Dr Benjamin Hardy Reveals Why Most Beginner Coaches Think Too Small (And How To Fix It)

You're about to see the actual interview that I did with the man himself, Dr. Benjamin Hardy. If you're watching this right now, there's a very good chance that you've been influenced and impacted by his books. And what's unique about this interview is that I asked him questions on how to 10x your thinking, especially if you are just starting out, no name, no brand, no experience, and how do you scale fast when you're starting from zero. And so in this interview here, you're going to see some some light bulb moments for an absolute beginner, and so take plenty of notes. Now, if you watched my other video where he coached me one-on-one on how to create a $10 million coaching offer, you're gonna love this one as well. This is a little bit different because I'm doing the interview with my business partner, Kelly Chu, but also now I get the chance to ask him questions rather than him asking me questions. And so enjoy this interview. We are here with one of the most brilliant minds in the entrepreneurial space, Dr. Benjamin Hardy, and you probably have heard of him or maybe at least read his books, but he's a bestselling author, organizational psychologist, and the GOAT of scaling and co-founder of scaling.com. Books like Who Not How, Be Your Future Self Now, The Gap and the Gain, The Science of Scaling, 10X Is Easier Than 2X, and I'm sure I've forgotten a few other books as well. Dr. Benjamin Hardy, The Personality Is Not Permanent.

I'm pumped to be with you, Richmond. You are, you are special, brother. So I just can't wait to be with you and chat with you.

Appreciate it. Appreciate it. So the first thing I guess I want to open up with, I know you, you ruthlessly say no way more than you say yes. And you're very intentional about what you say yes to, but even more intentional about what you say no to. So the first thing I want to ask is discernment. Like, you know, is that like, I'm not sure if I've heard too much about talking about how you discern on what gets filtered because there might be so many things you could say, you could potentially say yes to, to reach your goal of scaling or 10x. But how do you use discernment or how do you develop that on what you actually say yes to and what you say no to?

Such a really gorgeous and deep question. I'll hit it from a few different angles. Let me first say that selection That you know you used the word discernment, but I'll also use the word selection. And selection is one of the most fundamental aspects of of human decision making, psychology, obviously strategy, right? You know is is the fact that human as human beings we have the ability to select things, right? Our brains automatically select things, you know based on. You know, what matters to us based on our goals. But, you know, so in, in the psychology term, the psychology term is selective attention, right? That we're, we're only focusing on things that matter to us. But we also select goals, right? Like I can select a goal. I can select people I surround myself with. I can select media I put into my brain, right? We're always selecting and always choosing. And, and, and what we choose to select really shows who we are. Um, there's also a really critical concept called, you know, which is not— so our own selection matters, but also getting to the point where you're being selected by the right people, right? Uh, as a business, you want to position yourself so that you're the one who others select, right? Your ideal client, right? You want to be selected, right? And there's just so much competition and so much noise out there. If you think about just the millions and the masses trying to get attention and trying to do that. Um, the question isn't, do I want to be selected by everybody? It's who do we want to be selected by? Who are the people we want to impact and influence? Um, and so a big part of choosing who you want to be selected by is strategy and recognizing you don't want to serve everyone. There's a certain type of person or company that you want to serve, and you want to therefore position yourself so that you are the obvious answer and go-to for them so that you are the obvious selection, right? Um, they pick you. Because you've positioned yourself away from the competition, away from all the noise, and you become the obvious answer to their needs and to their solution. You're the solution to that. So I just wanted to give that little concept on the criticalness of selection. And then obviously discernment is a big aspect of what you choose to select. I think that a lot of discernment comes from a few different things. One is learning from your own experiences, right? We have So many experiences that teach us things that we should really learn from. And I'm such a big, uh, I'm such a big believer in really analyzing your own past, right? Analyzing experiences, analyzing different phases of time. I mean, even just today, I journaled for about 30 to 45 minutes today. And I don't do that every day. I journal usually, you know, 5, 10 minutes a day, but today I did a certain journaling exercise where I looked at a few different time frames over the last 15 years. Like, I looked at like what was my focus from 2010 to 2011 because it was a really defined chapter. You know, it was when I first came home from a church mission and was really kind of going to community college. And anyways, I looked at different chapters, and I was just like writing what happened during that phase of time, and then the next chapter, what happened during that phase of time. Oh, I was in my undergrad, and I was working on getting into grad school, and then what, you know, I got married, and then like what was the next chapter? Oh, I was in graduate school, And I was becoming a professional author, right? And I was just— I was writing these things down, but I was also looking at what were the major things that were holding me back during that period of time, right? What did I not know, right? And so the only reason I say this is our past is such an incredible tool for allowing us to have discernment if we squeeze more juice out of it. The problem with most people is that they don't heavily analyze their past and heavily analyze the biases of their former self that led them to mistakes. We all make mistakes. You know, I've made some critical mistakes even recently, and there's no point being mad at myself for those. Instead, I just need to heavily like learn from that so that I have better discernment in the future so I don't repeat mistakes. So it's a combination of learning from your past, learning good principles, right? Study, study, study, study. Like learn from the greats. Learn from good principles. And then from there, make better choices, better selections. Selection ends up being everything, Richmond. You know, what you choose to select in terms of your goals, your peers, your business model, who you choose to be around, all of these selections are critical. They shape you.

