17 Business Cheat Codes I Wish I Knew When I Was 17

as a 44-year-old entrepreneur I've learned a lot about building businesses so I put together 17 business hacks that I know now at 44 that I wish I knew at 17 starting with number one pick the right business model most people end up in a business or an industry that they know cuz it's you know what their parents did or what they learned at school but if you were a newspaper person and then you're trying to sell ads versus getting into Tik Tok ads those are completely different worlds even myself when I started as an entrepreneur

I'm 17 my business model was to make CDs for my friends at school so I was burning CDs every night not very scalable not very interesting and I don't know about you but when's the last time you touched a CD versus Enterprise portals and software where I eventually ended up into software has literally eaten the world so choosing the right business model will catapult you just by making that decision cuz High Tides rise all boats it's a difference between having a headwind working against you versus a Tailwind pushing you forward see most people when they

start a business they don't even consider what business model they're going to use so they just do whatever they learn or they think it's easy or they guess their way into business whereas a simple Google search tap tap tap tap tap will discover that there are industries that are growing 40% per year there's technology that is growing 40% per year and when you compare a industry a technology and a business model that is next level you will create a slingshot before we move into number two we've got a goal of hitting 500,000 subscribers so if

you aren't already click subscribe takes only a second which leads us to number two which is just take the money the other day I was on a hike and there was this young entrepreneur he was asking me for advice and he wants to start a company and he goes well how do I start a business and I said all right you ready for this pull out your notepad I'm going to give you the gold it's like okay what is it just take the money how does that help me he says well here's the deal what

do you want to do he goes I want to sell car parts okay cool how many car parts have you sold well I don't have any car parts do you need a car part to actually sell a car part no you don't you need to find somebody that needs a car part I mean this sounds trivial but I will tell you most adults don't even figure this out I learned a long time ago a business is started when you take money from somebody that's a stranger it's not hard you literally create a stripe account which

allows you to take money or PayPal or honestly go old school take some cash get a cashier check I honestly don't care the moment you take somebody's money for what you got your product or service is the moment you become an entrepreneur so run as fast as you can to get a customer to buy which leads us to number three under promise and over deliver see most people what they do is they overpromise and they under deliver because they're just trying to be the good guy you know they get their first customer their second customer

the Third customer and they're like whatever they need if you need this I'll say yes if you need this I'll say yes the problem is that you end up in a position where there's no boundaries and all of a sudden now people think well you said you would do this but they're paying you a fraction for what you should actually charge to do the work and then when you get backed up because you find some other customers they get upset because you're not as responsive or you're not doing the same amount of work used to

do for that discounted price so here's how you solve that number one find a clear problem that you can help somebody solve one clear problem not several two offer a simple solution to that problem but make it attractive design it in a way that deals with their objections number three for that simple solution to that problem go above and beyond and I'm talking simple things following up and asking them how they're doing a handwritten thank you note referring somebody else that you know to that customer for whatever reason the last mile is rarely crowded because

nobody's willing to go that far if you do that you will be different from everybody else out there which leads us to number four which is negotiate your needs I remember when I started Martel media this company that produces all my content I realized the commitment it was going to take on my calendar on my budgets because I was going to invest in it on my focus and energy and it required me to renegotiate my needs my preferences with everybody in my life cuz at that point it wasn't like my calendar wasn't already committed I

was essentially deciding to say no to a bunch of things that I already agreed to with business partners of mine who I absolutely adore and love but would require me to have a different level of involvement in their business so before I started I called every one of them up and had a tough conversation explained to them my vision explained to them what I wanted to do and asked them if it was okay if I changed the calendar the meetings I got involved in and how decisions got made it's something I learned when I didn't

do this in the past you know I've always gotten myself in trouble when I just said yes to somebody that impacted somebody else without talking to them about it first so here's the deal no agreement is permanent everything can be negotiated I'm talking Consultants vendors credit card processing you know people think well I can't get a cheaper fee just ask employees how they show up when they show up what you're paying them everything is negotiable even small adjustments can have a significant impact on your bottom line most people won't do it because they're worried that

somebody's going to be upset with them but what I would encourage you to consider is focus on you being better you creating the space in your count are you doing what's right for you so that you can be more for other people so that way they won't be upset in the short term they might cuz they don't understand it but long term they're actually going to be appreciative because you became more so you have more to give them you can't help others at the highest level until you put yourself first sounds counterintuitive but trust me

