5. The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone

This is the big idea. Best-selling books in15 minutes on Himalaya learning today, we'll be reading the 10 X rule by grantCardone.

[00:00:22] What if the difference betweensuccess and failure is simply a matter of mindset and action. According togrant Cardone, CEO of Cardone capital international speaker and top salestrainer. This is the essence of the 10 X rule. The 10 X rule is a principlethat establishes the right levels of thinking and the right levels of actionrequired to achieve success.

[00:00:48] You can think of the 10 X ruleas a superhuman commitment to success, which makes it more of a discipline thanan inherent talent. If you work 10 times harder than the average person and setyour goals 10 times higher than the average person you'll build lifestylehabits that are naturally 10 times more successful than the average person.

[00:01:10] So let's jump into the book tolearn more about what's needed to live a successful 10 X life.

[00:01:20] The 10 X rule has two parts, oneassessing the level of effort necessary to achieve a goal and two adjustingyour thinking. So you can dare to dream at levels that seem unreasonable byordinary standards. Many people succeed at the first step of the 10 X rule, butfail at the second because they don't adopt a domination mentality.

[00:01:45] Domination here doesn't meancontrolling other people, rather it's the willingness to do what others won'tdo unless we already have everything we desire. And most of us don't, we needto adjust our mindset and actions in order for us to achieve the next level upsuccess is like breathing. Your last breath was important, but not nearly asimportant as the next one.

[00:02:10] If you want to survive. Byextension being successful is about being able to sustain success. Cardonedidn't go to a great school. Wasn't lucky in any traditional sense and didn'thave a good network. When he was starting out in business. He just worked 10times harder than others did for every sales call that his peers made.

[00:02:33] Cardone made 10. When startingto invest in real estate, he looked at 10 times more properties than he couldbuy in order to make the best decision at the best price Cardone calls, thistype of action, massive action. Most people fail to achieve their desired goalsbecause they don't take enough massive action in their lives.

[00:02:56] Limiting your desires or goalsis an inherent error of judgment. If you limit the goal, you'll limit theamount of action you need to take, which in turn will set yourself up forfailure. If someone says they want to set realistic goals because they don'twant to be disappointed by failure. Falling short on 10 X goals will alwaysyield better results than falling short on one X goals.

[00:03:23] If you only achieve 50% of yourgoal, would you rather have 50% of a realistic goal of saving $10,000 or a 10 Xgoal of saving 100 that was in dollars Cardone. four common mistakes when setting goals, some of which we've alreadytouched upon one Ms. Targeting goals that are too low to underestimating theactions needed to accomplish the goal.

[00:03:53] Three competing instead ofdominating and for underestimating the adversity that will be faced along theway. This last point is crucial. When setting goals, there will always bethings along the way. You can't control economic changes, legal red tape,interpersonal problems, societal shifts, et cetera. The 10 X rule allows you toget through these unscaved or at the very least less scaped.

[00:04:23] It forces you to increaseefforts, not excuses. Don't be pessimistic. Be prepared. When Cardon launchedhis first business at the age of 29, he blamed his initial lack of success onmany factors, his young age, the economy, others stupidity, bad timing and soon. But after committing to putting in 10 X, the amount of effort he previouslywas, things began to change immediately.

[00:04:52] Instead of three sales calls aday, he did 30. 10 times the effort began yielding four times the results themarketplace began sensing he was a force to be reckoned with not just a new kidon the block. This anecdote implies that we shouldn't reduce our targets tobecome more realistic, but increase our actions to rise to the occasion.

[00:05:16] The 10 X rule assumes that thetarget is never the problem. This anecdote also implies that luck is oftenproportional to effort. The more actions you take, the greater your chances areof getting lucky. If success is the fruit that the 10 X rule bears, we shouldtake a moment to define success. Success means means different things todifferent people at different points in their lives.

