decision to make, slow it down. Make a list of things that need to be true for you to decide to move forward, sleep on it at minimum, and work through that process. I'm not saying don't make any quick actions. You want to take action to verify an idea, an investment, making a decision. But you don't want to sit there, analysis paralysis. You want to look at it and say, what's the risk return? Use the end in mind to make your decisions. The top entrepreneurs in the world, Elon Steve Jobs Bezos, were meticulous with their decision. But you don't want to make it without the information, and you don't want to make it too quick. You want to take action quickly and decision slowly. Which brings us to number 12, which is invert your question. And I first got this from Charlie Munger. He has this great quote that says invert always invert. The idea is this, most people can't tell you what they want in life, but if I ask them, what do they not want, they can make a list of all the things they don't want. So the cool part is, is your brain has an easier time trying to find the negative. So what you do is you ask the negative and then do the opposite. How can I guarantee to make money? Well, ask yourself, how can I guarantee staying broke? Be lazy and don't improve myself and eat like crap, Then those things would probably cause me to stay broke. Perfect. Do the opposite. See, as humans, we're a lot more inclined to find the negative. Inverting it, it'll give us the path to find the positive things we should do to get those results. Which brings us to number 13, which is play to win, don't play not to lose. So these people that are always saying to me, you know, I've got this strategy to save on taxes, or I've got this really sneaky way to not pay vendors. I get that. But my whole philosophy is instead of trying to focus on contraction, I want to focus on expansion. I want to to focus on how do I make more money. I literally have friends that have uprooted their whole family, their whole living situation, their relationships to move to a country to save a million dollars or half a million dollars. Instead, they should have had the conversation with somebody to say, hey, how do we create enough wealth where it doesn't impact our lifestyle? How do we expand in a way where that tax isn't a big issue? I'm not saying pay one penny more than you should. What I am saying is instead of focusing on how not to lose, why don't you spend that time on finding to win even bigger? What you focus on will expand. And the problem with that is one is a scarcity mindset and the other one is abundance mindset. And any person you admire in this world has an abundance mindset. They believe in the potential of the future. It's a better, energetic place to live in, and it'll create bigger results for you. Which brings us to number 14, which is to start with the what, not the how. I know a lot of people, they struggle with their ability to dream. Dream. They don't give themselves permission to really think big. They don't understand that there's a lot of magic in the ability to project a future that is just honestly, there's no way you know how to create, but you allow yourself to see it and to believe it. Because if you're always focused on the how, then you'll actually miss the opportunity to create something huge. So focus on the outcome, don't worry about the how, yet. Hold the belief true in your mind that it's possible. Because what you focus on will expand. The truth is, is a big enough what and a why. Take care of any how. See, some of you guys, you go to the how, which keeps the idea small. Because if you don't know how to do the how, you just kind of reduce the size of your goal until the how meets it. Instead of saying, who would I need to become to achieve this bigger dream? Then from there you'll go find the how. The how will literally magically be presented to you. You'll be having a conversation with somebody, or you'll read something, or you're in a book and you're like, oh my gosh, this is the thing that I need to learn how to do that I didn't know how to do to actually get this result I want in my life. So just know holding the what and the why true is going to be more powerful than focus on the how. Which brings us to number 15, which is to look for the problems in everything. Most people tend to avoid conflict, but if you want to be in the top 0.01% of earners, you need to look for the problems in the world. Most entrepreneurs I know, all my friends, they can't turn it off. They walk around and they see opportunity, AKA problems all around them, inefficiencies, things that frustrate them, things that aren't properly built. And they see these potential solutions. Businesses, revenue, income all over the place. They see it in other people's businesses. They go to a restaurant, they're like they're doing this wrong. They see it in how a product's made. And that is a skill set that you have to develop. You have to look around the world and run the numbers and understand how could you find a solution to a problem? Here's a hack. Go around your house and just make a list of anything that frustrates you. It could be as simple as the charging station where you plug in all your phones. Doesn't seem very intuitive. I can never find the connector. I don't like the fact that every time I park my car, I don't know how much distance I have to the end of the garage. I don't understand why I have to put my clothes from the washer to the dryer. But that's an