If I Started Investing in 2026, This is Exactly What I’d Do (From $0)

Dan Martell explains the process of building significant wealth through four distinct stages, each leveraging greater resources from the previous phase. Moving intentionally through these steps creates compounding growth, culminating in the ultimate wealth-building strategy: equity ownership.

Leveraging Time As Your Primary Asset in Stage One

In the first stage, time is your most valuable resource, especially when you are young and lack substantial capital. Martell describes how instead of seeking immediate high pay, you should invest your time in developing valuable skills, forging relationships with mentors, and gaining experience. Early on, he would use his commute to absorb audiobooks, seek out people who were smarter, and take on projects not for immediate monetary gain but for exposure to bigger ideas and to get better over time.

This stage is about maximizing return on the time you spend by deliberately placing yourself around educational opportunities and ambitious individuals. Martell emphasizes that getting curious, staying quiet to learn, and executing well makes successful people want to invest in you. Often, the payout in this stage isn’t a paycheck, but rather the compounding returns from knowledge, mentorship, and the budding opportunities that set the stage for future growth.

Stage Two Reclaims Time By Delegating Low-value Tasks

Once you have skills and are trading time productively, the next crucial step is to buy back your time by identifying and delegating lower-value tasks. Martell introduces the "buy-back loop": first, audit your calendar over the past two weeks. Highlight activities in green (energizing), red (draining), and yellow (mediocre). Assess which tasks are cheap or expensive to pay someone else to do. Tasks that are both low-cost to delegate and draining or mediocre go in a separate bucket for outsourcing.

By offloading red and yellow tasks, you can focus on high-leverage, income-generating work—the green activities that make the biggest difference. Martell credits his executive assistant (and now chief of staff), Ann, for handling all his professional logistics and another team member, Betty, for managing his household and real estate. This support structure buys him over 100 hours a week, hours he can re-invest into high-value activities that multiply his income.

Stage Three: Invest Capital for Passive Returns

After reclaiming significant amounts of time, the next phase is to let your capital work for you through passive investment. This transition involves a mindset shift from merely saving to actively investing in vehicles like funds, stocks, and real estate. Commonly, people start investing without first reclaiming their time, which can stunt their progress because they lack the accumulated capital from focusing on high-leverage work.

Martell urges people to optimize income first, then deploy surplus capital into investments with solid long-term, steady returns. He notes that true wealth building requires earning and capitalizing on the larger sums only possible af ...

Strategic delegation and the buy-back-your-time philosophy present a modern approach to achieving value for money, especially for high achievers seeking to scale their income and impact. Stage two, "buy back your time," is described as offering the best possible return on investment, surpassing even traditional investments.

Delegating to Buy Time Offers Superior Returns Over Traditional Investments By Enabling Higher-Income Activities

Hiring professionals for administrative or specialized tasks is compared to purchasing expertise and effort, much like investors buy access to markets or skills they don’t possess. When someone hires a stockbroker to invest for them, they are paying for expertise to secure returns without investing their own time in learning and managing the market. Warren Buffett exemplifies this principle on a grand scale by deploying billions to acquire companies and, in effect, purchasing all the accumulated time and effort that built those businesses instead of building them from scratch.

This buy-back-your-time mindset allows individuals to pursue higher-value activities that yield greater income or personal fulfillment, rather than spending their limited hours on tasks others can perform effectively.

Overcoming the Belief You Can Do Tasks Better Than Others

A common barrier to delegation is the belief, often held by high-performers, that they can do tasks better themselves. Dan addresses this, saying, "Of course you can. The problem is, is that you'll always be stuck being the person that can do this. You never learn how to work through somebody. The next level for most people is actually learning to let go." Perfectionism traps high achievers, as resisting delegation limits their earning potential and binds them to lower-impact work.

The key skill shifts from excelling in individual task performance to mastering the art of working effectively through others. This is fundamental for scaling income and business impact. Delegation becomes about saving time, acknowledging that the highest ...

