How to Make Rich Friends

How does a kid from a small town in Eastern Canada who struggled in school, was in and out of jail and rehab by 17, end up getting Mark Cuban invest in his company, or spend a week with Richard Branson, or have Tony Robbins invite him to speak on stage seven times? One word, relationships. Everyone says, your network is your net worth, but almost nobody actually shows you how to build your network. In this video, I'm going to show you why the right relationships can make you more money than anything else you'll do, the mistakes that are ruining your chances to connect with others, and the exact system I use to build relationship with people way out of my reach that doesn't feel cringey. And if you stick till the end, I'll give you the exact first step so you can start building your network today before you even close the tab on this video. Let's start with the first shift we all need to understand. Why is networking so important? I believe you should think in people, not problems. One conversation in my life can change everything. You're one person away from completely changing your life. One conversation with that person, one intro they make, one new relationship. Maybe it's a business partner, maybe it's an employee. The average person, they ask, how do I solve this? The most successful people, the richest, they ask, who's already solved this? They default to the who, not how. And my buddy Ben Hardy wrote a whole book on this. Every problem you have, somebody else out there has already solved it. If you build that relationship with them, then you get to inherit the solution because you know them. Trial and error is super slow. Like trying to figure it out on your own costs you years. The people with the blueprint will save you thousands of mistakes they've already made. When I was 28, I decided to move closer to people living a bigger life. That's why I moved to San Francisco. And depending on what industry you're in, you might make the same move. Software people move to San Francisco. Media people are right now moving to Austin. Music people typically move to Nashville. Finance people, New York City. See how proximity is power and being around the right people, the right environments, those relationships can happen just by being there? Often times, the solution to problems are caught, not taught. So, here's what we want to do. It takes 2 minutes. We want to build what I call our hit list. What we want to do is write out our goals and identify our people. You might have five different goals you want to get done before the end of the year. You might want to get your health in check. You might want to get your money figured out. Be very specific. Get in a new relationship. Improve the one you're in. You might even want to improve your wake surfing. You may want to create more content, media. So, now, next to each goal, you want to write down the name of a person who has achieved that. So, when I think health, I think of my buddy Allan Dick. And if you don't know these people, go on YouTube, search for folks teaching these topics, and then find out who they are. Maybe you'll find them on Instagram or TikTok. Give them a follow. On money, maybe you want to follow my buddy Garrett Gunderson. For relationships, depending on the topic, maybe learning how to build your network, go follow Keith Ferrazzi. He's one of my mentors cuz he wrote a book called Never Eat Alone. Wake surfing, a guy like Austin Keen, who's a pro surfer. I went a step further and actually reached out to him to hire him to coach me. And now we're homies. For media, you might want to write down Sam Gadets' name. Sam puts out new videos on YouTube. He's my creative director. He's one of my best buds. Somebody you want to get around. Obviously, these are people I know. But at some point, I didn't know them. So, you might want to start with folks that are closer to you. Write their name down. The key for me is you have to find someone who's done it, who can teach it somehow, but at minimum are living it. So, now that you have this list, I need you to keep it and put it to the side cuz we're going to come back to it at the end. Everyone is one conversation away from achieving their dreams. You never know who could change your life. So, if one relationship can change everything for you, why hasn't it happened yet? Because you may be making one of these two mistakes that most people make. What mistakes could be killing your ability to network? I call these the invisible showstoppers. These are things that most people don't realize they're doing. That's why they're invisible. That stops the opportunity to build a relationship before it even begins. And the worst part is nobody tells you that you blew it. You just for some reason feel like nobody gives you the same chances they give other people. This is the brutal part and it might hurt your feelings cuz you might have already wasted it. You only get one first impression with somebody big. I don't think people realize how little of an action can cause somebody else to just decide, I'm not going to spend time with them. So, we want to make sure that when you do have this opportunity, you make it count. And it starts by removing those invisible show stoppers. For example, guy sees my car at the gym, realizes I'm inside. He decides to