How to Grow Exponentially

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to Life on Purpose. My name is James Lachlan, former seven time world champion musician and now success coach to leaders and high performers. Each week I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you live your life on purpose. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

Before we jump into today's episode, I want to tell you about the Purpose Club. I started the Purpose Club quite some time ago so that I could coach people of all backgrounds. Not everybody has access to coaching and certainly it can be out of people's price range. So I wanted to create a community where I coach my members each month and it's incredibly affordable and I do a deep dive monthly live session and deliver my best techniques, strategies and habits. And I impart great lessons on leadership, motivation, mindset, abundance, habit, installation and you're creating a lasting legacy. There's free replays in there from all the previous live casts. There's high impact worksheets for you to take home and actually work through. Throughout the month. You'll receive weekly planning emails with actual planners to fill out your weekend. You'll get a weekly self evaluation email where you can evaluate yourself on all different levels. Relationship, life, business, wealth, career, everything that you want. You'll get weekly journal prompts to really get your mind tuned into that higher level thinking. And also on a monthly basis you'll get planning worksheets and reflections for your month. So if you would like to learn about it, please get in touch with me or someone in my team. You know, jump onto Instagram. Jameslochlanofficial drop me a DM or you can email me jamesjjlachlund.com or just go to the website jjlochlund.com and check it out. Enjoy the show and I hope to see some of you guys over in the Purpose Club.

