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Action Academy | Millionaire Mentorship For Your Life & Business
The Hidden Psychology of Scaling Your Life 10x Faster Than You Think w/ Dr. Ben Hardy
00:39:27
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- [00:00]
A
Your present lacks meaning and purpose without a future goal.
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B
The goal is not impossible. You just think it's impossible for you. Changed my life. I left my job in six months. I founded multiple seven figure companies since that point and travel all around the world.
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A
The biggest problem that high achievers face is that they shoot too low instead
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B
of asking, what do I want? It's what am I willing to let go of to get it?
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A
If you don't have a goal that's dramatically impacting your present, then it's not a good goal.
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B
Out of all the ideas and concepts and models that you've worked on, across all of your books, you can wave a magic wand and implant one idea, one model into a resistant person's mind to change their life.
- [00:31]
A
What would it be? This is the first time I've ever actually shared this with someone. I've.
- [00:36]
B
All right, doctors in the house. Dr. Ben Hardy.
- [00:39]
A
Yeah, man.
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B
Three years coming.
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A
It's been a minute, right?
- [00:42]
B
It's been a minute. Been a minute and a half. How, how are you? How do you feel?
- [00:45]
A
I feel good, man. Here with my son Caleb. Hanging out with you, man. So this is a cool room.
- [00:50]
B
So, yeah, it is super cool. We got accent, lights and everything, man. If you could wave a magic wand and you could take somebody that has a resistant mind and is like, living a very status quo, stereotypical life, very resistant to change new ideas. And out of all the ideas and concepts and models that you've worked on across all of your books, across all of the all of these years, you could wave a magic wand to implant one idea, one model into a resistant person's mind to change their life. What would it be out of all the ones you've worked on?
- [01:17]
A
So I would have to probably appeal to Frankel on this, Viktor Frankl, who wrote Man Search for Meaning, where he said, you know, in him speaking to the worst situation a person could be in, right, a concentration camp, everything's been stripped of them. Their pride, their dignity, um, their life, their family. They're in a situation that is utterly hopeless. And their past, in that context, actually becomes a problem because it's a place that they wish they could go. And it feels like everything's been downhill and that, like, their past was the peak, right? And so for Frankl, he said that any attempt to restore a man's inner strength while inside the camp had first to succeed in giving that person a future goal, right? And so like, that was the premise of Man Search for Meaning, which was, you know, your present lacks meaning and purpose. Without a future goal, period. And like, that's just like the crux of psychology is, is that your future is the tri. The driver of your present, and the better you get at that future. And in the case of Frankl and those people, like, without a future goal, specifically a goal, not a broad future, not a hope, a goal. Like, even in psychology, you can't have hope without a goal. And so people often say, like, what's your purpose? But purpose comes from a goal. And so, and so, like, I think that, like, the, the, the thing a person needs, even with what Frankl said, is you need a goal, period. Like, if you don't have a goal, we can talk about the qualities of goals. Good goals versus bad goals, effective goals versus ineffective, transformative goals. But if you don't have a goal, and it doesn't have to be a perfect goal, you know, and it doesn't even have to be one you think you can achieve, right? Like, I spend a lot of time thinking about impossible goals, but if you don't have a very specific goal, you're hosed. You're literally hosed.
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B
So let's talk about goals at a advanced level. This is the doctorate degree of goal setting. Let's throw away, hey, set smart goals. Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic. Which is bullshit, by the way.
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A
Agree.
- [03:17]
B
Time, boundaries. Yeah, let's talk about if you were given a doctorate, you know, degree to somebody on goal setting, because I'm somebody also that is accomplished and set and accomplished massive impossible goals. The first one that I ever did. And to your point, I want to talk about your. I want to use this as like a springboard for what you teach, because it's an example.
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A
Do it. Share.
