Dan Martell - 17 Business Cheat Codes I Wish I Knew When I Was 17

00:00:00.000 As a 44-year-old entrepreneur,

00:00:01.720 I've learned a lot about building businesses.

00:00:03.820 So I put together 17 business hacks

00:00:06.080 that I know now at 44 that I wish I knew at 17.

00:00:09.260 Starting with, number one, pick the right business model.

00:00:12.440 Most people end up in a business or an industry

00:00:14.580 that they know because it's what their parents did

00:00:16.680 or what they learned at school.

00:00:17.760 But if you were a newspaper person

00:00:19.440 and then you're trying to sell ads

00:00:21.360 versus getting into TikTok ads,

00:00:23.320 those are completely different worlds.

00:00:25.500 Even myself, when I started as an entrepreneur, I'm 17,

00:00:27.940 my business model was to make CDs for my friends at school.

00:00:31.500 So I was burning CDs every night.

00:00:33.520 Not very scalable, not very interesting.

00:00:35.500 And I don't know about you,

00:00:36.360 but when's the last time you touched a CD?

00:00:38.120 Versus enterprise portals and software,

00:00:40.400 where I eventually ended up into,

00:00:42.200 software has literally eaten the world.

00:00:44.460 So choosing the right business model

00:00:46.920 will catapult you just by making that decision

00:00:49.860 because high tides rise all boats.

00:00:51.940 It's the difference between having a headwind

00:00:54.040 working against you versus a tailwind pushing you forward.

00:00:56.880 See, most people, when they start a business,

00:00:58.420 they don't even consider what business model

00:01:00.620 they're gonna use.

00:01:01.500 So they just do whatever they learn or they think's easy

00:01:03.880 or they guess their way into business.

00:01:06.020 Whereas a simple Google search, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap,

00:01:09.040 will discover that there are industries

00:01:10.740 that are growing 40% per year.

00:01:12.400 There's technology that is growing 40% per year.

00:01:15.120 And when you compare a industry, a technology,

00:01:18.180 and a business model that is next level,

00:01:20.440 you will create a slingshot.

00:01:22.080 Before we move into number two,

00:01:23.380 we've got a goal of hitting 500,000 subscribers.

00:01:26.140 so if you aren't already, click subscribe.

00:01:29.260 It takes only a second.

00:01:30.140 Which leads us to number two, which is just take the money.

00:01:33.480 The other day I was on a hike

00:01:34.560 and there was this young entrepreneur

00:01:35.780 who's asking me for advice and he wants to start a company

00:01:38.140 and he goes, well, how do I start a business?

00:01:40.120 And I said, all right, you ready for this?

00:01:42.280 Pull out your notepad, I'm gonna give you the gold.

00:01:44.340 It's like, okay, what is it?

00:01:45.460 Just take the money.

00:01:46.940 How does that help me, he says.

00:01:48.640 Well, here's the deal, what do you wanna do?

00:01:50.200 He goes, I wanna sell car parts.

00:01:51.420 Okay, cool, how many car parts have you sold?

00:01:53.140 Well, I don't have any car parts.

00:01:54.200 Do you need a car part to actually sell a car part?

00:01:57.300 No, you don't.

00:01:57.820 You need to find somebody that needs a car part.

00:01:59.540 I mean, this sounds trivial,

00:02:00.560 but I will tell you most adults don't even figure this out.

00:02:03.780 I learned a long time ago,

00:02:04.840 a business has started when you take money

00:02:07.220 from somebody that's a stranger.

00:02:08.920 It's not hard.

00:02:09.680 You literally create a Stripe account,

00:02:11.440 which allows you to take money or PayPal,

00:02:13.040 or honestly go old school, take some cash,

00:02:15.800 get a cashier check.

00:02:16.600 I honestly don't care.

00:02:17.620 The moment you take somebody's money

00:02:19.620 for what you got, your product or service

00:02:21.580 is the moment you become an entrepreneur.

00:02:23.720 So run as fast as you can to get a customer to buy,

00:02:26.980 which leads us to number three,

00:02:28.540 under-promise and over-deliver.

00:02:30.420 See, most people, what they do is they over-promise

00:02:33.520 and they under-deliver

00:02:34.380 because they're just trying to be the good guy.

