Graham Cochrane (00:00.696)
So not everyone is cool. know, their, books might be great. They might be brilliant, but they're awkward to talk to that. That wasn't the case with you. So when you came in with your, your alo stuff, I was like, this guy's he's, he's relaxed. Myron's got his suit on and you, you've got your, your athleisure. was like, this is my guy. This is my guy. all right. Cool. and at the end, I'll definitely like set people up for the book and scaling.com at the beginning. But then at the end, I'll definitely toss it off to you you want to
Benjamin Hardy (00:13.329)
Yeah.
Graham Cochrane (00:29.864)
Say anything you want to say specifically about next steps with checking out what you guys do at scaling.com if that works for you. Cause that was that, will that be the wind for you? Like the book and getting people to scaling.com.
Benjamin Hardy (00:39.802)
The win is whatever man, win is spending time with you. I will tell them about the audiobook which they can get for free at scaling.com forward slash audiobook but that's it. I don't have a bunch of socials and stuff like that. Whatever's good man.
Graham Cochrane (00:55.662)
Alright dude. Cool. Well let's rock and roll.
Okay, today's a special day because I'm honored to hang out with my new friend, Dr. Benjamin Hardy, incredible author, organizational psychologist, co-founder of scaling.com, which is his newest endeavor, which I'm really excited about. I've been a fan of Ben Hardy's books. I've reviewed a couple of them on the show and on YouTube. And I got to bump into him at Myron Golden's event just a couple of weeks ago. Myron's like, Hey, you got to come. Dr. Benjamin Hardy is coming. I was like,
Benjamin Hardy (01:19.882)
So, thank
Graham Cochrane (01:28.322)
I love this guy's stuff. So it was great to get to bump into you. That whole day was amazing. But the new book is Scaling, or excuse me, The Science of Scaling. Scaling.com is the company, The Science of Scaling. Grow your business bigger and faster than you think possible. Ben, I'm pumped to have this conversation and dive into all things growing, thinking, scaling, and just actually living the life you want to live, which I think is the point of it. So thanks for spending some time with us today.
Benjamin Hardy (01:53.652)
Sure, Graham. Happy to be with you.
Graham Cochrane (01:56.696)
Bro, so the two books that I reviewed, think on this channel, Gap and the Game, you co-wrote with Dan Sullivan, and then 10X is easier than 2X, you co-wrote with Dan Sullivan. You've written a bunch of books on your own, you've written a few with Dan. I remember the first time somebody told me you have to read Gap and the Game. I was struggling with the tension between I see so much greatness in my future. I've done so many great things. My wife's like, can't you look at the things you've done?
Benjamin Hardy (01:58.411)
Thank
Graham Cochrane (02:25.656)
And I'm like, but what about the things I could do? You know, and I was having this conversation with a buddy of mine and he's like, you know, the book you need to read. And he sent me Gap and the Gain and I read it and it just really gave me practical tools. If first it made me feel like I'm not crazy, that there is this tension between the ideal where I want to be. But why I was feeling the way I was feeling is being in the gap, as you call it, as Dan calls it. But then looking at the gains, that book is immensely practical. And then when 10X is easier than 2X came out,
thought, well, that's a ridiculous title, but I love it. And I want to understand it. And, you know, I love the magic of thinking big. And I love some of these other classics about how having these impossible goals as we'll get into can just be such a fuel source and a clarifying engine for you. But that book was incredibly practical, too. It wasn't just theory. was just, no, this wakes way more sense. And so what it sounds like you've done, and correct me if I'm wrong, from what you've told me and what you shared and what I've read in the science of scaling is you've taken
10X, each other than 2X and you've made it a practical how-to manual that's no fluff, just meat of literally how to grow your business. And I think from what you say, you're trying to help people 10X their business in three years or less. So tell me about why this book now and what you're so excited about with this book.
Benjamin Hardy (03:44.902)
Yeah, and thank you for reading the other books. I know that it's funny that people I talk to because everyone reads books at different times, you know, I mean, in different books hit people at different times, the gap in the game definitely hits a lot of people at the right time. So how I look at it is the books that I did with Dan, and I would even say some of my other books, like Be Your Future Self Now and things like that, they were all
fundamentally like diving into a singular concept, right? Even 10x is easier than 2x is a fairly singular concept. It's the idea that a bigger goal is easier than a smaller one. And when I started writing that book, particularly like Dan didn't have a lot of the, the how to, to be honest with you, he's really good at concepts and nuggets and frameworks. And then people have to kind of work out the details. And so when I'm writing a book, I kind of have to work out the details, right? And so
I love the idea of 10 X is easier than two X and certainly Dan's not the first person to say that people even back in the nineties would say 10 X is easier than 10%. Talking about 10 % growth. Um, I want to understand, like, I understand, I believe the idea, how does it work? Right. And so that's kind of where my psychological background kicked in. And one of the concepts that I've like dived into deeply is called, um, pathways thinking, which is actually a part of both motivation theory and hope theory.