Well today I want to talk about how to grow exponentially. That might be revenue, impact, leadership, maybe up the career ladder, growing in that area, growing as a leader within your own family, growing physically. But when you want to grow exponentially, there's a certain way to not do it. And that's what I discovered pretty quickly. Or maybe not so quickly as you'll soon find out. But then there's also a way to, to grow exponentially and grow quickly. And there's a certain formula that I've really discovered that works incredibly well. And I've discovered that through my own practice, my own flaws, my own faults. I've also discovered that through some of the incredible leaders and global thought leaders that I've been interviewing over the last year. And I wanted to share it with you because I know it can help you for Fast Track. And we don't have lots of time in life and yeah, lots of us will live to the average age of 80 or 85, but still it's not lots of time to create the impact we want to create. And we get more freedom later in life when we are smarter with our time and our growth younger in life. So I wanted to share a few things with you and I guess probably it should start with, well, I'll share a bit of a tougher time for me. So I was at a point where I was running a retail shop, an online retail shop selling drumming products. And some of you guys know I'm a former seven time world champion drummer and I really was deep into the drumming world and I ran this retail shop that serviced Australia, New Zealand and other parts of Southeast Asia. And it grew quite quickly and it took up a large chunk of my time. But on top of that I also had about 45 to 50 hours a week of drumming tuition. I was teaching at a private school. I also had a number of online students from Germany, Hawaii, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, all over. Plus on top of that I was running two bands, so at a drum line. And that was taken up probably 15, 20 hours a week easily. And on top of that I had an online education program with lots of educational downloads that people were buying. So managing that side of things. I was doing a degree at the time in applied management and leadership and also I was a dad. So lots juggling and certainly for me, when I think back to was lots of stress. There was large consumption of unhealthy foods. I was drinking more alcohol than I needed to be. I was using coffee as a way to pick me up and keep things going. And it's so interesting when I look back at photos from that time, I really look unhealthy. I really do not look well. And I truly feel if I hadn't continued on that path, I would be in an incredibly disadvantaged way now, from a health perspective and certainly from a wealth perspective too, because when we're sick, well, we can't be out there impacting the world, we can't be earning. And certainly we're not of the most positive mindset when we're not in good physical health. So I look back at that and go, wow, that was a time where I was really over committing and I had a massive amount of priority dilution. I really was juggling lots of things and getting some results, you know, so some of the teams that I was working with and mentoring, they were winning World Championship titles. I was still at the top end of my drumming internationally at time. My business was doing very well. But, you know, there was other things that were struggling in my life, my personal life, and certainly my physical health was suffering. But it took me a long time to actually move through that and actually see it and acknowledge it and then go, oh, what do I need to do to, like, make a change? And something, you know, something had to change. And certainly there was a big turning point. And I would. I would give most of the credit to my son Finn. He was born in May of 2016, and when he came along, instantly there was a change in perspective for me. Like, I want to be the dad that's there. I want to be the present dad. I was fortunate to have a great dad, still do, and a great grandfather, and they were so present in my life. And so I want to. I wanted to be that person, and I still want to be that person. And I strive to be, try my best to be. But I knew if I continue to do what I did, I simply wouldn't have the time to show up and be there and create those experiences. So I first became aware of that priority dilution and realized I had so many hats I was wearing. And so there was a process of deletion where I went through and started to remove things from my life that weren't helping me get to the next point of being a better dad, of being healthier, of creating more freedom, of creating more impact. So I started to delete things around me and remove things. So it started with my own performance. I was competing at a world championship level, took up hundreds and hundreds of hours a year. So about seven or eight months after Finn came along, I retired from competing. And certainly everyone around me said, you're crazy. You know, you're only 30 or 31. Like, you can't retire now. You've got another 30 years left in the tank. But I didn't. I had no years left in the tank. And certainly I could have continued to compete and, you know, would have really focused on the side of competition I enjoyed, which was performance. But it would have taken away from the joy of being a dad and looking at other things that really fired me up. So I stepped away from that and started to remove other aspects of my professional life and honed in on one thing. And for me, it was about going an inch wide and a mile deep, whereas up until that point, I was a mile wide and an inch deep. One of the big turning points was a great book, and you've got to get it. In fact, if you go to my website, jjlochlund.combooks, you'll be able to see it. It's called the One Thing, an absolutely brilliant book written by Gary Keller. And it's all around focusing on how to grow, focusing on one important aspect, one metric. And certainly when I think back to last week's episode, if you haven't listened to it, it's a great episode with Greg Creed, former CEO of Taco Bell. He was also the CEO of Yum Brands, which is a Fortune 200 company. He talked about focusing on one metric for six months, just one definitive metric. And he said that changed everything. Like, that made such a difference to their growth, to their impact. But too many companies want to focus on 10 things. So definitely go grab that book, Gary Keller's book, the one Thing, so you can grab it at the website jjlochlund.com Books Now. How do you grow exponentially? Are you feeling like you're overwhelmed sometimes? Are you feeling maybe sometimes that you lack direction? Like, am I supposed to be doing this? Do I really love what I'm doing? Yeah, but I don't have time to do the other thing or discover what I love. You know, if you're in that boat where you really want to grow or you're maybe in a leadership position but feel that you're not doing it justice, then I've got a couple things that are really going to help you. Four steps that are really going to help. So grab a pen if you've got one there. If you're driving, just make some mental notes. So first is remove the noise. You've got to remove the noise. And you can only remove the noise once you actually define what the noise is. So that noise could be some unhealthy relationships, could be friends that just love to party and drink. That noise could be Your fourth or fifth side hustle that really you aren't doing justice and is distracting you from what you should be focusing on. So remove the noise in your life. And so I would encourage you to do a little bit of a time audit over the last couple weeks and ask yourself, where did I spend my time on any given day? Where do I spend my time with my family, with my work, with my side hustle? Reading, partying, drinking, social media. Social media Ing, Not a word. But hey, so ask yourself, where am I spending my time? And then define what is the noise and what is the priority? And it's really important you go, hey, that's noise. I need to reduce the noise there. And if I can remove the noise, that will then take you onto the second step and allow you to actually step into part two, which is you need to shine a light on your number one thing. What's that one thing that's going to give you meaning? What's that one thing that's going to give you freedom? What's that one thing that's going to allow you to do what you want to do on your terms? So it could be, hey, I'm pretty good at this, why don't I double down and really focus on that? So what's your one thing? Is your current career? Is it a business you've wanted to start for so many years and you just haven't got around to it? You've got to decide what your one thing is. That in itself is probably, I would say 2% of the population have done that. They've decided what their one thing is that they're willing to focus on for the next six months. Doesn't have to be the next 60 years, but how about six months of focus, right? So decide on your one thing third, become relentless. And what I mean by that is once you've decided on your one thing, relentlessly focus on pursuing it, on improving it, on becoming an expert at that one thing. And it could be that you become better at serving others, you become better at leading others. You level up your knowledge, your wisdom, your passion. But become relentless and last, make the decision and then act on that decision. Too many of us think things through, then overthink them, then rethink them, and then overthink them again. All of a sudden we're in this thinking loop. We need to act, we need to take action, and we need to be relentless about that. So I want you to just take a moment today and you've invested 10 or 15 minutes of your life in listening to this. So passive listening is not really going to take you forward, but active listening and then acting on that listening is going to help you move forward. So what's the one thing that's your number one priority for the next six months? I'm not asking you to do something for the next five years, just six months. What's one thing that you know, if you focused on that and that was your primary focus, like 80% of your time was focused on that, what would it be and what would it do for you? What would it change? Where would it take you? Ask yourself those questions. Why would I do this? What would it change? You know, why am I so passionate about this one thing? Then make a plan to get to work this week. Write down and schedule in your diary. This is what I'm going to do and here's how I'm going to measure it at the end of the week. So many people tend to overthink, right? Don't be that person that overthinks. I want you to really step in to clarity and get clear on what it is for you that you want. Your one thing, your one thing I know now is going to be different than my one thing. And that's what makes you unique. And you can make such an impact not only on your own life, but on your siblings, your parents, your kids, your community, your clients, your co workers by just deciding what your one thing is. That's your point of difference. And I'm just going to celebrate you for being the person that's taking that action today to get clear on what the noise is and reducing it. Getting really clear on shining the light on the one thing, then becoming absolutely relentless and getting after it. So go after it. Get out there and live life on purpose.

Thank you so much for listening in today and investing in your own personal growth. Please hit that subscribe button. I would love, love, love if you'd leave me a rating and review and it really helps me to impact more people. I've got some amazing guests lined up in the coming weeks and folks, it's that time. Get out there and live life on pur.

Sam.