Jasmine Star (00:00:01) - Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show, a place where we got to talk about business and mindset. And today we are going to be talking about achieving the impossible. How's that for a suspenseful tagline and bringing you to the precipice of awesomeness? I couldn't be more excited because welcoming back to our show is our ever amazing co-host, Amy Porterfield.

Amy Porterfield (00:00:19) - Hello my friend.

Jasmine Star (00:00:21) - okay. So as a quick reminder, Amy has carefully curated some of the most incredible people to be on the show today, and today's guest is nothing short of that. Doctor Benjamin Hardy is incredible. And I will say, go up very far in a limb that this man has changed my life and business in the last six months. So as I'm reading his writing, as I'm listening to him in my voice, as I am quite honestly taking my earbuds out from the airplane, putting them in my husband's earbuds, and I'm like, just give me five minutes, listen to five minutes, and then he asks me, do you have a piece of paper? And I'm like, I knew it.

Jasmine Star (00:00:54) - Of course I need a piece of paper because this guy blows your dang money. Doctor Benjamin Hardy, welcome to the Jasmine Star show.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:01:01) - Yes.

Jasmine Star (00:01:02) - We should clap. Yeah. No no no no. We. Okay, so on on the Amy Porterfield show, you know, marketing made easy. You clap. Yeah. On the Jasmine star show, we got laser horns. Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. So, so Amy and I were going back and forth. What do you feel most comfortable with? Do we say Ben, doctor hardy, doctor Benjamin, what do you feel we're.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:01:25) - Going, Ben.

Jasmine Star (00:01:25) - Right now? Okay, okay. Okay. Okay. Listen, if I had a doctor in front of my name, I'd be like, is doctor?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:01:31) - You're like, it's only doctor.

Jasmine Star (00:01:32) - It's only doctor. Exactly, exactly. Ben, thank you so much for being here. you know, Amy and I, as we were planning carefully planning the show, we had a theme of the show.

Jasmine Star (00:01:44) - And so, Amy, if you would remind Ben, I was like, Doctor Hardy, if you would remind Ben what the theme is and then talk to us about why you invited him from your perspective. Okay.

Amy Porterfield (00:01:54) - So the theme of our shows is going against the grain and doing something that most people wouldn't expect or in your case, something very unreasonable, impossible goals. And so we're going to talk about that today. But the reason I chose Ben is that I was at a charity event for Village Impact, and Ben was there, and I had really high heels on, on cobblestone. And so I was walking down the street and Ben pulled up and basically said, do you want a ride? And the answer is absolutely yes. So I jump in the car and we had already met. It wasn't like I was jumping in with the stranger, and we got to drive back to the hotel together, and I instantly knew there was something special about you. You are a doctor. You are incredibly intelligent, your work is important, but you also have heart.

Amy Porterfield (00:02:39) - And the instant he got in the car, he wanted to know all about me. Tell me about you, what do you do? And I just love the person you are and the work that you do. And your work has changed my life. Just like Jasmine, she's going to tell a funny story of how we all got into your work. And so I'm so very glad you're here.

Jasmine Star (00:02:56) - Yes.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:02:56) - Huge fan, huge fan. And so just, you know, honored. And by the way, I've never heard of the concept that you came up with with curating podcast guests. I think it's, in my opinion, the best form of like relationship creation but also podcast like that. Amazing idea. Thank you. Seriously amazing. Thank you man.

Jasmine Star (00:03:14) - Thank you. Now, if you and I were on an elevator together, we're going down four floors and I ask you, what do you do? This is where I want to start the podcast. And so we're absolutely going to get into Origin Story.

Jasmine Star (00:03:25) - But oftentimes podcasts follow a very systematic framework. Tell me how you got into what it is you do. And oftentimes I want to actually get the value first. So let's set the framework. Then we're gonna go into storytelling. Then we're going to peel back the layers. And then by the end of the show, people can walk away with a little bit of swag saying, I'm about to do something impossible. Hey, okay, so four floors, what do we do?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:03:43) - I do help individuals and organizations achieve impossible goals.