example of focusing on problems. They're all around you. I remember one time when I was younger, I went to Australia and I went to a store and they were selling rum and Coke in a can. And I thought, that's so obvious, like, why are we not doing this back in Canada? If you travel the world, you will see people solve problems in creative ways that are probably not well known in other parts of the world. And that alone could be a massive business. So here's the deal. You want to be really rich, though. You want to solve rich people problems. The richer the person is, the problem you solve solve it will be a lot easier to make money. Most people, when they start, they solve broke people problems and they wonder why the idea never takes off. Which brings us to number 16, which is to be a river, not a reservoir. When people have good ideas, they think, I gotta keep them to myself. I can't tell anybody. You need to sign an NDA or I'll never tell you about my idea. The truth is, is Great people, folks that change the world, they have this abundance mentality to not only their financials and their resources, but to their ideas. See, even like business coaches or people that teach their expertise line, a lot of them are holding back. They're not giving away their best stuff and then they're wondering why people aren't leaning in. It's like if everything you share just sounds very simple and basic because all the great stuff is stuff that people have to pay for, then nobody's going to know that you're actually the best at what you do. My belief is that information should be free and implementation should be paid. If you want to demonstrate your expertise, help people get a result in advance of ever working with you. If I want to recruit incredible talent, I need to teach people out in the world how to get the best job in the world. And hopefully they take that advice and eventually apply for my job. Create from a place of abundance. Teach. Give it away. Let the information flow through you. Don't be a reservoir, be a river. If you do it right, here's the big idea. Your marketing will help more people than your product ever will if you give everything away for free. High tides rise all boats. The more you get reach and reputation, the more opportunities will come back to you. My philosophy is very simple. In life, I want to create more value for everybody in my world than anybody else in their world world. If I focus on that desire to help other people achieve their outcomes, I know it's going to come back. Which brings us to 17, which is a monetize your passion. There's this great quote by Warren Buffett that says you can't teach passion. And for me, that was coding. Learning how to create software and write code. That was the thing that I became supremely obsessed about. I focused on it. I woke up and I started coding. I would think about it all day long if I couldn't code and I'd step till late in the night to write code. Here's what I learned at a young age. If I could find a way to have my profession be the thing that I love to do, that I would done for free, then it's going to allow me to go further. Where most people won't see the best people in the world, the folks that you see on social media or in the press or whatever, building these massive businesses, it's because they're passionate about the problem. They're passionate around building the solution. They play around to find out what they're burning passion for. So here's how you Find out what you're passionate about. What do you do when you procrastinate? That's my favorite one. It's what do you do? Some people, they organize their closet. What if you could get paid a lot of money to do that and be like, oh, you can't get a lot of money. Closet organizers don't make a lot of money. No, but people on YouTube do. Can't make money digging dirt. Yeah, you can. It's called an excavation company. You can buy an excavation company, make a million dollars a year, and your job could be sitting there on these massive machines moving dirt around. So don't tell me that you can't monetize your passion. You haven't figured out how to because you haven't leaned into it. If it feels like fun, is it really work? When I travel the world with people I admire, buyer doing cool stuff, creating content, having fun conversations, building this empire. If that's work, sign me up all day long. I mean, I don't want to brag, but most of the time I'm doing meetings on the back of my boat, wake surfing, I'm having chats with people and responding to text messages in between runs on my mountain bike, I'm shooting content with my buddy driving around in supercars. If that is work, then awesome sauce. And the cool part is, it's available to every one of you. And just because you don't have the belief today doesn't mean it isn't true. So here's the big idea. Only do things that light you up. Find ways that you can get paid to do those things over and over and over again and become obsessed with it. Because at the end of the day, success is self defined. So if you love everything you do in a day, you've already achieved success. Those are the 17 rules of success. If you want to learn how I brainwash myself to success, click the link and I'll see you on the other side. Side. Thanks for listening to the Martel Method. If you like this episode, could you do me a huge favor and go leave a review? This helps us get the podcast more ears and helps more people get unstuck, reclaim their freedom, and build their empire.