Transcript for:
Goal Setting and Transformation Strategies

So, we are here today on a special day because today's Wednesday. We were just here two days ago. This is a very rare occasion. We're going to talk about bridging the wealth gap. But when I say bridging the wealth gap, see, you're thinking about money immediately. Money is just one of the byproducts. You've heard me say it before. You'll hear me say it again. Wealth is not money. Wealth is your ability to create value for someone other than yourself. That's what wealth is. The the more people you can create value for that are not you, that's where your wealth comes from. And I am here with international best-selling author um one of the most brilliant people that I've ever had the privilege of meeting. Somebody who is going to like expand your brain in ways you didn't know it could expand. And I am here with the author co-author of 10x is easier than 2x the gap in the gain. Personality is impermanent. Be your future self now, Slipstream, and now his latest book, The Science of Scaling. And a lot of people, unfortunately, when they read this gentleman's books, they think that he's talking about some tactics to do so they can have some desired thing in the future. But what he is always talking about, at least from my perspective, and he can correct me on this if I'm wrong, is he's talking about becoming the best version of yourself. And when you become the best version of yourself, you will be able to do the best things and you will be able to have the best things. It is my privilege and my pleasure to have live in studio none other than the man, the myth, the legend himself, Dr. Benjamin Hardy. Ben, glad to have you here, brother. I always love being with you, Myin. I always love being with you. We knew we knew this would be fun. Oh, we knew it would be fun. We've been talking about this for a while. So, here we go. We're going to dive in the deep end of the pool. Um, you started out with a when we were right before we got went live, you started out with a quote. Do you want to start with that quote? No. Start where you want to start. No, no. I'll start with that quote because what was the question? No, there was a Oh, we were talking about is it easier? Yes. Is it easier? Is it easier to follow mo the path that most people are on? Because most people live life by analogy, by copy, by imitation. They don't they don't they don't even recognize who they are and so they're just following other people around is is it seems easier to follow just follow the crowd but is it easier or does it just feel easier was my question. Yeah. So that took me to this quote right here which is behind me. Uh it's by Robert Bralt and Robert Bralt said we're kept from our goal not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal. And so everything that we're doing is based on our goals. And that's that's one of the core psychological insights that I always want people to understand is you're here in this room, you're watching this because uh it it's relevant to your goals. If it wasn't relevant to your goals, you would see it as noise. You'd you'd push it away. You wouldn't do it. Um and so usually we're taking a default path to a lesser goal. And so I think that that's the easy that's the short-term easy, the long-term hard. That's what we're always doing is we're either going for the right goal and going through the obstacles, going through the transformation, or we're shifting to a lesser goal. And whenever you start shifting to a lesser goal, um you're you're in a lot of ways contradicting yourself. You know, you're starting to lie to yourself, contradict yourself, and starting to then justify. uh and that then leads to a massive uh it leads to inner conflict that then uh creates complexity and confusion and starts slowing down growth. And so that's when when you see someone who's not growing intensely, it's because they're still saying yes to lesser paths to uh to lesser goals. That happens all the time. So good. And sometimes it gets hard to discern if it's a lesser goal. So So let's look at let's look at that phrase. Michael, can you go ahead and broadcast like like cast this the vibe board as if I were writing on it? We're not we are kept from our goal not by obstac not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal. So the objective that we have in front of us the big thing that we're supposed to do the big version of oursel that we're supposed to experience the big the big results that we're supposed to produce and experience. If it's a clear path to a lesser goal is the reason we're not getting to that lesser goal. I mean to that big goal is because the path to the big goal is not clear. The path to the big goal is often not clear. It takes a lot of work to get to to make enough progress and the path to the to the higher goal transforms a lot along the way. It's not just a singular path. It will transform a lot. Um, and so as you're advancing towards the true goal, the pathway and the people involved are going to change, but you'll never get far enough along that journey cuz you keep saying yes to the lesser goals. And so you're going to heavily miss, you know, you'll you won't you won't filter enough to actually get to what we were talking about, the level of mastery, transformation. um you won't you won't get there because all of your attention and commitment and accountability are two lesser goals. Whether that be um fear of disappointing people, whether it be me getting that quick paycheck, whether it be I don't want to fire that person, so I'm going to keep them. Whatever it is, these things that we keep out of fear lead us to the word of the Lord is right. Sorry, my phone. They lead us to this and I know he can be a controversial figure but um this is from an engineering from an engineering and from a a system design standpoint. Elon is an absolute genius at engineering and system design as well as um business obviously. Um and so he says that the most common mistake of a smart engineer is to optimize a thing that shouldn't exist. Uh, and I think that this is this is those lesser goals is optimizing things that shouldn't be in the system. Optimizing things in your life that shouldn't be there at all. A lot of businesses are are literally focusing on the wrong thing and they're spending a lot of time optimizing the wrong goal or the wrong KPI. And so being able to know what is the right goal, what do we need to strip out that shouldn't exist so that then we can advance on the right path. That's what we're looking for. But I think that this quote is a heavy a heavy hitter because I think that the majority of what most people are doing is optimizing things that if they had a better goal and were committed to a cleaner path, they would stop optimizing most of the things that they're now doing. So, so, so the my very first you you probably don't know this, but my very first financial breakthrough in my life was in 1999. It was April 1999. Um, and in 1998 I made $48,000 for the whole year, right? A whole year went by, right? I made $48,000. And and in April of 1999, I accidentally made, and I say accidentally because I didn't have it as a goal. That's what I mean. So, I accidentally made $6,200 in one week. So, in one week, I made one and a half times as much as I used to make in a month. And 1998 up to that time was my best year, right? And so, so the first thing I said was, "Wow." And then I said, "I can't believe how easy that was." And then I concluded that that must mean that it's easier to make a lot of money in a short period of time than it is to make a little money over a long period of time. Which changed my whole life because I made a decision in that moment to not look at and not look for the hard ways to make a little bit of money anymore. ignore all the hard ways to make a little bit of money and only focus on the easier ways to make a lot. That was a decision I made in 1999. So, it changed how you filter. That changed your goals and it changed how you filter options and choices 1,000%. Which is why the first time I ever heard you a couple years ago in Mexico when you were talking about 10x is easier than 2x. Everything you said resonated with me. I was like, "Oh, this guy gets it." And so, I don't know if you remember, but we had a initial conversation. Came up and asked you a question. And from that time on it was just like it was like click. It was like it was like this electric conversation from that point on. Right? And so this whole idea that what why are people optimizing things that shouldn't exist? Why are people running down a clear path to a lesser goal? Why are like like okay everybody here heard that. Sad but true. Many people here, I won't say most cuz I don't know, but many people here will leave here and continue to do the exact same thing for the rest of the day and the rest of the week and the rest of the month and the rest of the year. Why? All right. Care if I just go in teacher mode for a minute? Please do. Please do. So, I've shared this before. Um, I mean, many of you have probably seen this, but your question on being versus doing, I think, had a lot to do with this. So this is the common approach and I think we shift into this linear approach. It's this is the natural default is to let the past determine the present and then let the present determine our approach to the future. Um this has huge consequences. Um but it leads us to defaulting into what we're now doing versus really in intensely thinking about the future and who we want to be. Um, and so when you said doing, I was thinking this is what you're doing. When you think being, you're bringing you're bringing the future forward. So this is this is the model that I that I want you all to catch yourself on all the time, which is that and there's a lot of important points with this view of time. The first one is is that the past and the present aren't or sorry the past and the future are not outside of you psychologically. Psychologically, these are just simply tools for filtering the present. The better and better I get at learning from my past, um, the less I'll repeat it in the present. Right? If I get better and better at learning from my past, could be mistakes I've made, challenges I made, the better I get at framing and understanding my past, the less it's directing me. The more I'm directing it, learning from it. And so, this is just showing that the past and future are tools and their purpose is to make better decisions in the present. And they do impact you in the present. Um, but the important point with these is is, and this is just true, is that the future holds 10x more weight than the past. If it doesn't, then you're in trouble. If the past is is holding most of the weight, then you actually have bad psychology. And then that leads to very bad strategy. And and so if your past holds the weight, then what that means is the past is dictating what you do. Even if it was a great past, even if it was a successful past, right? So good. Yeah. That it's so so this is what you want is you want to let the future determine what you do in the present. And we actually already are doing those things, but the problem is when our future is based on our past. And so this is when this is when you let your past, whether it's bad experiences, shape your goals. I had this traumatic experience. I'm never going to let that happen to me again. And so now your goal is to never let that happen to you again. So it's an avoidance-based goal. I you know, and so now you have a future that you're trying to avoid versus a future that you want that you're trying to approach. In psychology, you're either approaching or avoiding, right? And a lot of our goals are avoidance-based goals. I was talking to a guy who's running a nice company, $31 million in revenue. And as we were walking him through this framework, he realized that he was stalling his company from growth and he realized, oh, I have had a hidden goal that has been impacting our company. You know, they said we want to go for revenue, but he didn't realize that he had a a lesser goal that he was trying to avoid, which was he didn't want to happen. He was unaware of it, by the way. It was a hidden goal, an unconscious goal, but he became conscious of it and realized that his company was being driven by his past. Um, and he realized his father had had an experience like he had an experience when he was a young man that his father was running a big firm and it and it failed. They had 500 employees and it failed. And so he did not want that to happen to him. And so he was even though they had a great company, he was he was trying to avoid what had happened to his father and so he actually didn't want to grow the company even though he didn't realize that. But so much of his decisions were to avoid that from happening. And so another way that the uh the past impacts the future is when you take your prior performance and you use that as the basis for your goals. So let me give an example. You made a million dollars last year. So you use that as the basis for the goals you have this year. Okay? I made a million last year, so I'm going to go for one or two million, you know, 1.5 or 2 million this year. That's that's using the past to shape your goals. And that is going to lead to an ineffective future that doesn't have a powerful enough impact on the present. The whole point of the future as a tool and even of goals as a tool is to massively impact your present. The future is a tool for shaping your present, for directing your present, for forcing you to look at things you don't want to look at for, you know, and the better you frame your future, the better you can look at the present and honestly begin examining everything you're now saying yes to. And most of the things you're saying yes to are lesser goals. They're optimizing things that shouldn't exist. And the only way to begin to figure that out to Myron's question is to have a much better, more powerful future that you're using to look at the present and to filter the present and to make decisions in the present. And so the future is the tool to impact the present, but it's the quality of your future that determines how you can filter the present. Um because your future determines the pathways you take. The future determines what you say yes and no to. The goal shapes the path. And so to the idea of 10x is easier than 2x. Going for a goal that's 10 times bigger naturally forces you to find different paths than the one you're currently on. Almost everything you're now doing can maybe 2x you, right? maybe with more effort almost nothing you're doing right now can 10x you and so that goal or that future and and there's a lot of different ways to look at it and in the science of scaling I look at not just the scale of the goal but the timeline of the goal we we'll keep going but there's there's a lot of there's a lot but but the beautiful thing about a proper is there anybody else who can't breathe right now or is it just me okay thank you the beautiful thing about a properly framed future the first beauty of a properly framed future is that it allows you to start being far more honest with yourself about all the things you're now doing that can't get you there. And then you have to start to grapple with am I willing to let this go? Anyways, go ahead. So good. So, a couple things. Couple things. So this is why this whole thing you just explained is why people take their past experience, they project it on the screen of their future, they recreate the past and the present and they think they're living in the present, but they're actually just living yesterday again. Is that right? Oh yeah. Yeah. If if people are using the past as the basis for their goals, they're just repeating the past. Okay. And so a better way to do it is to take our desired future and superimpose it on our present to see who we have to become now in order to experience that then. Did I am I close? Oh yeah. He said he he said he said oh yeah. So, when we were in Mexico, cuz we're I'm I'm I'm going to you're I'm going to share something with you probably are not aware of about me. So, when we were in Mexico, I wanted to have a conversation with you about some of your concepts because you and I always like we always go to level level 11 million when we start talking, right? And so, Myron's one of my favorite people to talk to, by the way. Oh, and you're one of mine. And you are one of mine. I love this man. Um, and so, so for a long time I would speak out and everybody here who knows this and say I think goals are a bad idea. Now I like like really really a bad idea. And when you were talking in Mexico, it helped me get some clarity on why I believe go setting goals is a bad idea. And I So a couple things. Dr. Ben is my friend. I'm his friend. We're friends. We're not always going to agree on everything. I don't even always agree with me on everything. So, so we're not going to always agree on everything. Okay. Um, and if you understand that you can gain so much insight by having conversations with people you disagree with. I don't know if any of you have read the book Thank You for Arguing, but if you haven't, I would recommend it. Okay. Anyway, so so like I have I have this really strong belief about setting goals. Like setting goals not is not a good idea. I don't even have goals, right? And you all have heard me say that many times, right? You all have heard me say that. Okay. Then when you were talking, it made me realize why I was when I heard you talking in Mexico a couple weeks ago. It made me realize why I was so vehemently against setting goals. And it gave me a new awareness. So I'm going to share that awareness with you and then let's talk about that concept. Okay, here's the awareness that I gained. The reason I was so vehemently against setting goals is because the word goal is something that all of us have in our vocabulary, but we all have different dictionaries. What I agree, right? And so it's like people say you can sell without being salesy. And every time somebody says that I'm like I hate that saying, you can sell without being salesy. What does that even mean? like the but the reason when you when somebody like if somebody says I'm going to ask the question in here how many of you don't like sales don't don't like sales everybody in here loves sales really come on how many you don't like sales let's be honest okay good now here's what here's here's my contention the reason people don't like sales is because what they think sales means and people who don't like sales don't like sales because what they think sales means and what they think sales means is I'm going to talk people into buying something they don't want, don't need, can't afford, and I have to either convince them, congeal them, beg them, bug them, or otherwise bother them to say yes to me so I can get some money from them. Is that what y'all mean when you say I don't like sales? Yes. Okay. But selling is not convincing. Selling is the opposite of convincing. Convincing is what people who can't sell resort to because they can't sell. Convincing is when I attempt to get you to do something I desire you to do for my reasons. Persuasion is when I help you make a decision you already desire to make for your own reasons. So the reason I gave you that analogy is because the reason I didn't like the whole idea of setting goals is because everybody that I ever heard talk about setting goals used it in a totally different context with a totally different definition than you. And here's how they use it. They use it to verbally claim that they desire an outcome that they have no intention of working towards and then beating themsel up tomorrow for not doing the things today to make that thing happen. So that's what when I heard the word goal, that's the definition that I had in my mind of goal. When I heard you talk about goal, I was like, "Oh, I never thought about it from that perspective before." You talk about a goal as a desirable future outcome that if you decide you in fact you call it an impossible goal, right? Most people set goals they think are possible but believe are impossible. But that's another conversation for a different day. Um they but you were talking about an impossible goal. So something that clearly