Why 99% of Winners Plateau at $1M (How to Break Through to $10M)

It takes forever to build something, but destruction and falling apart can happen very quickly when you get your eye off the ball and you lose your focus. Welcome to Big Hitters. I'm Larry Weidel, and this show is for people who are done playing small. Each week we break down what it actually takes to win at a high level, the decisions, the discipline, the adjustments that separate those who almost do it from those who do it. No theory, no fluff, just straight talk from someone who spent 50 years building winners. If you're serious about momentum, you're in the right place. Let's get into it. Okay, I'm back and I'm talking about the possibility of what would be inside this new book I wrote, Never Just Do It: How Serial Winners Become Elite. And what I want to put in front of you today is some ideas That you can realize the difference between how you can distinguish yourself, differentiate yourself, and the way you go about things and the way you think things for most people. And so, popular myth is you just work harder, you grind, you push, take massive action. And I think we've all had people come up to us and say, I talked to 50,000 people on Thursday and then nobody said— Yes. And, you know, I've done all this stuff working around the clock. And the deal is, you see that they're running around like a chicken with their head cut off. Yes. You know, they're working, they're maybe doing the numbers, but they're just doing it. Just work harder. You know, just put my head down and, you know, they're not thinking. They're grinding, they're pushing, they're taking massive, but they're not studying what they're doing. They're not doing something for a purpose. It's like I hear all the time from my, the guy that's advised me on my painting, When I have a question about one thing or another, he'll say the universal answer is it comes back to intent. Well, what's your intent, Larry? And so on this thing is in everything you're doing, you need to be very clear what your intent is. And do you know, am I going to just do it just to have something to do, or do I want to become— do it and get better at it and keep moving up? Do I want to become elite? What am I trying to do here? Am I trying to do this as a stepping stone to something else? You know, what is my intent? And so the more you refine your intent, it's like the finer, you know, the pinhole that you're aiming at on the bullseye when you're throwing darts at the target. It's like the more refined you are on where your eyes are looking, the more likely You're going to hit the bullseye. And so if you become elite, the elite people rarely just act, just run out there and, you know, like, I'm going to hit a million golf balls. I'm going to be like Tiger Woods. I hear that he got up in the morning and he hit 1,000 golf balls before he had his cereal, you know? So I'm going to hit 2,000 balls. Yeah. Really? So the thing is, like, elite performers always have a purpose. You know, they're like, Running 100 laps. You know, we had a coach in high school was an idiot, and his his idea—you know—we'd come right off of football back in the day. You know, in small schools, you wind up playing all the sports. So we'd come off football. We'd been playing like three months football, six days a week, and immediately play our last game over the weekend and show up for basketball practice on. Monday, and the assistant football coach was the head basketball coach, Don Williams, the brother of football coach Frank Williams. And stupid fat Don, his thing was, we're going to be the best conditioned team out there, so we're going to run 100 laps to start the thing, the season. It's like, Don, you idiot, we've been out there. I mean, we're already fine-tuned. You know, we We've been playing football for 3 months. Maybe we should do some drills and do this and then give our bodies a little chance to kind of recover and let some of these bruises heal from football. But no, no, we're going to do 100 laps for this and 100 laps for that. And by Christmas, we all had shin splints and nobody could run anywhere. And so the thing is, that's a mindless type activity. Like, you have a purpose behind what you're doing. So like elite performers, Rarely just act. See, they study the game. They study what, where, you know, they, they say, okay, what are people doing and what kind of results are the top people getting? And they, they really put their eyes onto there. They choose their battles. They don't just do everything. No, they're gonna do the, what are the most important things to be doing? Then they engineer their environment. They set themselves up for success. There's no— There's no way in our lifetime we can have enough conversation about setting yourself up for success because environment leads to attitude, which is related to everything. So your environment is going to either sustain you, support you, encourage you, or tear you down. It's like friction, either gonna make it harder for you to do things or it's gonna make it easier for you to do things. And so everything we gotta be doing is going to take work and overcoming stuff. So the last thing we need to do is make it harder for ourselves by having a lousy environment. Elite performers are building systems and feedback loops. They're getting things like, what can we do and make repetitive from what we're doing? Because if we can get a pattern and we can do this in a pattern way, that means we're