00:02:36.440 You know, they get their first customer,

00:02:37.620 their second customer, their third customer,

00:02:39.000 and they're like, whatever they need.

00:02:40.440 If you need this, I'll say yes.

00:02:41.900 If you need this, I'll say yes.

00:02:43.120 The problem is that you end up in a position

00:02:45.080 where there's no boundaries.

00:02:46.560 And all of a sudden now, people think,

00:02:48.540 well, you said you would do this,

00:02:49.720 but they're paying you a fraction

00:02:51.200 for what you should actually charge to do the work.

00:02:53.560 And then when you get backed up

00:02:54.840 because you find some other customers,

00:02:56.420 they get upset because you're not as responsive

00:02:58.180 or you're not doing the same amount of work

00:02:59.700 you used to do for that discounted price.

00:03:01.920 So here's how you solve that.

00:03:03.360 Number one, find a clear problem

00:03:05.120 that you can help somebody solve.

00:03:06.620 One clear problem, not several.

00:03:08.540 Two, offer a simple solution to that problem,

00:03:11.800 but make it attractive.

00:03:13.160 Design it in a way that deals with their objections.

00:03:15.700 Number three, for that simple solution to that problem,

00:03:18.920 go above and beyond.

00:03:20.320 And I'm talking simple things,

00:03:21.860 following up and asking them how they're doing a handwritten thank you note referring somebody else

00:03:26.980 that you know to that customer for whatever reason the last mile is rarely crowded because nobody's

00:03:33.200 willing to go that far if you do that you will be different from everybody else out there which

00:03:37.680 leads us to number four which is negotiate your needs i remember when i started martel media this

00:03:42.840 company that produces all my content i realized the commitment it was going to take on my calendar

00:03:47.460 on my budgets because I was going to invest in it, on my focus and energy. And it required me

00:03:52.820 to renegotiate my needs, my preferences with everybody in my life. Because at that point,

00:03:58.180 it wasn't like my calendar wasn't already committed. I was essentially deciding to say

00:04:01.860 no to a bunch of things that I already agreed to with business partners of mine who I absolutely

00:04:06.420 adore and love, but would require me to have a different level of involvement in their business.

00:04:10.760 So before I started, I called every one of them up and had a tough conversation,

00:04:15.620 explain to them my vision, explain to them what I wanted to do and ask them if it was okay if I

00:04:20.060 changed the calendar, the meetings I got involved in and how decisions got made. It's something I

00:04:24.760 learned when I didn't do this in the past. You know, I've always gotten myself in trouble when

00:04:28.180 I just said yes to somebody that impacted somebody else without talking to them about it first.

00:04:32.480 So here's the deal. No agreement is permanent. Everything can be negotiated. I'm talking

00:04:36.940 consultants, vendors, credit card processing. You know, people think, well, I can't get a cheaper

00:04:41.240 fee just ask employees how they show up when they show up what you're paying them everything is

00:04:46.360 negotiable even small adjustments can have a significant impact on your bottom line most

00:04:51.160 people won't do it because they're worried that somebody's gonna be upset with them but what i

00:04:54.360 would encourage you to consider is focus on you being better you creating the space in your

00:04:59.320 calendar you doing what's right for you so that you can be more for other people so that way they

00:05:04.440 won't be upset in the short term they might because they don't understand it but long term

00:05:08.360 they're actually gonna be appreciative

00:05:09.760 because you became more, so you have more to give them.

00:05:12.680 You can't help others at the highest level

00:05:14.660 until you put yourself first.

00:05:16.520 Sounds counterintuitive, but trust me,

00:05:18.400 I wish I knew this sooner.

00:05:19.500 Which leads us to number five, which is dry.

00:05:22.220 Don't repeat yourself.

00:05:23.880 Now, this is one of my favorite principles

00:05:25.520 that I learned from writing code software.

00:05:27.740 It's the idea of if there's something

00:05:29.520 that's gonna be repeated, like some kind of calculation,

00:05:32.220 you put it inside of a function.