run up. He's wearing his full suit and tie and he runs across the gym well mid-workout and decides to start asking me questions, which I'm open to and I love meeting people. So, I say to him, "Hey, man, every Tuesday we do a founders hike. You're invited. Come hang out." For sure, man, love to do that. I'll be there. Guess who didn't show up on Tuesday. Guess who's never showed up since then and it's literally been 3 months. That guy. 98% of people that say, "I'll be there." They don't show up. That's why I do the hike. It acts as a filter and most people fail at the filter. If he would have just showed up at the hike, maybe the thing that he wanted my help on might have made sense. But because he couldn't do something as simple as doing what he said he was going to do, I decided to move on. Now, if we ever meet again, I have that first impression of him so it'll be hard for me to overlook it. The way you act in general can get back to the person you want to build a relationship with that you don't even know. And that's why it's an invisible show stopper. For example, there was a guy I was thinking of partnering with. Let's just call him Bobby. And then I have a buddy, let's call him Mike. My buddy Mike found out that I was talking to Bobby. Mike informs me that Bobby talks about other people all the time. And for what it's worth, I don't know if you're going to do something with him, but I wouldn't. Mike, thank you. Enough said. Hang up the phone. Decide not to talk to Bobby. The scary part is that Bobby never knew. Bobby didn't ever treat me poorly. He never talked about people in front of me, but the way he acted and talked about other people got back to me. So, to ensure you got the best chance of building the best relationships, let's make sure we don't do these four major invisible showstoppers, and I'm going to give you the fix for each one. We got the behavior and we got the fix. The first one, flaking. And I'll tell you, being late, same bucket. If you're not somebody that can do what they say they're going to do, people won't trust you. And really high-level folks that you want to build a relationship with, they need to surround themselves with folks that 100% of the time can follow through. And I understand, you can't commit to everything and things in life will happen, but the fix for this is only commit when 100%. And if you can't, just text them and let them know. Number two is neediness. This one reeks of desperation. You almost treat the person as if they have some kind of magical fairy dust of success that if they just sprinkle it all over you, that you'll be successful. Just don't get in their personal space. Arm's length, lean back, stand to their side. You have to act like a peer, not like a fanboy or girl. And trust me, those top people that you admire, they want you to act like that. Cuz if not, you make them feel uncomfortable. The third behavior, instant ask. Before I ever ask of anybody, I try to create value ahead of time. Offering to help people in their life is a great way to start. And the fix is we have to give first. And that's the key. Don't ask somebody like, "Hey, do you want me to edit a video?" Edit the video, send it to them. The instant ask will get you an immediate no, it'll make it harder to get a yes later on. Number four, it sounds similar, but it's not, transactional. If you just do things for other people cuz you're hoping to get from somebody, they will feel that and they will keep their distance. There are people out there that are very much like this. Do this for me, I'll do this for you. Those people have a hard time building relationship because it's not about keeping score. My favorite person that continues to do this every day at scale is Gary V. He looks at life like relationships and investments. So, the fix here is to be intentional with your actions. These are the four most often invisible showstoppers. These are the behaviors that shape how the world sees you, but there's a second set of mistakes and these are internal. And these are the beliefs that shape how you see yourself. We have to drop the head trash. These are the things you've said about yourself and that has nothing to do with what other people have said about you and I call them mindset blockers and these are the three lies that stop most people from being able to build relationship with folks that can help them solve big problems. The first lie is, "Who am I to take that person's time?" Most people that you admire, they're just on their chapter 27 and you're on your chapter two. And you're comparing yourself and because they're further along, you think that you're not worthy of their time or their attention. That is not true. As long as you're doing the work, then you're just them a few years prior. What you might be doing is tying your value to your achievements. Who you are and what you've done are two completely separate things. So, don't play yourself small because you think you're not worth it. I have 12 million followers today. Who cares? There was a time only three years ago when I had 70,000. I'm still the same person. What's impressive to me and inspires me is other people's challenges. The second lie is that you have no value to add. This one will stop people. I've got nothing to offer. I've got nothing I can help them with. I'm pretty