So good. So good. And on that note about learning from your past, I find sometimes we don't get the maybe the best lesson or the right lesson only to get the lesson again. And then you're like, okay, maybe that was the wrong lesson and you have to repeat the same pattern. Well, you know how some people just maybe don't get the lesson. So is there a process for learning that lesson from the past that's gonna allow us to move forward?

I think there's a lot of things. One is, one of the things that's really healthy is looking at and defining the way that you're different from your past self. Right? A lot of people, they do the opposite. They assume that they're the same person as their past self, and they even define themselves by their past. They say, oh, this happened to me and this is why I am the way I am. And that's not the best way to do it psychologically. Um, one of my favorite psychologists, his name is Brent Slife, and he spent a lot of time studying the psychology of time. And one of the really important things to know about the past from a psychological standpoint is, is that we're always reshaping it from the present. Right? So if I think about myself, if I think about, you know, me, Benjamin Hardy, and I go back to Benjamin Hardy at age 11, right, my 11-year-old self, and that was when my parents got divorced, right? And at that point in time, my, you know, my parent, my father became depressed and he became a drug addict. And like a lot of things changed in my life because of that point in time. And so the main point is, is do I let that event define me, right? Do I let the past define me? Or is it me in the present that defines that event, right? And can I analyze that event in the present, right? And can I— and so basically what they talk about with memory is that memory is a reconstruction. Memory is something that you construct in the present, and you're always constructing it anew based on where you're at in the present, right? You know, and so the main thing I want to give you here is that— and this is what Brent Slife said— he said it's more accurate to say that the present causes the meaning of the past than to say that the past causes the meaning of the present. So it's always us in the present that's choosing shapes our past. And part of that is recognizing, and I think this is a super important thing to do, is to define why you're different from your past self, right? Rather than saying, I am the same person as my past self, it's no, no, no, no. You want to define why you're different from your past self. A year ago, how are you different from who you were a year ago? And get very granular. What did— what was your past self doing a year ago that you absolutely would not do today? What are some of the decisions they made a year ago that you would not make today because you now know better? Like, lay out what— how am I different from my past? And one of the big aspects of this is that you never want to be mad at your past. There's no value in being mad at your past. But we do want to define now what the difference is and how, you know, how you would do things differently if you could go back. Not that you could go back, but now what do you know differently? And now that you do know differently, what are some of the situations or commitments that you're still living that your past self made that are not what you would, you know, not in alignment with your now, your current knowledge, right? So it's really just a matter of using the past and being rigorous with it and defining how things have changed, what's different. And also part of that is, again, you don't wanna do it with anger or frustration. You actually wanna do it with grace and understanding because you now know different. And because you now know different, you can now do different. You can select different, right? Um, but you want to actually lay out the errors in thinking that have led to certain consequences, right? What are some of the false assumptions that I had that now have proven not to be accurate, right? In terms of what I thought was needed to succeed or about people or about, you know, and just say, this was an assumption I had. Here's how it's proved out to be false. Here's now what I now know better, and here's how I can now do different. And here's, here's what I'm going to change because now I know. I think it's just, it's just being really critical and analyzing yourself and analyzing how, you know, your own learning, and that's how you can really start to squeeze more juice out of it.

So good. I've got, I've got another question and I'm going to pass it over to Katie. I think one of the most underestimated things that people don't know or notice about you is your, your ability to ask great questions, even to yourself. It's just mind-blowing, the questions you ask. So when I first saw you speak at a Russell Brunson event, but we personally met in a very TEDx way when you think about it, on a jet of all places. And I remember on that flight, you said something that stuck with me. And I'd love for you to expand on this, that you can't force readiness. And I thought, wow, that sounds so profound. And so For anyone watching this or listening to this, can you talk about that idea on what you meant by that? You can't force readiness, or maybe can you?

I think that— I actually think you fairly can, but you can't force someone else to be ready. I think that that's the main thing is you can't force someone else to be ready. You can't force someone else to want to get to where you want them to be. Um, you can shape factors. Like, for example, I have 7 kids, right? And so, um, you know, and ages 18 to 5, right? And so there's certain things we can do to kind of guide our kids in this way. Obviously, people outside of family, people outside of kids, it's different. But with our own kids, we can push them into situations that they wouldn't have chosen for themselves, right? And, um, you know, not at the end of the day, you can't absolutely force someone to do what they don't want to do. With kids, sometimes you have a little bit more leeway on that because, you know, they're, they have, they're, they're somewhat, you know, they live under your house and stuff like that, you know, but you can challenge them and you can push people in directions that get them ready. With people on the outside world, I think that, I don't know if you can force people to be ready for certain things, but you can present them or provide them enough context where they're more likely to have the paradigm shift needed to become ready.

Right?

So just as an example, like for us, what we do at scaling.com is we want to teach people frameworks and principles that would allow them to literally 10x their business. Um, most people when they hear that, it doesn't seem realistic because either there's so much hype and buzzwords and like there's a lot of, a lot of sludge and slime out there in the world, right? And a lot of scams. And also a lot of people just don't believe that they could actually go do that. And so their brain automatically turns it off.

