Dan Martell - I Discovered the Best Businesses to Start in 2026

00:00:00.000 These are the best businesses you can start in 2024.

00:00:03.260 Warren Buffett says great businesses have high gross margin.

00:00:06.920 So what is gross margin?

00:00:08.480 Essentially, if I sell a product for $5,

00:00:10.900 but it costs me $1 to make,

00:00:12.760 then my gross margin is $4 or 80%.

00:00:16.300 See, the best businesses are ones

00:00:18.240 where you have the highest margin

00:00:19.820 and then also sell for the highest dollar amount.

00:00:22.840 What you don't wanna be is like a restaurant

00:00:24.780 where the gross margins are only 45%.

00:00:26.940 You wanna be on the upper end of 70, 80,

00:00:29.160 even 90% gross margin. And to do this, you need to understand all the industries. And that's why

00:00:34.280 I've spent a lot of time analyzing all the best industries and evaluating all the gross margins

00:00:39.620 from lowest to highest that you can start today with very little experience to make this year,

00:00:44.840 the best year of your life. The first business is a product business. Typically these companies

00:00:49.600 have 50 or 60% gross margin. Now I've been involved in some incredible product companies

00:00:54.460 like Pila that does a biodegradable phone case

00:00:56.820 or Laundry Sauce, which is a modern day detergent company

00:01:00.460 or Lomi that does a food composting device.

00:01:04.180 And I mean, these are literally

00:01:06.100 some of the best companies out there,

00:01:07.400 but I've seen people lose their shirt

00:01:09.160 building product companies

00:01:10.640 because they don't understand how to get distribution,

00:01:13.260 how to get sales, how to build a product efficiently.

00:01:15.840 And essentially they take all their savings,

00:01:18.340 put it into a product, don't get any revenue.

00:01:20.980 So if you wanna make a product business work great,

00:01:23.460 these are the three things that you need to do right.

00:01:26.180 Number one is you have to pre-sell.

00:01:28.560 See, most product companies use Kickstarter or Indiegogo

00:01:31.720 or other crowdfunding platforms

00:01:33.240 so that they can validate demand for the product

00:01:36.160 without losing money.

00:01:37.720 Now, I know you've probably been burned

00:01:38.820 by investing in some of these crowdfunding campaigns,

00:01:41.180 but the best ones know how to do them,

00:01:43.820 promote them, market them, get the money,

00:01:46.180 and then use that to actually build the product.

00:01:48.540 The second thing is you have to do direct to consumer.

00:01:51.320 And the reason why is you got to skip the retailers

00:01:54.060 because if you go through a wholesaler to a retailer,

00:01:57.160 by the time you actually get paid

00:01:58.840 and there's the big cashflow issues,

00:02:00.820 it's very hard to make a product business work.

00:02:03.660 That's why Amazon has been a big category

00:02:05.880 for a lot of people that are getting into the product space.

00:02:08.420 And the third thing is you have to invest in the brand.

00:02:11.260 This means making sure that you use premium products,

00:02:14.760 meaning that you care about word of mouth,

00:02:16.600 that you focus on reviews,

00:02:18.060 that you look for opportunities to get press,

00:02:20.320 to drive traffic to the business

00:02:22.480 because that's what's gonna create the flywheel

00:02:24.680 to make a product business work.

00:02:26.440 The second business is an agency

00:02:28.300 or sometimes a service business.

00:02:30.200 The margins are between 60 and 70%.

00:02:32.920 Now, I've learned over the years

00:02:35.080 that the easiest companies are ones

00:02:37.160 where you take a skill that you already have,

00:02:39.020 maybe as an employee,

00:02:40.400 and then offer that skill to other businesses

00:02:43.100 and get paid to either do for those businesses

00:02:45.520 what you currently do

00:02:46.480 or teach them how to do it for themselves.

00:02:49.000 Now, I've seen a lot of people launch different types of agencies, social media marketing agencies, et cetera, and the ones that actually scale and make money, not just have a low-paying full-time, sometimes double full-time job.

00:03:00.820 They focus on these four things.

00:03:03.120 Number one is they focus on a strong pain in the market.

00:03:06.380 If you think about it, you could start an AI company today where you go and you analyze businesses and all the inefficiencies and then introduce them the AI tools to solve those problems.

00:03:16.620 and you would make a ton of money

00:03:18.720 because businesses will pay for anybody

00:03:21.080 that can show them how to save them or make them money.

00:03:24.040 Using AI is a modern day way of them getting leverage

00:03:27.260 and you can even negotiate where you get paid more

00:03:29.780 based on how much money or time you save them.

00:03:32.700 Number two is productized services.

00:03:35.160 See, if you sell just work for time,

00:03:37.860 then you're always gonna get paid for your hour.

