How to 10X Your Growth

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Hey, fastlaners Ryan, Daniel Moran here for Freedom Fast lane. And today we're going to talk about a kind of a weird subject. We're going to be talking about growth and specifically what it looks like to expedite and to maximize growth. We're going to talk about this because growth is kind of a bugger for entrepreneurs, because in a way, in our evolution as a species, we're not really wired for growth, especially not to desire growth. We haven't really had to think about that for most of our existence. We had to think about eating and surviving and reproducing, and there wasn't really any time for growth or even any mental space for growth. Who has time for thinking about growth when we're hunting food and we're building families? That's most of our history as a species. So in a way, being in a time now where we're so focused on growth and we're so obsessed with growth is a blessing, but yet it's also very dangerous because growth is both absolutely essential to our happiness and it can also be the enemy of our happiness. And we'll go into how that is and how we can use it to our advantage rather than to our detriment. Through throughout this episode, one of the things that I've noticed about entrepreneurs is we have this misunderstanding. We have this idea that we need to grow now so that one day we won't have to worry about growth ever again. There's this misconception that if we put in the work now, then we'll reach this point like nirvana, at which we no longer have to grow, which we no longer have to think about. What am I going to do to get better at something? And when we come at it from that approach, we look at growth as though it is some sort of an exhausting process of meaning. It takes from us rather than charges us up. And yet on the other end of things, when we plateau, when we aren't growing, we tend to resent our comfortability or we want to experience growth again. Or if you're an entrepreneur, then you beat yourself up over the fact that you haven't grown. I was having a conversation with somebody recently who had in our conversation, I mean, to belittle this idea, but their standards were fairly low. And in a way, it caused tension between the conversation I was having with this person because we were kind of at odds in our philosophy. And in another way, I was really jealous of this person in the sense that I wish that I could be as satisfied and as comfortable as that person was without needing to have any sort of outside stimuli or be working on anything or growing. And this really set me down kind of a rabbit trail of thinking about the struggles I've had with this topic and the struggles that I see come up for a lot of entrepreneurs around this. I know very few entrepreneurs, but I do know some, two of my mentors, Travis and Jesse specifically, who, at least in my assumption, in my outside viewpoint, are both wired for growth and very happy with where they are. And so I have a little bit of an outsider, unique perspective, I think, anyway, on this idea. Whereas I know that if I didn't have those examples, I would have a very destructive view of what growth was. So what I've kind of noticed among entrepreneurs is that when we're starting businesses or we're starting something new, there tends to be an initial growth period, and then we plateau pretty quickly. And part of that is because of this misconception that we have to grow for a while and then we can kind of coast. But there's another part of this that is the reason why we tend to plateau once we hit that period of growth. And the reason for that is because when we're putting in the initial work that it takes to start a business or to get in shape or to work on our relationships or whatever it is that we're trying to 10x whatever it is that we're trying to grow, whatever it is that we're trying to crush, there is work. And that work is not always pleasurable. Sometimes it's quite painful. I'll share a bit of a personal story because I fight some demons around this topic. And those demons are simply, right now, I'm going through a period of a lot of growth. And growth is not always comfortable. In fact, there's a lot of growth is forced out of really painful situations. Mine right now, I've put myself into a position where I want to grow. We're building a team. We're attempting to build something much bigger than just me, much bigger than the vision that I would have had three years ago. That process takes work, and it takes extra hours, and it takes sacrifice, and that is not fun. So if we're not clear on where the goal is or what the reason behind that growth is, then our brain actually associates that with pain, and instead of pleasure. So when we associate that with pain, why do you think we don't grow, or we don't want to grow, or why most people have no interest in growth at all? As entrepreneurs, we tend to be wired to at least want to grow enough to make a change. We're at least dissatisfied with a certain pain threshold where we want to make some change. But then we get on the growth path and realize there's pain there too. The only thing that can keep us going is the belief that at the end of it there will be more pleasure than there is pain. But we tend to get in these traps of we're in constant growth and we don't have pleasure at the end of it. Because once we grow into what it is that we envisioned, we then kick the vision down the road and say, let's grow even more. I'll give you an example of this. I run a workshop called the Next Level. You can learn more about it at next level video series.com this is for physical products entrepreneurs. And we work on getting them to think bigger and then giving them the strategies to actually grow their businesses bigger. And I run an exercise with them on the first day, within the first half of the first day. And part of that involves writing down where you are in your current business and then writing down where you want to be. And we pause and we look at where it is we want to be. And then I propose a question to the group and I simply say, look at that number of where you want to be now times that by 10. And then I pause and we have a conversation about it. And I ask them to write down whatever that number was. So if somebody's at $100,000 a month, they want to be at $250,000 a month. I ask them to write down 10 times that number and they write down $2.5 million a month. And then we just start having a conversation and some really interesting things start to open up. And we have conversations where people bring up these resistance points and they start saying where their fear comes up or they start talking about the work that's going to be involved to hit this number. And all of a sudden these self def ideas start to come out. And I look at them and I say, this is really interesting because all I asked you was the mathematical calculation of the number you wrote down times 10. And now you're personalizing all of this and telling me all the fears and insecurities you have about the arbitrary number that you just wrote down. What that reveals is that there is some sort of a connection, some sort of a belief that growth is going to be painful. And that can manifest in a variety of different ways. That can be an insecurity, that can be just an expression of.