Right.

And so they're just not receptive. And so the best thing that I can do or that we can do in our company is present information in context that allows them to start to understand it where they can get to that point of, of closer receptivity. Maybe they're not gonna be ready emotionally to go make that decision, but at least we've given them the context where they've got more, they've, they, they're more likely to make a, a choice, right? Versus just immediately just turning it off.

Right?

When it comes to your own self, it's tough because there are natural transitions that people go through, like, you know, where, you know, you just, you go through your own phases and eventually you hit some tipping point where you're just, you're like, I'm changing something, I'm changing this, you know? When it comes to, like, for me writing books, for example, I know at a certain point I'm going to get ready and I'm going to write the book. And I know for a long time I'm going to avoid it. I know I'm going to run in circles. I'm going to, you know, run away from the book or just go on walks or do anything and everything. But at a certain point, and there's a few factors that lead to it, I reached this point where I'm like, I'm done running. Like, I'm just going to face this thing in the face. I'm not going to keep running. I'm going to deal with the consequences. I'm ready to start living at a higher level. I'm ready to take— I'm ready to go for this. And I do think you can, you can implement things that can force that on yourself so that you can advance in readiness faster. I do think you can force those things. I think you can implement things that can not force you there, but make it way more likely that you'll get there a lot faster. I really do.

So cool. Kaylee?

I am just absorbing and typing notes at the moment because I love all these answers. So profound. Thank you so much, Dr. Benjamin Hardy. I do have a question because I know you talk a lot about the science of scaling and have got helping so many people to scale. But a lot of my audience or people that I know are at the very beginning of the journey about, you know, really no audience, no reputations, no connections, and they're really starting out, but they have the ambition to grow and scale. They want to be like a thought leader like yourself, speaking, writing, coaching. Um, where would you start if you were to have to start all over again? Um, for the audience who are just starting out, not ready to scale?

First off, I want to say, how's it going, Kaylee? You're amazing. Uh, I was— it was amazing to meet you in person as well. You two are a dream team. Um, what I would say is this, how I, how I explain it these days is that growing and scaling are actually two different things, right? Um, technically a business can be growing it, you know, the average, actually the average in the US growth rate of a company is 2 to 8% per year. Right. So you can grow very linearly and, and, and honestly, like not do much growth at all. And so to me, I don't, I, I, I don't feel it's appropriate to use those 2 words, um, you know, sloppily, like growth and scale are completely different games. And, and most businesses and most people are growing very linearly, meaning that they're just taking where they're at right now and just slightly doing a little bit more of it. Right. Um, they're not doing, they're, they're very, very It's very linear, very small growth, very incremental, right? For me, scaling means that you're, you're, you're transforming the company at least to go to a 10x level, right? Uh, a 10x is an order of magnitude. And so it's, it's at a, that's at a fundamentally level, fundamentally different level. And for me, I guess what I would say is, and, and a lot of people think, well, I don't really want to scale because they have a lot of false assumptions about what that means. Um, but scaling for me means you're, you're 10xing. And I don't mean metaphorically. That's something that I made a mistake on. Um, when I wrote this book, 10x Is Easier Than 2x, um, obviously people loved the book, but they didn't take it literally. They didn't take the concept of like literal 10x. So like if you're at $10 million, 10x would be getting to $100 million revenue, right? Or valuation. Um, and so we fixed that with The Science of Scaling. We were like, no, like You need to actually use a literal 10x, right? Whether it's revenue or valuation, you could use other metrics, I guess. You know, it depends on your goal, right? It could be book sales. I wouldn't do things like social media followers, right? Because those kind of things end up not having durability, right? Like, you know, social media channels change all the time, right? They change their algorithms like they don't. There's I wouldn't use that. Book sales, if you're truly like a pure author's author, maybe book sales would be a great thing to potentially 10x, right? But at least in business, I would do revenue or valuation. But what I'm trying to say is if someone was just starting out, because human beings are shaped largely by their goals, right? The goals that they select really influence everything that they do afterward, right? Goals shape our identity. Goals, so they shape our psychology. Goals shape our pathways or our options. Goals shape the people we surround ourselves with and who we learn from. Goals shape the systems that we end up designing and building, right? And so the thing I would say to anyone, whether you're starting out or whether you're where you're at, which doesn't really matter, is, is to be very thoughtful about the goal you select, right? Because the goal you select is going to Shape all your options and choices. That's that's the fundamental aspect of the science of scaling: is that when you actually scale the goal to a magnitude, an order of magnitude of at least you know one ten x, that that ten x and if you give yourself a short enough time frame where it forces you to start acting on it now rather than in five years, that goal is going to force you to. I call it raise your floor, right? But it's going to force you to really look at everything you're doing today because most things that you're doing right now. aren't going to get you to 10x. And so most of those things, they belong to your past, but they don't belong to your future. And they're beautiful. They're, again, no point in being mad at those things. But most things you're doing right now can't scale. Most things you're doing right now are linear. Most things you're doing right now are additive. They're not multiplicative. Multiplicative means that they multiply, they 10x, they're exponential. They're those 20% of things, you know, Richmond, that you brought up, those few things that create almost all the results. Most things that we're all saying yes to right now And everyone says yes, by the way, to thousands of things every single day, right? Um, most of those things are just continuations of what we were doing yesterday. And so the thing I'm trying to say, and I've gone in too many different circles to say it, is choose much bigger goals. Choose scale goals rather than growth goals, right? Choose goals that seem impossible. One of the things that we wrote about in The Science of Scaling was literally the research on impossible goals. They're called stretch goals. And if you think about people like Elon Musk, right, we know his goal. He wants to get to Mars, right? And that goal shapes everything he's doing. The reason he, you know, took SpaceX and turned it into an AI company, it's now technically an AI company more than a rocket company. The reason he did that was because the only way in his mind that he can get to Mars is he needed the company to be evaluated at a very high level. And the only way that the company could be valued at a very high level was for him to make it an AI company, because AI companies right now are evaluated at extreme multiples compared to a rocket company, right? And so he made the company an AI company, and he's pouring so much into owning AI because he needs that level of capital to achieve his goal, which is a ridiculous goal of getting to Mars. He couldn't do it any other way. And so Yeah, that's what I'd say. You don't have to say my, my goal is to go to Mars, right? And it's not your goal versus my goal, and I'm trying to be better than you, or I'm trying to, you know, it, it's just really a recognition that the goal you set shapes everything that comes afterward, and that the future is what actually shapes and determines who people are in the present. So I would challenge everyone, especially the beginner, but everyone to actually make their goals massively different and bigger. Solely for the sake of that changes your pathway, your choices, your options, and what you do afterward. And either way, it's going to take 3 years. Either way, it's going to take 5 years. It's just a very different learning journey.

