Ep. 123 - Dr. Benjamin Hardy: Scale Your Business 10x

Speaker A: Most people don't truly have a 10x goal. They may have a 10x aspiration, but it's not a 10x goal and they don't give themselves a short amount of time to do it. Uh, if Your goal is 5, 10, 15 years away, it's not, it's not pressing on you enough to force hard decisions.

Speaker B: Today this is the Business of Advice podcast where we help good advisors become great business owners. Today on the Business of Advice podcast, I am excited to welcome Dr. Benjamin Hardy, who is an organizational psychologist and the co founder of scaling.com and a best selling author whose books have sold millions of copies worldwide. I, uh, told him before we started, we tell the advisors we work with that his books are like required reading for any entrepreneur. Uh, he is the mastermind behind such, uh, game changing frameworks that we're going to talk about today. Like who not how the gap in the gain 10x is easier than 2x and his latest one, which we will probably spend the most amount of time on, the science of scaling, uh, which shows entrepreneurs a proven system to grow 10 times bigger and faster than you think possible in three years or less. So for financial advisors and any entrepreneur that's listening today that's ready to stop trading their time for incremental growth, his frameworks are pure rocket fuel. Dr. Hardy, welcome to the Business of Advice podcast.

Speaker A: Cody, it's good. Happy to be with you.

Speaker B: Yeah, excited. We have tried to do this for a while now. We've had a lot of mutual friends who have connected us and I guess when you just keep pumping out these best selling books like takes uh, up a lot of time writing those and I know you're working on one now too, so I can't wait to see it too.

Speaker A: Yeah. And um, grateful for your patience, uh, I've looked forward to being on your podcast, to be honest with you.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's going to be awesome. I told you, like legitimately, the concepts we're going to talk about like kind of four core principles that have been instrumental uh, for so many of our advisors through the years. But let me start this. I always like to kind of set the stage. So first question, you have been open about being a video game junkie who almost didn't make it out of high school, but then your parents divorce at age 11, shifted your world. Maybe just walk us through to start with your personal transformation and how those early experiences kind of shaped your philosophy on um, the work that you do today, I guess is an easy way to say it.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah, So I obviously had some big, big, pivotal, uh, childhood experiences, parents divorce being, you know, I think that that rocks many people's worlds. I uh, was 11 years old, oldest of three boys, parents got divorced. And the, the divorce just had massive repercussions and ripple effects. Uh, what it ended up doing was it ended up leading my, my father into just a deep depression and ultimately a drug addiction. So he became a meth addict and things like that. And he was, you know, so it's just, it's just the cascading effects of these things. I'm uh, in junior high going through high school, things like that. And so, yeah, I think that for me I just had a lot of escapism. You know, I escaped through video games, through snowboarding, through things like that. I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. Um, but there was a piece of me that had kind of uh, a view of, you know, we could call it my own future self. And that future self was, you know, serving a mission for my church. And so that was kind of the, like in Viktor Frankl's terms, that was kind of the thing that gave me meaning and hope. Right. So if, you know, Viktor Frankl wrote man, search for meaning, obviously all about the concentration camps and talked about how in dire circumstances and really, you know, in any circumstance, your future is what gives meaning and context to your present. And the difficulty with traumas is that it kind of erases the future and then you become defined by the past and uh, the present just is a downhill spiral. So for me, I think I was lucky enough that I had a view of my future self and that, that allowed me to navigate the landmines of my uh, my childhood and uh, ultimately come out fairly well. Uh, I also um, right before leaving on that, that, that two year kind of service, church mission, I did reconnect with my father. We reestablished a relationship. And while I was gone during those two years, he, he actually ended up going through massive rehab and things like that. When I came back, he was actually an addiction rec.

Speaker B: That's awesome.

Speaker A: And so he was. So I remember going home, coming home and I was going to community college and I'd go to like group, group 12 steps with him essentially and watch him kind of pour out his soul and watch him kind of just open up and in a group and have people kind of just obviously in, in respect and in confidence share what they're going through. So addiction, addiction obviously played a massive part in, in a lot of my uh, early insights. But that two year church mission was Massively transformational, just learning leadership skills. I ended up um, reading hundreds of books on that, on that mission and filling stacks of journals. And it was during that time that I decided I wanted to be a psychologist and an author. I didn't know I was going to eventually go into studying business and entrepreneurship. Originally, uh, it was just more about individual healing and personal transformation. But when I was home from that and I was studying psychology, I got really interested in business and ultimately entrepreneurship. And so that led me to studying organizational psychology. And you know, in that process I got to know Dan Sullivan, study his work and you know, don't know how far I want to go. But ultimately, you know, quickly in my PhD program, found my own pathways to becoming a professional author pretty quickly and ultimately wrote three books with Dan and just have continued to study um, study entrepreneurship and exponential thinking. Deeper and deeper in psychology just continues to be the roots of um, of how I think it's good.

Speaker B: It's, I think one of the things so many people appreciate is like the books that you write aren't theory, it's like research backed uh, which we're going to dive into some of those. So did you get a go anywhere fun on the mission?

Speaker A: Uh, I went to Pennsylvania. So I mean it was pretty awesome. Obviously people travel all over the world and stuff like that. You don't really get to choose where you go in our, in our faith. But uh, you just go wherever you're asked to go and you just go and serve the community you're in and try to make it a little bit of a better place while you're there. And it's a, a meaningful experience to, to uh, be with people of all walks of life, go places you wouldn't go, meet people you wouldn't meet and just try to help people come closer to God or just mow their lawn or clean out their garbage can. Whatever you, whatever you, whatever service you can do, you kind of, you just kind of do it.

