Transcription
In theory, you and I could make $100 million in the next 12 months. But we have a mental skoma, a blind spot, so we can't see the path that would get us there because we don't even think it's possible. But it is there and we could do it.
And there's some random dude who actually did just that. And he used a simple tool that you and I can use to uncover these blind spots and reveal a smart way to actually achieve any massive goal that may seem impossible right now. But once that path is revealed, you're going to be like, "Whoa, this could actually work. What's the catch?" It's like a glitch in the matrix. I've used it multiple times in the past, and that's been my experience. I'll tell you how this guy did it, how it worked for me, and how you can do it yourself, using the best ideas from multiple books of people who use this tool in different ways, so that by the end of this video, you can use it immediately and make something epic happen. And my guarantee is that if you actually use this tool and you really use it, you're going to achieve twice as much in half the time. Unless you already found it somewhere else and you already used it, which is unlikely.
If you're new here, I'm Leon Hendrix. On this channel, we talk about life strategies to achieve our goals faster while also being happy and having fun in the process. Cuz everyone can achieve massive goals while being miserable. We're greedy. We want to win and also have a good time in the process.
So, I first heard about this in 2016 when I was building my first business and I heard the story of Patrick Grove. He's this guy who sat down with a journal at Starbucks one day and asked himself, "How can I make $100 million in 12 months?" And he used a specific process to find the answers. And after a few sessions, he had laid out a plan that seemed crazy, but could actually work. So, he figured out a way to raise money to buy small websites that were listing cars for sale. Then he merged it with multiple other platforms and after 12 months the company iicar Asia went public at a valuation of $100 million. So he was like cool that worked. Let's see how far I can push this. And he asked himself how can I make a billion in 24 months. And this time he failed. He only achieved half of his goal. His company if basically the Netflix of Asia was valued at $500 million after 24 months of starting the company.
But there's a lot more to it than just asking yourself a simple question. When I first heard this story, I thought, "Yeah, I mean, he's an entrepreneur. I looked him up. He already had some experience and, you know, some successes before. But $500 million in 24 months. Maybe I could achieve more in less time as well." And it ended up completely changing my life. At the time, I was going through the toughest year yet. I had just started my first business, which was an e-commerce business. It was a real business, not some drop shipping BS. I had my own products that I actually designed myself. And my goal at the time was to make $10,000 per month by the end of the year, right? Which was 6 months out. That's what I saw possible. So, I sat down with a journal and asked myself, how can I get to $100,000 per month by the end of the year? For me, it didn't take multiple sessions. It was obvious in 10 minutes. I knew exactly which products I needed to launch based on the sales volume that I saw in my competitors. I knew how much money I needed to raise to launch them. and nothing was actually stopping me from making it happen other than fear. So, I followed the plan and a few months later, well, we'll get to that.
I've used this process ever since whenever I needed it. It's how I ended up selling that business later on for a ton of money. It's how I blew up my YouTube channel really fast, getting to 100K subscribers in a bit over a year. And whenever a friend of mine feels stuck or a business owner books a call with me to strategize, that's what I do with them. My point is, however big or small your current goal may be, there is a shorter path available to you towards something bigger that's sometimes even easier. You just don't see it yet.
So, let's get into how to do this process. Any goal you have is like a puzzle that you're trying to solve. Picture yourself in a jungle maze and you want to get to the mountain top at the end. That's your goal. 100K a month, $100 million if you're Patrick Grove, whatever it is. And like in any maze, there are all these different paths that you could take to get to your goal. But some are dead ends that never get you there. Some full of traps, and some get you there, but are really long or difficult. But some are easier, shorter, more direct, and more fun. Most people just kind of wing it, right? They're in the maze. They have their goals, and they think, "Okay, I guess I I'll just go get more customers. I'll just launch more products, more videos, whatever." And when there's a fork in the road, like what should I work on next? One looks like it goes into the direction of the mountain of the goal, but it might take you completely off track. You know how mazes are. If only we had a map for the jungle maze. And this is why I just decided to call this process growth mapping. Growth mapping allows us to draw a map of the maze to avoid obstacles, reveal hidden paths, and also find the best way to reach our goal. And there are five tools I'm going to walk you through right here so you can do growth mapping most effectively. And you'll see how the books that I mentioned earlier tie into it as well. So let's go through it step by step.