is impossible for you the way you're going about life right now, right? And the whole purpose of a goal from your the way you talk about it and I could be wrong by straighten me out completely. I'm I'm open for it. The way you talk about goals and an impossible goal and accomplish an impos an impossible goal in a way shorter time frame is because when you set that goal that's impossible and you collapse the time frame down to something that's ridiculous, it forces you to abandon the person you've been being and become the person you have to be in order for you to achieve that objective. Talk to me. That's uh that's going deep into the into quality of goals. But um one of the core things that I I want to help people understand is is that everything they do is driven by goals, even if they don't realize it. So define goal for me. So I'll give everyone here in person an example. When you woke up, you all were in different locations. How did you all land here? At a certain point, you had the goal of driving your car to this location. This became the future that you were driving to. That's why we all landed here in the same spot. you know, you created that situation, but they all had the goal to be here, or else they wouldn't be here. They'd be at different places doing their jobs. You'd be filming a podcast or something, you know, you got your day would be different, but at a certain point, it became your goal to come here. That's why you're here. The people who are online, they probably didn't know that this was going to happen. So, they're scrolling and now they see this and now it becomes a goal. It might be a lesser goal, a clear path to a lesser goal for them. Often our goals end up being reactive in the moment. Oh, I see a distraction. I'm going to go for that. Right? But everything we do is so for if you think about it from a spiritual perspective, I think a lot of what you do is to please God. So that% so so you might say that's not a goal, but it actually is. It's the thing driving you. It's the thing shaping your choices. It's the thing shaping your path. And so so that's what you mean when you say goal. The thing that's driving you and shaping your path. Yeah. The thing that the thing that's driving you is your goal. It is your intention. Yeah. It is your set intention. Yeah. And you can have micro ones and macro ones. you know, you have a core thing that's driving what you do and you you might not want to give it the term of a goal, but it is. I often hear people say, "I don't have a goal." And and they might be actually like literally trying to grow a business. It's like, well, why does that business exist then? Uh does it have a purpose? Of course has a purpose. The purpose is the goal, right? Okay. And so, uh so not only is all human psychology shaped by our goals and and the goal might be I want to please my dad, right? Or I want to make money, right? Like those are goals even if they're not stated. Mhm. They actually are stated. So a lot of people, why do they work until they're 65? Because they want to retire. Their goal is their goal is to retire and to be able to do X, Y, and Z. And so that's what shapes their process. That's what allows them to stay in a job for 30 years, right? That that became a philosophy that was outside of yours. And so you had different goals. Um so philosophy outside of yours. So you had different goals. So your philosophy shaped your goals. I think your philosophy largely shapes your goals for sure. Um yeah, it does. Okay. and developing new and better philosophy and then becoming aware of yourself and where you have goals that either contradict themselves or that are no longer worth having. There's a lot of goals that we still have that are the most awesome thing that will happen to us is eventually when we can let that that thing go. Um so let me give a few more examples. Is that all right? Please do. Let me let So one of the key things that I want to help you understand is that all human psychology is shaped by our goals. Um what we see, what we don't see, literally what you see, what you filter for, like how you see things. Um um and then what you what you build and what you don't build. I was thinking like so we talk about how all systems, all human systems are driven by goals. And so this this building is a system and it actually has a goal. It might be for you to film content in, but there's a reason this place exists and there's a purpose for it. There's a purpose for those lights. Like all human systems are shaped by by a goal. Um, and the more quality the goal, the more quality that the system can be built. Um, and so this is I I I share this a lot, but I just want to give this this base understanding and I want to explain how you can get stuck with the wrong goals without knowing it and then pursue lesser paths and ultimately not scale, which is what we're talking about. Make massive progress. So this is just a picture that shows frame. I I talk about this a lot, but essentially with our psychology, everything we see is shaped in what we call our frame, right? And our frame, our frame is largely based on our goals. Our experience shapes our frame, but our frame and what we see and what we're focused on is based on our goals. And so this is just a picture that shows that there's a ton of different pathways you could take. There's a ton of different information you can see. Most of that stuff is going to be invisible to you. There's a ton of think about the endless information on the internet. Most of it you're not going to see. And a lot of it that you see, you're going to completely disregard because it has no relevance to you. That's the difference between signal versus noise. And in psychology, we talk a lot about pathways thinking that everything we're doing is looking for pathways to our goals, whether they're known or unknown goals. And so everything we see and everything we do within our frame is based on our goals. And so this what I want to show you here, and I used the example in 10x is easier in in 10x is easier than 2x of my son Caleb. The idea was is in Orlando where we live, um if he wanted to go to college and play college tennis, there are a lot of pathways to that goal. This is an example of pathways that there's a ton of pathways for a 2x goal or for a smaller goal. There's a ton of options, right? Um but if he wants to go for pro, the options become far less. Like there's way less options to a bigger goal, right? If he wants to play professional, there may be a thousand possible pathways. Even in Orlando where we live, coaches, phenomenal ones that could get him into college. If he wants to go to pro, most of those pathways, most of those options become noise. They become optimizing things that shouldn't exist. They become they're nonviable pathways to his goal. Therefore, they go below the floor. That's why I say they become optimizing things that shouldn't exist. They become dead-end pathways that can't get him where he's going. And so even if he was putting a lot of effort on a bad path, it wouldn't get him to his goal. And so it forces you to filter and find the pathways that could get you there. And so that's that's that that's the point of the higher or the 10x goal or the impossible goal is is that it forces you to grapple with what you're doing right now can't get you to the goal. Now you have a choice. Do you keep what you're doing now? Do you stay on that path? Or do you face it? And are you willing to go find a better path, better partners, better people, better process, whatever it is. And so, um, ultimately you have, you know, the hardest thing for people. So, Steve Jobs said that innovation is saying no to a thousand things, right? Michael Porter who created the field of competitive strategy said that strategy is basically what you say no to, right? And so you have to in order to actually focus, right, which is what Steve Jobs was talking about, you actually have to have the right frame and be willing to get rid of all of the lesser goals, all the dead-end paths, stop optimizing things that shouldn't be there, and go and find that innovative path that we were talking about before, that that innovative path. Most people will never filter and find the right thing to focus on, let alone take that focus as far as it can go because then they end up getting distracted or they fall back below the floor. And so I want to show a quick example and then we'll dive into this and then Myron, we'll go over you want to go. So, I want to show an example, and maybe some of you guys have heard me talk about this, but um there's there's different ways to become aware when you're optimizing things that shouldn't exist or when you're pursuing ineffective goals, even if you think you're going for the right thing. So, this is a guy who he's a 22-year-old guy. I shared I talk about this story in the science of scaling, but he wants to own a European soccer team. So, there's a young man who wants to own a European soccer team. He's 22 years old. And I asked him, I said, 'I love that goal. That's a huge goal. You know, uh I said, "But when are you going to do it?" And he said, "By the time I'm 55, I'll get there." Right? That's pretty realistic. You know, he's he's 22 years old. He's he's we all, by the way, you know, often our our timelines are arbitrary, but usually it's the time the time frame for our goal that makes them very ineffective. So in his case, he wanted to get there by 55 because he felt like, well, first off, most owners of sports teams are are older and it takes a lot of time to accumulate the type of money and funds to do that, right? And so, but the thing that I want him to see is is that he's not actually on a path to doing it. And so I said, "Your timeline is bad. If you're giving yourself to age 55, right, you're giving yourself 33 years, which is reasonable." I said, "What would happen to your path and to your plan if rather than getting there by age 55, you only gave yourself to age 30?" Now it's impossible goal territory. Right now he's like, I have no clue how to do it. And so what happened with him was this is just a a graphical uh vision of showing that if you move the timeline on the same goal, the path has to change. You can't get there. So, um, if he gave himself 20 or 30 or 40 years, if we now gave him only a few, his old path wouldn't work. And so, there's a linear path and there's a focus path. But the the thing about the the long path that messes people up is that it allows you to optimize the wrong things. So, in his case, when I said when I said, "What would happen to you if you rather than going for the goal, I'm not I'm not telling you what goal to pursue. I'm just saying what would happen if you took the goal and rather than having 33 years to do it, you had like five or six. Then he started to see the the the what he believed to be requirements to achieve that goal. And now he had to question those requirements. He said, "I really want to get a PhD." He's like, "I also want to run a firm and I want to do this and this and this and this." He had a long laundry list of requirements in his head to eventually get to that goal. And I said, "Well, if you move the timeline forward and now you only have till age 30 to do it, what happens to all those things?" He says, "I don't know." He says, "Cuz I really thought I needed to get a PhD." He said, "I really wanted this." And I said, "Well, if you only have till age 30, is that even relevant anymore? Does that even work or no?" The problem with having too long of a timeline to do something, and this is true even in directly of a business, is that he wasn't actually solving the goal. His stated goal is, I want to own a European soccer team. But he's not solving the goal. He's not trying to figure he's not actually developing the relationships, the knowledge, the situations to actually do that. What he's trying to do is get to the next step on his linear journey, which is getting into a PhD program. So, he's now spending the next 5 years optimizing for getting into a PhD program, not how do I get the European soccer team. He's actually not even solving the goal. He's solving a false requirement. He's solving something that shouldn't exist if the goal was framed properly. He's literally and this what what are you taking from this? Oh my goodness. It's just it's just so good. No, don't keep going. Keep going. I'm going to save my questions cuz I got Oh, I've got questions. So this is what people do in their life is because of how poorly framed their goals are, they're on deadend pathways that the soonest thing the best thing that can happen to this young man is facing that goal of having a a PhD. By by the way, all goals are means, right? Um but in that case of that PhD, he sees that as a pathway to his goal, but it's a bad pathway to his goal. It's an attachment that he we all get attached to the path, right? And so in his mind, it's a beautiful path. He loves that path, but it's a bad path to his stated goal. And he doesn't realize that. And so part of why we're framing the future in these ways, going for an impossible goal, right? When I say the future shapes the present, what we want to do is we want to frame the future in such a way that it forces us to grapple with the present a lot more effectively. Right? If we make the goal a massively higher in his case, his goal was already so high that I didn't need to change the goal, but his timeline was so bad that when the goal was that far away, it justified really bad thinking. It justified a bad path, which would never work, by the way. His pathway was not going to work because he wasn't solving the goal. He was solving lesser goals that he thought were there. And so what you want to do is you always want to use the goal and start solving it immediately. Actually solve the goal. Find the path to the goal. If you start actually solving the goal, you'll start to actually learn what it takes to solve the goal and to achieve it instead of achieving some false milestones that are allowing you to optimize things that shouldn't exist and that are actually ensuring you'll never hit it. If your goal is more than 10 years away, you're not going to hit it. I'm telling you, you're not going to hit it. Um because the decisions you're making today are the very decisions that will make it fundamentally almost impossible for you to hit because you're making decisions that are counter to the goal. And this happens in business all the time. I'm going to show you just a and families and health and everything. Yeah. But you end up spending years optimizing a thing that you thought was going to get you the goal and it's literally taking you the opposite direction. It's it has nothing to do with the goal. Him getting a PhD has nothing to do with his goal. Right. And not that I'm against it. I have a PhD, right? But um but you have to ask what is the thing you're optimizing for? If he actually is optimizing for owning a European soccer team and if he actually made that the goal, if he forced that goal on his present and forced himself to look at everything he's now saying yes to and forced himself to look at all the things he's doing, most of it, if he was honest with himself, would go below the floor. Most of it would be clear paths to lesser goals that have no reality to the goal itself. And so what you want to do is you want to frame your goal so effectively that it forces you to find what's called the crux. The crux is the thing that actually has to be solved to hit the goal. He's not solving that, by the way. He doesn't even know what that is. It might seem impossible because he's probably going to have to get a lot of money, but there are there are pathways to getting to that goal, but he's not thinking about those. He's not solving those. He's not even considering those. His next 5 years is swallowed up and getting a PhD. Not even getting it getting into it. And so the crux, this is a book by a guy named Richard Romeltt called the crux, how leaders become strategists. The crux is a concept in rock climbing. And uh if you see the picture, the crux is the most crucial part of a climb. They call it the hardest difficult problem. In climbing, there's they call them problems to solve, but the crux is the thing that actually needs to be solved to hit the goal. And the problem with most people is they don't even know what the crux for their goal is. And they're certainly not putting their time and attention on solving it. And so in his case, he's not solving the crux. He's solving how do I get into a PhD program, which is actually making his life complex and taking it in the wrong direction. Um, so Dr. Richard Romel said this. He says, "You will have a much harder time dealing with a gnarly challenge or or a goal, whatever it is, if you have not distilled it down to a crux. No one solves a problem they cannot hold comprehend and hold in their mind." And so he actually can't comprehend how to hit his goal. Um let me give another well so what hap what I want to show you here is that this is an example by the way this is a complex versus a simple system the complex system is a system that has too many competing goals and priorities in his case his path to his PhD is a very complex path it's a very complex system I got to get a PhD I got to go this way I got to run this firm I got to do this I got to do that there's a lot of conflicting and competing goals and priorities that are creating complexity that that are not a clear path. He does not have a clear path to his goal and he's got a and he's optimizing many different things that are not and this is and and the left side or the complex system is what most businesses are. Most businesses are doing way too many things and they actually don't know why and they're and and they're doing it honestly largely out of fear. They're doing it out of fear of committing to the true goal and solving it. And so they're holding on to a lot of things because they're not willing to get so good at what they do well that they can succeed. Instead, they're holding on to a lot of mediocre and decent things that are actually creating complexity and muddling their focus and creating a lack of definition of who they are. And so they're not defined. They're not saying this is who I am. This is what I do. This is who I do it for. And more importantly, remember focus and innovation are saying no to a thousand things. Strategy is saying no to almost everything, even really great things. And so that this is what Steve Jobs said. I already said it, right? Focus and innovation means saying no to a thousand things, letting go of clear paths to lesser goals. You can know that someone's not going to scale or they're not going to grow fast. And you can see it because they're not growing fast because they're they haven't grappled with this. They're still pursuing too many different things and they're and they're unwilling to choose a focused path. Right? So I said frame floor focus. Your frame is what you see. It's based on your goals. Your floor defines what you don't do. When you have a really high floor, you have to start saying no to a lot of things including your lesser goals. Uh and then you can actually create a focus path which most people won't do. But if you actually focus and you're focused on the right thing, the actual crux. So, so you just you just said you have to let go of a lot of things, including lesser goals. Would it would it be even more accurate to say you have to let go of a lot of things, especially lesser goals, because those are the things that are the most distracting? Yeah. Those lesser goals are are false means to where you thought you needed to go, right? Or they're things that you were attached to for whatever reason, from prior premises. your false your sorry your past self is not a bad person but they had different premises than you and often we hold on to the goals of our past selves and that stops us from letting those go and going the better path and so um yeah it's it's sometimes hard to grapple with this meant a lot to me in the past but it's now a bad path can you go back to your slide that had the trajectories the two different trajectories that So, the path, the one-year path versus the 10-year path, that's that's like I don't know if it I don't know that anything could be more