Shadowing Practice: $100M Investor Explains: How to Invest in 2026 - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

I'm gonna show you how to invest your money to turn cash into more cash.

⏸ Paused

Speed:

259 sentences

If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.

I'm gonna show you how to invest your money to turn cash into more cash.

And it doesn't matter how much experience you have, the rules are the same.

After building and exiting three companies, becoming a multimillionaire at 28, and voted number one angel investor in Canada, here's what I've learned.

Rich people don't start with stocks.

There's actually two more stages before that that most people completely skip, and that's what keeps them broke.

Starting with stage one, trade your time.

There's only two things you can trade to get more money, time and money.

When you're young, you invest your time.

You got all the time in the world.

You get around mentors, you show up, you work late, you stack skills, you build reps.

Essentially, you use your time to invest in you to get a return.

Time is the first resource you ever have.

You can waste it or you can invest it.

Dude, when I didn't have all the money, I used my drive time to learn, listen to audio books.

I got around other people that were smarter and I got curious

and quiet and I executed so they'd wanna pour more into me.

I took on projects where I didn't necessarily get paid a lot so that I could get exposed to bigger ideas.

I took my time and I put myself in a place where the time got me a return.

You can make decent money trading your time, but eventually you're gonna hit a wall because you won't have a shortage of money.

That'll start to pile up, but you will have a shortage of time.

Stage two, buy back your time.

Think about it.

When I hire a stockbroker to invest for me, I'm buying their expertise to invest in a market

that I don't have to go learn so that I can get the return without doing the time.

Warren Buffett is literally deploying

billions of dollars into companies and he's buying all that time it took to build that company using his money.

One of the best ways to figure out where to buy

back your time is using a process I call the buyback loop.

The first thing we have to do is audit our calendar.

We have to look at everything we've done over the last two weeks and really write it down.

Then you highlight everything in green that lights you up, everything in red that takes your energy, and then yellow is kind of mediocre.

And right next to it, I write down, is this a $1 sign cheap to pay somebody else to do for me?

Or is it a $4 sign if I had to pay somebody to do things at my level?

Then you grab everything that is a $1 or $2 sign in cost that's red

or yellow and you make a bucket and you put it in a bucket.

What you do with that bucket is to transfer your tasks.

Delegate the red stuff, the yellow stuff, the low value stuff to anybody else.

You wanna invest your money to get all those things out of your calendar to other people

so that you can go to three, which is fill your time with high leverage work.

These are the things that light you up that make you a ton of money.

For most people, these are revenue generating activities.

Things when you're out there talking to people, talking to customers, understanding the product, the innovation.

It's not getting bogged down in emails and scheduling and purchasing stuff that other people could easily do for you.

You see, in business, you don't wanna just hire people to grow your business.

You wanna hire people to buy back your time so

that you end up not overwhelming yourself and you can make more money.

I have two incredible people in my life.

Anne, who is my executive assistant, now chief of staff, she handles everything.

My calendar, my appointments, my emails, all the interactions with different people in my life.

She essentially manages the professional side.

Then I have Betty, who manages our house, all my real estate, all my vehicles.

And she reports to Anne.

Those two people buy me literally 100 hours a week

that allows me to invest my time in things that make me millions of dollars.

And look, if you're hiring an executive assistant but have no idea how to work with them.

I have a complete EA playbook that teaches everything.

It's what I use with my assistant, every template, every workflow, everything my EA uses daily.

If you want it, just go to Instagram at Dan Martell

and DM me the word YouTube EA and I'll send it right over.

People will say to me like, Dan, I can just do this better myself.

I say, of course you can.

The problem 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.

See, most people like to spend time to save money.

I will draw 20 minutes all the way to save three cents on gas.

I like to spend money to save time.

And because I'm a good time trader, it's why I've been able to create the wealth in my life.

So now that you bought back your time, we can move on to stage three.

Let your money work for you.

I just learned a simple concept when I was young

that I need to get my money to do the work

where it makes me enough money where I don't have to work.

See, most people start here because they think that's what they're supposed to do.

And that's why they stay stuck.

They start investing in funds and stocks and real estate

because they a little extra money and they want to feel rich

and i'm investing the problem is is they're not good enough yet

and even if they're good enough they haven't learned how to buy back their time

and that's why they stay stuck now we're ready to have

our money make money for us see the one percent don't

get rich from stocks they got rich from stage two they

got rich from understanding how to buy back their time

so they can make more money

so they have a lot of money to invest in things where they have equity where they own things

when i was in my mid-20s and i started to pile up my cash, I realized that I had enough money to invest in other businesses.

And that's when I became an angel investor.

One of those deals, for example, was a company called Intercom.

So the founder shows up at our office.

I'd met him at an event.

He shows me this new product.