00:03:39.920 What you wanna do is get paid for an outcome.

00:03:42.100 And to do that, you gotta focus on one thing.

00:03:44.280 If you're a designer, focus on logo designs.

00:03:47.200 If you're a programmer, focus on the onboarding experience.

00:03:50.220 If you're a salesperson, focus on the discovery call.

00:03:54.060 Teach people how to do one specific thing

00:03:56.680 so that you can productize it.

00:03:58.220 And as you grow, you can buy back your time

00:04:00.280 by having somebody else support different aspects

00:04:02.480 of that productized service.

00:04:04.680 Number three is focus on reoccurring revenue.

00:04:06.840 See, too often when we start,

00:04:07.840 we just wanna like get paid to do the thing.

00:04:10.260 Problem is that every month,

00:04:11.420 you got to get paid to do the thing over and over and over again. So you start at zero at the

00:04:16.400 beginning of every month. What you want to do is sell a service, an ongoing reoccurring revenue

00:04:21.280 service for whatever that work is so that you come in, you evaluate it, you support them,

00:04:25.860 you keep doing more work. And that way you can sign them up for three months, six months,

00:04:29.460 12 months of service, and you start building the revenue base. Number four is you want to scale

00:04:34.460 with systems. The whole philosophy is build a business you don't grow to hate. The way we do

00:04:39.180 that is by replacing yourself using a system a checklist for how you deliver on that agency work

00:04:45.080 and then that way you can hire people to get them to do the work following your process that

00:04:49.640 guarantees the results for the customer the third business is coaching and the margins are between

00:04:54.500 70 and 80 percent now this is also consulting or information online training courses that kind of

00:05:01.120 business and i know this one incredibly well i run one of the largest coaching organization for

00:05:05.780 software CEOs. I've been involved in creating multiple courses and trainings and seminars and

00:05:11.120 all this stuff for some of the largest coaches that you know of online. And even for me,

00:05:16.180 I hesitated launching this. I mean, I even built a whole technology company called clarity.fm

00:05:20.880 because I was too scared to call myself a coach and I put it off. I mean, this platform we built,

00:05:26.140 I did over 1300 clarity calls over a two year period and never gave myself permission to call

00:05:31.440 myself a coach. And I want to tell you, it's been one of the most rewarding things deciding to go

00:05:36.960 all in on being a coach and really working with some of the best CEOs out there. And I want to

00:05:42.000 encourage you to consider it. But if you're going to do it, these are the three things that you have

00:05:45.860 to do right or you're going to eventually end up hating being a coach. Number one is to learn to

00:05:51.160 sell your expertise. I mean, this one is a fascinating one because I know people that are

00:05:55.020 world-class in what they do. They're literally the fittest person I know, or they're incredible

00:05:59.860 networkers, or they're so talented in their art, but they would never feel comfortable getting paid

00:06:06.420 to teach somebody else to do the thing they've done, which is crazy. I mean, at the end of the

00:06:10.100 day, you've become great at the thing you're doing and people have noticed. I want to encourage you

00:06:15.340 to allow other people to pay you for that advice because in doing so, you're actually helping them.

00:06:21.160 Oftentimes, the transformation happens at the transaction. So them investing in themselves

00:06:25.960 is by hiring you to teach them

00:06:27.640 how to become world-class at what you do

00:06:29.600 is actually where a lot of the value is created.

00:06:32.240 Number two is strategy.

00:06:33.900 See, most people think that

00:06:35.600 I know this information, so I can't give it away.

00:06:38.100 I'm gonna tell you something controversial.

00:06:40.660 I want you to give all of it away, okay?

00:06:43.080 It's called education-based marketing.

00:06:45.020 See, I believe that information wants to be free

00:06:47.780 and then you get paid for the support of the implementation.

00:06:51.300 So you wanna teach everything you know

00:06:53.860 around the topic for free on social media,

00:06:57.580 at seminars, get on stages, speak, share it all,

00:07:01.100 the best stuff.

00:07:02.500 And by doing so, you're gonna build an audience of people

00:07:05.160 that wanna learn more from you

00:07:06.580 and they will pay you for the implementation.

00:07:09.240 Number three is build a community.

00:07:11.520 See, I had a coach once and she was incredible.

00:07:14.040 Her name was Marcy.

00:07:14.980 I learned so many things.

00:07:16.020 She had brought a company public

00:07:17.260 and just an incredibly valuable coach.

00:07:20.500 The challenge was is that I knew she was working

00:07:22.800 with other incredible entrepreneurs

00:07:24.300 and I never got to meet them.

00:07:25.940 Never once did she organize a dinner or a meetup

00:07:29.080 or anything so that I could also get value

00:07:31.300 from meeting the clients she worked with.