Speaker B: Well it um, also instills so many our top advisors. He, he talks all the time about his mission and I, I think it instills just the confidence in you too, right? To be able to go, you know, knock on doors of complete strangers and be able to open those conversation. It's just there's some life lessons you learn early on there that I think equip you for a lot of success in the future too.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's pretty uh, pretty brutal, you know, going uh, going, going certain places and, and uh, you know, I won't say selling Religion. But, you know, you get the door slammed on your face a lot. You get the thousand or ten thousand no's, you know what I mean? And, uh, you have to, you have to, you have to learn some. Yeah. Ah. I mean, you come. A lot of them come home from these experiences and go on to be pretty dang successful in business because they've, they've had to learn conviction, they've had to learn sales, they've had to learn defeat and disappointment. They've had to learn teamwork. You have to live with people you don't really like. For me, it was, it was more. Way more of an inner journey, just, um, overcoming a lot of my, My childhood. It was really during that, that time that I let. I learned how to let go of certain things. Um, and certainly through writing and just study and, uh, I just, I watched myself go through, you know, when I barely ended up graduating high school, as you referenced before. And so for me, life can just knock people down. And so for me, that experience taught me that I could overcome those things, taught me that I could change, taught me that I could be a leader. Taught me that if I wanted to learn something, I could. Um, and I just consumed so much good books, so many good books. So it was really transformative and it just led me on a path of a deep dive into psychology and eventually a deep dive into strategy and business, which, uh, is just what I continue to love today.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's funny how those things work out sometimes. Obviously now to see the impact that you're having on so many others. And so I want to talk, um, we're going to try and get through all of these, but I always say when I think about you, there's kind of four core, I would say principles or concepts that I think of. The gap versus the gain. 10x is easier than 2x who, not how, and the new one, which is the science of scaling. So I may try and take them in that order and just talk about some of those. So we'll start with the gap versus the gain. And when I first heard, uh, you talk about this concept, probably one of the most powerful things that I've heard, uh, especially for fellow entrepreneurs and our advisors, because I think, um. Well, I would say the basic concept is what we tend to do is often focus on the gap of what's missing, you know, where we want to be versus where we are versus paying attention to the gain of where we've come from. And I know that way oversimplified the concept. So would you maybe Start by just explaining the gap versus the gain in more detail, because I think it's one of the most, uh, powerful mindsets that an entrepreneur can embrace.

Speaker A: 100%. Yeah. And those three books, who not how the Gap and The Gain in 10X is easier than 2X, are three books I wrote with Dan Sullivan. And, um, the beauty of Dan, um, is he, he's been teaching entrepreneurs for about 40, 50 years, and he's phenomenal after, after that many reps of working with entrepreneurs for like, 50 years at observing, you know, their, their pain points, their mistakes and things like that. And he's really good at, he's really good at crystallizing initial concepts where, where, where my strength was in that collaboration was seeing the signal in a lot of the, I won't call it noise, but like, I, I, I was able to identify, uh, you know, the, the, I call it power law. But the few things that Dan was seeing and doing that for me made almost all the results. And so for me, that was why I chose to write those three books was I saw like, I was like, uh, you know, dan has like 400 great ideas, but what are the three? What are the three? What are the 3 that, that have the most impact? And so with the gap in the gain. You said it really beautifully. You know, what Dan discovered was that entrepreneurs are never satisfied with where they're at. And that's, I think that that's a common idea. But his question was, what's the impact of that and why is that happening? Uh, and what he identified was that an entrepreneur usually does not take the time to reference, reflect on, and appreciate where they are now versus where they were before. Yeah, he calls out the gain instead. We're always comparing ourselves with the moving horizon, which is our future. And so we're always sprinting towards that horizon but never arriving there because the horizon never stops moving. And that's what the whole point of the future is. Um, and so if we're always constantly measuring ourselves against a horizon that never stops moving, that diminishes our sense of achievement and accomplishment, we end up feeling this gap constantly. The, the reason I loved that is because it's just so true in human psychology. Uh, I actually call it mastery over our past and mastery over our future. And so the gain, why I think the gain is so beautiful is that usually we don't take enough time. And I've seen this being in rooms, hundreds of rooms of entrepreneurs. Often I'll have them sit and reflect on their past, and they just don't spend a lot of time doing it. And I think that you miss out so much if you don't reflect on your past. Um, and. And really, that just means, like, literally sit and take the time to identify where are you now versus where were you before? Like, you know, that could be five years ago. And you. So for us, you know, you and I, it's May of 2026. So, like, literally go back. Go back to May of 2021, five years ago. Like, where are you versus where were you before? And, like, what actually happened? What's different? How's your company different? How's your team different? How's your process different? Even really, how are your priorities and your personality different? Those things have changed. And what Dan found and what I have also found is that when you actually take the time to actually establish and quantify and lay out the progress that's been made, um, naturally you just feel better. Like, that's extremely natural. But we don't spend the time doing it. But also we miss how much things have actually changed. Um, and it's really important in psychology to appreciate that you're not the same person you were in the past. Like, you know, you're not the same person you were five years ago. You now know a lot of things your past self didn't know. Um, you're now able to do things your past self couldn't do. And so defining how you've changed, defining what's different, laying out the progress that's actually been made, that actually allows you to realize that. That you have changed, that you've gone through a lot, that you've made progress, and that actually opens you up to creating a much bigger future as well. So, yeah, it's just. It's just a much better place to live in as well. When you. And, you know, as a parent, um, it's very easy to constantly move the goalposts. It's natural m to move the goalpost for where we think our kids should be. And so we're always constantly measuring them against, you know, an ideal of perfection in our mind, which we, you know, they don't know what that ideal is because that's in our mind, but we just keep feeling that disappointment. Why are you not where you should be? So instead, I think it's just really profound to constantly point out, especially to your kids or to, uh, those you lead, like, the difference between who they are versus where they were before and say, hey, look, here's where you are now. Yeah, of course, we've got all sorts of Room for improvement. We can talk about that. But, like, I just want you to acknowledge, I see where you are now, and I see that. Look what you were where you were before, and look at that improvement, like, actually showing people, because often other people don't see that in themselves. And as a parent, it's really powerful just to show your kids. Like, I am very amazed by. Look what you did here. Like, you weren't doing that before. Like, that's something really powerful. And yeah, I just think that's good leadership.

Speaker B: It's such a. I still remember, uh, Joel Johnson is one of our top advisors. Joel was a strategic coach guy forever, still may be in there. And he was leading a group of our advisors, did a training for us, and he started. This is probably five years ago now. Um, started it off by just saying, like, hey, I want you to go back 10 years ago and look at where you were at. And kind of was looking at it from a business standpoint. Right. Of just revenue growth, all those things.

Speaker A: Yeah, 100%.

Speaker B: Um, and the way it shifted the mood in the room, like, out of. He, like, opened with that of people really looking at, like, how far they had come, you know, over that period of time was. Was pretty incredible. I'll use that a little bit as a transition, but. And I'll. I should back up and just reinforce, like, if you are listening to this and you haven't done that, what Dr. Hardy just said, like, look back five years and just take stock of, like, how far you've come. Like, great thing to do, um, is just a takeaway.