Firstly, this one will change the way you approach any project in your life moving forward. If all you do is this, you'll get a ton out of this. So when you're starting this process and you multiply your goal by 10, you go from $10,000 to a $100,000 goal, don't freak out. It's just a thought exercise. You're not changing any plans here. In the beginning, the most important thing is that we just get the general direction right because setting a 10 times bigger goal oftentimes is a completely different direction than we have been taking before. Right? That's what Dan Sullivan talks about in the book 10x is easier than 2x. So if you want to 2x your business or your results in life, usually you just got to do more of the same which you've already been doing, which is kind of hard, right? You reach out to more customers, you put out more videos, launch more products, you just work longer hours, right? It works, no question. But the beauty about thinking in 10x multiples is that it forces you to start with a clean sheet of paper. Completely reinvent what you're doing. Think outside the box and think in a completely new direction.
The problem is that when you ask yourself, how do I get to this huge massive goal instead of this previous goal I had? You're still stuck in the middle of the maze. And all you see is the two or three paths in front of you from where you are right now. Right? They're based on what you've been doing so far. The assumptions you've made, the resources and limitations that you have. And so you have very limited thinking, right? You're like, "Oh, I've got my agency. I have these clients. They pay me this much, so I could just charge more, I guess, and I could get more clients, so I need an even bigger team, maybe." But that will only get you 2x, right? In my case, I was like, "Well, I just spent all my money on this one product I launched, and so I guess I have to sell a hundred times more of this that I have right now, but then I'm going to go out of stock." uh I had no idea what path I could take, right? And again, one looks like it goes in the right direction, but it could lead you far away, right? Like for example, to get to 100K or $100 million, you could sell more of the products you already have, but it's the path you have in front of you right now. But often times, having an upsell or an adjacent product or a way to make more from the customers you already have gets you there way faster. But at a different level, launching more and more products is actually a terrible idea because oftentimes companies grow much faster when they have less products that are more optimized. But my point is, it's a completely different direction. And the path that you see right now will not get you there. We need to get out of the maze, zoom out, get out of the situation that you're in and look at the map to know what direction we need to go in, which often times just disregards the path that we've taken so far.
And the way we do this is by not asking how can I make $100,000 per month, but by asking if I had already successfully achieved this goal, what would I had to do in order to achieve it? Or what would need to be true for it to be achieved? So, we reverse engineer from the mountain. We don't say, "I'm here. How do I get to the mountain?" But we ask, if I was at the mountain, how would I connect it to where I am now backwards? And you might realize, well, there's a massive river that's blocking the whole thing. We need to go around it. So, all these paths I have in front of me right now are just a massive detour. And we have to go to this other side actually where this map shows a bridge, right? To use real life examples, in my case, I knew for 100K a month to be achieved, this needed to be true. 111 sales a day with an average price point at $30. Four products to reach those daily sales. and I needed 10K to actually launch these new products in theory, right? And I came up with a simple, pretty obvious plan that seemed too good to be true at the time. And in step five, we're going to dive into how to actually put that theoretical plan into practice. But you might realize, you know, scaling my service business is super hard. I have to franchise it or hire someone or create a digital product, right? Or you realize I should go after different customers who pay way more, right? and capture a specific market or merge with a different company, right? Like something you've never even considered before. So the first step to get the general direction right is to start from the finish line and reverse engineer our way back. This is also the second habit in the seven habits of highly effective people which is begin with the end in mind. Always start there. And Gary Keller talks about it too. Uh, the guy who wrote the one thing, some billionaire dude who built one of the biggest real estate businesses in the world, Keller Williams. uh, he calls it goal setting to the now gstn where he starts with the long-term vision and then from there he determines what would I have to achieve in 5 years, 1 year, 3 months, this month, right now. So it works, it helps, good stuff, it's awesome.
