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The Martell Method w/ Dan Martell

One Simple Rule That Changed my Life Forever

Fri, 06 Jun 2025

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>> Get The Book (Buy Back Your Time): ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3pCTG78⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ >> Subscribe to My Newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3⁠20 years ago, I discovered a rule that changed everything, my work, my relationships, and my entire life.It’s called the 95/5 Rule.I first learned it from rubbing shoulders with billionaires, and I’ve used it ever since to go from burnout and broken relationships… to a dream life, private jet, beautiful family, and mentoring the next generation.In this episode, I’ll break it down and show you how to apply it to your own life starting today.

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Chapter 1: What is the 95/5 Rule?

0.449 - 12.717 Dan Martell

20 years ago, I came across a rule. A rule that completely changed my life and worked forever. It's called the 95-5 rule. I first learned this rule rubbing shoulders with some of the most successful billionaires that you probably know.

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Chapter 2: How did the 95/5 Rule change the speaker's life?

12.918 - 32.372 Dan Martell

And I've personally used this rule to go from burning out, working 100 hours a week, and ruining all my relationships, to building my dream life, a beautiful family, having access to resources like the plane and the cars, and mentoring hundreds of kids in my local community. So with that being said, this is the 95-5 rule. five rule. Welcome to the Martell Method.

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32.692 - 55.0 Dan Martell

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. And make sure you don't miss anything by subscribing to my newsletter at martellmethod.com. The 95 five rule means 95% of your results come from only 5% of your efforts.

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55.36 - 71.532 Dan Martell

Think of it like your life is like a boat on the ocean and you're going along and you accidentally hit a rock. And now all of a sudden you got water that's filling up the boat. Most people would run to the bucket and just start trying to bail it out. People that win in life, the 5% spend the time trying to figure out where the fricking hole is and try to plug it.

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71.832 - 85.085 Dan Martell

Years ago, I hired a marketer to come into a business that was doing about 3 million a year. And they were super talented and had all the right things to say. And everybody was super excited about them hitting the ground running. And then six months later, we had to fire them. Why?

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85.366 - 103.379 Dan Martell

Because instead of to stop and doing the deep analysis and figuring out what was actually wrong, they just started getting busy doing things. They didn't have the discipline to do the audit to figure out where the problems were and then the discipline to focus on what to say no to so that they could actually move the needle.

103.559 - 125.973 Dan Martell

The 95-5 rule is like the 80-20 rule, the Pareto principle, but on steroids. It essentially eliminates the illusion of productivity by saying, what's the one thing that if you knock out of the park, like a massive domino will just knock all the things down and get things moving. If you're truly growing, 95% of your calendar is going to look completely different in a year.

126.473 - 146.933 Dan Martell

That's how you know you're making progress. If you're still doing this year the same stuff you did last year, probably missing the mark. Which brings us to the question, how do you find your 5%? how can I focus on the right 5% if I don't know where I'm going? Like if I don't know what the target looks like, how am I supposed to hit the target? And people ask me, well, how do you prioritize?

146.973 - 167.086 Dan Martell

How do you figure out the 5%? How do you really focus? Well, if I know where I'm going, then I can ask myself, does this decision get me closer to that target? Without clarity of vision, it can feel overwhelming. It can feel hard. A lot of people get depressed because they don't have clarity. A confused mind can't move forward. If I don't know what I'm trying to do,

Chapter 3: What is the significance of focusing on the right 5%?

168.887 - 187.275 Dan Martell

Bill Gates knew early his vision, I want a personal computer in every home. Zuckerberg, he literally said from the beginning, I wanna build a metaverse. Elon Musk, the whole world, if you follow him for like five seconds, knows his number one priority in life is colonizing Mars. And that's why he started every one of his companies. Think about that.

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187.315 - 209.776 Dan Martell

Most people don't realize Starlink, boring company, the AI, Optimus, the robots, Tesla, self-driving cars, the whole infrastructure for colonizing Mars is every one of his businesses. Isn't that crazy? That's the 5%. Even Doge was him going, if I don't help save our economy, all the businesses I've created within that economy could be at risk.