00:05:33.820 And the reason why is that if anywhere else in the code,

00:05:36.500 you need to use that function,

00:05:37.680 it goes into one place and if there's a bug it's easy to fix if you copy and paste that code all

00:05:42.720 over your code base and there's a bug now you got to go find every place you put it so in business

00:05:47.120 i do the same thing if i'm going to teach my team how to be more productive i'm going to document

00:05:52.240 it i'm going to record it and then i'm going to save that as my philosophy on how to be more

00:05:57.040 productive so that way i can point to it from the onboarding training to the new employee manual to

00:06:02.400 the person that's having an issue and i need to upgrade their skills it's one place where i don't

00:06:06.480 have to feel like i'm repeating myself and that way i'm moving forward see i get frustrated when

00:06:10.640 i feel like i've said that before i'm saying it again but it's usually because i didn't put it in

00:06:15.600 a place that i could reference and on top of that most people don't like to be told all the time

00:06:20.160 whether they get better they want to know what principle they're violating so think about the

00:06:24.240 activity of not picking up after themselves it's not the fact that you left your cup on the counter

00:06:28.400 before the weekend and then it stayed out all weekend it's that you didn't keep your space

00:06:32.880 clean and what does that say about your respect for other people in the office or what does that

00:06:36.960 say about your desire to be the best or to have a great image i mean you don't know who's coming

00:06:41.600 early monday morning that might see that mess it might impact the rest of the business so talk

00:06:45.920 about the principle not the activity it might seem slower in the short term to document and

00:06:50.880 write this thing down but trust me in the long term it's way faster the goal is to build the

00:06:55.600 machine that runs a machine because system stands for save yourself time energy and money which

00:07:01.840 brings us to number six which is simple scales complex fails this one is probably one of my

00:07:08.080 favorite philosophies over the years i've gotten myself in trouble every time i've added complexity

00:07:13.440 to a business model to my agreements with other people to business terms contracts if we keep

00:07:19.300 things simple there's less parts less moving things to break i mean elon musk has these five

00:07:25.160 engineering rules the first rule is is remove as many components as you can until the part doesn't

00:07:30.420 work, then only add back the things that are needed. There's nothing more wasteful than to

00:07:35.440 improve a process or a part that never needed to be there in the first place. What I've learned is

00:07:40.780 over time, it's easy to add complexity. What's hard and impressive for me is watching somebody

00:07:46.620 fight to remove something. I know this is like, what? Remove things in the business that don't

00:07:52.060 have the same yield they used to. Remove things out of your life that don't serve you anymore to

00:07:56.440 create space for new opportunities. When it comes to business, I have a philosophy called the scaling

00:08:00.960 credo. It's the five ones. We focus on one product, not seven, one offer, not three, one funnel, not

00:08:08.260 two, and one ideal customer that we're going to sell the product to, not 15. And then we focus for

00:08:13.600 one year of execution. If we do that, we will build a $1 million business in 12 months. If you decide

00:08:19.760 to do it differently, then you're just adding complexity. And focus stands for follow one

00:08:24.880 course until successful. Five ones, dead focus, you can't miss. Which leads us to number seven,

00:08:31.580 which is raise your prices constantly. One of my favorite people in the world, Patrick Campbell,

00:08:36.500 says if you're not changing something about your pricing every six months, then you're not doing

00:08:40.860 it right. Think about this. Most people, when you ask them, if somebody bought your business

00:08:44.500 tomorrow, what's the first thing they would change? It would probably be change your prices.

00:08:47.780 I was coaching an entrepreneur once and he had this software product that he's been building for

00:08:51.540 15 years and i asked him when's the last time you raised your prices his response 11 years ago all

00:08:58.100 right let me ask you a few questions in the last 11 years have you made the product better uh yeah

00:09:02.980 way better have you innovated we're best in class has your team gotten better yeah have you gotten

00:09:07.780 better yeah all things being said you've gotten better but the customer has been paying the same

00:09:12.660 price has the world gotten more expensive have you heard of inflation you want to get to a place where

00:09:17.300 the value you're offering and the perceived value from the customer buying is in equilibrium so you

00:09:22.660 have the margins to invest in your business to get even better most of you guys struggle to buy back

00:09:27.620 your time or make that new hire because you're not making enough profit because your prices haven't

00:09:32.420 changed so remember this value rises with demand price follows so the more demand you have for your

00:09:38.260 product the value goes up you have to capture that by increasing your price which leads us to number

00:09:43.620 eight, which is be impeccable with your word. If it's in your calendar, show up. If you tell

00:09:48.980 somebody you're going to do something, do it. If you're talking to somebody else, don't talk crap 0.99

00:09:53.660 about other people. So I know this guy and he's always talking negative about somebody else. What 0.96

00:09:58.380 he doesn't realize is him being that way causes me not to want to share. Why would I ever tell him

00:10:02.960 anything that's going on in my life knowing that he's just going to tell the world? Being impeccable

00:10:07.240 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.