I think it's cool.

I've got money saved up to make those kinds of investments.

He's telling me he's going to meet with Marissa Mayer from Google and Jack from Twitter.

So I invest.

That company became a multi-billion dollar company.

And 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.

100

That's why I became the number one angel investor in Canada because I bought back my time to learn the skills,

101

to find the entrepreneurs to invest in that allowed me to have my money work for me.

102

I've learned

103

that having money in a bank account doing nothing for me is not how I get my money to work for me.

104

And what my job is, is being a professional capital allocator.

105

I got money, I wanna allocate it.

106

What do you got?

107

Here's my portfolio.

108

Here's what I know.

109

I stick to what I know and I put my money to work.

110

To me dollars are like little potential workers that need to be put to work.

111

If you leave them in your bank account because you're like oh this feels safe they're not working for you.

112

There should not be money just sitting around waiting.

113

Waiting yes to be put to work but not just like lazily hoarding it up.

114

When you get to this stage here's a few things

115

that I think about to make sure I know where to put my money.

116

First, I like to invest in what I know.

117

My new philosophy is unless I have an unfair advantage investing in something because of my background experience, I'm not going to do it.

118

I either put my money into boring investments like the SMP through an index fund with low fees, or I invest in software and technology because that's what I know.

119

I remember one of my mentors said to me, he said, Dan, making money is easy.

120

Keeping it is hard.

121

When you get a lot of money, take half, put that in the don't lose it pile and the rest of it, that's what you get to reinvest in yourself, in your business, in growing things.

122

You know, you want to hear a good story?

123

This is hilarious.

124

I'm not an idiot, but sometimes I can act like one.

125

Guy comes to me and he's like, hey, I got this investment where if you invest in medical supplies through this nonprofit,

126

we can give you a triple return receipt on your money to write off on your taxes.

127

And I was like, I hate taxes.

128

Tell me all about it.

129

And he even brought me to a seminar

130

and I went to the seminar and there's a hundred people in the room

131

and they're talking about this investment strategy and here's how it works.

132

And then we give you this.

133

So we did it.

134

Seven years later, I ended up paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes

135

because I listened to somebody explain something I couldn't explain.

136

So make sure that you can explain your investments in one simple sentence to somebody that doesn't know a lot.

137

If it's too complicated, stay away from it.

138

The second is the investment has to always be true.

139

See, if you're always chasing fads, you will get burned by the fads because essentially all you're doing is playing a lottery game.

140

I'm a software guy.

141

I'm an innovation guy.

142

I look for where the future is going, but in my decisions to invest, I'm still following the human part of it.

143

Not sitting here going like, oh, I think in the future, humans won't talk to each other.

144

I think they'll just beam things through their brain.

145

That might happen.

146

But if I'm investing today, I'm not investing at that level.

147

I'm investing in things that are aligned, right?

148

What will humans always need?

149

They'll always need housing.

150

They'll always need food.

151

They'll always need experiences.

152

They'll always need clothing.

153

These are things that will always be true.

154

They might change in the vehicle that it's delivered, right?

155

It used to be delivered on a horse, then a car, and now it's over the internet.

156

But humans will always buy stuff.

157

Those are like the fundamentals.

158

And then the third is play the long game.

159

If somebody came to me and said, hey man, I can make you 10X on your money in the next six months, I say, cool, no thanks.

160

They're like, but don't you wanna know how to get rich?

161

Good news is I'm already rich by not playing that fucking game.

162

I like to play long games.

163

If I'm gonna invest my money, I want it to make me a lot of money over a long period of time.

164

Why?

165

Because then I'm saving my time.

166

I know some people that actively manage their portfolio

167

that do worse than shitty managers and they lie to themselves and they're spending all their times refreshing, checking the stock, doing this,

168

I'm like, bro, why don't you go do the thing that makes you the most money

169

and put your money in this thing that averages 10, 12% a year and has for 100 years and go stock more cash into the vehicle.

170

Don't play short-term games, especially with short-term people.

171

All right, stage one is where you got your money.

172

Stage two is where you bought back your time.

173

Stage three is where you put your money to work.

174

And stage four is where you build real wealth.

175

Stage four, own the thing.

176

One of my early mentors when I moved to San Francisco, this guy named Naval Ravikant told me this and was very clear.

177

Wealth is created by owning things.

178

Wealth is not created by working.

179

You can't work enough hours to create the kind of wealth that anybody in Silicon Valley was talking about.

180

You have to get there by owning equity.

181

Now you either own equity in the business that you built

182

or you own equity in other companies like we talked about in the last stage.

183

The stock market may get you 10% a year and it may even make you a millionaire, but it's not gonna get you to the point where you can do anything with anybody at any time.

184

That is rarefied air and that's what I'm talking about.