Speaker A: But, uh, one quick thing I just want to add real quick. It's just. It's just that the better you. You know, how I look at things as a psychologist is, you know, we have these. We have these concept called the past and the future. And like, often, you know, often we think about time as a clock, and time is like, what time is it on the clock? But in psychology, we're carrying around this. These big concepts called the past and the future in our mind. You know, you have a past of where you were yesterday, last week, five years ago. I was talking about my past with my dad and him being a meth addict. Right. So we carry this past with us, but also we have this future as well. Right. And these are models that shape who we are in the present. Um, my view is that the future is a much more powerful model than the past in terms of shaping who we are in the present. But the past is still very powerful. And you know, what we're talking about right now is learning how to think about the past more effectively. Right? Thinking about the past effectively to enhance who you are in the present and the future. And just the thing I'll say is, although looking at say like a, ah, five or ten year time horizon is really powerful, what I have found with people who get really good at thinking about their past and one of the things that I said which can be easily missed is one of the most powerful ways you can think about your past is filtering for and looking for ways in which things have changed and things have improved. Like literally look for how has our business changed and improved in the last 12 months? And actually look for it and actually get really specific and granular about it. As you get better and better at that, you can start to find more change and more growth and more transformation even in, you can start to compress the time where it's like, you can start to get to a point where like every quarter, right, every 90 days or every month, you're seeing massive transformation both in yourself and in those around you where the quality of uh, the past just gets more and more of a valuable tool. So it's something that you can do on shorter and shorter timeframes. I would even recommend literally at the end of every week on a Friday, literally just looking back on the week and saying, what changed this week? You know, what was the most important things? Um, what do I now know that I didn't know a week ago? What's now possible that wasn't possible a week ago? You know, how, in what specific, what specific things do I know that I didn't know on Monday? Right. Like, I think you can get really good at it and it can then allow you to get better at filtering and making plans for the future so that you don't have to repeat cycles as much.

Speaker B: That's good. Um, what Joel used that, that I'm going to say exercise to open up is he had actually opened up with, uh, explaining that he thought everyone in the room would be able to 10x their business in 5 years. You know, and then when they look back, almost everyone in the room had 10x their business when they did that review view. That was, I think, one of the other principles that you've spoken so much about. I would say it's um, you say 10x growth is often easier than 2x because it really forces you to simplify what are maybe some of the most common, I don't know if traps is the right word to use or uh, things that are holding entrepreneurs back from really 10 x ing their business as you've kind of taught this principle or concept.

Speaker A: Yeah. So when, when I wrote 10x and then went on a massive book tour speaking all over the world on 10x. And it's what led to the insights ultimately that went into the science of scaling. Because I think that the science of scaling is really a far more complete understanding. But 10x. 10x was the kernel. But one of the things that I noticed was that people loved the book. I mean it's actually one of the biggest business books in China right now. I mean it's, it's, it's kind of, it's, it's kind of gotten a life of its own. It hasn't sold a million copies yet, but it's, it's well on its way for that. But, um, what I learned initially is that Most people took M10X and this was in retro, this was like after the fact, going around and listening to people and talking to people. Many times I'd talk to people and say, Ben, I read 10x is easier than 2x. Literally I've 50x my company in the last 3 years as a result here, you know, and so I hear that regularly. But the majority of people, I would say 90% or more of people who even read that book took 10x as more of a metaphor than a literal. Um, and so they didn't actually set a 10x goal. Like if they're comp. You know, if you're a business owner and your business is doing 5 million revenue, like literally, what does it look like at 50 million? How would you get to 50 million in two or three years, not in 20. Um, you know, if you were to actually set a 10x goal, how would that change? And we've done now national research, um, studying entrepreneurs. And one of the questions we asked entrepreneurs all over the US is if you actually went for 10x in your business and you wanted to get there in three years, not 10, would it change your strategy? And nearly all of them m said yes, of course it would change our strategy. Um, and so I think that one of the things that I have found is that most business owners don't actually aspire for scale level outcomes. And for me, I think I would define scale as a minimum of 10x. Going for 10x is a minimum in terms of how I would define scale. Ah, as compared to just more linear growth. I think that scale and growth are two different games. Um, and growth can be 2%. You know, like growth can be one you know, if you won't go 1%, that could be growth to some degree. But scale is not that. Um, and so growth and scale are two different things. And I think that a lot of entrepreneurs think that they can get to scale, um, by solving for growth. What I mean is that, is that if that business owner who's at 5 million, you know, they think that they can eventually get to 50 million. But the way that they're going to get there is incrementally. You know, First I'm at 5 million, let's get to 7. Eventually we'll get to 10. Once I get to 10, eventually we can get to, you know, 15 or 20. But if you're at 5 and you're striving for 10, that's gonna be very different than if you're at 5, striving for 50. They're just two different worlds, two different games. They're gonna be different business models, different client bases. And going for the scale, going for the 10x, it does simplify things because by nature, um, you know, goals are filters. And when you start going for the much higher goal, you know, John Doerr, the billionaire who, who um, advised Steve Jobs and, and the people at, at Google, he said that a goal properly set is halfway reached. And so the beauty of the 10x or the bigger goal is, is that its first job is actually to eliminate options. Like most, most, most pathways can't get you to 10x in, in a few years. And so it's a really extreme filter and it's an extreme selection tool. And so, um, it simplifies because you can't get there by doing 50 things. You have to filter and find the most, the most effective and go all in on those. That's really what power law thinking is all about. Power law is just the idea that the majority of results comes from a very small amount of what you do. It's kind of like the 80, 20, but it's way more extreme. And so 10x just forces you to find those few pathways that have exponential upside and to eliminate most things because most things can't scale.

Speaker B: This may be, uh, unfair question or tough question to ask, but obviously so many people have applied this principle. Have you seen a few common denominators? Like, hey, here in this 10x thinking, here's where they really applied this. And that could be, uh, people, process systems, uh, marketing. Are there any that you've seen that have been kind of the most common? Like, aha, uh, this really moved the needle.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. Uh, the first one is literally just actually setting the goal. Like, again, like I said, most people don't truly have a 10x goal. They may have a 10x aspiration, but it's not a 10x goal. And they don't give themselves a short amount of time to do it. Uh, if Your goal is 5, 10, 15 years away, it's not, it's not pressing on you enough to force hard decisions today. Um, and so actually going for scale and letting that objective shape what you do. So that's just a fundamental aspect of psychology, is that as people, we use the future to shape our present, even to organize and reorganize our present. Um, and so the ones that actually get places, they use the 10x goal to reorganize their company today. Um, and what that usually means to what you said before is it means it's simplifying the company. It means getting, I would say, going from a generalist business where you're serving a lot of different audiences, um, with fairly competitive, um, with fairly competitive products to you become a very specific and differentiated company, um, where you're no longer competing. Because, you know, that's really what strategy is all about is it's about escaping competition by distinguishing yourself, by differentiating yourself and saying, we're really the only ones that do this for this type of person, and here's why. And so, yeah, the ones who, um, the ones who get there, they actually let the goal inform everything they do. Like, and that's really how again, psychology works, is we operate by goals. And so when someone's really going 10x, they say the first step is actually eliminating what can't go 10x. We call that raising the floor. But, um, they do let go of business models. They let go of team members that can't get there. Um, they actually establish the direction and build the team that can get them to the goal. I'll give one example. There's a guy, um, he's a member of our scaling.com. and what happened was so he was a, he has a. He's been in the franchise business, food franchise. And it took him about, I think about 10 to 15 years. He was doing wingstops, and it took him about 10 to 15 years to get to 26 wing stops and awesome business. You know, he said it was really slow, painful, very slow, painful growth, you know, uh, but when he read the Science of Scaling, he thought about 10x in terms of valuation. And so what he did was he actually went and evaluated his company, his 26 wing stops, and evaluated at 50 million 50 million value. And so he asked himself the beautiful question, which is how would I get to 500 million valuation in three years? And that's really the starting point for me of 10x thinking is asking how do I get to 10x in 3 years or less? And just being honest about the answer. And so what he did when he thought how do I get to 500 million valuation in three years? It was just really obvious he couldn't get there through Wingstop and, and that that model was just way too slow, too clunky, et cetera. And so, but he had, he had already been researching other franchise models and he felt like there was one that could get him there. It's uh, Seven Brews Coffee. It's a fairly new concept. People drink more coffee than they do, uh, eat hot wings.