And like a fundamental aspect of any goal pursuit is just the filtering and finding of pathways to that goal. And so what, as, as I thought deeply about that book, particularly it was like, okay, so higher goals have less paths, like, which means that there are better filter for finding those paths and they force you to let go of the bad paths. Like that became kind of the, the core idea. Right. And so with, with this new book, the science of scaling, I think why it's different is, that, rather than just a singular
concept, like I really wanted to try to complete a full thought like a full concept, a full and I really do think that obviously, this doesn't answer every element of how to scale a business. But I do think that it really gives you like the fundamental start to finish of how to get there. Of course, there's details that need to be worked out. How some people have said it is is like 10x is easier than 2x maybe shows you why growing a lot is is a great approach. This book
Benjamin Hardy (06:10.439)
goes far, far deeper into the house.
Graham Cochrane (06:14.254)
100%. And I'm so grateful for it because I think in the entrepreneurial community, that book 10X, that really started to catch fire. And so the concept was there. And then I just kept hearing, you gotta read this book. And then people would say, yeah, that's great. But then how do I do that? What do I do with that? And which is always a great signal from the market that there's more content that's needed, which is great. So I love that you're continuing the conversation.
I just kind of want to get into it because I want to get into the three part framework because it seeing it you presented at first saw you presented at Myron's and I was just sitting there thinking, oh, this makes so much sense. And it's taken a ton of notes. then reading through the book, finally, as he generously gave us an advanced copy, I kept seeing some of these things again, and I wanted to pull out some of them. And I want to the framework. But you started, think, that day with a quote from Robert is a brault.
Benjamin Hardy (07:08.397)
Mm-hmm
Graham Cochrane (07:10.488)
Page 47, you quote him, we are kept from our goal, not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal. And I already felt like I needed to walk away and I was good after that first line because I was like, my gosh, this makes so much sense. And you gave a ton of examples and feel free to give any examples that you want to, but it immediately made sense to me in that moment that I think I'm scared of the bigger goals.
And something you also say in the book is that you almost have to become a different person to achieve these different goals. think I was intuitively scared of the bigger goal. So it was actually easier to just find a lesser goal or a bunch of lesser goals and like a bunch of easy paths. I could do that. I could get really good at that. And I could launch that thing really well, but, and I'm executing those things, but they're actually keeping me from the big thing that I really truly want. If I was honest and fearless and
There's so many things that came up psychologically for me, but unpack that statement to you. What does that mean to you? We're kept from our goal not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal.
Benjamin Hardy (08:16.551)
Yeah, I mean, honestly, man, this is probably my favorite quote, or at least top five, because there's so much packed in it.
One is just, you already said goals and pathways, right? And then this then becomes re-highlighted in this quote, right? So goals and pathways is a fundamental aspect of human psychology. And it even gets to the idea of frame, floor, focus, but our frame, you know, in psychology is just the way we see the world, right? We all see the world through a frame. And the thing that I think is powerful for people to know is that the frame is based on goals. Sometimes those goals are unknown, sometimes they're known, but so if you think about someone who has a goal of retiring at age
65, right? That goal then shapes their frame, right? It shapes their path. It shapes what they see, what they don't see. It shapes what they do for the next 30 years. And so to the idea of we're kept from our goal, not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal. One is just the notion that we don't hit our goals because of the obstacles or because they're too hard, but because we keep saying yes to lesser goals. And we say yes to those because they have a clear path, right?
And so we can just see the pathway to the lesser goal, even if that's on a daily basis, right? Let's just say on a daily basis, we have a goal, right? I want to sit and just write my book for three hours, right? But I keep not doing it because I keep taking the clear path of the lesser goal, which is checking my phone or checking my social media. Like these are lesser goals, right? And so when it comes to a company or a life, it's usually not the goal or the size of the goal that matters. In fact, to the point of 10 X is easier than two X. The bigger goal actually forces you to find the easier paths.
or the more direct path, the hard part. And this is why I think that people really struggle to be honest with themselves. They're still pursuing too many lesser goals. And you can go into the whys, they don't really believe in a goal or whatever, but the first step is just admitting. I'm big believer in AA and Alcoholics Anonymous and that all progress starts by telling the truth. The most important initial truth is just that you're saying yes to lesser goals and that you're pursuing too many things and you haven't yet.
Benjamin Hardy (10:21.052)
you haven't yet faced that fact and that the cost of those lesser goals is everything.
Graham Cochrane (10:27.178)
It's so wild. think, you know, I coach business owners and so the conversations I have at all levels, whether the beginners or they're doing set multis, multi seven figures is they come to me with a question, help me do this or how can I do this or what's the best way to do this? And the question is interesting because I'm like, I could try to answer that question if I know the answer, but the bigger questions are what, what, what is your goal? and the question I ask people in clients is what are you optimizing for? Like,
If someone says, grandma, I to make a million dollars a year. I'm like, okay, is that what you're really optimizing for? What do you really want? Because you can make a million dollars a year a lot of different ways, but maybe it gives up. You have to give up 80 hours every week to do it. Or maybe you have to be on the road all the time. Um, I thought about this when I started to become an author and I was like, I want to get a book deal. I want to write books and what are the, you know, what are the best people doing that are writing books? And then I want to be a speaker. What are the best speakers doing? And I talked to, I met John Gordon in a mastermind and we became friends and
I'm asking him like, what's life like as one of the top speakers and authors and, he's on the road all the time. And I was like, oh, well that doesn't make sense for my season of life right now. I have young kids at home. His kids are grown. It doesn't make sense for what I want to do. I like to travel, but not, I don't want that to be the main thing I want to do. So that doesn't make sense, but I have to ask what am I optimizing for? And so I feel like with people, they may be asked the wrong question. They want to know the clearest path to a lesser goal.
