10X is Easier than 2X

Foreign. Welcome, everybody to this edition of CPG Insiders. I'm your co host Mark Young with Justin Gerard, who I'm see, I'm gonna give, I'm gonna make the excuse here. His audio is a little off here.

Oh, my goodness.

It does sound like. It does sound like you're on a telephone. It does.

Oh, my goodness.

So we're gonna apologize for that up front because we like to, we like to deliver quality. We want people to have the best experience. So, folks, we're going to talk about something. We're going to talk about, actually, we're going to talk about a book that is written by a dear friend of mine, Dan Sullivan, and another friend of mine, Dr. Benjamin Hardy. And the book is called 10x is easier than 2x.

Yes.

And you've got a copy of the book there. There it is. I encourage, I encourage all the listeners to go get this book. Dan is a brilliant thinker and he is not only a good friend of mine, but he's also my business coach and has been for many years. And he is actually the number one business coach in the world. So to put it in perspective, folks, think about a business coach where it takes 160 employees to run the operation.

It's pretty incredible.

I know because most people, you think of a business coach, you kind of think of like one guy and maybe he has an assistant.

Yeah, I, I mean, strategic coach. It's, it's a machine.

It truly is.

Yeah.

So let me, let me kind of set where the premise is for this, folks. And this, here's the model. When we say 10x is easier than 2x, I want you to understand something that sounds a little crazy, but I'm going to get into this and it will make sense to you. First off, what is 2xing?

Right. Doubling. Right. So.

So it's grinding it out.

Yeah. Right. So you're thinking, okay, great, I want to try to get a little bit more of something. So then let's just keep doing more of what I'm currently doing and then I can get a little bit more.

So is. Yeah, so let's, let's double what we're doing, which means let's work harder.

Yeah.

Let's work longer hours.

Exactly.

Let's, let's try to repeat what we're doing.

Yeah, let's keep doing what got us here. Just a little bit more of it.

And when we think of 10x, we're talking about, let's be 10 times better, 10 times bigger than where we are right now. Now, I wanted the reason I wanted to share this with people is because we get, we take a lot of phone calls from a lot of entrepreneurs and love hearing from you and, and love helping. A lot of these calls happen with. We're currently on Amazon and we want to, we want to try to get some brick and mortar. We're, we're currently selling on our website. We're in Amazon and we're in 20 local stores.

Right.

And then what do they say to us? Well, well, we don't want to get in the national stores yet. Maybe we could get into another regional store that's got 50 stores or another store that has a hundred stores. That's 2xing your business. That's what 2xing is. Now, here's the reality in the CPG business, you have to ask yourself the question. And so first off, you have to define what your goals are.

Yes.

Is your goals, I want to grind out a living making this item, or is your goal, I want to build a substantial business and build a brand that has legacy value that I can leave to my kids or that I can sell for a large amount of money to a bigger company. What's your goal?

Well, even beyond that, Mark, especially for entrepreneurs, it's even going beyond that. It's. It has to go beyond what are your goals for your business? What are your goals for yourself? What are your goals for life? What are your goals for your people? Right. It's. When you think about that, this concept, and we're going to dig a lot deeper into it, especially if you're thinking that I am thinking 10x, you have to really lay it out, because 10x is transformational. And you can't do that in only one area of your life because then you're not truly transforming. It's not going to happen.

So when we talk to companies that are doing business on Amazon and they're doing business on their website, maybe a few stores, it's not unusual that we'll see somebody who, they built a business up and they're doing one, maybe $2 million.

Yeah, good business.

And you could do $2 million on Amazon and you can make a living at it. And you'll make a living at it for a limited amount of time. It won't be permanent. And the reason it won't be permanent is because either Amazon will knock you off or 50 Chinese manufacturers will end up knocking you off and crush you on price and take your business.

Yep.

It happens to everything on Amazon. Unless that something has some fabulous IP that can be defended or has a fabulous brand name where the brand can carry the day.

Right.