Jasmine Star (00:03:48) - Okay, we weren't in front of these fancy podcasts. Mine really got this. Okay, so speaking of the impossible, I want to set the stage. Amy and I, with six other women are in Laguna Beach, California. It's like balmy 73 degrees. We're looking out on the Pacific Ocean, and we're sitting in this lounge area, and they have these big bay windows and doors open. So the breeze is coming in. A few of us have like bubbly drinks, sometimes tea, and we're talking about doing and achieving things bigger than what we think we can do and how we think, oh, this is absolutely crazy.

Jasmine Star (00:04:22) - And so then one woman says, have you read ten x is easier than two x? And at that point, no. So she gives us this rundown. And there was another woman who had read the book. And they're going on and on. So finally we have to interject. Really great. So happy you guys have that experience. We have no idea what you're talking about. Let me think. And they said, well, you need to go and download the book. So that is in the afternoon. The next morning, all eight of us had downloaded and started the book. And I'm listening to you on to X, and I'm flying through this content and I am like, my God. So then the next day it almost becomes a pow wow. About the first three chapters was. Right. And so we're talking about the transformative effect that us taking the belief and saying, okay, what a lot of us are aiming to do is to double our business. You know, we're like, okay, we can double it.

Jasmine Star (00:05:14) - And here's how we're going to aims. Do you want to jump in? Yeah, because.

Amy Porterfield (00:05:17) - I'm all about doubling my business. I've talked about that for years. And I thought that was bold and the way to go. And then I'm listening to this while I'm getting ready in the morning at Laguna Hotel and I'm like, wait a second, he wants me to ten x, and he wants me to throw away everything that I'm doing that isn't about this one thing that I want to get to. And I have to tell you, if freaked me out, it really kind of scared me. And I thought, this is going to disrupt everything. So talk to me about that. This is a big disrupter. And why why do you want it? Do you want it to be a disruptor?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:05:51) - That's the natural effect. Yes. Yeah. So that's that's part of the effect. So one thing I'll just quickly say and then I'll kind of explain why you would want that. Okay. I have to give you massive kudos because as someone who has created and shared ideas for a living, it can be.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:06:09) - It's pretty brilliant if you can just like say, okay, that was what I thought for a long time, but I'm open to this new idea, right? It's the whole Mark Twain thing. It's not what you know or it's not what you don't know that hurts you. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so. Yeah, I think it takes massive humility to question assumptions, question old frameworks. And that's actually part of why you would want to go ten x or why we would want to pursue impossible goals. Okay. I kind of use those two as shorthand for each other. So let me let me honestly just use one kind of framework of time to explain this, okay. And then honestly, just whatever. Yes. However you guys want to think about it. So the notion of two X is rooted in what I'll call a linear approach to time. What I mean by this is, is that it's the belief that the past shapes the present, and the present shapes the future.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:06:53) - This is how most people do it, where, you know, you can't really go back to the past. And most people, if they're if I want to explain who I am to you often, I'll go back and explain my past. Right. And so usually people use the past to explain the present, and they use the present to create the future. And so this is kind of how people create two goals is they just take where they have and where they're at, and they just do more of it. Two x more of it. Right. Yeah. And so ten x takes a very opposite approach. And from my perspective as a psychologist, it's a more accurate approach of time. One of the problems with the linear approach to time is that the present is actually separate from the past. In the future, I can never go back to the past. The future is up ahead. So this is the most real thing right here in the present. My view is, is that the past, present and future are all existing right now and that there and even Albert Einstein said there's there's no dividing line between the three.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:07:40) - I know that that's kind of a big idea, but the main thing is, is that the past, present, and future all exist right now and that I can actually continuously change my view of the past. That's called reframing, right? And so rather than letting the past dictate who I am in the present, I always let the present shape the meaning of my past, the.

