The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure

by Grant Cardone

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

When people start limiting the amount of success they desire, I assure you they will limit what will be required of them in order to achieve success and will fail miserably at doing what it takes to keep it. This is the focus of the 10X Rule: You must set targets that are 10 times what you think you want and then do 10 times what you think it will take to accomplish those targets. Massive thoughts must be followed by massive actions.

The following is the basic series of mistakes people make when setting out to achieve goals: 1. Mistargeting by setting objectives that are too low and don't allow for enough correct motivation. 2. Severely underestimating what it will take in terms of actions, resources, money, and energy to accomplish the target. 3. Spending too much time competing and not enough time dominating their sector. 4. Underestimating the amount of adversity they will need to overcome in order to actually attain their desired goal.

Let's say that my original aim was to make $100,000, which I then changed to $1 million. Which of these goals would you rather come up short on? Some people claim that expectations are the reason for unhappiness. However, I can assure you from personal experience that you'll suffer greatly by setting subpar targets. You simply will not invest the energy, effort, and resources necessary to accommodate unexpected variables and conditions that are certain to occur sometime during the course of the project or event.

Why work eight hours a day at a job where no one recognizes you when you could be a superstar—and perhaps even run or own the place?

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

When you miscalculate the efforts you need to make something happen, you become visibly disappointed and discouraged. This causes you to incorrectly identify the problem and sooner or later assume that the target is unattainable and ultimately throw in the towel. Most people's—including managers'—first response is to reduce the target rather than increase their activity. I have watched sales managers in organizations do this for years with sales teams. They give a quota or agree on a target at the beginning of the quarter and then midway through find they are unable to reach the target, so they hold a meeting and reduce the target to some more attainable figure in order for the team to stay motivated and have a chance of winning. This major mistake should never even cross your mind as an option. It sends the wrong message to the organization—that targets are unimportant and the only way to win is to move the finish line.

Never reduce a target. Instead, increase actions. When you start rethinking your targets, making up excuses, and letting yourself off the hook, you are giving up on your dreams!

The 10X Rule assumes the target is never the problem. Any target attacked with the right actions in the right amounts with persistence is attainable.

10X parameters allow for a variety of unplanned variables that can strike at any point during a project: employee problems, lawsuits, economic swings, national or global events, competition, illness, and so forth.

success does not merely “happen.” It is the result of relentless, proper actions taken over time. Only those who operate with the appropriate view and corresponding actions will have success. Luck clearly has something to do with it, but anyone who is “getting lucky” will tell you that their “luck” is directly proportional to what they've done. The more actions you take, the better your chances are of getting “lucky.”

Quit Lying to Yourself It is fairly common for people who don't get what they want to provide justifications—and even lie to themselves—by minimizing how valuable success is to them.

Someone once said, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” We can even take this one step further: If you are able to repeatedly attain success, it becomes less of a “success” and more of a habit—almost everyday life for some people. Successful people have even been described as having a certain magnetism—some “x factor” or magical charm that seems to surround and follow them. Why? Because successful individuals approach success as a duty, obligation, and responsibility—and even a right!

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

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.

Erase any concepts you might have that success is limited only to some and only in certain amounts. You and I can get as much as we want—at the same time. The moment you start thinking someone else's gain is your loss, you limit yourself by thinking in terms of competition and shortages. This is the moment when you must discipline your thinking to equate any success with the possibilities for more success. Then move back to your commitment that success is your ethical duty. This will motivate the most creative parts of you to find the solution and the way in which you can create original success in abundant amounts.

Those who give control over to another for their success—or lack of it—will never be in control of their lives. No game in life is truly enjoyable without first accepting control over your understanding of the game, how you play the game, and then the outcome of the game. People who assume the position of victim will never be secure—simply because they elect to turn over responsibility to another party and because they never elect to know for themselves what they can do. They therefore never take charge over their outcomes going forward, saying, “I am a little victim; bad things happen to me often, and I cannot do anything about it.” 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.