The fact that it was hard to get to this point. And going to that number, we associate being even harder with me, I know, me personally, I tend to fight this demon that comes up at certain points of growth when I just think I'm not happy with X. If I am going to be at this for a while, then what, what am I going to do then? Am I going to be still in this state once I reach a certain point? And if that's the case, is it even worth me growing at all? And that conversation is basically saying, there's pain now, there's pain in what we're doing. If I'm going to continue down this road and it's going to be 10 times this, do I even want it in the first place? Because we're all wired at some level for just pain and pleasure. So in that sense, your brain is wired to give you the exact results that you have now. Whatever you have right now in all areas of your life, at some level, you're wired to get those results because you associate more pain with the thing that you say that you want.

And you don't associate enough pleasure to it. So you get exactly what it is that you have. So how do we fix that? I mean, how do we fix that so that we can actually get the results that we want and wire ourselves so we naturally move toward that? Well, it's my belief that in order to flip that around and to associate pain with staying where we are and pleasure with growth, we sometimes need to get new beliefs around growth or beliefs about the thing that it is that we want or that we're working towards. And in my experience, there's a couple ways to do this. There are some cool NLP tactics that you can use. I use a journaling tactic where I simply talk about the fact that I had a belief in the past and that I've replaced a belief with something else. And as a result, certain new things have showed up in my life and I write that and read that over and over again until it's true to me. But there's another way. There's another way that you can kind of rewire your brain and it's simply by flooding your brain with different beliefs. And that comes from two places. That comes from what you put into your brain via what you read and what you listen to and who you hang out with. Your brain is made to normalize what it hears on a regular basis. We're wired to fit in with the tribe. And when I say that, I mean the people we hang out with those five or 10 people that we hang out the most with, we're wired to be in tribes, so we're wired to become like the people that we hang out with. So we can switch the process simply by getting some new beliefs that we download from other people, either on a secondhand basis via reading what they wrote, or on a firsthand basis by being intentional about who it is that we do hang out with. But before we even get to that point, we should address something because I've right now been speaking in the sense of as if growth is a good thing. And I'm not so sure that's always the case.

I am a very growth minded person. But as I kind of reflect on how I've changed and grown and my experience.

In my elderly years of being 28, I'm not so sure that growth is always a good thing. I think when growth becomes an obsession, it can be just like a drug habit. I heard a quote once that said that growth for the sake of growth is the mentality of cancer. We have to grow because we have to grow because we have to grow.

That's the mentality of cancer. And the more I reflect on this idea of just growing to grow, I think about.