sure every person in the world has something they've done. They've spent a lot of time on, they've learned, that they've gotten great at it. It could be anything. My favorite that takes nothing is being somebody else's biggest cheerleader. I will tell you, my best friend Marty is my best friend Marty because it doesn't matter how much success I got. He was the person I could turn to to celebrate those wins with me. When you start winning, one of the worst things that happens is a lot of people stop celebrating because they're like, "Oh, they don't need to hear it and it's not that big of a deal. They do this all the time." Without adding any value, just your ability to celebrate other people is valuable. And the third one is they're different. Guess what? Everybody uses the toilet the exact same way. Think about that next time. I heard Joe Rogan say this once. Talk about Kim Kardashian and all these celebrities that everybody admires and he goes, "They all go to the bathroom. They're human. They're normal people. There's nothing different about them. Be kind. Be interesting. Be curious, but stop putting them up on a pedestal. They just done things for a longer period than you have. They've made different decisions in life, but they're just like you." I find this so funny. I consider myself humanity's biggest cheerleader, first and foremost. I just love people. I love seeing people win. Some people literally say to themselves, "Oh, I don't want to be somebody else's fan." It's like they're too cool. That's just weird to me. Be somebody's fan. Celebrate them. Book comes out, be the first person to buy. They post, especially your friends, be the first person to leave a comment. Share their post. That's what friends do. And guess what? The energy you put out in the world comes back to you. Now, before we get into actually how to activate your network, here's a quick hack. Get in the right room. And we'll talk more about this in a bit, but some of those rooms, I put those on myself. My team and I run events all the time, all year long, all over the place. And yes, all the top people that follow my videos, they come to my events. These are the people that are looking to unlock their life through relationships because they understand the who is more powerful than the how. So, if you want the chance to be invited to one of those rooms, just find me on Instagram and DM me the words YouTube events so we can chat to see if what I've got coming up might work for you as well. All right. So, we fixed how the world sees us. We fixed how we see ourselves. That's the foundation. Now, we need to talk about how to build a world-class network. We have to build our tribe. This framework is behind every relationship in my life. We're talking Cuban, Branson, Tony, Maxwell, etc. They all came from this. I wasn't born good at networking. Honestly, I was freaking awkward, more introverted. I learned how to code. I thought coding was great cuz I don't have to talk to anybody. Then I realized that business was about people, life was about people, so I had to learn. So I went to the best. I read the books and I got good at it. Now I want to teach it to you. The framework is called tribe. The first T is target. We have to have a list of people. Now the key is don't be transactional, be intentional. This isn't about trying to say what can they give me, it's about how do I show up for them? How do I build a real meaningful relationship? Good news, we already started with this with the list we started with at the beginning. So this is where we pull out the list of goals and make a list of the names of people that we can connect with. Again, you don't go for the people they're at top of their game because they're hard to get to. Just make a list of anybody who's achieved the results that you know. That's a great place to start cuz we're just trying to get some reps. The next we got to talk about that mindset again. We got to realize you don't need any one person. And those are two words, any one, not anyone, any one person. It's very dangerous when you say I need this person to invest in my company. I need this person to respond to my email. I need this person on my podcast. No, you don't. You don't need any one person to be successful. Make a list of a dozen of them. Make a list of a hundred of them and go wide. And it's true with personal people. You don't need your brother, your best friend, your partner in life to do anything for you to win. My whole philosophy in life is nobody has to change, nobody has to pick me for me to win. I don't want to make anybody a gatekeeper of my dreams. The third is we have to invest. The best way to invest in a relationship is to just show up. When my book came out and I held my first book event ever at my local bookstore, and my buddy Jason Gaynard surprised me. He lives 2,000 mi away and he got on a plane, stood in line to wait to get a book. And when I saw him there, I was like, "Dude, what are you doing here?" He's like, "I wanted to come and support the book." His book, Community Made, is the book you should buy as soon as you're done watching this video. Why do I love him so much? He just shows up. Number four is built. And built for me is a platform. A platform is a place where you can invite people to collaborate with you. This is where you've created