And I want to get to the bottom of what's the really exciting goal that maybe you haven't allowed yourself to think about. And that's what I think your book and the way you talk about things helps people do. You just get right to the point. What do you really want?
Benjamin Hardy (12:04.112)
Yeah, the question you ask is a question I always ask.
What are you optimizing? Excuse me. What are you optimizing for? And, uh, if you can be really honest with that, you can start to see all the areas where you're optimizing for other things. And then it's decoding. Why are you optimizing for those other things? Um, and the reasons are always, you know, are not always the best, right? So I really love, you know, and it's led, it's led my study to good strategy, right? And so good strategy.
is fundamentally about what you say no to, right? And Steve Jobs said that innovation is saying no to a thousand things. And so you have to get to the point where you stop optimizing really for, you know, at least in your business, right? Stop optimizing for more than one thing. And that's the hardest thing, but that's what creates a simple system that leads to the innovation that leads to scale. you always have to be confronted by either the lesser goals that you're still optimizing for.
or the ones that just present themselves regularly to you that present distractions. You know, I don't know if I mentioned this, actually, I don't think I did at Myron's, but when I was at Myron's with you a couple of weeks ago, and I asked Myron privately about this, but, Tony Robbins had read my book, The Science of Scaling, he read it twice, loved it, had his team read it, and then he's really wanting to get into corporate training. And I have massive respect for Tony.
but he really wanted me to help him with that. And he wanted me to go write books with him. And sometimes, and really we've begun to like think through, do you filter opportunities and how do you ensure that those opportunities are actually gonna help what you're optimizing for versus they're optimizing for something else and you have to just admit that this is a shiny distraction.
Benjamin Hardy (14:02.14)
And it's not optimizing for what you're trying to optimize for and it's going to take you away from that. And it's going to be costly, even if it's sexy. Right. And so with Tony, he really wanted me to write a few books with him. And particularly one that I would have, my pass off would have loved to do. It was a book on decision-making and like, was like, man, like my wife was even upset to be honest with you that like the right answer was to not do it. like my wife, like it was, it was, it was like one of those ones that was like, you start to try to justify why it can help you to the goal.
In our case, well, you know, obviously doing a book with Tony could be very beneficial to a brand or to my brand or to a book, but I had to admit that in that case, I wasn't optimizing for what we were really trying to accomplish in scaling.com. In scaling.com, we're trying to help companies scale 10x very quickly. And we're trying to do it very well. And the question would be, does Tony writing a book with Tony Robbins help us do that? Does diverting Ben's attention for three to six months so that he could do that help us help our clients 10x in three years?
or less, right? Sure, it might maybe grow the brand a little bit. But I had to face the truth that I was more with the Tony thing optimizing for looking good, right? Because it's a great look. It's a great look versus becoming great, right? Good is the enemy of great. And, and so it was a hard no, but that those these are the kind of things that you have to face. When you're asking that question, what am I optimizing for? And is it a clear path to a lesser goal?
Graham Cochrane (15:25.486)
That's so powerful. I that's, can't, I can't imagine being in the decision making process for you, but I think that's so instructive for us. Cause what's coming up for me is, gosh, most, most business owners actually don't know what the main thing is. Like you say, you really can only optimize for one thing in your business. And I don't know if people really know what that is. Maybe their singular thing is a certain revenue number that might be as far as they've gotten, which is useful to some degree, but maybe talk about, maybe this is a great place to talk about.
the frame and the floor and the focus of why getting really clear on a singular goal for your business is so important and how you think about it because I think most of the people I interact with are just doing a lot of things every day. Like Tim Ferriss says, they're doing work for work's sake. It's a lot of the 80 % that doesn't even lead to maybe even the 20%. But they don't know what really drives the business. But more than that, they don't even really know what they're shooting for. And that's been me oftentimes.
grow in carte blanche, just grow bigger or look better or look more impressive or just improve generically. There's no singular focus. So then you say yes to all these things. You go to events you shouldn't really go to. You create content that doesn't make sense for your brand. You do partnerships that are outside of your wheelhouse or could be good, but they're not going to make you be great at one thing. maybe help an entrepreneur who's starting or doing okay.
understand why having a singular focus is so important and maybe walk through what that frame floor focus does for them.
Benjamin Hardy (17:01.385)
Absolutely. And of course, as people, we have different dimensions of life, right? I'm a husband, a father, right?
Son of God. like, of course I have other areas of life, know, bigger goal, biggest goal, right? Go back to God, right? But like, when it comes to a business, right? I think that just to lay a few, few concepts. like one is from a psychological perspective, the most fundamental concept in psychology is time. And time is obviously three, three levels, right? There's past, there's present, there's future, right?