The most inspiring tool I think is when we get to number three, which is where you find some real gold. But first, I got to mention the second one, cuz it's the foundation of everything else and I think it's the biggest reason why somebody like Patrick Grove was able to come up with a genius plan to make $100 million in 12 months. So, I think the biggest challenge you're going to run into doing this exercise is that at some point you'll find yourself staring at a blank page or just getting stuck. The most tempting thing to do here is to just go, "I don't know." Which completely stops your thinking. Don't do that because this is how you know you're about to get a breakthrough idea. See, when you ask yourself a common question like, "Oh, how do I grow my business? What should I do next?" Your brain usually just comes up with an answer very quickly, right? But those are just surface level insights because you've asked yourself that question multiple times before, unconsciously or consciously, and it's just the paved path in front of you that everyone else sees as well. And most people walk. However, if you ask yourself a new question like the one in the first point we mentioned, oh, if I had already achieved this goal, what would have to be true? It may take you a few minutes to come up with answers. And that's because your brain has never thought about that before. And that's where you get new insights. And when you ask a really hard, difficult question and there's silence, nothing. There's confusion. You feel this effort to think and this tension. It's because you've never looked there before. And your brain is about to come up with a completely new answer and find a new path that maybe only a few people walk because it's so hidden. And it might take you hours, might take you days, might take you weeks of digging and searching and chewing and mapping it out. How do I make this happen? How do I make this happen? Right? What about this route? What about that route? What about that route? And you get incredible insights and a genius plan that lead you to 100K a month or $100 million. What's the last time you sat down and thought really deeply about something that you didn't get the answer to for days? So, as you're growth mapping and it gets challenging, embrace the uncertainty and keep digging. Keep chewing on it.
Now, let's get to the really fun part. This is where we find hidden paths that were always there, but we just never saw them before. And they unlock massive shortcuts, explosive growth, or they could also save us thousands of hours of work. Where sometimes even a tiny adjustments makes a huge difference. So, let me give you some real life examples that back this up. This is super inspiring. So, one is from this old story that Homozi told on his channel years ago, I think in 2020, where he was mentored by a guy who got his company to a billion dollars. And Homozi was like, "Oh, how'd you do it?" And the billionaire was like, "Oh, well, we tried all these things. I had all these plans and I just couldn't make it work. I tried so many ways." And eventually, I decided to retire because it was time. And so I replaced myself with the people that were working for the company and I just set up the right incentive structures and they just figured it out like that. They knew the business so well and they took it to the next level. He got to a billion by retiring. He stopped fighting his way through the jungle maze. He just took a cable car straight up to the mountaintop with zero work.
Another example is from a subscriber I recently did this exercise with. He had seven or eight clients that, you know, he was charging 5K a month, but he really wanted to work with a massive client that could pay him four or five times more. And I asked him, "Why don't you just do that?" And he was like, "Well, I don't really have the track record to prove that I can do it." And I was like, "Do you need a track record? Like, why can't you just prove you can do it by just doing it for them and they'll see the results?" And he was like, "Huh, I guess I could do that." and now he's in talks with getting one client that could pay him 20 or 30k a month. The obstacle that he thought he had was not really an obstacle. It's almost like in our jungle maze, we're finding a hidden path that is covered by something that looks like an obstacle like vines or there's a bush or tree that's in the way, but the path is right behind it. We just don't see it, right? And we go like, "Oh, well, I I guess I can't go there. There's this thing in the way." But when you remove that and you're like, "Oh, there's a secret passage here." It just saves you tons of time and effort. and you shortcut it. And yes, hard work super important, absolutely necessary. Sometimes you just got to go and execute. And there's always a better, more effective way. It's just hidden. And the way you find these hidden shortcuts is by going through your line of reasoning and asking, is that really true? To challenge your assumptions. Cuz so many of the obstacles that we perceive are based on just assumptions that we made a while ago, and then we just never question them again. You may have to go back and look at all the things that you've already done so far and already decided were true and go, is that really true?