not trying to make it up as we go and doing it different every kind of way. Like, if the thing is, like, if you, you know, you can get good at chess if you learn the rules of chess, you know, you can get good at basketball if they tell you the rules of basketball. But if they're changing the rules all the time in these sports, you're never going to get good. But you get the rules are the same, you do your repetition, pretty soon you get good. You develop strategies and you refine that stuff. And that's what elite performers are doing. They're finding the patterns. They're simplifying what they do in that thing, and they're trying to get repetitive patterns, take the thinking out of it, because thinking slows you down. And if you're going to be folding towels, if you're going to have a household, you're going to have to wash and fold towels, for example. Well, you like to take the thinking out of that. Like, we do this on a certain day, we sort of this. I don't have a big emotional thing. I don't feel like doing towels today. It's just like you don't let it be that kind of issue. This is a routine thing, and you make game out of it by seeing how quick and efficient you could do it. And so that's what elite performers do. And they're always looking for ways they can find a pattern and they can make a game out of it and they could speed up the process and look for advantages. So they build systems and then the feedback loops are the numbers. What am I getting for this? How long did it take? Is that a smart way? You know, it's just like if you're going to be driving to work all the time, it's like, which is the best way to go? And do I think, and then I've timed myself. You know, I've got a running debate with the GPS here in my area about how I navigate back to my house. GPS always wants to send me one way, but I know for a fact if I go the other way, I save an extra minute. And so I always go my way, but I found that out because I timed myself. And so the thing is, like, that's why I want to do this book about Never Just Do It, how elite performers How serial winners become elite, because you can become elite. So while you're doing this thing, you're doing all your work, you're doing all your processing and your framework. So once you, I'm just trying to give you an idea of the framework, kind of get you excited about possibilities where you can improve, like how you can go from just a winner to elite is you narrow the focus about what you want to win on. Don't try and be good at everything. Pick the leverage points, pick the places that have the best payoff, and get good at that. And spend your time with people that are already good at that. And be, you know, if you're reading, you're paying attention, you're talking about it, you have questions about it, do it about those really key, most important areas. And so they choose Whether it is choosing where they want to win. And you try and give yourself an unfair advantage because you're not wasting your time on 40 different things. You're locking in on this one and you're getting good at that. And then when you get good at that, you use it the rest of your life. And the more you do it, the better and better you get. And the more you go up while everybody else is running around saying, how do they do that? Well, they chose where they wanted to win. And again, engineering outcomes, designing systems, habits, environments, so good results are not the exception. They are the rule. You know, general consistency wins every time. And so you want to engineer consistent positive outcomes by putting the right kind of systems, habits, environments in place. And so you're verifying, you look for your feedback, you verify your feedback, and you do that with data, with numbers. You do that with mentors, other people that have done it, competitors, seeing what competitors are doing. And then you do it with postmortems. You kind of analyze, okay, how did that go? And you don't just grind away blindly. You're doing what you're doing with a purpose. And then you work on who you are, not just what you do, your beliefs, your standards, your self-concept, what you want to accomplish. You realize that I can't just do a role. I can't be a poser. I've got to be real here. This has got to be who I really am doing what I really want to do, and not because other people— have me set up. And so because you're working on yourself and you're questioning yourself and you're, you know, you're getting rid of the stuff that's really not that important to you and you're focusing more on the things that are important to you, then you're going to be more passionate about those things you still have in your life. You're, so you're elevating your identity and then you're repeating this stuff over and over again. It's just like sharpening a knife. It's like improving an iPhone. And what happens is little refinements. And this is why we have our big win of the week board. Little refinements don't sound like much, but they can make incredible differences. So because it allows you to compound faster and so you're not chasing novelty, you know, like, so what was the newest way we could do this? No, you're looking for the most efficient way and you're looking for fun. And entertainment in other areas, not in how you do, how you milk the cows. If you're in the dairy business, you don't say, okay, this week we're going to milk the ears. You know, it's like, you know, I need a change of pace here. No, that's not, that's not how you