Speaker B: As someone who has an 18 year old daughter, I'm very familiar with Seven Brews.

Speaker A: Are you really sorry?

Speaker B: Oh my gosh, it's insane.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So it's getting bigger. So what he did was, you know, it's fairly new, but it's blown up. But so he thought, okay, I actually can get there through seven Brew. And so then he did math and I think that this is uh, a really next critical point is validating a model to the 10x goal. And for him, his validated model was, he did the math and he said it will take me 200 locations to get to 500 million valuation. Um, so ultimately he, he let go of the franchise of Wingstops, he sold it and this is where I think he did something really special. Yes, he validated the model, he validated the path. He then asked to, you know, I'm sure a conversation will have, he asked who, right? He said who, who do I need that can help me and what is the need I need most? And the thing he needed most initially was because he needed to open, because according to his model he'd need to open up 200 stores in three years. Each one of those locations costs 2 million to start to open up from Dirt to drink, as they would call it. And so he needed a phenomenal cfo. He needed someone with financial understanding to get that level of funding and someone who brought with them already relationships with the banks, uh, et cetera. Just someone who had the wherewithal of the, the, the, just the, just the skillset and the network to be able to drive that ship and, and, and get the funding for that. So he ultimately put out a job description saying this is my, he called it impossible goal, but this is my 10x goal, get to 500 million valuation in three years through wing, uh, through seven brews coffees. 200 locations in three years. What I'm looking for is a CFO that can help me do this, that understands at that scale how we can actually fund and actually do this process. Each one's 2 million bucks. Um, if I can find the right person, you know, you'll. You'll. Here's the pay, and also here's like a. Here's a potential piece of, you know, equity at the top side when we get to the goal. Anyways, what happened was by putting that out there, he ended up attracting the then sitting CFO of Little Caesars. So the guy who was the CFO of Little Caesars saw that job description, saw it, called this, this. This scaler, this great guy, and, um, they had conversations, and ultimately he left Little Caesars and joined him. And, and, and, um, in. In year one of this, because this all happened like six months ago in year one. He's. He's gonna have over, um, he's gonna be past a hundred million revenue and be way past where he was in his other business. But he also, he also needed an operations guy. And so he ended up getting the operations guy from Boston Market. And so. But. But what's fun about this is he built his team from the goal. I think that this is a mistake that a lot of people make is they. They try to. They really try to force their existing team to a 10x and it just really. It really won't. It really usually can't happen. Some of the team will come with you, but most of them just don't have the capability.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, and I asked this guy, his name's Gaurav, but I asked him, I said, did you even have a CFO in your old business with the. With the Wingstop? He said no. He. He. He didn't have a scale team. You know, he. He had a mom and pop shop.

Speaker B: That's, um, that might be a great transition to the who, not how, because I, I do think that's one of those other concepts that, uh, I think we have tried to apply in our business. I know our advisors, um, our number one advisors, I mentioned, like, they talk about this all, all the time and how they read that book and they were in strategic coach and ended up hiring two key people that have just exploded their business. And I think the. Again, I'm oversimplifying the principle, so I'll let you maybe explain it in a little bit more detail, but the basic Principle is, like, so many people think about how to get there when the key to most businesses is who do you need to hire? Who do you need to bring on the team that can get you there. Again, oversimplifying it, but, um, and I'm gonna set this up because I think it's a lesson I've learned. And, uh, Darren Hardy is a good friend of mine and been a great mentor. He always says, like, great people are free, right? Uh, you almost can't pay them enough, and it still doesn't matter because, you know, they make so much more. So I think the concept is that, like, how do you bring great people onto your team? But maybe give us a more detailed, uh, explanation of my oversimplification of that.

Speaker A: I mean, I. Excuse me. I love. I love your simplification of it. I also want to hear at some point in this conversation how you've seen it in your own business and in your own life. But I think if anyone's listening to this, obviously, if you think about what are the things that have created the most impact in your life, usually it's going to be relationships. Usually it's going to be people. There's going to be. But also to the idea of the power law, which is the idea that very few things create almost all the results. If you really boil it down, there's a few people that have made the majority of impact in your life and your business. Of course, many people have contributed, but there's a few. There's some that have been 10x people, right? There's, like, some relationships that really move the needle or really enabled things or really made things possible. And so I think that it's really important to think in those ways. Um, yeah. Who, not how. I think that there's levels of application. Um, when I wrote that book originally, um, you know, it was more of a basic guide on delegation. I don't. I don't really like to use that term, but, like, what I mean by that is, is that many entrepreneurs, they are doing way too many things themselves. Right? Going back to Garav as an example, he didn't have a CFO before, right? But when he started to think in terms of scale or 10x, the first thing he needed was a who. Right? You know, when we start to think in terms of 10x or bigger results, you can't really get there on your own, nor should you. Like, you know, that's. That's. That's a, uh, that's a really amateur approach. Instead, you need to bring on people who already have the capability or the leverage of the skills, but also so who not who not how is just really the idea that if you want to achieve something, rather than asking how do I do it? Which is how we're trained to do it, you start to think in terms of who, who already, who already has access to the result or who, who can do that for me, or who can I partner with to do it? And that immediately kind of opens you to teamwork and opens you to leverage and opens you to opportunities. But, but, but another point of this that I think a lot of people just naturally miss is that there are, and it goes straight back to power law and 80, 20 thinking, which is there's certain things that you can do that are worth way more than other things. And so if you are so busy and diluted in your focus that you're the one doing X, Y, Z and five other things versus actually like delegating those out so that you can focus your role, right, and actually focus on the things that have the 10x upside, where you're actually a unique master, where like the company needs you, then you're just not valuing your time and you're not valuing the reality that most things, you know, can be delegated and that a few things are worth so much. And if you actually just put your focus on those things, your time would be worth a hundred times more, but also the company's time would be worth a lot more. So, you know, I think that level one is just delegating out the things that other people can do so that you can focus on the higher upside things. But the level two thinking, which I didn't really understand as much when I wrote who, not how, which I think we really laid out in the science of scaling, is just that, you know, the biggest, the most leveraged pathways and opportunities. You know, in, uh, psychology they call it pathways thinking. But if you're going to go for 10x or a hundredx, you're going to have to get there through partnerships. You're going to have to get there through key people. And those key people can open up such extreme doors. If you're willing to partner and willing to find great collaborative opportunities. There's just, you can go so much farther, so much faster with the right partners and with, through the right who's than if you're just trying to grind out the path on your own.