a way to add value to that and which gets their message, their story out to the world. By building that platform, it's a way to ask them to get involved with you, but also add value. So, for example, you could build a newsletter, like an email list. You could have a podcast. You might organize an event. Where I started was doing dinners. These were just dinners with local entrepreneurs. I tried to invite, you know, three other people other than myself that were like complimentary. They might not have known each other. And we'd just sit around, do intros, and then talk about the exciting projects in their life. That simple concept started to build my relationships, my network. So, if I knew when I started, I didn't know much about law, I'd invite the guy that owned the law firm. If I didn't know much about finance, the person who owned the accounting firm. And that way, I'm the person that brings them together. The cool part is if I'm shy and I don't want to talk a lot, those people will talk to each other. I just got to create the platform, the place where they come together, and then they think I'm the master networker, and all I did was send the email. Another example is my hike. I've had thousands of people come on my hike. It's open to everyone. They come, they fly in from all over the world. You're invited in case I've never formally invited you. It literally costs me nothing. I get my workout in and I get to meet some new people. And the last one is edit. You need to put things down before you can pick them up, and that works for relationship as well. Some of the most important move in building your network is we have to fix our feed. And our feed could be where we spend our time. Our feed is what we give attention to. And the best place to start is your social media feed. And I put it into two categories. There's people we have to follow. These are the folks that we put next to our goals. These are people we might have found on YouTube, we might have found on Instagram. They're folks in our community that might also create content, and we start to follow them. But the most important is who we forget. This might feel a little crazy to like decide to move on from somebody that you follow, but you can mute them. You can block them if they're really negative, but clearing up your feed so that you can edit what you pay attention to. So that if somebody you want to build a relationship with posts they're having a baby, you see that post. Can you imagine you don't see the thing you wanted to see because you're following a bunch of ding-dongs that keep posting about some stuff you have no interest whatsoever. My rule is this, if I ran into them at the mall, and I would pretend like I didn't know them. I don't care if I sat next to them in grade eight English, I'm not going to follow them on social media. I don't have to be friends with everybody. Most people, when they build their network, it's kind of by accident. When we do it this way, following the tribe structure, we do it with intention. We put effort into it because we know the upside is huge. And my philosophy is that it's all about creating goodwill. The more you give to the world, the more you get. And goodwill is only created when you give more than what you take off the table. So that's the full system. But remember that list that we started writing down at the beginning? Now it's time to actually use it. What we have to do is take the list and action it. Information without action is just entertainment. And I'm sure you're here because you know that one relationship will change your life. So I want to give you some very tactical strategies on how to reach out to those people and connect with them and do it in a way that's really genuine and easy. What I need you to do first off is do your homework. Read their stuff. Get in their world. Watch their videos. Read their book. Never freestyle this. There's nothing more insulting than when somebody asks them a question that it is the most public available fact about their life. And honestly, nuanced things that you might find the uncommon commonalities, as my buddy Jason calls it. The thing about like my dad's a pilot, your dad's a pilot. Those are the really smart things to write down. The next thing you want to do is you want to follow them on social media. Just show up in their world. If you leave comments on their stuff, that's really smart. You just got to make sure that your social media is done well as well. So, if your profile is literally like some random name 1 2 3 4, that's not a good look. Now, when I do finally reach out to somebody, I usually mention something very specific. Right off the bat, you say, "Hey person's name." You reference something very specific that means that you research it. Something that a bot could never write. Just real quick, short and sweet. Maybe there's a mutual connection. Mention that. The key is there's no pitch. You're not pitching your company. You're not pitching anything. The best way to get a relationship started is to ask for advice. And that's step three. Ask for advice around something simple, but is not simple as in like they write about this online. Like if you ask me how to start an AI company, and you haven't Googled how to start an AI company, Dan Martell, and find the 13 videos that I've done, that just