So notwithstanding that, short term, you can make money. And we see it. We see it all the time. Yeah, we were doing $250,000 a month on Amazon and then something changed and our sales went down to 30 grand a month overnight. See it all the time. Now, let's say you have that $2 million business. Okay. But let's say your goal is, I want to build a company that I can someday sell and have a liquidity event. And liquidity events are essentially, you sell a business, you cash something out. And the majority of wealthy people in America, by the way, make their money on liquidity events. So it's not that they have run an apartment complex for years and years and made money on the rents. It. They ran an apartment complex for years and years, made some money in the rent and then sold the entire property, or they made a living running their business and then sold the entire business. It's liquidity events where it happens. And this is in Liquidity events are what attracts investors. So when you're out looking for those of you, and we hear this all the time, I'm out looking for people to invest in my company. Well, keep in mind, no one is investing in your company hoping that you're going to give them an 8% return someday.

Right.

They're investing in the company, assuming there's going to be a liquidity eventually. But for a liquidity event to make sense, it needs to be 10x what the amount of money the investor put in. Now, what's the other thing? And so it's funny, and here's where I'm going with this, Justin. When you find solid universal truths, you find you can check them in, you can find other universal truths and combine them and you find out they all end up in the same place. So where I'm going with this is in relation to cpg. If I want to bring investor money, I'm going to need to deliver a 10x outcome for the investors.

Yeah.

If I build a $2 million business on Amazon and online, but I want to have a company I can sell. Guess what? What? You know the answer to this. What's the minimum gross dollar number that a company will look at to buy another company?

20 million 10x.

There we go again. So you kind of see where I'm going, how when you find something that is an irrefutable universal truth or law, other universal truths tend to agree with it. Okay, that's where I'm going with this.

That Makes sense.

So now what is the thing about doing 10x? The thing about doing 10x is simply this. If my goal is to do 2x, whether I could add, maybe I can do some more advertising on Amazon, maybe I could run some Facebook ads to my website. Maybe I can find another chain of 50 stores to carry my product. Maybe I can find a new flavor, I can come up with a new scent, I can come up with a bigger package, and I can squeeze out more money. So the thing about 2x is 2x has a lot of pathways. There's a lot of roads you can go down to accomplish 2x. Just work longer, just work harder, just make more phone calls, Just, I mean, just do more of what you're doing.

Yep.

Now let's talk about 10X. When we decide we want to go 10X, all of a sudden, a simple analysis of a 10X model tells us, well, finding another 50 stores is going to do it. Running some more Amazon ads isn't going to do it. Running some more Facebook ads isn't going to get me there. Working longer hours isn't going to get me there. So all of a sudden, your path becomes very narrow and you find there's probably only one, maybe two ways at the most to make 10x happen. Now, in the case of retail, if I want to make my Amazon business make 10x, I need Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid, and Target and Kroger on board. That's 10x. Yeah, I mean, that's 10x in a nutshell. There it is right there. So that means my efforts need to be grossly narrowed down. Now, the beauty of this is, is this kind of falls into a very old, again, universal truth. Pareto's law. Pareto's law. 80% of your efforts generate 20% of your success. 80% of your sales, or 20% of. And you reverse it. 20% of your sales staff generates 80% of the sales. 20% of your efforts make 80% of the money. What's one of the things that we do when a new company comes to us and they have 10 SKUs? The first thing we do is say, okay, what's the one that's making up 80% of your of your revenue?

It's the hero, right?

And they'll have 10 items, 5 items, 10 items, and we can easily find the one. 10 or 20% of their entire portfolio makes up 80% of their income. And what do we usually tell them? Why are you spending 80% of your time trying to chase 20% of your volume.

Exactly.

Why don't you spend 100% of your time chasing 80% of your volume? So what happens in Pareto's law is essentially about 80% of all the activities that you're currently doing to 2x your business, you're forced to stop doing because you realize they won't work. It's just, it's not going to happen. So now your attention is narrowed down to the 20% and who knows, maybe 10%, but your, your focus is narrowed down to what's going to work. So now all of a sudden you're not, you're not flying all over the country trying to meet with every 50 store chain that you can find. You're working on, what do I need to get to get a yes out of Walgreens? Because if I can get a yes out of Walgreens, I can get 9,000 stores in one shot. Meanwhile, I'm spending all my time chasing 20 store chains.