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B
I had a goal of leaving Corporate America in 2022 and replacing a quarter million dollar income. And my goal was to do that in 10 years, conservatively through real estate investing. I had one person just ask me a question one time, which was, that's a great goal, Brian, and it's realistic. But how would you do that in six months? I was like, what? I was like, that's impossible. And he goes, have other people done it? And I was like, I'm sure. He's like, have other people done, you know, twenty two hundred thousand dollars a month in six months? I was like, sure. I needed twenty thousand dollars because I have people done two million dollars a month in six months. I was like, yeah. He goes, okay, well then the goal is not impossible. You just think it's impossible for you. So let's start there. Changed My life. I left my job in six months. I've been now starting and founded multiple seven figure companies since that point and travel all around the world. And so everything that you teach, I want to go ahead and give prior validity to it. It works. And if people learned how to compress time like you're about to talk about, everything would change. It forced me to think differently, it forced me to ask bigger questions. And the most important idea that I actually work on is you can't attract a million dollar mentor with a hundred dollar goal.
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A
Sure you can't.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Because you wouldn't be looking for them.
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B
Exactly. They wouldn't be. And even if you found them and they found you, they wouldn't be attracted to you because you're not speaking the same language, you're not vibrating at the same frequency.
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A
Yeah. Well. And you wouldn't be asking them questions that they would want to teach. I mean, if you're asking them how do I get a job at McDonald's, they're gonna be like, dude, you don't need me, bro.
- [05:13]
B
Yeah. I was like, how do I buy a house a year? And then I was like, no, how do I travel the world? And so we figured it out and we pulled it off and it was in a completely different strategy than we anticipated. And so, you know, kudos to everything that you teach because it's like you set the goal. I can almost guarantee you're not going to get there the way that you thought, but you'll get there. So when you see people, especially high performers, setting goals, where do you normally typically see people setting them incorrectly? And what are the tweaks that you help them make? Because you said the word impossible versus possible. Let's talk about that.
- [05:44]
A
Yeah. So I would say like the advanced model of goal setting is first off the acknowledgement of time. So like time itself isn't from a psychological standpoint, time isn't outside of you. Like if I'm thinking about my future, I'm thinking about it in my head. Right. And so the future and the past are psychological tools. Yes. They and their primary objective, their primary purpose is to improve our present decision making. Right. And so getting better at framing the past helps you not get stuck there, helps you not to repeat cycles. Right. But the future is a, you know, going straight back to Frankl, the future is a 10 or 100x more powerful, more potent tool than the past. And so the first, the first, like big error, I'll just lay out the errors and then I'll kind of share a more effective approach. But the, the common errors of goal setting are to use the past as the basis for the goal. So like you see this in a company where they're like, I did 5 million revenue last year, so let's go for 6 or 7 next year, right? Or this year, right? They're using the past as the basis for their goal. They're using the past as the basis for their future. So that creates linear thinking, that creates non transformative thinking like the full, the primary purpose of the future as a tool. And even Peter Drucker has referenced this. The future is there actually to wreak havoc on the present, like he says. I mean, that's not exactly how he said it. He said that he specifically said, in order for research to be effective, you need a new future that is an enemy of today, right? And so the future, if you make a, and so like that leads to like, you want a future that's so big and seemingly impossible. And you also want to make the deadline so intense, like, right? Take a 10 year goal and move it to six months. You want a future that remodels the present, right? It's the new model that makes the existing model obsolete, right? So like we've talked about models and thinking, but the core model is your own future. And it's using that future as a tool to impact who you are today. And so if you don't have a goal that's dramatically impacting your present, then it's not a good goal. And so goals that are based on the past aren't going to dramatically impact your present because they're just a continuation of your present, right? Often people will have too many goals, right? Like they'll have like five or 10 or 20 goals or even just like two or three. And most of those goals, if you just had a single huge one, the other ones would have to go away. So like, you know, one of the stories that I tell is a young man who was on, like he, you know, I wrote about him in the book, but his huge goal, which is a beautiful goal, is he wants to one day own a European soccer team. I think one thing that's really important is, is like people, when I tell this story, people are like, but why should he want to own a European soccer team? Like, isn't that a bad goal? And I'm like, I don't necessarily think