And from a psychology standpoint, usually people let the past drive their present and then their present to drive their future. This is the common approach. I call it linear psychology, where you make decisions for your future based on your past. And in a business, this would be very simple where it's like we did a million revenue last year. So let's go for 1.5 or two this year, right? This is letting the past dictate the future. And when you operate that way, then it leads to bad strategy and bad filtering, because essentially you're just continuing what you're already doing.
Right. And that, you know, that leads to a lot of problems in psychology, such as imagining a future self that's pretty much the same as your present self, right. But it also leads to just an un an inability to hard filter everything you're now doing. And what's the point? Instead, you just kind of just try to just keep going and maybe increase a little bit here and there. So the real like the most fundamental insight that I could give to anyone here is just a reframe of time.
from a psychological standpoint, and then that allows us to reframe goals and how you can relook at goals in a more efficient way. And then from there, finding the most simple path. But I'm from a psychological standpoint, how I look at it is it's just a tool for operating in the present. So the better I frame my own past, the better I can operate in the present, because now I'm not being driven by it, right? Even traumas or failures or just being mad at someone, it's my choice how I frame that past. And if I can frame it effectively, I'm going to be better off in the present.
Benjamin Hardy (19:01.189)
If I can learn my lessons from my past, I can operate better in the present. If I go through a hardcore trauma and, you know, something really bad happens, that can either negatively impact my present or I can shift it in such a way that it positively impact my present. So the key point here is that past and future are psychological tools that we use in the present. And they shape how we operate in the present. And so I really look at them as tools, but the...
Back to what we've already been talking about, which is the primary aspect of our frame is our goals. Our future is 10 times more powerful, 10 times more weighty than our past. And if you lose hope in your future, your presence in a bad, bad place, right? If you don't have clear goals, if you don't have hope in the future, if you don't see things beyond this life or whatnot, the present really starts to be a directionless, even meaningless place. So the future really, really matters. The future is the primary tool for shaping the present. It's just a tool.
And how you frame that future is in the form of goals, right? And so it then forces you to think, well, what are the most important goals for shaping my present? Right? And so, you know, that's why 10 X is easier than two X is because bigger goals force you to filter harder in the present. If you go for a much bigger goal, that goal's job is not to make you feel awesome or successful or to compare yourself to others. That goal's job.
is to help you identify what matters in the present and what doesn't matter. And when you start going for really, really big goals, and what I'll also add with the science of scaling is extremely urgent goals, right? Take a goal that's 20 years away and go for it in two years, right? Now you have to look at all the things you're doing in the present. And if you start to take the goal and make it seemingly impossible, both in scale and timeline, and you start to use that seemingly impossible goal, now, now,
most of what you're doing starts to fall below what we call the floor, right? Most of what you're now doing just becomes the pursuit of lesser goals. Like it's just stuff that really doesn't matter. And that's right. That's when goals become effective, is you just use it as a tool for filtering. You use it as the tool for looking at everything you're doing. And if it's a good goal, it's going to force you to get rid of most of what you're now doing and find a better path. And so, you know, the whole point of a goal is to simplify what you're doing. Like I'll give one example.
Graham Cochrane (21:21.197)
Yes.
Benjamin Hardy (21:22.598)
my when I was in a PhD program, my main goal, honestly, was to become a professional author. But of course, I want to become a certain type of author, one with research ability, ability to break down big ideas. And so but I could have just said I want to write a book, which would have been awesome. But I also simultaneously had the goal of providing for my wife and three foster kids, right. And so I was like, well, what's one goal that allows me to just accomplish all this at once? It would be get a six figure book deal from a major publisher.
And so that became the goal I reverse engineered versus just becoming an author, right? Much higher goal, much harder goal. But it forced me to find a path that was very direct. And, you the goal always shapes the process. And in the achievement of that one goal, I was able to provide for my family, become the person I wanted to be, and now have the life I want. And I mean, obviously, there's been many goals since, but a goal's job is to simplify everything you're doing and force you to find the best path.
Graham Cochrane (22:20.142)
That last part is so cool. That's what I think I love about it in the book is it all leads to simplicity. Simplicity is like the bedrock of how I think about life and business. like simplicity is wealth to me. So simplicity in my schedule, simplicity in the way we handle our finances, simplicity the way I run my business. Because I just I don't do well with complex. Maybe some people do, but I love how you kept pointing that out in the book. And you asked you were doing like some workshopping in real time in Myron's office with a gentleman, his business. I think it was like a
a payment process for business, merchant account business. And he said, you asked him his goal to grow his business or his scale goal. And he said, you know, maybe I did 1.5 million. I want to do three. And you said, that's not scaling. That's just growing. And there's a difference. And like, if you want to scale, that's something bigger. And I was like, that's, that's good. I had to think about that. And then you asked everyone, you know, what's your crazy impossible scale goal and what's the ridiculous short timeframe that you mentioned. So I'm sitting there in my, in my chair and I was like, yeah,
I haven't really thought about it because I don't, even though I'm future focused, I have like a love-hate relationship with goals because I'm like, well, I don't want to be disappointed. I don't want to not hit the goal. So like I'll set like manageable goals, you classic, like something I know I can achieve. But I've been warmed up enough that day that I was like, all right, let's do it. And so let's, I was doing the math. was like, all right, last year I did 2 million. If I wanted to do, the number that came to mind was $20 million in the next 12 months. And that might be, you know, so.
