The Ten Times Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure

by Grant Cardone

  The biggest regret of my life is not the fact that I haven't worked my ass off—because I have. It's that I didn't set targets 10 times higher than what I originally thought I could accomplish from the very beginning. Why? Because my goals were influenced and limited greatly by the way I was brought up. I am not blaming anyone; it is just a fact. I spent the first 30 years of my business career getting the 10X effort part right and will spend the next 25 years getting the 10X goal-setting part right. So I recommend you do the following: 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.

  Chapter 10

  Competition Is for Sissies

  One of the great lies perpetuated by mankind is the idea that competition is good. Good for whom—exactly? It might help provide customers with choices and compel others to do better. However, 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!”

  From what I have seen, competing with others limits a person's ability to think creatively because he or she is constantly watching what someone else is doing. The reason my first business has been so successful is because I created sales programs that introduced a truly original way of selling for which there was no competition. It was clearly a new way to think and approach selling. No one had done anything other than just copy one another for the past 200 years. So I ignored the competition and did something created a new sales process called “Information-Assisted Selling.” This was before the Internet and before consumers had information readily available to them. I predicted that sellers would have to throw away the old ways of selling and learn how to use information to assist them. Although I was ahead of my time and traditional thinkers resisted once the Internet hit critical mass, information-assisted selling became a way of selling, and my competition was left holding on to antiquated systems and processes. And I came out on top, because people were thrilled to see something completely new. 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. Don't let another company set the pace; make this your organization's job. Stay ahead of the pack. Make it so that they want to chase you and try to be like you, not the other way around. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't study others' best practices in industry trends; however, you want to make it your job to take those concepts to another level. For example, Apple makes computers and smartphones; it didn't simply copy what Dell, IBM, Rimm, and others were doing. Apple doesn't compete; it dominates, it sets the pace, and it lets others try to duplicate its success. Don't set your goals at a competitive level. Set them at a level that will overshadow and dominate your sector completely.

  How do you dominate, you may wonder? The first step is to decide to dominate. Then the best way to dominate is to do what others refuse to do. That's right—do what they will not do. This will allow you to immediately carve out a space for yourself and develop an unfair advantage. Let me be clear: I want an unfair advantage if I can create one. Though I am always ethical, I never play fair. I seek out ways in which I can get an unfair advantage—and one surefire way to do this is to do what others won't. Find something they cannot do, maybe because of their size or their commitment to other projects, and then exploit that. Maybe they are cutting back during a time when the economy is uncertain. This would be your moment to expand into those spaces where they are contracting. A company I was working with that was in dental implants told me the leader in the field had cut all travel expenses and elected that all client contact is done by phone and over the Internet. To get a competitive advantage, we decided to dominate the personal contacts while the leader retreated. Domination—not competition!

  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. IBM did this so successfully that all PCs were referred to as IBMs. There was a time when Xerox accomplished this so successfully with copiers that you didn't talk about making copies but rather Xerox-ing. That is pure domination of a sector and not correctly protecting your trademarked name. The goal at my sales training company is not to compete with others in the space for the revenue or the clients. Our goal is to literally make sure that every human being on planet earth equates Grant Cardone with sales training. Achievable? Probably not, but it is the target we use for making decisions. We aren't competing with anyone else to be the best in a sector. Our goal is to dominate the thinking of all people so that my name becomes synonymous with sales training. Google the term “sales motivation” and watch my video pop up. That is the way to approach a sector, goal, or any endeavor—to own it completely.

  You can always learn from those who want to compete; just don't chase them. Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, was said to shop other stores weekly in order to see what they were doing well and improve on that. At the same time, he also had the goal of domination, not competition. If you are going to duplicate the best of what others do, then hammer away at them, champion that practice, and make it yours. Hone their “specialties” until they become your advantage. Do so to the point where you become the expert and leader in that area and dominate it so incredibly that they no longer even want to attempt it. You don't have to be first to the space, but it is important to be considered first in the space—if you get what I mean. The message you want to send to the marketplace through your persistent actions is, “No one can keep up with me. I'm not going away. I am not a competitor. I am the space.”