that. I'm not worried about the morality of his goal. There's some people who have bad goals. Like Hitler had bad goals, right? And stuff. But is this goal Moving him, is it forcing him to advance? Right. Maybe he'll change the goal in the future. But in his case, his goal was so big, but it was too far away. So in his case, he wanted to hit this goal. And I said, how long until you'll hit it? And he said, I will get there in 33 years. He said, I'll get there by my 50, my 55th birthday. And so what happened was, is I said, well, what if you just. He's 22 years old. I said, what would happen if you move this goal so that you would get there, like, by age 30? And he started to, like, tense up and freak out because he's like, well, I have a lot of things I feel like I need to do, right? So, like, I think I need to get a PhD. I need to run a firm. I need, like, he had this big bucket of things that he felt he needed to do in order to qualify him to one day hit the goal. Elon Musk calls those false requirements. And so one of the key things that's crucial for good goal setting is that the goal starts to strip out not only the false requirements you've placed on yourself. So in this case, again, he wants to own a European soccer team in 33 years. And as I said, well, what if we just moved it to, like, the next five or six? He's like, well, I have all these things I feel like I need to do. It's like, well, if you only had five years to do it back to your, like, six months. So it's like, how many of those things can keep existing, right? Most of them you can't do. But also, most of them are not even solving your goal, right? And so one thing is, if a goal is just way too far away, even 10 years, which is very common, you're usually not solving the goal, you're solving some next step, right? So in his case, he was not solving how do I get a European soccer team? For the last few years, he's been solving how do I get into a PhD program? Which has, like, literally zero connection, zero correlation. There's zero correlation, zero connection, zero connection at all. So one of the beauty, beautiful things of having a goal that seems impossible for both in scale and timeline is that it forces you to grapple with the majority of things you're doing right now have zero relevance. They. They, in my language, they fall below the floor, they become bad strategy. And so you then have to be. You have to be honest with yourself. Do you keep those things? And even though you know, they're dead ends. They have some dead end. Or do you just accept that that's now the goal and you won't get that? And so one thing that big goals and urgent goals do, and you can have it be impossible, is it forces you to look at those things and say, none of this stuff can get me there. The other thing it forces you to do so it forces you to say, everything I'm doing won't get me there. The other thing it forces you to do is say, yeah, but what about all those other goals I really wanted to do? In his case, he really did want to get the PhD. It's like, okay, but if you want to do this, would you be willing to let that goal go? A lot of times people won't let goals go. Like, they're like, yeah, but I want to do that. Okay, you can, but it's going to cost you that.
- [11:09]
B
That's such a powerful question is instead of asking, what do I want? It's what am I willing to let go of to get it?
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A
But not just what you're currently doing, but the goals that you thought you really wanted. Like, one of the best things you can do is let go of a goal.
- [11:24]
B
How do you. What do you use to determine which goal is worth letting go of versus which is the one to focus on? So if somebody's got like this list of goals, they've got this vision board of 10, what is the process that you can recommend to them whereby they can delineate it down to, this is the actual goal, and I'm willing to sacrifice the accomplishment of these other nine.
- [11:47]
A
I think one of them is, if you just looked at the 10, and you said, you know, which one of these is obviously the most important? Which one, which one, if you actually hit, like, pretty much makes up for the others, that might not always be the case. And so sometimes you have to say, is this the highest form of this goal? Sometimes you have to scale a goal up in order to, like, see where it starts to become a dead end. So, like, as an example for me, like, when I was growing a YouTube channel, I scaled that up, and I saw that more as a pathway and a process versus a goal. I just saw it as a pathway to helping me either grow my business or spread my books. So I saw it as a pathway. But even if I scaled that pathway up, YouTube in that case, and I was like, okay, what if I had 10 million YouTube followers? Would that actually, how. How effective would that be at helping me accomplish, like, what I really am wanting to accomplish. I mean, it might have some leverage, but is it. You know, would it really get me to where I'm trying to go? And also, what would it cost me to. To do that? Like, if it. Even if I did it effectively and fast, like we're talking about, and I got there in three years, what wouldn't have happened? Because I went for that, who would I have not become? Right? And so part of the goal is, like, who is this going to shape you to become? Because, like. And that's exactly what Drucker said. He said in order for research to be effective, and research is just what you're focusing on and becoming. And so for me, like, what's the goal that's also going to, like, it's going to shape you in a really, like, the way you want to be.
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B
I feel like the goal works on you more than you work on the goal.