Oh, absolutely. And so then this also gets to the other point mark. So you're going to jump in here, which is if you've identified what that 10x goal is and even the pathway on there and you look at and you say, okay, I don't know how to do that.

Yep.

Right.

And there's very good reason for it. So let me give people some examples. So I've been doing this for decades and have done hundreds of items. I'm going to equate this to driving a race car. As some of our people know, I race cars. Some of the racing, a lot of the racing I do is called endurance racing. So with endurance racing, I'll spend hundreds of laps on a track. I'll do 40 laps, 50 laps of practice, 100, 200 laps on Saturday, 100200 laps on Sunday. Okay. Now, I'm also a racing instructor. So when a new student comes in, what we do in racing instruction, a new student comes in, it's their first day on a track, they're very excited. And if it's a male, he is very convinced that he's going to be incredibly fast and incredibly gifted. And the reason is because he knows how to drive fast on the freeway. And he's watched all nine Fast and Furious movies and literally watched Fast and Furious nine the night before just to make sure that he was ready for, for track day. Now, let me tell you what actually happens. We do something called lead, follow. So an instructor, we take, we'll each take two or three students and they have their own cars and we hold classes and then we tell Them, okay, here's some hand signals. I'm going to give you these hand signals out the window. Pay attention to what I'm doing. And it's only four hand signals, by the way. Four things. Not that complicated, right? Four hand signals. Shouldn't be four hand signals. And here's what I tell them. I'm going to give you four hand signals. This means this, this means this. This means this. That's what we're going to do. And I say, whatever you do, put your car where my car is. Wherever I put my car on the track, put your car there. Okay. It doesn't seem like. Doesn't seem difficult, does it?

I mean, not so far.

Without exception. So, I mean, no one has surprised me yet.

Okay.

We go out on track, and my young student drivers, some of them are not young, but call them our padawan learners, are absolutely white knuckled, holding onto the steering wheel in their car, and they're confused on the forehand gestures or forehand commands. They can't get those right. And they cannot get their car to go on the part of the track that my car goes on to save their life. And they will spin out and they will hit the grass, and all kinds of crazy things will happen. And we will come off the track and they will say, oh, my God, I had no idea we were going to go so fast. Now, remember, we're road racers, so we're on tracks that are like two and a half to three and a half miles, 15 to 25 turns. So we're making left turns, right turns, sharp turns, narrow turns, wide turns. So normally, normally if I'm racing, it's gas break, gas break, gas break, gas break. Going as fast as I can, I get to the turn, hit the brake, make the turn, hit the gas again. Without exception, I and my fellow instructors are driving our cars in. In the lead. We never touch our brake pedals. And we've now gotten to the point where we'll touch the brake pedal to make the brake lights come on so they know that's where they break.

Yeah.

So we'll just make the brake lights come on. And I'm carrying a coffee mug and drinking coffee and talking on my cell phone h while we're doing this. And they are absolutely white knuckled, scared out of their mind. And we get off the track and they say, oh, my God, how did you do that? And they don't even realize I'm bored out of my mind up here.

Right.

They think I'm being fast. Then what'll Happen is I will say, would you like to go for a ride with me? And I'll put them in the right seat. And then their mind is just. I mean, their entire paradigm of being on a track is shattered. And they will come back to the pits, and they will usually. This is the fun part for us instructors. They'll usually come back and say, that was the most fun I've ever had in my life.

Right.

But typically, they will come back and say a couple things. One, I never knew that a car could do that. And two, I've never seen someone with such depth of focus. That's the things that we always hear. Now, here's why the instructors can do it and they can't. And this is. This will get back around to our CPG talk. So there is a reason why I'm giving you this explanation, folks. The reason is simply this. My first day on the track, I'm sure I was just like them right now. I don't think I was. Because as Jay Leno says, the two things that men grossly overestimate their ability in is auto racing and sex. And Jay Leno is a funny guy and a car guy. And that's a great observation, but I'm sure that I was just as slow as everybody else. The reason is simply this. I have hundreds of times, maybe a thousand times around that track. My brain knows where everything is. It knows where the cracks in the road exist. It knows where the flag stations are. It knows where there's a bump to avoid.