On that note, Dr. Hardy, I once heard you say, like, setting the right goal, you're halfway there. So what's an example of not a great goal? or an example of like a, a great goal, you know what I mean?

I wish I'm the one who said it, by the way. It was John Doerr. So John Doerr—

Oh, right.

John Doerr is actually one of the GOATs in, in, in venture capital. Um, he's truly one of the GOATs, and he's, he's multi-billionaire, helped guide Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs really, um, was mentored deeply by John Doerr. So were the people who created Google and many others. John Doerr is truly a GOAT. But he said that He said this in his book, Measure What Matters, which is a great book, but he said that a goal properly set is halfway reached. And the reason for that, and this fits with our framework with Frame, Floor, Focus, is, is that when you set the goal effectively, right, in terms of scale and timeline, and obviously measuring the right thing, right? Whether it's revenue, valuation, you certainly don't want to be going for the wrong goal, right? Because that's going to put you on Uh, you know, not the most effective path, right? Um, a lot of goals are simply vanity metrics, right? And a lot of goals are people chasing appearances or statuses or things like that. And they, and so definitely choose the right goal when it comes to business revenue or valuation. Certainly profits are awesome, but the reason it's a goal properly set is halfway reached is because when you set the goal effectively, It eliminates almost all choices, right? You want— a lot of people want infinite optionality, but the reality is, is that most options and most pathways and even most knowledge, right, most information is, is created by people who don't know what they're talking about, right? Like, think about on the internet, right? Most of the— you can go onto YouTube, right, and you can listen to quote-unquote experts, but what are they really experts at, right? Like, And so if you're listening to people who are sharing information, you gotta ask like, where is it? What is the source of this information? And how credible is this information really? Right. Um, you really wanna learn from people who are, who are way more advanced than you are, to be honest with you, because those are the people who can share with you proper knowledge and information. Um, and so, yeah, most options, most pathways, like just think about it like this. And I know that you're a great outlier on this respect, Richmond, but like, I think in the US it's somewhere around, you know, less than 2 or 3% of companies in the US ever get to $10 million revenue. Right. And so if you get to $10 million revenue, you're already in the top 1 or 2% of US companies. Right. And so, you know, but then, and, but then it's like, so now you want to go learn from companies at the $100 million or the billion level. Right? Go learn from those companies. But, but what I'm trying to say is this, if your goal is to get to $100 million, then most of the information out there isn't gonna get you there because most of the information out there is designed to help people get to $1 million or $2 million or $5 million, right? And that information's not gonna get you to $100 million or a billion, right? And so the goal properly set is halfway reached because if you set the goal at the right level, it's gonna eliminate 99.999% of not only pathways and options, but information. Most information is just noise. It's complete distraction from amateurs that you don't wanna deal with and don't wanna learn from because it's gonna make you more confused. Actually, Nassim Taleb in his book Black Swan said that the more people read the news, the less they know about the real world. Because if you think about it, most of the news is just trying to create headlines and trying to like, It's, it's just trying to— it's just a very skewed perspective of the world, and it's what most people are consuming, and it's mostly noise. It's not showing you what's the signal that really matters. And so if you're consuming broad information for the masses, then you're gonna have a really broad perspective that's not gonna get you very far. It's gonna make you average because it's made for the average man.

So good. Kaylee?

I am just fascinated about all the answers and I love it. So a personal question, um, what's your goal, Dr. Hardy? Um, what's your impossible goal?

