Podcast Summary: "Everything I Learned From Being Around the Top 0.01%"

The Martell Method with Dan Martell
Host: Dan Martell
Date: March 23, 2026

Episode Overview

In this episode, Dan Martell distills priceless lessons learned from spending time with ultra-successful entrepreneurs, including billionaires like Richard Branson, Naval Ravikant, Travis Kalanick, Toby Lutke, and Tony Robbins. Drawing from his journey from rehab at 17 to building a $100M empire and becoming a bestselling author and world-class coach, Dan reveals the mindset shifts, strategies, and business tactics that separate the top 0.01% from everyone else. He organizes these lessons into five “buckets”—each representing a deeper level of how exceptional individuals operate, think, and live.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Billionaires Play a Completely Different Game

(00:28)

Main insight: Most people are taught to play life’s "default game": go to school, get a steady job, save, and retire.
Billionaires, Dan notes, have deleted this script and operate by installing a unique “operating system.”
Example: Richard Branson manages 400 companies and still makes time for leisure and meaningful experiences.

2. Delete Your Old Software

(02:26)

Analogy: Your mind is like an operating system that needs updates—sometimes you must first uninstall old programs and beliefs.
Rule #1: Laws Are Meant to Be Broken (Sometimes) (03:00)
- Example: Travis Kalanick (Uber founder) didn’t accept existing rules but instead “changed the rules” by forcing regulators to adapt to innovation.
- Dan’s Take: “If everybody had to follow the letter of the law, then no business would ever be started.” (04:06)
- Personal Quirk: Dan pays parking tickets daily by choice to make his luxury cars accessible to admirers.
Rule #2: Think in First Principles (05:50)
- Definition: Approach problems from basic truths, not tradition.
- Example: Elon Musk reduced rocket launch costs at SpaceX by breaking problems down to what’s possible under the laws of physics, asking “Why not?”
- Action: “Don’t ask, ‘How was this done before?’ Ask, ‘What’s actually true about this?’” (07:23)

3. Install the New Software

(08:25)

Once limiting beliefs are deleted, you can instill new billionaire habits.
Rule #3: Look for Leverage, Not Labor
- Billionaires focus on leverage: gaining more output from each input, not just working harder.
- Naval Ravikant’s Four Cs of Leverage (09:50):
  1. Code – Software you build once and it continues working.
  2. Content – Playbooks, checklists, and thought leadership that scale your impact.
  3. Capital – Money works for you via investments.
  4. Collaboration – Partnering with people for exponential reach.
- Memorable Quote: “Your genius is better used as content than as labor.” (11:12)
Rule #4: Focus on Net Worth & Network, Not Active Income (12:35)
- Billionaires are “paper-rich”—it’s ownership, not cash flow.
- The biggest lever is your network: “The more hands you shake, the more money you make.” (13:15)
- Example: Elon Musk owns less than 20% of Tesla but reaps massive wealth through equity.
- Personal Example: Dan’s own AI venture studio, Martell Ventures, uses this principle to build $250M in company value in two years.

4. Just Act Lazy: Making Yourself the Bottleneck Is Not the Goal

(15:10)

Surprising Truth: Billionaires’ schedules often appear light; they avoid being bottlenecks in their own companies.
Rule #5: Create Your Filter (16:20)
- Learn to filter out noise.
- Example: Richard Branson doesn’t even carry a phone—his assistant acts as a “filter,” only presenting vital information and connections.
- Dan’s Practice: Uses a world-class Executive Assistant (EA) and offers to share his EA playbook for free via Instagram DMs.
Rule #6: Stop Working So Hard (18:04)
- Billionaires protect their thinking, not their time.
- Example: Jeff Bezos “putters” in the morning and focuses on making only 2-3 great decisions per day, rather than doing endless busywork.
- Quote: “What makes billionaires different than most entrepreneurs is billionaires protect their thinking, not their time.” (19:35)

5. Fall in Love with the Game, Not the Outcome

(20:20)