10X in just one year. And I just wanted to follow the train of thought. And what happened was so profound. I immediately got clarity on the math of, I need to get this number of people in my pay challenge. And then we have to these number of offers of this program and this program, just the math. And then, okay, do I have enough organic reach to do that? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I need to get some more pay traffic in there. But it got super clear. It's just, you just got to get more people into this event.
to sell this, converted this amount to sell this thing. And then what was more powerful was all the things I could stop doing. I was like, well, I got a list of nine to 10 things that are good, but there's no way they're gonna get me to 20 million. And actually that was the most freeing thing was like, oh, if I wanted to actually do this, I would stop doing nine out of the 10 things I'm doing and just do one thing and do it really well. And maybe I don't know how to do all those things. Maybe I need to find a couple of partners to help me.
Graham Cochrane (24:45.782)
implement some of those things faster, but the clarification and the simplification that came from that ridiculous goal, I've been chewing on that for the last few weeks.
Benjamin Hardy (24:55.954)
Yeah, it brings up some really high level principles. So simplicity is harder than complexity. Steve Jobs said that, right? It takes a lot of work to take something that's complex and make it simple.
What's really important about this is like the point again of the framing of the goal is to strip out the complexity and force a higher order of simplicity. And so the reason we go frame, then floor, then focus, a lot of people want to go from frame straight to focus, where they say, here's the goal, how do I get there? But just like simplicity is a higher order concept than complexity,
As part of that, subtraction is a higher order concept than addition. Right? So like anyone can add something, right? If I'm trying to get in shape, I can add 50 supplements, I can add workout plans, much harder just to remove sugar from my diet. Right? And so like subtraction creates simplicity, addition enhances complexity. Like the more things you add, like I think about it, like from like a science perspective where I think about variables, right? And the more variables you stick into a
you know, into a pot, like the more randomness is going to happen in that system, right? The more you can remove, the more prediction you can have. And so the whole, you know, it takes a lot of work. Like, so the biggest strength that can happen when you start going for the big goal is doing what you just did. If you want to get to 20 million in the next 12 months, you use that goal as a frame to look at the present, to look at your current business, you know, at 2 million and you
you know, or whatever the goal, wherever you're currently at. And you look, I just love it. You look at everything you're now doing. And you again, you use the filter to determine or use the future to determine what is relevant and what is not. call that signal and noise. And if you're honest from the goal, it's always operating from the goal. If you're honest from the goal, you just have to admit those nine things can't get me there. And so you can then have a conversation. Do we keep them even though we know they can't get us to 20 million or
Benjamin Hardy (27:00.889)
Are we willing to let those things go and find a pathway that can? And if we're willing to let those things that are maybe decent and good, but complex and lesser goals, allow us to go and find the path that we can focus on and execute on with, you know, to the idea of focus is saying no to a thousand things, strategy is saying no to almost everything. Even discipline is about saying no. It's like, now we can focus. Now are we willing to focus? That's a different question. But if you focus on the higher path, the better path,
Yes, you will you will go that's that's really how you go from good to great. It's it's also why it's so rare to become great is because most people won't do that. Most people won't raise their floor and strip out the stuff that shouldn't be there. Because it takes a lot of honesty. takes a lot of honesty about like, why am I doing this thing in the first place? One, it might be paying the bills to I don't want to disappoint customers three, I don't want to let go of team members like four, blah, blah, blah. Like there's all these things that you have to face when you do this. And the question is, are you going to operate from the goal? Or are you going to continue to continue the present?
Graham Cochrane (28:00.024)
It's so powerful. I love that when you came and you and Myron were riffing, I mean, it's just great to have both of you guys riffing off each other, but something that he teaches really lined up beautifully with what you are teaching about operating from the future self. He teaches that principle of be, do, have. So if you want to have more in your life or your business, you have to do more than you're doing now or do different, but to do more or different, you have to become
more and different than you are now. So it all starts with who you are. It all starts with identity. And the identity is a way I'm understanding you've been teaching it comes from your view of your future self. And there was like, I really loved Myron's concept, but then when you were talking about it and then reading this book, it's like something clicked for me how...
You know, everyone says, you know, we grew up, I think we're similar age, but we grew up in like the 90s and it's like, you know, you could be whatever you want to be and pursue your dreams. But like it clicked, like, wait a second. Here's my challenge. Like people think I need to become successful. This isn't working. That's why need to change. It's almost worse when it's working. It's almost worse when it's successful and you're still not doing the thing you ultimately want to do or your desires shift, your goals shift, because it's harder to leave something that's working and successful.
something that's good to go to something that's great, like you were saying earlier. And for me, there's been at least two major points in my business and career journey where it's like, I'm finally good at this, known for this, and it's working. But when I'm honest with myself and I look at the future version of me, I see someone bigger, different, maybe a different type of business entirely, maybe interacting with totally different people. And that's exciting until I realize, but I'm to have to change myself. I'm going have to become that person.