Speaker B: Um, yes, a huge, huge difference. I see you asked. Uh, in our business, we have several components to the business, but, um, one of those is Our wealth management business. And we, we just hired, it's, we have an RIA that today is sitting at about 50 billion in assets under management. And um, just hired a new president. Our old president retired and we literally said we want someone who can take us to 250 billion. And uh, Shannon, who started, I don't know, it's probably been three months ago now, like you can see it, just her background, her experience, the people she knows, the experience she has. Like you can see now this path where I think in five years we'll be at 250 billion, which isn't quite 10x but it's a big number.

Speaker A: Um, it's a big jump.

Speaker B: Yeah, I've just seen that over and over again. Great. People have such an impact on the size and scale of the business. So let's uh, transition that just in the time we have left probably to the one where I meant to spend the most time. But all of these principles, I guess I would say too, they really do work together. Right. And I think that's what you said, the science of scaling to me kind of brings all of this, um, together really. And so you talk in the science of scaling and scaling, something we talk about all the time. But this uh, three part framework which is frame, floor and focus, uh, I'll just maybe open it. Do you want to lay out kind of what that framework is and we might dive into each of those in a little more detail?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. What's fun about this framework is it is very, it's based on principles. Right. And so it's going to be true. It's true 500 years ago, it's true in AI. It's going to be true and it's going to be true in 50 years from now. Um, and so it's based in psychology, but it also shapes and informs strategy when you really start to understand it deeply. Um, so frame is just the idea. And we've all heard this concept that you see through, we all see through the world subjectively. Right. You see the world through a lens, through a frame. Right. And, and what's really critical to understand is that, and this is, this has really been well established especially in the last 20, 30 years in psychology, that our frame or our subjective perspective is fundamentally based on our goals. Um, human beings are goal driven beings. And so the things that we notice and the things that we pay attention to in the present for the most part have resonance with, with, with, with, with our, with our goals.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Um, and, and, and our goal is determine what is Signal and what is noise for us? It's actually a really good litmus test as well, because you should ask yourself, like, why am I paying so much attention to this? Right? It, it must mean that, you know, you've got some goal there, right? Um, um. But yeah, so our goals shape our, our frame. And our frame determines what's relevant and irrelevant to us, and especially what pathways are relevant and irrelevant to us. And so what we, what we teach with frame is, is that knowing that you are future or your goals are what shape what matters to you in the present. What happens is when you scale the goal, right, Then the goal, then the quality of the goal matters, Right back to John Doerr. A goal properly set is halfway reached. And so when you raise the goal up, you know, and you actually scale the goal and you do that on purpose. Uh, actually, we went into the research on impossible goals in the book, and when you scale the goal even to a seemingly impossible level, right, it could be 10x, 50x, whatever. Um, sometimes you can scale it too high where it ceases to be a good, A good tool. Um, but even just 10x as a baseline, if you scale your goal 10x and you give yourself a short amount of time, that goal then serves as an extreme filter, right? And what it does next is it raises your floor, right? Because when you actually go for an extreme goal and you give yourself an extremely short period of time to do it, that goal's job is to filter out the majority of options. Because the majority of options are ultimately distractions. They're dead ends. They're. They would lead you to competition rather than differentiation. And so when you raise the frame or the goal, it naturally raises the floor, right? And the floor determines what you don't do. Um, Michael Porter, by the way, who invented the field of competitive strategy, said that the essence of strategy is choosing what not to do. Also, if you study systems engineering and system design, um, the most fundamental aspect of systems is simplicity. Ah. And actually the focus of the system. The problem with most businesses as a system is that they're overly complex because they've got too many competing goals and agendas. They're trying to do too many things, right? So we call that a complex system. And so, you know, when you, when you raise the floor and you go for the bigger goal, naturally you're gonna have to strip a bunch of things out that shouldn't be there, right? So that's raising the floor is eliminating stuff that shouldn't be there and eliminating options and pathways that can't Exist and actually simplifying and focusing the system so that it can scale. Um, and so yeah, raising the goal up or raising the frame forces you to raise the floor, um, and begin to actually have a strategy, which means the majority of things are, are, are now irrelevant. The majority of things can't get you there. The majority of things are a distraction. Right, uh, uh, and so now that we have an actual strategy, we can then go and focus on, you know, whatever it is we're gonna do to go scale. You know, focus on the paths and the partnerships and the people that can actually get us to our goal. Focus on the thing that we wanna master. So focus becomes the thing that we're going to actually focus on. And as Steve Jobs said, you know, focus means saying no to a hundred things. Innovation means saying no to a thousand things. I already quoted, you know, um, Porter, but he said strategy is mostly about what you don't do. And so once you've raised your floor, you really only leave a few things left to fully focus on. And if you actually do focus on those things too extreme, um, it becomes pretty easy to separate yourself from the competition. It becomes pretty easy to develop unique mastery and skillset and to become a unique signal in the marketplace and what you do because you are focused and very few people are, you know, very. Most businesses are trying to, trying to do five different things. I would call it on the bell curve. Like they're trying to do five things in a competitive model versus actually differentiating and like doing one thing to such an extreme level that there is no competition. But if you actually do that and focus on, as Steve Jobs said, simple can be harder than complex. But if you do it, you can move mountains.

Speaker B: Well, even, um, today I view Elon as probably the great scaler of this generation. And I remember he said something like the worst thing we can do is optimize something that just shouldn't exist. I think you see that in what he's done. Everything has uber focus to it and it's been able to scale several businesses. Um, so this is, I'm going to ask this question and this is maybe turning it on you a little bit. So this, um, I don't want to say for the first time, I don't know all the things that you've done, but you actually launched out of this book, uh, scaling.com, which has become a very fast growing company that is teaching these principles and helping other people, other entrepreneurs scale, uh, quickly. What were the biggest challenges you faced when transitioning from I'M going to say like kind of successful author and coach to now you're co founding and scaling this business. So maybe said a different way, like how did you apply this framework to uh, building scaling.com?