is a bad look. But to ask something specific, as an example, "Hey Dan, I watched your videos and I went down the rabbit hole and I'm debating should I use Grok Build or Codex?" That's a question I have an opinion on that I could possibly answer that is short and sweet. And anything that sounds like, "Can we collab? Can you promote my thing? Can you invest in my company?" Those things get filtered out. That's the asking first before you create any more value. The key is to just show effort. And also, put your cell number in the email. That's one of my go-to moves. I literally send my followers, if I know somebody notable follows me, I just send them my cell number. And I just say, "Text me." And we'll connect over cell numbers. If you send me an email and I'm driving and I want to talk to you and I want to answer your question, and you make it really easy for me to find you, I'm just going to click your number and I'm going to call you. Now, when they reply, immediately thank them and tell them that you did something with it. So that they know that time that reply was well used. So, for example, Grok build this AI thing or Codex, hey, I never thought of Grok build. I tried it out. I built this new app. Thank you so much for that advice. It lets me know that I was helpful, which feels good. Now, I'm building relationship. Now, you have a chance to reply and maybe offer some help. So, if you notice that my book's launching soon and maybe there's an opportunity for you to volunteer to help support some online community to get the word out, that would be a great way to offer value. When I first moved to San Francisco and I didn't know anybody, I reached out to this woman named Cassie who ran the largest events business in the city and I just offered to volunteer. This was after I had sold my company and I was a multi-millionaire. I still knew the best way for me to connect and build relationships was to be in the right room and the easiest and fastest way to do that was to volunteer. So, what did I tell Cassie? I was like, "Hey, do you need somebody to recruit and reach out to other speakers for your events?" She's like, "Yeah." I go, "Cool. Give me your hit list." Well, now I could reach out to all these people asking them if they wanted to speak on her event, not even mine, and then they thought I was associated with the event, I just permission to reach out to those people on her behalf. She said, "Cool." And then I started building relationships with the top entrepreneurs in the city by adding value to people before I ever asked for anything. And the last thing is don't let the relationship die. Like my friend Jen's million follower goal, she achieved it. Or Natalie, a million on YouTube, she achieved it. I was the first one to be in there, comment there, screenshot, send them a text message and let them know just how cool it was. And that takes nothing, but it means everything to people. Don't put the heavy lifting on them. See what they're working on and think about problems that might be coming up. You don't just offer them help, you offer to help their team. When somebody reaches out to me and says, "Hey, I saw Sam or I saw Arturo or I saw Todd talk about this, does he want an introduction to this person?" And they're like a top person, that's perfect for me because then they're helping my team. I like that just as much. Remember, be short, concise, and say something that AI bot could never say. Do not use AI to do these outreaches. You can use it for inspiration, but you need to actually do it yourself. If you do that, you will start to build a relationship with incredible people. They can solve your biggest problems, and the best part is they will pull you up when you're feeling down. And that is why having rich relationships, and I don't mean money, I mean the quality of those relationships, that's probably more valuable than anything they could ever do for you. You want to get to a place where you have a problem with money, you got a guy. You got a problem with people, you got a guy. You need to hire somebody, you got a person. Especially if you're a content creator, understand that building that brand or building those relationships, when you know you can reach out to the world's best person in the world on a topic or a problem, you start to feel invincible. That's why I do what I do. So, here's what I want to do. I would love for you to leave a problem below in the comments. What's that one problem that you know you need a person to help you solve? In the comments below, let me know what the problem is. If I know somebody, maybe I'll reply with a name. And everybody else, read the comments, and if you know somebody, tag them in the comments. This is where I'm giving you a chance, all of you, to build a relationship below with each other. And remember, if you want to get into a room of world-class people, people that understand how I live my life, how I execute in my business, and you want the opportunity to talk to me about what events I've got coming up, just find me on Instagram and message me the word YouTube events, and we'll see if what I've got coming up is a fit for you. And if you want my full course on how to learn how to build a business from absolute scratch and scale to millions a year, just click the link and I'll see you on the other side.