Back in the day when I used to play video games, I played Dark Soul, one of my favorite games. And there's literally these invisible walls that if you hit them or you roll into them, they disappear. And the moment you figure that out, you do that on every single wall in the game. And that's what you want to do with any line of reasoning that you have, any obstacle that you see. Think about it. YouTube started as a dating app. It was called TuneIn Hookup. So people would upload their videos to find people that they could meet, right? Imagine they kept up the assumption that it's just for that. YouTube would have never existed. I would have never existed because I only exist in your screen. I'm not actually a real person. That could be happening in your business. Why do people really buy your product, watch your channel, in your personal life? What do people actually like you for? You might think it's because of these reasons, but it might be something completely different, right? You might be making the completely wrong assumption, doubling down on something that people actually don't care about. Like Heroszi was talking about how he made all these videos talking about relationships and fitness and personal stuff because he thought that, oh, then more people will check out my business stuff. And when they looked at the data, it didn't actually get him to his goal. So, he was just wasting effort on it, right? Right? And then he started just focusing on business content again. And a very common assumption for high achievers like us is that we think we need to know how to do something ourselves or do it ourselves, right? Like I have to figure out how to raise money, how to fix this problem, how to make these videos, whatever it is. But Dan Sullivan, absolute G. He wrote another book called Who, Not How, which is an even better question. So instead, you ask who do I need, not how. So instead of asking how can I build a big audience to promote my products, the founders of the prime electrolyte drink just partnered up with Logan Paul and KSI, that was their shortcut. Instead of forcing the how can I bring this company to a billion, that guy who retired and then made it happen, he just tapped into the who of the team that was already in place. People are the ultimate shortcut. Everyone watching this, me included, we're just one relationship away from growing our business by a factor of 10, solving our biggest problem, and just getting to the next level.
This next one could save you years of wasted effort. Speaking from experience, don't make the mistake I made. So, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, yes, a comedic sci-fi book, there's a fascinating idea that will illustrate this really well. So, there was a race of hyper intelligent pandimensional beings that built a supercomputer the size of a small city to ask it, "What is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything?" And it said, "It'll take me 7.5 million years to come up with the answer." And they couldn't wait to hear it. But they pass it down for generations. For 7.5 million years, a whole religion is forming around this computer. and wars are being fought until finally the day has come. The entire species gathers together for this monumental event and the computer reveals the answer is >> 42. >> They wasted 7.5 million years because they put in the wrong prompt. Here's how this applies to us. The question that I started with for my YouTube channel was, "How do I get to 100,000 subscribers?" And the path I found was very clear. Big production videos, pick the most clickable ideas, optimize every second for retention so people don't click off. Dumb things down so more people can understand it. And I got what I wanted. But years later, I was like, "This sucks. And I don't want to go down this path anymore. It's full of mosquitoes and rocks, and the view wasn't really nice, you know, to the point where I was like, I don't even want a million subscribers anymore." I started with the wrong question and the wrong metrics to track to begin with. Here's the thing. I could have achieved a bigger goal for my channel that would have also been easier to achieve and sustainable by simply asking a better question to find a better path because it is possible and I'll prove it to you.
