Dr. Benjamin Hardy Explains How to Flip Your Thinking and Scale Faster | #Success - Ep. 48

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This is the Russell Brunson Show. What's up everybody, welcome back to the show. Today we are in Cancun, Mexico, and I'm here with a very special guest, the author of a brand new book called The Science of Scaling and a whole bunch of other really cool books like The Gap and the Gain, Become Your Future Self Now, Who Not How, um, Willpower's Not the Way, Uh, which ones did I miss? I missed like 3.

There's a lot. That's all right. 10x.

10x. These are 2x. Yeah, those I missed. I got, I got the important ones. Uh, but he's got a brand new book here. So he actually came to Mexico for our Mastermind in Paradise and spent the last like 4 or 5 hours speaking to our audience about this. And then I thought before he passes out, we should do one more quick podcast with him, um, and share some of these things with you guys. And so his name is Dr. Benjamin Hardy. I'm super glad to have you here. So thanks for, thanks for coming to my thing.

That I can do with you all do. Yeah, seriously, you're, you're the one, you're one of the best, man. So happy to do it. Every time I'm here with you, it's a marathon. It's like, well, I don't know how you have the energy and like the stamina.

You're on day one right now.

I know, but I know it's like, yeah, it's like I'm toast, but you're doing this for like the rest of the week. You have way more stamina than I have. It's awesome.

Well, it's funny because I look back 10 years ago, like I used to do events, we'd go till midnight every night. And now I'm like, one night we do the rest of the night, I got to go to bed a little earlier. So it's fun though. Okay, so there's so many things we talk about. Part of me is like, we should talk about every book and the framework of all of them because they're all so good. But instead, I want to go into Science of Scaling. But before we go into it, I want to talk about one of your earlier frameworks. It's in the appendix here, but you talked about it in 10X. Was that the first place that—

No, this is actually the first place it actually showed up. So like, I actually formalized it. I know I taught it here. I came here. I came here 2 years ago and your people got the first ever copy of 10X. Yeah, but that model wasn't in that book and I actually created it after I wrote 10X, but before I was here with you 2 years ago.

Oh, I didn't realize that.

Yeah, so this is the first place it's formally written.

Oh, so we knew way up, we've known for years here in the ClickFunnels world, but everyone else is, okay, this is really fascinating. So those who are listening to audio and can't see it, there's in the, I'll talk about the framework real quick so I can have you describe it. So there's 3 circles, one says past, one says present, one says future, and there's an arrow going from past to present and present to future. So talk about what this is and then explain, yeah, explain this part of the framework. So cool.

Yeah. So this is— so one of the core aspects of all psychology is how we frame time. So think about how you think about your past. Think about hard events you've gone through. Think about, you know, yourself as a wrestler, right? So we, we have so many things about our past, and those things can be really dominant in shaping who we are. And so the, the linear model of time is where you let your past determine your present. And that word determine is like a strong word, like determine I know that you're like being definite, but when you, when you're determined by something that's outside of you, then you completely lose your agency. And so this model of time where you let the past shape the present and then you let the present to shape the future, although it's the common way we're taught to approach time, psychologically it's just inaccurate. Like psychologically, although, although we default to it. Yeah.

So everyone does.

Yeah. It's the default mode, letting the past determine us. You can see it in companies where they let their past performance shape their goals, right? We did 100, we did We did a million last year, let's go for 2 million this year because of that. But yeah, I guess the important insight here is that psychologically it's the opposite. Psychologically, the future is what shapes our present and it's what, and it's really our goals. Our goals are what shape who we are in the present. Our goals shape how we filter and make choices in the present. And then it's us in the present that determines the meaning of our past. But this model isn't the default. This model requires far more agency. Like you have to actually think about a future and then use that future to filter what you do and what you don't do. And also you have to look back on the past, even mistakes or problems. And rather than saying, oh, why did this, why is this shaping me? It's like, oh, what can I shape this into? What can I learn from this? And so this is just a more accurate model of time. And one of their final pieces is that both of these things co-occur in the now. They co-occur. So like the past, how you frame your past and your future shape who you're being in the present. But the key insight is that the future weighs way more than the past. The future's really what's driving your presence.

Key. So before we go too deep on the business side, I want, I want like a practical application for people, because we see this a lot of times when someone's got trauma or some, something happens early in their life. So it's past event that's now framing their— or it's, it's pretty— yeah. So we walk through just that direction then, and then reverse it back the other way for someone who, let's say, yeah, some trauma happened as a young kid.