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Chapter 4: How do you find your 5%?

209.996 - 227.306 Dan Martell

I'll go spend 90 days helping solve that problem so then I can go and get back to building electric cars. So think about it this way. The clarity of your vision, what you see, determines the quality of your decisions. If you're clear, your decisions are awesome. So here's what you wanna do. Number one, dream big.

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227.767 - 242.714 Dan Martell

People ask me all the time, if you can go back and talk to that 20-year-old version of yourself, what would you whisper in their ear? Dream bigger. See, most people don't give themselves permission to dream, so then their target is so near-sighted, it doesn't feel like it's big enough to make big decisions to move your life forward.

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242.734 - 258.261 Dan Martell

You actually have to go way out there, dream bigger, and then aim for it. Then what you do once you have that, sit down and write 12 goals for the year. Write down 12 projects, outcomes, things you want to do with your life that if you accomplish, even if you accomplish seven or eight of them,

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258.761 - 280.379 Dan Martell

you know you're making progress now here's the kicker the next step is actually to circle the one that if you got done every other goal would feel obsolete or not needed or be a lot easier to attack then i want you to write a list of projects that you got to get done to make that one goal accomplish and aggressively ignore the rest that is how you execute the 95 5 rule

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281.42 - 300.087 Dan Martell

Which brings us to the question, how do you make sure you're doing the 5%? So today I woke up and my calendar is full of only the things that I not only love doing, but they give me the most leverage on my time, which I'll share with you in a second. My dad had this like really original quote used to say, which was, if you love the work you do, you'll never work a day in your life.

300.427 - 317.702 Dan Martell

So that's why I designed the Drip Matrix for myself and to teach my friends. So the way it works is you evaluate all the things you could do through an X and Y axis. On one side, it's the things that light you up, that give you energy, that pump you up, that you look forward to do, right? It might be creating with friends, it might be research, it might be writing.

317.782 - 341.04 Dan Martell

Whatever lights you up gives you energy. And the second makes you the most money. It has to make you money. Why? Because money is a resource. Money is energy. Money is a battery of storing value you could use in other things. Here's what's cool is your 5% is in the very top right corner of the drip matrix in the production quadrant. It's in the quadrant of the quadrant that you focus on.

Chapter 5: What does dreaming big have to do with success?

341.28 - 359.689 Dan Martell

And for what it's worth, this may need to change as your life changes. Before I had kids, my life looked completely different. I used to be all about staying up late and getting a bunch of creative work done. Now my days are early. Why? I have human alarm clocks. I have little kids. I have to change and shift things. There was times when certain meetings were green and I loved doing them.

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360.009 - 380.276 Dan Martell

And then I realized I don't wanna do this anymore. I don't enjoy it. I don't even need to be here. There's no net new value of me being here. And guess what? I'm not empowering my team to step up when I stay in those things that used to be green. Now they're yellow, sometimes red. So I have to learn to let go and really self-evaluate where am I focusing my time?

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380.596 - 394.923 Dan Martell

As an example, one of my friend owns a dental clinic and he called me the other day because he was like, hey man, I need to restructure my life. I got to understand this drip matrix. And I asked him what was going on. And he explained to me the biggest challenge, his bottleneck was he doesn't have enough staff. That's your 5%.

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395.123 - 414.953 Dan Martell

Building a system for attracting, hiring, training, retaining top staff is gonna produce the biggest outcomes in your life. Everything else is just things that have to get done, but it's not gonna move the needle. Focus there. And the way I keep the main thing, the main thing is I put that in my calendar first in the morning.

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Chapter 6: How to prioritize goals effectively?

415.313 - 432.944 Dan Martell

The first 90 minutes of every day is working on the project that's gonna push everything else forward, keeping it there till it's solved, not getting bored with it, not getting distracted, being disciplined, stay with the problem. See, I had this bad habit a long time ago that I used to get bored with problems. I moved on from them too quick and they were never solved.

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433.244 - 451.552 Dan Martell

The more I understood the 95-5 rule, I realized that 5%, I gotta stay with it, I gotta do less. I shouldn't start another company, I shouldn't invest in another company, I shouldn't distract myself, stay with it. 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 Martell Method newsletter.

