17 Business Cheat Codes That WIll Make You Rich

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.
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, pick the right business model. Most people end up in a business or an industry that they know because it's 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 TikTok 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 because 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, we'll 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, 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 has 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 over promise 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 you 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. Because 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 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 calendar, 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 because 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.
Before we get back to this episode, if you prefer to watch your content, then go find me on YouTube. I have this episode on YouTube.
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Now let's get back to the episode. 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 gonna 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 gotta 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 gonna document it, I'm gonna record it, and then I'm gonna 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 repeating 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 whether they get better.
They wanna 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 then it 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 because 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 remove as many components as you can 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 six 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 be 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? 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 has 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 hire 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 and 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 gonna 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

the 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 gonna repel success.
If you're the kind of person that can keep their word, people wanna do business with you. So 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 and 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'd call them up. I'd pretend I was on the product team.
I didn't want them to know it was the 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 ask 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 gonna be able to learn faster, deliver on their needs faster, and have them be absolutely blown away that the owner is talking to them.
Know your customers, 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. 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.
We can bring them to you. It would mean so much.
Let's get back to the episode. 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 realized 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.
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 meaty 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 four hours than most people 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 are trying to reduce their expenses.

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 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? 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 so 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 in the same financial situation with the exact same friends that you have today, which if that's where you want to be, great. But I'm guessing you're not watching this because 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 hired 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 10-80-10 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 because 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 because 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, Dan Martell, 2Ls of 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. 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. 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 because 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 because the people build the business.
If you don't do this, guess what? You're the bottleneck. And it's funny because I always get people that say to me, it's like, Dan, well, what if I train them up and then they leave? Which I replied 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 been 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 reel 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 because 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 aligned with their vision. And the crazy part is you don't need to have all the answers.
If you want them, it's because you have insecurities that you need to know everything. But the truth is some of the smartest people with the highest IQs aren 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 because 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 eight 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 to 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 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 wouldn't 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 backend 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 wanna 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 six months.
And I laugh. I'm like six 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 100 customers today?

Did you do the marketing you were supposed to?

You wanna 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. Because here's what I've

learned. The man who loves walking will walk way further than the one who loves the destination.

Thanks for listening to Martell Method. If you like this episode, could you do me a huge favor

and go leave a review? This helps us get the podcast more ears and helps more people get unstuck,

reclaim their freedom and build their empire.