13 Simple Rules of Business That Will Make You Rich

I'm going to share with you the rules of business that have made me so rich I actually question the meaning of making money these rules are what allowed me to go from broke 22 yearold to a multi-millionaire today some of these rules I picked up on my own during my 27-year career as an entrepreneur and others I learned from some of the highest net worth individuals you probably know so without further explanation these are the 13 rules of business the first rule is to take the credit card get paid had a kid ask me on

this hike I host every Tuesday how do I start a business and I just replied take the credit card a business is started when money exchanges hands essentially a stranger gives you money for your product or service and it's not hard you can either take cash you can use stripe you can use PayPal you can use venmo just figure out what you want to sell and ask for it the payment validates that they actually have a problem they want help with see a lot of people will tell you like hey go start that business that

sounds great and you'll go off and build a bunch of stuff come back and guess what they're like cool I don't need it and you're like you were saying you're going to buy don't abuse this get them value deliver the thing you sold but don't go running around doing free work for everyone hoping to get ahead but the truth is without charging you don't know if the person actually wants what you have you don't know if they're the right customer and you're just going to waste a lot of time which brings us to number two

which is the under promise and overd deliver a lot of people start companies as like agencies Freelancers selling smma or some other kind of service and the challenge is is that sometimes you say yes to everything so that you can get the business and then you don't realize how much work it's going to be what happens is then somebody that gave you the work get pissed off because you can't deliver but you're not able to do everything so here's how we solve that first off find one clear problem somebody has then offer a simple but

incredibly effective solution and then when you deliver it go above and beyond that extra 10% will set you apart from everybody else for example I've got a guy that details my supercars his name is Dayton he is awesome I've had several people show up they leave cards on my window three other people showed up and couldn't do basic things Dayton's never asked me for a single thing and because he's always shown up and left the car better than I expected I was so impressed by him going that 10% above and beyond everybody else but doing

the basics like showing up on time doing the work as he said he would do that I thought enough that I wanted to give him a gift to thank him for his work that's how we overd deliver which brings us to number three which is simple scales and complex fails the biggest mistake first-time entrepreneurs make is they over complicate what they do it's hilarious to watch they could have a working thing a business a product a service and totally mess it up I always go back to what Elon Musk used to say about his engineering

approach he's always looking to remove parts from the requirements from the product because a part that is in the product that doesn't need to exist is one more thing that needs to be managed and Q&A and could break and could cause other issues so he's always looking at the requirements and he's always pulling so much stuff out of it that it should not work and then he says then I added it back to make the part work again and that's probably the right answer teach your team it's easy to make something complex it's actually hard

to keep something simple because everybody that joins your team or even yourself you're like I want to make it better and then you do something else how can I make it better you add it all back up and the problem is at some point you create this complexity ball it didn't solve a problem so you just keep adding and adding and adding my Approach in business is every time I add something it starts with negative value sometimes you need to think about before you add anything what can I remove so if you want to keep

this simple I always say start with one Clear customer you want to serve one clear product or offer some people call them Godfather offers cuz they're so good they can't say no then one clear way of getting attention marketing then one clear way of selling them and then focus on those four for one year those are the five ones if you put all that into your focus which stands for follow one course until successful don't complicate it you'll get rich which brings us to number four which is to give to get and this is a

cool one cuz I learned this back when I was in rehab I struggled with addiction ended up in rehab as a teenager and what I learned through this 11 months process obviously becoming a better version of me and dealing with some of the pain that I experienced is that in therapy they talk about if you want to be sober you got to help other people be sober this whole idea is that you can only keep what you give away when I started in business and I thought about like how can I be valuable in business

business I realize that if I want more money I got to help other people make more money if you think about it that all your income is probably about 10% of the value created in the world I call this a 10% rule that whatever value created in the world you're getting 10% of that so if you're making a million dollars you've made other people $10 million so the more you give the more you get see most people have a scarcity mindset so they don't want to give anything away they're just like if I give that

then I don't got it but that's actually flawed so resources are Unlimited if you can be resourceful there's unlimited money that's going to come into your world so the more you give the more you'll attract the scarcity mindset will keep you small the abundance mindset will make you rich if you want more you have to become more so your personal income will never exceed your investment in your personal development because you won't be as valuable to the rest of the world as you could be to make more money which brings us to number five which

