The number one way to guarantee success and financial freedom

Think Bigger!

There’s only one true way to guarantee success and financial freedom, and that is to THINK BIGGER! I recently went to the 10x Growth Conference 3 hosted by one of my favorite hype-men, Grant Cardone. Cardone’s whole philosophy revolves around thinking bigger and ‘10x’-ing your goals. When times are tough and business is going poorly, it’s easy to want to cut staff and reduce the marketing budget. Cardone tells us to EXPAND, spend MORE money on marketing and sell MORE products. The concept makes sense. Sales determines if our business thrives or dies. Even in a recession, you can succeed if you get enough sales.

Have an “Abundance” Mindset

Thinking bigger allows you to have an abundance mindset versus a scarcity mindset. An abundance mindset allows you to think in the future and lets you do things that people with scarcity mindsets would never do. For example, if there was a course you could take that would drastically improve your business and net profit, how much would you pay for it? If there was a guarantee that it would increase your revenue by 25%, wouldn’t it be worth it to take the course?

At the Growth Conference, there were a lot of pitches about products and some of them really hit home for me. I was able to identify which courses interested me and without hesitation, I purchased some of them. Throughout my life, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on courses and self-education because I believed that they would help me obtain more value than the cost of the course. With a scarcity mindset, you could easily think that they’re all scams and that they don’t work. But self-education is one of the best ways to make yourself a better person. Think bigger and you’ll know that the price you pay today is a small fraction of the benefits you’ll receive in the future.

10X Your Life

One of the best things I love about the “10x” movement is that it’s easy. Easy in the sense that it’s easy to imagine and easy to just slap on an extra zero at the end of an imaginary net profit number. But the beauty behind it is that it forces you to think differently. Making $1 million/year and making $10 million/year require very different ways to approach the problem. It forces you to get creative and keeps you from getting too comfortable. When you expand too quickly, you’re forced to shake things up and do things differently.

My Dad is a property manager and has a portfolio of about 80 homes. Managing 80 homes is too much work for one person. He’s constantly stressing out and has to deal with a new emergency every day. I’ve constantly told him to hire an assistant or find a partner to share the load. Unfortunately, he’s stuck in his ways and is scared that if he hires someone, they’ll learn from him for two years then leave and start their own business. Possibly even taking some of his clients with them. So now he’s stuck in this rut where he’s making some money, but he’s killing himself with all of this work. Next year, he might pick up another two or three homes to manage and will incrementally make his burden greater without finding a way to solve it since he thinks his system works well enough.

However, if I told him that he had to manage 800 properties next year, do you think he’d start hiring some folks? Absolutely. There’s no way that he would ever be able to property manage 800 units by himself and will do his best to hire people and make systems to make his business run smoothly. By doing this, he’ll be making 10x more revenue, while also doing less work! This is the power of the 10x rule. Do more business, get more revenue, do less actual work.

Don’t End Up Like the Dead Frog

It’s basically the story of the frog and hot water. Apparently, if you put a frog in a beaker and slowly turn up the temperature, the frog will be uncomfortable, but will stay in the water until it dies from the heat. But if you put a frog into water that’s already hot, it’ll immediately jump out and save its life. This is just like what we do. If we feel burdened or pressured, it’s probably because we’re trying to use the same things that we used to do when we had less work. But if we were immediately slammed with a lot of things to do at once, then we would find ways to ease our burden and would start delegating tasks.

Vision Boards and “The Secret”

Another thing about Thinking Bigger is that it’s easy and fun to think! Have you heard of vision boards? The theory behind a vision board is described in full detail in the book “The Secret”. Basically you create a large board and put images of the things you want on it. A nice house, a nice car, your desired net worth, your ideal body shape, your ideal partner, etc… Somehow, by seeing your vision board every day, it imprints those things into your subconscious. One day, you’ll wake up and realize that you have everything you put on your vision board. It’s weird but it works.

Oprah, Jim Carrey, and Tom Cruise all use vision boards and credits their success to their boards. There’s a famous story about Jim Carrey and his vision board. Before he was famous, he was just an average comic. He had nothing going on for him, but heard about the power of vision boards. He wrote a check to himself, $10 million dollars with a date of 1995. This was an outrageous number for someone, but he believed in the power of visualization. Well, a few years later, he became an international superstar with his role as Ace Ventura. In 1995, he received a check for $10 million dollars for this role in Dumb and Dumber.

Add and Extra ‘0’ to Your Goals, Why Not?

If you knew that you could achieve anything you wanted and that anything you put on your vision board will come true, wouldn’t you want to put a ridiculous number there? Instead of putting $10 million, why not add an extra zero and make it $100 million. It’s not hard to just add an extra zero to an imaginary board, but by doing it, you allow yourself to receive a great bounty in the future. Your mind opens up and you start to think of ways to hit that goal. If your goal was just to get $1 million in your lifetime, you could get by with just working at your regular job and saving until retirement.

But if your goals are large and outrageous, then you know that no matter what kind of job you have, there’s almost no way of earning $100 million from just a salary alone! It forces you to think outside the box and to take massive action to accomplish your goal. And even if you fail, do you think you’ll be worse off than before? Even if you fail to hit $100 million, and only get to $15 million, don’t you think that’s a better result than the $1 million goal you had? Think bigger, and it will force you to take the action required to hit those high targets. Only by thinking bigger will you guarantee your success and financial freedom.