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A
It does. The future transforms the present. That's its whole point. When you go for an impossible goal, you have to grapple with all the bad ideas you're currently saying yes to, all the lesser goals that you're still thinking about. And good psychology would allow you. And good strategy would allow you to start saying, okay, like, I can let that thing go. It served its purpose. I don't need to hold on to more. I'm gonna let that go. And, you know, one of my more favorite recent books is called Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Ramelt. And he says that good strategy is extremely surprising because of how rare it is. And so, like, most people don't. Most people don't expect you to have a good strategy because they don't have one themselves. Right? Most people are following other people or they're doing 50 things. They're throwing spaghetti against the wall. And so when you see someone actively, like, let go of something, even something that was good or successful, and, like, be like, no, I'm going this way. Like, that's unique. That's rare. Or when you see someone say, like, I'm actually going to focus on this thing. Like, again, rare. And so good strategy is very rare. Um, and so for me, going for the impossible goal is. Is a very valuable. I call it a valuable frame because it forces you to. To look at everything you're doing and just say, almost all this is noise. And then it forces you to find more effective pathways.
- [14:31]
B
I like goal setting by using what I call, like, the law of zero. So it's. Whenever you have a goal, especially a financial goal, just add two or three Zeros to it, you know, or two or three commas to it, because then the pursuit of the larger goal will allow you to hit your original goal as a rounding error.
- [14:49]
A
Yep.
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B
And it's funny how many times I've done that now economically. And it is hit, and it is hit, and it is hit over and over and over again. I want to Talk about your 3F framework for compressing time and hitting impossible goals in your new book. So what is this free 3F framework that you guys work on?
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A
Yeah, so we call it the scaling framework. By the way, to this point, there's been no science based effective framework for scaling, which was one of my frustrations. To the point of building new models that make old ones obsolete.
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B
Talk to me, Goose. I'm scaling right now.
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A
I feel like the topic of scaling, and it wasn't my original intent, but that topic has either been overly academic, overly overly complex by academics or just made overly cheap by, like, online marketers. Right.
- [15:43]
B
Copy. Bad execution, bad thinking.
- [15:46]
A
Yeah. So frame, floor, and focus is the model. Every, you know, every starting point of psychology is, is the frame that you're operating from. Right? And so everyone sees the world through a frame. And the core element of your frame are essentially the, the things that you find relevant. You know, they call it signal versus noise in data science, they call it pathways thinking in psychology. So everything in your frame are pathways to a goal. We're always, I mean, that's just, it's how humans work. We're, we're always trying to advance pathways to a goal. Even if you, you know, if you need to go to the bathroom, the pathway is gonna be like, how do I find the bathroom? Right, like, so we're always just trying to find a pathway to a goal. And in business, you know, often people's. They have too many conflicting paths because they haven't set a good goal. So like John Doerr, who, he's a billionaire and venture capitalist, he said a goal properly set is halfway reached. Because if you set the book.
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B
I love that one.
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A
It's like if you set the goal the right way, it strips out like 90% of the bad options. And so frame is all about how we see the world through a frame. And every element of what we see in our frame are pathways to a goal. And so our frame is based on our goals. Our future is the primary thing shaping what we see and what we spend our time doing in the present. And so from frame, it goes to floor. Right. Your floor is the dividing line between what you say. Yes. And no to. More specifically, your floor is what separates everything. The floor defines what you say no to. If someone says, that's below my floor, that's below my standards, they mean it. I don't do that. Right. And often people's floor is below where they really say it is. They're like, I don't do that. But then they constantly do it. Right. And so your floor really shows who you really are and what. In order to scale or grow, you have to raise your floor and you have to start saying no to the things that are holding you back.
- [17:33]
B
The quote, you don't rise to the level of the goal you follow to the level of your systems and habits.
