Are your personal brand goals missing The 10X Rule?
Thinking big, not small, is your best defence against the biggest mistakes of goal setting. Set your personal brand goals up for success from the get-go.
Despite gaining over a decade of experience in marketing and communications, this personal branding blog was my first venture into creating long-form content under my own name. Like many professionals turned first-time content creators, I pondered playing it safe. Maybe one blog a month was manageable? With this plan, I’d end up with 12 hopefully high-quality blogs on personal branding at the end of 12 months. Plan B (or Plan 10X) had other ideas.
In reality, after the first 12 months of my blog, I ended up with nearly 120 blog posts. All of the same, or likely better, quality than I first envisioned for my first 12 personal branding blogs in Plan A. It was reading Grant Cardone’s The 10X Rule that quickly made my initial goals both redundant and unimaginable. The 10X plan became the only option. It pushed me beyond what I thought was possible.
I recommend The 10X Rule to all of my personal brand coaching clients.
In this blog, I’m sharing the top takeaways that most resonate with me from The 10X Rule. These takeaways changed not only my personal brand goals, but also my personal goals.
What is The 10X Rule?
First, let’s start with what The 10X Rule is. In its simplest form, Cardone’s The 10X Rule is to:
Set goals that are 10X greater than what you think you can achieve
Set actions that are 10X greater than what you think is required
Sounds simple? It’s so significant - especially to overcome mistakes in goal-setting.
1. Be aware of the most common mistakes
Cardone identifies what he describes as the four biggest mistakes in goal setting. Can you spot any of these problems in your personal brand goals?
Mistargeting by setting objectives that are too low and don’t allow for enough correct motivation
Severely underestimating what it will take in terms of actions, resources, money and energy to accomplish the target
Spending too much time competing and not enough time dominating your sector
Underestimating the amount of adversity you’ll need to overcome in order to actually attain your goal
Cardone highlights that people tend to overestimate what they can achieve in a year. Yet, underestimate what they can achieve in five, ten or more years. So, with The 10X Rule in mind, are you underestimating what your personal brand can achieve in the long term?
Setting goals too low sets you up for failure due to the insufficient level of motivation it creates. Low goals and low motivation create low outcomes, likely missing even the low bar you set for your personal brand. High goals create high motivation that heightens your likelihood of success.
Steve Jobs’ influence on Apple always offers an exceptional antidote to thinking small for your personal brand. Jobs famously wanted to make a ‘ding’ in the universe. Remember Apple’s iconic ‘Think Different’ campaign? It said:
‘The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
Fittingly, The 10X Rule does not just propose to 10X the way you act but understands that to do that, you have to 10X the way you think.
The 10X Rule is about not being average because:
“Average assumes—incorrectly, of course—that everything operates stably. People optimistically overestimate how well things will go and then underestimate how much energy and effort it will take just to push things through.”
So, have you been aiming for average in pursuit of your personal brand potential?
2. Dominate the competition
The 10X Rule proposes that competing is a loser's game. It sets you up for failure. One, there will always be someone you perceive to have more success than you. So, you’ll find yourself in a comparison trap, keeping up with the Jones in your competition. But, worse, comparison stifles your creativity and potential. It means you’re always on the back foot chasing what someone else has achieved rather than changing the game all together.
The book highlights that if you compare yourself to anyone, compare yourself to the biggest players in your pursuits. The success of the biggest winners shouldn’t deflate you; it should inspire you. With so many personal brands now publicly accessible, seeing what someone else has done shows you what’s possible.
Dominating, on the other hand, is a winner’s game. In this game, the competition becomes relevant. You’re too busy taking massive action in your unique white space in the marketplace and doing it for something that feels less like work and more like passionately pursuing a purpose. It’s the best of hustle culture meets finding your ‘Why’. So, what space is your personal brand dominating in?
Cardone highlights the value of being obsessed:
“Until you become completely obsessed with your mission, no one will take you seriously. Until the world understands that you're not going away—that you are 100 per cent committed and have complete and utter conviction and will persist in pursuing your project—you will not get the attention you need and the support you want.”
The big winners don’t compete or copy - they set the pace. They lead their pack. For example, if you’re a salesperson, it’s making more sales calls than others thought possible. Perhaps you’re reading this as a content creator trying to build your personal brand. Then, it’s out-creating the competition. You win by controlling what you can control, and it’s a way to almost automatically put you ahead of the competition.
The aggressive strategy of dominating through your massive action is the alternative to slow productivity - which often the most successful personal brands promote only after their own hyper-productivity underpins their successful slower lifestyle.
Many people will rebuke “winning isn’t everything” - this commentary goes without saying. Of course, it isn’t everything, but as The 10X Rule highlights, you have a duty to yourself to be successful - whatever your definition of success - in a way that doesn’t limit your potential.
Cardone says:
“As long as you are alive, you will either live to accomplish your own goals and dreams or be used as a resource to accomplish someone else's.”
Losers complain about the game they are in, while winners create their own rules and create a new game.
3. Overcommit and overdeliver
The popular maxim tells us to ‘under-commit and over-deliver’. It’s a safe strategy. On the surface, it protects your personal brand’s reputation. But, why not over-commit and over-deliver? Instead of thinking safely, think about how you can deliver beyond what you thought was possible. This requires another mindset shift. It’s stretching your thinking beyond what you currently think is achievable - beyond its limitations and into new zones of possibilities.
We’re conditioned in business, professional and personal development and even in personal branding to set SMART goals. Goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. The 10X Rule obliterates this supposedly smart way of goal setting by highlighting that massive success takes massive action and operating beyond levels of what’s considered normal.
So, 10X your personal brand goals and 10X the actions you think are required for your personal brand to achieve them and watch it 10X better your life.
