[Music] hi Shannon Waller here and welcome to inside strategic coach with Dan Sullivan Dan today we're going to talk about something that I cannot wait to do a deep dive into and that is the biggest barriers or obstacles to 10x growth and this is great because with the launching of the book 10x is easier than 2x people are really excited about growing in a multiplier kind of way but there are some barriers mindset and in reality and some obstacles to overcome so I'm really curious as to what you think some of those barriers are well it's a great question Shannon because one of the fundamental themes in strategic coach as a matter of fact the whole level of our program in strategic coach is 10 times growth ambition so we call it 10 times ambition the biggest obstacle I can start off with two is that for most people I would say if you say 10 times they interpret it as 10 times harder 10 times more difficult they have to work 10 times longer to get there so actually what we've discovered is that it's counterintuitive that if you're not paying attention to two things you're not paying attention to what's happening in the world and the second thing you're not paying attention to is what's happened with your own life I think it's a lack of awareness of how the world is progressing and the world is progressing on the basis of new tools new technologies New Opportunities where people are very easily experiencing 10 times greater growth that's one thing but looking internally we've all gone 10 times in many many ways in our life starting as babies babies go through a 100 times growth in matter of months you know from not talking to talking from not walking to walking so our early years are just 10 times times 10 times time 10 times it takes an incredible amount of growth to go from baby stage to six-year-old stage to 20year Old Stage to 30y Old Stage there's a lot of things in life that I'm not a master of but one of the areas that I am a real master of is how I've grown even within the framework of my entrepreneurial life and that's a useful experience for entrepreneurs to look at so you know next August we're doing this in 2023 so in August of 2024 I will have been a coach for 50 years and I'll be 80 years old at that stage I can just think of about 10 different 10 times growths that got us from just me being a single entrepreneur in August of 1974 where we are with a $40 million company in three countries with 2,500 entrepreneurs as clients with a company of 130 team members you know with massive amounts of intellectual property but when you look at that and you look back you can break it down into a series of little 10 times jumps the other thing is that I think about 10 times in terms of entrepreneurial Freedom so 10 times better use of my time 10 times Improvement in the amount of money that I'm making and the quality of the money I'm making in other words how I'm making money do I love the activity and quality of money in terms of who's writing the checks to me you know what kind of people am I providing my services and then the third one is relationship so that's you know am I surrounded by people that I really like am I working with people in the marketplace that I really like and the third thing is when you put the first three freedoms Freedom of time freedom of money and freedom of relationship together it gives me the purpose that I have in life you know freedom of purpose that I'm basically you know at this stage 50 years coaching and 80 years old really really free to pursue and focus on whatever I want to focus yeah now if I take an entrepreneur through that I'll say when were you one tenth of where you are today let's just use revenues or take home money I think take-home money is probably a more meaningful statistic and you say when were you one tenth of where you are today in terms of actually making money and they can pick a spot I mean it may may not be the exact day but they would say you know it's about 15 years ago and I said well how did you do that how did you go from one tenth of where you are today because if I had asked the question think about going 10 times 15 years ago you would not have been able to visualize everything that you've done but you've already gone 10 times and what you'll notice when you pick the really crucial breakthroughs they weren't doing the same thing every day there was new skills you developed and that you multiplied through new skills new knowledge New Opportunities new support team members that you work with new collaborations in the marketplace and changes in the marketplace I mean one of our really big 10 times will turn out probably 10 years from now the fact that we took such great advantage of Zoom it truly made us a global coaching company in a matter of a year or two so the big thing is that looking ahead doesn't give you any indication of where the opportunities are and how you go 10 times it's actually looking at how you've already done it and I love telling this story because I asked a particular entrepreneur was in a workshop he was very resistant to the notion of 10 times and he says 10 times and he immediately said something which kind of tells you what the problem is and he says I can't do 10 times in three years and I said three years who said anything about years and he said well you know you're always talking about fast growth and I said yeah but fast in relationship to what you know I said actually I was thinking about giving you 25 years to go 10 times and he said 25 years I don't need 25 years to go 10 times and I said really how long would it take you and he said I could do 10 times in 15 years this is a person who just a few minutes before said it's not possible for me to go 10 times and I said 15 years so if you went 10 times in 15 years you still have another 10 years to get to 25 years yeah what would you do with the extra 10 years cuz you got change now you know I was asking could you go 10 times in 25 years and you said no I could do it in 15 and I said isn't that great you have 10 times which means that you're more skillful you're more knowledgeable you have a bigger reputation you have more opportuni so if 15 years from now you had just achieved 10 times from today what would you do with the extra 10 years and they said well I just do it again and I said well wait a minute wait a minute before you couldn't do it at all and now you're going to do a 100 times in 25 years 10 times was freaking you out and now you're very confidently talking about a hundred times so what I want to point to here it's all mindset there is nothing outside of you that's interfering with your ability to go 10 times except the mindsets that you have about yourself and about where you are right now in the present right isn't going to happen in the present it's going to happen in the future and your track record from the past already indicates that you've already done it so you probably know 80% of what got you from one0 of where you are to right now there certain crucial things you did which are probably repeatable if you have your eyes open but the big thing is you have your mind open and I said it's going to require change but you've always been changing to choose to be a life of an entrepreneur you're you're always changing change is just a natural part of being an entrepreneur so the only obstacle to you going 10 times if you're living in the modern world and there's opportunities and if you're not living in the right place for it you've already in your life probably moved to other places you've move to different relationship groups you've tried all sorts of things so it requires a mindset that it's possible and it's requires a mindset that it's desirable and it requires the mindset that I'm willing to change in order to achieve it so the obstacles are