And then that'll lead to doing different things. And it's like this weird tension of, do I have the clarity of who I want to become? And then once I do have that clarity, do I have the guts to make the changes? But I found it was super powerful because you all start with the future version of who you want to be. And I think you gave me permission, and I think your book gives people permission to get really honest. I think the idea of the word, Jamie Winship says the word confession, like in the Bible, confession means truth telling. Just tell the truth about
Graham Cochrane (30:19.736)
how you're feeling, what you're thinking, in his case, like the truth of what you think about God, also like, just be honest with what you really want in the future, and then be honest with is your present gonna get you there? And that's where that crazy goal with a short timeframe really clarifies things, and then you have to confront, or I've had to confront.
Do I just stay the same or like, or do I own up to the fact that what I wanna be, I'm have to change. And it's given me so much confidence. I've been like in this third pivot now in my career of like, who I want Graham to be is not what I've been even doing the last seven years, definitely not the last 16. And now I have the guts to say, I'm gonna go singular focus on this and it's gonna disappoint people. It might even disappoint version of me, but it's worth it and it's clarifying. And so anyway, I just wanna thank you for that. That's not really a question as much as like,
Benjamin Hardy (30:41.578)
So,
Graham Cochrane (31:09.602)
the power of making your decisions today from the future you. Like it really is to help you become more so that you can do more and have more.
Benjamin Hardy (31:18.957)
I love it. Love everything you're saying. Yeah, with identity, you really have two choices, you know, back to time, your identity can be rooted in your future or can be rooted in your past, right? Like, those are your two choices for who you are in the present. And obviously, the default is to have an identity that's based on the past, right? That's just
these are the things that happen to me, right? This is what I've been doing. And so if you do that, then your past and future are gonna be heavily limited, right? Whereas if you operate from the identity of a future, and I use the word identity quite loosely, because I think that identity itself can become a trap. But if you let the future shape who you are in the present, and if it's a much bigger future, and then that future forces you to filter the present much harder,
You're have to let go of a lot of the things that even you're doing now, which were relevant in the past. And so when I talk about raising the floor and raising the floor to me is, is the dividing line between the goods and the greats, right? Like anyone can have a high ceiling, but it's really about how high you raise that floor. And the floor for me is defined by what you don't do. And so as you've raised your floor, what that means is you're letting go of things that used to do even the things that were acceptable last year would have been phenomenally acceptable for me last year to write that book with Tony.
But from the perspective of my goal, it was below the floor. And not because of anything about him. There's nothing to do with him only to do with my future self. And I think that this is where people get mixed up is is that they think that when they have to walk away from relationships or disappoint people, it's about the other person. It's not it's about your future self. And are you being in alignment with that? And that's the thing you have to square with. And what's amazing when you start raising that floor, meaning that
you're now letting the future dictate what you do. And if it's a bigger future, that means the floor goes up because a lot of the options that are currently you're currently pursuing can't get you the bigger goal. And so you'll have to confront, do I keep these things or do I raise the floor and eliminate them? And my view of raising the floor is, that it's essentially you walking away from your past self. It's an active walking away from your past self. You know, it could be an aspect of your business that now is below the floor. And so you've to go and let that go.
Benjamin Hardy (33:32.995)
you're letting go of your past self and something you invested a lot into certain relationships, certain opportunities, certain wishes and desires, right? To the idea of lesser goals. Often the things you have to walk away from are the goals of your former self, which their place based on your past self's best understanding or best knowledge. But now those lesser goals are diverting your focus. And the best thing you can do is just let go of that lesser goal. Just admit it's no longer relevant. It's no longer something to optimize for. And so
Yeah, the raising of the floor is the crucial crux. Like, until someone raises their floor, I consider it they're lying to themselves, and they're saying yes to conflicting and competing things, and they're operating out of fear, because they're unwilling to let the future shape what they do, and they're unwilling to make the moves now that are in alignment with that, even if they're uncomfortable, even if there's unknowns.
Once you start raising your floor and filtering out the stuff that shouldn't be there, then the growth starts to just skyrocket.
Graham Cochrane (34:39.55)
It's bro. It's so counterintuitive. My first business was in the music space and it got incredibly successful for me. we were doing seven figures. was one of the largest YouTube channels in the music production space. And then I remember when I knew I wanted to coach business because people were reaching out to me. Some, some press happened, but they're reaching out to me like, how do you, what's your business model? How are you doing? This is such a random niche. The music production niche.