be elite. Talking about overdoing again, folks, you want to overdo the right things, not the wrong things. And so really lock in and Figure out what are the most important things, most important activities I need to be doing to get to where I want to go so I can move in a straight line. It's like not so much shortcuts, but there are straight lines where you want to go. And so, you know, I remember one time I went to a retreat up in Pennsylvania and it was in Allentown, north of Philly. And so they, this one guy was very excited about the chance to drive me to the airport. It was like an hour and a half drive. You know, an hour and 15-minute drive. And so very excited. I remember we had a Ron Schmidt Senior. I can remember who it was, had a convertible, so excited. So we get in and he's just talking like a madman the whole time. And before you know it, an hour and a half, hour and 45 minutes had gone by. I said, Ron, we should be at the airport by now. Where are we? And then I saw a sign in the interstate, Harrisburg. He had taken the wrong turn and we were headed for Pittsburgh. You know, we, so he said, Missed my flight, missed everything. But he was going like about 90 miles an hour down the road, the wrong direction. Make sure if you're gonna overdo it, you're doing the right things, folks. Talking about overdoing it, one aspect is you wanna clear the decks of extraneous activity and extraneous people and extraneous things that would interfere with your focus. You've got to make it possible for you to overdo and not get frustrated because you want to have the right attitude. You want to enjoy this thing. You want to have your mind on it. You want to have your mind free. And so to do that, you've got to think ahead a little bit and say, maybe let the family know, hey, I'm going to be involved in a project here for a while. So it might be hard to get ahold of me here for a little while, but I'll be back. Don't worry about it. But clear the decks. However you got to clear the decks, block off your time and get In the groove and you want to, you know, it's just like starting a car. You know, you get in a car, you know, the cars go, they don't immediately go into high speed. They go low gear, medium gear, and then high gear. You know, like big trucks have like 18, 20 gears they go through. Like Tour de France bikes, bicycles have like 12 gears, you know? So the deal is when you get on, you don't expect a mad dog start. Let yourself get into it. You know, if like you go to the gym, you know, any sports thing, you know, the football field, basketball stadium, they're in there and they're warming up an hour before the game, you know, getting the blood flowing, loosening up, give the blood a chance to adapt. Like this is— let your mind realize, okay, we're getting ready to do something important now. And so give yourself a while to get into your routine. Don't expect to be at Fever pitch perfection, high speed on your routine as soon as you start it. I think this is why a lot of people go belly up in New Year resolutions. They expect to be, you know, they don't give themselves time to get up to full speed, but clear the decks, give yourself time to get up to full speed and go get it done. One of the things about overdoing that is a must, allows you to stay on track, is have milestones, have small daily doable goals. We all know anything we're going to do, we're going to have millions of temporary disappointments. And so what you want to do is set up a series of small, achievable goals for yourself so that you can be successful. And as you do that on a daily basis, you say, yes, it's happening. Yes, it's working. Yes, it's happening. I'm going to get there. And so those yeses give you a little shot of adrenaline to overcome the little downer that comes when you get something negative happens. Keep on moving forward, you know, keep that energy up so you can keep moving forward and making that extra effort until you get over the finish line. By the way, if you're still listening right now, you're different. You don't just consume content, you're actively looking for an edge. And that's who I built the Big Hitter Community for. Not people chasing motivation, people chasing momentum. Not theory, proximity. Proximity to operators who are In the arena making real decisions and winning at a high level. Inside Big Hitter, you get conversations we don't have on the podcast, direct access to people who build what you're trying to build in a room that holds you to a higher standard every single week. This isn't a hype group. It's not networking for the sake of networking. It's where serious people go to sharpen their thinking and compress their timeline. If you're done just listening, And you're ready to be in the room where it actually happens, head to joinbighitters.com or click the link in the show notes. The right room changes everything. I'll see you inside. Well, the first thing is you've got to reckon it has to do with intent, and you're never going to get to the million unless you make up your mind To get your act together and to do things efficiently. And so it comes in with an intent. First thing I would say is intent. What is your intent from the time you started your business? What was your eye on? And was it on a fixed level or was it on unlimited growth to chase and see I want to see how high I can make this thing go. And so are you giving it everything you've got so that you can have the maximum success, or are you just kind of