The Ten Times Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure

The 10X Rule
is NOT for everyone. It is
clearly not for anyone who is willing to accept average or mediocrity or for those
who prefer to kick back and settle for the leftovers. It is not for those who want
to depend on hope and prayer for their success. The 10X Rule is meant for the
few people obsessed with creating an exceptional life—and who want to be in
charge of that process. The 10X Rule removes the concepts of luck and chance
from your business equation and shows you exactly what mind-set you must
embrace in order to lock in massive success.
Consider the following scenario: Let's say that you are setting your financial
goals. In 2009, the president of the United States said that people who make
$250,000 should be considered rich. Keeping with the current trend, your tax bill
will be at least $100,000, leaving you with a remaining $150,000. After you
make payments on two cars, make a mortgage payment, pay your property taxes,
and feed, clothe, and school your kids, you might have $20,000 left. If you save
that money for the next 20 years, you'll end up with around $400,000—assuming
nothing goes wrong. Now take into account the fact that your parents—possibly
both your parents and your in-laws—didn't plan for their own retirement
properly. They are going to outlive their savings by about 15 years and will

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depend on you to take care of them. If any of this happens, you will find out
quite quickly, and too late, that you underestimated your financial goals and will
spend more effort just trying to manage what you have created than what it took
to accumulate it. And remember, in addition to taking care of your parents, you
have to fund your own retirement years. Additionally, this scenario assumes no
increases in the cost of living, no bad news, no emergencies, and no major
events. Throw in just a little of what has happened in the last couple of years,
and you will see that 90 percent of the population has underestimated the goals
and targets necessary to fund their lifestyles, much less their life's purposes.
“Small” thinking has and always will be punished in one way or another.
We live on a planet where the primary belief is an underestimation of
everything. The best business schools in the country cite undercapitalization as
one of the top reasons for companies' failures. This is caused by a miscalculation
of how much cash a company would burn through before its product caught on
—and is yet another example of how average doesn't cut it.
The biggest regret of my life is not the fact that I haven't worked my ass off—
because I have. It's that I didn't set targets 10 times higher than what I originally
thought I could accomplish from the very beginning. Why? Because my goals
were influenced and limited greatly by the way I was brought up. I am not
blaming anyone; it is just a fact. I spent the first 30 years of my business career
getting the 10X effort part right and will spend the next 25 years getting the 10X
goal-setting part right. So I recommend you do the following: