How to Set Goals like Elon Musk

People who are very talented, even very talented entrepreneurs, they could be getting 100x the results they are. The belief that you can or can't isn't necessary in the beginning. A business is a human system. Every human system is driven by a goal. The clearer and better you get at the goal, the better you can systemize and scale. As you start using that goal more and more as the tool for orienting your life, for orienting your direction, for letting things go, you can start to reach a place of massive conviction. The human systems get what you tell them to give you, right? Like we all have systems, we all build out teams and processes, this, that, that, that, that, and they're just doing what we tell them to do.

The book Science of Scaling: Grow Your Business Bigger and Faster Than You Think Possible. Step 1, set an impossible goal.

It's very difficult to shoot for a goal that's that big because that goal will force you to grapple with hidden commitments or just lesser goals. I actually think that it's very powerful to set a goal that forces you to look at all your goals and say, why do I have these goals really? It's simply about, is this—

Yeah, that— yeah, you, you just mind warped me a little bit. Entrepreneurs have a lot of goals, and over time we tend to collect these different conflicting goals. And one day we wake up and we're not even sure where to put our focus. This conversation with Dr. Benjamin Hardy challenged me to set a goal bigger than one that I thought was possible. for me to hit, and I hope that it is convicting for you as well. The most difficult part of this conversation is choosing the goal that is big enough and worthwhile enough to make everything else possible to ignore. So I'm going to give you a challenge before we dive in. If you are a 7-figure entrepreneur or you're early in your journey, I want to challenge you to set a goal of building a company that does at least $10 million per year and align all other goals towards that one outcome. A lot of people find my work when they're building their first 7-figure business and they think that that is impossible. And then I lay out the path for making that real. And that's why hundreds of people have built million-dollar businesses as a result of being a part of the capitalism.com ecosystem. Today, I wanna raise that floor. And call out to the few of you who are bold enough to set the target of building a $10 million business. And if that feels impossible for you today, after this conversation, I think that you'll see that you're a few decisions away from being on the path to building an eight-figure business. Ben Hardy, I have a bone to pick with you. I read your book and then I couldn't sleep. So this was one of those books that I found very convicting, which. is ironic because I first discovered your work when I read Willpower Doesn't Work, which is the only book that I've ever gifted to a therapist who then he kept in his office. So I find your work very convicting. And what I want to do with you today is I want to be the case study. Like, I want to actually put some of my thinking of what I've been wrestling with after reading The Science of Scaling. You down?

Yeah, this is fun.

First, I like to ask people, how did you make your money?

I did through, honestly, through books and through a training company I had, which I sold.

You sold the training company?

Yeah.

What was the training company?

It was called AMP Platinum. I sold it to a guy named Chad Willardson.

I love how you just lay that out there. Sold it to Chad.

He's also just a dear friend, but I had that for like 5 years.

What was that business?

Uh, it was just a $20,000 a year coaching company that I had for 5 years. And then I've had probably 20,000 people go through my information products of some forms. And then my books do very well, oddly, in Asia.

In Asia?

Yeah. Like I get, I do very, I do very well in Asia.

That's interesting. Uh, 'cause for, for a while there have been times that our books have been competing with each other for like number one on Amazon, but I've never checked the Asian markets.

So, yeah, South Korea and Japan. My books do very well.

It seems like a, uh, and in the last couple years you made a conscious decision to go in a different direction, which I think became the impetus for this book. You kind of allude to it.

Yeah.

But you don't like come out and say it. So will you come out and say it?

Yeah. So Richard Rumelt, who wrote the book Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, and I referenced him in the book, he said that good strategy is surprising because of how rare it is. Right. And so For me, as I was learning more and more of these concepts myself, I purposely walked away from kind of the mainstream concepts of social media, a lot of the groups I was a part of, even my old business. Like I just, and just decided I'm going to go deep into, I didn't even know it was going to be scaling, to be honest with you. A lot of it was strategy and psychology. And so I was just going very, very deep into this. Basically my pathway was going to be books and audiobooks. And so I'm just kind of just sharing it with you directly. I just think that there's so many like bloody red oceans. And so I just said, I'm just going to go books and audiobooks. And so that was just the way I was going to go. And we're essentially in the process of creating a field called strategic psychology. So it was a very deliberate decision, but it was, I mean, it's hard as always to peel away, you know, even you were just mentioning about moving everything to capitalism.com. So it was painful to walk away from the path I was on, but it was great.

But basically what I'm hearing you say is that you made a conscious decision to double down on where you had the greatest impact and where you probably found the most fulfillment. And you stripped away everything else, and that included all the things that everybody else says that you're supposed to do, like post 17 times a day on social media and go to masterminds.

Yep.

And manage a blog and update your LinkedIn. All these things. Is that a fair summary of what you're saying?

Oh yeah. Yeah. I walked away from pretty much all of it and had a full year and a half or 2 years after I wrote 10X Is Easier Than 2X to just like, Sit. And I did have many potential collaborative conversations. And so, but most of it was just delving, delving deep, learning, considering things, and just looking at the landscape of business strategy, all these things. One of my favorite quotes comes from, I think it's Lafley, but he says that strategy, a big part of it is choosing the game you want to play and knowing how you'll win there. And so like, I just knew that a lot of the games I was playing in, I didn't wanna be playing in and I didn't, maybe I could have won in those games, but I didn't wanna be playing in those games.

That is a radically different view of scaling than what most people will say. Because I think what most people mean when they say scale is how do I do twice as many things?

Heard that very recently, even today. No, I, I heard, I heard that.

My, my, my sense of humor will grow on you as we get to know each other better.

Yeah. But I know what you're talking about. But no, I heard, I heard that, uh, about a week or two ago on a massive launch. A launch that you'd be aware of, but it was a massive launch. But he was talking about scaling and about how scaling means you add more and more and more products to what you're doing. And I was like, oof, I don't know about that.

Yeah, nope, nope. I disagree with that. The, the way that most people think is, is doing more means more growth. And I have sort of had the sense, it's, it's been kind of a, a feeling I've had within our company specifically, like the more we do, The less that happens. Everybody's busier.

Yep.

More's happening. I'm definitely more stressed, but our work isn't better.

True.

And what your most recent book did for me was put language to it, put words to it. But it's been kind of an observation and a feeling I've had. And over the last few months, I've started chipping away or at least questioning, do we really want to do this project? Like, is this process really necessary. And I'm curious if this was something that you chose or did you discover it through pain?

Like the idea that to really scale, you, you do less?

Yes.

One of the partners in scaling.com is a guy named Joseph Wynne. Joseph wrote the book, um, Don't Believe Everything You Think. Have you heard of that one?

Yes.

Yeah.

So he, um, I do not understand that man. You know him personally?

He's a partner in the company.

Okay, great. Good. I have so many questions.

I want you to, uh, the reason I bring him up, One is he changed, he's changed our book strategy. But number 2, I was teaching him about a concept, um, in learning where, so there's a concept in learning where you can either be a high rep learner or a low rep learner. A high rep learner means you have to like go through something over and over. You have to do many reps to finally learn the lesson and move on, which is fine. Low rep learner, they can do a few reps and really get— and what's crazy about Joseph, and he literally said this, is he said, I prefer no rep learning. And so what he meant by that is, is like, He does a lot of thinking in his mind and like anticipating. So like for him, success is being ahead of situations and problems. It's almost like go where the puck's going. But even like with clients, it's like rather than waiting and being reactive, it's like, let's, obviously you can't predict everything, but let's be as far ahead of it. He's pushing me on that. But so to your point of learning, I think that because I've been so deep in psychology and I understand that most of psychology, like most growth in psychology is stripping things away, letting go. you know, unlearning, et cetera. Like, because I have that foundational knowledge of psychology, thinking about it in the terms of strategy and business came pretty natural. And just seeing how rare it is again that people actually focus and choose a focused path.