beautiful than that picture. Um bec because because the amount of inertia that you have to overcome which is my present self, my past self. The amount of inertia that you have to overcome in order to take the focus path is it's way it it's way greater. the the trajectory makes gravity feel heavier, but the strength that you develop to overcome that level of gravity on that path will make you so strong that the feeling of the weight of gravity doesn't matter. So this like when I saw this it made me think of some stuff that you wrote in your book slipstream which is mind-blowing. So I want to ask you three questions from slipstream with regard to this illustration. Sure. Okay. One, the one of the premises of slipstream is life is measured by distance traveled, not by time elapsed. Focus on personal growth, not clock time. Can you expand on that? Because most people think that the quality of their lives is measured by the number of years of experience they have doing a thing. But it's really more accurately measured by the number of experiences they put in those years. So, can you expand on life is measured by distance traveled, not time elapsed. That's the first one. Yeah. So, this goes into physics a bit, but if you think about um That's okay. I like physics. I know you do. And correct correct me correct me where I'm wrong, professor. No, I I I'm a very uh novice physicist, but uh Yeah, me too. So, when you think of when they talk about um planetarian like physics in in in outer space, they talk about the the amount of time it takes for light to travel distances, right? And so they say that I believe the sun is eight light minutes away. Mhm. And so we're saying we're we're calling them light minutes, but we're really talking about a distance. We're talking about the distance between Earth and the and and the Sun, right? And so when we talk about distant galaxies, right, we're talking about how they're like two light years away. We're talking about the amount of time it takes for light to travel a distance, right? And so from a physics standpoint, um time is usually it's it's largely a measure of distance, which then kicks into Einstein's relativity theories. Absolutely. you know where when an object is moving faster in space relative to some other object that objects the one that's going faster it's time goes slower and so if you've you know if you've so so for example no so for example if an object can travel from one distance to another in a year and another object can travel that same distance in 10 years then this one has slower time. They traveled the same amount of time in one/tenth the time, one year. So their time is 10 times slower. It took they they were they both traveled the same distance. They traveled the same distance, but one it took them 10 times longer. So that one their time went 10 times faster. They lost 10 years. This one lived one year. That one lived 10. So this one had slower time. That's why it's so important to shorten the time period between where you are and where you're headed. Yeah. And so time, it's better to look at time as distance rather than time as minutes. Because if you look at time as distance, you can think, okay, I have this distance I want to travel. I can do it in 30 years or I can find a pathway to making that same distance in two. It's the same distance. The distance, it's going to be different pathways. one pathway is going to is going to be it's going to it's and so it's better to look at distances rather than how long it's going to take because if you look at the distance and then you start messing with the different pathways you can travel the same distance in much less time so you don't have to lose all that time bec is it because the slower path is fueled by labor and the the faster path to the same is fueled by leverage. And that leverage is optimizing the thing that will get you there. Optimizing for the thing that will get you there in that amount of time versus just allowing yourself to do. Leverage is a huge huge part of it. Not only your own leverage, but other people's leverage, right? Um technology leverage. Yeah. going for the faster go go goal will require a lot more leverage to get you there. Um and so it takes you into a concept we call superhoos. Should I go into that? Yeah. No, let's go into superhoo. Yeah. Le le leverage is leverage is is monster you know if but the thing is is there's different ways to access leverage right and there's different forms of leverage right it could be capital that's a form of leverage it could be knowledge it could be connections right there's different forms of leverage but if you want to get to the shorter if you want to hit the same goal in a tenth of the time you're going to need a lot more leverage go ahead go ahead I love this so what you said the faster progress stretches um the faster progress, it stretches your perception of time. So the quicker you move toward a goal, the slower time feels, the slower time goes relative to the person on the on that journey. On the longer journey, on the longer journey. Yeah. So you you achieve someone wants to be a millionaire. One person, they're on a 30-year path, one person on a one-year path. I literally had And so 30 years went by for the one that's fast time. Their time just zipped by. I literally had a friend of mine say to me last night on the phone, literally, this is what he said. I can't fathom making seven figures. And I thought to myself, I can't fathom making less than seven figures a month. Like that was my thought. I didn't say that, but I thought it right. No, I see. No, that was the that was But but my but my point my point is my point is that going faster increases the quality of your life. Because if you're if you're making time slow down relative to everybody else who's on a on a slower path, then you get to fill your life with more experiences. So it's it's it's actually even if you live the same number of years, you've lived longer because you've covered more distance over the same time. Some people have lived thousands of years or thousands of lifetime times in their in their one lifetime whereas other people don't even live all 10 years in their whole experience of life. And if you're traveling a massive if you're traveling a massive distance and that distance can be psychological, you know, think about it this way. Think if think if you've you had a tough childhood, right? And you you whether your parents are dead or alive. I'm just going to give an example. Say your dad is whether they're alive or dead. I could give I could give an example of someone, you know, Wayne Dyer, right? He talked about, you know, hating his father for his whole life and then going to the grave site of his father and facing things and probably traveling more psychological distance in a day than he had avoided for years, right? And so there was a girl I was talking to, she's in her like late 20s, who grew up in a tough situation and she hasn't talked to her dad in 10 years. And I said, "You're not going to grow your business effectively until you go and talk to your dad and clean that up." And so she called him and they went out to lunch. And so she covered more emotional distance in that one day than she had in a decade, right? And but think about how different think about how different that day was and how much she had to deal with psychologically and how much she had to let go of and face that she had not been facing forever. And now she doesn't have to carry all that weight with her. Now she doesn't have to let her past determine her future. So um but so the distance traveled she's not building her past away from her she's not building her present away from her past anymore. Now she can actually work towards her future. Now she can actually build a future that's not trying to avoid the past. Yeah. So I'm going to tell a story about leverage leverage and pathways to the idea of a faster goal or a higher goal needing different leverage. Yeah. Right. This is great. This is a great story. Right. So, this is Alysia. This is a beautiful lady. I love this lady. So, different if you want to hit a higher goal or if you want to hit the same goal in onetenth the time, the pathway is going to be different. I.e. I love what you're saying. Path and leverage might be synonymous or at least close to leverage is maybe how you get to the how you achieve the path. The path. Yeah. So, Alysia has this technology called LevelUp Score, and she's been in the credit industry for 20 years. She's had a one-on-one coaching practice for 20 years, coaching people who have bad credit, and giving them resources. Here's the good credit cards. There's the bad ones, right? Here's how you work with here's how you work in this free, complex, difficult system so that you can get your credit to a level where you can go get your house mortgage or whatever. She helped she's been helping people do this for 20 years. loves the people she serves and she also is very, you know, to the idea of gifts, she's very she was very good and so immersed in the field that she was a able to kind of see patterns in the field. And she was able to see that there's not ever really a useful tool that individuals can use to actually know a clear path to what they're trying to accomplish uh in order, you know, you get a you run your credit, you get a score back, but then how do you actually like take a just a straight up path to what you're trying to do? that didn't exa exist in that field. And so she created the software that you set your goal, you stick it, you stick your information in there, it gives you a credit score, and then it gives you tailored path including resources to get there. And so that's level up score and that didn't exist. So she made that back in 2019. She wanted to do it since 2009. But what happens? We we get stuck on clear paths to lesser goals. We stay busy in a complex system optimizing things that shouldn't exist. We don't pursue, we don't let the future shape the present. Instead, we're trying to sit in the present and try to force that into the future. Right? Um, you know, Buckminister Fuller. So, he said, you don't change things by fighting the existing reality. He said to change something, you have to have a new model that makes the existing reality obsolete, right? So, you need a new future that makes the existing system obsolete rather than trying to fight the existing system, which is your current life. So for her, um, she'd wanted to do this for a long time. In 2019, she partnered with a who. She realized she can't build this software, especially while she's so busy. She probably couldn't have built the software anyways cuz that's just not her skill set. Um, so she she partnered with a guy. He built LevelUp Score. Awesome. But she's still too busy. So for the next 5 years, she she just lets it sit on the shelf. This phenomenal tool that could change the industry is sitting on the shelf and no one's using it because she's busy in her job. And so at the beginning of 2024, last year, seeing if there's some legs to this thing. I'm going to start trying to get it out there. So in the US, there's 50,000 credit repair companies. I I actually wish I had a picture. I Well, I'm glad I'm on my phone, actually. I could probably show you guys something. I probably will. Um, but anyways, so there's 50,000 of these credit repair companies in the United States. And these the credit repair companies are really the ones who serve the individual. The individual goes to these credit repair companies to get help with their credit. So she built her software to not go to the individual necessarily, but to go to B2B. She wants to go to the credit repair companies who serve the individual, right? And so what she did was is she went to these credit repair companies and called them one at a time, the ones in her local area. Sorry, I know it's a little it's a little me. The microphone's ringing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and it might be me. Um, but anyways, yeah, we'll get it. So, she's during Q1 of last year, 2024, she called, cold called these credit repair companies. She called 10 of them. Wow. Explain level up score to them. Said, "This is the software. This is what it does." And 10 out of 10, they all said, "This is incredible. We would love to use this for our clients." Where go get it? Check, check, check. Yeah. Okay. They said, "We would love to use this for our clients." And so then they would create a little rev share deal. Every time that they would let their clients use the software and get a data output, they'd get some money and she'd get some money, right? And so she had 10 people using it, 10 of these businesses using it. By the end of quarter 1 of last year, that's when she joined us, learned frame floor focus, and basically what happened was we told her, Alysia, you need to set an impossible goal because right now you're operating linearly, and it's going to and you're going to lose a lot of time. You're going to lose decades on your path. M your path's not powerful enough to get you where you're trying to go. Your path's not powerful enough to scale a level up score. And so we told her, "Set an impossible goal and let that shape your path." And so she said, "I'm going to go for a hundred of these companies using my software in 90 days." And we told her, she found out herself that that was not an impossible goal. She found out herself that that was a false goal. She found out I why because it kept her on the same path. She thought I could just cold call another 90 of them, right? But that's not how it works, right? And so I said, "You need a bigger goal that forces you to find something different." And so she said, "Okay, Ben, I'm going to go for a thousand of these companies using the software in 90 days." Now, she doesn't know the path. And this is a super important point that I learned from Dan, who I wrote three books with. Most people won't set a goal unless they think that they unless they have the confidence that they can achieve it, right? And so most people won't set a goal because they said, "I don't know if I can accomplish it." So why would I set that because I don't know if I can do it. That's not the point of a goal. The point of a goal is to allow you to look at what you're doing, to analyze your path, and to find better paths. The goal is a tool. It's not something to be emotionally attached to. It's not something to define yourself by. It is a tool for looking at the present, for being honest about your current path, and then for strategically finding better paths. Goals are tools. People don't set huge goals cuz they say, "I don't know if I can do it. So, why would I set a goal I don't believe in?" You don't need to believe in it yet. You'll get there, right? You don't need to believe in it yet. Right now, let's just use it as a tool to ex examine what you're doing. So, she did that. She took the impossible goal. She took a she took 1,090 days and she said, "I have absolutely no clue how to get there." Right. But not having a clue how to get there, doesn't that mean she knew for sure what she was doing could not get her there? Precisely. She knew her current path and her current system was obsolete, right? And so she then had a choice. keep the dead end path even though it's well trodden and she knows it and she knows it well or let go of that path for a better path for a different leverage and often times you don't even get to find the better path until you let go of the lesser path that's when it gets spicy I'll say that's not always the case but that's often often the case right often you have to raise the explore and let go of the lesser path so that you reach a level of commitment that you can go and filter and find the path and the people that will get you there. Often that's the case and back to the idea that most people never actually get to the right focus because they're still on the clear path to the lesser goal. So they never let it go enough and to get above the floor so they can then go and find that path or that partner or that opportunity or that that life. So with her what happened and there's there's a concept I I really now this is the beautiful part about writing a book is you then see what could have and should have been in there. Um so I'll I'll explain that in a second. So when by simply moving the goal up same now before we were talking about move the timeline forward. Now we're saying keep the same timeline in her case 90 days. We're just going to 10x the goal because now we have to look at different pathways to get there. Right? So, two different ways to make your goal seemingly impossible is one just take the goal and make it much bigger or take the timeline and make it much shorter. Again, we're using this goal or a frame to look at the present and then to begin being honest about the dead ends and to begin filtering and finding better paths or better levels. Could you do both? Yeah. Oh. Oh, yeah. Increase the goal and shorten the timeline. Absolutely. Absolutely. And and one question people often ask is at a certain point does it just become too impossible? Yeah. Like at a certain point it stops being a good tool, right? If if she said I want to get a thousand in two hours that might force some creative thinking, but it might be just so at a certain point it the bounds become uh it stops being an effective tool, right? You want to be a powerful tool, a power tool. The future is a power tool for shaping the present. So what happened for her and I want to explain levels of analysis. levels of analysis is a really powerful concept in in psychology, but I'll just explain it. So, she thought about how do I get to a thousand in in 90 days. She knew she couldn't go directly to the companies, the the 50,000 credit per company. She couldn't go directly to them, but she wanted a thousand of those 50 companies using her software in 90 days. So, she had to think, how do I get there? How do I get there? How do I reach thousand a thousand or thousands of these companies in that short of a time? It can't be me cold calling them. So, what are other ways? So, she was thinking of pathways. And this is when real pathways thinking kicks in is when you're thinking from the goal and you're thinking from a goal you don't know how to solve. You always want to think from a goal, never toward it. Cuz if you're thinking toward it, you're taking the present and trying to shape the You always want to think from the goal. And it should be a goal you don't know how to reach because then that's going to force you to think about pathways you don't have. Does that make sense? I see this. It makes 1,000%. I see this, man. I see. So you pathways thinking only becomes effective. Pathways thinking is what it's called in psychology. Another you you could also call it strategy. But this is why John Door by the way John Door is a billionaire venture capitalist. He said a goal properly set is halfway reached. And the reason for that is is that a goal properly says halfway reached because it allows you to start stripping out the dead ends that won't work and saves you decades because now you start to strip out the pathways that don't work. So thinking from her goal, not toward it, pathways thinking, a thought hit her rather than going straight to the uh you know to the credit repair companies who serve the clients. What if I went to the people one level above who are the people that serve the credit repair companies? and she realized there are other software companies in my space that have thousands of these credit repair companies using their software. She knew them all. She knew cuz she's in this space so much. She knew the dominant softwares that these credit repair companies use. And she thought my old pathway was that I would need to have a thousand who's to hit my goal. If I wanted a thousand of these credit repair companies on her old linear path, non-leveraged path, she would need a thousand yeses to get a thousand. She would, she's going straight to the individual, she would need each individual company to say yes to get to a,000. Now she's thinking, if I actually went to the software companies who are already in my space who serve a thousand of these, I would only need one yes to get a thousand. That's higher leverage, right? And so she realized there's tons