00:10:12.840 you're allowed to say no. Have integrity with others. If you commit to somebody and you can't

00:10:17.480 make it, call them up ahead of time and renegotiate. When you tell somebody you're going to be there,

00:10:22.200 be on time. Don't talk crap about other people. Don't say anything you wouldn't feel comfortable 0.96

00:10:27.240 being covered on the homepage of your local newspaper. I just assume everything I say,

00:10:32.340 no matter what the setting, it could be captured and it could be published on the homepage of the

00:10:36.680 internet for everybody to scrutinize. Would I be okay with those words being published? And most

00:10:41.800 people don't live like that so they say things that are so crazy sometimes that cause emotional

00:10:46.500 shrapnel either from the person they're talking to or the person they're talking about that

00:10:50.540 eventually finds out so if people can't trust your word it's going to repel success if you're

00:10:55.220 the kind of person that can keep their word people want to do business with you so remember this

00:10:59.840 a promise made is debt unpaid always pay your debts which leads us to number nine talk to your

00:11:05.620 customers i can't tell you how important this is i have team members coming to me all day long

00:11:09.980 saying hey i got this idea to make this better i got this other idea we could do this my question

00:11:14.140 always is who did you ask there is so much opportunity in picking up the phone in talking

00:11:20.380 to your customers when i was building my company clarity i used to call it smile and dial every

00:11:24.700 thursday i'd grab a list of new customers i call them up i pretend i was on the product team i

00:11:29.580 didn't want them to know as the ceo and i would ask them questions like how did you hear about us

00:11:33.820 what did you like best what could we do to better meet your needs those conversations drove the

00:11:38.940 innovations those calls allowed me to find customers that were raving fans and asked

00:11:43.500 them if they would be willing to do a video testimonial entrepreneurs that talk to their

00:11:47.340 customers will have an unfair advantage because you're going to be able to learn faster deliver

00:11:51.820 on their needs faster and have them be absolutely blown away that the owner is talking to them know

00:11:58.220 your customers encourage your team to talk to your customers and only come up with ideas after you've

00:12:03.260 talked to them so you can validate them to make sure they're the right things to build to grow

00:12:07.100 grow your business which leads us to number 10 you don't manage time you manage energy back in

00:12:12.280 my 20s i would wake up and i would work all day 16 hours a day i just had one mode work work work

00:12:18.600 and i realized as the day went on i got less and less done my brain didn't work the same way that

00:12:24.040 it did when i started the day but it didn't matter as things came up i just filled my calendar filled

00:12:28.080 my calendar and then i realized that the things that were most important weren't getting the best

00:12:32.640 version of me. Honestly, thinking back to like, even in school, time isn't the same because when

00:12:37.760 I was in math class, it felt like time stood still. And then I went to art class and it felt

00:12:41.600 like time evaporated. Next thing you know, the bell was ringing for lunch. Two different experiences.

00:12:45.920 So how do I do it now? I design my calendar to map to my energy. For example, my mornings is when I

00:12:51.880 do my deep creative work. I call it creating connected to my creator. That's when I push the

00:12:57.000 big rocks up the hill, big meaty projects, things that give me a little anxiety, things that are

00:13:01.920 hard i do those first thing in the morning the afternoons is when i do most of my meetings

00:13:06.240 because i love talking to people and those conversations usually give me energy and then

00:13:10.720 what i'll do is i'll also put in a workout to reset my energy anytime i feel my energy drop

00:13:15.680 which sounds counterintuitive i'll hit the gym that's why i have a gym here at the studio i have

00:13:19.760 a gym at my home i have a gym membership honestly i have three memberships in the city i live in

00:13:23.600 energy flows where attention goes and if i put the attention on my body it turns out i have more

00:13:28.000 energy. Now I can get more done in four hours than most people will do in their whole day

00:13:32.340 because I'm mapping the activity to the energy and what I'll be able to produce the best with

00:13:36.980 my mind. Which leads us to number 11, play to win, don't play not to lose. Most entrepreneurs,

00:13:42.880 when they get some success and they're climbing that mountain, they're trying to play to win.