And I started coaching people for free on Zoom that reached out and I just was like, my gosh, these people don't know. They don't know how this works. They think it's all about brand deals or being an influencer. They don't understand what I'm selling and how you do it. So I just got excited helping people. And then I had this new version of vision of my future self. like, I wanna coach people in their business. And then I had my own like imposter syndrome stuff that came up. But once I knew like, no, I can do this, it was the...
but I'd have to say goodbye to the audiogram. And that was like my whole childhood, the music version of Graham and the theater kid version of Graham is like, that all made sense. And I was like, what will people think? What will I think? And so I punted for two years on making that pivot because of that. I couldn't walk away from what was great for that version of Graham. And I thought it would be a big mistake. I thought it was risky. But that's the beauty of it, like making that leap, realizing that ended up not being risky.
and it sort of propelled me to new heights and to way more opportunities and cooler people and getting connected with people like you and more growth, more learning, more revenue. But then even these last two years, I've been in another pivot. Like I see a different vision of myself and every time I've pivoted, I have had to let people down. But it gets easier to step into the new vision and be drawn to that each time. And right now, bro, what you're saying makes sense because a lot of my clients, a lot of my one-on-one clients,
what they're doing right now isn't working anymore. The economy is shifting, markets are shifting, the world we're in is a little bit different, and they're not operating out of a place of the future, what's possible. They're operating out of a place of what used to work and a sort of safety, like let's just keep everything together, stay on the ship while it sinks kind of thing instead of building a new raft and going somewhere else. And I'm trying to help them think about, what's the future hole? Do you even want to be doing this anymore? Like, I can't think about that. So maybe talk to that person that's like,
Graham Cochrane (37:01.414)
They sense they need to have a better, bigger vision of their future, but they're afraid to change their frame. They're afraid to raise the floor. How do you deal with that when you're coaching people?
Benjamin Hardy (37:13.286)
It's very common, you know, so I'll share two quick quotes and then I'll talk about that. So one of my favorite quotes, like, so for 10 X is easier than two X and I try to have a singular idea that is like the driver for 10 X is easier than two X. The main phrase was like,
you know, remove everything that's not the David, right? And I was talking about the David being like the statue of David that Michelangelo sculpted. And he just said, the way I made David was I removed everything that's not David, right? With Tenek, or sorry, with this book, the quote from Buckminster Fuller, where he says that you don't change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, you build a new model that makes the old model obsolete, right? And then with that, there's a second quote, which is that the system is designed to defend the system.
And so the new model, which makes the old model obsolete, that's great. But the old model is going to defend itself against being transformed, right? Like it's a fight against you and that could be your own self, your fears, your team, your friends, whatever the economy, right. so
just in terms of how, again, how psychology works, it's so much more efficient to operate from a goal versus to operate from the present into the future, right? Like always operating from a goal, and then beginning to use a much higher, more urgent goal to, determine the best path, irrespective of what you've been doing now. Like I love the Richard Koch, who wrote the book, the 80 20 principle. He also wrote actually a better book, which is very almost unknown called the 80 20 individual.
And he says, he uses a great quote where he says, you know, most people say if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But he said, if you're an exponential thinker, he says, if they broke, that's the time to fix it. Right? Like, like if you're, if you're, if you're growing enormously, like at a certain point, if you don't keep innovating, you're going to flat out, right? You're going to plateau out. And so obviously the time when to pivot is, you know, a matter of wisdom. But usually if you're operating from the future,
Benjamin Hardy (39:19.203)
I viewed the future just like I view it as a tool. view it as a draft, similar to like the draft of a chapter of a book or something like that. It's a draft under constant revision. By the way, the past is the same way. The past is a draft, right? My story of my trauma of a child, my childhood is a draft. In five years, I hopefully will have a better draft of that story. And so the future is just a draft, right? And as you get better and better at operating from the future, you get better at having goals that simplify what you're doing and help you find better paths and navigate better ways.
If you're not willing to do that, then essentially you're just doing what everyone else is doing, which is just going with the flow, doing what works right now or reacting to external stimuli. so anyone became successful because they chose a future and they started going for it and they got focused on it. And that principle has to also apply to successful people. In fact, it applies more. As Warren Buffett said, the difference between successful people and very successful people
Is it very successful? People say no to almost everything, including the things they're now doing. and so yeah, the beautiful part when you start operating from the bigger future for your clients, I mean, obviously if you're in a situation where it's, now not working, like that's a different situation than when it's working, as you've already said, but when you start going for the impossible goal, it takes you away from what everyone else is doing. And it leads to a far more distinguished path.
You know, it leads to differentiation, it leads to focus, leads you to walking away from the common thought. You know, most people will take the common pathways and just pursue them because that's what everyone else is doing. One of my favorite quotes from Richard Remelt is that, and I'm actually now writing this book. So the book I'm writing right now is called Surprising Strategy. But one of the things that Richard Remelt wrote,
and he wrote a book called Good Strategy Bad Strategy, is he said, good strategy is always unexpected, always. I mean, if you think about it from like a war perspective, that makes sense, like, it's going to hit you from an angle you're not looking for. But good strategy is always unexpected in business or in life, because it's coming from a fundamentally different future. And that fundamentally different future takes you in a different direction than everyone else is going. And so it's going to be surprising to everyone, because eventually,
Benjamin Hardy (41:44.835)
You know, if you take that good strategy, that surprising strategy really far, it's probably going to disrupt a lot of what most people are doing, right? It's probably going to disrupt a lot of the common status quo thinking, and it might even reinvent how things are done. So if you're not willing to operate from the future, and if you're not willing to let go of the stuff that shouldn't be there, and if you're not willing to innovate and say no to a thousand things, like just admit that you're not playing the big game.
and that it's okay if you can even be fairly successful in the other games, but just admit that you're not playing the big game and you're also not playing the right game. And the right game for you is not going to be the right game for me, but just admit you're playing someone else's game.