of software companies in my space. Now she then her fear kicked in. She thought, well, I'm a very small, she said, I'm a very small software company. Levelupcore has 10 clients. Like, these big software companies that serve thousands of these credit companies are not going to want to talk to me, right? So, she she she stopped so she stopped herself out of fear. But anyway, she decided, and this is actually an important point, there's a there's a concept a lot of people say, should you talk about your goals or should you not talk about your goals? If you start talking about your goals, you become signal to the right people. The right people will know who you are and what you're doing. That's so good. It's true. Like, how can the right people know if your signal for them if they don't know what you're doing? And usually when you have a very high goal and you start to develop a unique pathway to get there, you can become very attractive to the right people because they see a phenomenal opportunity in what you're doing too and they align with it. And so if you're not going to talk about your goals and if you have a poor goal, like if it's a small goal, obviously that's not going to attract phenomenal leverage, right? And if you don't have a unique pathway to doing it, you're not going to get the you're not you're not going to get those superhoos because they don't see any you're you're annoying them. They're not going to see any reason to get involved in what you're doing cuz their super capability or their leverage isn't going to be impactful for what you're doing. So anyways, she was she was talking about levelup score to one of these companies. She was cold calling one of these companies because she still, even though she knew she wanted to go to software companies who served those credit repair companies, she was still too afraid to go call those software companies. And so instead, she defaulted back to I'm going to call these companies. And so she was talking to one of them and she was explaining to one of these credit repair companies about LevelUp Score and the guy was just insanely amazed by it. And he's like, "I love this thing." He's like, "I want to introduce you to several of my friends who also work at these companies." And she's like, "You know what?" She's like, "I'd be happy to be introduced to those people, but be but to be honest with you, I actually don't want to serve just a few of these credit repair companies. I want to serve thousands of them." And then she said, "I actually think I should try to partner with other software companies. There's ones called like um My Credit Score Now and stuff." And there there's a lot of these software companies that do different things. And she said, "I think I should partner with another software company because these software companies sometimes they have a thousand or sometimes they have tens of thousands of these credit repair companies using their software." And he said, literally, he said, "I have someone for you." Literally, he said, "I have someone for you." He said, "I have a friend who owns a company called Credit Repair Junkies." And Credit Repair Junkies is a software that serves these credit repair companies and helps them improve their client experience. And so the next day, literally the next day, she's on the phone with the owner of this company. She's explaining level up score and he's in shock. He's like, "This thing is incredible." And they have they form a partnership right there. He actually has 8,000 of these credit repair companies using credit repair junkies. And he says, "I'm going to we're going to we're going to form a partnership and all 8,000 of my clients are now going to start using Level Up Score." Wow. In one day. In one day. Right. Literally. Literally. She went from 10 to 8,000 in one day. In one day and with one who, right? And so to to Myin's concept of leverage. These are these are what I call superhoos. Right? So I wrote who, not how, but superhoos are the one with the ones with the leverage to get you to your goal. That leverage could be knowledge. It could be distribution. It could be it could be uh technology, it could be capability, right? That one who had leverage in that he already had 8,000 clients and so he could bridge that gap that almost no one else could. Does this make sense? So, I want you to see something. This is a book called The No Rules Rules written by Reed Hastings. Oh, Reed. Reed Hastings. And I don't know if you guys can see it, so I'm going to summarize it for you. He's the guy who I think that they acquired Netflix when it was a small company. They acquired Netflix when it was small, when it was like competing with Blockbuster, right? They, by the way, when you have a bigger goal, it often reframes your company, right? They had to reframe from selling like DVDs to they had to go digital, right? Cuz the bigger goal forced a different model and a different path. But what he said was this and this this relates to leverage and talent and people. He said this is at the very beginning of Netflix. He said with a fixed amount of money for salaries and a project I needed to complete, I had a choice. I could hire 10 to 25 average engineers or I could hire one rockstar and pay significantly more than what I'd pay the others if necessary. So that's what he did. He ended up rather than buy like hiring 20 average engineers, he spent a lot more money hiring one rockstar rockstar. And then he said this and it's in the yellow, but he said, "I've since come to see that the best programmer doesn't add 10 times the value, she adds a hundred times the value." Right? And then down below he quoted uh Bill Gates and Bill Gates said that a great software writer is worth 10,000 times more than an average software writer. So to the idea of leverage and they call it the power law but the power law is similar to the 8020 principle that certain inputs create dramatically different outputs. Certain people create f so for her for Alysia she started to apply the power law with her better frame goal rather than one at a time she found someone that could create 8,000x the results of one. That's the power law. Uh and so when you're going for big goals and if you're going for scaling a company, those are the we call those superhoos. Those are the kind of people that you need involved in your project, but they won't be interested in your project if if you have a small goal or if it's not a clearly defined goal. If you're trying to do too many things for too many different people, how are you going to attract that talent or those partners? You need leverage to scale. So good. So good. Okay. um brains have been sufficiently bent into a new shape and a new form. So, but but Alysia, just to say, she's the humblest person you'll meet. That goal scared her, but by better pathways thinking, she took a great thing. She'd worked so hard for a great project, but a lot of us have great projects or ideas or knowledge, but we don't get to the better path, right? And she did have to sell her company. She did have to let go of her coaching practice. She had to let go of a lot of things that she was doing to scale this thing. So, but I'm just telling you to the point of of Myin, she's not different than any of us. She just found a better path and made a commitment to doing it and was willing to let go of her old path and her old her even her old business when that was required. So, go ahead, Myin. [Laughter] So, so, um, in 10X is easier than 2X, um, I think the thing that really hit me hard besides the fact that 10X is easier than 2X is, um, when you talk about the PO distribution principle, um, that 20% of what you're doing produces 80% of results, which means that if you're going to 10x, you need to eliminate 80% of what you're currently doing and then focus on the 20% that's left. But and from a power lot, it usually goes way smaller than 20%. Well, because then you take that 20% 20% the 20% then you take 20% and you take 80% of that and do it again. Then you take 80 but it is doing that. But you got to let go of the 80%. So, so re, so it sounds like what you're saying is it's the reduction and the elimination of lesser paths paths ineffective paths that are eating your time whether they're products etc maybe strategies whatever like could be most of them are not sufficient to the goal okay so so when that's what I mean when I say when you talk about goals. It's very different because you're set you said you use goals as a tool, but you don't just use it as a tool. You use it as a tool specifically, a goal in the future in a compressed time frame. You're using that to figure out what to eliminate in the present. And yeah, back to uh strategy being about what you're not doing, focus being about what you're not doing. The better frame goal allows you to begin dismantling your present and getting rid of stuff that shouldn't be there. It forces you to look at things more clearly and more honestly if you will, right? You might not. So why won't people sometimes some sometimes their future's not framed effectively enough to begin looking at it, right? um they may be on a path that's not really working or that's not very effective but or they might you know to the idea of the young man you know I don't know why he thinks a PhD is important but I don't think he's thinking so hard why he thinks it's important he might you know he might have his reasons right he might he might love researching right he might want to prove himself to his dad like and so we have to be a lot more rigorous with ourselves a lot more honest with ourselves like is this really worth the five years? Is this is this really even a pathway to where I'm going? Right. Um is it a good idea for us to evaluate why we think that's a valid path? We need to be very rigorous about that. Yeah. And sometimes it's nonlinear. Sometimes it's not always obvious, you know, but when you're thinking the the beauty of framing the future a certain way and and my my belief and my knowledge that human beings are shaped by their future and shaped by their goals, when you start to just change the goal, right, and mess with a better goal, it forces you to analyze your pathways. It forces you to be more rigorous. And so I really view goals and even the future as a strategic tool. That's why I think that psychology and how we think about our future and even our past psychology is fundamental to strategy. Um, and so I'm talking about a different form of psychology which leads to in my mind a more rigorous form of strategy which is looking at what you're doing and being honest about it. So I'll I'll give an example of myself even last week. Last week I wrote a little blog post about why last week I um I unscheduled 50 podcasts and but Myron, you're you're you're much better than those podcast. I'm just kidding. By the way, one of them is right here and I'm going to go back to yours. Trust me. No, but no, but listen. The reason I did it was this. I realized I was on a bad path and I had to face it. And the reason I'm I was on a bad path wasn't because podcasts are bad. The reason I was on a bad path and I didn't realize it was because our goal, the goal of my company is so big that podcasts are insufficient for us to hit that goal. for us to hit that goal. It's not a bad path, but for my goal, I had to look at it and say the rest of my year is scheduled, including going traveling a lot for my seven kids and being at keynotes. And those are great goals. Those are great paths if I'm an author trying to get book sales and things like that. But that's not what I actually am right now. I'm running a company called scaling.com and we have partners and we're trying to get members into scaling.com and me being out on the road all the time is not going to get us to our goal. One of the reasons is because in when you're building a big company, you have to actually build a good product. And if I'm all if I'm out on the road doing all of these podcasts, I'm not helping my team build this incredible product. And if the product's not great and the training is not great, then it doesn't matter how much distribution we get in. People are going to be upset because it's not good. And so I realized I'm not focused on the right thing. I'm focused on the wrong thing, but also I messed up because we actually have brought a superhoo onto our team. We brought a guy onto our team named Joseph Wyn. Joseph Wyn wrote a book called Don't Believe Everything You Think. Mhm. That book is one of the biggest books in the world. right now. And it was self-published. Wow. He's he was the superhoo we needed. And so what happened was when Joseph Wyn came into our company and again his book it sold like 2 million copies in the last two years and he's got very different marketing methods than me. He doesn't go on podcast. Now, not that those are bad paths, but for him, he's gotten very, very good at running ads and giving away and selling books. And so, one of the things that Joseph did when he came to us was he said, "We c you can't be at a traditional publisher anymore, Ben, if we want to hit this goal of getting 5,000 members into our program." He said, "We need more flexibility in using your books as leverage or as tools. We need to give this stuff away for free. And your publisher is not going to let you do that." And so our goal made my system as an author obsolete. I had to leave my publisher that I've been with for five books, Hey House, who I love, because our goal doesn't fit that. They have a different goal than we do. They want book sales. we can't optimize for book sales anymore. And so you can't be in partnership with somebody who has competing goals. I mean, I could have kept them there, but it would have created complexity in the system because we're both trying to optimize for different things, different things, which and the system that they require for books makes it difficult for us. And so we went to them luckily like I'm one of their top authors and they love me and they trust me. And Joseph has such knowledge and leverage that we met with the found like you know Reed Tracy who's the owner of Hay House and Patty who's like the the VP and we said we kind of have two choices. We really want to be able to give the audio book away. They own the audio book cuz I sold it to them cuz I'm at a traditional publisher. I said we either need to buy that back or you can trust us and let us give it away. And we believe that if we gave away a ton of copies that that would enhance the sales anyways because of word of mouth. So they did something special. They said we will trust you. This doesn't normally happen. And they said we will let you give the book away for free even though it's still So we now have a much more profound path than I had before Joseph cuz the superhoo brings pathways with them and knowledge and capabilities and leverage. And part of that leverage, by the way, is this. Now that we can give the audiobook away, and now that we can run ads like crazy to give away the audiobook, rather than trying to optimize for book sales, I can continue to optimize for the actual goal of the company, which is to get 5,000 people in there and to help them scale. And so now, because distribution is taken care of because of our superhoo and his knowledge and capabilities, he can now spread the book with ads. I no longer have to manually be spending my time. I'll still be in spots, but I no longer have to manually spend the rest of my year talking about the book because now the ads can lead people to the free book and that replaces that makes my path obsolete. Now I because of Joseph's leverage can shift my focus to actually doing the thing that needs to be done which is building the product. And I couldn't do that before because I felt I needed to go out and market. So, one of the things I talk about with superhoos, I talk about um Steph Curry and basketball right now. You like this guy. Are you a big Steph Curry fan? Who's talking? My brother. My My brother Jeff. Oh. Oh, this guy. My man. So, um what happened with Steph Curry is Steph Curry is like the best shooter of all time. And so what happens with Steph Curry is he is swarmed by the defense. He's always double or triple teamed, right? Everyone's just swarming him and it makes it harder for him to get open shots. Him still being the best shooter in the world. Even with triple coverage, he still makes more shots than people with only one person defending them. But when you bring a superh to your team, it transforms the dynamics. So what they did was is they brought like halfway through the year, they they um they traded for Jimmy Butler, right? And what happened is is that Jimmy Butler is really good. And so Jimmy Butler usually hangs out down below the hoop and because he's so good, he draws a lot of defense to him. And so what does that do for Steph Curry? Why? It creates space for Steph Curry to get way more open shots. So because Jimmy's on the court, Steph now is different. Right. Right. I'm saying because Joseph's on my team, I no longer need to do this. I can now be over here, right? Because of his leverage. And so, uh, what happened so with what happened with Steph Curry was is as soon as Jimmy Butler got there, the volume of threes that he started shooting went through the roof because now he's way more open than he's ever been. And so now Steph is a more powerful tool because of his superh. So good. So, but I had to let go of a path. I had to let go of pathways that worked for me in the past that are awesome pathways but not they're dead pathways to my goal and given my system and given the leverage of my system it would be irresponsible for me to be doing that to my team and if I'm below the floor on a lower goal or on a lower path if I'm below the floor our company is going to suffer and we might fail if I if I'm doing the wrong thing if I'm below the floor the company could fail Right? And so I can't justify being on paths because they were decent before because I'm therefore optimizing the wrong thing. So you have to use that discernment and you have to get that leverage so that you can be in the right place or else you won't skill. Okay. What are you taking from this? So, so this whole experience of life is about growth and progress and moving forward and becoming more so you can do more so you can have more be do have. So if you think about becoming more, building a bigger business, selling more books, giving more books away, all of the goals that all the people have that we're talking to, talking with, talking about, it all boils down to this whole concept of transformation. Transformation, what is transformation? Becoming more than you've been being. So you can do more than you've been doing and then ultimately you'll have more than you've been having. Okay? So if transformation is the objective because transform means to change, right? If transformation is the objective, like I just recently did a video on the six steps of transformation. I talked about it some when we were in Mexico when I came up and drew on the board, right? So the first step in transformation is awareness. You become aware of something that previously you were unaware of. So you now have a new focus. This your awareness is that you're focusing on something that used to seem like noise, but now it's clearly signal, right? Okay. You couldn't see it before. You couldn't see it before. It was invisible or you didn't understand or you couldn't see it because you were unaware of of it for whatever reason. And there are a lot of myriad of reasons a person could become unaware of this of this different way of being. Like I was totally unaware of the fact that it was easier it's easier to make a lot of money in a short period of time than to make a little money over a long period of time. And when I say that, I mean it's easier to make $100,000 in a month than it is to make $100,000 in a year. It's easier to make $100,000 in a week than it is to make $100,000 in a month. It's easier to make $100,000 in a day than it is to make $100,000 in a week. But every time you shorten the timeline, you just need more leverage. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Every time you shorten the time, which is a different path. Exactly. Different people with different leverage, different partners, but it's a different path. It's a different path. U but everyone every time you move the time forward, it's it's more intense leverage. It's more powerful. It's more intense leverage. It's more powerful leverage. It's it's more thrust. It's a greater trajectory. But it's easier because you have that leverage. That's it's easier, but then you you have to you have to be able to recognize the leverage and then you have to refine your ability to use that leverage as well. So all of that comes into play. So you become aware but awareness alone is not transformation because once you become aware then you have to take the next step which is you have to set a new intention right you become aware you set a new intention so I'm going to go all the way through all six of them then I'm going to come back to the first one and share what I gathered from what you said in your all of your work about this one thing. So, so it begins with awareness. Then you set an intention based on that awareness. So that's number two. 2B, 2 and 1/2, 2.5, whatever you want to call it. It's not three, but it's it's part of two is recognizing that disruption always follows intention. As soon as I decide to do something new, the first thing that shows up is something hard. The fir when I decide to go on a new path, new paths pose new problems that we didn't have on our old path. Most people erroneously conclude that the new problem is a sign that they're going in the wrong direction when in reality often times the new problem is a sign that they're going in the right direction. But you just have to become a different person who can last through the like who trusts that the disruption that follows your intention was put on that path to make you strong enough to stay there when you get there wherever there is. Okay. So, so awareness intention 2.5 disruption always follows intention. And then I have to make a decision. And and decision is not the same as a choice. Choose means to pick one. Decide means to cut yourself off from every other possibility. When you make a decision, there is no going back. If you choose, you can flip-flop. You can go back and forth. You can be wishy-washy. But when you decide like every things that used to be a yes are now a hard no, right? Because I made a decision. And then discipline is number four. I have to have the discipline to do the thing I'm supposed to do the way I'm supposed to do it. Every time I do it, I do it that same way. Like it's discipline, right? I'm disciplining myself to stick with my decision in spite of opposition, in spite of everything. In spite of mis misperception, in spite of being misunderstood, in spite of being called names, I am sticking with this because it's a decision that I made based on the awareness and my intention and my decision discipline. And then I have to take time for recognition. I have to recognize the progress that I've made. And I have to I have to re and and see that to me this is where the gap in the gain comes in, right? Um, I'm not I'm not running from my past. I'm acknowledging the I'm acknowledging the progress I've made from the past because I'm being drawn by the future. And then last is celebration. I celebrate the progress that I've made because I've literally done something in I've done something way bigger that's many orders of magnitude bigger in a fraction of the time or both. So those are the six things. Beautiful. But what I'm seeing and everything that you talked about this morning is the thing that is shaping my new awareness. Like me becoming aware of something didn't put it there. It was there before I became aware of it. Right. So what's shaping my new awareness in your model that you're talking about is the future desired outcome goal objective that I decided this is going to be my thing. It's that it's that future outcome that causes that awareness. Talk to me. Yeah. I it to me there's probably other ways to become aware, but that in my mind is the shortest hand way to become aware is to just reorient yourself. The ultimate shortcut to awareness is to have a new and better future that forces you to begin reooking at the present. M I think that's cuz I really do think that the future is the primary tool through which we look through the present. We look you know the tool is the lens through which we're looking at the present. It's the it's it's it is the primary tool or it's the best primary tool I think because the past is a tool that some people use to look at the present. We do. Yeah. Right. But but even the research says that the primary reason we look at the past is for its implications on the future. M so when we're thinking about history we do it sometimes for its own sake you know to learn but what is that learning for to impact the future yeah so so the past even is even in it even in a proper form even our own past no literally the very few people even if I'm thinking about my own past I I people don't spend that much time thinking about their past for its own sake although we sometimes do that you know I might just think about that episode right but it's not like I'm spending how much time am I really spending doing that. Usually when we think about the past or our own past, we do it for its implications on our future. So we're using it really as a tool for thinking about different future scenarios, things to avoid, right? Or things to pursue or things that are not worth the squeeze. So the the past is is primarily a tool for having a better future for learning. Um and so yeah, the future is the is really the best way to become aware. I want to show you this. I' I've shared this with people, but I I I'm in love with this this this this old school Franle. I'm just a big frankle guy. It's like the it's the absolute psychologist in me. But, you know, Franc was in the concentration camps. And that's a situation where you start to become unaware because of how numb you get. Your life is taken from you. Your family's all killed. Your career is gone. you know, these people were Jewish people who were taken into the Nazi concentration camps, right? And he was one of those people. And this is what he said. He said that the only way to restore a man's inner strength in the camp had to succeed first in showing him some future goal. Like you literally and so he said what happened was he said once he helped he said in the beginning they were trying to boost people cuz people lost hope. They were so sad in those concentration camps. their families had been taken. And so they would try all sorts of means and methods to give people happiness or to just help people get through the day. Can't imagine how awful that is, right? And he realized all of their methods were weak. None of them worked until they helped people have a future goal. Once people had a future goal in the concentration camps, then all of a sudden, not only could they handle the day, not only could they handle the present, but also they could enjoy literally he said happiness and meaning. Um, and he said that they could notice things like birds or they could notice another person who was hungry and give them the piece of bread because they it with the future gave them a different perspective. It gave them meaning, hope, happiness, and it allowed them to not suck in and just be so caved into the moment. So good. So that reminds me of because he wrote man's search for meaning like human fulfillment from my understanding is it's multiaceted and like I find when I'm I I found this concept in scripture that if a person is missing any one of these three things they are on some level feeling unfulfilled. Okay. And it it's really interesting that the first thing that God tells us about God is not that he is love even though he is love. And it's not that he is just even though he is just and it's not that he's righteous or omnipotent or omnipotent om omnicient or omni present even though he is all of those things. The first thing that God tells us about God in Genesis 1 verse one is in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Which I don't know if you've ever asked this question in your mind, but the question that I had in my mind for so long was why would he do that? You're God. You don't need anything, right? You're just existing in your self-existence and self-sufficiency and self-satisfaction. You don't need a heaven and an earth. You don't need something to do. So why did God create the heaven and the earth? And the only answer I've ever the only conclusion I've ever been able to come to is because he is creative and therefore it is his nature to create. So God tells us first about himself as many facets that there are about him. The first facet he tells us about is that he's creative. Which is interesting because the first thing he tells us about us is that he made us in his image. which means he created us to create stuff and he made us to make stuff. So if I'm not living in my creative space to make the world a better place, I am going to feel unfulfilled. If you're not creating, there's something about your life that feels worthless if you're not creating. Right? You're not creating. Uh the people in the concentration camp that you just mentioned, one of the reasons they felt so hopeless. You said their families are gone, their their their businesses are gone, their jobs are gone, their work is gone. They're just ex like they felt because in the concentration camp, what am I going to create? Well, what's interesting when you look at how when God created everything, God created three categories in creation. He created creation, the sun, the moon, the stars, the grass, the trees, the water, etc., etc., etc. But the creation couldn't appreciate the fact that it was created. It could not contemplate the fact that it was created. It couldn't have a conversation with its creator about the fact that it was created. It couldn't have a conver a tree can't talk to a rock and a rock can't talk to a tree. They just are. And so when we as human beings are not being like God and we're just existing, we are frustrated because we just are. And so the second category he created in creation was he created creatures. Creatures being dogs, cats, alligators, chimpanzees, kangaroos, etc., etc. They had more functionality than a tree. But the Hebrew word for an animal or a beast is the word bahhema, which if you don't speak Hebrew, that doesn't really mean anything to you. But ba means in and he means behold and ha means what? And so the word bea is is in it is what it is. A horse is a horse is a horse of course. What does that mean? That means a horse is not made in the image of God. Horses horses don't create like birds don't create. They make rudimentary things but they don't create create. They don't create by design is what I mean. And so so a bird or an animal can't progressively become more productive. All a horse can do is what a horse could do the first day a horse got here. A dog, same thing. a cat, a chimpanzeee, a kangaroo. They can only do the thing that they could do the first day they got here. So creatures are different than creation, but they're not like man. And when I say man, I'm talking about men and women. When God made man, Adam, which means men and women, he created them in his own image, which means he created us to be creative. He made us to make stuff. So man is higher than animals. Man is not a higher form of animal. Man is a higher being than animals. Okay? So, so God when he made creation, he made it, he could appreciate it, but it couldn't appreciate him. So, he had no connection. When he made the animals, they he could appreciate the animals that he had made, but they couldn't appreciate him because they were animals. They can't they animals cannot conceive of God. So, God made man someone who's like him, but not him. So now God created a create a created being that he had connection with. God created man for connection because man can appreciate the God that created him. So think about that. God made man for creation and God made man I mean God made creation to express his creativity but he made man to connect with. That's mindblowing. God looked at Adam in the Garden of Eden and he said, "It is not good for the man to be alone." Now, obviously, God knows everything. So, he wasn't surprised by the fact that it wasn't good for man to be alone. But if he had made man and woman at the same time, we wouldn't have discovered that it wasn't good for man to be alone. Are y'all tracking? How did God know it wasn't good for man to be alone? Well, because he's God. He knows everything. Well, how else does he know it wasn't good for man to be alone? Because man is made in the image of God. And it wasn't good for God to be alone. So if we are creative but we are not connected we feel unfulfilled like you said Victor Frankle they would give a piece of bread to somebody else who was hungry and that made them that brought them some level of joy why because now they're connect what's that and strength and strength which brings us to the last point that brings fulfillment and this is this this this whole fulfillment thing is is it's it's It's it's revolving. It just keeps continue. It's like it's like a self-perpetuating reality experience and reality. So man severed the connection with God when man sinned. So now God is no longer connected to the one he created for connection. And what man attempted to do was cover up the fact that he messed up. Adam and Eve swed themselves fig leaves. Why? And hid themselves from the presence of the Lord in the garden. Well, here's what's fascinating about that. The garden was man's workplace. When when Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves, it's a it's a picture of religion. I am going to use my work to cover my inadequacy and hopefully patch up my relationship with God. God said, "No, no, no." And then it says, "And the Lord God made coats of skin." God sacrificed an animal to make a covering for man that was a foreshadowing of the lamb of God, Jesus Christ, who would take away the sin of the world, which is the last point of fulfillment. Contribution. God created man, connected with man, then gave a contribution for man or he gave a picture of a confir of a contribution he would give for man. That's why we as human beings do not feel fulfilled unless we are creating something meaningful connecting with someone who can appreciate the meaning in a meaningful connection and then contributing. See when God gave made those coats of skin, man had nothing to offer God that God would accept. So God gave an a sacrifice that he would accept. We feel fulfilled when we are contributing to people who have nothing to offer us except receiving the contribution that we have given. Um you you may know um oh what's his name? He's a professor at Harvard. He wrote a book with Oprah Winfrey. Uh, his name's not coming to me right now, but it will. Uh, Arthur Brooks. Arthur Brooks. Arthur Brooks. Um, he's a religion professor, isn't he? Or he teaches happy happiness. He teaches happiness at Harvard. I went I visited his class. It was so great. It was so great. But one of the things he said in his book was we have two kinds of friends. We have real friends and we have deal friends. Deal friends are the friends we have because we get something out of the deal. And then he said something that's so mind-blowing to me. Our real friends often times are useless friends. And and what he means by useless, I'm not friends with them because I get something from them. I'm just friends with them because I'm friends with them. And I thought that is so good. So, so we feel fulfilled when we are creating, when we are connecting and when we are contributing. And I think one of the biggest things that we can get out of having this future goal that causes us to evaluate our present is it causes us to eliminate create. It causes us to eliminate the activities that we use to create things that have less that matter less and cause us to create things that matter more. And then it causes to create things that matter more and connect with people who can who are aware of that same need for that thing that we're creating. And they help us to spread that thing more. And then the value that we create contributes more to humanity. And then as all of us do that, it makes life better for each of us because all of us are operating at that highest level of fulfillment, creating, connecting, and contributing. What do you think about that, Dr. Ben? I love it. I love it. Um, yeah, the closer I get to God, um, the more certainly I think the more I want to create things that are impactful for other people. Um, uh, there's a there's a Peter Ducker quote that I keep thinking about while you're talking. Um, I stuck it in the front of the book. Um, by the way, we do have a present for you guys. Um but uh and lunch that's not the present lunch is the present guys. I'm sorry he already mentioned it. Um no but Peter Ducker said that um in industrial laboratories he's talking about um he's mostly talking about businesses honestly. He says in every he says in industrial laboratories research and research is what you're doing right it could be what you're creating right some people might be researching how do I how do I write this book right or how do I sell that product or how do I like we're doing research right how do I fix this cancer right we're always doing research right whatever it is you're doing and so he says research to be productive has to be the disorganizer the creator of a new future and the enemy of today can you say that whole thing. I will one more time. I'll say it. I'll say it. But then he said, "In almost all businesses, most people are doing defensive research aimed at perpetuating today." So I'll explain all this. He says, "In order for research to be effective, what I take as research is it could be what you're creating, right? It could be what you're building. It could be what you're doing. It could be what you're innovating, right? In order for your effect, your focus to be effective because whatever you focus on, you're creating. Uh in order for that focus to be effective, it has to be firstly the disorganizer which means it's disorganizing the present and it's the creation of a new future and it's even the enemy of the present right and so the future in order for it to be effective it has to be going for something that you don't know how to do right just as an example when I was thinking so that that that that goal then or that future which is the thing that you're trying to research to solve they call that deliberate practice in psychology but it could be innovation it could be research whatever it is you're doing, you're trying to solve a goal, right? So, if you go back to Alysia, she had one thing that she was trying to solve, which is how do I make it easier for people and to to to achieve their goals in credit in credit. She started researching that and so she came up then with levelup score. Then she thought, how do I get this into thousands of people's hands? Right? That then led to research on how do I get it into thousands of people's hands? Oh, partner with those software companies, right? And so, but that that research had to let her stop doing what she was doing in the present, right? They sometimes call that creative destruction, right? The new future forces that first off creative destruction of getting rid of the present and then finding the better path. But the reason I'm saying all this is what are you researching right now? What are you trying to solve right now? Right? What are you creating through that research? Are you trying to figure out how do I get to retirement? Is that your research? Right. Is it how do I what is it the the thing that and and so that then leads you to what kind of goal would shape a research and an innovation that would lead to results that no one else has even considered, right? It's like the re if if you thought about, you know, just what I do like at scaling, we're researching how do we help companies 10x in 3 years or less. M and so that's what we're researching like that's we're trying to solve that we're innovating that that's what we're focusing on that's what we're catching all of our blind spots on right and and so it's like but I think broad more broadly I'm always thinking about what how do you experience a