30 Business Cheat Codes I Wish I Knew in My 20s

at the time of this recording I've been in business for 27 years but if I had to go back and give my 20-year-old self some advice on how to build a business a lot faster here's what I would say number one spend money to save time not time to save money see most people are always trying to save money but they don't realize that you have to invest money to save time in today's world where you can spend dollars to buy back hours with the apps and the delivery and having things come to you and

be able to have people all over the world support you in your dreams for a few dollars an hour do that number two solve problems for rich people not broke people if you want your life to be easier you want to have a business that thrives you want to have a great job go solve problems for people that have money broke people they'll be a pain in your butt you'll deal with them not paying you you deal with the drama that they're going to come along with it because they expect everything for very little rich

people way easier to work with number three sell before you build anything my default as soon as I have an idea is to run to find a customer I sell before I've ever built anything all my software companies all my coaching programs all my media stuff always sell first then figure out how to build it number four you don't manage time you manage energy if I could go back and talk to myself about the way I structured my life instead of just responding to whoever needed my time instead put those projects tasks together throughout the

day based on the energy I would have in the morning versus the afternoon I would have got so much more done number five simp scales complex fails the best way to build a life that's awesome is keep it simple don't have a lot of options don't have a lot of things to manage don't allow people to keep adding things to make it better fight for Simplicity cuz complexity is the ceiling of growth number six cash flow is critical don't Finance your customers if people want to buy from you and you have fixed cost have them

pay you enough to cover those costs if you got to go and finance that through a line of credit or through investors that means that you're essentially supporting their growth in their business through your bank account I want them to pay me upfront I want to finance my growth through my customer financing number seven model and modify so many times I've had people that coach with me try to modify my instructions and I know when I worked with a coach I learned this the hard way where I would take what they said and say Well

mine's a little different I'll do it this way and it turns out it didn't work why cuz I modified too much when you learn something new do it exactly as they say and then once you get traction and results then you can modify now before we dive in we've added 200,000 new subscribers over the last 2 months and we're looking to hit a million so if you haven't already hit subscribe number eight 50 to fix it the number one way you move faster to allow people to make decisions on your behalf when you're not around

I give everybody in my life the power to solve a problem if it's less than $50 without asking they're just got to tell me they did it afterwards cuz they got to expense it but 50 to fix it huge leverage in your business number nine be patient with results but impatient with action see some people stress themselves out and they get overwhelmed because they have this big vision for their life and they don't see that materialize yet when you have an idea do it and be consistent over long periods of time don't do a lot

and then slow down it's not a Sprint it's a Sprint within a marathon number 10 if you think you have the answers to your problems already you're in trouble it's impossible for you to actually know how you're about to do the thing you need to do without going and studying it without going to learn it from somebody else I tell this to my team all the time if you think that we're going to win by the knowledge and the experience we have in this room we're all in trouble we all have to go outside this

room to go learn so we can bring those best practices back here so we can execute faster number 11 don't waste time on hypothetical problems so often when I'm coaching people they ask me about a scenario that hasn't happened hypotheticals or hypocritical don't ask you make up situations that haven't happened so you solve problems that aren't problems yet instead of the ones you actually have focus on the things that are real not made up number 12 measure everything and make it visible My Philosophy is that sunlight sanitizes all problems meaning that first off I got

to measure if I'm doing it right step two is make it public to everybody so in my studio I have two dashboards for the different engines of my business that every person can see with names next to every metric that we monitor so that there's accountability if you measure it you can manage it number 13 Focus stands for follow one course until successful I can't tell you how how much wealth has been destroyed by being distracted instead of saying I'm going to do one thing and follow One customer in one market in one area and

make $1 million people think well I'm going to do this and this and this and I have 17 side businesses that's not focused that's a distraction and you're not that good yet number 14 be the smallest person in the biggest room when I look around my peer group I want to feel like I'm trying to keep up to everybody else like they're so far ahead of me if I'm the big dog in my little city I got to go find a new City if you're the smartest person on your street you got to move if

you're the top person in the room you're in go find a bigger room where you got a fight to get into and these are not things you can easily get access to many of them at the highest level it's invite only which means you got to figure out who's got the room who created it and how do you create enough value to even be considered to be invited but that transformed my life number 15 play to win don't play not to lose too often people are trying to think about risk mitigation trying to save every