- [17:38]
A
Yeah, I think that's partially right. I think it's partially right. But the truth is that the goal always shapes the system. So the goal shapes your psychology, it shapes your frame, it shapes what you see. But in all human systems, the goal is always. Even in the book Thinking in Systems by Danelle Meadows, systems theory always states that the goal is the driver of the system. So the better the goal is set, the more likely you can create a simple system to get there. You do need to create systems. And yes, if you don't have a good system, you won't hit the goal. But the goal is what allows you to shape a system. You can't have a human system without a goal, or at least a meaningful one. And so anyways, back to frame, floor, focus. Frame is the goal that sets the floor, which is what you say no to. Michael Porter, who created competitive strategy, says that strategy is mostly about what you say no to. So when you raise your frame to a very high level, say you take your goal and you make it 10 times bigger, your floor has to go up, meaning, like, almost nothing you're currently doing works. And so it forces you then to filter and find and focus on the very few pathways and people that will get you there. Right. For. You know, I used my son Caleb as an example in 10x is easier than 2x, where we were talking about, like, if he wanted to play college tennis, there's a lot of pathways to get there. Like, he. There's where we live in Orlando, there's hundreds of coaches that truly could get him to college if he really wanted to go pro, meaning he raised his frame, the floor of those coaches would have to go through the roof. Like most of the college coaches couldn't get him there. And so it would force us to filter and focus and find the few that can get you there. And when it comes to the power Law. Peter Thiel often talks about the power Law. The power law is that very few. And it's like the 8020 principle, but very few things create almost all the results. Right. So if you think about the S&P 500, there's seven companies that, you know, account for the majority of, like the US Economy, right? Correct. And Bill Gates said, like, a great writer isn't worth 10 times an average writer. A great writer is worth 10,000 times an average writer. Right. And so when it comes to like the impossible goals, it forces such a high floor where it's like you really have to filter a lot more finely and a lot more aggressively to find those super paths, those super who's that are worth 10 or 100, not even 10x, like a thousandx. What you would find if you were just, you had a lower goal and a lower floor.
- [20:15]
B
How do you know when a goal is complete? How do you know when a goal is at its highest and best form?
- [20:24]
A
I would say, well, when you say complete, do you mean like that it's, it's framed properly or like you're done with it?
- [20:32]
B
Framed properly. So the goal that you were setting in the pursuit that it is creating your frame, your floor, your future and everything. So when you're setting a goal. So for instance, you and I had this conversation. We can use this as an actual, like in real life case study. So we were talking about my company before, we were just chatting, and you were like, all right, cool. What's your goal in the next three years? I said, 17.5 million, 2,000 members. You go, okay, well what would you do at 50? Like, what would you do if you wanted to hit 50 million? I'm like, well, and then your brain starts working, it starts doing the click words and you start asking bigger and better questions. But at what point can you actually make that delineation to where you're like, okay, cool, this isn't a possible goal worth working on versus, you know, kind of where, where does that stop, I guess is the point? Because then I could say, well, why don't I do a $500 million company in three years? And then all of a sudden you're going from an impossible goal to actually, like, that is where I'd start to be like, oh, that perhaps is a little bit delusion.
- [21:33]
A
Yeah, it's a really beautiful question. It is going to come down to the person, right? Because someone could get to 500 million in three years. Absolutely. But there's like so many things. So for me, it's Is it a valuable tool? Right. I view the future as a tool. I feel I view goals as a tool. I think people have very unhealthy relationships with goals where they're like, well, what if I don't hit it right? Or, like, what if, you know, they have all these, like, emotions attached to. And from my view, every human action and every human system is driven by a goal. And so everything we're already doing is driven by goals. We might just already have, like, five or 10 competing ones, and some of them we're not even, like, aware of. And so everything we're doing is. Is based on goals. And so it's like. So your question is a really good one. It's like, what's an effective goal? Right? At a certain point, does it stop being effective? And so for me, it's like, is it something that is very resonant? Like, is it something that is moving you to action, but is forcing you to, like, forcing you to make much better decisions than you would have made yesterday? Right? So, like, in my case, our company that our goal remodeled us. We're like, we actually needed to go acquire scaling.com because our goal became so big that we needed to redefine that genre. And so one of the great quotes on strategy is like, choose the game you want to play and then figure out how to win. Right? And so, like, I wasn't originally wanting to go into strategy or and scaling, but, like, once the goal became so big, like, that became the most obvious place to just go redefine. But our goal, very practically is very similar to yours, actually. It's 5,000 members of scaling.com but they're all scaling, right? And to do it in about 24 months. And so that would be 120 million revenue. It's between 120 and 140 million revenue. That goal is very useful for us because it forces us to find something super who's like, it forces us to find really phenomenal team members. It forces us to be really sharp in what we're doing. But also, it's. It's short enough, like, two years that we don't have. We. We don't have one month to waste. Like, we have to solve a lot of things today. Could we move the goal to a billion revenue in three years or two years? We could, and that would remodel us. But to your point, right now, this goal is very transformative already. Like, it's already huge. It's already in the realm of, like, no one's done this and it doesn't matter if no one's done it. At a certain point we might need to change the goal, I guess, to
- [24:06]
B
reframe it a bit. How should you feel with the goal? Because there should be. I like to think of things like there should be a combination of excitement along with a combination of curiosity. So it's almost like excitement times curiosity times. Holy shit. You know, if you don't have a
- [24:29]
A
little bit of that, that last piece is huge.
