The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone

Introduction

Setting the right targets, estimating the mandatory effort, and operating at the right level of action(s) are the only things that will guarantee success — and that will allow you to blast through business cliches, competition, client resistance, economic challenges, risk aversion, and even fear of failure while taking concrete steps to reach your dreams.

What Is the 10X Rule

Extraordinary by definition means anything outside the realm of what most normal people can and do achieve. And of course that definition would then depend on with whom or what class of success you are comparing yourself.

Success is the degree of measure of attaining some desired object or end. An interesting thing about success is that it’s like a breath of air; although your last breath of air is important, it’s not nearly as important as the next one.

Extremely successful people know that their efforts must continue in order for them to realize new achievements. Once the hunt for a desired object or goal is abandoned, the cycle of success comes to an end.

When people start limiting the amount of success they desire, I assure you they will limit what will be required of them in order to achieve success and will fail miserably at doing what it takes to keep it.

As long as you are alive, you will either live to accomplish your own goals and dreams or be used as a resource to accomplish someone else’s.

Why the 10X Rule Is Vital

Never reduce a target. Instead, increase actions.

Any target attacked with the right actions in the right amounts with persistence is attainable.

What Is Success?

The most crucial things to know about success — in order to have it and keep it — are the following:

1. Success is important.
2. Success is your duty.
3. There is no shortage of success.

Individuals and groups must actively accomplish their goals and targets in order to carry on. If not, they will either cease to exist or be consumed and become part of something else.

Winning — over and over again — at everything in which you involve yourself ensures that you will be able to further expand. And it guarantees that bout you and your ideas will survive into the feature.

Success Is Your Duty

The continued pursuit of success should be approached not as a choice but as an absolute must.

Success must be approached from an ethical viewpoint. Success is your duty, obligation, and responsibility!

There Is No Shortage of Success

Success is something people make. Great ideas, new technologies, innovative products, and fresh solutions to old problems are all things that will never exist in shortages.

Success for anyone or any group is ultimately a positive contribution to all people and all groups as it provides validation of the possibilities to all.

Assume Control for Everything

People who typically succeed are required to take big actions — and it is impossible to take big actions if you don’t take responsibility. It is equally impossible to do something positive when you are spending your time making excuses.

Anyone who uses blame as the reason why something happened or did not happen will never accumulate real success in life and only further his or her status as a slave on this planet.

To get where you want to go in life, you must adopt the view that whatever is going on in your world — good, bad, or nothing — is something caused by you.

Once you start to approach every situation as someone who is acting — not being acted upon — you will start to have more control over your life.

Four Degrees of Action

The more action you take, the better your chances are of getting a break. Disciplined, consistent, and persistent actions are more of a determining factor in the creation of success that any other combination of things.

Categories of degrees of actions:

1. Do nothing.
2. Retreat.
3. Take normal levels of action.
4. Take massive action.

Regardless of which degree of action you operate in, they all require work in their own ways.

Someone who takes average actions but is capable of much more is really electing to do some variation of doing nothing or retreating.

Taking normal action is the most dangerous of the levels, because it is the most accepted by society.

Taking massive action means making somewhat unreasonable choices and then following these up with even more action.

You will know you are stepping into the realm of massive action when you create new problems for yourself and start to receive criticism and warning from others.

Money and power follow attention, so whoever can get the most attention is the person who takes the most action and sooner or later will get the most results.

Making massive action a discipline will break you through obscurity, increase you value to the marketplace, and help you generate success in any area you elect.

Average Is a Failing Formula

You need to change your commitment and thinking to be far above any concepts of average.

Average never yields anything more than average and usually much less. Average thinking and actions will only guarantee you misery, uncertainty, and failure.

10X Goals

To maintain your enthusiasm, you have to make your goals substantial enough that they keep your attention. Average and realistic goals are almost always a letdown to the person setting them — who is then unable to fuel his or her goals with the actions necessary.

Never set realistic goals; you can get a realistic life without setting goals for it.

I recommend you do the following:

1. Set 10X targets.
2. Align them with your other purposes.
3. Write them down every day — when you wake up and before you go to sleep.