Yeah. So I think it's common when something negative happens or a mistake happens, you, you fail in some way or you make a mistake, to think that it's the thing that's that it's causing you in the present, right? It's leading me to be this way. And then you put all of the agency to it, right? In psychology, they call it locus of control. So like, the loc— it's the location of control. And so rather than putting the location of control outside of you, you realize— and there's research on this that says you have to have an internal locus of control in order to reframe a trauma. That means in the present, I know that my past and how I frame it is actually up to me. And so I have to actively, not passively, actively look at it and give it new meaning. So usually with a trauma, what it means is, is that it has— you've defined it as negative value, like negative value, meaning it would have been better if it didn't happen, because now that it happened, you know, I'm worse off. Maybe I lost my leg, right? Or like maybe I lost a sibling, or maybe, maybe my business failed. So you're saying this is negative and it's negatively impacting my present and future. And so the only way to change it is to actually look at it and give it positive value. Like constructive value. Like, yeah, it was rough, but because of that, I now know X, Y, and Z. Or because of that, I can now do X, Y, and Z. But you have to give that value. That's part of reframing, is giving it value and then also getting to a point where you're grateful for it. That's a really hard one where you can say, you know, for me, I'm grateful my parents got divorced when I was 11, right? I'm grateful that, you know, X, Y, and Z happened because now I can do this, right? And so now I'm happening to the past. It's not happening to me. But also It's in my mind. Like, how— it is a great quote that says the past is never dead, it's not even past, because I'm carrying around my past, whatever I— whatever one I decide to have. And so by giving it value, now my present, my future are better.

Is it like in therapy, like, in terms of psychology, like, how long does it take someone to actually learn how to do the ME? Is it fast? Does it take a long time? Is it repetition? Like, what's the— what's the secret? Because you see people all the time who default back to it, like, well, I can't do it because I was raised here, this happened in my life, or whatever it might be.

I think one— so I don't know if there's like an exact amount of time, but one thing that really helps is distinguishing your current self from your past self. So saying, how am I different from my past self? What are the things that my past self said yes to that I would say no to? Or what are some of their tendencies that I've kind of outgrown? So for me, as an example, like when I was first in a PhD program, I was actually like very sloppy. In my thinking and also in my work. And my advisor would kind of like call me out on it. Like, I would tell her I was going to get her a draft, and I would get her like a really bad draft, which is okay. But like, she would say like, don't send it to me until you've actually read it. Like, don't just like write it and send it. Like, actually rewrite. And it took me like a year to like finally like start listening and like actually like read it again and then like catch the 50,000 typos and then send it to her. And so You know, it's very helpful to look at how you've outgrown your past self, right? And one of the worst things you can do is say, I'm still the same person I was in the past, because the truth is you're not. And so some people are like, this is who I am, this is who I've always been. It's like, no, you aren't. Let's take some time to actually look at how have you evolved, how have you changed, how are you different from your past self? And the more you get better at doing that— even, even a week ago, I might say, you know, this is what I did a week ago, but now I know better and I don't have to do it that way anymore. And so you start to just, you want to utilize your past, but also you want to separate yourself from who you were so that you can have the freedom to be different. Yeah. So cool. So, but it, you know, it's, it takes time. You can get better at doing it quicker and catching the lessons quicker if you choose to. I mean, it's kind of painful to choose the lessons because you have to look at it and say, oh, I could do it differently, but you don't have to be mad at your past self. There's no value in being angry at your past self. Just, just learning from it. Building value in it, being thankful for it, and then just being different, being better.

It happens all the time. I don't think it's a one-time thing, right? Because it's like constant in, in your childhood, but also your business. Last week, what'd you do? What's happening tonight? You know, yesterday, whatever. It's like all the— it's always looking back. Is anything that's happened— you can, you can attach the wrong meaning and then it can derail you for years if you're not careful about it.