I think about the. The guy I never wanted to be. The guy who works so much and is so obsessed with a certain result that it's always gonna happen soon and just gonna take a little bit more time and it never arrives and you end up at the end of your life and you're dead. Or even in a completely unrelated example, it's the individual who obsessed with a certain physique or a person who is obsessed with a certain amount of being thin and taken to this idea of it's never enough or there's always a next thing.

That can be very dangerous, even fatal. Food is pretty good.

Until you overdo it, until it becomes all about the next high you get from food. So sex is pretty cool until it just becomes about getting the next experience and the next experience. There's never an end to any of that. Business is no different. If the growth, if the goal is just to grow because that's what you do, that is very hard on your psyche. But at the same time not growing is very hard on your psyche. So what do we do? One, what do we, what do we do with this? Is there a healthy way to have aggressive goals? And is there a healthy way to grow exponentially or 10 times or whatever the hot thing is in our community that we're using? And I think that There is, and I may be hallucinating, but I'm of the opinion that there is. And it comes down to a couple of questions. First, what's the reason for the growth? Or in other words, what are we going to enjoy differently about either the growth process or when we hit a certain benchmark or goal? How will life be differently then? If there's a clear answer there, if there is a clear why in that, then growth is not only easy, but it's very, very clear and it's pleasurable. If we can put a target on our growth by identifying how our life is going to be different and what we're going to enjoy, the pleasure we're going to experience as a result of that growth, then it's clear, it's measurable, and it's enjoyable because we're working towards something. When it just becomes for the sake of doing it, that's when we start to burn out. The next piece of this is I've noticed a belief within myself, and I don't know if you're like me in this sense, but I've noticed that I have certain beliefs about growth in the sense that I just assume that growth is going to require my effort. And I've kind of touched on this in this episode. But that's a belief I'm only realizing that I have, that if I'm going to grow, it's going to require more of me, it's going to require more sacrifice. And sometimes that's true. If I want to get into better shape, I can't not work out.

But especially in business, I have this belief that if I want to grow, it's going to require more sacrifice than I already have, and therefore I conclude it's more painful and I'm not going to grow. And what I'm realizing lately is that that's an illusion. That is not the case. And I'm basing that on the beliefs I have around it rather than what is actually true. Are there people out there that grow business or financially without having to put in more sacrifice? And then I think about the fact that when I'm really happy, when I'm really disconnected, and when I'm really a step away from my business, growth all of a sudden seems really easy. It seems almost automatic. Building something really cool and providing value all of a sudden becomes really simple and straightforward. So I have boiled some things down with some takeaways for you. Rather than you just listening to me go on a philosophical rant for 20 minutes, I have boiled down what I think are some clear differentiators for growing both faster and in healthy ways that allow you to expand what you want and increase the quality of your life rather than to detract from that. And the first thing is to be very clear and very protective of the lifestyle that you want. And when I say that, I mean the things that make you happy, the things that light you up, the things that you want to do when you have, quote, made it to work them into your life. Now it's really popular right now to talk about, I'm just gonna. I'm gonna crush it. It takes work to get there. And all of that is true. But each of us has a different threshold for what we can handle before we completely psychologically collapse and therefore associate pain with the process. So we fix this by being clear up front on what it is that we want from our lifestyle. If a certain goal or a certain piece of growth does not give us the lifestyle that we want, and I mean the enjoyment that we want, what makes you think that you're going to move forward towards that thing or. Or that benchmark? There are times in which it requires temporary sacrifice of lifestyle. If there's a very clear goal that we're trying to hit and we are clear on the target and clear on the reason for hitting that target, we might conclude that it is worth sacrificing certain parts of our lifestyle in order to put in what is necessary to move towards that clear goal. But if we lose sight of the fact that it's a temporary sacrifice of that we've missed the point. We have missed the whole reason in the first place. And that is when we start to sabotage. The second thing that I have discovered and would like to offer to you is that there are different ways to achieve the same result that you're working towards. And when I say this, I mean the belief that it will always take more work or more investment is not always the case for me. I have found that I do more when I do less. And this is a muscle that I don't pretend to have flexed very well. It's something that is really becoming more and more clear to me that as I build systems and get things off of me, that that's when I'm happiest, When I take time to disconnect, that's when I'm happiest and therefore I produce more. So the belief that putting in consistent or consist isn't the right word, putting in an overreaching amount of effort or stress into something is what it takes is not always the case, my friend Kevin nations has a great process for working through this, and it's simply with the power of questions. What is it that we want to do and what is it that we don't want to do? When we write it in a sentence, I want without.