Core lesson: Billionaires are primarily driven not by money, but by growth, impact, and “who they are becoming.”
Quote: “They didn’t give a sh*t about their bank account… they looked at [success] as a way of being.” (21:05)
Rule #7: Never Ever Stop Growing (22:02)
- Toby Lutke’s practice: Shopify must grow 40% per year; if an employee can’t keep up, they’ll be left behind—including Toby himself, who continues to develop coding skills.
- Quote: “You’ll get paid for the value you bring to the world, not the time… but how much value you created with that time.” (23:29)
Rule #8: Build a Life Resume
- Inspired by Jesse Itzler, who designs life around memorable, challenging experiences (“annual Misogi”), not just business milestones.
- Dan’s takeaway: "They don’t just focus on adding zeros… they prioritize living a life worth remembering." (25:45)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On breaking the mold:
- “Billionaires follow rules that 99% of people don’t even know exist.” (00:00)
On deleting limiting beliefs:
- “Your mind is like an operating system… before you can update it, you need to delete the old one.” (02:31)
On leverage:
- “Most people think more work equals more money. Billionaires think more leverage equals more money.” (09:08)
On filtering demands:
- “Richard Branson doesn’t carry a phone… nothing gets to Richard unless it’s supposed to.” (16:41)
On the value of personal growth:
- “If you want your bank account to go up, you have to personally develop yourself.” (21:52)
On designing your own game:
- “Stop trying to win a game someone else designed. Build your own game.” (26:58)

Key Timestamps

00:00 — Introduction: Billionaires play by different rules
02:26 — Bucket 2: Delete your old software
05:50 — First Principles & Elon Musk
08:25 — Bucket 3: Install new software
09:50 — Naval Ravikant's Four Cs of Leverage
12:35 — Net worth & the power of network
15:10 — Bucket 4: Just act lazy
16:20 — Filtering with executive assistants
18:04 — Stop working so hard; Jeff Bezos’ slow mornings
20:20 — Bucket 5: Fall in love with the game
22:02 — Continuous growth & Toby Lutke’s 40% rule
24:35 — Jesse Itzler and building a life resume
26:58 — Build your own game; closing remarks

Final Takeaways

Dan Martell emphasizes that the world’s most successful people don’t just work harder—they build different games with updated “operating systems.” They break rules, think from first principles, relentlessly pursue leverage, focus on equity and networks, protect their creative mind, and fall in love with the process of growth. Above all, they design lives full of rich experience, not just bank balances.

For actionable strategies and Dan’s EA playbook, DM him “YouTube EA” on Instagram.

Transcript

A (0:00)