When we live in a cancel culture, as you know, where people love to jump on someone's mistake, right? And it's like And I think it's far more like valuable to be empathetic towards someone's past self. Like, why, why do I need to like really try to like hammer someone because of a decision that their past self made, especially if they've already like learned the lesson? Like, why do we need to take them down because of their past? I mean, obviously certain things it's good to acknowledge and look at and stuff like that. But like, my dad was a drug addict, you know? And so like, I could continue to be angry at my dad because of his choices when I was a teenager. But he's not that guy anymore. Like, why do I need to go back and keep pointing out his past? Like, that's— I think that's one of the things I heard with marriage is like, don't, like, don't, don't go and point things out, you know, about your spouse and like the mistakes they made in the past, because like that just like it recreates it. It shows that you haven't let it go. So I think we can even do this with other people too. And, and I, I prefer if someone makes a mistake, of course it's good to have an opinion of it, to learn from it, but I need to just destroy someone because of of what they did in the past.

Yeah, it's cool. So the framework— sorry, I told you earlier, who are listening, the first version of framework, there's arrow going from past to present, present to future. And then the second version of framework, the arrow's going back where you have your future self defines your present, and your present then adds meaning or attaches meaning to the past. Is that right? Yeah, I got it right. Cool.

Yeah, so psychologically, the future is what shapes the present, and the present is what shapes the past. Yeah. As a chef, I know flavor doesn't begin in the kitchen.

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So focus more so on the future. All right. So in that frame now, Science of Scaling, your new book, walk us through like the core framework. I know we don't have enough time to read the whole book to everybody, but like just conceptually, 'cause it is kind of based off that as the foundation.

Yeah, so the core framework of this book is what we call the scaling framework. It's 3 levels, frame, floor, focus. And basically your frame, which is everything we've been talking about, your frame is what you see in the present. So it's like, it's everything you see, it's everything you're focusing on, it's everything you're thinking about. All of these things are in your frame. And you've heard the quote, you don't see the world as it is, you see the world as you are. So none of us see the same thing, right? We're all seeing the world subjectively through our own lens or our own frame. But the, the really big thing, which we've already been talking about, is, is— and this is like rooted in a lot of just really good thought and, and research— is the core element of our frame is our goals. So like, as people, we have goals, we're thinking about our future, and the, and the goals that we have for our future is what shapes what we see in the present. And so there's, there's infinite pathways we could take, there's infinite information, but what determines what we see as signal and what we see as noise, it's our goals. And so it's really our future that shapes our frame or our pathways that we're looking for and that we're striving for. And then basically the idea is, is with this framework is, is when you actually start to pursue impossible goals, goals that you don't know how to achieve, like you could call it a 10x goal, whatever, you make the goal much bigger and you, or you make it shorter, right? A lot of people I've worked with, they have like a 10, 20-year goal and I just say that's not a good enough modeling of the future to impact the present enough. So like I see the past and the future as tools for shaping the present. And especially the future. And so if someone has a 20-year goal or a 10-year goal, I just say, what would happen if you move the timeline to 2 years right now? All of a sudden, the pathways that they were on start to become noise. They have to start finding better paths because their 20-year path isn't going to get them to the goal in 2. And so when you raise the frame, whether it's in scale or timeline, shorter timeline, then that takes your floor up. Your floor is what is the dividing line between what you say yes and no to. So everything below the floor is noise. Everything below the floor is is a contradiction to the, to the goal. And we spend a lot of time below the floor, right? Whenever we're below the floor, we're saying yes to things that we know are holding us back and we're creating complexity and confusion for ourselves and for other people. And so having the higher frame or the higher goal forces you to raise your floor and strip out most of what you're doing, because most of what you're doing can't reach the higher goal. And then it forces you to find and focus on the most efficient and the most effective paths. And so that's frame, floor, focus.

Yeah. First time I ever talked about any of those things is when I read Tex. It was easier in 2X. I remember it's one of the things that like clicked for me. I can't remember if you said this or it was in, I can't remember exactly where. Maybe you said it in the event, maybe it was in the book, but when you were in a group or something, you asked them like, who here knows like ways to double or triple their business? Like everyone's hands went up. You're like, who knows how to like 100X your business? And like nobody's hands went up. It was like, you know, there's a million ways you could double your business, but there's only probably one that you could actually do, the big one, right? So it's like, If you know you're going after the one, it's like it cuts out all the noise, all the complexity, because none of the things will actually get you to where you're trying to get to, right?

