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

I'm going to share with you the rules that made me so rich that I questioned the meaning of making money these rules are what allowed me to go from a broke 22-year-old to a multi-millionaire today some of these rules I picked up on my own during my 26e career as an entrepreneur and others I learned from some of the highest net worth individuals you probably know so without any further explanation these are the 14 rules of money the first rule is kind of obvious but it's to spend less than you make you know Dave Ramsey likes to say act your way age and I love that think about it it's what you make but you got to act proportionate to what it is it's not your salary that makes you rich it's your spending habits you know my dad used to say it's not what you make it's what you keep that'll make you rich when I started off I was a horrible spender I remember I was just trying to kind of live life I never thought I'd ever have money so when I started making money it was a bit carpedm you know sees the day YOLO remember at 21 I got a check for almost $20,000 for working a month I was a consultant I was on contract and it all showed up in my bank account and my little brother Mo showed up and I said hey man let's go on a ski trip it's right around Christmas time when we decided to splurge over a 10day period that he was visiting I spent $133,000 on snowboard gear and paying for drinks for friends and crazy hotel rooms and eating like a king it was one of the most ridiculous weeks ever there was like everything was an option we kept spending the money and at the end of it I talked to my dad and said Dan did you do you put any money aside for taxes and I said nope and that was the day that I got introduced to Norm and Norm was my accountant and what he said is how about we put you on a salary but what do you need to live and I was like well my expenses are covered let's do 60,000 a year and everything else will put in the bank account and that one decision allowed me to save the seed money I needed to eventually start the company that made me a multi-millionaire so at the start the most important thing is to live off as little as possible and reinvest in yourself re invest in your business reinvest in your future so most people would say that you want to put 50% towards needs you know you got to live you got to eat you got 30% towards wants right so that brings you 80% and then 20% towards savings high level think about it so all consuming and living you want to be at 80% save the rest which brings us to the second rule which is to pay yourself first this one's tough some people feel like all their money's got to go out first I got to help other people before I ever help myself here's what I know you are actually the most important asset not a house a car a watch an investment it is you I remember back in 2009 I was talking to my business partner Ethan and we had a major issu we had to solve in the business and I asked him to meet me at the office and he said he couldn't now we had just raised a million dollars from some of the top investors in San Francisco and we're building up the team and we ran into an issue with our product and I said why can't you meet he's like hey man I've got to get some laundry done okay I know it's Sunday dude but you can do your laundry on any other day and he said yeah but if I don't do it this I got a plan and d d and I'm like man on your way to work there are literally three different laundromats that do Wash and Fold like they'll do it for like 35 bucks it's like yeah man I'm not really paying myself enough I'm I'm barely making rent so here's a situation where we just raised a million dollars to build the business and he can't come work on the business cuz he's too busy doing laundry the issue he wasn't paying himself enough to essentially invest in things that would buy back his time so him and I could actually go Jam to solve the problem see most people stay broke because they're trading time for money what I'm going to encourage you to consider is invest time for skills to get paid more then buy more time to reinvest in learning new skills that make you more money see most people spend time to save money I like to spend money to save time once I've got that time then I invested in acquiring new skills that allows me to become more valuable then I get to make more money to then buy time to invest in more skills that is the equation I remember one time I was talking to one of my coaching clients Brad reading he had an incredible company and he was kind of burnt out and he wanted to sell it I said you could and you know the price and people will buy it from you today or you take some of the profit you're making instead of reinvesting in more software developers and marketing teams and all that stuff just pay yourself more so you can enjoy life a little bit better I said just make a list of things that you would love to do and he put on there you know I'd like a gym in my house I'd love to be able to hire somebody to take care of the kids we can get date nights so we were only talking a few thousand bucks a month and I said if you could invest in you to give you more time to build the business business bigger that dollar amount today is going to turn into millions of dollars in a few years and that's exactly what happened so the way Brad bought back his time and his energy is that not only did he have time to work on key things spend time with his wife