piecemealing it because it's just like you have limited expectations? But when you're going for the million and the $10 million and the $100 million, the people that make that happen, they have an expectation. They have a— Intent that they would just want to see where the top is. You know, just one time in their life, they see other people doing it and they say, is it possible for me? And so the first— repeat it again— intent. What is your intent? Are you just going to try and do— get your business going? Are you going to get it in survival mode, see if you can make a living out of it? Are you going to try and do something great? And welcome to the wonderful world of winning where people Love to win again and again. And that turns into compounded, incredible success. The great thing about that is that you harness your momentum and you're not having to always start over again, you know, have slumps, you know, because you're pushing, pushing, pushing. Do you know where you want to keep it growing? You have 1 or 2 or 3 good months during the year. You want to keep growing. You want to keep, you know, stretching it, seeing how much further you can go, even if it's just 1% more. That's higher. And the one thing you don't want to do is like sliding, climbing a flagpole. You don't want to get halfway up the flagpole and then loosen your grip a little bit. Like, I'm tired, I'm halfway up. Unbelievable. Look at me, everybody. Take my picture, selfie, and lose your focus and lose your grip. And then boom, slide back down. Because the thing is, these things can unravel. Very, very quickly. And so, uh, it takes forever to get— to build something, but, uh, destruction and just, you know, falling apart can happen very, very quickly when you get your eye off the ball and you lose your, your focus. So, uh, when I say it has to do with intent, these are things that I'm getting at. It's like, are you going to do your best? Are you going to expect the best of the people around you? Are you going to Maybe not all the time, but is it usual for you to kind of get there a little bit early, hit the ground running, start the week with a bang? That's why inside our community, it's just so easy, especially when you're in business for yourself. You're either on a commission or whatever you're in charge is kind of cut corners, kind of lazy your way into the day. Well, it's just like if you're out building a business, if you're competing, you're playing the game. You gotta be competitive, you know, or you gotta work for somebody who's competitive. And if you're running things, that you can't be coach of the team and you let the team lay around in the locker room until the second quarter and then finally come out. By then it's gonna be like 200 to nothing and there's no chance of you winning the game. So the deal is you got to at least put yourself in a position to have success by using the 24 hours. And basically, it's how you use your 24 hours in a day, how you get your team to use the 24 hours a day, how you structure the company to go out and offer that product or service. And whatever it is, unless you're some genius who can come up with something brand new out of thin air, if you're like most of us, you got to do something that's already out there. And even if you are that kind of genius, you're going to be copied. People know what's going on right now. As soon as you get successful, you're going to have people that copycat you. You've always got to be— it's like law of the jungle, life on the plains, the lions and the animals. Everybody's running. You got predators and prey. And so you got to keep your eyes open. You got to keep your head on a swivel. And if you're over there sleeping in the middle of the day, you're probably going to get eaten. And so intent has to do with everything. So if we go out there and Let's just say difference between a million and a $10 million person. One thing you can recognize, if you're up to a million, you probably have got the fundamentals down pretty well. You know, you know, you know, some, you know, you've mastered enough of the basics to be productive and more productive than most people. And so that's a good thing. And so the thing is, if you're that, you know, you've done the hard part. That's what I would say. I would look at it and say, good for you. You've done the hard part. So why slow down now? That's crazy. You know why? You know why? You built something that's working, that people want, that, you know, that you're reaching the market and everything. So why not continue to grow? Why let it slip through your fingers? And now you have to go out there and start it all over again. And now the problem is the second time is, you know how hard it was the first time. So the million-dollar people, You almost have to go for $10 million. You know, you have to go because you've tasted the good life. And if you don't keep pushing forward, you don't have to, uh, do, uh, get to $10 million, but you've got to keep pushing forward because that's how you keep the million going. And so the thing is, the people, the, the $1 million operator, uh, you cannot change your focus because you broke over A million. You can't, you know, the way you got to a million is you kept looking up. You know, you're looking up the stair— staircase. You know, I'm keep— I'm climbing, I'm working, I'm, you know, I'm overcoming, I'm dealing with issues. Well, once you get to a certain level, if it's a half a million, a million, 5 million, 10 million, you