  Most of you will have less money than some of the leaders in your space. Even if you have less money than other players in the market, that doesn't mean you're at a disadvantage. Although they may be able to outspend or outadvertise you, you can certainly outwork them by using social media, personal visits, mail, e-mail, networking, and so on. Create campaigns using the resources you do have. 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. For example, people think that they can post twice a day on Facebook or Twitter and that they are creating an effect. You don't understand massive action if you think in twos and you definitely are underestimating the size of the Internet if you think a couple of posts are going to get you noticed. Like every other aspect of growing your business, you have to keep showing up over and over and make it obvious that you are not going away.

  The good thing about social media is anyone can play in the space, regardless of his or her financial situation. It allows for unlimited creativity, and rewards only those who use it consistently and persistently. When I first started playing with social media, I posted twice a day. I don't know what I was thinking—it was a moment of “little think.” We simultaneously began sending out e-mail strategies once a month and found ourselves getting requests from people who wanted to be removed from our e-mail campaign. My colleagues suggested I back off. That is when I woke up and came to my senses. Instead of backing off, I made
the order to increase the number of posts to 10 times what we had been doing. I then instructed my employees to start sending out electronic strategies twice a week instead of monthly (eight times) and began personally posting comments on Twitter 48 times a day (once every 30 minutes). Each of them was written by me, and they were set up to be dropped in at a certain time. Although you might assume that the complaints and “unsubscribe” requests would increase with this massive outflow campaign, they didn't. Instead, we started receiving e-mails and posts of admiration for my activity level, and compliments for my willingness to provide people with free sales and motivational information. The questions came flooding in: “How can you do all this? How big is your staff? Where do you find the time? Do you ever rest?” And for every person commenting, there had to be another 1,000 thinking something similar . . . and who do you think they were thinking about? This was not expensive to do and only cost me energy, effort, and creativity. At the same time I was doing this, the guy who most people compare me with was asked what he thought about social media. He responded, “I am still evaluating it.” While he is evaluating, I am beating it to death. I posted one day on Twitter, “I am going to make Twitter my little bitch.”

  This is a great example of domination and outrageous think and action that doesn't cost money. Think about domination like this: 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.

  Another problem for all of us is just getting through the amount of noise in the marketplace. You have to do two things: (1) get noticed and (2) get through the noise. In my case, had we made a decision to back off in order to satisfy a few complainers, we would not have expanded our contact base. The more I posted, the more people liked us. The more we put out, the more people we helped. As we blasted on this new program, we even saw posts from competitors mocking me. Yet even these comments brought attention to me and my business. Two things will happen when you take the right amount of action: (1) You will get a new set of problems and (2) your competition will start promoting you. I love it when I have made such an impact that others who don't even know me are having conversations that raise awareness about my business, my products, and what I am up to.

  Determine the capability, actions, and mind-set of those against whom you compete. Do what they will not do, go where they will not go, and think and take actions in 10X quantities that they cannot comprehend. Don't get too involved in competing on best practices; take your actions to a point considered unreasonable by the world, where you are doing those things that only you and your company would, could, or are willing to do—something I call “only practices.”

  For one company I once consulted with, we identified places in which “only practices” could be employed. We discovered that the industry in general struggled with the practice of following up with customers. So we looked at what our competitors would not do and found that none of them would call back clients as they left the store. This led the company to immediately initiate programs during which clients were called back as they drove out of the parking lot. Managers then immediately started calling clients' cell phones as they left the company's premises and asked them to return. If the call went to voicemail, the manager left a message requesting the client to, “Please come back immediately. I have something you must see.” Or the manager would send a text suggesting that the company had something to show the client right away. If there was no successful contact made, another manager repeated the callback program that same day and again the next morning. The results were crazy. Almost 50 percent of the clients returned immediately, and almost 80 percent of those became buyers at that time. Another 20 percent returned as a result of the later calls and increased the sales of that organization to new levels. This is an example of “only practices.”