Yeah. I mean, it's a simplifier. I mean, that's really why you want to use it as a tool. Like a lot of people say, why should I go for an impossible goal? I'm probably not going to be able to hit it. That's going to create all sorts of stress. Now I'm going to feel like a loser. I'm like, it's just a tool. The future is a tool, right? Even timelines are a tool. So it's like a 10-year timeline isn't an effective tool. Move that timeline to 12 to 24 months. Now it's going to force you to really rethink your present. It's going to really force you to start looking at all the things you're doing and start letting go of a lot of it, because a lot of it can't get you there in 2 years and it's going to force you to find a much better path. And so that's part of the beauty of going for massive goals, is that there's just naturally far less pathways to get there. Like you said, you can— there's 20 paths to 2x, right? But there might be 1 or 2 to 10. And so it forces you to filter a lot more aggressively and find those pathways, find those partners. And you couldn't find those without having the goal to do it. You know, I mean, I know you, you know, you love like the idea of, you know, changing your thinking and even choosing what you want. It's like if you haven't defined the goal, you're not going to be able to filter and find it. And so moving the goal up higher just creates a much better filter for the present. It's like, well, all this stuff can't get me there, so what can? And once you start looking for it, you'll find it. Yeah.

Where do you find the most resistance when entrepreneurs hear this and they're like, I know my resistance. I'm curious if it's similar to other people.

I want to hear your resistance. So I'll tell you what's funny is like I was just telling Myron, who's— he's one of your friends and stuff. He's a great friend of mine too. I said, I said, it's interesting, the further and further I go down this path, the more resistance I'm getting. Yeah. Which I actually don't take as a bad sign. Yeah. To be honest with you. But the main resistances are, you know, why would I set a goal Well, you know, such a high goal or short timeline, if I don't think I can hit it, right? They think that they have to believe in the goal first. And I just say it's a tool. It's a tool for making decisions in the present, for being a lot more honest with yourself. So one of the resistances is that people think they have to fully believe they can hit the goal before they start using it to filter their choices. From my opinion, it's okay if you're not sure if you can hit the goal. That's not what it's there for. As you start making progress towards the goal, you might build that belief, that commitment, that conviction. Another one is just, you know, naturally the idea of raising the floor and simplifying like that thing. It's really hard for people to let go of things. We get very attached to our current path, our current model, our current audience, whatever it is. And so a lot of times people would rather just stay on the wave they're on versus leverage it into the next wave. And so people have a hard time letting go of their current path or their current plan or their current system. Right? And maybe for good reason, it might be paying the bills, or like you might have a huge team, or you might have a lot of responsibility. And so going for a 10x often requires you to remodel that, simplify it so that it can grow a lot faster. And that means disappointing people, letting people down, um, maybe putting yourself in a little bit of uncertainty because a lot of your income is over here, but it's obviously below the floor and it's not going to scale, and it's kind of a dead-end path. And so, and so people who don't know the plan and path yet have a hard time letting go of their current plan. Yeah.

So, okay, so they know the path, it becomes easier. It is, because I agree, my thing's the same thing. It's like I have team, I have existing things, stuff that we do that I love that maybe not be as profitable, but I enjoy, I give, I get value from it, but it's not, you know. And so maybe that's things just not clarity enough on, on what that goal is to be able to feel comfortable shifting.

I don't know if you know who Robert Gay is, Bob Gay. He created—

you talking about capital?

Yeah. Yeah. So that was his biggest concern is it's very— I think one of the hardest things is choosing the right goal. You know, like actually choosing a goal and being willing to let go of other goals to go get it. Like that's very difficult for people because sometimes we, we think we can like scale 50 goals. Right. And so it's very hard to face that. You probably can't do it all. And so actually deciding what should I optimize for is a, is a tough thing to do. Yeah, it's very hard.

So with your, with the Science of Scaling book and scaling.com and the business, like, can I ask what your, your big goals right now with, for the, that business, for the business specifically?

Yeah. And I think that it's really good for a business to have a goal, right? A business is different than a family, right? And so the business has a goal and that goal shapes its process, it shapes its team, it shapes what we do. So scaling.com, the goal is to have 5,000 members in the program all scaling 10x within 2.5 years. So by the end of 2027. And so, you know, that's effectively like $130, $140 million in revenue.

What's the price point of each member?

It's $2,000 a month.

Oh, gotcha.

On autopilot. Yeah, just $2,000 a month. The price might go up, but it's just a single concept and $2,000 a month for membership. And in order to get in, we have a very high filter. Like you have to be fully committed to like actually applying the framework and going for an impossible goal and using that to scale. And so you have to essentially be committed to 10x-ing in a few years. And even mature companies that come in doing tens of millions, even hundreds of millions, some of them are like, I don't know if I can 10x again. It's like, well, then you're out. Well, we turn people away.