is to be impeccable with your word if you say to somebody else you're going to do something do it I can't tell you your life will absolutely change your bank account will fill up if you just went 90 days and did what you told other people you would do people either trust you or they don't and if they don't it's cuz you taught them that you can't be trusted the idea of being impeccable with your word to me is be the kind of person that when you talk you actually don't have negativity it's not only

when you make a commitment you show up so if it's no just say no you don't have to say yes and and then also just be impeccable with your word with others you realize that when you complain about other people that person's thinking I wonder if they say that stuff about me when I'm not around so this is the way I would encourage you to think about it everything you say is cataloged and published on the front page of your local newspaper I personally live my life pretty much on video so everything I say is

recorded and I do have to be accountable for every word so the truth is if you don't have something nice to say about somebody and you wouldn't feel comfortable saying it in front of them you probably shouldn't say it and the cool part is is that makes you an attractive character to be around and what I've learned over the years is that you don't create success you attract success by being that type of person by being someone others can trust their word of commitment is strong and they don't talk crap they don't complain they don't

bring negative energy into their life they'll want to have you around they'll want to go out of their way to help you achieve your dreams you will be so rich because other people's success will come into your life and impact your business because of your word which brings us to number six which is you win or you learn most people see me and they go Dan when's the last time you had a big L it happens almost on a weekly basis I'm swinging massively less than a couple years ago I lost a million dollars on

a company that I bought some people would be like that sucks and I went cool I learned well I learned I didn't have the team in the infrastructure to support it I learned what kind of companies I should and shouldn't buy I learned the process that I need to install to make sure that situation didn't happen again and then what was the upside from that is that I found my business partner Kevin who I then built Big Band software with and now we buy a company every month so yes did it hurt in the moment

uh-huh but did I use that setback to ask myself what can I learn from this 100% And what you'll learn from some of the richest people in the world they're always pushing to learn so that they can earn this always brings me back to Napoleon Hills quote from thinking Grow Rich which is every adversity every failure every heartache carries the seed of equal or greater benefit every setback every challenge instead of it being like something that scares you annoys you bugs you is actually like cool I'm going to learn sometimes when I'm dealing with something

really meaningful the language I say to myself is great wethy adversary it's been a while since I've been exposed and stretched and had an opportunity to learn something massive regardless of the outcome there's always something to gain from The Experience there's never been a situation where I and I'm assuming you have learned something when things went well so in many ways the setbacks are valuable learning experiences stop reflect dialogue contemplate lock it in and move on which brings us to number seven which is you don't manage time you manage energy back in my 20s I

would wake up alarm goes off and I would work I would crush I would just go 16 hours a day 100 hours a week and it went on and on for 4 years and what's crazy is the longer it went on for the less and less I got done why because I didn't didn't have a process for getting things done I had all these plates spinning I was running around making sure they kept moving cuz I was so scared that one would fall cuz I actually didn't know why I was being successful I just know

that the more I worked it feels like it's going to keep going what I've learned since then is that my calendar is essentially a map to getting things done that calendar needs to map to my energy so I can get the best work done in the right spots so over the years before I had kids my life looked completely different I used to stay up till 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning sleep in until 8:00 or 900 and that was my rhythm then I had kids and I had these human alarm clocks and all of

a sudden now I got to wake up at 5:30 in the morning so I changed my whole life to map to my energy so for example first thing in the morning I create connected to my Creator I literally sit down and I say okay here's the big problems I'm faced with I've got to create these new outcomes how do I tap into that early morning energy to build something new to strategize to think differently so that I can come up with the solution to the problems that otherwise I'd be too close to it so in

the mornings for me is really my opportunity to tackle big meaningful projects in the afternoon I will schedule all my in-person meetings all my meetings are typically after lunch where I can really get into the zone of having conversations and it just flows with my energy you can get more done in those 4 hours than most people doing 12 there's no distractions there's no concerns there's no notifications popping off all over over the place I'm dialed in I'm in flow and I'm getting the best work done connected to my creat which brings us to number

eight which is to play to win don't play not to lose when you work are you working to expand or are you working to contract and protect are you in wealth creation mode or are you in wealth preservation mode cuz it's interesting when you start off you're like I'm poor I want to be rich so you go and you build then eventually potentially you get to a place where you now have something to lose so you change the way you approach your day and specifically your finances people that spend more time trying to protect the

amount of money they pay on taxes versus saying how can I create more money as a percentage I want to pay the least amount of taxes but I want that dollar amount to be massive and too often people are working in business trying to protect themselves from the downside instead of trying to create more the reason they do this is because they're shrinking themselves to save instead of asking themselves how can I focus on creating more value how can I help more people how can I expand how can I build cool new things what are