Such a gorgeous question and I'm here for all of it. I, I truly love you guys so much and one day I want to spend more time with you. I really, really resonate with both of you on a huge level. Um, yeah, so for our company scaling.com, our quote-unquote impossible goal Um, we officially opened the doors on it. Um, it's been about 14 or 15 months. We opened the doors in May of 2025, right? We're at about $13 million revenue. We've hit some massive walls and plateaus. Um, but we're, we're now, we are now, we've now learned some of our, you know, beautiful lessons. And, um, so we want to get, we want to go 10x essentially in the next 2 years, right? We want to be between $120 and $150 million revenue. Um, by the end of 2027. Um, and so that's, that's our, that's kind of our focused goal, right? Um, there's, there's pathways to doing it. I'm writing, I'll be writing 2 or 3 additional books that'll go out there. And those books obviously drive people to scaling.com, what we're building. They provide the philosophy. Um, they're really high-level marketing, right? They're, you know, New York Times bestselling books and stuff like that. So, um, but yeah, the number one objective is get the company to that level of revenue by the end of 2027. About— it's a range between $120 and $150 million revenue.

Wow.

So that's what we're doing. Yeah, we, we, we pretty much need about 3,000 clients to do it, right? 3,000 additional clients, 3,000 scalers.

On, on the note of, um, personal questions, I, I know you speak a lot about identity, and, um, because I know you're a husband, a father, um, a mentor, an author, so how do you go about switching hats and switching identities? Or is there like a global identity that you kind of live by? For someone with multiple responsibilities watching this, like, I'm a mom, I'm a sister, I'm a friend, now got to be a coach, and I'm doing this part-time, and now I got to scale, and business owner. So can you talk to us about that?

Yeah, absolutely. I definitely— obviously we all have different roles in our lives, and probably to some degree different role, different goals related to those different roles. For me, like, obviously my fundamental identity relates to my faith in God, right? Child of God, lived with God, you know, that's like, that's like my fundamental identity. And that, that obviously filters and shapes my priorities, my choices, etc. You know, why I chose to, you know, marry the person I married, right? Why we chose to have kids, why we chose to have a family, right? Those were shaped by my faith in God. And that viewpoint, that more core identity. And so yeah, my faith is by far the biggest aspect of my identity, and with that fits my family, my relationship with my wife, our family, our choices. So being a husband and father are huge aspects of my identity and huge aspects of what I value. That doesn't mean, and I know that a lot of people talk about this, they say that your time should be deeply you know, should be proven out by your values. And people say that a lot, but, but, but sometimes people's roles determine certain things. Like, it is part of my role as a father and how me and my wife have chosen to live that. Part of my role as a father is to provide, right? And so that means I need to be at work. And so even though I'm working and, you know, I, you know, and away from my kids a lot of the time, that doesn't mean that they're not my priority or that I'm not aligned with my wife. You know what I mean? And so I think, I think a lot of people mess up, miss, miss, mess that up. And they make people feel guilty when, you know, their time is invested a lot in their work, even though like, and so I, but obviously I still think you should prioritize quality time and one-on-one moments and things like that. But they're often, they're often about quality of moments, just, just as much, if not more about quality than quantity. Yeah, I would just say it's best to have, this may sound weird, but it's best to have as few identities as possible. You know, I don't think you want 50 identities, in my opinion. Obviously having a few, but to me, I don't really, I think that I don't really see myself as having like a bunch of split identities. I guess I just don't think about it that way. I know that there's, there's times when I need to go deep in my writing, right? I'm actually in that phase right now. So this is kind of a funny time to be recording a podcast because usually I don't do it in this window. Like I'm in this insane window right now where I'm finishing this book. Um, and so like my wife knows and respects that. My kids know that they're like, dad is in tunnel cave mode right now. And like, you know, it's summer, right? And so like, but then I pull out of that, you know, and after I finished the book, like we, we do travel, we have fun. Like, you know, we celebrated 4th of July, so we were doing fireworks and stuff like that. So. I don't think I'm explaining myself well. All I'm really trying to say is, is I don't think you should have too segmented of identities. I think that they should definitely— in the psychology literature, they would, they'd call it, they'd say, do you have an obsessive— they relate it to passion, but do you have obsessiveness or do you have a harmonious? Harmonious passion is where like the core elements of your life are in harmony with each other. You know, they may not be in like perfect balance, but they're in harmony. They resonate with each other. They're not at conflict with each other. Whereas people who are obsessively passionate about things, Um, they do try to segment things and they end up creating like real, real extremes where aspects of their life destroy other aspects of their life. Um, and so I'm more into being harmonious. That doesn't mean I'm equal, but it means I'm harmonious.

Yeah, well said. Well said. On the note of harmonious too, um, environment. So, um, what I'm getting, I guess, from environment is when people are looking for change or looking to get focused, like you're in this period now where you're just writing, writing, writing. How do you set up an environment for you to win? But more importantly, how can— what are some things that some people can do out there that they can do to change the environment to set it up for success?