Yeah.

And so I think it became just more and more clear to me and continues to become more and more clear to me how unfocused people are. And I had to have that shoved in my face because I think often we think we're focused when we're really not. And so that was one of the things that hit me hard Even while writing this book was one of my mentors saying, Ben, you are not focused. Like literally just be honest with yourself. Look at the many things you're doing. Look at the web of goals you have and they're not as synergistic as you think. Let's just be honest. And it's good to have good people too. We'll just tell you that.

What were they that you thought was so synergistic?

One was like a YouTube channel for me. Like YouTube is obviously probably one of the smarter platforms for anyone to be on right now. Like me, even as a writer, it's smart to be on YouTube. But for me, that was one. My coaching business was one. Even doing the books with Dan was another. And so like there was many things I was doing, even consulting actually for a while I was consulting big companies. And that's, and a lot of it, a lot of the learning did come from that experience, but it was still just like I was doing probably 5 things that all were related, but all of them were pathways. I viewed them as pathways. But none of them were an excellent path, like to where I was trying to go. All of them were decent pathways, but none of them were powerful. Like none of them, none of them would get me where I was really trying to go.

That's a good word.

Yeah.

Powerful.

True.

That's a, that's a good word. Yeah. Power requires focus.

Yeah. And power in statistics means you can actually like get the thing done. In statistics, they talk about like how much power does the, does the experiment have, or how much power does the variable have? They were all decent, but I even knew that they were still kind of shotgun versus laser.

I think that's why I found the book so convicting.

What did I wanna understand more of, like, for you, what was, what was convicting or, or strong about it for you?

Well, one, I mean, the book Science of Scaling, grow your business bigger and faster than you think possible. Step 1, set an impossible goal. And then all my resistance came up. So that was, you know, chapter 1, set a Goal so big that you don't think that you can hit it. I thought about that and I had like 7 goals that all seemed related to one another, and it was very difficult for me to narrow it down to like 3. And at that point it's like, well, they're all related, which I know is a cop-out, but I struggled with step 1. So that was convicting, right? And then the next part is, okay, set a timeline. That you don't think you can hit. All right. More of my resistance comes up, right? Why this is—

This is the good psychologist in me.

And then it's raising the floor. Yeah. You're going to have to cut some things out. Okay. And so more of my resistance comes out. Now, logically, I totally get why this is correct. Right. And I have experienced enough and I would even advise clients to do the exact same thing of you're doing way too many things. You're not doing enough of them well. And I have enough experience in my life to know that when we do fewer things, but do them better, we get better results across the board. But this was just like a smack in the face of you can do way more focus on a few things.

Yeah. My feeling is, is that people who are very talented, even very talented entrepreneurs, they could be getting 100x the results they are. It's very difficult to shoot for a goal that's that big because that goal will force you to grapple with what I call either what Musk calls false requirements or what others would call hidden commitments or just lesser goals, right? These are lesser goals that I actually think that it's very powerful to set a goal that forces you to look at all your goals and say, why do I have these goals really? You know, that's the sign of a good goal is that it forces you to look at everything you're doing and say, I have to really dig into the well and say, why am I really doing that? Right? So like one of the guys who I wrote about in the book, 22-year-old guy wants to own a European soccer team, wants to do it in like, you know, he's 22 years old, wants to do it by age 55. So he's got, he's given himself 33 years to potentially become a billionaire, which is great. You know, that's a huge goal. But when I said, how about we just try to do it rather than by your 55th birthday, let's go for it by age 30, right? Let's use time as a tool. Then he had to realize, well, I really had a path that I liked. That 33-year path, I was attached to it. I really wanted to get that PhD and run that firm and do all of these things that would make me important enough to own a company or own a— and I said, well, when you go for it and by your 30th birthday instead, and let's just cut the timeline to like 5 to 7 years, now we have to actually really question his PhD and his business and say, are all of these just hidden assumptions, false goals? Like, why does it even matter now if we're just going to go straight at the goal versus optimize for things that are not really that valuable in light of the better frame. And so that's the beauty of being smacked in the face with these things is it forces you to say, do I really need that thing? Or how valuable is it instead of just going that way?

Ben keeps using this phrase of using time as a tool. And I struggled with this. What does it mean to use time as a tool? Well, if we have $10 million set up as the target of what we're shooting for, and then we put a timetable on it, 3 years, let's say, all of a sudden we start filtering out what decisions are gonna take us to that goal or move us away from that goal. If you keep doing the same things that got you to 7 figures, then you are going to stay a 7-figure company. But if you change the goal to be something that filters out the 7-figure decisions, all of a sudden it becomes clear what we need to do in order to grow this business from a 7-figure business into a $10 million empire. Time as a tool means that we shorten the window of success so that we filter out the 7-figure ideas, and instead we create time and capacity to only pursue the things that will take us to the ultimate goal. So let's talk about that some more because I found it difficult and convicting and not like I could just make a decision about what goal was big or meaningful enough. to forsake all other goals. That was something that it was like, I, I need to put my pen down and think about this for a little bit. So I would like for you to prod a little bit.

Okay.

And let's just play of how you would advise me or someone listening to wrestle with this question of setting a goal too big for someone to think that they can actually hit.

How intense and blunt do you want me to be with you?

Be blunt.

Okay. So what is the current goal of capitalism.com?

There's like 7.

What's the revenue goal?

Oh, $100 million holding company.

Perfect. By when?

By 2030.

Perfect. So what would have to go if we said $100 million holding company by 2020, by the end of 2027? So if we just applied the idea, yeah, I'm fine with the goal. I'm not gonna question the goal. Let's just say we want to get there by end of 2027. If we did that, what in your current plan starts to fall apart? If we are literally going to go for, go for, yeah, if we just literally went for your same goal, but by the end of 2027, we're going to give you 2 and a half years to do it. What in your current plan can't get you there?

What needs to be removed or what needs to be added?

Removed. What in your current plan that's going to get you there by 2030? Because you have a 2030 plan, I'm guessing. And so if we were just going to go for it by the end of 2027, what part of your current plan absolutely can't work?

There's, uh, a way we treat a role. We call it the brand manager. On the org chart, it's the bottom of the role. And that role either needs to be eliminated or we need much higher level people in that role. There's a lot of management of that manager. That's what needs to go.

When were you planning on making that decision?

I wasn't planning on making that decision.

Really? So that decision just came clear to you from the 2027?

Oh, I've, I've, I've kicked it around. Like, is this the right use of this role?

But if you, if you were gonna do this by 2027, that would have to happen soon.

Yes.

What else would have to happen soon if you were gonna, like, if you were just actually to say to your team, guys, we have this goal, it's the right goal, we're just gonna do it by the end of 2027 and we're gonna find a better way to get there, a more straight path to get there. What else would have to change?

There might be one brand in our portfolio that we just need to scrap or sell.

Like that one's a distraction from—

I would have to sit down and, and think, which one do I really think has the upside here? 'Cause they're all small and managing small brands versus one, maybe 2 big brands. Yeah. It's different.

What is the current model to $100 million holding company? Like what's, what would you call, like, is it, is it, is it managing brands? That's pretty much it.

Yes.

And so do you know how many-ish you'd have to get to $100 million?

I wanna do it with less than 10.

Okay, perfect. How many do you have now?

3.

Okay. So if you were to do it by 2027, you think you'd need less, way less than 10? Yeah.

I mean, the thing that's coming up again is, is that I would need to develop the skillset of acquiring bigger companies.

That would be like, that's the idea of raising the floor, right? But so, so that would be like, would, would you call that the crux of solving that goal? Like that's the main thing that if you got phenomenal at acquiring What, what did you call it? Bigger companies or?