[00:05:42] Success is not the same for ateenager as it is for someone in their early thirties, as it is for someone intheir sixties. And so on success exists in many realms, financial, familial,mental, et cetera. There are three keys to know about success regardless of therealm and the 10 X rule applies to them all.

[00:06:08] The first key is that success isimportant. Regardless of culture, religion, or time period. Success is vital towellbeing on the individual family and group level. Without it things start tocrumble in order for any one of these subgroups to succeed and carry on, theyneed to achieve their goals. It is essential to survival playing the game.

[00:06:33] Isn't enough. You must win. Wehave to dismiss cliches that tell us success. Isn't everything. Of course it'snot, but what is the point of diminishing its importance? If you quit caringabout success, you will quit winning. And if you quit winning, you will quitaltogether. If you quit, you don't benefit those close to you.

[00:06:55] Don't benefit and ultimatelysociety doesn't benefit. The second key is that success is your duty. If yousee success as an ethical responsibility to yourself, family, company, andfuture, you will stop casually waiting for success to happen to you and starttaking actionable steps towards it. For people who treat success like a dutyand achieve it again.

[00:07:20] And again, success becomes ahabit and a lifestyle. The third key is understanding that there is no shortageof success. Success is not a limited resource like gold or diamonds. It's not azero sum game. There can be many winners competition seems to suggest that inorder for one to win, another must lose.

[00:07:44] This is true for a board game,but not of business and life. If big winners think without limits, for example,the longstanding success of Microsoft didn't stop Apple from innovating newproducts for the market. Buying into the myth of the shortage of successcreates envy. When we see a television personality paid $400 million, ratherthan asking how is that possible or that's unfair.

[00:08:12] We should think anything ispossible buying into the myth of a shortage of success. Also puts a limit onyour goals and big winners must set their goals without limits victims andcrybabies. Don't attract success. Success happens because someone takes bigactions and making excuses prevents those actions from being taken successful.

[00:08:37] People accept high levels ofaccountability for good and bad outcomes. Uh, like even for things they can'tcontrol, they take ownership of things. They can't control by doing somethingto change the future. For example, if the electricity goes out, rather thanblaming the state or the company for the blackout or complaining, just get abackup generator.

[00:09:00] Now, a generator might costmoney, but not as much money as being without electricity for three days.Thinking like this increases responsibility, believe you are acting, not beingacted upon.

[00:09:17] Cardone outlines four degrees ofaction. One doing nothing to retreating, three, taking normal levels of actionand for taking massive action. Counter-intuitively all of these actions requirework and energy. Doing nothing means no longer taking actions to move yourselfforward. People in this group spend time justifying their lack of action tothemselves, which actually takes work the wrong kind of work.

[00:09:50] So doing nothing, isn'tliterally doing nothing. Usually people who do nothing at work are dedicatingmassive action to something else. Retreating epitomizes the fear of success andmoves in the opposite direction of big goals. Retreaters might claim to oneunfruitful action at work as justification for not repeating that action everagain.

[00:10:15] When in reality, that actionprobably needs to be repeated at the 10 X level in order to see any results.Maybe they're listening to their friends or colleagues who are telling themthey're too ambitious. Once you decide there's nothing you can do aboutsomething. You're a retriever. Again, a retriever must work to justify theirdecision to themselves when they could be dedicating that energy to massiveaction.

[00:10:43] Taking normal levels of actionis dangerous because it's considered normal and creates a complacentmiddle-class they have normal careers, normal marriages, et cetera, but nothingthey do is a great success. As long as. Average works. They're happy, but thereality is relationships, the economy and other aspects of life, sometimes dipbelow the average status quo, which threatens people who consistently takenormal levels of action in life.

[00:11:14] Taking massive action. Cardoneargues is natural. Look at ordinary kids and their massive curiosity abouteverything. Look at a beehive or an anthill society, discourages kids from thiskind of massive action curiosity. And for many this discouragement lingers forthe rest of life, people who take massive action, don't count the hours intheir day.