paradigm shift that transforms what you do right that's what I've been researching for like the last 10 years right and that leads to insights like future self or science of scaling so the only reason your future shapes what you're researching and in Mo most people are just trying to perpetuate today, trying to defend today rather than having a future that dismantles today a little bit and forces you to do better research or better creation to create something better. But if you think about the moon mission, right, just as an idea, that was a goal that forced them to do very interesting research. How do we get to the moon? So going for seemingly impossible goals or how you know changing the goal rather than how do I ever make a million dollars? How do I do it in a week? That's going to lead to different research, right? It's going to, you know, so your goal shapes your creativity. It it creates the it it forces you to solve different things. And I think a lot of people are not solving very powerful things which they could be if they had a future that invited them to go to that level. So when so good. So when you talked about creative destruction creative destruction I love that term. If you are not actively this is the first thing that came to my mind. If you are not actively using creative destruction by focusing on your future to disrupt your present, what's going to happen is other people who are focused on creative destruction are going to create something that's going to destroy your present for you and you are going to become obsolete. That's right. That's right. Say more. Say more, he said. Okay. Um, don't you often say don't say more. Don't. Yeah. Or say less. Yeah. Say less. Say less. Say more. Say more. So, so what? When you were talking, it reminded me of the history and mystery of wealth and how every economic era created the economic era that succeeded it. But before it succeeded it or as it succeeded it, it actually made it obsolete. It made the prior one obsolete. It made the prior one obsolete. And so, so if you think about from the beginning of time to the mid-700s, the economic infrastructure of the world was based on agriculture. And if so, like it's hard for us to imagine that like the economic infrastructure of the world is based on agriculture. How much land do you have? How much food can you grow? How many animals can you tend to in order to have land? In order to create have wealth, you had to have land. Land equaled wealth. Think about that. Land equal wealth. countries would go to war to take land from people so they could have more wealth for their country. Right? So, but people were farming lands. Well, the people who own the land didn't didn't farm the land. They were the lords and ladies. They would let poor peasants farm the land for them and give them enough food to stay strong enough to farm the land again next year. That's why that's where we come up with the term landlords. The lords and the ladies are the people who own the land that the peasants farmed. Are y'all tracking? But mid-700s people like you know this this hard work is hard maybe I'll invent a plow maybe I'll invent a tractor maybe I'll invent and so what happened was people started inventing machines to make farming the land easier and then they figured out a way to make machines to make machines that made work easier. So they leveraged making leverage which brought in the industrial age. The agricultural age created the need for the industrial age and the industrial age replaced the agricultural age because wealth moved as a whole from land to machines. And so in the industrial age from the mid- 1700s to the mid 1950s the people who own the machines own the wealth. Well, in the agricultural age, I think one of the things that would benefit all of us is to realize if you're having a hard time generating wealth in 2025, it is more than likely because you are attempting to make a living in the past. You are using outdated tools to accomplish outdated objectives. And so so in the agricultural age everything happens slowly. Why? Because you only have one spring and one fall every year. And so you had one opportunity per year. You talk about time like you talk about slipstreaming. You have one opportunity per year to make a profit and it's months and months apart. The gestation period is months and months apart. It doesn't matter whether you're raising animals. Maybe some animals could reproduce a couple of times a year, but it's still that's still very very slow. But all of a sudden, you start making these machines and and and and the one of the things that happened in the industrial age is progress. Progress itself sped up because of technology. And so the machines equal wealth, but the people own the machines own the wealth. But one of the things that was created, two, a couple of things that were created in the industrial age. One is a permissionbased society. What do I mean by a permissionbased society? If you wanted to be an actor, somebody who owned a movie studio with cameras and sets had to believe that you were a good actor and they had to approve you and give you permission to be an actor. If you wanted to be an author, somebody who owned a printing press and a publishing company had to think that your writing was worth publishing. If you were a singer, somebody who owned a record label and the ability to record had to believe that you were a good enough singer to Now all of that stuff's available to everybody. But most people are still looking for permission to people from the industrial age to give them permission to be an author, to be an actor, to be a singer, to be a whatever. You're waiting for somebody to come by and dub you. when that whole thing of being dubbed by somebody other than you, that thing that thing like it evaporated a long time ago, right? Okay. So, what happened in the 1950s? We were producing so much stuff in the 50s that it was going to sit on the shelf and rot unless we could figure out a way to distribute it. So, we went from the industrial age to the distribution age. And so, now people who owned outlets own the wealth. And so you have people like Sam, you have Kmart, Sears and Robuck, J C Penney, all um um all of these all of these five and dime stores, all of these stores, people created locations for outlets. Those are people who own the wealth. And Sam Walton became the wealthiest of all of those because he optimized owning a store, right? And so, but that that only last went where the puck was going. He he went where the puck was going. In fact, Sam Walton is the person who created who who developed the concept of supply chain distribution. Like he went into IBM and hired like software engineers to design software that would tell him when Walmart was almost out of toothpaste and track where everything was in the supply chain. It's it's mind-blowing how far advanced he was. Which is why when he died, he was more than five times richer than six times richer than Bill Gates. Like when he died, Bill Gates became the wealthiest person in the world. His wife and children became the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth wealthiest people in the world. That's how rich Sam Walton was. Okay? Because because one of the things that that all of wealth is easy to create if you create it in the era that exists and stop attempting to make a living in the past. Henry Ford became one of the richest men in the world because he created his wealth during the industrial age, right? Sam Walton became wealthy because JC Penney became wealthy because they created their wealth. Um, Rich Rich Devos, the founder of Amway, like all like department stores, grocery I mean department stores, malls, infomercials, network marketing, direct sales, all of those things became really viable opportunities in the distribution age which lasted from like 1952, 1954 to 1978. And in 1978 something was created that changed the world. What was it? The personal computer. And we went into the technology age. And in the technology age, technohow equal wealth. And I, some of y'all are old enough to remember in the 1980s, everybody wanted to go to school to become a computer programmer. Why? Because we saw Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, all these kids in their 20s who were billionaires on the front of Time magazine. So everybody wanted to learn how to do but by but if you went to school in the 80s to become a computer programmer, you were already too late. Bill Gates started learning how to programming computers in 1968. Wow. Okay. So, he was he was he was a decade ahead. He was his his research was in the future, not the past. Past. Exactly. His his career was way ahead. Way ahead of its time. Way ahead of its time. And so he was he was preparing himself then for what would become his later now. Okay. And most of us are optimizing for what used to be. I say us, but I mean most people are are optimizing their lives to prep they're they're they're preparing themselves to earn a living in a world that no longer exists. And the world that exists exists for a shorter and shorter time period. Every time we go into a new new economic era, which brings me to the next point from 1978 to about 1994, that's how long the technology age lasted. And then we went into the information age with the onset of the internet which used to be prodigy and computer which I say those words some of you are probably looking like what's that what's that even mean that's what the internet was before the internet was the internet right they were bulletin boards that you could go and read stuff on and I can remember my brother saying to me in like the early ' 80s oh my or late ' 80s not early ' 80s late 80s you don't understand they're going to have these online stores and people are going to buy stuff in these online malls and you won't even have to go to the store anymore and I said to These words came out of my mouth. Don't judge me. I didn't know. I didn't understand slipstreaming and be your future self now and the gap in the gate. I didn't understand any of this stuff. Then I said to him, "Why would I buy something on a computer when I can just go to the store and get it?" I actually said that. You know what I say now? Why would I go to the store and get something when I can just order it online and have it shipped to my house? Right? So, but cuz I couldn't see that future. I didn't understand computers well enough. I didn't understand where the world was going well enough back then to see where that future was going. Then what happened? Well, because of the information age, it gave everybody access to everything. And so from 1994 to 2003, we're in the information age. In 2003 to 2008, we were in what I call the techno info enterainment age. Think about it. People knew how to use technology to create information to educate themselves, to educate people in an entertaining way. Those were people who own the wealth. Spike Lee, um, uh, Russell, Russell Simmons, Russell Simmons created a whole new industry because he knew how to use technology. Jeff Foxworthy, you might be a redneck if now you may not know, you may know that he became really mega wealthy, mega, maybe a billionaire, but definitely rich enough to be a shark on Shark Tank for a season. Jeff Foxworthy started selling his you might be a redneck if cassette tapes at truck stops where he knew his ideal avatar would be. So these truck drivers are driving and they're buying these Jeff Foxworthy tapes. He became so rich from that. Okay. Then 2008 something else was invented. What was it? Something else came into being. Something came into being in 2007 which was the iPhone. But the next year 2008 something came out. That's right. The app store. The app store changed the world forever because the app store took us into the partnership age from 2008 until later. What did you notice about each one of those economic eras that everyone becomes shorter and shorter. How's that for slipstreaming? Every economic era all of them have to your point increasing leverage for results. Exactly. Exactly. Every economic era increases leverage which makes the results that everybody's working towards easier to get hard easier to get to but harder to p perceive your ability to get to them. Why? Because you were trained in an era that's obsolete by people who were trained in an area that's two times removed obsolete. And so you've been you've literally been trained to look at what's no longer there and ignore what is going to be there. which means you miss your opportunity in the present. So, so what happened? So, what happened and what happened in 2008 with the app store was we went into the partnership age and most people missed it. You say, "What do you mean the partnership age?" Because for the first time in world history, multi-billion dollar corporations said, "I don't want you to come work for me. I want you to partner with me. If you will create software and put it on my shelf, if you will create music and put it in my music store, if you will write books and put them on my bookshelves, I will sell your products to my database and I'll give you most of the money. Amazon, M Google, um, Apple, all of these companies said, "Tell you what, we'll give you most of the money and we'll go do the work for you." Amazon, I've written some ebooks and they're on Amazon. Amazon has done email marketing and sent me emails to buy ebooks that I wrote. So I know Amazon does email marketing to their database. They just like just like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok, they serve ads to people to the who because they know what they like. If you write books and put them on Amazon, ebooks, audio books, put them on Audible, they literally Amazon emails you to get you to buy things that they know you're interested in because they have the customer data. 2021, we went into the AI age. We're still in the AI age. But my point is, stop holding so tightly on to the past because if you don't creatively destroy your present by focusing on your future, somebody else is going to do it. And then you're going to be stuck like Chuck in a pickup truck holding the bag saying, "What do I do now?" And you're going to be talking about pivoting, but you're not really pivoting. You're just reacting to the fact that you refused to move into the future. when it was your present in the past. So anyway, you said say more. [Applause] Say more. So So here's what here's what I want to do. Here's what I want to do. I want us to go into a Q&A and we're going to do it very strategically. Okay. Um because I know some of y'all need to take a break. I know I need to take a break. So we're going to do a Q&A. Can we get another hot mic? Um, Michael, can we get another hot mic for the audience? So, I'm going to have the audience. Do we have another hot mic? Okay, we do. So, I'm going to have the audience ask us questions. I'm going to have by start by having them ask you questions so I can take a quick break. Okay. And then I'll come back and if you need to take a quick break, then they can ask me questions. Fair enough. Okay. So, what is the time frame for lunch? We're going to eat lunch in 45 minutes. Perfect. We're going to eat lunch in 45 minutes. So, we're good. So, Dalan has a question. We're going to start over here with her and then I saw Jeff had a question. So, we'll we'll pass the mic around. Okay. It's going to it's going to be okay, guys. We're going to we're going to do this now and then we're going to do it again later. So, we're going to we're going to get to the audience questions. So So, Don, we're going to start with your question and hopefully it's for Dr. Ben. Yes. Okay. And this is a pretty chill kind of fun format event, right? I mean, let's give it to Let's give it to Myron and his team. I love your format, man. I love your format. Can you go to the bathroom or do you need Thank you. So my question is how do you choose your impossible goal? It's beautiful. So there's a few different things to consider. One is literally just if you're are you already in a business that that that you want to grow? Yes. Perfect. So you want to give yourself an actual scale goal. One of the things that I've learned working with lots of people is is that they don't actually have a true scale goal. In other words, most people, let's I I won't go into too many details, but assume you're doing a million dollars or or less. A little less. Way less. Okay, perfect. Perfect. Perfect. So it will be natural for you to set a linear goal that you want to get to the next milestone that you want to get to the next step right your business in your life will change when you actually go for a big goal right so again rather than say you're at $200,000 in your business rather than going for $400,000 what if you went for 20 million now you're going to start having to do different research now you're going to have to start building a different business. So that's that's going to lead you to making a lot of very different decisions in your business today. Do you choose the number arbitrarily? Sort of sort of remember it's just a tool. Um let me let me give an example of a different guy. Um this guy actually set a scale goal which I was so happy about. If you remember this example, I told you the example of the young man with a soccer team. I mean, that's a great goal. Um, one of the beauties is having an expansive future and actually going for a bigger goal. Honestly, just go for a bigger goal. Not because you have to think it's you're not a better person because you hit a bigger goal, but it forces you to do better work than you would have done. You know, it forces you to get better at something specific. you know, to his point, a different type of creativity. So, but a lot of times people won't even consider that bigger future. They just limit their future and therefore they limit their present. So, this is a guy named Xavier Martin. Um, and he's a lawyer. So, he passed the bar in uh 2019. When I met him, he was doing 2.5 million in revenue in his law firm. And so he's in Minnesota and he's got like a few different offices. And after studying a lot, you know, he read a lot of books, stretched his imagination, right? Did a lot of learning, was in groups, he he actually decided to go for a big goal. He said, "I'm going to go for 100 million revenue in my business and I'm going to have a national firm." Right? So most lawyers don't want to have a national firm. Right? And I'm not saying you have to, by the way. Um, not everyone has to scale. A lot of people actually don't want to have big goals. um you know they would rather scale their lifestyle right or but I'm saying in business going for a much bigger goal is going to force you to make a lot better decisions and it's going to force you to hard look at your your your existing assumptions and pathways. Does that make sense? So with with so let me just explain this and I'll I'll answer there's there's a lot of different ways to think about how to set a a useful impossible goal. But he actually had he decided that he was going to get his firm to 100 million. That felt like an impossible goal, you know, but he like the young man gave himself 10 years to do it. He and that's natural by the way when we have a big goal like he's at 2 million and he wants to get to 100 million. It seems like it probably should take 10 years to do that. That's natural. But I told him, Xavier, what would happen if you took your 100 million goal and you said, "Let's go for it in three." And he's two 2.5 million. And now I'm saying, I want you to go for a 100 million in three years. It's like a what, like a 25x or something like that, maybe more, 30x in 3 years. So why that was important for him was this. when he moved his timeline forward, he realized that even though he said his goal was a h 100red million, he wasn't solving how to have a hund00 million business. If you if you go for his long timeline, he was actually solving for how do I get to 5 million because he's at 2.5. So his next he was solving for the next linear step. How do I get to 5 million? But that's a fundamentally different question than how do I solve 100 million? He wasn't solving his real goal. He was solving how do I get to the next step? And building a business to five million is very different decisions. What happened