but he got the energy back by not having to worry about not spending enough time with his family not going on date nights taking care of his health I mean he's literally transformed his body from where he was to where he is today because he made an investment in himself if you pay yourself you force yourself to find resources to cover other expenses which brings us to number three which is to assign your priorities Oprah Winfrey once said you can have it all just not all at once I mean it's kind of like you can do anything you just can't do everything when people see me today they go wow Dan you do so many things but if you actually look over the last 25 years of my career I've only done one thing and that's software I started off as a programmer then I went to Consulting then I built companies and now I deploy Capital the four coding Consulting companies and capital into technology into software essentially I started off and I wrote code and I learned how to build apps and then I ended up starting a company and I sold people the applications that I was building and then I did that three times in a row and then I decided Well now I'm going to start investing in other companies and I did that and now I buy companies but they're all in the software space so I want to teach a big idea that a lot of people get wrong when they start to try to make their first million dollars which is is don't diversify except for globally or Investments don't get distracted most people end up saying yes to things they should be saying no to and know the things they should being yes to because they don't know what is their primary aim and focus and if you do this right then you become the tip of the spear at what you do tip of the spear means Best in Class I like to say world class I think you should be top five in what you do which sounds crazy I know if you're an editor or a logo designer or even a singer you're like that's just not me and I'm like yeah it is it just takes a decision and if you go all in you say I'm going to be one of the best programmers I'm going to be one of the best designers I'm going to be one of the best editors what you do is you start getting better and better and better and then you get this thing called the four levels of luck that one of my mentors nval rant talks about all the time first level is just dumb lock you know just random moments and opportunities show up in your life and those are just like dumb lock the second level is grit luck this is by doing the work the luckier you get right people talk about this all the time the third is skilled luck meaning that you're getting so skilled at what you do people know you for that so they ask you for opportunities that otherwise it looks lucky to everybody else but to you you're like no it's just because I'm really skillful at this thing and then you end up getting to others luck which is the tip of the spear you know like the Warren buffets and the opras and the Elon Musk where they brought opportunities that is other people's skilled luck meaning that people get lucky in Opportunities and they're like I like Warren so much I want to partner with him to do this deal that's when things get really crazy those are the four levels of luck that most people never understand the key for this step is you got to stick to what is your unfair advantage in the market invest in something you know don't get distracted some of you are really great at building houses and you're like I want to go into software I would argue you go make a lot of money in houses first or some of you guys are into software and you're like hey I should get into real estate how about you stick to software and get really good at it and trust me you will find Real Estate Investors that will partner to build out a massive portfolio with you if you go get rich I understand that it's fun to do new things and there's excitement but don't make those where you make your money call those hobbies and go have fun and explore and don't put the pressure around it having to perform see a lot of people get distracted because they take their money they saved up and they go put it on new things and then they're freaking out when the thing's not working out so they're sacrificing both their current business and the new business and both suffer which brings us to number four which is to have a rip cord budget Jim rone wants said never begin the day until you finish it on paper same in life you should plan for success and you should plan for worst case so that way you build a plan around both and you never have to think about it and when they're going great or there's an issue you can go back to the plan you could lose it all you could find out they change some law you could get hit by a bus and My Philosophy is that you have to plan for it have a disaster recovery plan I learned this back when we were building data centers with my software company if the power went down in the room you had to backup generators kick in and it took over the challenge is you had to have the checklist already designed so that when it happened you got to stay cool calm and collected nobody was running around freaking out like oh did anybody put the diesel in the generator you tested it every once in a while and you made sure you had the checklist ready to go why is this important because it allows you to move incredibly fast and even harder knowing that if at any point of moving fast in a direction Something Happens you've already made the decision