Expand—Never Contract

spending.

Because contracting is a form of retreating, it violates the concept of the 10X Rule, which demands that you continue to act, produce, and create in massive quantities regardless of the situation or circumstances. I will admit that it can be very

difficult and counterintuitive to expand while others are taking protective measures. However, it’s an approach you must adopt in order to take advantage of opportunity. Remember: Regard- less of what is happening in the world at any given time, most people are not taking massive action. Although there are, of course, times when you must defend, retreat, and conserve, you should only do so for short periods of time—in order to prepare yourself to reinforce and attack again. You would never contract as a continued business effort. Although we frequently seem to hear reports of companies that failed because they expanded too fast, the case for many of them probably wasn’t so simple. Most companies fail not because they stay on the offensive but because they don’t properly prepare themselves for expansion and cannot dominate the sector.

The idea of constant, unwavering expansion is counterin- tuitive and even unpopular; however, it will separate you from the rest of the pack more than any other single activity. The task of expanding when others are contracting should not be reduced to some simplistic concept. This is a very difficult discipline to apply in the real world. Yet once you get into the groove of mak- ing it your innate method of responding, the ability to continu- ously, relentlessly attack any activity will give way to forward movement. Any disagreement with this comes because most people only attack to the point where they meet resistance— and then back off. It’s kind of like challenging the schoolyard bully and then running away; it always turns out badly. If you approach trials in this way, the market, your clients, and your competition will not believe that you’re committed to a persis- tent attack. Therefore, they will threaten or criticize you—and you will back off. You’ll figure that it didn’t work—but the only reason why it didn’t work is because you didn’t stick with it long enough for the market, your clients, and your competition to finally submit to your efforts. Repeated attacks over extended periods of time will always be successful.

You must implement the tactic of expansion regardless of whether the economy and those surrounding you encourage

you to do so. I say this because we live in a society that pro- motes contraction most of the time, and when it does support expansion, it is typically too late in the cycle—hence the recent meltdown. News of contraction should serve as an indicator for you to do the contrary. You never want to blindly follow the masses; they are almost always wrong. Instead of follow- ing the pack, lead them! The way out is to expand, push, and take action—regardless of what others are saying and doing.

I watched others in my sector cut staff and promo- tion dollars during this recent recession—which served as a green light for me to augment my own forces. I didn’t cut employees or promotional spending. Instead, I increased both. Eventhough Isaw ourrevenueshrink with therest oftheworld’s, I opted to cut my own salary as an alternative. I redirected those monies to promote the business, which helped to increase my footprint and take market share from other organizations that were retreating. In fact, I spent more money on advertising, marketing, and promotion in the course of those 18 months than I had in 18 years! I realize how counterintuitive this was. I fully admit that it was scary and that I often second- guessed my actions. Yet I knew that if I could continue to keep pushing forward, I would gain tremendous ground.

Even more important than the money I spent were the demands I made on my staff and myself to repeatedly expand the use of our most valuable resources: energy, cre- ativity, persistence, and contact with our clients. By doing so, we immediately increased production in every area: phone calls, e-mails, e-newsletters, social media posts, personal visits, speaking engagements, teleconferences, webinars, Skype conferences, and the like. Over that year and a half, I published three books, introduced four new sales programs, produced more than 700 segments of training material for a virtual training site, did 600 radio interviews, wrote more than 150 articles or blog entries, and made thousands of personal phone calls. While the rest of the world withdrew, we expanded on every front possible.

Pretty much everyone in the world was convinced that their only saving grace was to save—so they did. It’s always intriguing to me that when people start saving money, they immediately begin saving everything else—almost automati- cally. It is as though the mind is unable to distinguish between saving paper bills or numbers in a bank and conserving energy, creativity, and effort. The whole world held back in its expenditure of both dollars and effort while just a few people expanded. Who do you think came out on top?

People have asked me how—and why—I decided to expand when things were so uncertain. My answer to them was, “I would rather die in expansion than die in contraction. I would rather fail pushing forward than in retreat.” Consider this yourself: At which of the four degrees of action intro- duced in Chapter 7 do you choose to operate? If you allow the economy to determine your choice, you will never be in control of your own economy.

The solution? Get off the sofa, get out of your home, and make your way into the market! Get in front of clients, seek out opportunities, and show that you are advancing in the market. Only retreat for brief moments, if necessary, in order to shore up resources so that you can prepare to expand with even more action. Your energy, efforts, creativity, and personality are worth more than the dollars that men create and machines print. And although spending money is the most common way for businesses to expand, it is certainly not the only way—and is not nearly as valuable as taking 10X actions consistently and persistently.

Remember 10X, baby. You want to expand with the goal of dominating your sector and getting attention by taking massive action. Only then will you be able to expand your con- tacts, influences, connections, and visibility with the goal of creating new problems. You will then continue to expand until everyone—including your supposed competitors—knows you are the dominant 10X player and always associates your name with what you do.

CHAPTER

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 764