Yeah. Bigger brands.

So if that, is that the core path to getting there?

I think it's a way to get there.

What, what would be another way to get there?

Install ex— really high-level experienced brand managers rather than training people up.

Okay. So bringing on much better people from the beginning, much better people from the beginning. Okay. What would stop you from just changing the timeline? Che— keeping the same goal, assuming the goal's right, what would, uh, stop you from just saying, let's just go for it by end of 2027?

The honest answer is because I've done it in the past and doubted my own abilities and stopped and aborted. And the longer timelines, I relax into doing the work.

Yeah. And some people operate that way. I wonder if rather than Uh, letting the timeline be a stressor. No one says anything about success or failure if you hit the goal in the time or not. Like literally that has nothing to do with this. It is literally between you and no one else. Like no one else is monitoring your goal. It's just a tool for making better decisions and getting better.

This is what you mean by using time as a tool.

A million percent. That's, uh, this is actually how I view time. It's also how I view goals. Is, is that time is simply a tool for making better strategic decisions.

Ah.

It's a tool. And so if you remove the emotion from it, cuz so many people have emotional baggage around goals and deadlines and time. And if you just said it is a tool for actually looking at the present more strategically, for looking at everything I'm doing, including the companies we're investing in and filtering for. And if we're just gonna actually commit to it in 2 and a half years using time as a tool. What would the path have to be? And then you just start to look at it as a pathway to solve versus something that means failure or success, whether you're a good person or a bad person. None of that means anything. Your morality as a person or your value as a person, that's not what it's about. And so it's literally about just—

That's at least a separate conversation. Yeah. Yeah.

It's, it's simply about, is this a good pathway? Could you do it on your current pathway?

I'm really glad you said that because I think the urgency that people feel like that stressful urgency around hitting a goal is something deeper than the goal itself.

Oh yeah. It's not effective either. It's not helpful.

It's a measure that they use to judge themselves rather than it being helpful.

It's a tool.

But when you say tool, you mean it as a focus mechanism, as a way to evaluate The strategy of how you're going to accomplish something.

I really don't think that there's a better mechanism for strategy. I think that time is the most like crucial mechanism for strategy. And so if, if we were to just, again, taking your same goal from 7 or 8 years or whatever, 2030, move it just 3 years ahead, right? I don't know of a better mechanism for, of genuinely evaluating, for more rigorously evaluating your strategy, your pathway, who you're working with, the companies you're filtering for. It would change everything. Like it would literally, by just simply changing the deadline, change your path.

You kind of gave me an out by not poking holes in the goal itself, which was very, was very kind of you. Uh, you know, my, my ego thanks you, but I got halfway through the book and was like still stuck on, but part 1.

So tell me more about that.

Well, what immediately came up for me, like with, with like, if you're going to scale a business, I under— I understand the methodology behind this framework of set a big goal. Collapse time, eliminate what doesn't get you there, raise the floor, keep things simple. I believe that.

Yep.

When I do it for a client, easy, effortless. No, I have, I will do this thing with friends or colleagues. Sometimes we call it shit swapping where I bring them my pile of shit and like they have none of the emotional baggage behind it. So they have no problem solving it.

They look at it and they're like, oh, there's the answer.

Right. And then they bring me theirs. I'm like, oh, this is so easy. 'Cause there's no emotional baggage to those problems. So doing it for somebody else, no problem. But when I look at the question of what is a goal that is the North Star, if you will, that makes you question all other goals, first thing that came up for me was like the 7 things that are on my mind. Like, I want this to be this, and I want this to be this, and I want this to be this. And then it felt like I needed to pick just one. And that was more emotional than I wanted to admit. So walk me through how you advise somebody. Hey guys, I'm interrupting this podcast because I want to clarify something. You do not need to have a giant financial target in order to have an appropriate impossible goal. A lot of times when we're talking about goal setting, it's tempting to say, We're going to build a billion-dollar company. And we sometimes do that from a place of insecurity. The reality is that most people's actual impossible goal is to build a business that gives them a million dollars a year in cash flow and/or could be sold for $5 million or more within the next 3 to 5 years. That's an impossible goal for a lot of people. And if that feels about appropriate for you, Good news. You're definitely on the right channel for that because that is what we do all day long is we help people build 7-figure businesses that they can scale or sell. And here's a resource that will help you out on that journey. If that goal feels good to you, our next bootcamp is all about that. We're going to set up the target. We're going to help you build the plan for you to have a 7-figure business and a 7-figure exit. And you can get on the waiting list for that over at capitalism.com/bootcamp. These workshops are incredible. If you've never been to one, they don't always sell out, but they sometimes do. So get on the waitlist at capitalism.com/bootcamp. And now let's go back to the episode.

I do wonder why you did choose $100 million. I mean, it's a nice round number. We all choose numbers, you know, so it's, it's an, it's $100 million by the end of a decade, right? Yeah, it's perfect. It's a very smooth goal. What's going to happen after you hit that? Are you going to hit some bigger goal? Are you then going to go for a billion? Like, do you, do you know what you plan for after that? Like, do you have a future self beyond that?

Uh, I mean, I would be making it up, right? Like there's, there's ideas in there.

Of course.

Right.

I mean, just using this, I would love to hear about the 7 other goals, but if you did just move that to a billion, uh-huh, would that change anything in the same timeline? I mean, 7 years is a normal, uh, or I guess it's 5, but you know, if you moved it to a billion, does it feel harder?

Yes. Well, it feels less clear, right?

What, what about it feels less clear?

Because I can see the path to $100 million. Can't see the—

You're already on the path, right?

Yeah. So I, but I can't see the path to a billion.

And what does that do for you?

Uh, freaks me out a little. Yeah. It makes me feel, it brings up a little anxiety isn't the right word, but like uncertainty is the word.

So if you moved the goal up and just, I'm not saying you have to do anything with it, by the way, but if you did commit to it, And you committed to it, even if you commit to it by the end of the decade, I wonder what are the 7 other goals? Do you mind just sharing them?

Yeah. So one of them being the number one business podcast.

Okay.

Well, those are the 2 that I narrowed down to, so they're fresh in my mind. And just that focus, I've already forgotten what like 4 of them were.

Do you have them written down or something?

Uh, I, I don't in this notebook. I'm actually kind of embarrassed and that was an enlightening moment. Or it was like, oh, it just aligned my focus into something.

So, I mean, even if you just have just those 2, that is so much more focused than 7, whatever 7 was.

The 3rd was the, the, the public statement that we said as a company at capitalism.com has always been we want to create a million millionaires. Right. And I've always liked that goal.

Yeah. Is it more of a goal or a purpose? Would you say? I know that's a hard question.

Yeah. That, yeah, you, you just mind warped me a little bit. What's the difference in your mind?

Well, I, I, I guess, I guess let's just, let's just call it a goal for now. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll go away from that for a minute.

That's, that's a, a goal that I'm not building processes for. So I'd call that more, I guess that's more of a purpose. Like we—

More of a broad mission.

Yeah.

Could you do it through getting to the $100 million or a billion or through the podcast? Absolutely. Those are the pathways to achieving that bigger mission. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Okay. That might be the goal. It might not be. Um, is there any others?

My personal lifelong dream has always been to own the Cleveland Guardians.

Would you say that's bigger personally than the other ones?

Yes.

Is that the goal shaping all of this? Yeah.

A couple years ago I stopped believing it. A couple years ago when I got, when I got hit in the face with some major setbacks, it, it took me a few years to start dreaming again.

I think that you would be better off and the world would be better off if you committed back to that goal. I think that that's a gorgeous goal. I think if you went for owning that company, but I don't know, whatever timeline you give yourself on it, if you gave yourself 10 years or less, I think you could figure out a way to leverage these companies into achieving that. If it was, if that was like stabilizing goal to every, all the pathways you're going to. So would you say it is still a goal or no?

