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.
Welcome to the Martell Method. I went from rehab at 17 to building a $100 million empire and being a Wall Street Journal best-selling author.
In this podcast, I'll show you exactly how to build a life and business you don't grow to hate. And make sure you don't miss anything by subscribing to my newsletter at martellmethod.com.
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 wanna have a business that thrives, you wanna have a great job, go solve problems for people that have money.
Broke people, there'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, simple 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 because complexity is the ceiling of growth.
Number six, cashflow is critical. Don't finance

your customers. If people want to buy from you and you have fixed costs, 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 customers

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 and I'll do it this way.
And it turns out it didn't work. Why? Because 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.
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 gonna tell me they did it afterwards because they gotta 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. Before we get back to the episode, if you're enjoying it so far, could you go ahead and do me a huge favor and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify? Reviews help us get up in the rankings, which gives us credibility to reach out to bigger and bigger guests.
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Let's get back to the episode. 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 are 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 gotta 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 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 to 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.
Before we get back to the episode, if you actually want to know what my real life looks like and see the people and the businesses and the companies I buy and my family and just like how I make it all work, go follow me on Instagram, Dan Martell, 2Ls and Martell on Instagram. It's where I show the behind the scenes, the real deal, real time.
I'd love to see you there. Have an amazing day.
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 wanna wake up every day and go, how do I win? You don't even want to talk about considering the option of losing because 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 network 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 because 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.
Because 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 have 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. Before we get back to this episode, if you prefer to watch your content, then go find me on YouTube.
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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 bosses 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 a five-year-old. You know, the other day we were remodeling my studio office and my GM comes in and he asked me, hey, you know, what are you doing with those shelves? Are you gonna 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. And he started working on hiring a designer to design the shelves because 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 because 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're 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 having 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 because 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 is because 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 they're 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 them the job offer. Number 29, use the 108010 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 108010 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 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.

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