Speaker A: it's really cool. So back to Porter a little bit, Michael Porter. He said that strategy is about escaping competition, not beating competition. So the first thing we did is we wanted to find the company, right? We had our own impossible goal, right. We wanted to normalize scaling in a world where that topic was not clearly defined. Right? And so we decided the game we wanted to play, we decided the thing that we wanted to solve, which we felt was a game worth solving, which was this topic of scaling, which is a buzzword but which, you know, most people wouldn't be able to actually clearly define it, let alone like say, here's a framework for how to do it. And so we felt like that was where the puck was going. Like we felt like that's, that's we're living in more and more of a scale world, uh, versus a growth world. And so we just felt like that was the game worth playing, the game worth solving. And then that led to well, what's the business model? Right? Um, and so rather than trying to serve all entrepreneurs, we just decided a very specific psychographic which was we only will work with people who want to 10x their company and our, and are willing to go for it in three years or less. And so you know, naturally that, that filters out 98% of entrepreneurs. You know, most entrepreneurs aren't, are more growth oriented rather than scale oriented and few would really have the paradigm to fully go for 10x in that speed of time. And we do have companies at uh, a million revenue, many of them at a million. But we have companies in the billions of revenue that are going for 10x in 3 years and using that framework frame floor focus to, to reshape their business model and to find more exponential pathways forward. Um, so, so we decided very specifically who we were and who we want to serve and how we'd be different. Um, and I'd say that the things that massively differentiated us is like the deep, the deep research base. Like we're not only is everything we do based on research, but, but even our content is very much, um, studying and analyzing our top scalers and understanding what they're doing to 10x and applying our framework and then we use those insights to teach everyone else through case studies and things like that. So we're obsessed with research and, and then this, the the next piece is we actually felt like what, what could, what's actually going to help our clients 10x. So we, we, we ultimately have um, you know, strategic advisors inside the company and we call, you know, I guess you call them scaling advisors. There are strategists and these are, you know, they're not business coaches. These are people who are trained in our framework. They're people who have had companies, scaled companies and are just really, really believing what we're doing. And so, you know, I think that they're, I think increasingly our scaler or our strategists are going to be, you know, seen in higher lenses than say like a McKinsey consultant. Right. Like they're very good and very intense with our scalers in a good way. Um, so you know we, we ultimately just decided we're only going to have one product. We're not going to have 50 products. We're not going to have a tiered suite of products. We're going to just have one which is this advising program. We're very specific about who we serve and then we just decide what are the few things that we felt were essential to master in order to help fulfill our brand promise, which is 10x in three years. And for us that was give them a truly world class strategist that they work with one on one. Give them accountability, give them structure, give them, provide them continuous research and case studies that show them how to do it. Um, and I would say, and then our distribution path was through something we already had mastery in which was the books. Right. Just like launching massive books and using those books to bring people back rather than trying to do 50 things with marketing. It's just like, no, what's the one that if we just do it at an outlier level, could get us to our goal. So those are some of the things that we've done and I think we've done. I'd give us an A minus. Like in our first year we went from 0 to 12 million ARR. Um, I think we probably could have gotten to 25 to 30. But we did make some big mistakes in that first year. Brought on some of the wrong people who had more of a linear mentality. Um, and we've had to hit our head several times as well. But I'm happy with that. I still think we'll break um, 100 million annual revenue within the first three years. I'm sure we'll do it.

Speaker B: It's uh, and you may have just answered it, I was going to ask you like, was There anything you found, like, you all making mistakes where you're like, I'm going against the principles that I teach or maybe more. It's like, oh, duh.

Speaker A: Like I would say. And I use that story of Gaurav. He did a better job than we did. And often. Actually, this is the beauty of our client base, is our clients often apply our own framework way better than we do. And it's like. It's humbling, you know, because, like, you know, like, they're there. Some of them are a lot faster at it. And. And naturally, we're focusing on the outliers who are applying it extremely well. But, like, that's the standard we hold ourselves to. Right? We should be. We should be applying it at outlier levels as well. So, yeah, I would say that there. We sometimes, you know, sometimes we did. We did not apply the framework. Sometimes we actually didn't hire from the goal, you know, and you. Like, he. I used him as an example because he hired the CFO of a company like Little Caesars, and, you know, he. He's now just. He's just ripping. I think, you know, I think we, you know, to your point of, you know, the best people are free, actually, I think that we. We made some big mistakes with people sometimes. I'm not saying trying to be cheap, but just not being discerning enough, knowing just the power of the right person. Um, and we've had to learn that a few times, and I think we could have learned that lesson sooner. Also, when you work with super talent, you do have to treat that talent differently, right? Like, you know, and. Yeah, so that was. That was one of the mistakes we've made. I would say other mistakes we've made were just not truly operating at the scale needed. Like, um, you know, it. It's really powerful to quantify the path and the model for us. Just as one example, if we sell a million copies of the Science of Scaling, that alone could get us to 5,000 clients or more. If we properly have the right funnel and the right positioning and if we have the right value prop. And so I think sometimes we've been a little linear in how we get that book out there. Unwilling to go get some capital and invest $10 million into that, knowing that that $10 million will have us at $100 million a year company. So there's. There's just certain things that I think that, you know, we. We, we, We. We were a little too linear for the first year, maybe a little too conservative. Like, when, you know what you're doing sometimes you have to make some swings.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's good. Uh, so maybe I know you said you like, look at the, the clients that you have and who's done it the best. So, and then I want to ask you one kind of different question. Then we'll go into this wrap up lightning round. But so an entrepreneur or uh, for us, we have a lot of financial advisor entrepreneurs who listen to this. If you were to boil it down and say like, hey, here's the one thing that you could do in the next 90 days that I think would make the biggest leap forward based on the principles that I teach. But now also watching these people do it, is there one thing that you would say? This is the one thing that would make a big difference in 90 days.