Dan Martell outlines a clear investment philosophy centered on understanding, simplicity, and patience. He emphasizes the importance of investing in what you know, avoiding complex strategies, and trusting tried-and-true vehicles over speculative promises.

Avoid Complex Investment Strategies That Often Mask Poor Value

if an Investment Can't Be Clearly Explained, It Likely Hides Risks or Exploits Your Lack of Understanding

Martell stresses that if an investment cannot be explained simply, it likely hides risks or preys on your lack of understanding. He shares a personal story: someone pitched him a medical supply nonprofit investment offering "triple return receipts" to reduce taxes. Despite attending a seminar with a hundred other people, he didn’t fully understand the model. Years later, authorities challenged the strategy, leading to hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. Martell concludes that "if it's too complicated, stay away from it," and advises being able to summarize any investment in one simple sentence for someone without specialized knowledge.

Understandable Investment Philosophy Reduces Catastrophic Losses

Martell's approach now is to only invest where he has a background advantage. For him, this means sticking to familiar territory—software, technology, or traditional low-fee S&P 500 index funds. He avoids industries he doesn’t deeply understand, trusting that boring, low-cost index funds are the prudent choice outside one's area of expertise. This discipline helps reduce the risk of catastrophic losses often incurred with complex or unfamiliar strategies.

Patience and Consistency in Long-Term Investment Outperforms Rapid Wealth Through Short-Term Trading or Speculation

Martell rejects promises of massive, short-term returns such as "10x your money in six months," equating such offers with lottery schemes rather than legitimate wealth-building. He prefers the long game, choosing investments that have shown consistent 10–12% annual returns for over a century—like the S&P 500. He believes ...

Dan Martell advocates that true financial freedom and exponential wealth are built through business equity and entrepreneurship, not passive income or stock market investing alone. He emphasizes that ownership, active investment, and strategic capital allocation are the foundations of lasting wealth.

Stock Market and Passive Investing Limit True Financial Freedom and Unlimited Wealth

Martell acknowledges that the stock market can generate about 10% annually and is effective at creating millionaires. However, he argues this approach does not offer the kind of wealth that allows total financial independence—having “millions of dollars being generated every month when you’re not working.” He points out that many people who depend only on stock investments for retirement have to return to work when the market downturns, highlighting the vulnerability of this strategy. Martell notes, “How many people do you know that invested in the stock market and still aren’t rich, aren’t free?” He observes that he knows many 70-year-olds still working because the market failed to secure their promised freedom.

Wealth Comes From Business Equity, Not Employment Income or Passive Returns

Martell states that the vast majority—90%—of those on the Forbes billionaire list made their fortunes by creating businesses and then acquiring stakes in other companies. He asserts that true wealth is built by owning equity, which is the only asset class with uncapped upside. Unlike real estate, which Martell describes as having limited potential (“You buy a 32-unit apartment building… you can do some value-adds, get some rezoning, squeeze value, but at the end of the day, it can only do so much”), business ownership or investing in growth-oriented companies offers the potential for significant equity appreciation through resource-efficient scaling. Martell highlights that a business that operates and grows without daily owner involvement is the most valuable—“a business that’s growing without you there can grow as big as it possibly can.”

Angel Investing In Startups Is a Practical Use of Equity for Those With Capital From Previous Wealth-Building Stages

Martell details his progression from successful entrepreneurship to angel investing, using capital from previous ventures to invest in startups. He points out that owning equity in other people’s companies generates wealth independently of direct labor. For example, Martell invested in Intercom after meeting the founder; the company became a multi-billion dollar business. He notes, “When you ask me how much time I put in, the answer is none. I deployed my money, my money grew and I got really good at making those investments.” Identifying and investing in promising entrepreneurs, especially when one has relevant industry expertise, consistently yields superior returns compared to passive stock market investing. Martell credits this strategy for becoming Canada’s top angel investor.

Building a Personal Investment Portfolio Generates Exponential Wealth Through Equity Ownership

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