[00:11:38] They work until they get resultsapproach each day. Like your life depended on it. It can be exhausting, but itneeds to be done. Society will think you're insane, greedy or obsessive, butthat's because they're operating at normal levels of action. It's simple aboveaverage performances, yield above average results.

[00:12:03] The problem with average actionsis that they don't take the unexpected into consideration. After Cardone hadachieved some level of success and began coasting. He was cheated in a businessdeal that cost him greatly because he had stopped operating at 10 X levels. Atthis point in his career, this unexpected incident took a serious toll on hisfinances.

[00:12:26] Most new businesses fail becausethey overestimate how well things will go. They make an average business planput in an average amount of work and only see average results that don't takepotential disasters such as this into account.

[00:12:45] people fail to achieve theirgoals because they set them too low to begin with. If you don't set your goalsbig enough, you'll never actually act big enough to succeed a goal that seemstoo big will sustain your attention and force you to tap into your fullpotential. Our goals tend to be similar to the people we associate with.

[00:13:06] So trying to associate withpeople who have big goals. When setting your goals, be clear about their biggerpurpose. If your goal is to make tons of money, knowing what you actually wantto do with that money will motivate you to get closer to the goal. Smallthinking is an inherent risk. If your parents outlive their savings, you'll beresponsible for taking care of them.

[00:13:31] And on top of that, you'll alsobe funding your own retirement and possibly putting kids through college. Ifyou don't plan big and something on average happens like an increase in thecost of living. It puts the stability of your life, risk

[00:13:51] old axioms and beliefs competingwith others. Isn't good for business competing limits the ability to thinkcreatively, because it means you're constantly watching what other people aredoing instead of competing. Dominate the best way to dominate is by finding anunfair advantage. This does not mean being unethical.

[00:14:14] It means finding a space thatyou can carve out just for yourself, focus on what others can't do. This willput you ahead. Don't just be in the race. Try to be the only viable winner. Thebest way to dominate is by getting the most out of the resources you have. If acompetitor has more money than you do, outdo them with more emails, personalvisits, social media posts, et cetera, most people's biggest problem isobscurity.

[00:14:44] So the only way to get noticedis to be 10 times more visible than your competitors. When social media wasstill new Cardone started posting twice a day. A colleague told him that thatwas too much. After ramping up Twitter posts to the 10 X level, the generalpublic's awareness about Cardone began to

[00:15:09] many people dedicate their livesto it. Striving to be in the middle-class is the wrong goal. The average incomeof the middle class worker doesn't make it easy to live in desirable citieslike New York or LA, nor does it offer financial security. Many people whoremain in the middle class have come to accept just getting by.

[00:15:31] As we now know, if an unexpectedcircumstance arises, this mentality is a risk middle-class means differentthings at different time periods and in different places. So Cardona defines itspecifically as a mindset of complacency that even someone who earns a milliondollars can fall into. In spite of widespread claims, most middle-class earnersdon't have one third of their income left for discretionary income and theirdependence on credit makes downward mobility threat

[00:16:06] success requires you to give100% of your efforts, creativity, persistence, and energy. These are notmaterial things that have limited quantities like money. Your limit, is thatwhat you impose upon yourself? We must be like the tortoise and the Haresimultaneously the speed of the hair and the steadfastness of the tortoise makefor a winning combination.

[00:16:31] If you fail to achieve yourgoals, you can keep on getting up and trying again, an infinite number oftimes, make another call, try out another tactic. With the ability to try againand infinite number of times, why not go all in every hand, playing it safe isnot a safe strategy drawing on this mindset, Cardone, critiques, the businessrule of thumb of under committing and over-delivering as totally backwards.

[00:17:00] Would you see a Broadway showthat promised a mediocre cast? When in reality they were great. No. Insteadover commit or at the very least fully commit. And then over deliver overcommitting may create some problems that need to be resolved, but that's abetter situation to be in and then avoiding problems altogether.