can't reach a certain level and then say, okay, you know, sit back and relax. Now you can take a breath, you know, you can get, you know, take a nap, have a meal and take a A little vacation or something. But when it comes back to your business, you gotta keep the intensity on. You gotta make sure the people that run the business are still intent and still after it. And so, uh, and that's gonna be because you're after it and you, they've got goals, they've got a vision. They realize future is brighter. Like, you know, if you double your business, the people are working with you, they've got a chance to get promotions, they've got a chance to get pay raises. But if you got a business that's flatlined and it's not going anywhere, or it's in a slump, Well, that doesn't look good for them. They're going to be looking out around and say, I got to get on a go-go in a different industry, a different company. That's what I did. I got out of construction and got into a different— because I didn't like the ups and downs. And I said, if I'm going to put in a quarter of a million dollars a year worth of effort, I got to get paid something close to a quarter million dollars or more. I'm certainly not going to be satisfied with $25,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000. And so that's the way people look at it. Like, if they're gonna be working hard for you and busting their rear, you wanna have the business grow so they can get their rewards and their promotions and they're, you know, on schedule and feel like it's paying off for them. And so that's why you— and otherwise you gotta replace 'em. And again, that's another version of starting over again. So you want— you've got to keep moving forward. And so I'm gonna beat a dead horse, But this would be like the first thing I would say about the difference between a $1 million and a $10 million operator is intent, because it affects everything you do. Their expectation from your suppliers, from your vendors, from your staff, from yourself, from your— when you run a marketing project campaign, are the results there? You've got your eye on the numbers at all times and you're expecting Growth and you're making decisions. You know, because what happens is when your intent is like that, you don't waste time. You know, when something's not working, you say, change it. We gotta change, you know, now you're not, you know, you gotta be patient. You know, there's a paradox. You have to give time for your efforts to compound and multiply, and you've got to make sure that, you know, you're not jumping like a cat on a hot tin roof from one thing to another. You gotta, you know, you gotta give 'em a chance to mature. But after You've given it proper time and the results and the harvest is supposed to come. You know, you're supposed to be seeing some results. If things are not working, you got to be willing to change things. But if you're lackadaisical, it's like, well, give it another month, give it another 3 or 4 months. Because mainly not because you're being patient and you still think it'll work, it's just you don't want to make the effort to change. But if you've got the intent, like it's my job to produce growth, And so the difference between where the intent comes in, I think, with a person over a $10 million versus $1 million, they realize it's their job to keep that thing growing through $1 million to the $2, $3, $4, $5, $10 million to keep advantage of that momentum so it'll pay off of everybody. And they don't look and say, well, you know, maybe if the economy's good, maybe if this is good, maybe if that's good. No. They look at it and they say, my fault. If we don't grow, it's my fault. The only reason for me to be here in the leadership role is to produce growth and to set things up and to call the shots. I got to steer the ship and it's on me. You know, they can fail, they can be average without me. If we're going to grow, then that's going to require somebody adding a little spark and a little energy at the top. And so that's why the, you know, you take responsibility for the growth. And I think that at no time, and at no time do the people that go from $1 million to $10 million start taking the average thing like, good, and that's good enough. That's close enough. That's good. No, no, they're going for the best. They're going for perfection. You're never good enough and you never reach perfection, but you're going for it all the time. And the way you know what to change in terms of Systems, operations, results, everything is what are you capable of? You know we're at least capable of this. Worst things comes of this, we could, if we did 10 units today, we bust our rear, we could be at 11 or 12 in 30, 60 days. I mean, there's just no reason for that, not to do that. And so when that's not happening, Then you go and you make changes because your intent is to get that 11 or 12, you know, get the 10 to 11 or 12. So it has to do with what you're focused on, which has everything to do with what your intent is, which has everything to do with if you're in charge, you understand what your job is. And your job is to produce growth at all times and to keep everybody's eyes in the company on moving up. And so those are some of the first opening things. I don't want to open up another can of worms. I want you to think about that at this point. But, you know, there's a difference in— such a huge difference in the intent, what's in the— what people have got as their goal. You know, goals come