my goals and do they grow me how can I create opportunity for everybody on my team where my vision is so big that everybody's goals and dreams can fit inside of it your inner conversation creates your outer world and Today's Energy will literally shape tomorrow's reality so you have to be on the creation mindset not on the preservation mindset it's actually 100% the difference between rich people and broke people which brings us to number nine which is to spend money to save time not time to save money this is what broke people get wrong that

the rich have understood for a long time broke people prioritize saving money not saving time I've seen people drive 36 minutes out of their way to get gas at Costco to save 10 cents on the gas per gallon they don't value their time wealthy people the ones that have the most success in business are always looking to invest money to buy back time because they know time is the most precious resource the richest people protect their time they value it they put a dollar amount is that $100 $300 $500 and then every request on their

time they ask themselves is this yes worth the investment or should I default to a not they spend money to buy back their time once they get that time back then they're reinvesting it in a few different ways they're going can I do more of the thing I'm doing to make me money that's a good start who do I need to become some people their beliefs are what holding them back and they think if I go get some sales training I will make more money no you literally have to ask yourself what do you believe

about the world that's holding you back do you have money blockers do you have people blockers do you have productivity issues choosing goals in your life to grow you with the time You' bought back is exactly how you should reinvest it if you want my internal Playbook how I've done this my whole life Built My Empire then go check out my book buyback your time it's available on Amazon retailers buyback your time.com and it's not only a Wall Street Journal bestseller it continues to sell more copies every week than the previous week because people are

getting so much value from it and it's dedicated to this specific problem which brings us to number 10 which is 80% done by somebody else is 100% freaking awesome some of you guys are like I keep hearing you talking about hiring people and delegating to people it's just like how do you find great employees and I mean every time I give them something to do they mess it up it's like I might as well just do it myself cuz it takes less time to do it than to have to teach somebody else and then fix

it cuz they don't do it as good I get it but my employees can't do it as good as me see there's all these reasons that you believe that and the only person that can fix that is you you'll only scale as fast as your ability to delegate which means you're going to have to learn how to lead people it means you're going to have to learn how to communicate it might mean you're going to have to learn a skill called documentation and creating checklist because having somebody else follow a process that doesn't exist and

blaming the people is not fair anytime there's an issue in my company go is this a people problem or a processed problem nine times out of 10 it's a processed problem and some of you are like well Dan my work is very creative I create content I write books I design things that nobody else in the world knows how to design that's where the 10810 rule comes into play so the 10% up front is the ideation how do I collaborate with my team to get them on the right track the 80% is the execution them

doing the work to actually go and do research and create first draft see you want to be an editor not an author and then the last 10% that's integration that's where you take what they've done and your ability and you kind of tweak things but you weren't involved in 80% of all of that so you get that time back to go become better could you clean your house yeah but having somebody clean your house to buy back that time even if it's not as good as you could have cleaned it I know I'm not as

good as my cleaner you then get to reinvest that time on things that going to make you more money so stop taking the prideful route of like I like to clean my car and I like to mow my lawn and I like to run my own errands use the apps think about meal look at Wash and Fold there are so many opportunities for you to get leverage in your life which brings us to number 11 which is to be incompetent most people hire people and then do their work I had a short go viral where

I said if you want to be rich be lazy but if you want to be wealthy being competent why because you have to stop doing the work for example if I owned a restaurant and the chef quit I'm not going to jump into that kitchen and start cooking people's meals I mean nobody wants that I haven't cooked a meal for myself in a long time what I'm going to do is I'm going to go find another Chef I'm going to solve the problem not by me putting my time in there but to actually solve the

thing that's broken see often times as entrepreneurs instead of building the machine that runs the machine we start operating in the machine that's not what we're supposed to be doing we have to learn the skill to work through people if we don't then we'll always be dependent by our business and we won't create something that other people would value so every time I build a business I'm always trying to build it in a way that it could be sold because a company I can sell is actually an incredible company to own and the truth is

you don't need to have all the answers some of the smartest people in the world aren't Rich if it was IQ or knoow then all these PhD professors would be multi-millionaires but they're not because they don't understand that by being in competent is actually a superpower because it empowers your people around you to step up and own things remember one time I was sitting in my office and all these shelves were empty and my general manager who runs this company came in he's like hey what do you going to put on those shelves and I