when he moved his timeline forward is he realized I don't even know what it means to have a hund00 million business. I had the goal of the idea, but I wasn't actually solving it. So, I had no actual clue what was involved. Now I've got to actually start thinking about it and figure it out and having a plan for that and figuring it out and but also he used that goal to look at everything he was doing and he realized oh my goodness every almost everything I'm doing in my firm even though it's okay for 2.5 million it's going to crash and burn even if I get to 5 million like it has no bearing to get there. He was practicing like 10 different forms of law. Most of them were nonprofitable and they were forms of law that they didn't want to be in. So they got rid of most of them. They said, "What are the few that if we were doing 100 million, we would be the best in the world at these things." He also had to simplify everything they're doing. Um got rid of a lot of bad things in his business. There was a lot his sales team was inefficient. Had to replace them. He had to bring on a superhoo and start running things. Like he said that there were so many inefficiencies in his business that he would have never become aware of for probably years. But all of those things were happening in his business and had he not moved the timeline forward, he would have never had to start thinking about those things. Now he's actually trying to solve a 100 million and now he's developing mentorships and partnerships with people who have built 100 million plus businesses. Now he's learning those things, right, to the idea of research. But none of those things he would have done if his goal was 10 years away. And if his goal had remained 10 years away, all the things he was doing to get to five million would have made it increasingly less likely that he would have ever gotten to 100 million because he was building a business that was going to break. He was building an awful business to be honest with you. And so I want you to actually go for a scale goal. Actually, I was who was the friend? Uh I sent you a picture of I was on his podcast. Um Oh, Omar. Omar. Was it Omar? No, I think he Oh, David Shans. It was Sh. That guy is awesome. Yeah, Sh. That guy's awesome. So, he's doing a few million in his business and I asked him to go for a scale goal and he said 100 million in three years. And he realized he's going to have to get rid of most things he's doing. And that if he goes this bigger goal, if he actually goes, he he said he thought scale was 2x. He said, "If I go from 3 million to 6 million, isn't that me scing?" I said, "No, that's not scaling. that might be growing but it's not scaling like I said what he said I do have a thing I want to do I'd have to let go of three of the things I'm doing he said but if I do this thing he said it might revolutionize the podcast space that's what I actually really want to do I said if you went for that that's scaling so it's just it's a goal sometimes it's easy just to use revenue right revenue is a great goal for for for if it's podcast it could be downloads Um, but have the goal be so big and so urgent, right? You're I'm just, you know, whatever you're at, have it be 10 or 100x, whatever it is in the next two or three years, and use that to shape your process. Use that to shape your business. Use that to shape who you're working with. Use that to shape who you don't hire. So good. Thank you. So, I'm getting like make it in a way that you think it's impossible because once you make it in a way that you think is impossible, then you're going to be forced to find the possibility of it and you're going to be forced to develop the maturity required now. So, for Xavier, he has to make mature decisions now about what it means to build a law firm that's national with his old goal, which was still huge, but 10 years away. He didn't have to make hard mature decisions now because his goal was so far away that that's a future that doesn't massively impact the present enough. And so his goal was enabling him to make a lot of immature decisions and to be unaware. But now because of how the goal was framed and it was shorter, now he's got to face his immaturities. Not that that's bad about him. It's not speaking about his value as a person, but just saying he doesn't he doesn't know what he's doing. And that's okay. Now he has to learn hard lessons and things like that. That's what you want. You want a future that forces those hard lessons on you so that you can learn them now rather than be faced with them in five or 10 years because you didn't learn them now. Cool. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next question. Yeah. Go ahead, Jeff. Can I go? Yeah, you're right there. You got the microphone. One of your books that really knocked me on my socks. Brings me to a question uh that's hard to ask, so I'm going to ask it gently uh without insulting you, sir. Uh you talked about being in college. Is that funny Myron? Anyway, you talked about being in college and your early years. Uh you had a different self-image than you have now. I think that's you you were talking about maybe. And you were talking about being perceived by somebody that really mattered to you, at least their parents, in a very not so good light. Let's just say that. How you know which book you're talking about? I think it's slipstream. I think I think it's slipstream. Okay. Keep going. That was I wrote that 10 11 years ago. So, I'm I'm trying to I'm trying to go back, but keep going. Okay. Well, sorry. I don't want to make you go back, but so far you had a self-image about yourself, not taking college serious, not taking things serious, and it showed up on some personality test or something and almost forced you, almost caused you not to get married to the girl of your dreams, that sort of thing. And my question is, how did you what did you do and I think you just answered it in all the stuff you talked about. What did you do to make sure that that self-image did not that old self-image does not haunt you on a daily basis through some form of imposttor syndrome or something like that because we all have some negative things from that's screaming at us that we want to forget at times and it doesn't always come up like you said it's something that comes up when we're traumatically close to something that we were close to in the past so I'm not trying to give you some long long question, but I am curious for people who are trying to knock down their goal or their dream or their future place that they believe, which is 10 times greater than what they're doing now. What do you how did you not let what was even statistically on paper, how did you not let that become permanently who you would become? Such a a beautiful question and I would love your thoughts on that too, you know, in terms of self-image, identity, anything you want to share. Um, one thing that is helpful and we were talking about uh the the gap in the gain which is a book I wrote is and this fits with what I was talking about with mastery of time. Um, I'm just going to share a few different thoughts on your question. So this one right here, one is the the knowledge that it's not the it's not the past that determines the present. It's always you in the present that determines the meaning of your past, right? Um that's very important. And the more agency you take in the present or responsibility, the more you're responsible for how you define your past rather than letting your past define who you are today. and and import and an important part of that is actively clarifying the differences between who you are now and who you were in the past. And so, but you have to do that actively, not passively. Sure. Right. What do you mean when you say that by the way? Can you Yeah. So, what I mean by that is if I actually sit and think, how am I different than who I was 12 months ago? What are some of the things I was saying 12 months ago, saying yes to 12 months ago that I would say no to today? what was my view of the future 12 months ago. What were the things I was prioritizing? Um what are some of the things I was avoiding? Right? Like just literally make then I could do that for 5 years ago. I could do that for two months ago. Right? So one of the things I'm just trying to invite you to do is get better and better at defining the differences between your current self and your past self. What most people do is they say this is how he's always been. Right? That's who he always is. Um and that's not a proper framing of the past for yourself or for someone else. Right? It's better to actually appreciate and to find and to filter for those differences. And you can then get better and better at seeing, oh my goodness, uh I'm not even the same person I was a week ago. Like there's a lot of things I was saying yes to a week ago that I wouldn't say no to today, right? Probably because of distance traveled and learning and things like that. Some of the stuff we've been talking about, but it's good to clarify those differences and to define them. And it and you have to actually do that actively. So if I sat in my journal or if I just thought about it and said, "What have I gone through in the last week that makes me know a lot of things my past self even a week ago didn't know and didn't realize and now I know and now therefore I don't have to repeat." Um so that that's one thing. Um I look at identity similar to how I look at goals and I look at it more as a tool. Uh I don't I don't certainly there's core elements of identity how you you know how you define yourself uh your view of God things like that. Um but I I I don't try to overattach to a particular identity, right? Um like I don't I don't make it such a big deal that I've written books, right? And have to say like I got to have this identity as an author like because then that then identity becomes a trap, right? And so you don't want so um I think it's just important to so for to the idea of not getting stuck in a self-image. Um certainly having a different future self. Like I've been talking just in the last two or three minutes about how I'm not the same as my past self. I think it's also important to realize your future self isn't the same as who you are today. And so if you start to really think from the future and start letting your future self shape who you are today, then you're not as rigid about who you are today. Right? Like one of the things that Carol Dwek wrote about in her concepts on growth mindset versus fixed mindset is that someone with a fixed mindset has a fragile identity because they're so fixated on who they think that they are that they don't want to expose that. They don't want to be wrong. They don't want to fail. They don't want to look bad. That's a fixed mindset. That's someone who's afraid of looking bad. That's someone who's afraid of failing. Therefore, they're afraid of learning. Whereas, if you're just operating from the future and you're and you're you're not so attached to where you're at in the present, you know that who you are in the present is just a blip in the radar, then you're very comfortable failing. And in fact, if you're going for an impossible goal or if you're if you're going for big goals, you're literally failing or making mistakes every single day. You're not defined by them. You're not avoiding them. you're actually fully exposing them. You're a lot more willing to just say, "I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing or I I need help." Right? Um there's someone on my team who I love, but I want him to expose his weaknesses more cuz he holds him in. He tries to pretend like he's got it all figured out and it can create problems. I'm like, "No, just it's okay to not know. Now that we now that we know we don't know, let's work on it. Let's solve it. We can solve it." And so, um, I think that just owning the truth when I let my future shape my present, I tell the truth more. I say that no longer resonates with me. I'm going to go this way. Yeah, that's how you guys think I am, but that this is where I'm going. And it's okay to get there very imperfectly. So, that that's kind of how I see it. So, I have no need to prove myself to you. No need for this to be a perfect presentation, right? Um, and so I'm just It's okay to make mistakes. It's okay to expose yourself. It's okay to not have the answers. That's where you're going to really start learning. I uh if I just real briefly when I first read that, I was shocked that people admit things like that in books, people with bigger names. And I thought, man, he is opening the door for all of us because we all have some similar story just in a different area. And I just want to say I appreciate it. Cool. It's great to expose yourself. Expose yourself. Seriously. I want to come over to this side. I want to come over to this side. Who? Um, Donna, I see your hand right there, sis. Go ahead. Thank you, Cat. Good morning and thank you for everything. Amazing. Um there is a premise that I've believed in for a long time that says if you continue to focus on your um past it can become your future. With that I think about there are lessons in the past that are valuable for me and that will allow me to propel into my future and there are also some things in my past that are negative. How do you differentiate between what you should pull forward based on that principle? It's gorgeous. Um, I look at all like the past just like I view the future as a tool. I view the past as a tool, right? And so there's there's enormous meaning you can even get even knowing things like your family history, right? Like those things can give you roots. Those things can be very powerful. Um, and so the past is is is a p very beautiful and powerful and and having a great relationship with it can really benefit your present and your future um for the things that were negative, right? That that is that's where some good reframing can come in, right? To reframe its meaning. Usually if something is viewed as negative, it's it's viewed as um not only lacking value but even having negative value. Like it was such a bad experience that it's now costing me in the present and the future. Trauma. That's what a tra that's how a trauma is framed. Yeah. And so with reframing a trauma as an example or just a bad experience or whatever it is, you have to actually look at it in ways to create value from the experience because if something has value then it's beneficial, right? And so that's part of the whole concept of taking something that's negative and turning it into something of positive value is what are the things that because of this I can now do. What are the things that I now know that I didn't know before? Right? You have to create value. That's why I said you you when you're when you're taking the present and using that to shape the past, you have to use agency. Like it doesn't just happen. You actually have to pro proactively give it value. Value doesn't just come. You might get in the great habit of turning negatives into positives quickly, but you have to be the one to give it value. What does that mean for you? What is the usefulness of that? Why does that make your present and your future better and getting to a point where then you become even grateful for that experience? Now you've given it value and you're grateful for it. Now that past is valuable. Now it's a tool and I'm able to bring it into my future. You're able to take the learning from it. you're able to take squeeze the good juice out of it and take that so that your future is much better and more meaningful, you know, and rather and you're no longer dragging an elephant with you like now it's cool. Now you can let it go. Mhm. So good. Good stuff. Thank you. This this gentleman over here with a hat and then we'll come up here to Graham and then we're going to go back to the other side. All right. So I don't know if my question will make sense to you. So is our desire a definer of the future self or is desire a product of our future self? Is desire a part of your future self or what was the question? Is our desire a definer of the future self or is desire a product of our future self? Future self. Is does it define our future self or is the product of our future self? Does it define your future self or is it or does it come from your future self? Is that the question? It's great. Um, it's a really good question. I think Myer and I I bet you have some some good thoughts on that. I think that desires are important. Um, I think it's important to be aware of those, but it's also important to realize that some of our desires aren't that great, right? like you know like honestly sometimes they are sometimes they're phenomenal like I might have a desire to do XY and Z and so learn that but recognizing sometimes when your desires are for a lesser goal right or your desires maybe to imp you know impress that person often a lot of our desires um whether whe uh we're better off letting those go and maybe shaping better desires um and so You know, a person might desire just kicking it on the couch all day, right? They can learn to desire to get off the couch and go contribute and go create, right? And so I I'm a big believer that um like unique ability, you can shape your desires. Now, sometimes God can give you those, you know, maybe your future self can give you those and and so those are worth being open to, but I also think I can think about who I want my future self to be. And if I do that, I might have to learn how to want to do certain things that right now I don't want to do. A lot of times though, people won't do something because they don't want to do it. And and then they then they make that like a chasm where it's like, well, unless I'm super passionate about it or feel it all the time. I'm It's like sometimes you have to do things that you really don't want to do. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. Can you pass up here to Graham? Good stuff. Um, this has been awesome. So, gap in the gain and 10x is easier than 2x combining them in my brain. And I know there's a gap in the gain chapter in 10X, but how do you my question is how do you balance the impossible goal, the big dream, the all that excitement and that clarity that comes from the future without getting caught in the gap and still being able to be satisfied with your progress of of how far you've come while you're chasing this big thing? because I feel that tension between the ambition and the excitement of I'm going to go create this thing and and it does fuel me and clarify, but then that sort of gap mentality can creep up if you're like I didn't hit the 10x goal yet and it's been the three years. Yeah, I love it. I always I I view the past and the future as tools like the the past is a tool for learning, for reflection. I think it I think it's important, right, to to define progress. Um, I don't view so I have a huge 10x goal. Um, but I don't feel anxiety about it. If I don't hit it, I'm not a loser. But I'm using that to shape my decisions in the present. Right? And so I think I think you feel the gap when you've put the future so far away from you. I'm saying that the future's right here and it's the tool to shape what you're doing. Right? Doesn't mean you're actually there yet, right? doesn't mean that but um I see them as very complimentary. Um I see that the future is allowing me to filter and make better decisions and my past is allowing me to see how much progress I've made and and I can look at the past and say I've made huge progress in the last month. Now what's the most important progress I can make next month? Right? And so I don't view them in conflict. Um, but I think that the thing that is very understandable that you deal with and that a lot of people deal with is that when they have such a big future, um, they over they overeotionalize it, right? Is it attachment? Is that really the issue? I think so. And over definitions like what does it mean if you don't hit it right or what? Like all of that stuff isn't the use of the goal. The goal is a tool for being really honest about what are you doing now that has no relevance there anymore? Raising your floor and saying what would be more leveraged paths, right? what would be better pathways like Alysia. So use the goal as a tool. Don't don't use it to hurt you. Don't use it to make you feel lesser. Don't That's why a lot of people have bad relationships with goals. And a lot of people why would they set a big goal? Cuz now now the pain's going to be even worse. I just use it as a tool. It's just a tool for making great decisions. It's not It doesn't need to be emotionalized. Use it as a lens. So you use the goal as a means of discovering direction and making decisions but not to define who you are. No. Nor to define my value or whether I'm good or bad or whether I'm a winner or a loser. Loser or successful or failure. I'm playing my own game. You're playing your own game. You know, um AG Laughly, he wrote uh a book on strategy and he said strategy is about defining the game you want to play and learning how to win, right? And so like I'm playing a different game than you're playing. you're playing a different game than she's playing. So, it's like your future allows you to find the right game and to get into the right game and play the right game and it can stretch you and challenge you and the short timelines. Like sometimes it's good to have some pressure, but it doesn't that pressure can be good. You know, it doesn't mean you have to go into the gap. It doesn't mean you have to be a loser and wish you were there. Like the gap, as I see it, is that you're mad at yourself for not being there yet. You're mad at yourself because you're not where you think you should be. you start using the word should a lot when you're in the gap. I should have done that. You should do that. Um where it's like no, that thing is a tool for helping me redirect and honestly to reanalyze. Uh and the past is a phenomenal tool for saying, "Wow, look at where look at how different things are from where they were even a month ago." They're just tools. They're phenomenal tools. And you can know if you're using them right because the present is very illuminated. It's meaningful and it's clear. It's a lot more filtered. It's clear. What What does that do for you with your goal? Yeah. No, that's that's super helpful. I think this whole conversation has been gamechanging. And what's wild is the identity piece and the destruction of the sorting giving yourself peace of like I used to value this. This path got me to that goal that I used to value and now that's shifting. and how hard it is not only to get yourself over the inertia of I'm becoming a different person and choosing a different path than all the other people that are like but you're that guy or that's what you did like I've had personally I've had like three or four professional pivots in my life and every time it's been fueled by an impossible goal that gave clarity to the present and then immediately after that is the oh but we know you as this and I'm like yeah I know myself as that and so I'm then you alluded to it so my question for you now getting personal as you're balancing company builder Ben and there's author Ben and then there's you know all these other facets of you. How how do you look at identity even in this present moment shaping for you and pivoting for you? Does it like you said identity is a tool. So do you let one identity sort of lead a little bit for a while to accomplish a goal until another one needs to take the lead or is that's one visual that just comes to mind. I think it's great. I I don't overly define my identity. Um, like we have an impossible goal. Um, and so I'm I know I know I have various skills and desires and abilities and so I'll use those and hopefully form a right role for what we're trying to accomplish or even even with my family, right, with my wife and my kids. Um, so yeah, I don't um I know what you're talking about. Like I think this is one of the key things is when you let the future shape the present, it's going to take you into a different direction and a lot of people who knew you as one way are going to want to they're going to be concerned, right? Cuz now your relationship changes, right? To the idea of connection. So that's a natural part. That's just natural. I'm dealing with that right now even with my own family. um like with my wife um I have some really special uh book opportunities that have come up like writing books with like people you all know. Um but those goals are slightly in conflict with what I'm trying to accomplish right now to be honest with you. And so and my but my wife she's gone through such a crazy journey with me as an author that she's like I don't want you to miss those really good opportunities Ben because you're now building this. It's like, well, maybe you're still looking at me from the past, right? You know, like the idea of building a business in the past, maybe, you know, and so it's like, and so it can be difficult for people to make those adjustments, right? Um, appreciate you sharing that. Yeah. No, for sure. But I think that again to the point of honesty. I was mentioning honesty. uh if you can really be clear and transparent with people about what you're trying to do and why and why you're making the shift, even if it is uncomfortable for them or even maybe even negatively impacts them. Um at least they understand and that builds trust. So you can disappoint someone while still building trust. But if you're not being clear and honest, then then they don't know what's going on. Then it's hard to understand why. So So good. So good. Good stuff. Good stuff. Ryan, over here. Over here. Ryan. Ryan. Um, yeah. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Wow. This has been awesome so far. Thank you, Myin. My pleasure, bro. That's what we do. The uh I Yeah, I kind of feel like you you guys came out swinging on me today. I'm feeling very Imagine that. Yeah, I'm feeling very uh I don't know, called out. I'm feeling very called out. So, I I I own a payment processing firm and um we have a lot of different types of clients and I I imagine this framing thing that you've got here and there's got to be a process for finding the correct path. Like it's it's cool to see in that visual and that I think that's your current business. Correct. And I think that grossly oversimplifies the process at least in my mind. Maybe that's the lie I'm telling myself but fig the process of of framing to get up there. I'm going to let you talk. You obviously know where I'm going. Go ahead. Go ahead. Get get to your clean answer. Yeah. No, seriously. I'm not calling you. I I've grossly oversimplified it. Keep going. So, well, no. No. So, so like I've I've um my word for the year this year is simplify and with for the purpose of scaling. So, I said that back in January because and and I'm I'm I'm literally optimizing pieces of my business right now. And that's part of the reason I feel called out is because I think like I'm putting people in place and I've hired employees and I'm I'm tweaking systems internally to be able to pump volume through those systems, but like I'm hoping that I'm optimizing the right things, right? And so what what I mean by that is there's is there a framework other than just saying, "Oh, hund00 million goal or billion dollar goal that you can use to identify those things." Some things will naturally fall out, but then maybe there's six or seven or eight options, right? And which one is is the option? That makes sense. I love it. So, how much Let's just How much money How many What is your business doing right now? Uh, well, we're projected this year to about 1.5. Awesome. Yeah. And what are you going for? What are you optimizing for? Uh, well, last year we broke a million for the first time and I was like, you know, awesome. Let's go for two. [Applause] which is a little I mean just saying in this context a little embarrassing but it's not it's not embarrassing. He really means 10 million. So you So you're going for two. Well that's what I was going for. Now what are you going for this year? Yeah. Yeah it was two. Um but now I think well I think this particular year over the next six months we there's a lot of adjustments I'd have to make to do more than probably three. I mean, I I can I can maybe see a path to three in the next six months. Okay, so let's mess with this for a minute. Sure. You really wanted that microphone, didn't you, Ryan? I actually have to give you massive credit. You don't want it to be as simple as it is, but let's just let's just keep rolling with your punches right now, cuz right now you're taking the present and you're pushing it into the future. So, let's just take your 2 million goal and let's pump harder and go to three. Yeah. Cool. So, how do you do that? How are you gonna get to three? What's it going to take you to get to three with all your systems that you're optimizing? Uh focusing on our our lead generation. Like that's that's one of the things that has been um falling through the cracks. We've been optimizing product and systems and not our marketing and lead generation. And that's that's one of the and and with that simplifying the products is part of being able to even simplify that process because we can only do a certain number of messages to a certain number of avatars successfully. But you said you have a lot of different types of clients you're working with, right? Correct. Correct. And you have a lot of different products or services. We do. We do. What are they? Um so so for like example our five main industries would be like restaurants, retails, automat so like restaurants we sell uh restaurant point of sale systems for them to run their business on and obviously the payments is attached to that and so that's a large number of our clients are restaurants same idea. How would you say you're defined in the marketplace if I was a if I was looking you up? What would what would what would I find in terms of who you are, what you do and who you do it for? How are you defined payments and POSOS for small businesses? Okay, great. But you do that in a ton of different ways, right? Right. Any of it extremely innovative, well- definfined, and best-in-class. So, if I was looking for something very specific from you, I'd be like, "Dang, that's the only option." Mhm. No. No. Consider us more of a generalist. Generalist. Yeah. Yeah. And generalist businesses usually won't scale. Yeah. Um, so if we if we were to take your goal and rather than go for 2 or 3 million, if we really were going to go for 20 or 50 million in the next two or three years and we use that as the goal, we really wanted to scale your company. That's the thing we would use to say what's the business model for that? What's the business model to get you in? Can can you even can you see a business model to get even to 20 million? Sure. So, so we're we're currently developing our own software because one of the things is that we resell other other softwares pair it with payments and then that that is a piece of it. So, we're we're developing our own uh invoicing software that will be modular for us to add other modular pieces to it as as features and things need to come but the basis of it is project management and um and invoicing. That's the same as what you're doing right now. It it is because we f like one of our industries that we service is trades for like field service management and uh we're going after the payments and we're using the software as the value proposition to an industry. Right. So that's kind of I wrote about a story like that in in the book. They did the same thing. Gave away the software for free. Right. Right. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we do. Um depending on on the specifics. I'm wondering if you wanted to get to 20 million in 3 years, what's the business model? Yeah. What are you selling? Who what are you as a business? What I'm I'm wanting an actual business model. Number of clients, number of prices. Is it because if it's 20 million, you might sell some, you know, a,000 units at what um 200 bucks, right? Or I don't know the number, but what is the business model? If you're doing 20 million, what are you selling? What who's your clients? What are you doing at 20 million? That's what I want you to solve right now because that will tell you the many things you're now doing that have nothing to do with that. Right? There's a lot of things you're doing right now that would be optimizing things that shouldn't should not exist if you were going for 20 million, right? What's a business model to 20 million that you think you could fulfill? Sure. So, so I mean I would say average, you know, profit per client on a payments client. It it varies widely, right? There's clients that bring your floor would have to go up, right? You couldn't very widely well a lot of the clients you have would have to go away because you can't optimize those ones anymore. You'd have to have better clients avatar. You'd have to have a very specific avatar. You'd have to be specific. You'd have to be a defined business. You'd have to have a defined path. You'd have to say this is who we are. This is what we do. This is who we do it for. And we do it better than everyone else. No one else can compete. And we're innovative. And right right now, uh, you offer us, you know, a lot of average products to a lot of people and that's not how you're going to scale, right? Our differentiator has been our level of service, right? Which I mean, it's a race to the bottom. It is. Yeah. Yeah. Service service does, you know, that's that's that that's not I mean, that's not going to get you there, right? Yeah. I agree. Cool. But tell me so tell me if you went for a bigger goal. If you really want to scale it, by the way, this man is so courageous and so power like this is this I I told I said I said expose yourself. This man is going to grow cuz he's asking the hard questions and he's exposing himself that this man is doing what it takes to grow. Um yeah, if you had a bigger goal, it would force you to simplify your business model. It would force you to look at all the things you're doing right now that are mediocre or obsolete. And it would force you to find a path and a definition of a company and get and get really serious about actually getting to a level of service. Not just how you do it, but the quality of what you do and who you do it for. And especially back to strategy, who you don't do it for. Right. Right. You'd have to offer a very specific type of service to a very specific type of business in a way that's perfectly signal for them. Sure. And that would mean that you don't serve a lot of the businesses that you want to serve because they're quick wins. A lot of the market's no longer for you. A ton of the markets longer for you because the floor went up. Maybe now you maybe What's the average price of say one of your clients? Like say the average service you provide. Just give me an example on a monthly basis. Yeah. $500 a month. Perfect. What's your top What's the top client you serve? What do they how much they give you a month? 10,000 a month. Do you really have one at that level? So, what if that became your floor? What if you didn't serve anyone for less than 10,000 a month and that you only optimized for those and you became so good at that level that there was no other competition for those types of clients and you didn't accept anything less because all that stuff would require a different type of service than this one and that's what you're the best in the world at. What if that became your for? Sure. But 10,000 I mean do the math. I mean do a few of those and you'll be all right. No. No. Could you build a $20 million company off of clients like that? Yeah. I think that's 200, right? It might be more. I mean, I'm not the best math guy, especially when I'm sitting in front of a crowd. Uh, let me see here. Two 200 million. You might not be able to get there even with that model. Divide by 10,000. It's Yeah, 2,000. Yeah, that's probably too many too many million customers, right? No. Um, you think you could serve 2,000 people? there and and just doing the math that way there's there's two options like what the other option is like when I think of the software that we're building right now the reason I'm building it is that we would own the platform and then it would provide me the ability to innovate on my own because one of the restrictions I currently have that's preventing that creative ability manifesting itself into the business is we're reselling other people's products so you see it as a much better model to have your own thing that you can Right 100% and then taking that. So like for example with invoicing one of our things is because we we work with trades on field service management already. We we understand that industry but I see the gap for them is in the guy that has one, two, three trucks wanting to scale himself. Us being able to provide them a tool that would help them scale. AI being a piece of that being like I'm now in a truck and instead of me having to do a bunch of paperwork, which as a plumber, an electrician, a handyman, whatever, I'm not good at now. I get in my truck, I tell my invoicing platform, hey, build me an estimate for this, this, this, and this. Boom, it builds the invoice, and then I just have to plug in an email and send it to the customer. Now, I've got a a secretary in my pocket, right, to help their business scale from an AI perspective. And so, that's a piece of of what of what we're Can you do something specific, innovative, and powerful enough to scale? I think that is all right. Could you let go of everything else so you could do that? Well, I guess we in order to do it, you'd have to. I mean, that's like you're the one who said I was oversimplifying. Yeah. Yeah. Well, innovation is saying no to a thousand things. What if you became defined as the person who did that? How how many businesses could you serve if you did that at the highest level? Yeah. Yeah. 10,000 businesses. I mean, the trades industry is huge. So, get focused. Just do it. Get focused. All the things you're doing that are splitting your focus are below the floor and they're costing you doing that. Yeah. Okay. So, here's I I have to There's other people here. You were awesome. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, so here's the before we go to any more questions. Food is almost ready. Um, so if somebody has a question that they can ask in 30 seconds, then we'll go to that question. But if it can't be asked in 30 seconds, then we're not going to go there. Okay. I'm going to go with Cole over here. 30. No, you need the microphone. And then we're going to we're then we're going to give thanks for lunch. Yeah. Um, thank you so much. So, um, psychology to psychology. What's a great protocol that you've helped, um, uh, business professionals unlock their past doubt or whatnot? Um, what's a good protocol to help them go to the next level? Um, you had mentioned a gentleman who had to go back to his past. It's like Sigman Freud, but not Sigman Freud, and then unlock that like fear of failure or whatnot to go to the next level. What protocol do you typically use? Um, I would go just straight back to the framework that we've been talking about the whole time, which is, um, have a better future and start being really honest in the present from that future. Have a bet. You don't need to go into the past and try to dig it all up and try to try to find some unlock in the past. It's about having a better version of your future and then using that to be a really honest with yourself. like that great guy was just being really honest. That's like that's going to move him forward a lot faster than trying to dig into the past and finding some key to unlock that opens him up. Like just have a better future and start being a lot more honest in the present. Be willing to expo expose yourself. Be willing to be honest about where things are not right and just start being honest about it. That's going to get that's the that's the unlock. Good great stuff. Great stuff. Give it up for everybody who ask questions. Dr. Ben, so here's here here's what we're going to do. We're we're we're going to we're on YouTube. We're going to we're going to bounce right now. We'll be back in about an hour, okay? And we're going to pick up this conversation where you left off in about an hour for about an hour. So, come back and join us at 1 p.m. So, um let me know when I'm out of YouTube, Michael. And what we're going to