Billionaires follow rules that 99% of people don't even know exists. And I'm not talking about the stuff you've heard from everybody before. Work hard, wake up early, read books. I'm talking about the actual operating system these people run on. I've spent time with Richard Branson, Naval Ravikant, Travis Kalanick, Toby Lutke, Tony Robbins, and dozens of other billionaires. And every single one of them taught me something that completely changed how I build businesses and live my life. Going to break these down into five buckets. And every bucket builds deeper understanding of how they operate, starting with the one they all have in common. Welcome to the Martell method. I went from rehab at 17 to building a hundred million dollar empire and being a Wall Street Journal bestselling author. In this podcast, I'll show you exactly how to build a life and business you don't grow to hate. My bestselling book. Buy back. Your time is out now. Grab a copy@buybackyourtime.com or at any of your preferred online retailers. Bucket number one. They just play a completely different game. You and I grew up learning one game. Go to school, get a job, work hard, save some money, retire at 65. That's the game we were taught. Billionaires aren't playing that game at all. They essentially deleted it and they installed something completely different. That's how Richard Branson is able to run 400 companies every and was able to ski with us all day long while we hung out at his lodge in Switzerland. But before we can install anything new, you need to take the old programming out. Which brings us to bucket number two. Delete your old software. Your mind is like an operating system. Okay? Think about it like your phone. If you don't start updating it, your phone starts to lag. That's when you need the new software update. Your life works the exact same way, but before you can update it, you need to delete the old one. So to delete your old software, we need to follow these rules. Our first billionaire rule. Laws are meant to be broken sometimes. Travis Kalanick, who is the founder of Uber, was one of my first investors in my company Flowtown. And we used to spend time in the jam pad watching him build the first version of Uber. And what we immediately saw Travis face with was all the taxis in the city that were threatening to sue every time somebody took a ride. It was illegal. Travis just didn't accept that he had a vision for the future. He didn't just break the rules, he changed them. By 2017, over 36 states passed new laws for ride sharing. Not because the industry asked nicely, because Travis made the old rules irrelevant. First. And my belief is very simple, if everybody had to follow the letter of the law, then no business would ever be started. But obviously, consult your lawyer. I'm not responsible for what you choose to do. But just so you know, every day I get one or two tickets on my car for where I park. I pay the fine. I consider it adding to the economy because I choose every day to have my cars be available for the dozens of kids that come with their cameras to take pictures. That's an example of where I break the rule. That's what I got to pay. That's what I'm willing to pay. Next, we go to billionaire rule number two. Think in first principles. It's kind of like starting from a blank slate and saying, I want to go from point A to point B as fast and cheap as possible. How would I do that? And the best example of this is Elon Musk. That guy literally breaks everything down into first principle. I'm talking to quantum level. His whole rule is that if it doesn't break the laws of physics, it should work. See, NASA paid roughly 380 million per launch of their rockets. SpaceX cut that down to 67 million. Because Elon asks, why not? That is a first principle framework where you break complex problems down to their most basic undeniable truths. So here's how it works. You don't ask, how was this done? Before? You ask, what's actually true about that. And those are totally different questions that will get you totally different answers. They will help you find how the billionaires think about innovation. So that will start to delete the old software in your brain. But what do you replace it with? Bucket number three, install the new software. This is where things get really interesting. I wanna bring back the phone example again. Because once you've cleared that old software and you deleted it, now you're able to install new software. Cause the hard drive's open to make it even more effective. So let's talk about billionaire rules that help you install your new software. Which leads us to billionaire rule number three. Look for leverage, not labor. Most people think more work equals more money. Billionaires think more leverage equals more money. Leverage means a little bit of input and a lot of output. You know, if you haven't heard Archimedes quote, he says, give me a place to stand with a lever, and I can move the world. Meaning that with the long enough stick, if he was sitting in the right place with the right lever and he pulled on it. He could literally create the force to lift the world for me. I learned this from a billionaire mentor, Naval Ravikant, because he breaks it down into four Cs of leverage. There's only four ways that if you study and master them, you can create anything in the world without hammering your calendar. And the first C is code. Those tools are incredible leverage to get a lot of output because you create it once and it lives forever. Because it doesn't take you doing anything for the computer to continue to run every night and crunch numbers to actually get your result. The second C is content. And if you think of content in two buckets, both the ability to create a checklist or playbook for how something should get done, or for you to document your content, for your ideas to give it out to the world. I believe your genius is better used as content than as labor. The third C is capital. And I'm sure you've already heard this, which is it takes money to make money. It takes you understanding how to deploy your dollars to work through investing to actually make money. The fourth C is collaboration. And this is my favorite, and that is understanding how to recruit, work with people, partner with people, but essentially unlocking the labor force, working through a person that might have access to thousands of people, one person, many customers. That's collaboration. That's why Naval and every one of the billionaires I mentioned have mastered these four Cs to build their empires without increasing their labor. Before we get back to the episode, if you want to jumpstart your week with my top stories and tactics, be sure to subscribe to the Martel Method newsletter. It's where you'll elevate your mindset, fitness and business in less than five minutes a week. Find it@martell method.com Next is billionaire rule number four. Focus on net worth and network, not active income. The billionaires that I just mentioned aren't billionaires because they made a billion dollars. They're actually billionaires because they own something and made it worth a billion dollars. Most of them don't have a billion dollars in cash in a bank account. It's the value of the thing. They've built either a business or their value of their stock or. Or their companies. And that's what makes them a billionaire. And to do that, the biggest lever you could ever build is your network. I believe the more hands you shake, the more money you make. You need to be out there talking to people. Because when I bring People into my business to co create companies with me, partner with me, invest in my businesses. I don't control the whole thing anymore. See, most people think you need to own the whole thing. That is the biggest mistake people starting off in business make. Elon Musk only owns 19.8% of Tesla, and that business makes him a bazillion dollars on paper. So stop asking yourself, how do I make more money? And start asking yourself, what do I own that can compound, for example, Martel Ventures, which is my AI