just looked at them and he was confused for about half a second then he goes oh got it I was like exactly like I don't know you figure it out work with the team I like to talk to you all the other stuff the people that own it they own it I train them I don't teach them Focus instead on helping other people get rich invest in them build the people the people build the business one of my big rules that'll help summarize all this is train them don't tell them teach them how to be

awesome don't tell them how to do their job with brings us to number 12 which is be patient with results but impatient with action I get business owners all the time that come to me and they say I just can't figure it out I've been trying and it's just not working and I'm like for how long and they're like for 2 months 4 months now probably I'm like you have to go all in and attack it for like 6 months a year 2 years most people are so impatient and then they get down on themselves

and they stopped doing the thing that could have had some potential to become the big thing because they're not attack hacking the activity here's the way I think about it that makes it completely different from what everybody else does I am patient with the timeline if I say 10 years I'm cool we're going to do this for 10 years however daily many times every hour We're ruthless on Effectiveness we are focused on the activities that lead to the outcome we're always asking ourselves like what are the steps today that I can be impatient about getting

done that will Stack Up and lead to that outcome to make inevitable and that's the language it's inevitable that if I just am patient and I keep doing it and I keep doing it I keep showing up and I keep iterating and I keep getting feedback that over time just by being consistent every day that eventually it'll get better and hit the mark and something will work this is the frame that I think about when I share this is the man who loves walking will walk further than the one who loves the destination too many

of you guys want to be rich but you don't want to do the work I mean one of my mentors John Maxwell said a lot of people want to do what I do they're just not willing to do what I've done and what he's done is 57 years of showing up every day and writing and speaking and 90 books later he's the leadership goat which brings us to number 13 which is to protect your reputation I remember one time I was sitting down and I was redesigning kind of my vision for my life and being

very detailed of all the things I want to accomplish and I've done some cool stuff but trust me I'm just getting started and I want to do some bigger things and it occurred to me that all of those things on my vision board all the things that I had out line the goals the dreams the impact I want to have sits on the other side of two things reach and reputation that's all brand is if you think about it brand is association with other things so that people can build trust with you around whatever you

do really well and then from a kind of pricing point of view your brand dictates the pricing power think about something that's cheap it's got no brand it's cheap it's like two bucks for a t-shirt however you put a logo like a Nike logo and all of a sudden that's a $60 shirt why can I achieve that if I have those things reach and reputation why can I achieve my goals if I have that is because now I can move really quick if I want to connect with people then they'll say yes I could go

and try to create all this stuff but a lot of them would only ever happen if the people involved would know about me and want me to be participating in those projects some people make the mistake of saying oh I want to be wellknown I want to be wellknown it's like you want to be known well you want people to have a positive response you could be really famous and every body think you're a dingdong or you could be known well to the right people because of your reputation the only way you do that is

a few key things number one you got to deliver when you make a promise to somebody else you have to show up and you got to deliver second thing is you got to make a decision to go all in and some people feel called and what I learned a long time ago is your call-in in the middle of that is all in and it's deciding to go pro if you do that if you want to be world class like a Warren Buffett and what's crazy is all the other people around Warren that's in his space

will go to him because of who he is and his reputation so they'll have big opportunities big luck that just shows up in their life and they'll bring it to Buffet then to make decisions you have to have the values you need to know what you stand for cuz if you don't stand for something you're going to fall for anything people want to know that they can trust your response because they know how you act values for me is making decisions when I'm not around so I want everybody know what my values are so even

if I'm not around to speak up they'd be like oh Dan would probably want you to do this and if they know how they can expect you to act then they have consistency it's huge values I've got them for my businesses I've got them for my family and it all leads into Integrity Integrity is how you react when things go wrong it's easy to be all like sunshine and rainbows when you're everybody's making money and all is good but what about the moment something goes wrong how do you respond cuz I believe that in those

moments you actually have the opportunity to show your customers how good you've been saying you are last thing is to shine your light you have to decide to be authentically you you are the original you want to focus on a niche until you become the niche so don't focus on a niche become the niche become the best in the world become the person that has values and integrity you are the original and that is something that you can express you can own nobody can take it cool part is it doesn't feel as heavy trying to

be somebody else versus just being who you are and there's enough people in this crazy world that they'll want to do business with you they'll want to have you around your tribe is attracted by your Vibe you just have to shine your light those are the 13 rules of business if you want to learn the only three skills you need to build a million-- dooll company click the link and I'll see you on the other side