You fund your money then, yeah.

Yeah, 'cause we want everyone in the program to be scaling. Like, you know, I've been a part of a lot of programs even programs with you where, you know, there's different purposes for the program. It could be networking, it could be connection, it could be just improving your thinking. But, you know, in those groups and they're all essentially business groups, what I found was, is that only a few people were actually like massively growing, whereas the majority of people, although they were growing, they were growing linearly. They were on that linear path of letting the past shape the present, shape the future. And so their growth was more stagnant. And so, you know, even writing the 3 books with Dan, just being in that environment and being aware of it, like the majority of people even in that program aren't actually 10xing. And so I just, I just wanted to like really look at it and say, what if we just made that the requirement from the beginning? Like if, if you're not interested in that, you should just go somewhere else.

Yeah.

So that's, that's just kind of what we filter for. So we want 5,000 people to be 10xing and scaling in the next 2 or 3 years.

That's cool. And then reverse engineering that, then you gotta figure out the team, the process, all the rest of stuff What?

Yeah, with an extreme urgent goal, it forces you to find really clean paths. And you can't do 1,000 things. There's a lot of things I can't do, right? The floor represents what you say no to. Strategy represents what you say no to. Even Steve Jobs said focus is what you say no to. So we have to say no to a lot of things and we just, we just have a focused, disciplined path.

Yeah, it's cool.

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Sip for yourself. Shop VertuoUp exclusively at Nespresso.com. Another thing, so obviously you wrote a book called Who Not the How, which is something I've quoted a lot in our trainings and stuff like that. And our people, I think my community buys into that, that concept. But one thing you start saying today that I hadn't heard you say before was not like finding the right whos. You start talking about super whos. What's the difference between a normal who and a super who? I was like, that's amazing, because it gave me a new framework. Because before I was like, oh, I see the who versus like, no, the type of who matters.

Yeah, there's different levels of whos. So there's a concept, obviously the 80/20 principle, right? That 20% of inputs create 80% or more of outputs. Really, one of the— so I read the book The 80/20 Individual by Richard Koch. He wrote The 80/20 Principle. When I read that book, I realized that, you know, he talks about, he doesn't talk about the power law, but other people talk about the power law, meaning like the very few create almost all the results. And so I started just digging into that concept that we're all like one proper who away from a 10x or 100x. And so the more and more I dug into that, the more I just started finding, you know, Bill Gates talked about how like a really good code writer is not worth, you know, 10x, it's actually worth 10,000x, the average code writer. Like there's certain people that create code that like literally changes the game, right? And so there's certain individuals that can create not just 10x the results of the average who, but like literally 10,000x. But you won't find those if your goal doesn't require them. Because like to the idea of who, not how, like the super who is the pathway. And usually they're a pathway to a few things. One could be like really good distribution, right? Like a who could literally get you the distribution you need to a goal. Or they just bring such new capability that because they're there, they like, they raise the floor, they transform the system. And so these are just whos that change the game and they almost make the impossible goal inevitable. And you really don't need 20 of these super whos. Like, you might need like 1 or 2 to 10x or 100x your company, you know? I mean, obviously the more the merrier. Yeah, but it's just the idea that they they are what make the goal possible, and you can't really get there without them. And they do, they do shift your role, they shift your focus. Like, you know, not that you change your role entirely, but, you know, it's like chess. Um, like when two pieces are together, their skill, their ability is, is different than when they're apart, right? And so like in basketball, like recently, and I wrote about it in the book, like one of the— so the Warriors who have Steph Curry they were really plateaued, like their ceiling was just like maxed out. And so they knew that they needed another superstar to complement Steph. And so they traded one of their like marquee players, Andrew Wiggins, they traded him to the Heat for a guy named Jimmy Butler. And Jimmy Butler being like a rock star who like, he's like a freaking amazing chess piece that when you bring him into the same team as Steph, it unlocked Steph. In ways that were just incredible because he created so much space. Like, so in basketball, because he's so good like down below the, the, like the basket, all of a sudden people would swarm him and all of a sudden Steph was way more open, right, than he'd ever been. Like, he was way more open than he was used to being. So these kind of whos not only do they transform like your capability, but they also bring out the best in like you. And so these are the types of whos you want.