00:07:33.080 I'm telling you, if you are a coach,

00:07:35.260 having a community where other people

00:07:37.840 from that same coach can connect and meet each other,

00:07:40.940 that's where a lot of value as a coach will come from

00:07:43.620 to help you with keeping people in your world

00:07:46.240 and also allowing you to send their support

00:07:48.860 as you grow the business.

00:07:50.180 The fourth business is software

00:07:52.300 and the gross margins are between 80 and 90%.

00:07:56.020 If you think about it,

00:07:57.100 having a new customer use your software costs nothing.

00:08:00.280 Literally, it's like server data storage on some computer.

00:08:03.760 Now, I learned this personally back in the 2000s

00:08:06.480 when I started writing code and building software.

00:08:09.460 And over the years, I just found it so amazing

00:08:11.800 that I can build some software once,

00:08:13.940 and the more it grows, the less it costs me.

00:08:16.660 And as long as the servers don't change,

00:08:18.400 that code will run the way it has forever.

00:08:21.180 Now I have a lot of friends that wanna get into software,

00:08:23.740 but what they miss is these key points

00:08:25.900 to make the software work.

00:08:27.380 Because if you don't have people using it

00:08:29.500 and loving it the way you need to,

00:08:31.300 then it's not gonna create the margins

00:08:32.740 because customers are gonna come and they're gonna go.

00:08:34.320 Number one is a sticky product.

00:08:36.180 You wanna build a tool that solves a problem in a business

00:08:39.900 where they have to use it every day.

00:08:42.600 Think about things that are painkillers, not vitamins.

00:08:45.040 You wanna create something that's a must have problem solve,

00:08:48.100 not a nice to have like a vitamin.

00:08:50.060 Think dating sites where it's just like a one and done

00:08:53.120 or taxes where they do it once a year. 0.64

00:08:55.120 Those are not tools that are gonna have daily usage

00:08:58.360 like a Dropbox or a Slack.

00:09:00.080 So you wanna look for problems that are sticky

00:09:03.000 in regards to the product solving those problems

00:09:05.180 and keeping them around.

00:09:06.500 Number two is boring industry.

00:09:08.620 See, most people build software for marketing or sales

00:09:11.560 because it's what they know,

00:09:12.400 but the problem is the customers are gonna be swapping

00:09:14.220 off of your product to your competitors

00:09:16.300 every three to six months.

00:09:18.000 You wanna be in boring industries

00:09:19.940 like local services, lawn care, body shop software,

00:09:23.540 government is definitely a fit.

00:09:25.540 You wanna find customers that aren't always looking

00:09:28.560 for the latest whiz bang,

00:09:30.120 but you can solve a core problem

00:09:32.060 in their business using software.

00:09:34.320 Number three is first time user experience,

00:09:36.360 also pronounced Fatui.

00:09:37.900 The key is, is you wanna look at your software

00:09:40.820 as like the level one of a video game.

00:09:42.920 You know, when you start playing a video game,

00:09:44.260 they don't just like drop you in and say,

00:09:45.800 start fighting or start racing.

00:09:47.260 Like they walk you through the process

00:09:49.080 And they actually teach you, you're not playing the game,

00:09:51.260 but you're kind of playing the game.

00:09:53.000 That is the same concept you wanna do with your software

00:09:55.620 so you don't overwhelm people

00:09:57.100 and get them to what's called activation

00:09:59.660 or receiving core value.

00:10:01.260 Most people try to add too much to the product,

00:10:03.820 especially when people just sign up

00:10:05.700 and it confuses the customer.

00:10:07.400 So you wanna focus on that first time user experience

00:10:09.880 to make sure they activate

00:10:11.120 and receive the value promise on your homepage.

00:10:13.720 Number four is focus on retention.

00:10:16.440 See, too often people wanna focus on the chocolate,

00:10:19.120 which is marketing and sales

00:10:20.240 and getting more customers and leads

00:10:21.620 and just trying to get as many people into the thing.

00:10:24.000 But the real broccoli of software is retention

00:10:26.680 and keeping people from churning out,

00:10:29.500 figuring out of the people that leave,

00:10:31.120 why did they leave?

00:10:31.900 Try to keep them back

00:10:32.840 because the more you can keep the customers that you've got,

00:10:35.480 the higher the lifetime value will be

00:10:37.400 of your customers over time,

00:10:38.760 which will massively increase your gross margin

00:10:41.560 and what makes software so powerful.

00:10:43.640 Those are the best businesses you can start in 2024.

00:10:46.440 And if you wanna learn how to go

00:10:47.920 from zero to million in 60 days,

00:10:50.140 click the link and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - February 04, 2024

I Discovered the Best Businesses to Start in 2026

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