The 10X Rule

Grant Cardone
Rating: 8.0

“If you don’t think goal setting is important in life, don’t waste your time reading The 10X Rule. If you do . . . Grant has set a new benchmark on the subject with his new book. Give it to a friend or colleague and it will make a huge difference in their life.”
-Bill Jenkins, National Sales Director, Kawasaki Motors Corp., USA

The 10x rule based on the idea you should figure out what you want to do. Say what goal you have: got making a certain amount of money, finding your ideal loved ones, achieving a certain body fat percentage, etc. Multiply the effort and time you think you’ll take by 10. That way you have a more accurate idea of how much time and effort it will actually take.

This is just one part of the 10x rule though on the other side of the coin is 10x thinking. That is when you think how much money you want to earn, you should multiply that by 10 and figure out the steps that you’ll want to take in the amount of time that will take to get to the goal.

We as humans have a tendency to underestimate what we can accomplish and therefore set lower goals and not reach our full potential. When you apply the 10x rule, do your thinking and then apply the 10x rule to how you act as well.

Contents

CHAPTER 1: What Is the 10X Rule?

The 10X Rule is the one thing that will guarantee that you will get what you want in amounts greater than you ever thought imaginable. It can work in every area of life— spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, familial, and ﬁnancial. The 10X Rule is based on understanding how much effort and thought are required to get anything done successfully.

CHAPTER 2: Why the 10X Rule Is Vital

Never reduce target, instead increase actions. The 10X rule assumes that the goal is never the problem. The problem is thinking and action. Any goal attacked with the right amount of thinking and action is attainable.

Regardless of how superior your product, service, or proposition is, I assure you that there will be something you don’t anticipate or correctly plan. Economic changes, legal matters, competition, resistance to converting, too new of a product bank freezing up, market uncertainty, technology changes, people problems . . . more people problems, elections, war, strikes—these are just a few of the potential “unexpected events.” I don’t say this to scare you but instead to prepare you for where the biggest opportunities exist. 10X thinking and actions are vital; they are the only things that will get you through these events.

CHAPTER 3: What Is Success?

The deﬁnition of success really depends on where a person is in life or what has his or her attention.

However, wherever you ﬁnd it, the most crucial things to know about success—in order to have it and keep it— are the following:

Success is important.
Success is your duty.
There is no shortage of success.

CHAPTER 4: Success Is Your Duty

Treating success as an option is one of the major reasons why more people don’t create it for themselves—and why most people don’t even get close to living up to their full potential. Ask yourself how close you are to your full capability. You might not like the answer very much

People don’t approach the creation of success as a must-have obligation, do-or-die mission, gotta-have-it, “hungry-dog-on-the-back-of-a-meat-truck” mentality. They then spend the rest of their lives making excuses for why they didn’t get it. And that is what happens when you consider success to be an alternative rather than an obligation.

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

CHAPTER 5: There Is No Shortage of Success

Success is not a commodity or resource that has limited reserves. There will never be a dearth of success because it is created by those who have no limits in terms of ideas, creativity, ingenuity, talent, intelligence, originality, persistence, and determination.

CHAPTER 6: Assume Control for Everything

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

Assume control and increase responsibility by adopting the position that you make all things happen, even those things you have previously considered to not be under your control. Never take the position that things just happen to you; rather, they happen because of something you did or did not do. If you are willing to take credit when you win, you have to take credit when you don’t! Increasing your responsibility level will inherently enhance your ability to ﬁnd solutions and create more success for yourself.

CHAPTER 7: Four Degrees of Action

Most people fail only because they are operating at the wrong degree of action.

There are four choices or say degree of action:

Do nothing
Retreat
Take normal levels of action
Take massive action.

The First Degree of Action

“Doing nothing” is exactly what it sounds like: no longer taking actions to move forward in order to learn, achieve, or control some area.

The Second Degree of Action

“Retreaters” are those who take actions in reverse—probably in order to avoid negative experiences that they imagine will come as a result of taking action.

The Third Degree of Action

People who take normal levels of action are probably the most prevalent in our society today. This is the group that appears on the surface to be taking the necessary amounts of action and to be “normal.”

The Fourth Degree: Massive Action

Massive action is actually the level of action that creates new problems—and until you create problems, you’re not truly operating at the fourth stage of action

When you are taking massive action, you aren’t thinking in terms of how many hours you work. When you start operating at the fourth degree of action, your mindset will shift and so will your results.

CHAPTER 8: Average Is a Failing Formula

Any undertaking that includes accepting average will fail you sooner or later. Anything conducted in standard amounts simply won’t get the job done.

When average actions hit any resistance, competition, loss or lack of interest, negative or challenging market conditions, or all of these, you will ﬁ nd your project tumbling down.

CHAPTER 9: 10X Goals

Make an initial list of goals then make an initial list of actions. Don’t plan too much to start taking action. Do not reduce your goals as you write them down. Don’t get lost in the details either and do not prematurely value the outcome of your actions. Remember to evaluate your goals off.