And when we get clear on that, without peace, we can simply ask, okay, how would I achieve without?

How would I do this without stress? How would I do this without sacrificing my lifestyle? How would I do this without working more than 4, 5 extra hours a week? And by doing that, we can get really simple solutions. You know, when I look at the people that I'm acquainted with that are extremely successful, I mean, the top tier of success.

Multimillionaires and billionaires, they're not necessarily more stressed than me, they're not necessarily working harder than me, but they are doing things differently than me. And the only way that we can do that is by changing our beliefs, by who we hang out with and what we put into our brain. The third thing that I want to offer to you is that I find that operating in shorter windows gives me clearer targets. And I first was exposed to this via Todd Herman, who's been on the podcast, one of the most popular episodes we've ever done. If you haven't heard it, go look up the Freedom Fast Lane podcast with Todd Herman where he talks about breaking up our visions into 90 day sprints and how we can use that as a map for working towards goals. And that gives us a clear enough picture and a short enough window to make working towards that easier and with enough feedback loops in order to keep our brain health happy. The next thing that I've noticed about this is, you know, our brains are wired to compare. We only know happy based on what we compare it to. We only know successful based on what we compare it to. All of our conclusions that we reach are based on a comparison to something else. When we compare ourselves with just an arbitrary idea of growth, growth is unlimited. I don't believe in limits, and I don't think you do either. There is no limit to the amount of happiness or fun or money or anything that is out in the world. There is a world of abundance out there. There's just what hasn't been done yet. But when we base our happiness, a comparison of where we are compared to an elusive idea of growth, we always lose that game. Always. There's plenty of research to say that you're happier making $100,000 in a world of people who make $25,000 then you are making $250,000 in a world that makes half a million dollars. It's relative, and that's how we reach most of our conclusions. Our brain kind of messes with us in that capacity. But the good news here is that we get to control the game. This is why, by the way, we are so unhappy with so much more stuff than we've ever had and so much more opportunity than we've ever had, because we normalize what's real and then we compare it to what's not real.

Most of us are operating consciously, I'm sorry, unconsciously, from this. From this position. We're unconsciously comparing ourselves to an elusive idea that always makes us lose. When we're comparing ourselves to fitness magazines that are doctored and we compare ourselves to other people peddling how much money they say they're making, and they're usually lying, or we compare ourselves to an idea, a story that we had in our head, rather than appreciating what it is that we do have and comparing it to what could be without that, that's when we have unlimited unhappiness. That's when you can get more and more and not be happy. Whereas if you are always compared to either where you came from, so that you're constantly appreciating the growth that we have, or by comparing to another real example, and there's plenty of those to go around, there are people who have nothing and are more happy than you. And when you compare your situation to a lot of other people's, you are in control of who you put in that comparison. And it can mean everything about your total happiness. I've talked enough about kind of the philosophical idea of growth, so let's put a few more practical takeaways onto this. When it comes to growth, if we really want to explode in different areas of our life, and we really want to get on the fast lane to growth, that requires that we break the paradigms of what we currently believe is possible. I was actually speaking with someone today, and I asked this person, hey, if you had a magic wand and you could paint your ideal situation in a certain area of your life, and we were talking about a certain area of our lives, I said, if you could paint your ideal situation here, what would that look like? And this person gave me an answer and in the same breath said, but I don't think that is possible. And what this person said was that they would like to be at home more, but I don't think that's possible. And it was Interesting to me because from my perspective, this was a fairly achievable, attainable goal or dream. The very fact that this person thought it was impossible was a reflection of beliefs that they had and could be changed by getting some different examples into their life. So getting a different map or a different perspective on life is usually what it takes to get us even aware of the fact that we can grow 10 times in the first place. When I have spent time with.