I wish I knew this sooner which leads us to number five which is dry don't repeat yourself now this is one of my favorite principles that I learned from writing code software it's the idea of if there's something that's going to be repeated like some kind of calculation you put it inside of a function and the reason why is that if anywhere else in the code you need to use that function it goes into one place and if there's a bug it's easy to fix if you copy and paste that code all over your code

base and there's a bug now you got to go find every place you put it so in business I do the same thing if I'm going to teach my team how to be more productive I'm going to document it I'm going to record it and then I'm going to save that as my philosophy on how to be more productive so that way I can point to it from the onboarding training to the new employee manual to the person that's having an issue and I need to upgrade their skills it's one place where I don't have

to feel like I'm repeat myself and that way I'm moving forward see I get frustrated when I feel like I've said that before I'm saying it again but it's usually because I didn't put it in a place that I could reference and on top of that most people don't like to be told all the time where they get better they want to know what principle they're violating so think about the activity of not picking up after themselves it's not the fact that you left your cup on the counter before the weekend and stayed out all

weekend it's that you didn't keep your space clean and what does that say about your respect for other people in the office or what does that say about your desire to be the best or to have a great image I mean you don't know who's coming early Monday morning that might see that mess that might impact the rest of the business so talk about the principle not the activity it might seem slower in the short term to document and write this thing down but trust me in the long term it's way faster the goal is

to build the machine that runs a machine cuz system stands for save yourself time energy and money which brings us to number six which is simple scales complex fails this one is probably one of my favorite philosophies over the years I've gotten myself in trouble every time I've added complexity to a business model to my agreements with other people to business terms contracts if we keep things simple there's less Parts less moving things to break I mean Elon Musk has these five engineering rules the first rule is is remove as many components as you can

until until the part doesn't work then only add back the things that are needed there's nothing more wasteful than to improve a process or a part that never needed to be there in the first place what I've learned is over time it's easy to add complexity what's hard and impressive for me is watching somebody fight to remove something I know this is like what remove things in the business that don't have the same yield they used to remove things out of your life that don't serve you anymore to create space for New Opportunities when it

comes to business I have a philosophy called the scaling Credo it's the five ones we focus on one product not seven one offer not three one funnel not two and one ideal customer that we're going to sell the product to not 15 and then we focus for one year of execution if we do that we will build a $1 million business in 12 months if you decide to do it differently then you're just adding complexity and focus stands for follow one course until successful five ones dead Focus you can't miss which leads us to number

seven which is raise your prices constantly one of my favorite people in the world Patrick Campbell says if you're not changing something about your pricing every 6 months then you're not doing it right think about this most people when you ask them if somebody bought your business tomorrow what's the first thing they would change it would probably change your prices I was coaching an entrepreneur once and he had this software product that he's been building for 15 years and I asked him when's the last time you raised your prices his response 11 years ago all

right let me ask you a few questions in the last 11 years have you made the product better uh yeah way better have you innovated we're Best in Class has your team gotten better yeah have you gotten better yeah all things being said you've gotten better but the customer's been paying the same price has the world gotten more expensive have you heard of inflation you want to get to a place where the value you're offering and the perceived value from the customer buying is in equilibrium so you have the margins to invest in your business

to get even better most of you guys struggle to buy back your time or make that new higher because you're not making enough profit because your prices haven't changed so remember this value Rises with demand price follows so the more demand you have for your product the value goes up you have to capture that by increasing your price which leads us to number eight which is be impeccable with your word if it's in your calendar show up if you tell somebody you're going to do something do it if you're talking to somebody else don't talk

crap about other people so I know this guy and he's always talking negative about somebody else what he doesn't realize is him being that way causes me not to want to share why would I ever tell him anything that's going on in my life knowing that he's just going to tell the world being impeccable with your word is a few things one if it's a no just say no don't say maybe say yes or say no you're allowed to say no have integrity with others if you commit to somebody and you can't make it call

them up ahead of time and renegotiate when you tell somebody you're going to be there be on time don't talk crap about other people don't say anything you wouldn't feel comfortable being covered on the homepage of your local newspaper I just assume everything I say no matter what the setting it could be captured and it could be published on the homepage of the internet for everybody to scrutinize would I be okay with those words being published and most people don't live like that so they say things that are so crazy sometimes that cause emotional shrapnel

either from the person they're talking to or the person they're talking about that eventually finds out so if people can't trust your word it's going to repel success if you're the kind of person that can keep their word people want to do business with you so remember remember this a promise made is debt unpaid always pay your debts which leads us to number nine talk to your customers I can't tell you how important this is I have team members coming to me all day long saying hey I got this idea to make this better I

got this other idea we could do this my question always is who did you ask there is so much opportunity in picking up the phone in talking to your customers when I was building my company Clarity I used to call it smile and dial every Thursday I'd grab a list of new customers I call them up I pretend I was on the product team I didn't want them to know as a CEO and I would ask them questions like how did you hear about us what did you like best what could we do to better

meet your needs those conversations drove the Innovations those calls allowed me to find customers that were raving fans and asked them if they would be willing to do a video testimonial entrepreneurs that talk to their customers will have an unfair Advantage because you're going to be able to learn faster deliver on their needs faster and have them being absolutely blown away that the owner is talking to them know your customers and encourage your team to talk to your customers and only come up with ideas after you've talked to them so you can validate them to