Yes. Thinking about it right now feels more exciting than it did 2 years ago where it was like, I look, I'm I'm depressed after getting hit.

After getting hit, you're like, 2 years ago I was just depressed, right?

Like, like my whole life got turned upside down. So, so I, I, it took me, it took me a while to start dreaming again. But yeah, is that still in there? Of course. Of course that's still in there.

I see the $100 million, or if you moved it to a billion and the podcast as pathways to that, that's how I see them. Okay.

Interesting.

I see these as pathways to getting to the goal. That's how I view them.

So you view the impossible goal.

I view your impossible goal as owning the Cleveland Guardians.

I see.

That's what I see. I don't know if you have a deadline for it, 'cause I think if you gave yourself more of an intense deadline, you would reallocate your resources and you'd reallocate your focus. I would think you would start reverse engineering that goal and really starting to do that like in a very direct way. How do I own this company? Who owns it now? You probably do know. I know you're a big baseball fan and it's the Dolan family, obviously, Ben.

Yeah.

So it's like, do you know them?

I don't.

No. See, so I think you need to get to know them, right? I think that you need to get to know them and who's around them and like the other owners. I could introduce you to one and, and like you would start to generate relationships and pathways directly to figuring out how to get that. I think you'd have a lot of fun with that.

That actually feels really good.

I have, I didn't know, by the way, that you were a Cleveland fan until I came to your house and like hearing you talk about the team. I, I, I like it. See, so like even like Gary Vee, like as much as I've never met him, like I know he wants to own the New York Jets. It's clear to me that that goal is shaping everything he's doing, right?

That was actually how I discovered Gary in like 2008. Yeah. Because I saw this guy talk about how he wanted to own the Jets and I was like, I want to own the Cleveland team. He was 10 years older than me. I was like, I'm going to follow this guy and watch what he's doing.

Whether you hit it or not, the goal serves an enormous purpose. I still think it's worth going for. I think it's I mean, I'm a huge believer in go for it, but the goal itself, I think is like, it's probably a big part of what brought you here. Okay.

So, so let's play with this because, okay, my personal goal and I, where I'm feeling a little bit convicted right here is I'm actually 2 relationships away from a couple of the owners and I, and I just haven't made that an intent. I could do that. Right. And part of me, I think there's like, we could probably analyze the psychology of why I, I haven't done that. And that would be an interesting conversation for another day.

You've been avoiding it.

Right. But the other part of this is, okay, the, the team, the goal that you rally the team around, that you rally your company around, or that you align things around.

Sure. So that would be the, the goal of the company, right? So the company itself has a goal. You have a goal, the company has a goal, right? And the reason it's important that the company has a goal is, is that when you go for the bigger goal in the company and that requires raising the floor, which means letting go of aspects of the business, including team members that are not coming on the ride, it's not personal. The company has a goal. And so when you make it overly personal, then it's like the, the, the thing about, uh, any human system is that every human system is driven by a goal. And so like a business is a human system. And so the clearer and better you get at the goal, the better you can systemize and scale. And so it's very important that everyone is clear on the company's goal.

Uh, how do you get the founder or the founding team to choose the damn goal?

So, you know, it's funny, and I'll tell you, I, I'll tell you the best answer I have. It's a, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's the question. It's a hard question. One of my mentors who's a billionaire—

And, and ask me tomorrow and it might be different than how I felt yesterday. Yeah.

Yeah, no, it is the hardest question. It's why we end up having split focus and diluted, you know, systems is because we can't just choose something and, and have it be strong enough that we just go for it. Right. I think if you move the goal, I'm not saying you have to be, I think if you move the goal to $500 million or a billion, either in the same timeline or moved it forward, and then you just said, guys, we're not gonna do smaller companies. We're going to just work. We're gonna have this new floor.

Yeah.

Whatever it is. Like you have to be over X amount. And we don't, you know, you'll, you could probably set a floor. You could probably actually like off the top of your head set a minimum threshold for the types of companies you'd invest in. Could you, could you give a number?

Not off the top of my head.

No. Okay. But the current ones, they're smaller companies you've said, right? So like, okay. You'd find a new threshold. But my friend who read this book, he read a very sketchy early draft. His name's Robert Gay. He founded Bain Capital with Mitt Romney. He's one of the fathers of private equity, period. When he read it, I had to clean up the book because he was like, Ben, the hardest thing that— and he, you know, founded Bain Capital. They've literally bought and sold, scaled some of the biggest companies in the US. He was like, the thing that challenged me most in reading your book is he said, how do you choose the right goal? He literally said that. He's like, it is so hard to answer that question. Like, and this is Robert Gay, who, you know, is one of the fathers of private equity. He's like, I don't know how to choose the goal, Ben. He's like, that is the hardest thing. And then he introduced me and he's, you know, multi-billionaire and et cetera. And he introduces me to who's the guy who's over his philanthropy, who like, they do so many big things in Africa. And his guy in Africa reads this and he's like, this is coming at a really good time because we are having such a hard time choosing our goal. And so I don't know how to tell you to choose the goal. I'm just giving you dimensions about goals. I believe that the goal should be so big you don't know how to solve it and that the timeline needs to be so short that it forces out all bad thinking and all bad pathways. Like those are like elements of, of a, an effective goal.

My longest standing mentor likes to say that all the action happens after you choose.

It's true.

So it almost doesn't matter what you choose, just choose. But I think that philosophy might fly in the face of what you say in The Science of Scaling, because you talk a lot about optimizing the wrong things.

True.

And I've definitely been guilty of this. I've been looking at our company recently saying like, do we really need to be doing this? So how does the idea of just choose conflict with optimizing for the wrong thing?

So I think that it all starts with choosing a better goal. Because I think if you committed to either getting to a billion in 5 years or getting to $100 million in 2 or 3, whatever it is, don't change your goal, change your goal. But if you made the goal higher, And you actually said, we're going to do this, that's when you'd have to start looking at all the things. And so I, I think that the goal determines, and, and I think a revenue goal or, or your holdings goal, I think that that's totally fine. If you wanted to go more macro for yourself and just say, we're gonna get the in, you know, Indians or the Guardians, you know, by 2030, then you'd have to look at everything.

Yes.

And say, is even capitalism.com Right, exactly. And so like, you could, you could do that, but just speaking to the company as a system in and of itself. If you made the goal bigger and more urgent, that is the easiest way to start looking at everything because then you can look and say, can this get us there? Is this effective? Like it's always easiest when beginning to analyze a system or the things that are going on from a very intense frame, which is the whole purpose of the extreme high and the extreme urgent is it's just like, so that's how I would look at it is just you could question the holding company goal, but I don't really think you even need to do that. I think that the goal is good enough. Let's just scale it and make it more urgent so that then we can look at all your current pathways and processes.

So I guess what I'm learning now, hearing you kind of process this out loud, I think I'm watching you in the 4th person right now. I think you are processing me talking about your work back to you. That's weird. Some weird meta stuff. I think it's fun.

By the way, this is the funnest conversation I've had today by far. I appreciate that. And the most intense, which I love. I love how intense you are. I know I really do. I love, I love your intensity. I love how, how serious you are about things. And I just think it's very refreshing.

Thank you. I don't know if serious is a compliment.

It is. Well, you're just, you're rigorous. You're in, you know.

Well, thank you. See, you threw me off my game here, Ben, with your compliments. But what I'm, what I'm realizing as you're processing this is that the purpose of the goal Is actually addressing what it forces to bring up.

Correct. The future is a tool for the present.

The, the, the goal and the timeline is a tool to address what you keep and what you cut.