Competition Is for Sissies

Competing with others limits a person’s ability to think creatively because he or she is constantly watching what someone else is doing.

Never make it your goal to compete. Instead, do everything you can to dominate your sector in order to avoid spending your time chasing someone else.

You can’t dominate if you don’t penetrate, and you won’t penetrate by using reasonable levels of activity.

Two things will happen when you take the right amount of action: You will get a new set of problems and your competition will start promoting you.

It doesn’t matter what you do — it does matter that your goal is to dominate your sector with actions, that are immediate, consistent, and persistent and at levels that no one else is willing to operate at or duplicate.

Breaking Out of the Middle Class

The middle class is, in large part, a goal that will not provide you with what you truly want. It is “middle” — normal or average — synonymous with the terms we’ve already deemed as highly unattractive.

The middle class is the most suppressed, restricted, and confined socioeconomic demographic in the world. Those who desire to be a part of it are compelled to think and act in a certain way where “just enough” is the reward.

Obsession Isn’t a Disease; It’s a Gift

Obsession is not a bad thing here; it is a requirement to get where you want to go. In fact, you want to be so fanatical about success that the world knows you will not compromise or go away.

Most people make only enough effort for it to feel like work, whereas the most successful follow up every action with an obsession to see it through to a reward.

If your ideas do not excessively preoccupy your own thoughts, then how can you ever expect them to preoccupy the thoughts of others?

I suggest that you become obsessed about the things you want; otherwise, you are going to spend a lifetime being obsessed with making up excuses as to why you didn’t get the life you wanted.

Go “All In” and Overcommit

You can go “all in” with energy as many times as you want — because even if you fail, you can keep going all in!

There are no shortages of how many times you can get up and continue! There is no failure unless you quit!

Grand claims, over-commitment, and extreme promises will immediately separate you from the masses — and therefore force you to deliver at 10X levels.

One of the major difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that the former look for problems to resolve, whereas the latter make every attempt to avoid them.

Expand — Never Contract

You must implement the tactic of expansion regardless of whether the economy and those surrounding you encourage you to do so.

You want to expand the goal of dominating your sector and getting attention by taking massive action.

Burn the place down

• It’s easier and most natural to continue taking massive actions when you are winning — and winning is only possible with massive actions.
• Don’t worry about the resistance you’re afraid you’ll face from either the market or your competitors.

Fear Is the Great Indicator

Fear is actually a sign that you are doing what’s needed to move in the right direction.

Rather than seeing fear as a sign to run — as most other people in the market will do — it must become your indicator to go.

Fear doesn’t just tell you what to do; it also tells you when to do it.

Regardless of the outcome; I would say that it’s far preferable to fail while doing something than to fail by over-preparing while someone else walks up and scoops up your dreams.

If you aren’t experience fear, you are not taking new actions and growing.

The Myth of Time Management

The only way to increase time is to get more done in the time you have.

Most people only work enough so that it feels like work, whereas successful people work at pace that gets such satisfying results that work is a reward.

The point is that we are controlling our time rather than just haphazardly trying to manage it.

Criticism Is a Sign of Success

Criticism is not something that you want to avoid; rather, it’s what you must expect to come your way once you start hitting it big.

When you start taking enough action, it won’t be long before you’re judged by people who aren’t taking any.

The only way to handle criticism is to foresee it as an element of your success formula. Much like fear, it’s a sign that you are making the right moves in the right volumes, getting enough attention, and making enough of a splash.

Customer Satisfaction Is the Wrong Target

Make your primary focus commanding attention and generating customers before you worry about making them happy.

The client who never buys your product suggests that you have a real serious customer satisfaction problem because you never made that person a customer.

Brands that truly deliver customer satisfaction do not talk about customer service; they focus on customer acquisition.

Companies fail not because they offend customers but because they don’t take enough action to make these individuals customers in the first place.

Omnipresence

You want people to see you so often that they think of you constantly and instantaneously identify your face or name with not just the offering your represent but even the offering made by those similar to you.

Unless people know who you are, no one will pay attention to what you represent.

Once you match your mind-set with the right purpose, you will start taking 10X actions — and find yourself simultaneously propelled into more places that you ever thought possible.