Speaker A: Yeah. And to me it's the ultimate lever. Um, and it truly is the goal properly set. Um, if, you know, and this just is completely rooted in my understanding of human psychology, that humans are shaped by goals and systems are shaped by goals. And if a entrepreneur or someone listening to this, one of your incredible advisors actually genuinely set a 10x goal, gave themselves three years to do it. If you genuinely looked at your current business from the perspective of 10x in three years and you just asked what, what would it actually take to get there? What would the pathway have to be? The natural response if you genuinely sat with it is you'd have to focus more on something very specific and, and at least half what you're doing right now would immediately fall below the floor. Um, and you don't have to do anything with that yet. I'm just, we, we, we, we say use the goal as a tool. Use the goal as a tool for identifying the pathways that matter. Because tools are ultimately selection criteria. They just, they lead to selection. And, and a goal properly set eliminates 99% of options. And so I think that's just that like literally set the 10x goal, give yourself three years or less, and you don't have to do anything with it. Yet oftentimes people are unwilling to do that because immediately their imposter syndrome kicks in or their ego or their pride kicks in and they're like, they don't. We would rather, humans would rather have a lesser certainty than a better uncertainty. Um, um, but also, people would rather hit a smaller goal than miss a bigger goal. Yeah, right. There's just, there's just these funny aspects of psychology. Uh, also, obviously people have extreme sunk cost bias and so they're already really invested in who they are in, in, in who they presently are versus being willing to relinquish aspects of that to become something better. Um, um. And so knowing all those things, what, what we suggest is use the goal as a tool. Don't. You're not. You don't have to commit to it right now, but just genuinely think from 10x and just ask yourself, if you were to get there in three years, what would work? How would you have to get there? Who would you. What would you know, what would have to be the focus for your business? And also just m. As importantly, what would not work? What would you have to stop doing that would actually slow that whole train down and ultimately make you more complex? One of the people that we had, um, in scaling, it was the cto, ah, of a technology company that joined. And this technology company was at 6 million in revenue, but they had taken on like 20 million of capital, like investment, like private, you know, investment capital. He read it and he was like, holy cow. He's like, I think our company, he's like, I don't know why our company doesn't go for a billion, like a billion revenue. Like, they had a tech company, they had funding, like, you know, like they. He thought that the upside could get to a billion revenue. And so he went to his boss and, um, he said, and his boss had not read the Science of scaling, but he just said, he said, why isn't our goal to get to a billion revenue? I think that the goal was like to get to 25 that year or something like that. But he just said, why isn't our goal to get to a billion revenue? And his boss, who like, was the founder of the company, said he's like, I think we can get to a billion. I just think, you know, he's. That we'll get there. It'll probably just take like 15 years. Um, and this guy was just playing with, you know, playing with the psychology of it. He just said, he's like, yeah, but if we had to get there in three years, how would we do it? And he didn't tell the person, hey, I got this from the science of getting. He just said, if we had to do it in three, how'd we do it? And the boss thought about it and he just said, if we had to do it in three, we'd have to get. And I, uh, don't know what the product is, so I don't know. But he basically just said, if we had to get there in three, we'd have to get into 10,000 schools. And then all of A sudden, like a light bulb hit him, and he just said, I think we can get into 10,000 schools in three years. And so they ultimately changed their goal, and now they're going for it in three years. And now they have their quantified path and model, and now they're actually just pathways thinking, how do we get this technology into 10,000 schools? Right. And so, you know, I just think if you actually think from scale, it really cleans up your thinking. I would just say that's the first step is just allowing yourself to think

Speaker B: from scale, set that 10x goal, be literal about it. Yeah, yeah. And stew on that for the next couple, uh, months. That's good. Okay. I said I had a little different question. Um, one of the things I heard you talk about one time, I think I've read too, is, uh, I'm going to talk about adoption a little. So you and your wife adopted, um, I think it was three children from the foster care system, and then found out, like, shortly thereafter, you were going to have twins. So that is, uh, a lot of change at one time. Just an adoption is something my wife and I love, have a fund and have helped, uh, fund a lot of adoptions through the years. So maybe just walk us through, like, managing and pri. I think all the time what I say is we work with so many high achievers.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: That are trying to lead, um, their families well, lead their businesses well, grow all those things. What did that experience teach you about just capacity and priorities and, I mean, I guess rapid transformation, uh, just that's. That's a lot of change in a short period of time.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's true. We technically went from zero to five kids during 2018. We. We adopted three from the foster system, and then my wife had twins. We also moved from Clemson to Florida that year. Yeah, um, that was the year my first major book came out. Willpower Doesn't Work. Um, that was the year I established a collaboration with Dan Sullivan. So that was a powerful year. Right. Um, but, um, yeah, and we've since adopted a girl from Guatemala who'd been here, um, illegally. She. We adopted her when she was almost 15. Now she's 17. Um, so we have seven kids. But to answer your question, what did. What did that. What did that compressed experience of change teach me about capacity and about priority? Such a beautiful question. I think one of the things that taught me is how elastic our capacity actually is. I think that there's the concept of, uh, Parkinson's Law, which is that work fills the space. You give it which is one of the reasons why we actually force our scaling people to have short timelines. Because if you give yourself a short timeline, it forces you to find the more efficient pathways. Um, but also I think that um, just as workflows, the, the capacity or the time you give it, I think that our capacity also expands based on, based on the demand. Um, there was kind of an analogy I gave a TED, like a TEDx talk back in 2018 when we first moved here to Florida. And I quoted this story that I really like. And it's the story of um, like this guy who had a pickup truck and a brand new pickup truck. There's like back in the 70s before like, you know, cell phones and stuff like that. But he drove up, up in the mountains to test out his pickup truck and he was, I think he was in the Colorado or something like that. It was super snowy, went into the mountains. Um, and ultimately like he was driving on, on like the snow a little bit. And ultimately he got stuck and um, he was peeling out and he just couldn't get out and he didn't have a phone, he couldn't do anything. And so he just kind of sat there and ultimately uh, he decided to like pull out his chainsaw and start chopping down a tree because he's going to, I think he was going to get treated anyways. And he ultimately just started throwing wood in the back of the truck just because he really didn't know what else to do and he was hoping someone would just come and help. And uh, after he filled the entire back of his truck with uh, with a tree, essentially like chopped up wood, he got in his car, kind of said a prayer and real. And like what was interesting was that the weight of the wood is what gave his tires traction and he was able to get out, whereas he had, he had been working on it for like an hour before peeling out. Tried everything but the weight of the wood allowed him to have the traction to get out. And I kind of use that as an example of like with, with my family and with my kids, um, I felt like they kind of gave me the spiritual weight, you know, of responsibility that you know, is never, it's never been a hinderment to my work. Yeah, um, it's always, it's always been something that has given me greater depth and purpose, but also to the point, your point of priority. Naturally, with seven kids I can't do everything. And so even though I probably spent a good. As all people, I spent a decent chunk of my time on Stuff that really doesn't matter, that doesn't move the needle. I just, given the. Just given the nature of my family, I do have to prioritize a little bit more extremely. And so I do have to focus on, like, what are the things that actually will move the needle, knowing maybe this week I only have 15, 20 hours. Right. And so it's like, you know, and just exhaustion, you know, sometimes just from, you know. So it's like, with limited resources, including time and energy, it's like, what are the few things that really matter and that will move the needle? So I think it does. It gives me perspective, but it also, it does force me to prioritize. That's at least what I've seen so far.