It know.

It knows where the cement is stickier and has more traction. My brain knows all this stuff and has recorded it into my unconscious mind. But when you're a newbie, you have no unconscious mind bank of data. So you're dealing with conscious mind. Now, let's go back to that description for a minute. When we think about how our brains work, I want you to think about a grape sitting on a dime sitting on a beach ball. The grape represents conscious awareness. Seven bits of information, plus or minus two per second. The reason phone numbers are seven digits. Dime represents critical faculty, which is the passing of information between those two circles. The beach ball represents the unconscious mind, which can process 10,000 bits of information per second. So when I'm on the track, I have a machine that can process 10,000 bits of information driving around the track. When they're on the track, they have a machine that only processes seven bits of information.

Mm.

Because there's no database of information to draw on. Okay. When you're setting out to start Your first consumer packaged goods product. You're living in the grape, right? You're living in the seven bits of information, plus or minus two. You have no history, no experience, no unconscious awareness to draw on. And I'm going to give you an example. Somebody will, will come into our office and bring a product and set a product down on our conference room table. And in 10 minutes, we've told them more about that product and more about what's going to happen and what they need to do and where this thing's going to go and where it's going to fail and where it's going to succeed. They're literally just chugging from a fire hose and they're asking where you know, how do you already know all that? I already know all that because I've already. I've already lapped this track 250 times. Yep, you're on your first lap. So it's important that we relate ourselves to experts who have all that track time. Whether that's in the the realm of a consultant, a broker, a partner, an ad agency, you need to align yourselves with someone who has hundreds of laps in. And I want to warn you, because we meet people in this industry who hold themselves out as experts, but they're not because they've only done a quarter of the track a couple of times. So, yeah, they're really good on turn one, two and three. And then they're out of gas.

Right?

Because yes, they got a product manufactured once and they got it on Amazon and they made money on Amazon and they're done. So you need to find people who you can align yourself with who have done this from start to finish many times. And when I say start to finish went from an idea all the way to following through the company being sold.

Well. And that's what comes back to what you started the conversation with, Mark, which is know what your goals are. If you don't know what you're trying to accomplish and where you're trying to go, then you won't even have the foundation to understand how to have that conversation. Who to really start even looking for, what questions to even to ask in the beginning to help evaluate that.

Yeah, it's going on vacation and not knowing where you're heading.

Exactly. And then as it relates to your business and as it relates to this growth, this also comes back out. And I don't know if we've done episodes on this before, Mark, but it also comes back to understanding what your unique ability is, what are your skills, what are you great at? That than, than any better than anybody else. So then, then you can even understand, okay, here are the holes that need to be filled.

Right. Because you are not good at everything.

Nobody is. Nobody is. You can't be.

So what is the thing you're good at? And how do you plug the holes with other people where their unique ability is the thing you're missing? You know, you take a David beer and bomb for a minute, for a moment. Who we've been on the show before. David Berenbaum has forgotten more about broker brokering products into retail stores than most people will ever actually know about brokering stuff into a retail store.

He's literally written the book on most of this stuff. He's the one who paved the way on most of it, let alone had to learn it.

I'm going to use myself as an example. You know that. How many times have you seen me pick up a product and say, you're focusing on the wrong demographic because this product can do X, Y and Z and this is where you ought to take this product.

Absolutely.

And the person who invented it never even thought of that usage or that demographic or that group of people to sell it to.

Well, because again, you're looking at it through a different lens than they are.

It's because the experience matters.

Yeah.

And then there's a couple of other things I want to cover. So for us, I want to tell people about who we are for a moment. We don't always talk about what the agency is. We are a transformational agency. We're the place to come if you're a, you know, startup to mid size brand and your goal is, you know, I need to start 10xing. I got a $2 million Amazon brand. I need a $20 million retail brand. Because by the way, nobody's looking to buy you until you're over $20 million. Don't even think about it. It's just, it's not worth the effort.