100%. It's what allows you to more accurately create a floor.

That's very, that's a very helpful clarification for me.

Good. Yeah. The goal is a tool. The better framed the goal, the more challengingly framed the goal, right? In our case, as entrepreneurs, as business owners, you take the goal and you take it to an extremely high level, move the timeline forward. In your case, from there and from that perspective, you look at the business, you look at everything you're doing and you say, what, if any of this could get there? Again, it's just a tool. We don't have to fire someone on the spot right now. We don't have to throw that thing out, but it's just like, it allows you to start being honest with yourself. I mean, that's, that's one of the things is one of my friends who, uh, he's a very mature entrepreneur. He said that he believes that the reason people don't scale is because they lie to themselves all the time. You know, and my view is, is when you're overly doing too many different things, you're unsure of yourself, right? You're not clearly defined. You're not saying, I'm doing this, I'm not going, I'm getting, I'm not, I'm going to get the Guardians, right? Or we're going to get to $100 million. Like, and so when we don't just own what we're gonna do and let ourselves be defined, you know, a lot of people don't wanna be defined 'cause they wanna be painted in a corner. The great part is you can redefine yourself, you can redefine the business. But you do want to get defined. You want to say, this is what we're doing. This, we are going to help a million millionaires or whatever. Like, this is what we are. This is what we do, period. And I think you already do that, but if we're going to just own that and we're going to just do it and like no one else is going to do that, where are we kind of still playing small? Where are we not being that today?

Yeah. The, the example that's coming to mind for me is, uh, my colleague Logan Corrode, who started a company called Physician's Choice. And he tells a story about how they were launching all of these SKUs and selling all these products. And when they set the proper, the goal that aligned all their focus of building a $100 million supplement company, they started cutting SKUs, which is counterintuitive to what most people will do is they'll—

That's a sign of a good goal.

That it makes you cut things.

SKUs. That's the sign of a good goal.

And he says they were profitable SKUs too.

Yep.

But we saw that it was derailing focus from the things that would go really deep. And that always stuck with me because the temptation of most of my peers is more, more, more, more, more. And it makes sense when you first hear it, but the experience of it is miserable.

Very hard to do several things well. I've tried, and to your question a while ago about pain, I have tried to do Several things well, and if I was honest with myself, I was doing most of them. I can get away with things. I mean, even you, you, you know how to perform and you know how to act. So you have a, I would consider you have a high floor in, in how you perform in most things. And so you can get away with a lot of things.

Yeah.

But if you really look at the work, you're not really innovating it. You're not really to that idea of depth. You're not really seeing how far you can really take that thing. You haven't continued getting better. You just, you're just kind of coasting with it, even though you can coast pretty well with it. And I've—

Totally.

And I was coasting with most of the things I was doing where I was like, I wasn't really drilling down and like solving something new or doing something that might change at least my game, but maybe change the game. And so I wasn't doing that. I was just doing things, even though doing them okay, certainly not to the level that could Scale, like really scale.

I think that is the philosophical bind that so many entrepreneurs find themselves in because there's this wide open menu of options of things that they could do. And every time they open up social media or talk to a friend or go to an event where they're supposed to sharpen their skills, they get 4 new ideas of what could be. That feels productive. For a short time. It is productive in some cases in the short run.

The productive thing would be to have such a high goal that you don't go to that event unless like it's the path to the goal. Like unless it's like these guys are gonna help me do it, or this is the community to help me do it. Like, and the only thing that that event should do is to give you pathways to the goal, not to give you new goals. It shouldn't give you new goals. You know, maybe expand the goal. Right. But yeah, I find that when people go to these kind of things, everything you just said, like they just get more and more confused and more and more ADHD, honestly. Like they're not using it with a filter. They're actually going in just completely open for pure influence versus saying, I'm going to come in here with a very razor filter. And most of it is complete noise. But maybe if I'm filtering properly, I can find the one person there who could connect me with that person. Right. And if you can do that with a sharp blade, you can absolutely find that.

How specific do you think a goal needs to be in order for it to be properly filtered? I admitted to you earlier that if we made my goal $1 billion, I am unclear about how that would be possible.

Yep. That's a good thing.

So I'm interested to hear why you say that, but I perceive that I would start going and looking for options. I would start looking for routes.

You would. That's the first thing you would do is you'd start pathways thinking. It's great. The example I gave in the book was the woman who has the software company, you know, Alyssia Alt. She had a software company, Level Up Score, and she, she was in a one-on-one coaching business and she wanted to get her software into the hands of the 50,000 credit repair companies throughout the United States. And she was doing it very linearly, one-on-one. And so anyways, when she set her own massive goal of, I want to have 1,000 of these companies using my software, again, it took her a long time to get to just 10. Now she wants to get to 1,000 in 90 days. That forced her to find a different path, but she didn't know how to get there. She hesitated to set that goal because, and I'm not saying you should have an absurd 90-day goal, but In her case, when she set that goal that I'm gonna have 1,000 companies using my software in 90 days, she was willing to sit with not knowing the how. Absolutely, she needed to start working on it. It's not just gonna appear out of nowhere. She needed to start thinking from the goal, asking herself questions, journaling, pondering, going in. But, but by thinking from the goal and pathway seeking and considering it, pathways began to emerge. A new model began to emerge.

Mm-hmm.

You know, if you actually think on it, You can really start to solve business models, new business models to goals, or, or just finding really powerful pathways, which often come through highly leveraged whos, highly leveraged people. In her case, it was, oh, rather than going straight to the, uh, to the companies, I'm gonna actually just partner with other software companies that already serve tens of thousands of them. And she did that in a week and literally went from 10 to 8,000 software, 10 of, 10 to 8,000 of these people using her software, like she 800x'd in a week. So one of the things that I wish I had read when I was writing 10X Is Easier Than 2X, but I didn't, was Richard Koch's book. Richard Koch wrote The 80/20 Individual. And what he said in that book, I knew the 80/20 principle. I even wrote all about it in 10X, but I didn't appreciate— Peter Thiel talks about the power law. The power law is like the very few get almost all the results. In the S&P, there's 7 companies that like run our economy, right? Literally. So it's like, you know, and in, in Richard Koch, he quoted Bill Gates where Bill Gates said that a good a software writer is worth 10,000x an average software writer. If you think about certain books, they have the impact of tens of thousands of books, right? Or certain companies. And so when you start to think in terms of that power law, the beautiful part about going for the impossible goal is that it forces you to apply that to some degree. It forces you to say, what are the people that could get me there? And it would probably be different than the people you're looking for. In your case, maybe the companies that would get me there. And so it forces you to find the the people and the paths with just the most extreme leverage. Back to Joseph Nguyen. So our goal with scaling.com is to have 5,000 members of the program all scaling in 2 years, 2, 3 years. That's $120 million, like basically from zero to $120 million in revenue in about 2 and a half years. And Joseph, the thing that Joseph did, like when you're filtering from the goal, you might not always know what you're looking for, but once you see it, you're like, oh my goodness. So Joseph has probably the biggest self-published book in the world right now. It's sold almost 2 million copies.

That's what I meant when I said I don't understand him. Like the book was short. It was simple.

He's 26 years old.

And it just blew up.

Oh, very strategically. He is a brilliant strategist. And so when we met Joseph and we were like, we listened to how he did what he did. We're like, if Joseph is on our team, I'm not saying it guarantees our goal, but it probably cuts the timeline in half. And our deadline was already impossible. Now it cuts it in half and it creates what I call margin for error, right? So like you want to create margin for error. For me, I'm a basketball fan, right? I also like the NFL, but in basketball they talk all the time about margin for error because the teams are so small, like the 5-man on the roster, that when you do have a superstar on the team, They create enormous, um, margin for everyone else, right? So Steph Curry, right? Or LeBron James. Like if, if they're on the court, not that everyone else has to play less well, but like they open up everything for everyone else. And so with a super who, with someone with like, with extreme love, Joseph, the who often comes with those pathways. And so for us, because the book is kind of the crux for us to scaling the company.

