The 1% Rule: How to Fall in Love with the Process and Achieve Your Wildest Dreams

by Tommy Baker

The how is not some grand plan, a blueprint, or a treasure map, it’s the resistance showing up in full force. If you did have every step of your vision laid out, it wouldn’t be yours. Or worse, it’d mean you were playing safe and small because we could easily identify every tiny step on the way to the peak of your mountain.

When the what and why are bold and vivid, the how starts to reveal itself. It starts to reveal itself step by step. But you’ve got to have the audacity and courage to take those first few steps.

Execute with blinders on. Stay consistent, and then rinse and repeat. Use the 1% Rule to begin to carve out your path, and you’ll notice the how becomes obvious. You’ll realize it at the time, but also know you could have never seen it when you were starting out—because you didn’t need to see it.

If you will be judged regardless of what you do, you might as well play full tilt.

There are so many people online wasting their time and energy talking shit about others when they could be using this energy for powerful creation.

You simply continue to ship your message because it comes from the heart, and that’s all that matters. The right people will be open and listening, even if you never hear from them.

If you keep waiting to get started, you’ll wake up one day and wonder what happened—and where it all went.

you and I know life won’t get less busy or complex. And as we’ve mentioned several times, the “perfect” timing is simply a choice.

Creating urgency in life is crucial to cutting out all possible distractions and narrowing down on all the work we’ve created together so far.

What separates the pro from the amateur in life is simple: The amateur sits around waiting to be inspired while the pro creates inspiration.

All of the feelings most people wait for to get started or get serious—inspiration, energy, zest, passion, purpose, excitement, intensity, desire, fulfillment, abundance—are on the other side of stepping into the unknown and taking action.

Set daily targets, and celebrate crushing them. Using the 1% Rule, set daily targets low enough to ensure success yet high enough to force you to push past resistance. For example, in writing this book I set out for 1,000 words a day. Once I’d gotten to 1,000, I usually didn’t want to stop.

Declare your outcomes, and put yourself on the line. Declaring your outcomes to others will hold you accountable long after the high has worn off.

The more you succeed and grow, the more urgency must be manufactured with higher and higher levels of accountability. We’ve all experienced the back-up-against-the-wall mentality that forces us to produce and create at high levels. Then we get comfortable and let it all slide.

Everyone wants accountability until they get punched in the face with it. It sounds great on paper, or reading these words, but when you’ve had five hours of sleep and you’re being challenged about why you didn’t complete the crucial execution step you said you would, you aren’t going to like it.

This is the inherent power of accountability: it compels us to action, gets us clear and honest, and manufactures intense levels of urgency.

Do these people have the results you’re looking to achieve in your life, both tangible and intangible? Do these people challenge and push you to new levels of execution and intensity? Are you bought in and invested physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially? Who is running this group and who is the main leader who structures the programs? What are their results?

Enablers in your life don’t move the needle. You don’t need them. If someone really respects and appreciates you and can see past the excuses you create, that’s a powerful relationship.

Accountability helps provide new perspectives, and new perspectives bring massive clarity. Without perspective, it’s easy to spin our wheels and wonder why we can’t get out of a rut or experience the breakthrough we’ve wanted.

The role of a coach or mentor is not to do the work for you or to save you.

This moment, and the next, are the defining moments in life. Don’t let time fool you. Go all in on what you truly want. Express yourself, be creative, tell someone what needs to be said. This may be your last chance. Don’t die with your song inside of you, unheard by the world. You deserve it, and they need to hear it. It’s a matter of life or death.

This is what I call strategic disconnects—being as intentional with your “off” time as your “on” time. In a nonstop world of stimulus, noise, and a cultural attitude of “sleep when you’re dead” and “hustle harder,” disconnecting may seem like a paradox.

No matter where you’re starting today and how disconnected you may feel from your vision, no matter what your general outlook on your life is, everything can change in the span of a few months.

There is an unmistakable energy associated with living your path and dreams out loud in a world telling you what to do and how to do it.

You won’t learn invaluable skills when you’re on the sidelines. You won’t change your mindset. You won’t sharpen your craft and your confidence watching others. You won’t create this inner belief of fortitude that only comes with self-reliance. You won’t create your masterpiece if someone else is painting the brush strokes. Only you can, and there is no more waiting, there is no more time.

Taking the leap is much like going skydiving—once you decide to go, you need to register as fast as possible. Because let’s face it, jumping out of a perfectly good airplane is an idea we can easily talk ourselves out of.