Well, and, and beyond that, Mark, and you know this, if you're running a $2 million Amazon business, you basically own your own job.

Right. Until it goes away.

Exactly. So you're, you're, you're not even creating the life that you most likely wanted to in the beginning when you set out this goal. Now you just own a job. Yeah.

It's a, it's a short term hit.

Yeah.

So you need you. So for us, we're looking for clients who have that transformational mindset, who are looking to make these kind of steps, who are willing to narrow their focus down to the 20% of their efforts and are willing to do what it takes to win. You know, we've all been really excited in Detroit because the Detroit Lions have got themselves literally as of this moment, one step away from being in the Super Bowl. So that's, that's not something we've experienced in Detroit. And I was, and I was watching last Sunday's game and as you know, our quarterback got sacked a couple times, but I was watching that and I'm thinking what he's doing is exactly what we need to do in business and what we need to get our clients to do. He has all this noise around him, screaming fans, 350 pound guys trying to crush him, all this chaos around him and he's just looking for the guy downfield. He's just laser focused on where's my receiver and how do I get this to him? That's 10xing. That quarterback position is 10xing.

Yeah.

It's letting all that chaos and all that other noise around you kind of just be what it is. And I'm after the long ball here. I'm not going to try, I'm not trying to win this game by inches. I'm trying to win this game by yards.

Yep. Yeah. Oh, well. And then that's what again, as we've been digging into this, to this and circling it back around, that's why it's easier, right? That's why 10xing actually is easier. Because what you're doing is you're letting go of everything that keeps you busy. And now you're focusing your energy and you're focusing your time on what gets you results. And almost a hundred percent of the time, those are also the activities for you personally that energize you. So all of a sudden everything feels easier now and then. Surround yourself with people are in the same position. Let's give them, let's get them, let's get them.

And then believe that you're worthy of it. So a lot of times, yeah, because a lot of times I'll talk to people and well, Walgreens is never going to say yes to us, but maybe we can get, you know, drugs in, in Cleveland to say yes to us right now. Do I think it's easier to get a small chain to say yes than it is a big chain? Yeah, it actually is a little easier.

Yeah.

And the reason it's a little easier is because the big 10x players aren't chasing them.

Yeah.

And they are such a disadvantage to their 10x competitors that the only Advantage they can find as a business is to bring in products that nobody's ever seen.

Yep. So they need novelty.

Yep. So, yeah, so they can. They can. It's sometimes easier to get a yes out of them. Except how many 20 or 50 store chains do I have to go out and find? How many frogs do I need to kiss to equal one Walgreens or one CVS or one Walmart?

I don't think there are enough to equal Walmart.

That's exactly right. You could put every small chain in the country together and you wouldn't equal a Walmart. So then where does your focus belong? Does your focus belong chasing? And again, don't get me wrong, we're all for picking up the regional accounts.

Sure.

But as a rule, we pick up the big ones first and we pick up the, the, the small ones at the end when it's not. When all we're doing is rounding out acv.

Right. Because again, it's easier to move a national than it is a tiny regional.

What else is it? It's easier to advertise for a national that is a tiny regional.

Exactly.

Because you got 10x the amount of real estate to go after, which means now we can 10x the efficiency of our ad campaign immediately. So when we're advertising nationally, we could talk to a thousand people for 2 to $4. When we're advertising locally, it's costing us 20 to $40 to talk to a thousand people. 10x efficiency when we, when we expand our thinking to 10x distribution.

The lesson. Go ahead. I was going to say I was just going to add on to that. Mark, if you're talking about belief, and this is something we've been talking about a lot internally here too, is you have to understand that you've also already done it.

Absolutely. So it's not impossible. You went 10x when you went from not being able to move to crawling. You went from 10x when you learned to walk, from crawling, you went 10x when you learned how to read. Yeah, there's, there's other places in your life when you, when you went from an idea to an actual real product in your hand, that was a 10x moment because you took, you took something that was just a thought and you brought substance to it. You made it, you made it real.