185

How many people do you know that invested in the stock market and still aren't rich, aren't free, and many of them had to go back to work

186

because the market went like this right when they're about to retire?

187

I know a lot of 70-year-old people that are still working

188

because they thought the market was gonna solve the problem for them.

189

You can become a millionaire investing in the stock market.

190

Cool, but if you wanna get to a place where you have millions of dollars being generated every month

191

when you're not working, you have to own your own thing.

192

You have to own equity and other people's things.

193

See, rich people don't rent wealth.

194

They own it.

195

If you look at the Forbes list, 100% of them made that money because they own the business they were in.

196

And then they took the cash and they invested in other businesses that they also own.

197

Because equity is the only asset where the upside is uncapped.

198

Even in real estate, when people buy a building, they're like, hey, I bought a 32 unit multifamily building.

199

Cool, guess what?

200

You can't make it do more.

201

Sure, you can do some value add.

202

Sure, you can get some rezoning.

203

Sure, you can try to squeeze as much as you can.

204

Sure, there's some tax benefit, but at the end of the day, a business that's growing without you there can grow as big as it possibly can.

205

My dad doesn't understand why I still do what I do because his perspective is that if you show up, you work.

206

He doesn't know how I work.

207

So every time I've sold a company, he thought, okay, you're gonna retire.

208

Okay, you're gonna retire.

209

Okay, you're gonna...

210

Why are you still creating?

211

Because he doesn't understand what I just shared with you guys is

212

that I've used my money to invest in people so the companies I'm involved in, I don't operate them.

213

I've taken my money to invest it in things I know because I will bet on me every day, all day, more than some money manager in the market.

214

So yes, 50% of my money.

215

Don't lose it.

216

I have a great team.

217

They battle test it, legal insurance and infrastructure and all that stuff, tax, capital gains.

218

Awesome.

219

Don't lose my money.

220

Over here, I invest in me.

221

I invest in the people.

222

I invest in my companies.

223

I invest in things that I own where the equity continues to roll in and grow a lot faster.

224

So if you're good at something and you know how to do something, not investing in that more align other people around it

225

that ecosystem is a huge missed opportunity

226

and that's why i've built martel ventures essentially it's a studio for me to build tools like apex

227

that helps me build other tools within martel ventures

228

and the whole ecosystem of talent

229

and people in my world i get a place to go create with them for me that is my empire.

230

When I wrote in my book, buy back your time, build your empire.

231

That's what I meant.

232

There's a world where you could create for yourself

233

that you almost feel guilty for how you interact and work with the people.

234

Cause everybody's amazing.

235

Everybody's building something.

236

And from an equity point of view, you have big pieces in each one of those.

237

If you haven't watched my video on how I'm building a billion dollar company, go check it out.

238

I show you the people, the process, the whole thing.

239

I'm building it in public.

240

The best investment I've ever made wasn't a stock.

241

It wasn't real estate.

242

It was building a company I could sell.

243

Even if I never wanted to sell it, a company that I could sell is a great company to run.

244

And maybe your next stage is hiring that person to help you run it

245

so that you can go work on bigger things.

246

So don't just graduate from one stage and get really good at making money

247

or the next stage and buy back your time and then chilling out on a beach.

248

Stack all four.

249

Each stage feeds the next one.

250

And the higher you go, the bigger the swings.

251

Now, if you're still trying to make some money, let me share this with you.

252

Your bank account is a lagging indicator of who you are, what you believe you're capable of, what you believe you're worth, right?

253

And you'll never get what you want.

254

You get who you are.

255

And if you don't realize that you got to become the person first, the person that believes it, then the money will never catch up.

256

So understand these are tactics and strategies, but the best way to invest is by looking at the person in the mirror.

257

So just leave me a comment below and let me know what you needed to hear most, what resonated with you most today that you can take with you to elevate to the next stage.

258

And remember, if you want my full executive assistant playbook that I use with my own EAs, just DM me the word YouTube EA on Instagram and I'll send it right over.

259

Now, if you've ever wondered why dumb people make more money than you, click here and I'll see you on the other side.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

☕ Buy us a coffee

ShadowingEnglish remains 100% free thanks to your support. Server and AI costs are high — your coffee keeps us going! 🙏

Donate via PayPal

ShadowingEnglish.com – English Shadowing Practice

Speak English fluently using the Shadowing technique. Listen to native YouTube videos, repeat sentence by sentence, and build real pronunciation and fluency — used by IELTS learners worldwide.

Shadowing Practice: $100M Investor Explains: How to Invest in 2026 - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

Context & Background

Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication

Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing Practice: $100M Investor Explains: How to Invest in 2026 - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

Download App

Context & Background

Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication

Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

What is the Shadowing Technique?