00:13:46.020 I don't have any money. I would like money. So I wake up to try to be rich. And then one day you

00:13:50.220 wake up and you have more money than you expected and you shift your strategy. Now you're worried

00:13:55.420 about losing what you've got.

00:13:57.000 It's like the people that are trying

00:13:58.120 to reduce their expenses.

00:13:59.540 And I'm like, okay, you could.

00:14:00.980 You know, people that move to different countries

00:14:02.800 just to save on taxes.

00:14:03.860 Or you could focus on making more money, right?

00:14:06.660 Is the difference between wealth preservation

00:14:08.320 or shrinking versus wealth creation or expanding?

00:14:11.520 I prefer to focus my energy on becoming more, not less.

00:14:14.660 Think about your inner conversations.

00:14:16.740 When you're attacking a problem,

00:14:18.080 are you worried about what you could lose?

00:14:19.880 Are you focused on what you could gain?

00:14:21.780 Because here's what I know is today's energy

00:14:23.960 will shape tomorrow's reality you want to be focused on the potential of the future not the

00:14:28.760 fear of losing from the past which leads us to number 12 which is spend money to save time not

00:14:34.360 time to save money unfortunately broke people spend a lot of time to save money i know people

00:14:40.040 that drive to costco 25 30 minutes out of their way to save 10 cents on a gallon of gas i watched

00:14:46.040 my dad doing this my whole life my dad owned rental properties and every sunday he would go

00:14:50.200 and mow the lawn he would spend his time to save money instead of taking that money to invest to

00:14:55.560 buy time to go work on bigger leverage deals so here's the formula if you have an opportunity to

00:15:01.720 become more you want to spend your current money to buy back time out of your calendar so you have

00:15:06.520 that freedom then with that new time go invest it in becoming more so that you become more valuable

00:15:12.200 to the world if all you do is stay in this hamster wheel of being busy being busy being busy and you

00:15:17.400 don't get better week over week over week you're gonna wake up in a decade living the exact same

00:15:22.360 life in the same financial situation with the exact same friends you have today which if that's

00:15:26.200 where you want to be great but i'm guessing you're not watching this because you want to be in the

00:15:29.640 same place you want more so you have to spend money to buy back time to invest in yourself

00:15:34.840 and with that time choose goals to grow you which leads us to number 13 80 done by somebody else is

00:15:41.000 a hundred percent freaking awesome i can't tell you the amount of people that complain about i

00:15:45.560 I hired this person, but they're not doing as good as me.

00:15:48.140 Okay, are you training them right?

00:15:49.840 Did you give them the process?

00:15:51.380 Are you a great leader?

00:15:52.640 Any hour that I didn't spend to do something,

00:15:56.220 even if it was done at 80% of what I could do,

00:15:58.780 is 100% freaking awesome.

00:16:00.760 It's that hour I got back so I could focus on myself,

00:16:03.640 so I can invest in myself,

00:16:04.660 so I could go spend time with my family,

00:16:06.300 spend time with my team.

00:16:07.640 You'll only scale as fast as your ability to let go.

00:16:10.460 It doesn't mean you need to let go of everything.

00:16:12.680 I teach this framework called the 108010 rule.

00:16:14.680 the first 10 is when you ideate with your team the other 80 is when they execute on what you

00:16:20.040 talked about and you were clear in that communication and the last 10 is where you

00:16:24.120 integrate what they've done into the final steps to polish it for you to feel really good about

00:16:29.320 it when you have a business that you could take that time where you're running around errands or

00:16:33.800 cleaning your house or doing laundry all that stuff instead of going and finding new customers

00:16:37.960 and delivering on your customers and calling up to make sure your customers are happy and asking

00:16:41.320 for referrals that's just not smart the math doesn't math and may create a situation where

00:16:46.840 you'll never achieve your goals because there's not enough hours in the day million dollar

00:16:50.680 companies were not built off ten dollar tasks what i often get is people asking about an executive

00:16:55.320 assistant as their first hire because they've read my book but they don't know what to do with