Interesting. I was like in the business too, like if you wanted If you want to play, like, you have to be a super who in and of yourself. You do, you know what I mean? Because like, people always ask me, well, how do you, how do you recruit the right people? And that's like, well, you've got to be the standard initially, right? If you're building the business, like, you got to be the initial standard. You got to be super who that does whatever your role is. It can be anything. Like, you know, I've seen, I've seen really good accountants who, who became the super who and then built a team and they built things kind of— I've seen really good, you know, entrepreneurs, really good. Like, but I think like step number one, I think for a lot of people is like they got to become the super who. Like, I just did an interview with the teenagers over here and they asked me, what would be the number one What would you tell me about, you know, as a teenager, what would you say? I was like, you should become obsessed. Like pick one little, like don't try to become obsessed with everything. Like find one part of the business, become obsessed with it. And then like from there you can attract everybody else you need. But if you're just like dabbling, you're not gonna inspire people to come and go on a mission with you, you know?

Yeah. Well, and I mean, you know, not to make you uncomfortable, but think about how you've changed the game in marketing, right? Like you not only changed, like, you know, you as a super who, like you got so deep in marketing and then you invent, you know, you clarified and invented the model of funnels, right? And obviously your technology made that possible for hundreds of thousands of companies, right? Yeah. To scale and to actually apply marketing in a simple frame, right? I mean, even, you know, when I read your book, I remember reading Dotcom Secrets in 2016. When did it come out?

2015.

Okay, so I read it in 2015 or '16.

By the way, Ben Hardy read my book. That's pretty cool.

Sorry, just, I read it in Alaska on a fishing trip with my grandfather, on a fishing trip with my father-in-law, and I was reading DotCom Secrets and it showed me exactly what I was doing wrong, right? And so like what you've done as a super who is you've changed the game and made marketing easier for everyone, right? And so like that's extreme leverage. But I remember reading that and I was just starting as a blogger and growing my blog and I was sending people to my website, right? And my website was like multifaceted. There was 50 things and you taught me about the landing page. And so literally I start, what happened was, and I wouldn't be the professional author if I hadn't read that book, I would've found probably another pathway. But it was like I read that, I'm like, okay, I'm never sending people to my website again. I'm only sending them to a landing page. And all of a sudden, bang, my blogs and the value of those blogs because I got email subscribers, 10x, and it was what enabled me to become a professional writer. So I love what you're saying and it takes extreme capability to become a super who. You actually have to become so good at what you do that it does change maybe the whole game like you did for marketing, or it changes at least the game of that business, right? And it's like it makes the impossible happen.

Yeah. Okay, one last question for you. It's actually going back 5 minutes to the interview, but, um, so when I first met you, you were the number one blogger on Medium, right? Like the number one dude on the platform. And then, and then you just, just, you, you shut it down, and then you were blowing up YouTube and then you shut it down. And I want to talk about this because a lot of times, me specifically, I get really good at something and like it's my thing and like I'm going to die holding on to this thing. And both times you built big distribution channels, you like literally just shut them down. I don't know what to do with the book, but I would love you to explain that because I think it will give people some understanding of like maybe a different way to look at like the things that they love so much that maybe are holding them back. Maybe this is selfishly for me too.