I would think about environment a little differently. I would think about it more as— sorry, you might have to edit that. I would think about environment a little bit differently. I would think about it more as what's the situation you set up? That's a little bit more macro, right? Because obviously I'm in an environment right now. You're in an environment, right? I'm in a studio, right? It's great. And it's a great setup. But what I'm saying is it's better to think about what's the situation you created for yourself more than the environment. And the situation is more than just the physical surroundings. The situation is like, what are the expectations, right? What's the investment, right? What's the, you You know, so for you, you know this because people work with you, they pay a lot of money to work with you. That changes the situation, that changes their psychology, right? Maybe having a deadline, maybe having partners, right? So for me, as just an example, because I'm married and part of my situation is having a wife and kids like that, that changes who I am. When I was a PhD student back, you know, back in the day, a first-year PhD student, that's when my wife and I first became foster foster parents, right? And so we went from zero to zero kids to 3, literally overnight. We had 3 foster kids. And a lot of people would think that that would've hurt my productivity. It actually made my productivity go through the roof because now I, I felt this weight of expectation that I needed to succeed for my family. It's not like I worked more. I just worked better with my time because I felt this weight as this new husband, as this new father to provide for my family. So that was a different situation.

You know what I mean?

Actually, um, Angela Duckworth, who wrote the book Grit. She has a new book coming out soon called Situated, and it's a lot about this. I haven't read the book yet, but I know all the research where you, yeah, you really want to put yourself in a situation that demands a lot out of you. They actually call it the Pygmalion effect in psychology where we rise to the demands of our situation, right? So, so for me, as an example, you know, in scaling.com, I have 2 partners, right? Like they're You know, they expect me to to do things, and on days when I don't want to do it, I do. I often do what I don't want to do because they expect me to, right? And because I'm accountable to them, right? The same would be true of my wife and kids. Having a deadline, right? Being you know, in in the case of my book, I'm at a publisher. I've set it up so that I know when the deadline is, right? And I'm like, and I push for that deadline because I know that by having that deadline, it's going to. Force me to to go deep into to what we were talking about earlier, to get my butt ready even when I don't want to be ready. And so I think more than the environment, I think you can set up the situation so that the situation, you know, you're the one who set up the situation, but now the situation is is is is not letting you off the hook, right? It's it's the the situation and the demands of the situation and the deadline of the situation, just the reality of it. is forcing you to do what you really want to do. But often, you know, you distract yourself or you get yourself in the way because there's no external accountability. Having external accountability is really important. Of course, you want to be accountable to yourself, but the research is really big on this. You also want external accountability. And often there's things you'll do for external accountability that you wouldn't do for internal. And that's not a weakness. That's a strength. You know, even myself, I have a running partner, right? I'll just give a really basic example because I know that I want to get in much better shape. Right. And part of that, I just like running. I think running's good for my brain, my body and stuff. And so I go running with this guy, um, who lives near us. He's 30 years older than me. Right. He's, he's like one of those people who's elite. He's like a Boston marathoner. He's 70, but he runs Bostons. Um, and I just like spending time with him. I started running with him a lot and he's training for a marathon. So I just signed up for the marathon. Right. And it's like, I'm just explaining to you, setting up the situation. And I know that if I wake up at 5:30 in the morning, like he's going to expect me to be there. So I go, and if I didn't have him there, and if I hadn't signed up to like do the marathon with him, it'd be less likely that I would go running. So this is just setting up situations. I hope that makes sense.

Yeah, makes sense. And running in Florida too. Wow. In summer, that is brutal, brother.

That's why, that's why we're getting up at 5:30 in the morning.

Kaylee?

I'm just happy listening because I— one thing that you mentioned that's really got my attention. I mean, I listen to your books and all the time to get motivations, but you just motivate me so much because I'm pregnant and I've got baby coming next month, literally. And when you say that after 3 foster kids you've got higher productivity instead of lower productivity, that one sentence really got me excited and go, wow, I really need to set up my own situation in a way that it happens for me as well. So thank you for, for that inspiration. On that note, can we dig a little bit deeper into that? Because I think a lot of our audience are also in a situation where they're busy, they've got a lot of things happening. So how do we really like higher productivity? Like other than external accountability, what else we can do specifically to have a higher productivity in a busier situation, if, if that question makes sense?