Right.

So the idea is to keep making the 10x jumps, to keep doing them. Now there's a concept, another concept on people to understand, and it's, it's kind of around cognitive bias and it's a term which we Sometimes think of as, as thought tunnels. And what happens in these thought tunnels is people. So we have to start off that as humans we're hardwired to defend our positions. We think we're right and we do not like to be wrong. We hate being wrong. We hate admitting we're wrong. We hate thinking, my God, I've been, I've been holding this belief for three years and now I have to admit that I just spent three years chasing the wrong tunnel or the wrong rabbit hole. And this sometimes messes with people in their 10x process. And it's called sunk cost fallacy because, well, I've been, you know, I've been chasing Bush's, you know, five grocery stores for two years now, trying to get my product into there. I can't just stop now. I'm, look, I'm this close that I think finally getting an order from them. Meanwhile, I'm ignoring Kroger. So I'm focused on getting these five stores, but I'm too busy to knock off 2500 stores. So, because we don't want to admit chasing those five stores for the past two years of my life was probably a stupid idea. So these are what are called thought tunnels. And we run down these tunnels and what happens is the great researchers Trinsky and Kanahan did a lot of research on this and it was Nobel Prize winning research they did. And what they discovered was that the Average person equates 10 pieces of evidence to their contrary of their belief, to one piece of evidence that validates their belief. So If I see 10 piece, if, let's say that I think Hillary Clinton was wonderful, and let's say people present me with 10 pieces of evidence of why Hillary Clinton would have been a bad candidate, 10 legitimate pieces of evidence, but somebody gives me one piece of evidence why she would have been a good candidate. In the average person's mind, those are equal.

It's crazy.

So now If I get 10 pieces of negative and two pieces of positive, I'm right, right?

The scales have been imbalanced in your favor.

Scales are in my favor. I'm absolutely correct. I. There was this event. There was that event. See, I'm right. But what about the other 10? Well, you know, those studies weren't done well. Those were from people that had a bias. I find reasons to throw those ideas out. We also run down these thought tunnels in our business life. And again, I'm not using any names, but folks, I have conversations with people who will call me up and they'll tell me what Their plan is for their business and I will try to explain to them that this is a non starting business plan. No one has ever done it this way. No one will ever do it the way you're going to do it because our industry doesn't work that way. And the industry doesn't care about you or certainly doesn't care enough about you to rearrange itself to accommodate you. I remember a client that David Berenbaum and I had, I won't say the name of the client. David and I were on a conference call with this client and the client's brother was on the call and David had just gotten Walmart to say yes to the product. But Walmart said, well you currently have a four ounce product, that's $30. If you want to put it in our stores, you're going to need to make us a two ounce product that sells for $18. Because at Walmart a $30 item is too big of an item. We need an $18 version. The client's brother said, well then screw Walmart. They're going to have to learn to do business with us.

No.

And David and I spent the next hour trying to explain to this guy they have 140, 148,000 SKUs inside their building on any given day and they can live without any one of them. And they're not going to change their business model to fit you. You're going to fit them. And then we had to explain to them what we want you to understand is yes, you're going to go out, you're going to make, you're going to buy two ounce jars and you're going to put the goop in a 2 ounce jar. Not the end of the world.

No.

And that 2 ounce jar at $18 will represent 40% of your entire gross income for the rest of your life. But he was so, he was so convinced down his paradigm that we couldn't convince him otherwise. Now fortunately we convinced the other brother. The other brother at least had enough trust in us to say, well I think we bought a, listen to these guys.

So.

And we did the 2 ounce and the rest is history. And the product did unbelievably well. Yep, these are these thought tunnels we need to get down. This is the other reason you need to surround yourself with people who have already been around the track hundreds of times because they don't have your thought tunnel. They have the ability to say, you know Justin, that seems like a great idea, but that's not how the business operates.

Right.

And and isn't it funny I got to say this? Think about all the people we've talked to over the years and think of the people we talk to that how many of them we've talked to that actually had a decent item, decent product. They would not listen to how to sell it. And that product is still exactly where we left it at sometimes five, 10 years ago. It's still in the exact same position it was.

