Burn the Place Down

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 gener- ated by your victories. It will be about this time that people start offering you admiration—and then advice. Be particu- larly 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 recommend- ing 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 cel- ebrate 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.

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 unwill- ing 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 play- ers 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 imagina- tion 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 over- exposed person or product will somehow lose its value. But consider the following: Coca-Cola is known by almost every- one 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 some athletic and celebrity personalities. Although overexposure is usually not the problem, obscu- rity 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 incin- erate everything in your path. Go all the way—and then keep going until your fire burns so hot that people stand in admi- ration 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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Date: 2016-04-22; view: 707