- [24:31]
B
If you don't have that holy shit factor, then you're not playing the correct game. But for me, I was like, I don't want $50 million company. At least not in the stage that I'm at right now. I really like 17.5. And it makes me feel good. And that gives me a good. Holy shit. But it also gives me a good. You know, it makes me feel.
- [24:54]
A
Tell me what the 50 or 100 does to your emotions.
- [24:58]
B
Nothing.
- [24:59]
A
So, but why do you not want that?
- [25:01]
B
It's not that I don't want 50 to 100 million. It's that I couldn't do it through the current. Through the current business system and the current business model that we run today, which is very cult focus. And so there's a cap at how many Mastermind members that you can introduce at a certain rate before dilution occurs.
- [25:20]
A
Very true.
- [25:21]
B
And so the game that I'm choosing to play. So you. Another question I was going to ask as a follow up is you. You mentioned winnable games. And a lot of the games that I want to play are unwinnable games. So I'm curious about your thoughts on that. Because as you're talking about goals, I'm like, It's almost like the goal. The point, the goal of the goal is like goal ception. Right. It's a goal within a goal.
- [25:41]
A
Well, every goal is a means, by the way.
- [25:42]
B
Yeah. So the goal is really. I'm almost. I'm trying to think about how I want to delineate this. So this is the process. And I think it is that everything that you're talking about seems to be that the true point of the goal isn't even the economics or the marathon that you're running or the thing that you're building. It's who you become in the process. Right.
- [26:02]
A
To some degree. I think that's a huge part of it. I think that it's also there. I mean, it's also there to force better thinking. It's there to force better decision making. Like the future is the tool we use to make decisions in the present. And time is a tool like, you will advance in the next three years. Right. And, you know, you've already, for the most part, chosen what those three years are going to be defined by. And I think that it's just important for us to recognize, like, we will use this time, and it's largely our choice how we choose to use it. And we can use that time in very different ways.
- [26:44]
B
Man, this is a fun one to grapple on because even I don't know how, like, I'm choking on it, too. I'm choking on the question of how do you actually truly identify what you're capable of? Because I feel most of our. I mean, I don't feel. I know that on. Because they did a deathbed study and they interviewed like, 5,000 people on their deathbeds. And all of their regrets were not regrets of what they did. They were regrets of omission, things that they didn't do. So they didn't live up to the potential that they had in their marriage and their health and their relationships and their economics. So my greatest fear personally is going to my deathbed, hopefully at a very, very late and old age, in saying, man, like, I'd milk the out of this. You know, there's this quote that I love that's I don't want to go to heaven. Heaven. Well rested.
- [27:37]
A
Yeah.
- [27:38]
B
You know, so. So how do you. So for somebody that I'm 30 and, like, you're still on the hunt, too. Like, we're all on the hunt. The worst thing possible is being unaware. It's like you don't know what you don't know. So it's like being unaware of what you're actually capable of and what your actual potential is. So what's some advice that you can give on a lot. Unlocking that shoot way higher.
- [27:59]
A
So, like, Tony Robbins wrote the Ford of this book.
- [28:02]
B
I noticed that.
- [28:03]
A
Yeah. Yeah. It's fabulous. And like, he literally said that the biggest problem that high achievers face is that they shoot too low.
- [28:10]
B
Like, ironically.