Yeah.

Because they are still fighting that the world's going to do it my way.

Well, you've talked about this in the past. It's, it's, it's really tough, especially for entrepreneurs, because you got where you're at by thinking the way you do and following your gut or your intuition or whatever you, whatever word you want to use. So then when you have others in your life saying that's not how it works, unless you can overcome that biases and understand that, okay, you know what, these are the experts this is. And take that who, not how mentality, then you're only hurting your own growth, period.

So if I were to ask you who was the better inventor? Thomas Edison or Nikola Tesla, Keeping in mind that Nikola Tesla once worked for, for Edison.

Right.

Who was the better inventor? So let's say who was the most financially successful inventor? Thomas Edison.

Right. I mean, we know that answer, right?

The light bulb, the phonograph, the, I mean the tele. Not the telephone. But we advance. The telephone.

Yes.

Goes on and on and on. Okay. The Now Nikola Tesla was actually the smarter inventor.

He had way more intellectual capacity than.

Edison did and died broke.

Uhhuh. Because he didn't have the flexibility because.

He would not listen to anybody. Edison had the good sense to realize he. Yeah, I'm an inventor, but I'm really a marketer.

Right.

And Edison realized it didn't matter if I was right. It mattered if people would write a check for it. Tesla would argue that he didn't care if anybody wrote a check on, check for it because he was going to prove he was correct.

Better be right than happy. Right?

Tesla's model was better to be right than happy.

Yeah.

And I probably used to have that. And I've really learned it's better to be happy than it is to be right. Which is, which is why you choose your battles on what you want to fight with your wife and your kids about. Because it's like, is this the hill I want to die on? So where I'm going with that is you can, you can be Nikola Tesla and, and, and we, we meet These people. I. I met with a guy, and I'm not going to say the product, but we had dinner with him, and sitting at the table were four people with Dr. In front of their name. And he's an inventor with no credentials, but he's invented a really unique health item. Okay. We're all sitting there having dinner, and I say to him, so what is the mechanism. What's. What's the actual working mechanism behind this product? Well, it wouldn't matter if I told you, because you get. None of you would be smart enough to understand it.

So that's nice. He's the only person in the world.

And my comment to him was, I think there are four people sitting at this table right now who, you may be surprised what they might be able to understand, all of whom are grossly more successful than you at this moment. I also think your product will never see the light of day. Now, guess what? That was three years ago. The product still hasn't seen the light of day because he's still fighting that the only way I'm going to let anybody sell my product is if they do it the way I want it. He does not want to meet the world where it is. He wants the world to come and meet him where he is.

Mm.

It doesn't work that way. We need to meet our consumers and meet the world where it exists.

When we talked about this, you mentioned this before. And not that we have to go into this, this show, but also comes down to what's your driving purpose? If your driving purpose is to create value, and it is, and it is to impact the world and whatever that world is, whatever that audience is, then. Then you will overcome that thought process, because expanding the reach and the impact is all about that. It's all about bringing them into that world and teaching them and creating that value. So it's like, okay, great. Well, let's talk about this. Let me explain this to you. Let's see how we can do this together. If. If you are there just to. For prestige, for lack of better term, an ego, that's where you're going to stay.

To succeed at 10x requires you to come to 10x with a level of humility, with a level of curiosity, and with a strong level of gratitude, because you have to commence. I'm grateful for. For the time I'm getting with you. I'm grateful for somebody pouring into me their knowledge. I'm curious. I have an open mind. I'm married to my questions, not married to my current answers. And. And I'M willing to be flexible. I'm willing to learn, I'm willing to listen. And I can, I can make changes. And these are the people that succeed.

Yep.

As you said, the people we see fly.

As you said many times to me, I know, and I'm sure to many others, it's. It's those that are truly abundant and are here to create wealth, not money. People who are truly looking to be wealthy.

And let's leave people with one last thought. When we talk about 10x versus 2x, when you live in a 2x world, you live in a world of scarcity because there's not enough of everything.

Right.

I'm just trying to get a little more.