This guy's story is super inspiring. So 2016 I was at a conference while running my e-commerce business and there was this guy called Brian Lee, a serial entrepreneur and he was telling a story about how he was in the process of building this massive company at the time which is now known as Legal Zoom. It's worth billions of dollars. And at the same time, he also had the genius idea to launch a frozen yogurt store down the street cuz he thought it'd be cool. You know, it's tiny business in comparison. It's like a little hobby. Now, which one do you think was more difficult? With Legal Zoom, they had this massive vision. They had great engineers. It was challenging, but they were making progress and it was exciting. With the frozen yogurt store, the staff was unreliable and they were always late. The margins were very low and they kept running out of coconuts. He said that he actually spent more of his time worrying about the frozen yogurt store because he just couldn't get it to work and it didn't even have big potential. And the lesson that he was sharing at the conference was building a big company is not necessarily harder than building a small company. It's just a different path. So in our case, you can pursue something that's bigger and also try to do it in a way that's easier, but it's just a matter of finding the right way. It's just a matter of digging for it. And again, 10x is easier than 2x because it just forces a completely different level of thinking to say, I want it to be easier and I want it to be this big goal. And this is also the downside of being disciplined at times, right? And the upside of being lazy in certain ways. Because if you're someone with a ton of discipline and you have a strong work ethic, your go-to is probably in order to triple my business, I'm going to work three times as long, make three times as much stuff, and reach out to three times as many people. Just go in the pain route, right? I'm just going to machete my entire way through the jungle. And that will work. Don't get me wrong, but there might be a better way that you just don't see yet. And I love this quote. We are kept from our goal not by obstacles but by our clear path to a lesser goal by Robert Braw. No idea who that guy is, but that's a fire quote. And in this case, the clearer path is just the hard way, the brute force way. But given the choice, is that really what you want?
And again, we use a better question to do exactly that by adding constraints. So if you're like, how can I make 10 times more money? The go-to is, well, I hire more people. I raise more money. I I work more, right? But what if you don't want a big team and you already work 12 hours a day? Then you just add the constraint, how can I make 10 times more money with a smaller team while working less? Completely different level of thinking. Instead of how can I find my life partner, how can I find my life partner in the next 6 months while living my normal day-to-day life without going on dating apps? Or how can I build my dream physique in 3 hours a week without having to go to the gym? And you might discover a cool hobby like stand up paddle boarding which just is way more fun and it gets you in shape too. And what I should have asked myself is how can I grow a loyal following of 100,000 people who are my ideal target audience while making videos I enjoy making so much that I could do it for the next 10 years. The more specific your question, the better your answers. And it actually makes it way easier to solve these challenging problems, right? Like how can I build a million dollar business is way too vague and overwhelming. But if you're like, "How can I make a million dollars in this industry solving this problem with these skill sets, working this many hours?" It becomes very confined and and targeted.
But here's the thing. You can figure out all these great ways and know exactly what to do and still find a way to sabotage yourself or talk your way out of it. That's what number five is about. When you know the path, this is how you make it happen. Cuz here's the thing. You could have the perfect plan laid out or brought to you on a silver platter to land a client who will pay you 10 times more or you find a product that will dominate the market or you make one partnership that just takes your company to the moon, whatever, right? You're really excited for a moment, but then you find the reasons why it actually won't work or it'll work, but it won't work for you. You know, it's not that simple. I'm not ready. I don't have the skills. I don't have the money. I'm just being realistic here. I think you can relate to this, right? You're really excited at first, but then doubt creeps in. And if we're being honest, it's really just fear, right? We get wrapped up in our own stories because there's emotions attached to it and it comes with all these excuses and perceived limitations. And this is where we make up obstacles where there aren't any. And we literally block our own way.
But there's a smart way around this. Have you ever noticed how easy it is to spot someone else's problems? And you know exactly what they should do, but they just don't see it. And meanwhile, that's what everyone else thinks about you, too. You have that one friend who gives really great relationship advice, but they can't keep a stable relationship themselves. And that's because everything is easier to solve from an outside perspective. And that's one of the most common reasons why business owners book a call with me, so they can get an outside perspective and we can strategize together. Even if I don't know the industry, I can help pull them out and help them zoom out. So this tool allows you to detach yourself from the emotion and look at things objectively. And it's called ilism. Not illegalism. That's don't do that. Ilism. The practice of referring to yourself in the third person. >> He said once, "I am the single greatest president in his lifetime." I said, "I love this guy." >> It sounds too simple. Sounds kind of dumb, but it is a very powerful tool for journaling if you want to get some distance from your own problem, right? Right? Like detach yourself from emotions or stories that you have while you're in it. If you're like sitting down to journal and you say, "Oh, I'm so pissed." It's very different than saying, "Leon feels pissed." Interesting. You feel the difference? It's great for emotional regulation, for clear thinking, decision-making because it just creates space.