The best way to even the score against those who have it in for you is to make yourself so will known that every time they look up — each morning when they wake and right before they go to sleep at night — they see evidence of you and your success.

Excuses

Excuses are never the reason for why you did or didn’t do something. They’re just a revision of the facts that you make up in order to help yourself feel better about what happened(or didn’t).

Engaging in self-pity and excuse making are signs that someone has an extremely minimal degree of responsibility.

Successful or Unsuccessful

Success is no different than any other skill. Duplicate the actions and mindsets of successful people and you will create success for yourself.

People with a “can do” attitude approach every situation with the outlook that no matter what, it can be done.

Communicate to yourself and others that you are willing to do what is necessary to figure it out!

Successful people see all situations — even problems and complaints — as opportunities.

When you are to develop a more positive outlook, you begin to see a challenge as stimulation to engage — rather than as an excuse to avoid something.

Successful individuals love to seek out problems because they know that almost every problem is universal in some way or another.

The successful are willing to take gambles — to put it all out there and know, regardless of the outcome, that they can go back and do it again.

Successful people recognize how vital it is to act without reason. They know they cannot afford to act in accordance with the agreed-upon realities.

Massive action demands that you throw caution to the wind, even if it puts you in the path of danger.

Move your attention from conserving money to creating wealth, and you’ll be thinking as successful people do.

Your ability to take action will be a major factor in determining your potential success — and is a discipline that you should spend time on daily.

When given an option to do or not do something, always say yes! Life is to be lived — something that becomes impossible to do when you’re constantly saying no.

Commit fully as though you are already successful and demonstrate that commitment to all those with — and for — whom you work.

Commit to being completely unreasonable and going all the way. Don’t accept any excuses! No settling allowed!

Discipline yourself to perform now — not later — and I assure you that the volume of endeavors you are undertaking will quickly increase the quality of work — and propel you to move with enhanced conviction and certainty.

You can train to increase your skills and your confidence, courage is only attained by doing — especially doing things that you fear.

Change is not something to resist; it’s something that should keep you excited.

Successful people invest time, energy, and money in improving themselves. As a result, they don’t focus on how hard the work is but rather on how rewarding the results are!

Highly successful individuals are not concerned with the way things “have always been done”; they’re interested in finding new and better ways.

If you don’t stay focused on your goals, you will spend your life achieving the objectives of other people — particularly those who are goal oriented.

Until you start approaching your job as though you are on a mission, it will always to be reduced to “just a job”.

True motivation — the underlying reason for doing something — must come from within.

Results(not efforts) — regardless of the challenges, resistance, and problems — are a primary focus of the successful.

Dream big, go big, and then figure out how to go bigger than that!

The next reality of how things will or can be is only as far away as the next person who creates it.

Committing first means getting 100 percent behind whatever it is you are committing to before you figure out every detail.

The most successful among us are driven by ethical obligation and motivation to do something significant that aligns with their potential.

You want everyone on your team winning and improving because this is likely to improve your game. For that reason, you always want to do everything you can to bring the rest of the team to higher levels.

Join the ranks of successful people who know that their income, wealth, health, and future are dependent upon their ability to continue to seek out new information and never stop learning.

Be willing to be uncomfortable, and do what makes other people uncomfortable as well. It is a sure sign that you’re on your way to success.

Make a habit of “reaching up” in all of your relationships — toward people who are better connected, better educated, and even more successful. These individuals have much more to share that your supposed “equals”.

Discipline is what you use to complete and activity until the activity — regardless of how uncomfortable — becomes your normal operating procedure.

Getting Started with 10X

A few things to keep in mind as you start:

1. Do not reduce your goals as you write them.
2. Do not get lost in the details of how to accomplish them at this point.
3. Ask yourself, “What actions can I take today to move me toward these goals?”
4. Take whatever actions you come up with — regardless of what they are or how you feel.
5. Do not prematurely value the outcome of your actions.
6. Go back each day and review the list.

The goal has to be more valuable than the risk — or you have determined the wrong target.

Success is your duty, obligation, and responsibility, and by thinking at 10X levels and taking 10X actions, I am certain you will create more success than you have even dreamed of!