The who often comes with those pathways.

They do because they know how to get to the goal, which I don't, right? You were saying, I don't know how to hit the goal.

Oh, oh, oh, you mean So you mean that when you meet the person, they often bring the pathway to you.

They bring the pathway to your goal.

So when you have the impossible goal, it is not necessary for you to know the how. It is now more necessary for you to discover the whos and they bring the hows with them.

Yeah. Well, you do still need to determine a path and you do need to—

I'm just summarizing what you're saying.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But usually you're not going to figure out that path until you start finding those right leverage whos that can often bring the distribution or the capability that you don't have. Often it's in those 2 forms, distribution or capability, right? Targeted or, or filtered distribution. And so like there's someone that can have distribution to those 5 companies that could get you to $100 million plus, right? There's one person. And that was the thing that I got out of The 80/20 Individual was, is there's one, maybe 2, you don't need 50 super whos, you need like one or 2. And like those one or 2 make your goal not only possible, but like they create enormous margin for error that like you can mess up a lot and still hit the goal.

We're using a lot of words to come to this conclusion that I'm getting at, but I'm realizing more and more that this process is a way to clarify your thinking more than anything else. It's a way to eliminate the noise and protect your thinking. So that you can stay crystal clear on the outcome that you are searching for. I have definitely set goals, said I'm super committed to this goal, and then I will get a piece of information that just takes me 2 degrees into a different direction. And then I'll get another that takes me to it and I start questioning it because I'm off track. But if you're quiet enough to stay focused on that goal and stay quiet enough Then as you are just going through the world, you'll be filtering for it.

You'll be filtering pretty aggressively. If you're thinking about the goal, you won't just be going through the world. I mean, you will be actively filtering. Like even you said, finding pathways. If you set it to a billion, you wouldn't be just going through the world. You'd be pretty actively filtering.

Would you explain the story of Tom Brady, that the example that you use in the book? Because there were some pieces of that that I didn't know that made this even more convicting.

In the case of Tom, I think that he was singularly focused on winning Super Bowls to the extent that he was willing to take enormous pay cuts and actually figure out what it took to win Super Bowls. You look at professional athletes, you see them on commercials, right? You see them doing this and that, right? I think about Odell Beckham Jr., who you would know just given that You know, you're a Browns fan. He had a lot of goals, obviously his fame, his house, like his persona, right? He is not surprising that his career fell off. He stopped scaling like he was. He could have been one of the best receivers ever. Just being blunt, and I hope he hears me. He, he had a disappointing career. He had a bad career and he had a bad career for who he could have been, but he had too many goals. He stopped actually wanting to be the best receiver in the world. The thing that separates Tom Brady from other Super Bowls, uh, or from other quarterbacks is that they had too many goals, whether it was their fame, whether it was their sponsorships, whether it was this and this. And Tom's was very clear. He was optimizing for one thing. He even left his team to go win another one. He wanted to just prove that like, I can do this. Like it was very obvious to everyone that that's all that mattered to Tom was winning Super Bowls and he got what he optimized for. And that's one of the things that I've— I grapple with is that In learning about human systems, the human systems get what you tell them to give you, right? Like we all have systems. We all build out teams and processes, this, that, that, that, that. And they're just doing what we tell them to do, whether it's our teams, whether it's our businesses, whether it's our, whatever we're doing, we're telling these things to do them. And so for Tom, it was just that.

Do you think most systems are unconscious?

It's a really, really good question. Probably, yes. I mean, there's, there's still a goal behind them, but there's a lot of unconscious aspects of those systems.

Because if you, if you take the contrast of Tom Brady and Odell Beckham Jr., they both are given the same goal of the game.

Sure.

But they're clearly optimizing for different things.

Very different things. And that's a beautiful way of saying it. Yes.

So yes, the, the, the goal of the sport is to win Super Bowls.

The goal of the individual is going to be different.

Yeah.

This is why the beauty of this conversation is that it forces transparency and honesty on yourself. Because the most central piece of any system is its accountability. But the question is accountability to what? In the case of Tom, for one reason or another, he just said, my goal is one thing. Of course he had others, but he lost many things, including his marriage for that goal, right? For others, I don't think that they're willing to be honest enough with themselves about their conflicting goals. Because I think if you asked Odell 5 years ago, Odell, you're doing a lot of different things. Maybe you're partying too much, right? Like, what about football? Do you remember that you're a football player? No, like really? You know what I mean? It's like, remember when you wanted to be the best? Do you still? I think in his mind, To the idea of unconscious, I think he didn't think he was as off track as he really was. I think this is where we start to really lie to ourselves. I think he was lying to himself and thinking that he had it handled and he didn't. And I think that he was caught in a bunch of bad goals, a bunch of whatever it was, low floor. He had a low floor, you know, and the low floor created complexity in his life and it allowed him to optimize a ton of things that were fine, but they were below his, probably his true goal. The great part about Brady is, is that when you actually do have a singular focus and a singular goal, you can actually start solving it. You can get away with a lot, right? And you can get away with not being so great at it. But like Tom was actually like, because he was so focused on winning Super Bowls, when other people were like just going to practice, like he was actually like solving it. He's like, you know what? Like, I have to lower my salary. I know that I need a much better line and a backup line. Like that's called innovation. Like he was solving things that other quarterbacks weren't solving. Because he was really working on the goal, whereas they were just coming to practice, right? Like they might've even still been motivated, but they weren't solving it with the level of strategy and insight that he was because he was really solving it. And he did have a high floor. Like if people weren't committed to the goal, if they weren't coming, like he's like, get this guy out. Yeah.

So the example that's coming to mind for me now, we're sticking with sports, Cleveland Guardians fan. The star of the team is Jose Ramirez and his goal is to go down as the greatest Cleveland baseball player of all time. Great. And so he took a contract that was $100 million below market. He plays his heart out every day.

Good for him.

And they're the team that brought him up when he was 16 and he wants to be the greatest player ever. And, and it's so obvious that he's going to do it.

It's because that's his one goal.

Yes.

I think that that's, that's like a shocking fact is, is that once you actually commit to it, it doesn't take long for it to become obvious. that you're going to do it. I really don't think it has. I'm serious. I think that once you actually establish it, own it, and just start marching toward it over not too long of a time, it becomes pretty obvious that you're going to do it.

So Ben, how many goals do you have?

It's a really good one. I would say I have a few core goals. One would be helping my son here get on a church mission, right? Like, I think that would be phenomenal for him. Certainly as a family, we have 7 kids, right? So like, You know, helping my family is, you know, and just being aligned with God are, are like my core goals. In terms of my business life, I have one goal, get 5,000 members into scaling.com and help them all 10x their companies or more. If I am honest, like I do have a broader goal, which is like, I would love to change how this conversation of entrepreneurship and scaling happen, right? I want to, I want to change that conversation. I'd love to see tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of companies in the US scale. I'd love to help the US. Like, I, you know, I would love for various people to read this book and be like, we want help, you know, implementing this. But in terms of the business and the business having a goal, you know, we're all aligned that we, you know, in the next 2 or 3 years, we want to help 5,000 members of our company to scale their companies. And that's our standard. So that's, that's like, that's the only goal there. Of course, I have family goals.

One of the themes of this conversation is that You can have too many goals.

You can.

How many goals are too many?

The, the example, it's a good and a hard question.

The example I'm thinking of is Logan Paul. Logan Paul just wins at everything he does.

He's intense, man. He is intense.