- [28:11]
A
Yeah, like, that's like, that's. It is. Is that like that I think is the starting point is, is that the goal was too low. And so that's something we all just have to face. And it's okay. There are still practicalities. Right. There is an upper threshold where it's like, I'm not going to get to Mars tomorrow. So there is a certain point where it's just like, that's not useful, that's not helpful. But even still, often it's too low to force you to innovate. Even in your case, how could you innovate a mastermind? I don't know. Right. I'm not saying, by the way, you have to change your goal, but it's a beautiful exercise to just actually think through. How would going for 50 or 100 in the next three years, even just as an exercise in your journal, just be like, how would I have to do that? And like, is there a way to do it without leaving this space, without leaving culture, or would it force me to go and do something much, much different? It's just a useful exercise to use it as a tool, to not use it as a stress, or to not use it to even change things, but to just use it for what I would call pathways thinking. Again, I don't view goals as stressors, although of course when you extreme the deadline, it definitely forces innovation and action and sometimes it does create stress. But I genuinely view it as a tool. And so like I'm not that worried if I'm gonna hit it or not, even though I'm fully committed to hitting it. Right. But like, I just genuinely use it as like, is this allowing me to get out of the dead ends and distractions, allowing me to become like, you know, is this allowing me to go in the direction that is the, is the best direction that I could possibly go? And to this point it's, it's, it's, it's been very effective and very fun. I'm not saying I'm like the best practitioner of it, but certainly like the futures that I've had in the past really helped me. Like to Frankl's point, like me as a young man in a very bad situation, having a future going on, wanting to go on a mission to serve my church, like that got me out of a really bad situation as a young man. And then wanting to become a professional author, like that got me into a PhD program that got me like into. And so like having these futures really does. And like to the point of the book, one like it for me it wasn't writing a book, it was to get a six figure book deal. Like so, like that was a 1% of 1% goal, but it forced me to get 100,000 subscribers because that was the only way I could get a six figure book deal.
- [30:53]
B
So that's ironic because of how small that goal feels in retrospect.
- [30:57]
A
Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, I mean, but it was millions. Yeah, but it was huge. I mean to go get a six figure book deal as someone who doesn't have a website, like, that is possible. Like, that is laughable. Even, Even, you know, me wanting to become a per. I. I did for a time want to become a professor, and it was laughable from where I was at, because, like, of where I was at, it was such a impossible goal. Like, I had family members say, like, I was betting against you, Ben, like, because of just your situation and who you were. Like, if I was a betting man, I would have bet against you. And like, that was even, like, just like, because I want. That was like, when I was like, I'd go to family event, be like, I want to become a professor. And like, Ben, I would have bet against you. Like, you were not great and you were not in a good spot. And so, like, yeah, like, at a certain point those things seem small. Yeah, I just think that the quality of the goal, Right. For you choosing a quality goal, this one is very quality. So, like, you know, to your situation, you never want to. There's no point in making yourself feel bad. Right? Like, so that's bad psychology. Thinking about your past, thinking about your future in a way that diminishes your present or diminishes your future. Like, that's not useful. And so, like, the cool part about your situation is you're already, like, on an insane path. Like, you're on a good path. There's no reason. But the hard question is, if you had a higher goal and it did force you to go on a different path, could that be a better path and could that transform you and could that make a bigger impact? And it's worth at least exploring that. Even though we do get it, even though we do get attached to our path, our model, our system, our approach, it's very worthy to ask, if I did go for the bigger goal, what would that force me to do? And usually what it would force people to do is it would force them out of the center of what they're doing, and it would force them to get, you know, other people involved, bigger. You know, not maybe not bigger, but important, most likely bigger people, important people involved. It doesn't always have to be bigger, but it will force you to get different people involved that can move the needle in different ways than you're currently operating.
- [33:10]
B
And my last closing thought for all of this is you said you mentioned goals being stressors, and it's been interesting because I'm very much so in the messy middle of business right now, where it's like, you've got something big enough to. Where you can start hiring top talent, but you don't know how to attract top talent and manage top talent. And you haven't quite been there yet. And so you kind of have. You have to hire the quarter million dollar guy or girl before you have the revenue to support it.
- [33:33]
A
Amen.
- [33:33]
B
And good for you scaling, right?
- [33:35]
A
It's a good spot.
- [33:35]
B
So yeah, so it's like, sounds like somebody should buy scaling.com and, and throughout the process somebody gave me some really, really great advice. A mentor of mine. And he goes, I'm like, man, I'm so stressed out. I'm so stressed out. And he goes, okay, well Fast forward to 10 years from now when you're running a company 100 times this size. He's like, do the actions that you are experiencing today stress you out? I'm like, absolutely not. These are flip on the radar things that my assistant would handle. You know, hiring like building a sales team, doing all this stuff. I was like something my assistant could do at that point. He goes, okay, cool. He's like, so each one of these levels, he's like, you're going to feel the stress of that level today, but then you're going to learn and become better at solving that thing and then move on to the next level. So he's like, you're advancing levels to the video game every single time that you stress out. So just know just because it's stressful today doesn't mean it will be stressful forever because you become better, the stressors don't go away. You just become better at solving them. So closing question, closing thought is have you found that to be true and any advice that you could give on kind of processing the growth personally that comes along with the giant goals.