Graham Cochrane (42:27.726)
That's so good. That Buckminster quote is so good. It makes me think about Steve Jobs was always willing to cannibalize his own products with newer, better products, know, cannibalizing the iPod, which sounded crazy at the time. Some people don't even, yeah, like they're like, why would you do that? It's the better vision. It's like, he said something to the fact if I don't cannibalize my own product, somebody else will. And that's bold. That's so powerful.
Benjamin Hardy (42:41.846)
with the iPhone.
Benjamin Hardy (42:54.466)
If you don't do that regularly, you're stuck. So Peter Drucker, who I really love, he wrote the Effective Executive. He basically said that this is the same thing. He, one of my favorite quotes, and I stuck it at the very beginning of chapter one in the book is essentially the quote is that in most industrial laboratories, and he's talking about just businesses, but he says in most industrial laboratories, people are just perpetuating today. Like they're just trying to defend the status quo and perpetuate today. He said, in order for research to be productive, you have to have
a new future that is actually the enemy of today. Literally, it's like, that's what that's what jobs was doing. Like, what they had was awesome. But think if think if he was too afraid to let go of the iPod. Like, this is what almost everyone does when they go below the floor is that they don't pursue the bigger future because they're because they can't let go of the great present. They can't let go of the iPod iPod to go invent the iPhone, like
And they're unwilling to do it. And so they don't. And that's the difference again from reaching levels of greatness is at a certain point, their iPod is sufficient and they don't go to the next level and they don't see that next innovation that could have been their future self and the one beyond that.
Graham Cochrane (44:09.262)
That's so good. That's so wild, bro. My thinking is stimulated talking to you and listening to you talk and reading your books. That's why I appreciate that. It's very rare to be in someone's company where you feel more clarity about yourself as an individual just by having the conversation with them. So thank you for that gift. I have one more question for you that I ask every guest on the show. Before we do that though, the book is The Science of Scaling.
It is officially out now. When this drops, it's at least launch day. So you can go get it wherever books are sold. There's an audiobook option, right? You want to tell people about?
Benjamin Hardy (44:43.49)
Yeah, obviously you can go get the audio book on audible, you know, very efficient. We also give the audio book away scaling.com forward slash audio book. So if you want the audio book for free, obviously it's not in the app, which is very efficient. I'm an audible listener, but if you just want the free version, go to go to the science of Sorry, sorry. Go to scaling.com forward slash audio book.
Graham Cochrane (45:07.15)
Okay, free audio book. I'll put that in the show notes as well. But also just pick up a copy of the book. Just go support what he's doing and check out scaling.com as well. They work with clients and entrepreneurs to scale their companies to 10x in three years or less, which is amazing. Him and his co-founder Blake Erickson. A final question for you is a personal one. So you can take it anywhere you want. I call it the golden rule. You have seven kids, am I correct?
Benjamin Hardy (45:35.721)
Correct.
Graham Cochrane (45:36.876)
Okay, so that's only five more than me. So you've got seven kids and you and your wife are doing an amazing job trying to raise them. You're teaching them everything you possibly can about life, themselves, spiritual things, practical things. Let's imagine that they forget everything you and your wife ever taught them, except for one piece of advice or one piece of wisdom that they actually would carry with them forever. Like, dad always taught me this, mom, dad always taught me this.
something like a golden rule, what would you want that one piece of advice to be or that one thought to be?
Benjamin Hardy (46:12.14)
I mean, the most fundamental thing period would be just try to listen to God's voice and follow it.
Like that's the most fundamental. Like the more a person can do that, the more a person can seek that, like the answers to God's voice for them individually, good things follow from that. And if you're missing that, things can fall apart. So that'd be the number one thing I would have them do if I could only give them one.
Graham Cochrane (46:26.286)
100%.
Graham Cochrane (46:48.046)
Bro, one of the best answers that I've heard, 100%. I love it, man. Any parting words for our guests before I let you go, my friend? Anything that's on your mind or anything you're excited about?
Benjamin Hardy (46:56.267)
Now just
Just keep listening to Graham. I actually personally watch your show, Graham. Now, I'm being honest, I watch your stuff. I love it. Keep watching Graham. Keep listening to Graham. And I'm just happy to be with you, You do a beautiful job.
Graham Cochrane (47:11.882)
I really appreciate that. receive it. Thank you for the time. Thank you for your wisdom. Keep writing, keep teaching. Rooting for you with this new endeavor with scaling.com. You guys are crushing it already. I know you will continue to help a lot of people not only make more money and grow their businesses, but become the people they were meant to become.
Benjamin Hardy (47:28.801)
Thank you, man.