  It doesn't matter what you do—it does matter that your goal be to dominate your sector with actions, that are immediate, consistent, and persistent and at levels that no one else is willing to operate at or duplicate. Take any action, and take it to a level that will separate you and your company from everyone else who might be in your space. Be willing to spend every last bit of energy, effort, and creativity on distinguishing yourself as the only player there. Learn how to dominate by being first in the minds of your market, your clients, and even your competitors. Market conditions won't improve until you improve the way you think and approach the market. Even if you are in a weak market, you suffer less when you dominate it. Weak markets actually create opportunities because the players in those markets typically have become dependent and weak because they don't know how to operate in a more challenging environment. Don't feel sorry for them; dominate them. They're not having bad luck; their average think and actions are simply failing them. The marketplace is brutal and will punish anyone and everyone who does not take the right amounts of action. Now is the time to shift into making your every thought and action aimed at dominating your sector, market, competition—and the every thought of your potential clients. Quit thinking about competing. Despite what everyone says, it's not healthy. It's for sissies.

  Chapter 11

  Breaking Out of the Middle Class

  Please don't take offense at what I write in this chapter. I know many of you have spent your whole life trying to get to the middle class, and I am about to tell you it is the wrong goal. Have an open mind. I am going to write an entire book on this topic one day—but for now, let's just think about breaking out of what I call the “middle-class mentality.” I believe I can make the case that the middle class is the group hurt most by its members' thinking and actions—leaving themselves to be the most susceptible to insecurity and pain. Although this is a group that many people aspire to be a part of, it's also the group that seems the most trapped, manipulated, and at risk. Is the middle class really as good a status as you've been made to believe? Do you even know what it means to be middle class or what puts a person in this group? Before you make a decision about where you are going or the group you're striving to belong to, it would be wise to inspect the statistics of that group.

  The Incomes of the Middle Class

  Reports from Wikipedia and the 2008 Census suggest that the middle-class income range is somewhere between $35,000 to $50,000 per year. Read another set of studies, and these figures are between $22,000 and $65,000 per year. It's no secret that it would be extremely difficult to live on either of these income levels in an urban area like New York or LA—much less feel financially secure. This experience is not what most people would consider a desirable situation.

  The middle class is further divided into the upper and lower middle class. The upper middle class usually consists of people who have substantial assets and household earnings of over $1 million per year, although there is nothing to substantiate what makes $1 million the mark. I guess it just sounds good. Most people consider $1 million to be a lot of money—until they have it. Then they realize that it doesn't go very far since a person's decisions and considerations tend to change once he or she enters a new income bracket.

  The people in the supposed upper middle class occupy noticeably higher positions in their offices and are considered financially more stable than many of their peers. This may very well be the case—until any sort of economic destruction occurs. Then we tend to see that even this group is unprotected. Admittedly, members of this group should experience a considerable rise in their incomes due to the economic growth of the nation in good times. They have higher disposable incomes than many of their counterparts in the lower middle class, which consists of people who have basic educational qualifications and an annual income of between $30,000 and $60,000. The lower middle class constitutes a large part of our country's total population. This set frequently struggles to reach the upper middle class's level; however, when economic hardship takes hold, everyone gets pulled down.

  A client of mine recently asked me
via text message on the 26th of a recent month, “Grant, I have to net $10,000 to keep my doors open this month. How can I do this?” I happened to get his message during a Sunday football game, so I asked him, “Are you watching the game today?” He texted me back, “Yes.” I then replied, “What are you doing taking a Sunday off to watch the game?! You should be out distributing fliers, spending every second of every hour trying to create income in excess of what you need. And by the way, you need $100,000 in net profits—not $10,000.” “Sunday,” he responded, “is a day of rest.” Oh boy. I shot back, “It is for those that worked the other six days! The Lord wasn't talking to the people who are short on funds and haven't earned the day of rest. So turn off the game, get off your couch, and go get the money you need! Quit being a middle-class slave, and go create the income you need to secure wealth and financial freedom—for yourself and your household and your company!” I think he got the message.

  My client is at risk because he has been operating based on what he needs and therefore is just “getting by.” Unfortunately, this middle-class mentality will not create financial security. The banks dried up on him; he could no longer depend on credit for his cushion, and he can now depend only on his actions. This is the problem with many members of the middle class. They go after what they've deemed necessary rather than ever going really big. Most people believe that a comfortable middle-class life includes clothes, a house, a few cars, vacation time, maybe an upper-management position, and some money in the bank.