The Compound Effect (10th Anniversary Edition): Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success

by Darren Hardy

every morning at 7 a.m., I have what I call my calibration appointment, a recurring appointment set in my calendar, where I take fifteen minutes to calibrate my day. This is where I brush over my top three one-year and five-year goals, my key quarterly objectives, and my top goal for the week and month. Then, for the most important part of the calibration appointment, I review (or set) my top three MVPs (Most Valuable Priorities) for that day,

“If I only did three things today, what are the actions that will produce the greatest results in moving me closer to my big goals?”

Compared to your plan for the day, how did it go? What do you need to carry over to tomorrow’s plan? What else needs to be added, based on what showed up throughout the day? What’s no longer important and needs to be scratched out?

I like to read at least ten pages of an inspirational book before going to sleep. I know the mind continues to process the last information consumed before bedtime,

All hell can break loose throughout the day, but because I control the bookends, I know I’m always going to start and finish strong.

Right now I’m working on adding more adventure into my life. I set weekly, monthly, and yearly goals to do something I wouldn’t normally do.

Envisioning your success as an unstoppable locomotive may help you stay enthusiastic about getting into your own rhythm.

RR (Relationship Review). This is a practice I picked up from relationship experts Linda and Richard Eyre. During this time, we discuss the previous week’s wins, losses, as well as the adjustments we need to make in our relationship. We start the conversation by telling each other a few things we have appreciated about the other during the previous week

“On a scale of one to ten (ten being the best), how would you rate our relationship this week?”

“What would it take to make your experience a ten?”

Consistency I’ve mentioned that if there’s one discipline that gives me a competitive advantage, it’s my ability to be consistent. Nothing kills Big Mo quicker and with more certainty than a lack of consistency.

Now that the water is flowing, you no longer need to pump the lever as hard or as quickly. It becomes easy, actually. All you have to do to keep the pressure steady is to keep pumping the lever consistently. That’s the Compound Effect.

Miss only a couple weeks of anything—workouts at the gym, affectionate gestures toward your spouse, or the phone calls that are part of your prospecting routine—and you don’t simply lose the results those two weeks would have produced. If that’s all you lost (which is what most people assume), not much damage would be done. But by slacking off, for even a short time, you killed Mo. It’s dead. And that’s a tragedy.

Winning the race is all about pace. Be the tortoise. The person who, given enough time, will beat virtually anybody in any competition as a result of positive habits and behaviors applied consistently. That’ll put the mojo in your momentum. And keep it there!

Your brain has only one agenda in mind: survival. It is always watching for signs of “lack and attack.”

We can teach our minds to look beyond “lack and attack.” How? We can protect and feed our minds. We can be disciplined and proactive about what we allow in.

You expect whatever it is you’re thinking about. Your thought process, the conversation in your head, is at the base of the results you create in life. So the question is, What are you thinking about? What is influencing and directing your thoughts? The answer: whatever you’re allowing yourself to hear and see.

The great danger of the media is that it gives us a very perverted view of the world. Because the focus and the repetition of messaging is on the negative, that’s what our minds start believing. This warped and narrow view of what’s not working has a severe influence on your creative potential. It can be crippling.

DarrenDaily On-Demand wherever you listen to your podcast episodes, or go to DarrenDailyOnDemand.com.

your associations don’t shove you in a direction; they nudge you ever so slightly over time. Their influence is so subtle that it’s like being on an inner tube out in the ocean, feeling like you’re floating in place.

The influence your friends have over you is subtle and can be positive or negative. Either way, the impact is incredibly powerful. Watch out! You cannot hang out with negative people and expect to live a positive life.

When you make the tough decision to put up boundaries between you and people who drag you down, realize that they’ll fight you—especially those closest to you. Your decision to live a more positive, goal-oriented life will hold a mirror up to their own poor choices. You will make them uncomfortable and they will attempt to pull you back down to their level. Their resistance doesn’t mean they don’t love you or want the best for you—it’s actually not about you at all. It’s about their fear and guilt about their own poor choices and lack of discipline. Just know that breaking away won’t be easy.

The person you’re walking with can determine whether you slow your pace or quicken it, literally and figuratively. Similarly, you can’t help but be touched by the dominant attitudes, actions, and behaviors of the people with whom you spend time.

Identify people who have positive qualities in the areas of life where you want to improve—people with the financial and business success you desire, the parenting skills you want, the relationships you yearn for, the lifestyle you love. And then spend more time with them. Join organizations, businesses, and health clubs where these people gather and make friends. Ahead, you’ll see how I even used to drive to a different town to spend quality time—with fortuitous results.

you, too, can have almost any mentor you want, if he or she has gathered their best thoughts, stories, and ideas into books, videos, and podcasts. You have an unlimited bounty from which to draw. Take advantage of it. Now people often reach out to my assistant in order to get my advice or mentorship. All she has to do is tell them it’s all already available from anywhere in the world through DarrenDaily or inside our Darren Hardy Training Vault.

