This article contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosure page.
Grant Cardone’s 10x Rule is a book about extreme goals, extreme performance, and extreme actions taken to achieve those goals. I’m an avid fan of ways to improve productivity, and I was eager to check out the Grant Cardone 10X Rule to see what value I could gain from his book.
Grant Cardone writes on leadership, investing, sales and finance. He’s successful not only as a writer, but in business as well. His bio on Amazon states that “His 5 privately held companies have annual revenues exceeding $100 million” and that “As CEO of the #1 Sales Training company, Cardone consults with Fortune 500 customers such as Google, Northwestern Mutual, Morgan Stanley, and more.” Some of his other books include “Sell or Be Sold: How to Get Your Way in Business and in Life” and “If You’re Not First, You’re Last: Sales Strategies to Dominate Your Market and Beat Your Competition”.
Grant Cardone’s 10X Rule lays out how to increase your chance of success in reaching very large goals.
VERY large goals.
As a matter of fact, much of his guidance is around setting extremely high goals.
I listened to the audiobook, which the author narrated. His enthusiasm came through and I enjoyed the format, but because there are many questions and lists throughout the book, the print format would possibly be even more valuable.
Cardone’s premise is that if you want extreme success, in order to achieve it, you can’t operate like everyone else. If you merely work as hard as everyone else at achieving your goals, you’ll likely be mediocre.
Points I liked in Grant Cardone 10X Rule
The Grant Cardone 10X Rule continually stresses the importance of aiming high and staying with it.
Most people don’t strive to level-up or work harder to reach higher goals. They either retreat, do nothing, or operate at the status quo. Doing any of these will not help you reach your full potential. Continually striving for more, working harder, and taking bold action will get you further toward big goals and dreams.
Grant Cardone points out that we’re action takers early in life: running, exploring, trying new things and failing.
But somewhere along the way we start internalizing messages around limiting ourselves. We get lazy and insecure and limit our actions and ambitions.
We also internalize messages around our level of control regarding our success. We often blame others and see oursleves as victims. Instead, recognize your role in what happens to you. Be accountable. When things don’t go as planned, learn from it. Even if you’re not responsible for things not going as planned, you are responsible for how you react. This brings to mind one of my favorite books, “The Obstacle is the Way” by Ryan Holiday. (Read my review HERE)
When we take massive action, we encounter bigger problems. But you’re going to have problems anyway, so why not level up. Cardone points out that until you create higher levels of problems, you’re not operating at your full potential. There are going to be problems anyway – work on harder ones.
One idea I particularly liked: Carry out every action as if you are being recorded as a model for others. This brought to mind a Marie Forleo quote I have up on my wall at work: “How would you behave if you were the best in the world at what you do?” These are similar in my mind, and can inspire me to better performance.
“How would you behave if you were the best in the world at what you do?”
Marie Forleo
Cardone stresses staying with it to reach your goals. DO NOT GIVE UP.
“Never reduce a target. Instead, increase actions. When you start rethinking your targets, making up excuses, and letting yourself off the hook, you are giving up on your dreams!”
10X Your Goal Setting
Books and peers usually encourage us to set attainable goals. For this reason, people set goals that are way below their highest potential. If you do actually reach that goal, you’ve simply attained a small goal. But if you set a very high goal, and you don’t reach it, you will still likely go further than if you’d set a small goal.
He lists out multiple points to consider when goal-setting, but one that struck me as particularly inspirational was this: You have more potential than you realize.
“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.”
10X Your Obsession
Cardone stresses the importance of obsession. You must work relentlessly and obsessively to attain your goals.
Even when you start getting traction toward your goal, do not relax, but move forward with the drive and obsession that got you moving forward. Keep up the momentum.
“Disciplined, consistent, and persistent actions are more of a determining factor in the creation of success than any other combination of things.”
10X Your Fear
Yes, fear plays a role in success. If you don’t experience fear, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough. Don’t think of fear as something to be avoided. Use it as an indicator that you’re striving to move further out of your comfort zone into growth. Fear can also be a signal that you’re avoiding something that you likely need to do. I fully believe these two premises, and over the past several years have learned to use fear as an indicator – either that there’s an action I should take as a growth opportunity, or that there’s something I’m avoiding that I likely really need to give attention to. It has served me well.
10X Advice
The book is full of advice regarding ambition and success. You’ll find many of the concepts in this book elsewhere. But this is an intense concentration of suggested mindsets, activities, and behaviors to adopt to help you be extremely successful. They’re not easy. But Cardone lays out a great deal of inspiration and advice, and sheds light on the work required to get massive results.
Cardone gives a long list of “commonly found qualities and personality types in successful people” and points out that the “only way to be successful is to take the same actions that successful people are taking.”
He also has questions throughout the book to guide your actions. These can be helpful tools in growth and action-taking.
My 5X Action
I don’t dispute that Grant Cardone’s 10X Rule lays our great advice for kicking ass and reaching extraordinary target goals. I am tempering my kicking-ass overacheiving behavior with the desire to also give my family attention, and enjoy moments that I’d regret missing years down the road. However, I can see that I’ll come back to this book again – likely repeatedly – as inspiration and guidance to continue to level up.
I also question the need to pace to prevent burnout. I’ve had the experience of setting super high goals and working with an intensity beyond anything I’d done before. I hit a wall and simply had to stop and step away to rest and recharge before coming back and diving in again. So, while I appreciate the sentiment of working harder, I think there’s value in consistency and balance, as well.
I won’t adopt every single recommendation in the Grant Cardone 10X Rule, and I likely won’t reach the level of wealth that Grant Cardone has. That’s not my goal. I am extremely happy – and wealthy – in so many ways already.
But my nature is to strive to live bigger and continue to stretch and grow, and I’ll come back to this book multiple times to continue to get inspiration and reminders of ways to continue to do so.
If you want a book to push you way out there, this one will.
The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure
If you have any other great books you’d like to recommend, let me know in the comments. I’m always thrilled to learn of gems I’ve not read before.
If you enjoyed this book review, you might also like this post: Embrace Failure on the Path to Growth or Top 5 Ways to Achieve Peak Performance
No Responses