Here's the truth about starting and building a business you need to hear. For starters, there is no hack to outsmart the system. You'll never find the magic combination of levers to pull that will skyrocket a business from nothing since it doesn't exist.
Chasing an elixir that makes you successful overnight is a fool's errand and will most likely leave you disappointed. There are however frameworks you can follow to greatly increase your chances of success. That framework is probably something you already know since it's taught as early as high school business class - the 4P's of marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. We're going to go over real world use and what they don't tell you in business school.
Product
Development and delivery of your core offering
Price
Strategic pricing for profitability and competitiveness
Place
Distribution channels and market positioning
Promotion
Marketing strategies and customer acquisition
Product
The first P is the most important. The number one rule of business isn't profit minus expenses equals profit. It is you will not be able to sell a bad product. Now, some might start thinking of brands with mediocre or bad products that sold well. However, those are cherry picked examples. What you don't hear about is the many more who failed trying the same approach. Research suggests that people tend to be less rational in the short term but more rational in the long term. This makes sense since if you bought a product which people praised to the moon but ended up being terrible, how likely are you going to buy it again, say positive things about it or recommend it?
Product can be subdivided into 2 categories: Development and Delivery. Development is creating the product itself while delivery encompasses manufacturing, distribution and efficiency - everything to take the product to market as cost efficiently and as quickly as possible. As a general rule, you only need to be good at one (but not neglect the other) to succeed. If you can be great at both, then at the minimum getting customers will be easy. At a maximum, if you're in an important industry, then you can change the world.
For many new founders with limited resources, getting good with Delivery is hard. Many will elect to start with Development. When it comes to Development, there are 2 main components - functionality and aesthetics. Functionality are features which almost everyone would want and encompass a wide variety of factors such as speed, durability, safety, health and convenience (depending on the product category). They are objective and are what people ultimately look for. Aesthetics includes factors like color, texture and flavour. They are generally subjective (with few exceptions such as certain colors. Selling pink if your audience is primarily men likely won't work out). If you focus on purely aesthetics, it's a roll of the dice whether or not your product will be a success since people have differing preferences for style and those preferences change over time. As such, it is recommended that when launching new products to try to attain advantages in terms of functionality in at least one meaningful area over competition.
Price, Place and Promotions
Price is heavily linked with product in the Delivery part in that you can only sell a product at lower prices profitably if you're able to manufacture it at a lower price in the first place. When pricing your items, it is important not only to be profitable (in many cases) but also have an additional cash buffer if something goes wrong.
One virtually foolproof strategy is selling a product with better functionality than your competitors but a lower cost. This doesn't mean you need to sell something cheap but it does mean if you're selling a premium product to price it at less than other premium products in your category. By doing so, you will almost certainly win over customers in the long run since they are strictly better off going with you. They are getting a better product at a cheaper price. As such even if they don't buy from you immediately, if they go with a competitor but are aware of you, they're going to realize they've been ripped off and next time would go with you instead. Of course, being able to profitably sell a better product at a lower price is easier said than done.
Place is where your products are sold and as a general rule, you'll have to start off with your own distribution channels (like your website) since getting into retail stores or selling via partnerships are difficult for new businesses.
Promotions are what most people think of when they think of the word marketing. These are the strategies you use to get word of your product or business out into the market. They include everything from Google ads, SEO, organic social media, publicity & press, billboard advertising and more. There are 2 components to promotion - targeting and message. Targeting refers to the audiences you want to reach. Messaging is the content of your promotions and what you want to convey to your customers.
Conclusion
For a product to sell, you generally have to cater for all 4 P's of marketing. Conversely if a product isn't selling, then it is because there's something wrong with one or more of the 4 P's.
The reason I put product as one category and all the other 3 P's together is because of how disproportionately important product is (I would say 80% of businesses success is based on the 2 components of product - Development and Delivery). It can also be very difficult and costly to make or fix a product. If you've been in business a while, you'll probably notice people claiming to be guru's, advisors, consultants, coaches or whatever they call themselves claiming they have a strategy that can 10X your sales. They will almost never succeed since they ignore the fundamentals of how this world happens to work. Even if by some miracle you do get a temporary uplift in sales, it will only be temporary. If there's something wrong with your product, if people buy once they won't buy from you again.
Are they any good books I can read to teach myself about businesses? Absolutely. This will depend on your industry but will involve learning how to make a good product in the first place. If you're making a physical product, learn about industrial design). If you're making a food product, learn about recipes and formulation. If you're making an app, learn the principles of conversion optimization and good user experience (UX) practices.
In terms of learning how to do the rest such as creating a conversion optimized website, doing Meta ads or or creating promo videos, the resources and best practices often change with the times. As such, it's generally better to learn from update to date online content how to do those things.
This is the basic framework on how to launch a successful business. Don't chase magical hacks or secret formulas. Do create a good product and go out there and sell it.