venture studio. We own dozens of companies. This is where I took my knowledge and my skill, documented it, partnered with people, and have built all of these companies. Literally, we're on pace in only the second year to do almost $250 million in value. And, and that's why all the billionaires I've ever met, they don't think about how much cash they have in a bank account. They ask themselves, how much do I own equity assets? And then who do I know that can solve the biggest problems that I might face? That's valuable now that you've got some new software installed, a new understanding of building net worth, not active income. Next, we need to make you the laziest person on your team. Which brings us to bucket number four, just act lazy. Every time I've met a new billionaire, I will tell you, I am often surprised not by how much they work, but how little they work. All the billionaires I know, when I text them, they reply right away. They're the fastest to reply. They're always available. If I say, hey, I'm thinking of doing this thing, they're like, yeah, no problem. Their whole philosophy is, I don't want to be the bottleneck. I don't want to be the person that needs to be there to move something forward. Because if I am, it can't move forward. And what's funny is you watch them. You would call them lazy, but they do it on purpose. So here are two billionaire rules on how to be lazy. Billionaire rule number five, create your filter. And I learned this from Richard Branson, one of the smartest. You see Richard, when I last saw him, he doesn't carry a phone. What he does have is his assistant, Helen. She is the filter. And nothing gets to Richard unless it's supposed to. Now to you. If you didn't know, you might think he's lazy. But what you would hear if you could listen to those conversations, is that he's using his time for the best resource he can. Not operationally, but looking and identifying for those next opportunities. When I spent the week with him, I saw him do several multimillion dollar deals. Just through conversations at dinner. And watching him work made me realize I had to redesign my whole day. And that's when I got an in person executive assistant to help me deal with all the noise. By the way, if you want to know exactly how I've set up my life and my executive assistant to handle all of this, I'm giving away my EA playbook. Just DM me, YouTube EA on Instagram and I'll send it right over. This took me years to create Perfect. And it is my gift to you for free. Which brings us to billionaire rule number six. Stop working so hard. See, most entrepreneurs fill every freaking minute with tasks. They do calls, they do emails, they do meetings. They feel productive because they're always doing something. They're busy. You know. You wanna know what the top people do? Like Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon. He actually brags that most mornings he putters, he doesn't run to work. Cause he said to himself a long time ago, the truth is, I gotta ramp up my brain. I gotta be ready. And I just got to make two to three really good decisions every day. Not 50 like some of you, not 100, but three. And if he does those three every day with consistency, that creates leverage and compounding. What makes billionaires different than most entrepreneurs is billionaires protect their thinking, not their time. They understand their best work, their best energy is whenever they decide to do it. And they guard that. So now that you've got that mindset, the leverage, the systems, all of it is useless if you don't know the reason why all this matters in the first place. Which brings us to bucket number five. Fall in love with the game, not the outcome. Recently, I was sitting across the table from a bunch of people and they were worth billions of dollars. And not one of them talked about how much money they were making. They all talked about the people they were building. They talked about who they were becoming. They talked about what scared them for years. They talked about what they learned and how they overcame that. The numbers were a byproduct, not the primary reason they didn't give a about their bank account they looked at as a way of being and that life is a place to do the work, to become more, to help other people achieve more. Which reminds me of a quote I heard which said, your personal income is tied to your personal development. If you want your bank account to go up, you have to personally develop yourself. If you're not doing anything to make yourself better. Don't be surprised if the money doesn't show up. There's two rules that I watch billionaires execute that taught me this. 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 channel. Just subscribe to the channel, turn on the notification bell. Cause 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. Billionaire rule number seven Never ever ever stop growing. I've watched my friend Toby, founder of Shopify, do this every year. Toby has this rule that the company has to grow 40% per year and if you can't keep up, you become the bottleneck. And he's the first one to say this. If you actually go on GitHub right now, which is like this nerdy software platform, you will see Toby, the CEO of Shopify, he's put more code into his GitHub in the first two months of the year than he did the last year so far. But here's what most people miss. The growth isn't just about the business. It's about you. What skills are you developing? You'll get paid for the value you bring to the world, not the time. Not how hard the time was, not how hard you worked, but how much value you created with that time. So. So if you think about it, every problem could make you sharper, every failure could make you tougher, every hire, fire and hard conversation could be an upgrade for who you are if you look for the lessons. So the point of business isn't the outcome of getting to a place of buying a thing or making a lot of money. It's who you become in the process. Finally, billionaire rule number eight, build a life resume. Jesse Itzler, super cool dude. I mean if you haven't seen him, he's not only a world class speaker, he's a world class person. And he essentially schedules his whole life around the most important parts. We were talking last week and this is what he said to me. I take every Friday off, every month I take a whole week off. That's not something he decided to get to eventually. He's been doing this for a long time. If you read any of the books he's written, I mean this is how he's operated. And he has a thing called the annual Musogi, essentially a life defining activity, something that's challenging that for many people should be 50% impossible. It could be an ironman or hiking a mountain or even writing your first book. That way, every year has a thing you can go, oh, 20, 24 was this? 25 was that? 26 was this? What's my misogy for 27? And the biggest takeaway I've had from spending time with billionaires is they don't just focus on adding zeros to their and bank account. They prioritize living a life worth remembering. So when you think of all these billionaire rules, I need you to bring them together and remind yourself of one thing. Stop trying to win a game someone else designed. Build your own game. That's what the billionaires have done. They said, I've got my own rules. My friend Lori said it the other day. She goes, when I feel bored, I realize I'm being boring. And if I'm bored, I should probably start doing things that are not boring. And if you're feeling that way today, take that inspiration. Start building a life worth remembering. So here's what I need you to do is below. Based on all these rules, I need you to write down the one that resonates the most with you. Drop a comment and tell me which one it is. And remember, if you want my Executive assistant playbook, just find me on Instagram and DM me the word YouTube EA and I'll send it right over. Thanks for listening. The Martell Method if you like this episode, could you do me a huge favorite 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.