Amy Porterfield (00:07:58) - Present shape, the meaning of your past.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:08:00) - And that's a more agency based approach. But that's also how memory works. Okay. And so it's always the present that determines the past rather than the past. It determines the present. But similarly it's not the present that determines the future. It's always the future that determines who you are in the present.

Amy Porterfield (00:08:13) - I thought that was fascinating. The future. So your future self, who you want to be, is going to determine who you are today in the present.

Jasmine Star (00:08:21) - Yes.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:08:22) - And it already does happen. Like even psychologists, Marty Seligman, he's the father of positive psychology.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:08:27) - They've spent a lot of time studying an idea called prospecting. And prospecting is the idea that as humans, we are very intelligent for one of the reasons that we can actually think about our past and learn from it and even reshape its meaning. Reframe. But also, I can think about tons of different possible futures. That's called prospects. And then I get pulled by the future. And so what what the kind of shift in psychology over the last 100 years has been is rather than a belief that humans are driven by the past, which was that old view, it's that we're actually pulled forward by the future that we're most committed to. And so the big important point of A2X feature versus a ten X feature is, is that A2X feature is actually based on the past, and it's not very imaginative. It's not very creative. It's actually mostly just taking the present and just doing more of it. And that's really what the research shows that most people do with their future selves.

Jasmine Star (00:09:12) - That's what I did. Yeah.

Jasmine Star (00:09:13) - Okay. So I want to break down a couple things because totally.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:09:17) - Let's break it down as we go.

Jasmine Star (00:09:18) - I hit the ground running. I was like, oh, well, I think you run much faster than I do. Okay. No, no, I want to do a couple of things here. So when we were talking about two X in our business, let's break this down in like brass tacks.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:09:30) - Do it.

Jasmine Star (00:09:31) - There is somebody who's listening right now and you're doing $1 million in for you. Your big goal is, if I can do 2 million by the end of the year, if there is somebody who has a podcasting goal and they can reach it by doubling the amount of podcasts they have, there's somebody who has an Instagram following, and they want to double the amount of content that they're creating to get an end result. And what you're saying is that it is better for us to look at our goal and instead of saying, I want to do 2 million, ask yourself, how do I do 10 million? Yes.

Jasmine Star (00:10:00) - And the reason why you're asking us, encouraging us, saying that is the way is because when we choose to do 10 million or 10 x of whatever our goal is, it requires us to shed beliefs about the past and beliefs about what we can do in the future. Now, one thing we talked about reframing is that you had said in many of us, my whole life, my whole life I was using the past.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:10:21) - As explain who you are now.

Jasmine Star (00:10:23) - Absolutely, absolutely. And there's been a lot of work around this reframing work. So I don't think that we can have a real conversation about the belief of ten x until if you, if possible, can you break down what you see. The patterns are specifically our audience is entrepreneurs. When you see an entrepreneur who is saying the past has brought me or explained why I am here today, what are the common fallacies, the flaws that actually keep that entrepreneur from getting to the ten x? Because we can't talk about it until we actually break down the listener who's like, oh no, this show is not for me.

Jasmine Star (00:10:51) - Yeah.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:10:51) - So I think one thing that's really fascinating is rather than me looking at you and saying you are who you are because of all your previous experiences, which are super important, you are who you are because of the future that you're most being pulled by. And so like that explains more why we're having this conversation that explains more following this belief.

Jasmine Star (00:11:08) - A person with a stronger idea of their future. Do they take more action or are they more inclined to success?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:11:15) - Yeah, absolutely. 100%, yes. When you let the future and when you become committed to it, conscious about it, thoughtful about it, then it starts to lead to massive disruptions in what you were doing in the past, but to the idea that you were talking about with, with reframing and why people. One of the things that Dan taught me, which I love, he's very in Dan Sullivan is the one who I wrote three books with, including ten X is Easier than two x. He has a beautiful quote that says, before we make our future bigger, let's make our past better.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:11:45) - Ooh, I think that's just a beautiful line.

Jasmine Star (00:11:46) - Okay, wait wait wait.