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451.792 - 468.251 Dan Martell

It's where you'll elevate your mindset, fitness, and business in less than five minutes a week. Find it at martellmethod.com. Which brings us to the last question you're probably asking yourself. What do I do with the other 95% of my time? The best analogy I could give you is to think of yourself like a chef, right?

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468.691 - 486.163 Dan Martell

In a kitchen, the chef should only be doing the thing that actually makes the meal world-class. He's not sitting there and doing all the prep. He's not cutting all the vegetables. He's not pre-cooking some of the proteins. He literally sits there, the top chef in a kitchen and things are brought to him. He's done his work. It's called mise en place.

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486.203 - 508.456 Dan Martell

He sits there and he does the work and the plates go out the kitchen Perfect. You want to figure out how to get your life to the same place where you stay in that flow, you stay in that zone and have people support you around you, even part-time, even friends, so you can keep creating and pushing your life forward. So that's what you do. The other 95%, think of the three Ds. Number one is defer.

508.636 - 526.268 Dan Martell

Some stuff that you want to do is just not a now thing. Understanding the right time for the right action is just as important as understanding what to do. Because if you do something too soon, it's not valuable. So postpone intentionally. not passively. You're allowed to defer things to next quarter, next year. Just make the decision. The second thing is delete it.

526.528 - 539.18 Dan Martell

I can't tell you how often I go through, I call it a pruning process, where I just like look at stuff that I'm currently doing and go, I'm just gonna remove that. I'm gonna remove that. I'm gonna remove that. I did that for my morning routine. I used to be one of those guys that get up and had a very structured morning routine. And I was like,

Chapter 7: What is the Drip Matrix and how does it help?

539.801 - 554.907 Dan Martell

I wonder what would happen if I actually just woke up and started to work. Turned out, really good move. Now, do I recommend people start there? No, because they hadn't built the discipline of execution. They didn't even understand what that 5% is. They didn't build the muscle of actually just getting up and working.

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555.327 - 574.655 Dan Martell

So if you don't have a process to get ready for work and you're new to this, it'll hurt you. But deleting things, pruning things is a powerful strategy. The third is delegate. And this is why I always tell people to start with a part-time assistant because most people are not good at this. Most people, when they ask somebody else to do something, it ends up not getting done the way they want it.

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575.135 - 595.564 Dan Martell

And the person ends up getting involved and it doesn't save them any more time because they don't know how to learn to let go. The way we do this is we got to hand off with clarity. Define what the definition of done looks like and practice delegating because it is an art. One of my core philosophies to really get more time back to focus on my 5% is to train, don't tell.

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595.704 - 615.016 Dan Martell

See, if I'm telling everybody what to do, then I get stuck in this tell, check, next, doom loop of always having people relying on me to get work done. Instead, I train them on how to think this way. That's why I create this content is because it's for you and it's all the people on all my teams. When you learn to let go, you gotta be sure to train them on how you did it.

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615.176 - 630.828 Dan Martell

A checklist is not enough. Some people are like, I have an SOP. Not enough. Role play with them. Teach them the mental models. Think about the first principles. How do you think about this? What are the frameworks you use? If you're mad that people are in a meeting and they're not contributing to the meeting, have you ever taught them how to?

631.269 - 652.607 Dan Martell

And if you don't know how to train people, the good news is there's this really powerful, expensive tool that you might've heard of called ChatGPT. It's free. Use it. Now I know, choosing one thing is scary. What if you're wrong? Here's my promise, picking something and doing as much effort and focus on it and learning and getting feedback is always the winning move.

653.047 - 672.215 Dan Martell

Versus doing too many things and playing a game of whack-a-mole in the dark, it's like fighting an invisible monster. At least this way, you can eliminate things knowing they didn't work versus not knowing what's broken. Now, if you wanna go deeper on delegating, click this video and I'll see you on the other side. Thanks for listening to The Martell Method.

672.435 - 682.88 Dan Martell

If you liked 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.

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