Yeah, it makes beautiful sense. Number 1, remember what I said. So obviously we've talked about setting up the situation, having external accountability, right? People you care about, people that matter, like literally like creating expectation, right? Having deadlines, things like that. Things that actually pull you forward, things that you need to show up on, right? And it all fits. And just don't forget, we already said set much higher goals, right? Set much higher goals. Because those goals are going to shape who you partner with and who you don't partner with. It's going to set the things you focus on, but it's also going to determine— so back to the core framework of the Science of Scaling, frame, floor, focus. A big thing to recognize, and this kind of fits actually with the new book that I'm working on right now called Power Law Strategy. In the world of statistics and then just in the world of So there's a concept called power laws, right? Power laws fit very much with what Richmond brought up, which was the Pareto principle, the 80/20 rule, which is just the idea that not everything creates the same exact results, right? You could spend a lot of time on certain things and it won't get you the desired result. Um, most things actually can't get you the result, right? And so part of the 80/20 principle is just the recognition that if there's a few things that you do, That are actually the things that are generating almost all of your results. And you really want to isolate what are those few things you're doing that are actually creating the results, and what are the 80% or 90% or 95% things you're doing right now that at the end of the day, they're mostly just busy work. They're they're not they're not your best. They're not they're not worth your time and investment in terms of attention and energy, right? You just have to realize that that with the power law. It's the idea that a few things matter and most things don't. And you just have to realize that and appreciate that. And that's just a reality. That's just a fact. And, and, and you can pretend that's not a fact and you can just equally place your focus and energy on all the things in your life. Or you can say, most of the things I'm doing right now aren't gonna get me very far. I either need to delegate those or delete 'em, and I need to raise my floor. Raising your floor means you're raising your floor and you're saying anything below that floor. We're not doing it. We're not touching it. We're not dealing with it. It's not gonna get us very far. And we're gonna focus on the few things that really matter. We're gonna take, we're gonna go really deep into those. We're gonna actually get to extreme levels of mastery in those few things that matter. And that's what's gonna make you stand out. You know, like the difference between 1 and 2 isn't that much in terms of skill, but it's like 10 or 100x in terms of pay and position. And so like, you just gotta realize that investing in mastery and getting better and better at what you do and how you're positioned, the results are exponential. And most people just won't pay that price. They're just too broad and diversified in what they say yes to. So the main thing I'm trying to say here is you don't, it's not like you need 100 hours a week of work. It's that you need 20 or 40 hours a week of work on the few things that really matter. You need to stop saying yes to the stuff that are below the floor. Those are the things that are slowing you down dramatically. Those are the things that are linear, creating 8 to 10% a year growth, right? Versus 10x to 100x scale. So the goal actually tells you what to focus on. That's why you want to scale the goal. When you scale the goal 10 or 100x, it tells you what's above and below the floor. And so I just want you to know, like, Productivity is not about, um, how much you can crunch into an hour, right? Or, or, or time management. It's about focusing on the few things that actually get the result and the few relationships that get the result. And until you're focused on those few things and the right things, that's back to discernment and selection, Richmond. you're not— you're going to be saying yes to all the wrong things that just by their nature create a small result.

So good. Dr. Hardy, we're going to have you on the front cover of the Top Speaker Magazine. And so a lot of our listeners and viewers are going to be either speaking already or aspirational speakers. What I noticed about you is your linguistic skills, like your communication, your language, your words that you use, was that something that you intentionally developed? Or how did that come about? Because I think a lot of the top speakers in the world, they communicate so well and so differently. Can you talk to us about that?

I don't know, Richmond, you're probably more polished than me. You can give me critical feedback too. I think sometimes I wander in circles. What would you say would be Strengths and weaknesses, if you're being honest about my speaking.

Strengths, 100% is— I don't think there's any weakness. Like, I'm so good.

There is some weakness, but anyways.

There are people in the industry which I look up to in terms of how they communicate. You, Myron Golden, Jordan Peterson, and I would even say, like, you know, whether you're polarising figures like Andrew Tate, but they just communicate in a very in a very unique style. And there's not many, there's only about half a dozen people in the world like that. And that's what I really noticed, this pattern between how you speak and how you articulate your thoughts and ideas and the language you use and the words you use to describe it is very high level. But it makes sense when you describe it as well. So that's, that's kind of what I'm getting at. That's what I love most. And I've been trying to learn a new word every day as just a normal practice. I don't know if that's something you were doing or you're doing, but that's like, if I could learn one new word per day, that would be a cool goal.

I think that's beautiful. Yeah, I, I really work hard and I struggle with it. I'll be honest with you, I really struggle with it, but I really work hard to understand What I'm studying, right? So if I'm studying a concept, you know, luckily with AI nowadays, like you can ask it, explain it 50 different ways so that I can actually get this right. And because when you're a teacher, you need to explain and you need to help other people understand. So sometimes you have to share analogies or share it from this perspective or that perspective, and you have to learn what makes sense. So I think that the main thing with communication is understanding, right? Like communication, when you don't have understanding, doesn't matter how articulate it is, it's not conveying a clear message, right? I think that the first thing is, is that there's clarity of an idea or a concept, whatever the communication is, it's a clear message and it gets delivered clearly and it gets received clearly, right? And I remember when I was first writing blog posts, Back in the day on Medium.com, I would always ask myself before I even started writing, like, what's the main thing I want people to to get? Like, what's the main point of this article in this case, right? I think a lot of people don't even ask that question, and so they end up actually trying to accomplish way too many things or having no clear goal with their communication, right? And you know, just as an example, I have a friend of mine who's trying to write a book, and he sent me the.

Doctor Hari, is it the sound just got cut off? Was that me?

I can hear.

Did my sound get cut off? Check, check, check, check, check, check. I might have. I might have actually. I might have actually touched. I might have touched. Okay. Is my sound still okay? I might have touched the cord.

Yeah. Maybe it's my end, but it's working now.

I think I was touching the cord. So when did it go out?

About fifteen seconds for about fifteen second period or so. Fifteen seconds ago.

I'll just quickly repeat and then I'll show you. So the main, the main thing, the main thing is knowing what you want to say before you say it. And this is a challenge that I think that many people have is that they're not clear on what they want to say, or they're trying to say too much all at once and they're just not really clear on it.

Sorry.