He, he want, he wants to have the top podcast, has the top podcast. He wants to be a WWE champion. What?

He is a very crazy gifted human. He's amazing. I have to give it to him. And I, I actually have a billion dollar sports drink company.

Yeah, he does all these things. Clearly Logan Paul does not have too many goals.

That's a good point.

So what do I do with this riddle wrapped in a sesame seed bun of mystery?

I wouldn't model him.

Okay. Elon Musk.

So I would guess, I would guess—

How many other super extreme examples can I throw at you just to put a wrench in the thinking?

No, I, I, I trust me when I think about Musk the most. I think he does have one goal. I think he has one major goal.

Going to Mars?

Yeah, I think that's his one major goal. I think that all of these other things are him generating pathways to that. I really do. In terms of Logan, I can't say. I think he, I feel like his psychology's a bit harder to read than even Musk's. I think Musk's, Musk is a clearer guy than Logan. I don't know what Logan is really optimizing for.

I am processing this internally and analyzing some of my behaviors and wondering where it has fallen off in the, the science of scaling model, if you will. Logan Paul can optimize, can I, he can have multiple goals and hit 'em. You say Elon has one, but he's, he's done a few really cool things.

He's doing huge things. He's only doing the big stuff.

5 outta 10 big, you know?

Exactly. For me, but if you looked at Musk and even if you've read his biography, Isaacson said that, and he uses the word focus over and over. He says that he has like a destroying focus. Like he focuses so hard that like it blows everything up around it. Like he has a laser beam focus. I think that where he's at in his scale and in where he's at in like He has more room to explore pathways, which we don't fully understand. You know, he's so up there. I mean, when he created PayPal, that was the only thing he did, right? It's not like he was doing 50 things.

I see.

He got to such a high level. We're watching now, you know, SpaceX has been around for 20 years, right? So like we're watching the highest level, the system that we're observing with Twitter and all these things. it's probably not big in his eyes with where he's at. Like he's in outer space compared to us. And so when we're seeing things, we're not seeing it from the mothership where he's looking, but I still get what you're saying, which is it all looks very complex. It looks like he's doing 15 and he probably is. And so that is a contradiction in my thinking.

Well, well, I, the way that you described it actually clicked in my brain because what you're suggesting is One goal at a time can compound on each other. So in, in my experience, after reading the book where I have 7 goals and I'm like, I have to pick one and I have to sacrifice 6, the actual nugget of truth in there is that I may have to sacrifice 6 for now.

For now. Absolutely.

And it doesn't, it does not mean that I don't pursue them. It means that we are choosing one to focus on. So the, what I will tell clients in e-commerce, a simple business like e-commerce, you sell products, you make something, you sell something. I tell them the first step is that you choose your customer and they have as much resistance to that as I am having to picking the damn goal.

That's good.

So all of this resistance comes up. Well, it could be this person, it could be this, it could be, And it's just a choice.

Choose who your customer is.

We just, we just, we just choose because once we choose, we speak to them. And once we speak to them, they convert into customers, then we treat them really well. And they start to tell other people about us.

Exactly right.

And, and, and now they are bringing other people to us. And so in the same way, the impossible goal is not picking the one that I'm going to live with forever and forget about these other goals. It is, What is going to get all of my relentless focus right now?

But also, if you did achieve that impossible goal, maybe a handful of those other 6 end up just being solved by doing it. And maybe the other 2 or 3 become less valuable. So in going for that goal, either you end up solving or making the, the 3 ones that can stick easier or they just get solved.

Yeah.

And then along that way, the other 1 or 2 just fall by the wayside. Yeah. You let them go.

That was really helpful.

I want to see you go for the goal. I would love to see you go for the billion, but if not, $100 million in 2 or 3 years.

Well, what was helpful until you said that, what I'm processing is I, again, I said I could, I could not sleep after I read the book. I had excitement, but it was like I had a cup of coffee. It was conflicted in a bunch of different directions, right? Which meant that I had some thinking to do. What I've processed out of this conversation is it's not that it doesn't matter what you pick. It's just that whatever you put all of your focus on is going to grow. And everything that is a distraction from that is a dangerous threat to progress.

That's great. I, I, I agree with that. I agree with that.

I, I do want to talk about the concept of raising the floor. It's big because regardless of what goal we pick, the idea of it raising the floor is another conscious choice to let things go.

It is the conscious choice to let things go. That's what raising the floor is.

How do entrepreneurs know what to cut?

That's why I think that the goal is the first piece, is because the goal determines what the floor is, and then therefore from there what the focus is. And so it's very hard to know what, I mean, there are, there are things in the business that you don't need to set a different goal for to know that they probably should be cut. There's things that are obviously below the floor.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, those things, whether it's just bad product or bad team members or just, you know, Bad habits, whatever it is. There are things that we already know are probably below the baseline of our best self or our best company, right? And so those things are below the floor. But if there's things that you just don't know, the goal is what determines that. That's why you use such an extreme frame of an impossible goal and impossible deadline, because that then shows you with more honesty that pathway can't get you there. That pathway is eventually a dead end.

Mm-hmm.

Or that product or that team member, or you need you know, what you were saying, you need the better general managers or whatever they are. Like it starts, the goal starts to highlight the new floor and then you start to set that. And so that's why I was thinking about the companies that you would invest in is if you went for either the higher goal or the more urgent goal, it would force you to say like, we don't take these kinds of companies anymore. You know, it would establish a new floor and then you'd have to start to optimize a new skillset or a new type of company that you invest in. But also it would force you to look at what are those other things that are competing our focus from doing that? Because—

Would you say that again?

What are the, like, what are the things that we're currently doing that are competing? I said competing our focus, but you know, they're like just taking away our focus from figuring out how to solve the goal, right? That's what focus is, right? And so if you went for the $100 million in 2 or 3 years and you actually were like, we're going to solve this, you could solve it. But right now there's too many conflicting things that are, you know, like sparring for your focus. And so that's what creates dilution of focus with a goal that intense, right? You going for a billion in 4 or 5 years. But what I like is, is that the goal forces you to say, which of these things absolutely can't get me to that goal? Which of these team members can't get me to that goal? Often what happens when a company moves the goal so high is, is that they realize that they're probably not the who, you know, that can solve it in the way that they got here. So like often I'll work with like a, I've worked with CEOs who took a company 10x or even more. Like I worked with one CEO and he took a company from $4 million to $100 million in 4 or 5 years in revenue. And now he's like, I want to get to a billion, but to do it in like 2 or 3 years, I absolutely cannot be the CEO. Even though he's the most capable CEO, he's like, if I was to get there in 10 years, maybe I could stay the CEO, but to get there in 2, We need to bring someone on who's taken a public company public and who understands what it means to go to that next level. And so therefore, not that my role's less important, but I shouldn't be there anymore. And so like, that's the kind of thinking that happens when you're like, we're gonna move the goal up, is you start to really think about what it really takes to hit the goal. And your current model, your current process, your current thinking won't get you there. Your current team won't get you there.

I would imagine that one of the most common things that comes up When someone sets an impossible goal is I'm not capable of doing that. Is there a way around that?

Use it as a tool. It's just a tool. I'm serious. Maybe, maybe I have more optimism or faith or whatnot, but the belief that you can or can't isn't necessary in the beginning. I don't think, I think that that belief and that confidence can grow as you start raising the floor. As you start stripping things out and start actually moving things, you're actually demonstrating commitment. And so as you start using that goal more and more as the tool for orienting your life, for orienting your direction, for letting things go, for maybe filtering and finding better ways of solving it, you can start to reach a place of massive conviction. But I don't think you have to like think about the goal and be like, I absolutely can do this. Like, and like, you know, be, I don't think you have to have that for it to be an effective goal. You know, when you go for the higher goal and when you start acting courageously, the outcome is transformation. And so people don't transform at the level they could because they're optimizing for comfort.