Blaming someone or something else only extends how long you will be a victim and slave. Assuming control will cause you to start to look at what you can do to make sure negative events don't take place so that you can improve the quality of your life and reduce the occurrence of seemingly random unfortunate events.

Good things don't happen to victims; bad things do—quite frequently—and all you have to do is ask them.

There are four consistent factors in the life of the victim: (1) bad things happen to them, (2) bad things happen often, (3) they are always involved, and (4) someone or something else is always to blame.

Once you start to approach every situation as someone who is acting—not being acted upon—you will start to have more control over your life. Having (or failing to have) success, I believe, is a direct result of everything you are doing and thinking yourself. You are the source, the generator, the origin, and the reason for everything—both positive and negative. This is not meant to simplify the concept of success, of course, but until you decide you are responsible for everything, you likely will not take the action necessary to get you above the game. However, if you want to have it all, then of course you have to assume responsibility for everything. Otherwise, you are going to waste a lot of potential 10X energy making excuses instead of profits.

You doubtlessly have gifts you have yet to use—potential that remains untapped. You've been endowed with a desire for greatness and are aware enough to know that there are no shortages of success. Increase your responsibility level, assume control for everything that happens to you, and live by the slogan that nothing happens to you—only because of you! And remember, “Don't be a little bitch.”

Disciplined, consistent, and persistent actions are more of a determining factor in the creation of success than any other combination of things.

degree of action. To simplify action, we are going to break down your choices into four simple categories or degrees of action. Your four choices are: 1. Do nothing. 2. Retreat. 3. Take normal levels of action. 4. Take massive 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 retreater personifies the “fear-of-success” phenomenon. He or she has experienced results that were not fruitful (or that he or she did not perceive as fruitful) and has therefore decided to avoid taking further actions that might prompt this to occur again.

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 mind-set will shift and so will your results. You will end up instigating opportunities that you will have to address earlier, later, and in a different way than you would on a “normal” day, so a routine day will become a thing of the past.

However, you can't think in terms of compliments or how many hours you work or even how much money you're making when you're operating at this degree. Instead, you have to approach each day as though your life and your future depend on your ability to take massive action.

People don't know you or about your new product—and the only way to burst through obscurity is by taking massive action. I didn't have money to invest in advertising, so I spent all my energy on phone calls, traditional mail, e-mail, cold calls, return calls, visits, and more calls. This level of massive action may sound—and is indeed—exhausting at times. However, it will create more certainty and security for you than probably any other education or training you will ever receive.

The second you start hitting it big, you will immediately be judged by the mediocre. People who operate at the other three levels of action will be threatened by your activity level and will often make it seem somehow “wrong” in order to make themselves right. These people cannot stand seeing others succeed at these levels and will do everything to stop them. Whereas a sane person would step up to your level, a mediocre person will tell you that you are wasting your time, this won't work in your industry, it is a turnoff to your clientele, no one will want to work with you, and so on. Even management occasionally discourages employees from putting forth this kind of substantial effort. You will know you are stepping into the realm of massive action when you (1) create new problems for yourself and (2) start to receive criticism and warning from others. But stay strong. This activity will break you out of the hypnotic state of mediocrity that you've been taught to accept.

The average worker reads an average of less than one book a year and works an average of 37.5 hours per week. This same person makes 319 times less money than the top U.S. CEOs, who claim to read more than 60 books a year.

Average levels of anything will fail you—or at the very least, put you at risk! If, on the other hand, you create more success than you want or need, you'll always be prepared—even when those who can't create success for themselves try to steal it from you.

Average is also the reason why most new companies fail. A couple of people get together, have a great idea, write a business plan, start a company, and base their predictions on everything going in their favor.

Even the most amazing product on earth might require 100 calls just to get the 10 meetings.

