If I Wanted to Go From Broke to Millionaire, Here’s What I’d Do

Welcome to the Growth Stacking podcast. This is Dan Martell. I went from a broke 17 year old with 15 bucks in my pocket to a 27 year old millionaire with over a million cash in my bank account. But if I had to do it over again starting today and go from zero to a million dollars by the end of this year, this is exactly how I would do it. So to get to seven figures, first I have to get to six figures. Step one, I would build one of the five six figure skills that have the most demand this year. And they only take a few hours a day to learn. I built my first six figure skill when I was 17 years old in rehab. That's where I found a book on Java programming and I got obsessed with programming software. I built the skill knowing it was going to be valuable. This is 1997. I get out of rehab and discover this small thing called the Internet and it turns out to be a very big deal. And this is actually one of the six figure skills that are most in demand this year. So number one is software engineering, learning how to build products, code systems. Two is video editing, taking content like this and making it engaging for people to want to start watching it and continue watching it. Three is copywriting, learning the skill of persuasion, communication, getting people to purchase without anybody having a conversation with them. Number four is graphic design. How do you take images and make them beautiful? How do we create more content? Social media, build audiences. And number five is data analysts. There's people that take the information and massage it in a certain way and structure it so that the AI algorithms know how to talk to the data to make sense of it all. Which brings us to number two, which is follow one course until successful. See, once I started to see that my skill could make six figures, I put my head down and started focusing on actually how to make it happen. And this is how I did it. Follow one course until successful is actually part of the first focus acronym. Get it? Focus. Follow one course until successful. So instead of acting on all the crazy ideas, I focus on one path. And for me, that was building my software company. Multiple streams of income will not make you rich, not when you're starting off. Entrepreneurs typically die from indigestion, not starvation, meaning they take on too many things. They say yes to all these opportunities instead of understanding what is the focus and going all in one. Learning what to say no to is just important to what to say yes to. See, when you're starting off, you need to figure out how to do one thing that you can sell that people will buy and continue building that process, trying to start selling other products, other business ideas, getting involved with the friends, those are all distractions away from being focused on building your revenue. So if you actually want to build a million dollar a year business, do one thing, commit to it, Go all in. Put the effort to a point that it would be unreasonable for you not to achieve that outcome if focused. Which brings us to number three, which is to audit your social circle. While following one course took me from 0 to 100k, it's only when I expanded my circle that I saw massive leaps in my revenue. 100k to 250k came on the backside of looking at who I spent time with, cutting out all the wrong people and then adding the right people in. I call it doing a friendventory. So three groups of people that you should evaluate to start building relationships. Number one is peers. And these are typically people that are in your industry or building similar type companies that are about two years ahead so that they can give you feedback on what you're doing that are still very relevant strategies in today's world. The second group is advisors. These are people that have specialized skill sets. Think accountant recruiters, lawyers. Yes, you can pay them, but I would also try to find people that could advise you on these different areas of your business as you start getting going. And then the third group are mentors. And I always joke, mentors are people that you turn to instead of your parents. And the reason why is because mentors are people that have done the thing you want to do. They've created the outcome that you're striving to achieve. And if you turn to your parents for advice, you'll get the exact same life they had. Which if your dad is wealthy and your mom is incredible, great. But for most people, we want to create a future that's bigger than the one we experience in our childhood. Which means going to your parents for advice is actually a flawed strategy. So mentors are people that have been to where you want to go and can give you advice on how to think through the sequencing in the steps. Which brings us to number four, which is to quit your time assassin. At that point in my life, I was hovering around 250k in revenue and had to take a serious look at my life, where I was spending my time, what time was being wasted. This is when I realized that there's five time assassins holding entrepreneurs back. The first one is the staller. And this is people, entrepreneurs that can't make decisions. They have Analysis paralysis. These are people that it takes them 15 minutes to decide how to reply to an email. I remember one time one of my mentors, this guy named David Allen, he wrote a great book called Getting Things Done. His rule is if it takes less than two minutes to reply to somebody or to make a decision, if you've got all the information, then you must make that decision, at least the next step to move it forward. Number two is the speed demon. This is kind of the opposite. This is the person that needs to hire somebody and they go on their Facebook post and they say, I need to hire somebody that looks like