on how you're going to react there's no wasted brain Cycles around fear concern challenges worry my business coach Ed milet has this great saying he says worry is a wasted use of your imagination I think most times cuz we haven't built the plan we're always worrying about what could happen how about you just decide to do if it does and you get back to building your life so there's two categories you want to look at there's the business side and the personal side most people will say in business you want to have at least 3 months of operating expenses some will say 6 months but honestly I've never seen a scenario where you need that much as long as you're fast to respond to ISS then yeah you might need 6 months or more on the personal side 6 months of overhead is what you want to have ready liquid in cash so that if anything happens to you you lose your job your business goes to zero the family won't be impacted and there's no scenario of seen where an individual couldn't rebound within 6 months if they had the fortitude and the mental focus to just get back in there and find an opportunity you need to save to weather the storm because on every economic downside that's ever happened there's this crazy upswing on the back end it's like like a slingshot so you want to be ready to go through tough times cuz you built the plan so that you can come out like a rocket ship which brings us to number five which is give to get and Frank one said no one ever became poor by giving I love this so much literally it's like my ethos in life I wake up every day asking myself how can I create more value for other people than anybody else in their life that is just a fun place to get to where you wake up and you're just giving giving giving so here's a funny story to give you a little bit more color a couple years ago I realized I had been hoarding credit card points I don't know why I just became this fun game that I play with myself I put credit cards in all my companies for all the ads they run and all these other scenarios and I was collecting millions of points per year but I never use them I've done this with you know Starbucks points as well at the coffee shop I don't know why I just got into this hoarding mentality and I realized that this hoarding Behavior was holding me back so this year I woke up I'm remember tell my assistant I said we are going to spend all of it I'm going to use all the the coffee points going use all the travel points any points that I've been hoarding is going to get spent and here's why I call this money velocity see the more you spend the more opportunities you create the more you spend the more you learn the more you spend the more you can get in returns because you're making good investment see I use the word spend but don't get it confused it's about putting money in the market being part of the economy the more time and money exchanges hands the more value is created in the world see money is energy and if you hoard it it will find its way away from you if you spend it it creates more energy comes back to you and allows you to do bigger things with it most people think I'm going supposed to save but they don't invest I know I did that for a long time I looked at my bank account and I just kept saving saving saving saving it was in a savings account but it wasn't doing anything at one point I had millions of dollars my banker is like hey do you want to do anything with this and I'm like leave me alone don't touch it and they're like we could put it in a GIC I'm like don't talk to me I don't trust you it's cuz I didn't know any better then I realized that if I take the money I put it in the market I put it into Investments I invest in myself I invest in my team I use it I circulate it it's a resource and the more I use it the more it's going to come back because I'm telling the world that I believe that it's a flow it's an energy it comes out it comes back it's just like the more you give the more you get that's how it works if you hoard it it will find its way away from you if you hoard it you're essentially telling the world it's a scarce resource don't give me more cuz all I'm going to do is put it in a bucket but if I say hey there's an unlimited amount of money out there and I'm going to put it out it's going to come back then I'm kind of learning I'm earning I'm creating opportunities and getting resources to do bigger things which brings us to number six which is to minimize borrowing Robert kosaki author of Rich Dad Poor Dad once said the only difference between rich person and a poor person is how they use their time in debt I would actually change the word debt to leverage when I got my first apartment I had to buy furniture for the place so I went down to my local furniture shop I sat down I tested a bunch of different couches I'm kind of a tall dude so I need like a deep seat and I finally found the set that I wanted and the sales gu is like hey good news we can offer financing and I'm like what does that look like and he tells me this magical thing where I don't have to make a payment for like 4 years or something like that anyways I decided to take it because there was no interest blah blah blah and it just sounded awesome the problem is is by the time I had to start making payments when you actually looked at the fine print and the interest rate kicked in I ended up paying four times more for the furniture than if I would have just paid for it and the truth was is I was borrowing money to buy