[00:17:22] But what about when times aretough during recessions businesses might want to reduce, save and staycautious. This is a form of retreating, which is a violation of the 10 X rule.If you need to retreat and conserve out of necessity, make sure it's only for ashort period of time. Contracting is never a good business model also, justbecause you can serve money doesn't mean you need to conserve your creativityor mental energy.

[00:17:52] You have to maintain a mindsetof expansion regardless of the state of the economy. Cardona made it throughthe 2008 recession by cutting his own salary and reallocating that money toadvertising and it paid off. He also demanded increased productivity from hisemployees and to begin increasing his public presence with more interviews,video content, and blog articles than ever before.

[00:18:17] When you start taking action ata 10 X level, especially during trying times, you may start experiencing fearand that's a good sign. And absence of fear is probably a sign that you'redoing. What's comfortable for you. Paradoxically, a lack of fear is what shouldscare you. Fear is often emotional rather than rational and emotions are oftenused to justify failure.

[00:18:43] One way of stopping fear fromholding you back is by refusing to give yourself time to reflect on that fear.If you're afraid of walking into your boss's office and you put it off by gettingcoffee or ruminating on what may or may not go wrong, you're just adding fuelto that fear fire. Don't give yourself that time to reflect.

[00:19:03] And over-prepare just actbecause fear is often false events appearing real F E a R. Failure comes inmany forms, both from acting and not acting. But if you don't act out of fear,you are guaranteed to fail.

[00:19:28] I be thinking I can't possiblyoperate at 10 X levels because I don't have the time. Cardone thinks thatpeople who are obsessed with time management tend to operate from a mentalityof scarcity. What's more important is knowing exactly what your goals are andunderstanding the amount of time and energy needed to achieve them.

[00:19:48] If you don't understand how muchtime you need to achieve your goals, what's the point in trying to manage yourtime. Once you figure out your priorities, you may be surprised at how muchtime you waste on things that are not conducive to them own your time, ratherthan haphazardly trying to manage it.

[00:20:05] You also might be thinking. Ican't possibly operate at 10 X levels because it will hurt my brand or mycompany. People will think I'm too aggressive. This might be true to somedegree, but with an ever increasing amount of products and services being knownand constantly remaining on the radar is absolutely necessary.

[00:20:27] If you commit toover-delivering, you'll never need to worry about customer satisfaction, worryabout non customer satisfaction. That is potential clients who could be satisfiedby your product or service, but who don't know about you yet, customersatisfaction problems are easily fixed. Non customer satisfaction can make orbreak you without customers.

[00:20:49] There's no customersatisfaction. So focus on growing customers. The obsession with customersatisfaction can be detrimental to actually acquiring new customers. Insteadbecome obsessed with your brands. Omnipresence people should see your brand sooften that they can't help identify it with a quality offering money.

[00:21:12] And other successes are aby-product of this kind of omnipresence. If everyone knows who you are, youwill profit from that in one way or another. Be active and say yes to everyopportunity. Get involved everywhere. So now that you have a sense of how the10 X rule works and have heard some anecdotal stories from Cardone's own life,how do you get started on your 10 X journey?

[00:21:37] First decide when to getstarted. And the answer is now set 10 X goals. Big enough to keep yourselfinterested and know that they will seem unreasonable. Don't overwhelm yourselfwith technicalities and minutia that will discourage you from setting the goalat the correct magnitude. Commit first, figure it out later, don't add time,hesitation or doubt into the equation.

[00:22:03] Remember that people will giveyou pushback and discouragement, but you cannot fall for it. Your goal must bemore valuable than the risk. And if it's not, you've determined the wrong goal.This episode was co-produced by Himalaya and campfire. If you want to use thisbook at your company to build skills and culture, You need a new way to hostyour corporate book club.

[00:22:27] Visit campfire.com to learnmore.