Dr. Noah St John argues 80-90% of business success comes from inner game: beliefs and mindset, not tactics. A 7-figure LA entrepreneur he coached hit $20 million in 18 months using his Power Habit System after plateauing for four years despite heavy external investment.
80 to 90% of success really is your inner game. There's 10 million billion gazillion books out there, and I understand that. But I think one of the things that makes my approach different, and what makes this book different, as well as my coaching really, is that I come from an inside-out approach. And here's what I mean by that. When we look at success, it really has 2 aspects. There's the inner game and the outer game. If you think about or picture 2 circles that meet in the middle, right, like a Venn diagram, which is one of my favorite things, and I have a lot of Venn diagrams that I use in my teachings. But anyways, so on one circle is the inner game, and one is the outer game. Now your inner game is everything that happens between your ears that you can't see directly, but it affects everything that you do. And then your outer game is everything that you can see directly that also affects everything that you do. So what I realized is that 90% of the success of that, you know, $3 billion that I've helped my clients make over the last 25+ years really comes from inner game. And that's why I've written all these books on inner game. But I realized that you also need the outer game, you really have to do both. So what happens is a lot of people, you know, come to me, they hire me as a coach, whether it's one-on-one coaching or group coaching, after they spent all this money on all these, you know, marketing guys and all these gurus out there, but they're still stuck. They're still hitting that income ceiling, as I call it. They— I call it the income ceiling syndrome. And they just keep hitting their head on that income ceiling. And one of the reasons for that is because no one has taken the time to show them how to actually master their inner game as well as marry it to their outer game. So it's only when you master your inner game and your outer game that you really have that breakthrough success. I'll give you a perfect example. So I was speaking at a seminar in Los Angeles for about 1,000 business owners. I mean, these are, you know, multiple 6, 7, and 8-figure earners. So, you know, very successful entrepreneurs, right? So I was, you know, giving my presentation, and I just finished, and I was walking off the stage. And a man came up to me out of the audience. And he practically grabbed me by the lapels. And he said, Noah, you are the coach that I've been looking for. I want to hire you as my coach. And so I said, okay, well, what's going on? He said, well, Noah, you know, I've hired all these marketing gurus, and I spent all this money. And, you know, my company is making 7 figures now. So we're at 7 figures. I said, well, that's great. He goes, well, yeah, but we've been stuck at the same level for the past 4 years, 4 years, and we haven't been able to break through that income ceiling, as you just talked about. And he said, as soon as you were talking about inner game and outer game and head trash and your foot on the brake and everything you just said, he said, I knew that you were the coach that I've been looking for, you know. And that's why I love working with high achievers, right? Because they make decisions quickly and firmly. They don't mess around. They don't have analysis by paralysis. They just make decisions and go for it. So anyway, he basically hired me on the spot, and I coached him for 18 months. And in that 18 months, we were able to get his company from being stuck at the previous 4 years to over $20 million in sales in less than 18 months. That's a 600 600% increase in less than 18 months. And you can watch his video along with many others on my website. So what does this story mean for you, for everyone listening? So the interesting thing about this story is that 95% of what we talked about was inner game. See, he had spent all that money and, you know, going to all these seminars, hired all these marketing gurus, which is great. And that's what enabled him to get to that 7-figure level. But he couldn't break through that income ceiling because no one had taken the time to show him how to master his inner game. Wow. So using my inner game framework, which we call the Power Habit System, that's what enabled him to get 600% growth in less than 18 months. 80 to 90% of success really is your inner game.