- [34:46]
A
What I like about your situation is that it is the common situation in different forms when someone grows is that they have to start letting go of certain things that they're currently doing and they have to solve at risk. They're present for their future. And there's certain times when you're like, I have a good. One of the reasons why it's hard to succeed more upon successes is that risking a really great situation or a really great future, a really great company for something bigger is tough. And obviously you don't have to, you know, burn the whole ship to the ground. But the great part is, is that you, you have solved different, very difficult things in the past. And so not, not to necessarily lean too much on your past as a tool. Although that is like actually what David Goggins talks About doing, like, he calls it the cookie jar, right? He, like, that's what he does is he, like, says, like, I've done something pretty. I've done gnarly things in the past, right? And so, like, if you find yourself in a situation, like, you should trust that, like, you put yourself in this situation because your former self believed you could figure this out, right? I'm in a fairly similar situation where it's like, the amount of things conspiring all at one time on me are so complex.
- [36:08]
B
It's a bit overwhelming.
- [36:09]
A
It can be. But I think at the same time, You can be thoughtful. You don't have to be reactive to it. You can figure out how to solve it, and you can make better decisions and you can have better people on your team to help you solve it. And so I think it does take honesty, transparency, having open conversations, being open where things aren't working, where they're falling apart, where you don't know how to solve it. Like, the sooner you can have, like, good, open, honest, transparent conversation, the faster you will solve it, the less you'll keep it. You know, even in the addiction world, they say, never fight a silent battle, right? Like an addiction, often you're just keeping things secret. They say you're as sick as your secrets. So the more just dead honest and transparent you are about what you're going through, the quicker you'll solve it.
- [37:06]
B
And it's funny because the more people and the more help that you'll attract along the way, because people don't want to see all of your wins and triumphs. They want to see where you're struggling, and that's where the help comes in.
- [37:16]
A
It's huge. So, you know, to answer your question, I would say kudos to you for being in that situation. I think it's really powerful to be in a situation you don't know if you can solve. And then that's when, like, necessity and pathways, thinking comes in. And then you will find some, like, you know, boom. And you'll get to a comfortable spot and you're like, okay, I. I've solved this at least for the week or for the month. And then you. And so you will solve it. You've watched yourself solve. Ridiculous. Yeah. So, like, I'm actually in a situation where, like, it's intense, where the situation I put myself in, but I'm very confident I'll solve it. Even though, like, it's a hundred x bigger than anything I've tried to solve and more complex. Um, like, to your idea of Simplifying and figuring out the path. If you actually think about it, there is a path, like, and there is a pathway. You can do it. Maybe you don't want to do it, or maybe you don't know if you're ready to do it, but there is the path to do it and you can figure that out and you can walk it.
- [38:20]
B
So a hundred x is easier than 2x. So, Ben, if people want to find out more about you, if they want to read the book, where can they go?
- [38:28]
A
So what's cool is that to the idea of pathways thinking. We recently brought on what I call super who, and so we've been able to give away the Science of Scaling Audiobook for free. Our publisher is allowing us some very unique strategy because of our unique team. And so if you just go to scaling.com audiobook, you can actually get the Science of Scaling Full Audiobook for free. So I know a lot of people prefer listening. Obviously they're listening to a podcast right now. So, yeah, you know, if you want it for free, you can just go to scaling.com audiobook.
- [39:01]
B
Pretty easy offer to take up. So, guys, that's going to be in the show description. Ben, thanks so much for coming on, man. This has been a long time coming.
- [39:08]
A
Thanks for very much, like, intellectually pushing this. This is fun.
- [39:12]
B
This has been a blast, man. I wish we could go for two more hours, but we got people knocking on the door. So, guys, it's been Ben and Brian with the Action Academy podcast. If you like this, share it with somebody that you think could get value from it. And of course, subscribe if you like setting big goals and accomplishing them. See you guys. Go get the book.