things that didn't make me money so this is what I've learned about borrowing money see the banks make their money on the majority of the collecting of the debt and paying of Interest what I want you to consider is how do you borrow money to make a return for yourself it's to increase your earning potential right so in the short term if you make an investment in your business I want you to monitor the ROI cuz you're still learning how to do it you got to take shots on goal small bullets little tiny bullets take shots you're like hey I'm going to spend some money see if I get a return these are ways to learn then if you figure it out you want to shoot a cannonball see most people when they start off they like make these big investments in themselves borrow money to go to a very expensive Mastermind or invest in education or go to university they don't get the return that they thought they would get borrow to invest in yourself don't borrow to invest in your lifestyle that's where you're going to get yourself in trouble I could have easily bought used furniture I did not need new stuff I was trying to show everybody how cool I was so my rule is if you can't afford it go make more money to get it you don't need new you can buy old which brings us to number seven which is to analyze the risk return ratios Warren Buffett said risk comes from not knowing what you're doing let me tell you about this crazy story there's this investor named Bill acman back in the day he took $27 million and he invested in a CDS credit default Swap and that investment and I think a 12-month period turned into $2.7 billion let me tell you why this applies to you see he knew there was a chance that that 27 could go down not necessarily to zero Real Estate Investors do this all day long they find a property they get it under contract they borrow money for the deposit they borrow private money to buy the place they then they renovate it they add the value and then they go and they sell it to somebody else and they take the difference I mean they pay off the investors they refinance it with the bank essentially they have no personal guarantee no money out of pocket so the upside is unlimited from a cash on cash return because had very little of their own money in the deal so we're always looking for deals where we have asymmetrical risk low downside unlimited upside but let me tell you about the risk quadrant so on the left side you have risk and on the bottom you have returns then place your opportunity that you're looking at to make an investment and say hey Bitcoin would be a highrisk high return index funds would be lowrisk low returns and something that's a low return high risk well that's a trick question as you wouldn't want to do that one buying a business or for some real estate and improving the business or the real estate that's called value ad that deal would look like a lowrisk high return scenario which brings us to number eight which is to not fear money an ran once said wealth is the product of a man's capacity to think I love that see we all have these money stories these money beliefs my buddy RIT said he calls them money scripts they're blueprints there's a way we think about money yeah I had a weird one that I used to think that I needed to go bankrupt to be successful I know it's crazy and it push money away from me for years cuz I'd read books on Dave Ramsey who went bankrupt Walt Disney bankrupt Henry Ford bankrupt and it made me think oh my gosh what if I push really hard and I lose all this money so it made me question decisions and almost fold in my businesses some of us have stories around thinking being rich is bad and it's only for the greedy well if you thought that and you're a good person would you want to race to be rich or would you slow yourself down yes there's bad and there's greedy people but most rich people I know are incredibly generous and good people the more you judge people and fear money the more you'll push it away a lot of people self-sabotage themselves to being rich and I'll tell you why let's say your goal is to be rich I'm just curious if we just played a game and said what are some of the negative beliefs people might have around being rich well they might say well rich people don't pay taxes and rich people steal from people and rich people are greedy and rich people are self-centered and you can just list all these beliefs in order and just ask yourself have I ever thought that because what I've discovered is that if we don't work through all the negative beliefs we have about being rich then we'll fear money and we'll push it away so you don't actually have money problems you have a mindset problem that just happens to be reflected in your bank account I want you to invite more money into your life by believing you deserve to be rich and that rich people are great people and create from a place of abundance and literally watch your life transform that is the key which brings us to number nine which is to avoid lifestyle creep I once had this buddy I met him at an event and I watched him make aot lot of money very quick and as he was playing this game of trying to keep up with the Joneses his lifestyle just kept growing he bought a new car he upgraded his house watches pretty much everything and eventually everything backfired on him and his business really suffered and unfortunately he was overleveraged and he didn't have the money to cover all of his payments so he had to file for bankruptcy you see