So, while you are growth mapping and strategizing, you could just ask yourself, if someone else had already achieved this, how would they have done it? That removes the stories that you have for why you can't do it. and you come up with vastly different answers and you can really remove yourself from it cuz often times we just don't feel like we deserve a goal or we're ready because we have certain stories or daddy issues whatever, right? We all have our own little little thing, right? Everyone has their own sense of how much they believe they deserve in terms of money, in terms of love, in terms of relationships. And some people just feel like they shouldn't have more than a certain amount of money cuz it's not ethical. it's like h it feels a bit greedy, you know, even though logically they they know it, right? But that's a way to go get around that self-sabotage. And I'll be honest, I I have parts of that too, right? Where I feel like I can't receive too much. I have to give like 10 times more and then maybe I get something back. So, if you're asking yourself, how can I make a million dollars in 12 months? And you're squirming and you're like have so much resistance that you're like, ah, this feels too big. This feels too uh, just ask yourself if someone else had already made a million dollars in 12 months, how would they have done it? Feel the difference? It's someone else. It's not me. I would never be that greedy. But in theory, if somebody else did it, like how did they do that? Let me take some notes here. Like, yeah, I know how I could find the love of my life and be happily ever after if I was someone else, but the problem is I'm me. Okay, then just ask yourself if someone else who felt like me or was like me found their life partner in six months, what would need to be true about them? Well, they would have to feel worthy. They have to be radiant to attract them. They have to have a full cup, put themselves out there, go on 100 days, whatever it is, right?
That's what I did when I realized that in order to get to my goal, I would have to launch three more products. I would have to probably get to 10K. Here's the thing. I'm broke. Like, somebody else, yeah, they could do it, but I don't have any money. I spent all my money on the first product, but I was like, "Yeah, if someone else who was broke had to get together $10,000 in the next four weeks so they could launch more products, how would they do it?" And I looked around and I still had my guitar from high school. I had old toys from childhood. I had a whole video game collection that I spent years putting together, including video games that were before my time, cuz I don't know, that was like a hobby of mine. And all that was already worth $5,000. then that person would probably also get a job or something. And I just started working at a nightclub to get closer to the number that I needed. And yeah, I mean, if they needed more, they could probably ask friends and family and maybe some of them might be crazy enough to to lend them some. And again, you want to question your assumptions, right? Is that really true? Is it really true that I'm messed up and I can't attract a relationship or whatever? Right? You know, your mind has a strong mental obstacle in place when it jumps to answers like, "Oh, yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but that doesn't work for me." Right? Keep digging. Is that really true? And the emphasis is on really. And seek out the reasons why it isn't, cuz it probably isn't. And you might think you're being realistic, but you're not really. You're just discounting the good and the reasons why it's possible and why you're worthy and why you're actually capable. And you do this until you remove all the obstacles.
Now once you have all that and you have your plan, you remove the obstacles, what's stopping you from just doing it? When I asked myself that question, I realized nothing really. So I followed the plan. I got the money together. I launched the products and instead of making $10,000 by the end of the year, I hit my goal of $100,000 per month instead. And I think I did it a month late, but considering where I started, that's insane.
And now it's time for you to try it. If you're an established business owner and you want to go through this process with me, I've opened up a few spots for those of you who want to strategize together, cuz it's much easier when you have an outside perspective that can help you zoom out. Or you can just do it yourself by downloading the free guide that I put down below that summarizes everything. And I recommend you watch this video next on how to find your zone of genius so you can achieve more doing something that you love that feels effortless to you by finding your superpower. Stay driven. See you over there.