Just as a quick example, just, just as a quick example, I have a friend who shared with me his book proposal. He's writing a book proposal right now for a book he wants to sell to a publisher. And he, it was clear to me that he didn't know what he was trying to say. Like, honestly, he did not know what he was trying to say. It was just like, it was like spaghetti all over the place on the wall. Like, and I told him, I said, you're not clear on what you're trying to say. You don't have a clear message. Like, you're literally trying to say everything and anything. It's like, if you go back to the idea of focus and signal, like being on the bullseye versus being way out here. Or another way of saying it is hitting at the branch rather than— or sorry, hitting the root rather than hitting all the branches. I think with a lot of people, when they're communicating, they're focused on the branches, right? And they don't even know what the root is that they're actually talking about. And so they're not talking about the root. They're not going deep on the root. You know, I love the quote from Thoreau where he says, where there's 1,000 people whacking at the branches, there's only one whacking at the root, right? And I think that when it comes to communication, I think a lot of people, um, either they're trying to, you know, trying to prove themselves or this or that, and they're, they're, they're just, they're literally just hacking at the branches and they're nowhere even near the root of what they're really trying to say. And they're not, they don't even know, they might not even know what the root is and they haven't focused enough on the root and they're not clarifying the root. And so they're just all over the place. And so I think that that has a lot to do with communication, Richmond, as I, as I see it. Is I just think that a lot of people, even with a singular message, a singular point, like they're just all over the place. They're not truly clear and therefore their message isn't clear and it's not clearly received. And they haven't gone so deep on what they're working on that they can't explain it with a level of mastery. Instead, they're fairly amateur at what they're trying to explain. Plus they're explaining like 5 things rather than 1. Does that make sense? Yeah. And by the way, you should never say, does that make sense? I think that, that I've heard that that's actually a bad thing to say for speakers.

Kaylee, do you want to comment on that? I've never heard that. That's—

I've heard, I've heard it said if people say, does that make sense? That's actually a bad thing, but that may be wrong.

All right. We've got, we've got a couple of minutes left. Um, any final things, Kaylee?

Um, I always learn so much from you, Dr. Hardy, every time I hear from you and I want to be useful for you. I know your goal. You mentioned earlier that you want to get to 120 to 150 million revenue in the next 2, 3 years. Is there anything me or Richmond or our community can do for you to help you get there, maybe even a little bit faster, that we can support you?

So the, the practical aspect of that goal is that we need 3,500 people in our company, scalers, 300— 3,500 clients, right? And, and, and so right now we're at almost 600. Um, but yeah, we're looking for people who want to 10x their business, frankly. You know, people in, in our floor is $1 million revenue, right? You gotta be doing at least $1 million in revenue and you have to be fully committed to at least 10x-ing your business in 3 years, right? And, and so those are the people we're looking for. So if you know entrepreneurs who are doing at least $1 million revenue and who truly wanna 10x, um, and are willing to implement real strategy, meaning they're gonna change their business model, they're gonna actually like build a team that's gonna scale, uh, those are the people we're looking for. And so that, that, that's the best way you can help us. Uh, secondarily, obviously just doing this, me spending time with you two doing these interviews, share this with your people. Um, whoever wants to read The Science of Scaling, you know, that's the book that Tony Robbins said changed his whole, you know, that's the book that he said was going to be the book that's gonna revolutionize the whole field of scaling and strategy. Um, so getting the book out there and ultimately pointing people who wanna 10x their business to scaling.com, that's, that's how you support. That's how you support me.

Will do.

I think there are a few people in the community that will tick that box, so I would love to send them your way. Um, last question that I know Richmond asks every single guest in our podcast is, if you lose your voice tomorrow, what's that one last message you'd like to share with the world?

It's really a humbling question, Richmond. Richmond, though, I think you got to give yourself some credit. And actually, I know how you use your AI. You're very good at asking questions. And I know you, you, you were mentioning to us at a dinner, you know, when we were at dinner about the questions you've, you have, you've got like sets of prompts that you give to your clients, which is brilliant, by the way. So I think you're an elite, you both are elite at asking questions as well. Um, yeah, I would say, you know, my, the most simple, the most simple and honest truth I have is, is that I know that God is real. You know, I mean, that's like, that's, that's the— if I was gonna get hit the root of all roots, for me, that's the root of all roots, right? Is that God is real, um, and that, uh, we can build a relationship with God and that we can utilize that relationship to do incredible things and learn incredible things. And, uh, that there's a purpose to life and, uh, that life's a beautiful thing. And, um, a big aspect of life is learning. It's sharing. It's, it's, uh, it's building relationships. And I think that that's like— Numero uno, you know. So I think that it— that's probably, uh, just truth, truth fact number one that, uh, you know, I know that many people believe that, but that, that's probably what I would say if I had just one choice of a word, of a message to share.

Wow, what a way to end. What a way to end. Dr. Benjamin Hardy, it's been an absolute pleasure. What a great podcast. And if you're watching this right now, you can go to scaling.com or you can look him up and Get his books, and The Science of Scaling is the book that's going to help you grow as well. Um, thank you for being on the podcast.

Thank you.

You guys are incredible.

All right, well, I trust that you enjoyed that interview there. Now, if you haven't seen my video on my channel where he coached me one-on-one on how to create a $10 million coaching offer, and he showed me on how to launch it as well, which I did, which is crazy. And when I launched it that week, I had got over 22 leads. Catch that video right now on my channel. I'll drop the link in the description for you to find.