make sure they're the right things to build to grow your business which leads us to number 10 you don't manage time you manage energy back in my 20s I would wake up and I would work all day 16 hours a day I just had one Mode work work work and I realized as the day went on I got less and less done my brain didn't work the same way that it did when I started the day but it didn't matter as things came up I just filled my calendar filled my calendar and then I realize

that the things that were most important weren't getting the best version of me honestly thinking back to like even in school time isn't the same because when I was in math class it felt like time Stood Still and then I went to art class and it felt like time evaporated and next thing you know the Bell was ringing for lunch two different experiences so how do I do it now I design my calendar to map to my energy for example my mornings is when I do my deep creative work I call it creating connected to

my Creator that's when I push the big rocks up the hill big medium projects things that give me a little anxiety things that are hard I do those first thing in the morning the afternoons is when I do most of my meetings because I love talking to people and those conversations usually give me energy and then what I'll do is I'll also put in a workout to reset my energy anytime I feel my energy drop which sounds counterintuitive I'll hit the gym that's why I have a gym here at the studio I have a gym

at my home I have a gym membership honestly I have three memberships in the city I live in energy flows where attention goes and if I put the attention on my body it turns out I have more energy now I can get more done in 4 hours than most people will do in their whole day because I'm mapping the activity to the energy and what I'll be able to produce the best with my mind which leads us to number 11 play to win don't play not to lose most entrepreneurs when they get some success and

they're climbing that mountain they're trying to play to win I don't have any money I would like money so I wake up to try to be rich and then one day you wake up and you have more money than you expected and you shift your strategy now you're worried about losing what you've got it's like the people that trying to reduce their expens ens es and I'm like okay you could you know people that move to different countries just to save on taxes or you could focus on making more money right is the a difference

between wealth preservation or shrinking versus wealth creation or expanding I prefer to focus my energy on becoming more not less think about your inner conversations when you're attacking a problem are you worried about what you could lose or are you focused on what you could gain because here's what I know is today's energy will shape tomorrow's reality you want to be focused on the potential of the future not the fear of losing from the past which leads us to number 12 which is spend money to save time not time to save money unfortunately broke people

spend a lot of time to save money I know people that drive to Costco 25 30 minutes out of their way to save 10 cents on a gallon of gas I watched my dad doing this my whole life my dad owned rental properties and every Sunday he would go and mow the lawn he would spend his time to save money instead of taking that money to invest to buy time to go work on bigger leverage deals so here's the formula if you have an opportunity to become more you want to spend your current money to

buy back time out of your calendar so you have that freedom then with that new time go invest it in becoming more that you become more valuable to the world if all you do is stay in this hamster wheel of being busy being busy being busy and you don't get better week over week over week you're going to wake up in a decade living the exact same life and the same financial situation with the exact same friends you have today which if that's where you want to be great but I'm guessing you're not watching this

cuz you want to be in the same place you want more so you have to spend money to buy back time to invest in yourself and with that time choose goals to grow you which leads us to number 13 80% done by somebody else is 100% freaking awesome I can't tell you the amount of people that complain about I hire this person but they're not doing as good as me okay are you training them right did you give them the process are you a great leader any hour that I didn't spend to do something even

if it was done at 80% of what I could do is 100% freaking awesome it's that hour I got back so I could focus on myself so I can invest in myself so I could go spend time with my family spend time with my team you'll only scale as fast as your ability to let go it doesn't mean you need to let go of everything I teach this framework called the 10810 rule the first 10% is when you ideate with your team the other 80% is when they execute on what you talked about and you

were clear in that communication and the last 10% is where you integrate what they've done into the final steps to polish it for you to feel really good about it when you have a business that you could take that time where you're running around errands or cleaning your house or doing laundry all that stuff instead of going and finding new customers and delivering on your customers and calling up to make sure your customers are happy and asking for referrals that's just not smart the math doesn't math and may create a situation where you'll never achieve

your goals cuz there's not enough hours in the day million-dollar companies were not built off $10 tasks what I often get is people asking me about an executive assistant as their first hire cuz they've read my book but they don't know what to do with that person so if you want my internal EA Playbook just message me on Instagram Dam Martell TW Martell on Instagram the word YouTube EA and I'll know you came from here and I will send you my internal Google doc to my executive assistant Playbook that I use cleaned up just for

you so you can see how it works which leads us to number 14 which is build the people so one of my philosophies is train don't tell see too often entrepreneurs that have never been properly taught how to lead they're always giving people the answers to the test the problem with that is that if you're not around nobody can make a decision nobody can move a project forward nobody can actually do the work cuz they're waiting on you to tell them how to do it versus training them gives them the framework for how you think