Average goal setting cannot and will not fuel massive 10X actions.

If your goals are only important enough for you to write them down once a year, then you can’t be expected to have the drive and motivation to complete them. An ideal situation would be to write down your goals every morning when you wake up and every night before you go to bed.

Approach what you do like a mission, keep coming up with new reasons to show up and be motivated. True motivation comes from the inside and keeps you driving toward success.

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

If you underestimate your potential, then it is impossible to set appropriately sized targets. Set the goals too small, and you will not gear up for the massive action necessary

CHAPTER 10: Competition Is for Sissies

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

How do you dominate, you may wonder? The ﬁrst step is to decide to dominate. Then the best way to dominate is to do what others refuse to do. This will allow you to immediately carve out space for yourself and develop an unfair advantage.

CHAPTER 11: Breaking Out of the Middle Class

For most people, being middle class means having a reliable job with fair to good pay, consistent health care, fairly comfortable home in a nice neighborhood, a good education for one’s children.

CHAPTER 12: Obsession Isn’t a Disease; It’s a Gift

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

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

CHAPTER 13: Go “All In” and Overcommit

Most of society discourages the all-in mentality because we are taught to play it safe and not to put everything at risk.

There are certain things in life that have limits, but you don’t unless you impose limits on yourself. It is vital that you get your head completely reworked about taking action and that you understand that there is no limit to how many times you can continue to take action.

CHAPTER 14: Expand—Never Contract

Most companies fail not because they stay on the offensive but because they don’t properly prepare themselves for expansion and cannot dominate the sector.

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

Only retreat for brief moments, if necessary, in order to shore up resources so that you can prepare to expand with even more action.

CHAPTER 15: Burn the Place Down

Once you take 10X actions and start getting traction, you must continue to add wood to your ﬁ re until you either start a brushﬁ re or a bonﬁ re—or burn the place down. Don’t rest, and don’t stop—ever.

Keep stacking wood until the ﬁ re is so hot and burns so brightly that not even competitors or market changes can put your ﬁ re out.

CHAPTER 16: Fear Is the Great Indicator

Fear isn’t bad or something to avoid; conversely, it’s something you want to seek and embrace. Fear is actually a sign that you are doing what’s needed to move in the right direction.

Fear is a fire that won’t blaze if you don’t give it oxygen. When you feel fear that’s when you know it’s time for action. Now for debating or wondering what the next step is when you feel fear, you deal with it by attacking it and not giving it any room to breathe and grow.

So commit first, figure out the details later, get moving on your tasks immediately and don’t worry about the details too.

As strange as it may sound, you want to be scared until you have to push yourself to new levels to experience fear again. In fact, the only thing that should scare you is a complete lack of fear.

CHAPTER 17: The Myth of Time Management

Most don’t even know how much time is available to them or what tasks are most necessary to accomplish in that time.

The ﬁrst thing you must do is make success your duty by setting distinct and deﬁnitive priorities.
The moment you achieve one goal you’ve set for yourself, then it’s time to establish a new target.
Most people only work enough so that it feels like work, whereas successful people work at a pace that gets such satisfying results that work is a reward.

CHAPTER 18: Criticism Is a Sign of Success

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

When you start taking the right amount of action and therefore creating success, criticism is often not far behind.

Criticism precedes admiration and— like it or not—goes hand in hand with success. Keep pouring on the success, and sooner or later, the very same people who were putting you down will be admiring you for what you have done.

CHAPTER 19: Customer Satisfaction Is the Wrong Target

Most companies fail not due to lack of quality in their product, service, or their offering. They fail because they don’t take enough strategic actions to acquire the support—the client—in the first place. That is why I suggest that customer satisfaction is the wrong target—because you don’t even get the opportunity to “satisfy” someone who never evolves into a customer.

The point here is not to negate customer satisfaction after acquisition but to shift your attention back to acquisition.

Remember the operative order of importance: customer acquisition is the primary target, followed by customer loyalty, followed by customers who spread the word about you.

CHAPTER 20: Omnipresence

Think in terms of being everywhere at all times. This is the kind of 10X mindset necessary to dominate your sector. If you commit to taking 10X actions consistently, followed up with more 10X actions, then I assure you that you will be propelled into situations where you ﬁnd yourself everywhere.

CHAPTER 21: Excuses

Excuses are never the reason for why you did or didn’t do something. They’re just a revision of the facts that you make up in order to help yourself feel better about what happened or didn’t). Making excuses won’t change your situation; only getting to the real reason behind it can do this. Excuses are for people who refuse to take responsibility for their life and how it turns out. Slaves and victims make excuses—and will forever be destined to having leftovers and others’ scraps.

CHAPTER 22: Successful or Unsuccessful?

Successful people talk, think, and approach situations, challenges, and problems differently than most people—and they deﬁnitely think about money differently.

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