Do you have an emotional reaction when you set a goal?

Yeah, I would say I do, but it's not a huge emotional reaction. Like if I, if I said, let's go for $1 billion, right, in my company in 3 years, I don't think I'd have an emotional reaction in the beginning, but it would become emotional if I started to really like think about it and if I had to really start to face the consequences of it. when you start facing the consequences, it can just, you know, it's really hard. It's really painful. You know, you have to face hard realities when you start to like get committed. And so, yeah, I would say I don't have an emotional reaction in the beginning, but when I actually start to get serious about it, it does get very emotional because then I have to actually face it and then I have to actually like look at my life and I have to look at, and I have to start making big decisions or big risks.

I think most people have an emotional reaction in Just the choosing of the goal.

Because I've, I've numbed that to myself.

That's interesting because you're, you saying a billion dollars.

Yeah.

For, for you, based on this conversation, I know that you are picking a number out of the air in order to focus your thinking and to challenge you to a greater level of performance and to clarify the path moving forward. I, I understand that's what you mean. For most people, There's an emotional reason for why they picked a billion in the first place.

Yeah. And I have a, I wouldn't say it's an emotional reason. I would say it's not an emotional reason why we chose 5,000 people in the program in 3 years. I am very confident that that book, if it sold even half a million copies, there'd be 5,000 people in the program. So like, to me, I see a direct pathway there. Is that a hard goal in 3 years? Is it hard to fulfill? No, but like, I actually see a very clear pathway to that goal. I've never done that. You know, my books with Dan sold, you know, generated thousands of clients to his company. So like, I know it can be done. I even wrote in 10X Is Easier Than 2X, Dan, why don't we just, like, actually I wrote in the book that the goal of the book was to get 5,000 people into his program. So like 5,000 members in our program isn't actually doing it in 3 years is what makes that goal impossible. It's taken Dan 40 years to grow his company, right? And he has nothing to do with this conversation. Like he's just a great mentor and friend.

But Ben, what I'm getting at is I think that most people are bringing emotion to the goal setting process. Like they choose a billion because—

For emotional reasons.

Yes. And it may, it may be importance, validation.

You're right.

It is to be seen.

Which are all different goals.

Ah, so speak on that because from, from a psychological perspective, I think that's where It gets very interesting.

There's a great book by a guy named Robert Keegan. He is a really phenomenal Harvard psychologist. He's written some important books, but one of his important books is called Immunity to Change. It's all about how we have a built-in immunity to change, literally. And he's speaking about organizations and people.

Immunity, like resistance to it? Yeah.

Immunity to Change. Like, it's a really good book, but he talks about how the core immunity to change that we have are what he calls hidden commitments. And these hidden commitments are things that we committed to some point that have become our hidden goals, right? So in this case, you know, I might have a hidden commitment that I need to, in order for you to like me, I need to seem smart, right? You know, and so I am, I might have this commitment in my mind, right? And so I have to do whatever I, and so whatever it is, like we may have these hidden commitments that then become our goals, right? And sometimes we have hidden goals based on painful experiences in our past or traumas or just And so like one of the people who I recently had a conversation with in the conversation realized he had a hidden goal. Goals are often in the form of either approach or avoid, right? They're trying to approach something you want or to avoid something you don't want to happen. And generally speaking, having an avoidance-based goal is a bad goal, like where like you are overly projecting a future you don't want to happen and therefore you're spending a lot of time trying to steer away from it. And so in his case, he realized He had a fairly good-sized company. They're doing $31 million in revenue, $31 million. But in having the conversation, he realized, oh my goodness, I've been unintentionally, to your idea of unconscious goals, I've been actually trying to avoid what happened to my father. Because he said his father once had a company that had 500 employees and it tanked and cratered and they all lost their jobs. And it was like a painful thing for his dad to see. And it was a painful thing for him as a little boy to see. And so He has been growing his company, but he's also been intentionally not growing it. And so even though they have a business goal, what he realizes is he actually has an unconscious goal of not, not going through what his father went through. And so he actually doesn't wanna ever get the company to 500 employees, right? And so that's a, that's just an example of a hidden goal, a hidden commitment, which he then became aware of and was like, okay, like I have been screwing myself and my company because I've been trying to avoid this thing for all these years. That's, I think part of the beauty of this unpeeling process is, is like becoming more aware, becoming more honest with yourself, becoming more ruthless with yourself, becoming more rigorous with yourself about why do you, why do you want that thing? And what are some other things that you don't even know you're unintentionally optimizing for that are hurting you?

Do you think that you can work that all out by yourself?

No, but you can set a goal that forces you to start grappling with it. You can set a goal that forces you to start analyzing and looking at the system and start forcing you to start raising your floor because raising the floor is where you analyze it. Raising the floor is where you start stripping things out that shouldn't be there. And so it's the raising of the floor. Like that was a raising floor moment for that man. And so like now he doesn't have to have that thing stop him. The raising of the floor is where you start to go like head to head with yourself. You're going head to head with yourself and you're saying, why is that? Why am I accepting this thing? Like this thing is costing me a lot. This thing, this pathway, this product, this company, this person is costing me a lot. It's, it's costing me my life because I'm choosing to invest in it. I'm choosing to optimize for it. So you have to start saying, why am I doing this? Like, it's, I could be doing that. And so when you start to let those things go, even goals which you've had for a long time, those things are very powerful moments. They are very freeing moments where you're like, that's like one of the most essential elements of spiritual and psychological development. Is letting go.

Did you know that this was gonna be a psychological process?

I didn't know that it was going to be a scaling process.

Okay.

That's the better answer. I was so deep in psychology and studying strategy that I didn't realize that it was gonna become the scaling process. I really didn't. Um, and then once I started working with big companies and going for 10x goals and things like that and applying this framework, uh, and just stripping out their business, stripping up their leadership. I mean, I have people come up to me very regularly, you know, Ben, I read 10X is easier than 2X. My company's 52X'd. I mean, I met someone like that last week at a Cincinnati Reds game. And so it's just like, it's interesting that, you know, but you've heard it before, psychology and strategy are almost all of it. And so better psychology leads to better strategy.

Ben, it's been a pleasure. This isn't the conversation I thought we were going to have today, but I enjoyed every minute of it.

I'm not surprised at how the conversation went because the thing that I know about you, just watching you from afar, is that you are incredibly sincere and like very, just like, you are just like looking for the answer and you're also very honest about sharing yourself. From my perspective, I, I'm very, uh, this has been very enjoyable, but as I think about it, I'm ha— this is, this is what I expect from you. It's awesome.

Appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, it's great to see you.

You too, my man.

Ben and I spent most of this episode talking about choosing a goal that is big enough and appropriate to align your focus. And when you choose the goal, you start seeing the world as opening up to help you accomplish that goal. But I wish we had spent a little bit more time talking about the lifestyle component of goal setting, because it's not worth setting a billion-dollar target if you don't enjoy your life. So I wish we had clarified that we can build really big visions and enjoy our lives. I'm recording this for you right now while I'm on an international trip. This is how I want to spend my time. I'm writing my second book right now. That's what I want to do with my time. I want to have a company and a business portfolio that I'm proud of, and I want to do the things that I love and enjoy. The point is to give you options, and those options become available Starting when you're at about $100,000 a month in sales. And if that's a target that you want some help accomplishing, that's what we specialize in. Go over to capitalism.com/100k. That's where all of our best free resources live. It's our playbook to $100,000 a month. That is our best free resources and an AI tool that'll help you create your own plan. That's at capitalism.com/100k. Thanks for watching, guys. Appreciate you. I'll see you on the next episode.