Penny because they can't predict how could they keep doing it over and over so they're playing defense not offense you want to wake up every day and go how do I win you don't even want to talk about considering the option of losing cuz that energy will get you focused on it and what you focus on expands and you don't want that number 16 it's not who you know it's who knows you see I believe that your netw workk is your net worth and back in the day I worked really hard to know the right

people that could solve the problems for me now I make sure that I have a personal brand and a reputation that precedes me so that when I need to solve a problem those people are willing and wanting and available because they know who I am not necessarily that I know who they are number 17 broke people get good at doing tasks rich people get good at avoiding them just cuz you can doesn't mean you should and honestly the thing that you're best at becomes your Achilles heel as you grow because it's the thing you'll be

most critical of somebody else doing for you that you give away last which means that if you want to be rich be lazy don't give people the answers to the test if you buy back your time make sure it stays sold by not doing their work number 18 working hard actually means doing what scares you too often people talk about like I'm hustling I'm working hard no you're not show me the anxiety you have around that task tell me where you're outside your comfort zone cuz what I see is somebody that's working long hours yes

hard by your definition maybe for me it's what scares you that you don't want to do that you know if you do will expand you that's what working hard means number 19 doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will see most people doubt themselves to even start they imagine this future of what could go wrong so they have all this fear around even taking action what I've learned is fear gives bad advice do things in spite of fear courage is not absence of Doubt courage is taking action in spite of Doubt number 20 build the

people and the people build the business this is one of the most powerful lessons over the years I wish I would have learned when I was 18 19 20 because I would have invested in being a better leader for my people I would understood how to create a scenario where the people that I wanted to hire would want to work for me because the best people they're very employed and what I've discovered is the ability to develop a person and understand their dreams and their aspirations and align their personal development to their achievement of their

dreams that is the skill of leadership number 21 your team should work harder on themselves than they do on their job every Monday I do leadership training and I start with this quote where I encourage them please please please work harder on yourself than you do in your role because in doing that you'll be better for your job you'll be better for your team and that's a weird one for a lot of CEOs or entrepreneurs to understand but that's what they should be asking and if you do it for yourself you'll be more for the

people that need you most number 22 train don't tell the thing I see bad boss do all the time is they run around telling people what to do they correct they fix they tell tell tell the problem is is that if you keep doing that you'll always be the bottleneck because if they don't get told how to fix the problem they won't do anything instead train them talk about the philosophies the principles the process to help somebody do the work right if you train them they'll scale if you tell them you'll fail number 23 lead

like you're 5-year-old you know the other day we were remodeling my studio office and my GM comes in he asks me hey hey you know what are you doing with those shelves you going to design them up I just stared at him and I was like I don't know I looked at him and he goes oh got it that's my responsibility I was like yes he goes okay heard and he left he started working on hiring a designer to design the shelves cuzz he runs the studio not me it's his responsibility if you run around

and keep telling everybody what to do then you'll never grow your business cuz they'll keep coming to you for the answers number 24 results over effort every time you know I have some incredible leaders that work for me and sometimes they tell me they working really hard and they're putting in super crazy hours and they're trying to get the results but they don't show up the only difference is the person either the person can figure it out and get the result or they complain about the effort and hav been doing this for 27 years I

will tell you I don't care how hard somebody works on my team I care about the results number 25 all business problems are just personal problems that manifest in your business if you're stressed out at work it's CU you're probably stressed out yourself and that's something that happens at home and your work is just an amplifier of who you are so if you learn how to be a better leader at work trust me you'll be better for your family number 26 people problem versus process problems anytime there's an issue in my business I default to

a process problem not a people problem see most CEOs when there's something that happens they go oh that person did this nope you hired them there's a process is there a process show it to me oh there's not if you're the leader guess whose fault that is yours fix the process train the person if it happens again now you know you have a people problem number 27 know what your time's worth rich people value their time poor people don't it's that simple the reason why there's small businesses is because small business entrepreneurs don't value their

time they don't even know what it's worth they can't make a decision to say no because they think everything is a yes because they want to be busy that's not how you grow your business number 28 I have to work with you before I work with you I never hire somebody until I have the opportunity to collaborate with them I don't want to have the first time that we ever work together being after I hire you after you quit your job join my team and now I see how we collaborate that's crazy to me so

we always do test projects I pay them for it and it happens before we ever give him the job offer number 29 use the 10810 rule to delegate without losing control a lot of creatives are scared of giving up projects that feel like art to them like they need to have their special touch and that's why the 10810 is 10% ideation upfront to set the picture of what needs to get done 80% execution by the other person and that last 10% is integration where you get to sit down and add your fingerprint to the magic

that makes it you so that it can have the feel of completion it's the art form it's the thing that actually makes it work not the busy stuff number 30 have dreams big enough for your team's dreams to fit inside of if you want to hire great people and keep great people you need to have a vision big enough for your team's dreams and goal to fit inside of if you don't do this they will find somebody else that does and that's why I see great people leave companies all the time to go start their

own company to to go build this massive success that they could have built inside the company they're at beforehand but the leader didn't have this philosophy if you want to learn how to build a business that runs itself click the link and I'll see you on the other side