00:16:59.000 that person so if you want my internal ea playbook just message me on instagram dan martell 12 martell

00:17:04.680 on instagram the word youtube ea and i'll know you came from here and i will send you my internal

00:17:09.720 google doc to my executive assistant playbook that i use cleaned up just for you so you can see how

00:17:15.400 it works which leads us to number 14 which is build the people so one of my philosophies is

00:17:20.680 train don't tell see too often entrepreneurs that have never been properly taught how to lead they're

00:17:25.480 always giving people the answers to the test the problem with that is that if you're not around

00:17:29.320 nobody can make a decision nobody can move a project forward nobody can actually do the work

00:17:33.000 because they're waiting on you to tell them how to do it versus training them gives them the framework

00:17:38.600 for how you think you're teaching them the philosophy in your life that you've learned

00:17:43.240 so that you can be more productive so i love to do leadership trainings every monday i commit to

00:17:48.840 my team to build the people because the people build the business if you don't do this guess 0.98

00:17:53.640 what you're the bottleneck and it's funny because i always get people that say to me it's like damn

00:17:57.320 well what if i train them up and then they leave which i reply to well what if you don't and then

00:18:02.520 they stay think about it you have a whole team of people they're inefficient they've never been

00:18:06.440 train properly and you think that's a winning strategy business is a privilege because you

00:18:10.840 build a team and your job is to develop your team you are responsible for not only their livelihood

00:18:16.200 but for them to become better people so in many ways business is a people game not a business game

00:18:21.800 which leads us to number 15 which is be incompetent i know you're like what not that long ago i had a

00:18:27.960 real go viral where i said if you want to be rich be lazy if you want to be wealthy be incompetent

00:18:32.760 I've met some incredibly wealthy people, billionaires.

00:18:35.640 And when I meet them, I'm like,

00:18:36.660 this person doesn't know anything about their business.

00:18:39.460 Like I asked them simple questions about their financials

00:18:42.000 and they're like, I don't know,

00:18:43.100 which caught me off guard at first.

00:18:44.700 And then I realized the reason they don't know

00:18:46.400 is because they've hired great people

00:18:47.920 and they've decided to empower those people

00:18:50.120 to do their work.

00:18:50.940 I remember one day, Todd, who runs my media company,

00:18:52.980 came to me and he was looking at my shelves

00:18:54.740 in my new office and he says,

00:18:56.020 who's gonna decorate these?

00:18:57.320 And I just looked at him with a confused look

00:18:59.180 and I kind of smiled and he goes, oh, I got it.

00:19:01.740 That's my job.

00:19:02.460 And I'm like, yeah, dude, you run this place.

00:19:04.900 I'm not gonna tell you how to decorate this.

00:19:06.700 We have people, you can talk to them.

00:19:08.260 I trust you.

00:19:09.220 That simple moment set the expectations

00:19:11.640 for him to understand how to move forward.

00:19:13.660 If it's in this space, you own it, not me.

00:19:17.120 It means you gotta learn how to work through people.

00:19:18.980 A lot of people have a hard time letting go.

00:19:20.940 They have a hard time setting a vision

00:19:22.560 or communicating in a way that the other person

00:19:24.500 can take action aligned with their vision.

00:19:26.720 And the crazy part is you don't need to have all the answers.

00:19:29.200 If you want them, it's because you have insecurities

00:19:31.140 that you need to know everything,

00:19:32.680 but the truth is some of the smartest people

00:19:34.300 with the highest IQs aren't rich.

00:19:35.860 Think about all the PhD business professors.

00:19:38.060 They're not running around

00:19:39.140 with multi-billion dollar companies,

00:19:40.740 yet they're teaching people about business.

00:19:42.760 Why?

00:19:43.260 Because they have beliefs that are holding them back.

00:19:45.340 So you can have those people

00:19:46.600 that can execute working for you,

00:19:48.500 but you don't need to know that stuff.

00:19:50.220 You can just have the belief that it's possible,

00:19:52.160 put a team together,

00:19:53.200 and hold them accountable to the vision,

00:19:55.040 not getting involved in the weeds.

00:19:56.860 All that being said, here's one big idea.

00:19:58.920 them. I want you to focus on helping other people get rich, invest in them, train them, teach them.

