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

Chapter 15
Burn the Place Down

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Once you take 10X actions and start getting traction, you must continue to add
wood to your fire until you either start a brushfire or a bonfire—or burn the
place down. Don't rest, and don't stop—ever. I learned this the hard way after
achieving a lot of success and then resting on my laurels. This is a commonly
made mistake. Do 
not
do it! Keep stacking wood until the fire is so hot and
burns so brightly that not even competitors or market changes can put your fire
out. Your fire has to continue to be stoked, and that means more wood, more
fuel, and in your case, more actions. Once you start operating like this, it will
become almost second nature to continue—because you are going to be winning.
It's easiest and most natural to continue taking massive actions when you are
winning—and winning is only possible with massive actions.
When you begin to “heat things up,” you'll quickly become aware—even
obsessed—with the possibilities before you and will start to see new levels of
positive results. Your actions will start to perpetuate themselves like a flywheel
that, once it gets going, continues going. Newton talked about the law of inertia:
An object in motion continues in motion. Keep taking action until you can't stop
your forward momentum. You might even find yourself operating on less sleep
and food because you are literally subsisting on your adrenaline generated by
your victories. It will be about this time that people start offering you admiration
—and then advice. Be particularly wary of those who suggest you have “done
enough” or who advise you to take a rest or vacation. Now is not the time for
rest and celebration; it's time for more action. Andy Grove, one of Intel
Corporation's first employees, coined the saying, “Only the paranoid survive.”
Although I'm not recommending that you spend your entire career in a state of
paranoia, I do believe that you must stay committed to taking action. Even after
achieving successes along the way, continue to take more actions in order to
exceed your goals. The time to celebrate or take vacations will come. Right now,
you must keep adding wood until the fire is burning so hot that no one—and
nothing—can put out your successes.
One of the problems with success is that it demands continuous attention.
Success tends to bless those who are most committed to giving it the most
attention. It's somewhat like a lawn or garden; no matter how green it gets or
beautiful the flowers, you must continue to tend to it. You have to keep mowing,
trimming, edging, watering, and planting; otherwise, your grass will turn brown
and your flowers will die. That is the case for success as well. There is 
no
retreating for those who want to create and keep it. It is a myth to believe that the
successful get to “kick back” and stop making the very efforts that have brought
them fulfillment in the first place.

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Always keep the four actions—doing nothing, retreating, taking an average
amount of action, and taking massive action—in mind. The 10X Rule means you
are going to create success in quantities great enough that you are constantly in
total control. The wannabes and people who get close are the ones who quit
adding wood and then backed off. Massive action is designed to move you past
your peers and off the “treadmill.” The best way to quit worrying about
competition and uncertainty is to build a fire so large and so hot that everyone in
the world—even your competition—comes to sit by 
your
fire for warmth. Keep
in mind that most competition is created by those who are unwilling to operate at
the higher levels of action, who merely imitate others' efforts. There can never be
enough wood on your fire. You can never take too much action or accumulate
too much success. There is no such thing as being talked or written about
excessively, being covered too frequently, receiving too much authority, or
working too much. These are simply claims that mediocre people make in order
to justify their own decisions to be happy with the status quo.
How can you ever take too much action when you have an endless ability to
create new actions? Look at the big players on this planet. None of them ever
“runs out” of energy, efforts, people, ideas, or resources. They enjoy the gifts of
abundance because they create abundance in their enterprises. So instead of
resenting them, admire and emulate them. If you do, you'll find that the more
you commit to new actions, the more creative you will become. It is as though
your imagination opens up, and new possibilities just pour from it. It's not even
necessarily the creativity that is so brilliant but the ability to take massive action
that it prompts.
I recently met with a very high-profile PR firm in Los Angeles whose
members suggested that I was in danger of being “overexposed”—something I
thought was an extremely strange concept. The notion of overexposure—the
idea that you can see or hear too much about someone—is based on the concept
that a person doesn't continue to generate new ideas and products. The
underlying belief is that an overexposed person or product will somehow lose its
value. But consider the following: Coca-Cola is known by almost everyone on
planet Earth. You can find the company's products in almost every store, bar,
airplane, and hotel in the world. Is it overexposed? Should it hide its products?
Should the company hold back in fear that Coca-Cola will lose its value because
too many people are hearing about and using it? This seems to be a fairly
ridiculous way of thinking. And there are countless other examples of products
and companies that prove this point—Microsoft, Starbucks, McDonald's, Wells
Fargo, Google, Fox TV, Marlboro, Walgreens, Exxon, Apple, Toyota—and even

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some athletic and celebrity personalities. Although overexposure is usually not
the problem, obscurity certainly can be. Remember: If you don't know (or know
about) me, then it doesn't matter how good my product is or how low my price
is. And even if this 
were
the case, I would rather be overexposed than face
obscurity.
The sad but true fact is that most people don't even get in the neighborhood of
building a bonfire. They're either miseducated, socially programmed to settle for
less, or fear that their actions will somehow get “out of control.” I promise you
that this will not happen. You must build your fire so big and so hot that you not
only burn the house down but incinerate everything in your path. Go all the way
—and then keep going until your fire burns so hot that people stand in
admiration of your ability to take action. Don't worry about the resistance you're
afraid you'll face from either the market or your competitors. They'll get right
out of your way once they see that you're a force to be reckoned with.

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