My mentors, I've discovered about them that they're fully aware as I am, that there are no limits, that there's no such thing as a limit. But they're also very appreciative of what they do have, which actually empowers them to be in positions to go after what it is they want once they discover what that is. And when they discover what that is, it comes from usually an example that is put by somebody else or by simply wondering how things could be versus how they are. One of the kind of cool ways to trick your brain into doing this is to do the 10 times growth exercise, which is simply looking at where you say that you want to be and then timesing that by 10 and asking yourself the question with no judgment, how would I have to think? What would I have to do in order for this to be normal to me? If you can do that without any personal judgment on it, you'll realize that other people have done that. Other people have. Other people have done way more than that or have achieved that goal. Was there something magical about that person that you don't have? Was there something special? Was there some unique circumstance around that person? Or might they just have had certain beliefs and certain habits that you are not currently practicing? What were those habits? Could you practice those habits? What would you have to think about? What would you have to do in order to go towards that 10 times goal instead of the goal that you previously had? Because chances are you're gonna develop a certain number of habits that are gonna be very different based on a 2 times goal versus a 10 times goal. And the habits of the 10 times goal are probably the ones that you want to have anyway, so long as you are protective of your lifestyle and there is a reason for the growth or a way that you will enjoy life more once you experience the benefit of that growth. So here's what I'm inviting you to do. I very much believe that the fastest way to hack the system is to change the surroundings that you have, to change the beliefs that you have which come from who you hang out with and what you put into your brain. I like to tell the story that I used to think I was doing pretty good in business until I joined a group that I paid a lot of money to be a part of. And they completely shattered my beliefs about what was possible. And it really actually threatened me. It made me feel really bad about myself for a while until it was normal to me. And then my life took off in a different direction. And I have always wanted to duplicate that process in my life where I'm just around people who shatter my paradigms and allow me to see that there's another level that I'm not hitting. If I'm going to own the Cleveland Indians, then I got to hit a different level. I got to be around people who shatter the paradigms of what I think is possible. And even though I think that I have a pretty big perspective on life, there are no limits to that. And there are plenty of people who have a much bigger perspective than I do. And that's why I put together Freedom Fastlane Live at the time of this recording. There's about six weeks until Freedom Fast Lane Live. Robert Herjavec, who's worth over $100 million, has a private island and knows exactly what to do to take a startup business to compare what all the successes have done versus all of the failures and is gonna be keynoting the event. Gary Vaynerchuk, whose goal is to own the New York jets, kind of a similar dream to mine will be keynoting the first day. Grant Cardone, who owns $350 million in real estate, has several multimillion dollar businesses will be there. The billionaire founder of PriceSign.com, jeff Hoffman, Pat Flynn, three of my mentors will all be there, and some of them will be hanging out the entire three days. So you'll literally be able to buddy up with them and download their thoughts into your brain. The collect just the speakers have a net worth of almost $2 billion. Collectively. That's what you'll be surrounded with for three days. It'll be a crash course in upgrading your brain. But here's the thing. We've sold a lot of tickets. There aren't that many left, and we're about six weeks out, which means if you want that kind of an upgrade, and you wouldn't have listened to this whole rant, this whole philosophical rant about growth if you weren't, your time is running short. In order to join us in Austin, Texas, at Freedom Fast Lane Live this December, go to freedom fastlanelive.com grab a ticket, book your stay and come join us at Freedom Fastlane live. It will be more than worth your time and the investment to make it there, no matter where you are in the world. This is a very unique conglomeration of big time thinkers. And by being around them, by meeting them, by hanging out with them, and yes, by listening to them talk, you will have a natural upgrade in your brain. And that is what it is, what is necessary in order to create true change and to put you on a different route for different results. I'd hate for you to have to miss it. Come join us at Freedom Fast Lane Live in Austin in December. And I hope, hope to see you there. As always, I appreciate your comments and your thoughts over at the show notes@freedomfastlane.com thank you for listening to Freedom Fastlane and I'll see you on the next show.