this. And then all their friends reply. And then as long as a person can fog a mirror, they have a heartbeat, they're willing to take the pay the person's offering. They just hire them. No process, no systems. And then the person completely falls apart. And then they got to hire somebody new. And they wonder why they keep wasting all their time with bad hires. Because of the way they do things. They're trying to move too quick instead of moving with intent. Number three is the supervisor. This is the micromanager. This is the person that hires somebody to do a job and then tells them how to do the job, checks that they did the job and then tells them what to do next. If I hire somebody to do the job, I let them do the job. So I don't tell people what to do, I train people to what to do. And that's how we avoid becoming the supervisor, not actually getting our time back when we hire people. Number four is the saver. This is the person that walks over dollars to pick up dimes. These are people that don't understand that hoarding money in bank account is not actually productive. They're not putting their money to work and they have all these money beliefs and scarcity beliefs instead of an abundance personality that causes them to go slow in life and waste time instead of investing to buy back that time to move faster. Number five is a self medicator. And for me this used to be one of my biggest problems where I couldn't even celebrate a win or deal with a loss without drinking. Not wanting to feel the feelings, I just felt like I deserved it. I had a long day, so I deserve a drink. And drinking caused more pain and created more time suckage in my life than anything else. And honestly created a path where if I didn't quit 12 years ago, that I know it would have created some major issues for me in my life. So what's cool is these five time Assassins cost nothing to implement, to overcome, and can save you a ton, a ton of time. Which brings us to number five, which is to feed your mind. After quitting my time Assassins at this point I was 24 years old at 300k in revenue in my software business and I realized that I needed to feed my mind. I started reading multiple business books like the E. Myth, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind and Think and Grow Rich. I started learning about these ideas and inserting them into my mind. And These are the four channels I use to feed my mind. Number one is podcasts and videos. I mean it could be YouTube or your jam. First off, I'm gonna tell you a little productivity hack. Go buy yourself a membership for YouTube Red. Why? It gets rid of ads and allows you to Download videos from YouTube offline so you could watch them when you're traveling. You don't have Internet connection. It's probably the best 10 bucks a month that I spend. But if you don't wanna Podcasts are free. My favorite podcasts are podcasts that teach me the skill that I need to learn. Next from trying to figure out marketing, go subscribe to the top five top 10 marketing podcasts. If you want to figure out sales, go subscribe to the top 10 sales podcasts. If you want to figure out teams or leadership, go subscribe to the top 10 podcast. So you have the feed and you're always listening while you're driving, while you're working out, while you're in commute so that you're feeding your mind. The second is books. And I consider books a little bit more dense in information than podcasts. I consider podcasts and YouTube videos kind of the fast food of information. Still good motivational, but not as good, high nutrient dense information as books. The best books are again the top five in the category you need to learn. And this is how I still do it to today. If I want to go deep on an industry, deep on a vertical, deep on a skillset, I always Google top five books. I read those books even a few years ago. I realized one of the areas I wanted to really double down on was my mindset. So I decided to start with Think and grow Rich that was published in 1937 and research the top 150 books that were written that influence that book and started reading those for the last two years because to me that's how I learned information. I want to go deep on something. So books will give you frameworks to feed your mind to improve your skills. The third is courses and training. So if you want to go even faster, buy the courses who have already read the top 25 books or have 25 years of experience and put it into a training methodology for you to absorb. Training courses are way more potent than a book. And the fourth is events and seminars. And the reason why I think seminars specifically that are designed, that are very transformational in nature. They have the impact of a course or a training program and the peer group and the energy of having other peers that can show you what's possible. So you have the information plus the vibe of the room and you get to make new friends and you get to really transform some of those negative beliefs or those limiting beliefs that could really push you forward. I cannot stress how important getting in a room of other people that are on the same journey as you and feeling that energy and meeting those people and being inspired for what they've done with their life for you to bring that into your business. Which brings us to number six, which is to use the achievement roadmap process. Although feeding my mind helped me grow my business substantially, it's only when I extended my time horizon and set my goals using the specific framework that I unlocked over 500k in revenue in my software business. This is the process that helped me get there. First off, I believe there's three things you need to achieve any goal. You need 100% clarity on what you're trying to achieve. You need 100% belief that you can achieve it, and you need to think about those two things 