Speaker B: That's good. So. Well, I, uh, commend you and Lauren for doing that. I always say I think it's, uh, one of the most loving and generous things that people can do. So, um, congrats on that, too. So, uh, okay, let's hit these lightning round questions real quick. Uh, so these can be simple, quick answers. Uh, first one I like to ask people, is, is there a lesson that you have learned over the past few years or maybe one that has just been reinforced that, you know, you're going to carry forward for the rest of your life?

Speaker A: Um, yeah, I mean, there's so many. I, um, would say probably, you know, it's so hard to choose just one. But. But I. I do think that, you know, as simple as it. As simple as it is, like, knowing what to focus on, uh, is. Is the. Is like one of the hardest things for people. Because I think as people, there's. There's too many options. And if you can know what to focus on and if you can just put your energy into the few things that really matter, you're already going to be an outlier. Right? Like, yeah. Uh, and so I just think knowing what to focus on and having the discipline to say no to so many other things is. Is pretty dang fundamental.

Speaker B: That's good. I think today too, it's so easy to become distracted that being able to focus is just becoming a superpower too. Um, okay.

Speaker A: And there's just so many. There's so many. Not just even bad distractions, but good distractions. You know, like a business that says yes to the wrong business, um, you know, says yes to the wrong opportunities. That's gonna come back and haunt them.

Speaker B: Yep. Okay, second question. What is the one thing you did that graduated you from being good to great in your field?

Speaker A: That's a High bar. That's a super high bar. Um, I think that, uh, one was just aspiring for it. You know, that goes back to the 10x goal. Uh, I think that aspiring and then, and then willingness to say yes to only the few things that could actually get you there. Like for example, when I first became a professional author, um, I was a grad student. I wanted to get a six figure book deal with one of the major publishers. And I was told, first off, I was told it would take me over 10 years because I didn't even have a website. I had no, no nothing. But I was like, but I was like, I want to get a six figure book deal. And they're all like that. You know, that's like a 1% of one. That's like a 1% book deal. Like, you know, that's for like celebrities or like people with huge followings. And I was just like, well, what's the one way, what's the, what's the absolute thing I need to get there? And they said you need an email list of at least 100,000 people, but they also said you need huge followings on social media and all these different things. Like, they gave me a list of 50 things I needed. But ultimately I decided like, what's, you know, how do I, what's the pathway to get me to the 100,000 email subscribers? Ultimately, I started blogging on a platform called medium.com. and um, you know, I didn't do anything else, I just did that one thing. But I pushed it so far that I became the top writer on that platform as a PhD student. And that one platform got me, you know, into, into, into the major leagues. You know, I was a professional author, like you know, 12, 12, 18 months later. Um, and so I think that it's, one is like actually narrowing the focus, but the other one is like once you know your path, like, you know, in 10x is easier than 2x. I wrote about Michelangelo, right? And about how he took that David statue to just such a beautiful level. Like he. And I think that, I think that most people never push, push like a project that they do to that extreme level. Um, you know, they do five things at like the 90th percentile rather than one thing at the 99.999 percentile. Right? And so, uh, I think that a few things at a few different stages I've tried to, to push what I'm doing to like the 99.999 percentile where it can really withstand. You know, I don't Think I've done that on everything. But like, I think with 10x is easier than 2x that book specifically, I paid a really heavy price to try to take that book to mastery. I think I took the next book even to further mastery. But uh, I just think that if you do one thing extremely well, it's going to get you much further than doing 10 things. There's a concept called non substitutability. And that's the idea that. And mastery is non substitutable. Einstein is non substitutable. But non substitutable means you can't take 10 bad like songs and combine them together to get one great song. Like, you know, you can't take, you can't take 10 average businesses and combine them to have a phenomenal business. Right. Like, and so the great things are non substitutable. Like there's something unique and different about them that you can't combine a bunch of average things to get it right. And so, um, you know, 10Aminus is. Won't get you an A plus.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right. And so it's just knowing that that one A plus is actually worth more than the 10Aminus is combined.

Speaker B: That's good. Okay. Ah, third question. Is there something you are doing to drive your own personal growth and development this year that has you excited?

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. I, um, would say, you know, I mean there's personal sides. We have our oldest going on, uh, leaving on his own church mission, other daughters going to college. Uh, so families always huge and transformational, demanding and always changing. Um, on the business side, just, I'll, uh, end up finishing this book. And we're, we're trying to apply our own framework like you mentioned to um, to create our own mastery. So the business is always requiring everything we've talked about. On the personal side, I've always wanted to run an ultra marathon. Um, and I failed so many times, which I'm completely comfortable with by the way. I'm very comfortable failing at goals. Um, but uh, that's one where I want to, I still want to do it, you know. So, yeah, uh, you know, I want to, I want to try to run an ultramarathon and just spend more time running and walking and listening to good books and stuff like that.

Speaker B: That's good. Okay, Good Transition can't be one of your own books, but what is the one book that you have recommended most to other entrepreneur business leaders?

Speaker A: I'll give you a few. One is, um, one is Peaks and Valleys by Spencer Johnson. That's such a Great book he wrote. Who Moved my cheese.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Um, Peaks and Valleys I love Zero to One by Peter Thiel. Um, I'll stick with those. Although I'm always reading new stuff and so there's always. There's some that just hit me really hard. But those two, I really love.

Speaker B: Those are great. Um, okay, final question. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Speaker A: I don't know. It's probably as simple as just, like, put God first, you know, like, that's just. I mean, uh, I don't know if, uh. I don't know if I could find the best. But that's, That's. That's. That's pretty. That's pretty hard to beat.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's pretty, pretty, uh, timeless. One. So, uh, Dr. Hardy, thank you for the incredible insights today. And I would say this, like, on behalf of us. I know we use a lot of it, our advisors, just the, um, the work that you're doing to help entrepreneurs understand how to lead and scale their business, that I would say, uh, for so many of them is creating more freedom and impact. So, uh, that's awesome. If, uh, people want to learn more about the science of scaling or scaling.com and what you're doing there. Your books, like, what's. What's the best way for them to learn more about you or follow along

Speaker A: on everything that you're doing, definitely just scaling.com. as simple as that. You know, great website, scaling.com. yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was part of our choice of, uh, you know, becoming the power law of that topic was just, you know, capturing that domain. But yeah, scaling.com is our, you know, our advisory. You can get access to the science of scaling even for free there. Um, you can see case studies there. And if you're someone who wants to 10x your business quickly, I, uh, would say that there's really, There's. I don't think that there's anyone else that's, you know, at the level of depth research and advising that we offer there. So scaling. Com.

Speaker B: Perfect. Dr. Hardy, again, thank you for your time. Really enjoyed it, and m glad to have, uh, finally got you on here.

Speaker A: It's my pleasure, brother.