once you start making money the game is here to try and live off as little as possible for as long long as possible not to suffocate your ability to reinvest in yourself to make more money but to just not be wasteful instead of buying the new BMW invest in yourself or another business vehicle that could buy you 10 BMWs in the future some people think that compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe but delayed gratification is even stronger and that's why this money rule will make you rich if you're able to delay trying to reap the rewards too soon you should get used to play playing this game of spending as little as possible for as long as possible like all the the Gucci and the fancy stuff and look I know a lot of people see me today with the jet and the cars and the house and all that stuff but even today I live off about 10% of my income because I'm reinvesting and other things that are going to make me money in the long term and then over time I just I live off of that cash flow and I think everybody has the opportunity to do that if they learn how to play this money game which brings us to number 10 which is build a personal p&l so I was talking to one of my friends once and he was telling me how he wanted a simple life and this guy was wealthy he didn't want too much stuff too many things to manage but here's the secret and this is why I told them the wealthiest people aren't managing their own Estates dude you can invest in having somebody to help you out so I explained to him when you have two or three or four homes like I do then you have somebody manages it I have a house manager named Betty She is the CEO of everything in my personal life like any money that comes in manages the income she manages the expenses that go out and she manages the forecast and the budgets for all those so if anything gets out of whack she's the first one to say like hey why is the landscaping for you know the properties more expensive than it should be so I want to teach you this cool idea that most people have never heard when it comes to money just like in a business your personal life should have its own profit and loss statement I know I know this is some people are like what are you talking about if you think about it your life is a business you have a salary you have income and you have expenses and I know most businesses have a CEO a CFO a COO to manage all this and financial projections and planning and most people with money would maybe call this a financial planner or a family office but I like to think it at a high level I actually have my personal family Affairs in my accounting software I know crazy idea but why wouldn't you it just makes it so much easier to manage I want you to consider if you get really good at managing money you'll be able to make more money most people that are Loosey Goosey on their financials they will never have the rigor and the maturity to be able to grow their personal netw worth which brings us to number 11 which is high tides rise all boats when it comes to making money it requires a team and I used to have a belief that if I trained a team that eventually they would leave you know I have my buddy Cameron Harold incredible author you know people would say to him like what if you hire a bunch of people and you train them and then they leave and he would joke well what if you don't and they stay so what most people do is they hire less competent people because it feels more secure because they're insecure about people leaving them the challenge with that is this B's and C's risk your a so think about anybody on your team today that might be great if you hire somebody that makes them work harder they're going to get frustrated and they'll eventually leave so if you're trying to rise the tide if you're trying to increase the average of the people on your team then you have to invest in your people I mean I know when things are good it's easy to invest in them the economy is good I invest in my people but honestly even when they're not doing so well just don't stop it could be you training them buying some training making sure they feel supported so the best way to keep people is to understand what their dreams and goals are and my rule is your dreams and goals for your life have to be big enough for everybody else's to fit inside of so that you can raise the tide and it brings them with you in they'll want to stay with you you got to fix that mindset and watch your life transform which brings us to number 12 which is money is a tool not the goal Henry Ford once said money is like an arm or a leg use it or lose it you know I once heard that that money is a tool it's like a fork it can either be used to nourish you or it could be used to take somebody's life but it is not the goal of Life see I became a multi-millionaire at 28 and then drifted for almost 2 years I thought I had made it you know I sold my company I kind of retired and then I realized that Financial Freedom means nothing because the point of life is not actually about making money it's about having a richer life money is just a tool that can do that it can also not do that if you stress yourself out if money is a primary reason that you make any decision then you'll always make money the master but if money is just a consideration then you'll feel free at the end of the day it doesn't matter if you have a million dollar or $100 million money is a store of value and needs to be put to work the work is to buy you time so you