100% of the time. And to the degree that you have 100% clarity on what you want to achieve, 100% belief you can do it and you hold that together 100% of the time is how fast you're able to pull forward into your life that outcome. Here's the four step process I use to achieve anything. Like the brand new Lamborghini I just got or the new Ferrari P stuff for the people that like fancy cars or the jet or my homes, like whatever it is, I use this exact same process. So the first thing is the standards. If I think about a goal of getting in shape like I did Project Visible Labs, which is essentially I went from 15% body fat down to 4 and a half percent body fat. The way I did that is I asked myself what would be the standard on a yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, hourly basis that I would hold and to create a simple standard. And for me, what I realized that If I eat 200 grams of protein, 2,000 calories a day, and I train and I work out every day. That standard would enable me to achieve Visible absurd. So you gotta ask yourself, whatever your goal is, what activity, what work, what process, could you implement the standard on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis? That would make the achievement of the goal inevitable. So that's number one. Number two is resources. If my goal is to get in shape, I need to ask myself, what are the people or the systems? Maybe it's courses or tools. Maybe they're apps that I know about that I can go and ask or acquire to help on the outcome that I'm trying to achieve. So if it's people, I might ask myself, who are the fittest, most jacked people I know in my life? Make a list of them. Systems, what are the different dieting programs, workout programs that I know about that I can maybe go buy? Or tools, what are the apps that I could install on my phone like a meal tracking app or a workout app, so that I can have some more accountability? When you look at the resources, you actually probably already know what they are. Pull those into your life, tell the people what your goal is, ask them to hold you accountable, and then use the tools and the systems to achieve that goal even faster. The third is triggers. So what I do is I've anchored different outcomes to things I do in a day. So for example, I review my goals three times a day and I've connected them to when I sit at my desk here or I sit in my car and I review them, because what I want to do is I want to keep my focus of my outcome top of mind. See, most people, they write down goals and then they forget about them. They don't ever ask themselves, does my calendar reflect my priorities or do I have the right resources, or did I ever follow up on this person, or am I on track? Have I weighed myself lately? So you want to connect the triggers to reviewing your goals so that you always keep them top of mind. And then what I do, which is number four, is rewards. This is next level stuff. But essentially anything that I want to buy things like experiences for my family or for myself or my friends or possessions, cars, houses, etc. I put on the back end of achieving a goal. Usually I do a physical goal or some kind of spiritual goal is experiences with my family. And any business goals, I always usually give myself a possession, like a car, a property, or some art. For example, Project Visible Labs. I put my new Lamborghini Urus on there because again, I could buy them at any point. But the Challenge is that then I don't appreciate it and I didn't gamify the achievement. So I do that on the back end of those outcomes so that I have something to work towards and then reward myself to build that process. Which brings us to number seven, which is to trade money for money while dreaming big got me to 500k in revenue. I wasn't a millionaire yet in cash in the bank after tax. But that's when I learned there was only three trades you could make. So understanding how to reinvest these trades allowed me to multiply my money, making me a millionaire at 27. I'm talking cash money in my bank account, taxes paid, not a paper millionaire, not a equity millionaire, real cash in my bank account using these three trades. So number one is I traded time for money so I would do programming and maybe you're a graphic designer or a copywriter and you do that skill and you get paid for it. That is trading time for money, which is great and you wanna keep putting your prices until you get paid top dollar. But that's the first level trade. The second trade is money for time. And this is really about understanding how to get leverage where you take money you've made and then buy back more time so you can go invest in yourself, in the skills so you can become better to actually generate more money with the amount of time you're spending in your business. But then eventually you want to reinvest the money you have into the business so that you can increase more money generated from the business. This is money for money. This is where you're investing in the business, not in buying back your time, but in opportun and strategies to grow the business so that you can make more money. And if you live below your means like I did, I became a millionaire within three years building that company. And that's what allowed me to become a cash millionaire at 27 years old. That's what I would do if I wanted to become a millionaire today. If you want to learn my 15 laws of success, click the link and I'll see you on the other side. If you like this week's episode, be sure to visit itunes. Leave a review that'll help us get in front of other founders just just like you. And if you're looking for more resources and video trainings, be sure to check out dan martell2lsmartell.com to subscribe. Keep up the hustle. Keep stacking your growth and I'll see you in next Monday's episode. Peace. Grow peace. Bye. Bye.