from intent. You know, all of these things come from Why are you doing this? Where do you want to go? How high do you want to be? Are you wanting to go as high as you possibly can? You want to be as good as you possibly can, build it as big as you possibly can? Because why should you go and then you could be in, you know, hey, we're great, you know, we're in 10 states. Well, we could be in all 50 states. And like, we're, you know, we're in 3 countries, you know, we're in Mexico, United States, Canada. Unbelievable. And so, but maybe if you pushed it, you can be in 100 countries. You know, there's, I talk to people on these podcasts all the time that are in 100 countries, some 180 countries. It's just like, and you talk to them and like, you know, you pitch, no, they're not an alien. They're a normal human being. Yep. I pinched them. Yep. And so the thing has to do with their intent. They didn't get to that thing by saying, okay, good enough. Slack off, or we'll start adding 14 new things and stop doing our main thing. They stayed with their main thing and they kept driving it every which way they could. Their intent was to see how big it could go. And so once you get it, let's just say you took your company, we're just brainstorming now, and you have this mentality, we want to grow, we want to see how big we can get. And let's just say you're in 180 countries. Well, then what you want to do is see how many countries can we be number one in and get in the top 10. And, you know, we're in 75 countries, we're in the top 10, whatever category you're, whatever your business is. And so you want to be like John Maxwell. I heard about John Maxwell one time. He may have told me while we were playing golf, but getting ready to go to South America, got a tour going into 5 countries, and he's written a zillion books. He's one of the top authors. I think he sold more books than— he's kind of like Billy Graham and the Bible in terms of how many books he sold. But he's like the number one business book in all 5 countries. He was going to speak to business leaders in 5 countries, And when he went down there, it's one thing to say, hey, I've got my book. I've got a book. It's translated into 2 or 3 languages, 5 languages, 10 languages, 100 languages. It's another thing to say, I'm number 1 in the United States, but I'm also number 1 business book in, or leadership book in 5 countries or 25 countries. Well, that's John Maxwell. And he probably said, Same now. But I mean, that's— you said, why should you stop? So if you're going to go, see how many countries you could go, how many states, how many countries, how can you expand this thing? Because the bigger you get, it's really the easier you get in many ways. I mean, it's complicated, but you get more help, you have more resources, you have more— you can afford higher price advisors. You know, you swim with the bigger fishes, fish that have always already been in these countries. If you're only in one country, you don't get a chance to spend a lot of time with people that are in 180 countries. And so it's just easier to get the kind of information. People would say, well, don't do this, do this. If other people have done it, you could do it if that's your intent. And so what I'm saying is there are people out there like John Maxwell. He's got out there not only written bestsellers, but bestsellers in Multiple countries. Not only got it translated into multiple languages, but he's got— we went to number 1 in these places. And as it turned out, because of that, when John went to all 5 countries, he was going to have a private meeting with the president of every one of those countries. Now, this was like 12 years ago. So the thing is, people are doing these things, have done these things, and why not you? And so the people that are making $10 million versus the $1 million, they're saying, why not me? Why not us? Why are we, you know, why do we have to not be, you know, think about things like that? You know, what are we, second-class citizens? And so the leader's got to be the one who says, let's find out where the limit is. Let's not decide in advance. Let's not rule ourselves out of the game. Let's go for the top. And if it's $10 million, $100 million, I don't know. Let's get there as fast as we can. See what it's like. If we don't like it, we can do something else. But as quick as we can, let's get to that next big breakthrough level and see how we like it and see if we want to keep on going. Let's find out for ourselves and not get other people to tell us. So anyway, those are some quick thoughts, and I hope my intent is to Well, if we're talking about intent here, my intent is to follow this up with another idea that specifically has to do with action that I see people taking. The method about how they drive themselves and their companies to these higher and higher levels, bigger and bigger breakthroughs. And so we'll talk about that next time. But anyway, Intent, folks. It shapes everything. That's it for this episode. If this resonated with you, do me a favor, share it with someone who's ready to level up. Winners find winners, and the right conversation at the right time can change everything. Want to go deeper? Join us inside the Big Hitter Community at joinbighitters.com. That's where the real work happens. And if you haven't already, subscribe so you don't miss the next one. Remember that you're either growing or dying, and there's no standing still. Keep winning, and I'll see you next week.