have options about how you want to spend it to become more valuable ideally so you can reinvest it in making more money to buy more time to feel useful I mean at the end of the day people talk about happiness I'm not about being happy I think that's a moment in time what I want to feel at the end of the day is I want to feel useful I want to feel like I created something I want to feel fulfilled and when I look back at the days where I felt that way it's usually spent with people I really admire creating something really cool that was kind of hard to do things that were going to impct a lot of other people don't make money the primary goal but a tool to get to your goals which brings us to 13 which is your network is your net worth Oprah famously said surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher if you think about it you got to look around your peer group and ask yourself are these people that are going to lift me up to achieve higher levels my friend jokingly asked me cuz I was saying that you know I'm trying to upgrade my network and he said how many of your friends have private Jets or gate cats and at the time I was like none he's like look it's not about the money but that's usually a good filter cuz people that are kind of vibing at that level typically have a lot of cool stuff going on in your life and if you want to get in a room where you're going to feel like an impostor which is the key then you got to make sure that those people are doing really big things most people make the mistake they say you become the average of The Five People You spend time with I would actually you become the average of the five people that you let influence you I upgrade my relationships all the time I look at my goals I look at where I spend my time and I get to ask myself if these people are going to help me and support me with my goals if I feel like they'll slow me down or they'll always talk down on me or they're just not wanting to create a life at that level unfortunately I have to do a friend ventory I have to evaluate where I'm at and find some new people I can love people I just can just figure out where I can spend time with other folks that might get me to where I'm going a lot faster so if you're fast growing you need to look at who you're spending time with and cut anchors holding you back which brings us to number 14 which is Define your why when I started out I use a lot of dark energy to build my life I a lot of people I wanted to prove wrong like my buddy Mike's mom who said I couldn't play together to you know my dad who I didn't think at the time he believed in me to everybody that ever doubted my ability to win and I didn't give him a lot to go off of but that was the energy to prove people wrong but then once I achieved success and I became a multi-millionaire this actually needed to shift to light energy and the reason why is that dark energy can work it's just heavy so to go bigger you got to figure out your why because that'll pull you forward not push you forward using Dark Energy it's more of a light energy pulling you forward my why is huge it's very simple I want to become the person I needed most in my darkest days and I want to teach everything I've learned that worked for me along the way you know my friend coach Bert says you know you should go to bed tired wake up hungry a lot of people see me get up at 400 in the morning and go back back back back and do everything with the kids the family the workouts the the team meetings the podcast tours the media stuff flying around all this stuff what they don't get is my work ethic is a reflection of my gratitude my gratitude for the opportunity my Creator giving me this chance I just want to show up and give as much as I can towards my why so I'm going to ask you what are you optimizing your life for essentially what are you trying to do are you just trying to get rich that could work if everything you do is to make more money you could become really great at that some point you might ask yourself what's the meaning of it all because I know if that I found out that tomorrow at 5:00 was my last day I'm not rushing to the office I'm not rushing to go snowboarding I'm going to grab my family members that I can grab I'm going to sit down I'm going to hang with them I'm going to pour into them and in the last breath I got to leave this earth with a smile because I spent the time with the people I wanted to most so there's opportunities all day to make more money I get hundreds of investment opportunities every day I could spend a lot more time looking at them but I say no to most opportunities speaking gigs traveling the world free vacations dinner request everything cuz the last thing I want to do is get really excited about a new opportunity actually be successful climb this ladder of success only to find out that that ladder that future is leaning against the wrong wall and look across the room and see the ladder on a different wall which is actually where I want to be so we have to begin with the end in mind we have to know what our why is what our purpose is that's really cool having a Big Y just makes the whole process easier and will make you more money if you want to learn how I would go from broke to millionaire then click the link and I'll see you on the other side

Channel: Dan Martell

Views: 359,420

Keywords: rules of money, millionaire mindset, get rich rules

Id: yntwf1JYnFA

Length: 28min 38sec (1718 seconds)

Published: Fri May 31 2024