It's a need mentality.

So it's a need mentality. We're doing a million dollars a year, but we need $2 million a year to make any money. We need this.

Yep.

When you live in a 10x world, you're living in a want world. When you live in a want world, one, you don't need to explain why you want it because you just want it to say, I want my brand to do $50 million. Doesn't need to. Doesn't need an explanation. You don't need to justify it. You want it because you want it to say, I have to get my sales up over a million dollars. I'm not going to stay in business. You need that. You're explaining the need. Wants are is an easier world to live in than needs. So when, when you're thinking of where do I want my company to be? We want to leave you with is stop thinking about what do I need it to do next year. And, and that's a legitimate exercise. But what do I want from my company? What do I want it to do? What do I want to be known as? How do I want to impact the world? How do I want this company to change my lifestyle? How do I want to interact with people? Who do I want to interact with? How do I want to exist? And none of those things need any explanation. You do them because you want them. So stop thinking of I need my company to grow by 20% next year. I'm in trouble. And start thinking of, I want my company to be X. I want my company to be 20 million. I want my company to be 50 million, 100 million, whatever. A billion.

Right.

This is what I want it to do. That's 10x thinking. And your brain will go there. As Dan Sullivan says, the mind, the eye only sees and the ear only hears what the mind goes looking for. So what I want to do is I want to encourage people to go get the book from Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy. Dr. Ben Hardy. The book is called 10x is easier than 2x. And you know what? I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask Dan to come on the podcast here at some point and talk about this with our audience directly.

Yeah, that'd be great.

We'll get him or Ben Hardy or both of them to come on and talk about it firsthand. Yeah, but get the books, folks. And, and just let me. Is this is. Would you say this book is. Is going to be thought provoking, life changing? What would you call it?

I. I mean the, the first word that came to my mind is transformational. I mean it truly it. When I read. And now I've. I've read it three times now. Three times in. In literally the last two months. I just keep reading it because I keep taking more from it. And, and it is life changing. And the reason why it's life changing for me and the impact on me is that it is, it has created freedom. It is create freedom to embrace want. It's. Create freedom to embrace who I am and my abilities and, and also it's created freedom to truly look at the world through the lens of. As you said, it's okay to want what I want because I want it, because I'm a good person. So I'm not. There's nothing that I want that's going to hurt anyone.

Right. You're not taking it from someone else?

No, no, no. So I don't have to justify it. I'm not hurting anyone. And not only has it helped me, but now that's my energy. So my entire world is changing. The people in my life are changing because now this is the way that I can embrace them and look at them and help them see it. So truly, it is changing. It is life changing.

So think about for your business. What do you want? What do you want your business to become? You know, as always, if you enjoy the podcast, leave us. Five star review. Wherever you get your podcast, you're always welcome to get in touch with us. We're working on a new book right now. It's going to be out. It won't be out for several months yet. Still working on it, but I've really been doing a lot of work on it, Justin. And I'm really excited about this book because the book we're doing, folks, is literally the A to Z of the life of a CPG product. We're literally starting it with what's your idea? And we're taking you through every step of the way of the life of a CPG product right up to I'm selling the company.

Yeah. This is the roadmap.

It is the roadmap and I don't have the exact number in my head, but there's like 35 steps, roughly about 35 things you need to learn.

Yeah.

And we'll call those kind of key. 35 key elements that have hundreds of elements under them.

Yeah.

And I, I think this book for, for, for people that are just getting into the industry, I think this book's, I think this book will be a life changing book for them.

I think it'll be transformational.

But think about it, folks. Go Amazon wherever you get books. 10x is easier than 2x. Dan Sullivan, as always, you can reach out to us and contact us. There's something we can do for you. Find us at CPG insiders.com or Jekyll Hyde labs.com and that's it for today. And we'll see you on the next episode of CPG Insiders. If you're looking to greatly increase sales on your CPG product, don't hesitate to contact us at Jekyll and Hyde Advertising and Marketing. By the way, the only advertising agency with a guaranteed result. Just go to jekyllheidagency.com or feel free to give us a call at 800-542-SA.