00:20:04.680 That is why we create businesses is so we create a platform for growth for the people on our team,

00:20:09.840 which leads us to number 16, which is build your personal brand. About a year ago, after publishing

00:20:15.180 YouTube videos for eight years and blogging now for 12 years and creating all this content on

00:20:21.080 social media, as I looked at some of my big goals that I want to accomplish in my lifetime,

00:20:25.600 my vision board and where I want to go and the impact I want to leave. It occurred to me that

00:20:30.440 all of that would get easier or come to life on the backend of two things. One, reach, how many

00:20:37.920 people know and are aware of me. And two, on reputation, what people think of you. It sounds

00:20:43.920 crazy, but it's kind of what we do in life, right? When we're working on a team, we do a good job.

00:20:48.640 Why? Because we want the people we're working with to tell the boss so that he knows that we

00:20:52.060 do a good job. And when we work with customers, we want to do a good job for the customers.

00:20:55.600 so that they tell their friends that we did a good job.

00:20:58.000 So reach and reputation has always been there.

00:21:00.340 It's just now we have this new world,

00:21:02.420 this platform that we live in,

00:21:03.880 where we can show up and create so much value

00:21:06.820 that people take that and share it with other people.

00:21:09.320 And then opportunities come up.

00:21:11.200 Me speaking on stage at Tony Robbins,

00:21:13.240 me speaking at John Maxwell,

00:21:15.020 me getting opportunities to get invited,

00:21:17.780 to participate and collaborate

00:21:18.920 with the top podcasters in the world.

00:21:20.620 All of those things came on the backend

00:21:22.800 of reach and reputation, crazy stuff.

00:21:25.060 Think about Tesla though.

00:21:26.060 Tesla wouldn't be Tesla without Elon.

00:21:28.000 Amazon wouldn't be Amazon without Jeff Bezos,

00:21:30.220 Apple, Facebook, Virgin, Twitter, Microsoft.

00:21:32.860 You know the founders of these companies

00:21:34.480 and the reason why they're able to hire top talent

00:21:37.260 and get access to customers and raise money.

00:21:40.240 All of those are on the backend

00:21:41.780 of their reach and reputation.

00:21:43.680 So you can sit here and watch another video

00:21:46.220 talking about building your personal brand

00:21:47.900 or make today the day you decide

00:21:49.940 to start letting people know what you're about

00:21:51.780 so they can decide if they wanna work with you.

00:21:53.480 which leads to number 17, which is be patient with results, but impatient with action.

00:21:59.080 I've got business owners coming to me all the time saying, Dan, I've been listening to you.

00:22:03.560 I'm executing. I've been trying really hard, but it's just not working. And I always go,

00:22:07.820 well, how long have you been trying doing that online stuff or doing this other strategy?

00:22:11.460 They're like six months. And I laugh. I'm like six months. Do you realize that I've been doing

00:22:16.920 this for 27 years? Do you realize that I've read 10 pages of a book every day for decades? Do you

00:22:22.780 realize that I've been focusing on myself for decades. These are not things that just come out

00:22:27.900 of left field. It requires you to focus at a level and give it years to build mastery. The key is,

00:22:34.220 is you have to have patience with the outcome you're trying to achieve, but be impatient with

00:22:39.060 taking action to get better. See, most people get pissed off that they haven't became a millionaire

00:22:42.960 yet, but they haven't been honest with themselves on, did you go to the gym today? Did you read

00:22:46.780 those 10 pages of a book? Did you follow up and call a hundred customers today? Did you do the

00:22:51.120 marketing you were supposed to. You want to be impatient with your action, but be willing to go

00:22:55.460 long periods of time without ever seeing a result. That is the definition of entrepreneurship. It

00:23:00.700 isn't just to be consistent, but also to be consistently better. Perfect practice. Show up

00:23:06.420 every day and practice your skills. If you can fall in love with the process of creating and

00:23:12.720 disconnect how fast you can get rich or get that recognition and fall in love with that, that's

00:23:18.400 what's going to separate you from everybody else. Because here's what I've learned. The man who loves

00:23:22.120 walking will walk way further than the one who loves the destination. If you want to learn the

00:23:26.700 44 cheat codes I know at 44, I wish I knew at 24, click the link and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - October 25, 2024

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

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