Befriend the person you think is the biggest, baddest, most successful person in your field. What do they read? Where do they go for lunch? How can that association influence you? You can build these expanded associations by joining networking groups and even online communities. Find the charity organizations, symphonies, and clubs where the people you want to emulate gather.

My longtime “accountability partner” is my good friend Landon Taylor. As I mentioned before, we have a thirty-minute call every Friday to discuss our weekly wins, losses, fixes, “ah-has,” and where we are on our growth plans. The anticipation of the call and knowing I have to be accountable to Landon keeps me extra committed throughout the week.

“How do I show up to you? What do you think my strengths are? In what areas do you think I can improve? Where do you think I sabotage myself? What’s one thing I can stop doing that would benefit me the most? What’s the one thing I should start doing?”

After time with Paul, I’d want to go take a nap! But my association with him raised my game. His walking pace was my running pace. It expanded my ideas about how big I could play and how ambitious I could be. You have to get around people like that!

Harvey Mackay told me, “I have had twenty coaches, if you can believe it. I have a speech coach, I have a writing coach, I have a humor coach, I’ve got a language coach, and on and on.” I have always found it interesting that the most successful people, the truly top performers, are the ones willing to hire and pay for the best coaches and trainers there are. It pays to invest in your improved performance.

“Mentoring is your true legacy. It is the greatest inheritance you can give to others. And it should never end. It is why you get up every day. To teach and be taught.”

“Never ask advice of someone with whom you wouldn’t want to trade places.”

The dream in your heart may be bigger than the environment in which you find yourself. Sometimes you have to get out of that environment to see that dream fulfilled. It’s like planting an oak sapling in a pot. Once it becomes rootbound, its growth is limited. It needs a great space to become a mighty oak. So do you.

whatever’s broken, whatever makes you cringe. Each and every incomplete piece of your life exerts a draining force on you, sucking the energy of accomplishment and success out of you as surely as a vampire stealing your blood. Every incomplete promise, commitment, and agreement saps your strength because it blocks your momentum and inhibits your ability to move forward. Incomplete tasks keep calling you back to the past to take care of them. So think about what you can complete today.

when you’re creating an environment to support your goals, remember that you get in life what you tolerate.

What you have decided to tolerate is also reflected in the situations and circumstances of your life right now. Put another way, you will get in life what you accept and expect you are worthy of.

Decide when, how regularly, and what you will hold each other accountable to, and what ideas you will expect the other to bring to each conversation.

sometimes when you pick it up and just forget about how you’re feeling and just engage for a little bit, it can kind of turn everything around,”

When you’ve prepared, practiced, studied, and consistently put in the required effort, sooner or later you’ll be presented with your own moment of truth. In that moment, you will define who you are and who you are becoming. It is in those moments where growth and improvement live—when we either step forward or shrink back, when we climb to the top of the podium and seize the medal

every time I hit one of those mental and emotional walls, I recognized my competitors were facing the same challenges. I knew this was another moment when, if I kept going, I would gain strides ahead of them.

It’s not getting to the wall that counts. It’s what you do after you hit it that really matters.

Lou Holtz, the famous football coach, knew it was what you did after you did your best that created victories.

It’s not until situations are difficult, when problems come up and temptation is great, that you get to prove your worthiness for progress. As Jim Rohn would say, “Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.”

When you hit the wall in your disciplines, routines, rhythms, and consistency, realize that’s when you are separating yourself from your old self, scaling that wall, and finding your more powerful, triumphant, and victorious self.

You won’t just add a few reps to the aggregate of your workout. No. Those reps done after you hit your max will multiply your results. You’ve pushed through the wall of your max. The previous reps only got you there. The real growth happens with what you do after you’re at the wall.

Viewing yourself as your toughest competitor is one of the best ways to multiply your results. Go above and beyond when you hit the wall. Another way to multiply your results is pushing past what other people expect of you—doing more than “enough.”

Where in life can you do more than expected when you hit the wall? Or where can you go for “WOW”? It doesn’t take a lot more effort, but the little extra multiplies your results many times over. Whether you’re making calls, serving customers, recognizing your team, acknowledging your spouse, going for a run, bench-pressing, planning a date night, sharing time with your kids, whatever… What’s the little extra you can do that exceeds expectations and accelerates your results?

If I set my sights on something, I’m going to ensure success by going all in and all out. I launch what I call “shock and awe” campaigns.

If you have a cause or ideal worthy of attention, do what it takes, even the unexpected, to make your case heard. Add a little audacity to your repertoire.

Better Than Expected Find the line of expectation and then exceed it. Even when it comes to the small stuff—or maybe especially then. Whatever I think the dress standard is going to be for any event, for example, I always choose to go at least one step above it.