you're teaching them the philosophy in your life that you've learned so that you can be more productive so I love to do leadership trainings every Monday I commit to my team to build the people cuz the people build the business if you don't do this guess what you're the bottleneck and it's funny cuz I always get people that say to me it's like damn well what if I train them up and then they leave which I reply to well what if you don't and then they stay think about it you have a whole team of

people that are inefficient that have never even trained properly and you think that's a winning strategy business is a privilege because you build a team and your job is to develop your team you are responsible for not only their livelihood but for them to become better people so in many ways business is a people game not a business game which leads us to number 15 which is be incompetent I know you're like what not that long ago I had a real go viral where I said if you want to be rich be lazy if you

want to be wealthy be incompetent I've met some incredibly wealthy people billionaires and when I meet them I'm like this person doesn't know anything about their business like I asked them simple questions about their financials and they're like I don't know which caught me off guard at first and then I realized the reason they don't know is cuz they've hired great people and they've decided to empower those people to do their work I remember one day Todd who runs my media company came to me and he was looking at my shelves in my new office

and he says who's going to decorate these and I just looked at him with a confused look and I kind of smiled and he goes oh I got it that's my job and I'm like yeah dude you run this place I'm not going to tell you how to decorate this we have people you can talk to them I trust you that simple moment set the expectations for him to understand how to move forward if it's in this space you own it not me it means you got to learn how to work through people a lot

of people have a hard time letting go they have a hard time setting a vision or communicating in a way that the other person can take action align with their vision and the crazy part is you don't need to have all the answers if you want them it's cuz you have insecurities that you need to know everything but the truth is some of the smartest people with the highest IQs aren't Rich think about all the PHD business professors they're not running around with multi-billion dollar companies yet they're teaching people about business why cuz they have

beliefs that are holding them back so you can have those people that can execute working for you but you don't need to know that stuff you can just have the belief that it's possible put a team together and hold them accountable to the vision not getting involved in the weeds all that being said here's one big idea I want you to focus on helping other people get rich invest in them train them teach them that is why we create businesses is so we create a platform for growth for the people on our team which leads

us to number 16 which is build your personal brand about a year ago after publishing YouTube videos for 8 years and blogging now for 12 years and creating all this content on social media as I looked at some of my big goals that I want to accomplish in my lifetime my vision board and where I want to go and the impact I want leave it occurred to me that all of that would get easier or come to life on the back end of two things one reach how many people know and are aware of me

and two on reputation what people think of you it sounds crazy but it's kind of what we do in life right when we're working on a team we do a good job why because we want the people we're working with to tell the boss so that he knows that we do a good job and when we work with customers we want to do a good job for the customers so that they tell their friends that we did a good job so reach and rep reputation has always been there it's just now we have this new

world this platform that we live in where we can show up and create so much value that people take that and share with other people and then opportunities come up me speaking on stage at Tony Robbins me speaking at John Maxwell me getting opportunities to get invited to participate and collaborate with the top podcasters in the world all of those things came on the back end of reach and reputation crazy stuff think about Tesla though Tesla wouldn't be Tesla without Elon Amazon would be Amazon without Jeff Bezos Apple Facebook virgin Twitter Microsoft you know the

founders of these companies and the reason why they're able to hire top talent and get access to customers and raise money all of those are on the back end of their reach and reputation so you can sit here and watch another video talking about building your personal brand or make today the day you decide to start letting people know what you're about so they can decide if they want to work with you which leads to number 17 which is be patient with results but impatient with action I've got business owners coming to me all the

time saying Dan I've been listening to you I'm executing I've been trying really hard but it's just not working and I always go well how long have you been trying doing that online stuff or doing this other strategy they're like 6 months and I laugh I'm like 6 months do you realize that I've been doing this for 27 years do you realize that I've read 10 pages of a book every day for decades do you realize that I've been focusing on myself for decades these are not things that just come out of left field it

requires you to focus at a level and give it years to build Mastery the key is is you have to have patience with the outcome you're trying to achieve but be impatient with taking action to get better see most people get pissed off that they haven't became a millionaire yet but they haven't been honest with themselves on did you go to the gym today did you read those 10 pages of a book did you follow up and call a 100 customers today did you do the marketing you were supposed to you want to be impatient

with your action but be willing to go long periods of time without ever seeing a result that is the definition of Entrepreneurship it isn't just to be consistent but also to be consistently better perfect practice show up every day and practice your skills if you can fall in love with the process of creating and disconnect how fast you can get rich or get that recognition and fall in love with that that's what's going to separate you from everybody else cuz here's what I've learned the man who loves walking Will Walk Way further than the one

who loves the destination if you want to learn the 44 cheat codes I know at 40 4 I wish I knew at 24 click the link and I'll see you on the other side