When new ideas come together, they are influenced by the excitement and enthusiasm of those who generate them. Many negative considerations—such as competition, the economy, market conditions, manufacturing, lending, raising money, the preoccupation of your clients with other projects, and the like—are set at what everyone considers normal or average difficulty. Then, when optimistic projections prove unrealistic, even the most conservative objectives are missed. A key partner might get sick, there might be some significant change in economic conditions, or some global event might occur that shifts everyone's attention for the next six months. People involved in the new venture start to lose their enthusiasm, bickering ensues, and as things become more difficult than was originally considered, failure emerges as a likely possibility. The partners go through more money than anyone projected—and with no income. One of the dreamers begins to have second thoughts and wonders if perhaps he should bail since the players don't seem mentally, emotionally, or physically prepared to take the massive action necessary to push through market resistance.

Continuing with this scenario, in order to resolve the lack of income problems, members of the group try to borrow or raise money from their friends—where they hit even more resistance. They realize that it will become increasingly difficult for most people to ante up to the “unreasonable” amounts of relentless 10X actions that are necessary to see things through and were missing from the business plan. The partners start to believe that their company relies more intensely on raising money than it does on increasing actions because they didn't correctly estimate the 10X level of thoughts and actions necessary to keep going.

Average assumes—incorrectly, of course—that everything operates stably. People optimistically overestimate how well things will go and then underestimate how much energy and effort it will take just to push things through. Anyone who has made it in business will support this concept. You simply cannot train or prepare for normal amounts of gravity or resistance, competition, and market conditions. Don't think average; think massive. Compare your actions to having to carry a 1,000-pound backpack that you will...

Most businesses fail because they are unable to sell their ideas, products, and services at prices high enough to sustain the company and fund its activities. The company isn't able to collect revenue in quantities great enough because the people with whom the company has been built—...

Average never yields anything more than average and usually much less. Average thinking and actions will only guarantee you misery, uncertainty, and failure. Rid yourself of everything that is aver...

Study what average people do, and prohibit yourself and your team from considering average as an option. Surround yourself with exceptional thinkers and doers. Let your friends, family, and work associates know that you treat average like a terminal disease. Remember, average anything will never get you to an extraordinary life. Look up the word average and see for yourself what it holds for you—typical, ordinary, common. That should be enough to abandon the concept from all your considerations.

I make sure to always do two things: (1) I write my goals down every day and (2) I choose objectives that are just out of reach.

A good idea is to word your goals as though you've already accomplished them. I

Realistic thinking is based on what others think is possible—but they are not you and have no way of knowing your potential and purposes. If you are going to set goals based on what others think, then be sure you do it based on what the giants on this planet think. They will be the first to tell you, “Don't base your goals on what I have done because you can do even more.”

(1) You are setting these for you—not for anyone else. (2) Anything is possible. (3) You have much more potential than you realize. (4) Success is your duty, obligation, and responsibility. (5) There is no shortage of success. (6) Regardless of the size of the goal, it will require work. Once you've reviewed these concepts, then sit down and write out your goals. And then be willing to rewrite them every day until they are achieved.

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

in the business world, you always want to be in a position to dominate—not compete. If the old saying is, “Competition is healthy,” the new saying is, “If competition is healthy, then domination is immunity!”

Forward thinkers don't copy. They don't compete—they create. They also don't look at what others have done. 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.

Never play by the agreed-upon norms within which others operate. The rules, norms, and traditions of any group or industry are usually traps that prevent new ideas, higher levels of greatness, and domination. You don't want to just be in a race; you want to be at the top of the list of considerations. Even better, you would like to be the only one considered as a viable solution. You need to adopt the attitude that you have so much power in your space that your clients, your market, and even your competition automatically think about you first when they think about what you do.

There is no shortage of energy, effort, creativity, or how much you can make contact with your clients. Use variations of campaigns of offers, information, video, links, third-party validation, mail, e-mails, phone calls, and personal visit combinations to counter the expensive and often wasteful ad campaigns used by the bigger players. Warning: When using activity to counter “deep pocket” advertising of competitors, never underestimate how much activity it takes to be noticed and to maintain attention in your space.

You can't dominate if you don't penetrate, and you won't penetrate by using reasonable levels of activity. Your biggest problem is obscurity—other people don't know you and aren't thinking about you.

You have to do two things: (1) get noticed and (2) get through the noise.