you're not having the mindset of growth you don't have the mindset of ambition and you don't have the mindset of getting better so I said those are the biggest obstacles to 10 times well that's powerful Dan because not appreciating that you've already done it is a really interesting take on it and having done the exercise in the program forever people are like oh my goodness I didn't realize I'd already done it yeah their eyes just get really big and they're like and they figure out how long it took them last time and they just to your point with their increased skills and capabilities and reputation and resources now they can do it next time much shorter but really putting those false deadlines in place like if yourself 25 years I want to go back to that thing immediately put three years so I've personally coached about 7,000 entrepreneurs that's where I had Direct input and direct impact on entrepreneurs so about 7,000 coming up on 50 years what I notice is that entrepreneurs do not drive themselves crazy with their goals they drive themselves crazy with their deadlines you know I mean you have to put some deadline to progress or you don't make the progress y our brain doesn't pay attention to wishes that don't have a deadline that's what makes it a wish you don't have a deadline for it and it's got to have some measurement to it it's got to I mean 10 times as a measurement okay now the question is what's the appropriate time frame and you wouldn't go 10 times right away you would go part of the way to 10 times how to eat an elephant you know a bite at a time you don't try to eat the whole elephant but it's an interesting thing and it takes you into a different world because the moment that you commit yourself to 10 times you find that you have company o so the moment you commit yourself to 10 times you find you have company yeah you don't see them until you commit but the moment you commit to 10 times I mean your brain only picks up on what you're actually looking for so when you're looking for it 10 times all of a sudden evidence starts pouring out you know and one of the great advantages we have in the 21st century is just the incredible proliferation of technological multipliers yeah yeah and to your point as we're talking about this I think you'd almost have to be blind not to see the 10 times there's so much evidence in the world in the news with companies and not just high tech companies although they're great representatives of that of lots of things are going 10 times but I think you have to commit to it for yourself not to say oh it's bad that things are going 10 times no I want to go 10 times I want to grow that much I want to have that ambition that's powerful well you know things are good or they're bad depending on your mindset yeah so it really does come back and start with mindset yeah I mean you've already made a choice that sentenced you to being an entrepreneur for the rest of your life I mean it's not like you can go back I mean and be an employee no I mean one they wouldn't have you I would never hire an entrepreneur you know who was only biting their time until they go out again you know so I have hired some people but I check out whether they were an entrepreneur before and I said I just want you to know that you know and I know that this is very temporary so here's what I ask you to do while you're here really contribute nice so that you have a good memory and we have a good memory of working together nice and I said don't have this secret agenda while you're here because it'll interfere with you but I know you're going to go back out again you know it's in your bloodstream and um you'll want to go out again you know unless you've really found a place where everything you wanted to achieve as an entrepreneur you can actually achieve it here I made the decision in August 50 years ago almost and I knew it was for the rest of my life the moment I made the decision I knew I would never again be an employee so you know you either know it or you don't know it and we're not talking to people trying to convince people to be entrepreneurs we're actually just talking to a very select group of people who have made that decision a long time ago and they prove that they can do it and they're hitting a ceiling but it's a mindset ceiling that they're hitting there's no barrier outside of them that's preventing them from endless growth that strictly mindsets that they have this is so cool Dan because you know the barriers are all internal which means there's something completely under your control there's no external barrier to 10x growth so it could be too short a time frame not recognizing where in your life you've already grown not focusing on each of the Four Freedoms of time money relationship and purpose I love talking about the quality of money that is super cool and I you know you and I having worked together for 32 years at this point you know I just think about how we're doing what we're doing and with whom and it's just way more than 10 times in terms of growth that way and totally freed up to do more of our purpose which is amazing and then it's almost the not committing or not believing or not trusting in your own capabilities but if you really are an entrepreneur which means you've put yourself in what the 5% Dan or 5% or 5% for us it's one out of 400 of 400 entrepreneurs likely there's one of them who will find strategic coach and excellent solution for their future growth and we've narrowed our vision down to looking for essentially mindset first of all I mean the capability is already proven and they already have entrepreneurial capabilities they're successful they're talented the question is do they now see that maybe they've gone as far as they can just doing it on their own that having a great team around them a self-managing company having great collaborations with other entrepreneurs would that be their next growth stage yeah and the question is is their mind open to maybe looking at their life so far as stage one and now they're going into a stage two but then again that's internal that's not external yeah and I'm just thinking down both of us working with 10x clients the success stories that we get to see people who not only 10x what they're taking home they 10x their clients they 10x their personal lives they 10x their free time or they do a 2X in terms of free time and a 5x in terms of income and that you know multiplies out to 10x the growth we've seen when people are in this environment not alone with other people who also want to have that 10x ambition it's just spectacular to see the impact of that the other thing is that it's a mindset that I have that the moment that you show up in any setting that you're very growth motivated and that the way you look at your life is that your future is always bigger than your past other people are very very attracted to that okay we're attracted to other people's energy and 10 times energy is very contagious it's very attractive to other people so the one thing is just that if you show up as being 10 times ambitious the opportunities are attracted to you oh resources are attracted to you the collaborations are attracted to you okay so it's not so much about what you have to do it's what you have to be it's not so much what you have to do it's what you have to be yeah I love all of this Dan thank you so much just to wrap up I love that the barriers are all internal and they're easily blasted through and once you do make that commitment 10x is an attraction people resources capabilities opportunities collaborations all the things so thank you for breaking through all the barriers for us well I'm just describing how it's done okay thank you for describing how to break through all the barriers wonderful thanks so much Dan thank you shanon