I think it's great. So Dr. Richard Rumelt, he wrote a good book called Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, and he said that Good Strategy is surprising because of how rare it is. And most people don't expect you to have a good strategy because they don't have a good one themselves. Like, it's just a really good book on strategy. But again, back to the idea of strategy is about choosing a path, not 20 paths, right? And that's really hard to do. So strategy is really about making a choice. And when it came to Medium, like, all goals are means, not ends, right? And so for me, Medium was a means to growing my email list and becoming a professional author. Once I became a professional author, like the future was like, how do I actually write hopefully game-changing books in business and in psychology? And if I continue to just focus on Medium just 'cause I had it, like I would've never gone deep on this, right? And so I would've been stuck on that last wave. That wave served a phenomenal purpose and gave me the opportunity to like really focus on this new 10x, which was writing different books. And obviously, you know, unique pathways writing the books with Dan, that was unexpected. My, my publisher at the time was very upset that I was wanting to write those 3 books with them. But I saw that as like a really good book or a really good pathway and partnership for going deep on what I wanted to learn. And then to the idea of YouTube, like YouTube, although it's a good path, like it gives distribution, it gives eyeballs, it's a clunky path for our goal, right? If I had 10 years to do it, I could go grow a YouTube channel. But if I have 2, YouTube would take way too much time, too much bandwidth. It's not, it's not high enough leverage for what we're trying to accomplish with our goal, right? As scaling that company, it's, it's not an efficient enough path. And so like the book is a much more efficient path for the kind of people we're looking for. Also the kind of people we're looking for are more likely to read a book or listen to an audiobook than watch YouTube. Like, you know, YouTube is a great platform, but it was one that I realized was a distraction from me focusing on a better path. And then we all have reasons for certain goals. You know, like, I actually used to like walk around Italy and stuff and people would recognize me because of my YouTube channel. Whereas like this, like, people don't always recognize— Your face is not known. Yeah, exactly. But sometimes we're optimizing for vanity metrics, right? And so for me, it was like one of the core concepts of healing, psychology, spirituality, growth is this concept of letting go. Right. And Dr. David Hawkins wrote a book called Letting Go. But the longer it takes you to let go of something, obviously, like the more attached you are to it and that's stopping you. And so getting really good at letting go and stripping things out and letting go of even goals or vanity metrics or things that you really valued, not that you have to let it all go, but at a certain point it's stopping you from the next path. And so just being aware that like, okay, this thing served its purpose, but now it's like it actually is costing me a much bigger opportunity or a much bigger future. That's really hard. And so it's a skill to be able to say this is now kind of a dead end or this has reached its plateau. I squeezed the majority of the juice out as I can. There's probably much more efficient and better pathways which are going to require me to, to jump into a new role. Yeah. So it's just, it's just being willing to let go of even something that's really great and that's working Most people won't do that. I mean, that's very difficult work, but I think it's required for innovation. You know, if you think about Apple and things like that, like they had to eventually let go of the iPod, right? And like other things. And so, you know, most of their products are new concepts or new models, right? And so, you know, you can only ride certain things so far.

Yeah. Interesting. Well, I'm hoping everyone, as they read this book, they pick a goal and then do what I'm going to do, which is what you've done, which is go through the process and figure out like what are the things you got to cut to be able to focus to actually achieve them.

It's awesome and it's difficult.

It's funny, somebody asked me after your talk, like, so Russell, what's your goal right now? And I was like, it's interesting. I'm like, well, my major goal I had, I accomplished. I think that's part of why I've been like, you under a little bit huge. It's just like, what's the next thing? I got to figure that out. So I'm excited to kind of relook at it through this lens and then rebuild everything based on that. So anyway, I'm excited.

I'm excited for you, man. I mean, whenever you have a goal, Russell, watch out world.

We'll see what happens.

Yeah, it's awesome. I mean, Viktor Frankl, I'll end with this is, you know, and I started with this in my talk to your other group. Group, but, you know, Frankl knew— and he wrote Man's Search for Meaning, The Concentration Camp— he knew that in order to have meaning in your life, you have to have a goal. And in order to overcome awful situations, circumstances, or just deal with challenge, you have to have a goal. And so humans need a goal. And so even if you've achieved huge goals, that, you know, you need, you need a future. Like, in our psychology and our meaning, but also just our mental health, is based on striving toward a future. Once you stop having a future to strive for, your mental health starts to go downhill. Like, you just, you start to become confused. And, and so having a goal that gives you direction and purpose is essential, not only for like better decisions, but it's also just essential for like operating effectively. So yeah, so we all need a goal, as much as some people don't want one.

Might as well choose a huge one. If we're gonna shoot for them, go for a big one.

Well, because it'll strip out bad paths. It'll force you to find the most powerful paths and super-whos. But it's no harder to do the bigger goal. It just requires more letting go and better filtering and a willingness to go find those better paths. Yeah.

Awesome, man. I appreciate you. Thank you. Where can people get your book? Is it live yet? When's it actually going live?

So they can actually get it for free. Literally free. Scaling.com/audio-book.

Ooh, the best version, the audiobook.

Yeah. I mean, obviously you can go get it on Amazon. But we give away the audiobook. Our publisher gave us permission to give the audiobook away. So, yeah, I mean, obviously you can go to Amazon and get it if that's the preference or Audible, you know.

So, yeah. Awesome.

Thanks, man.

Thanks for being here in Mexico. Thanks for the time.

Appreciate you letting me come, man. Seriously, anything, anything you're up to, I'm super interested in it. Okay.

I appreciate it, man.

All right.