Amy Porterfield (00:11:48) - How do that's such a beautiful time? How exactly what steps do people take to make that happen? Yeah.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:11:54) - Yeah. So and and there's so many things I want to share with you. So we'll start with this whole make the pass better idea. But certainly the why of impossible goals or the why of ten goals and how they simplify things is is a beautiful thing as well. Because just another he's very good at pithy things, but he says the only way to make your present better is by making your future bigger. Bigger. That's my favorite quote. Yeah, yeah. So we'll go into that. But to making the past better, it's very important. And this goes to the idea of reframing is just that the past. So one of my favorite quotes comes from a psychologist. His name is Brent's Life. And he basically just talks about and as I said, the past, present and future are all here right now.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:12:30) - So I have a version of my past, a narrative of perspective that influences who I am in the present. If I have unresolved trauma as an example, of course that's going to impact who I am, who I'm being. It's going to also shape my goals, right? And it's going to shape whether I'm nervous and anxious or whether I'm angry. Right. And so how we frame our past absolutely shapes who we are in the present. And so my view and again, I basically said that the past and future are tools. They're incredible tools. If used effectively, they're not actual realities. So I can use the past powerfully to improve my present. I can also use the future powerfully to improve my present. That's what they're here for. It's like that's why we're why humans can be so intelligent. It's also why we can change and grow so fast, is because I can take my past and really learn from it, so that I actually am a different person from my former self.

Jasmine Star (00:13:17) - Can we pause?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:13:18) - Yeah, please.

Jasmine Star (00:13:19) - Can you give a real example of how somebody might do this today?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:13:22) - Yeah, 100%. So one like the most basic reframe is gratitude, right. That's the most basic reframe. If I, if I'm thinking about today at the end of the day. You know, I do this all the time with my kids. It's just like, how was your day? Not a great day, right? Or it was just. It was just. Okay. So that's how they've framed their experience of the day, right? That's how they organize it. That's how they've categorized it. It's like, okay, one way of just reshaping the frame or reshaping the meaning of it, the definition of it, the meaning of it is just thinking about why was it a great day? Right? That's just a new perspective. What was something you're grateful for? How did you see God in the day? Right. These are just different ways of looking at the same thing. And so, you know, that's basically what post-traumatic growth is based on, is just taking something that you initially perceived as negative and essentially taking something that call it a liability.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:14:09) - It's something that's costing you. It's something that's maybe ruining your life and actually turning it into an asset.

Amy Porterfield (00:14:15) - Okay, love this because it's not serving you to look at. It's an okay day or it's a bad day. I'm going to give you an example. You tell me if I'm on the right track. I grew up with a really strict father, and I had a really hard childhood with him and didn't feel worthy enough. However, I've done a lot of therapy and I have reframed it my hard work ethic, the fact that I work till I get it done, that was from my dad. I learned hard work from that man, so I have reframed how he raised me and what that look like because it has served me today and it will serve me in the future. Is that a good example?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:14:47) - I think that's a much more useful past than the other. Yes. Right. Again, it's a tool and it's going to impact who you are. And one of them is going to maybe lead to hopelessness or depression or anger, and one of them is going to lead to empowerment.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:14:59) - Right. And so yeah, you want to get better and better at it, squeezing the juice out of it. That's a that's a beautiful example. I'll give an example of like a company I consoled. Is that all right. So this is this is an amazing company. They're doing 200 million in revenue. We're going to get them to 1,000,000,000 in 3 years. Again, one thing that's just funny about past and future is tools. Their goal was to accomplish there get to 1,000,000,010, but that as a future is so far away that it doesn't force urgency and the whole disruption ideas. It doesn't. It doesn't force enough on the present. You take the same goal and you make it three years. That starts to force a lot of things on the present, because these, again, are just tools for moving forward better in the present. And so one of the things we just did a like a training, I went to Atlanta where they're based, trained their leadership team. And this was at the end of Q1 2024.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:15:44) - So what, 20 days ago, 25 days ago? And we have some impossible goals that we're going for, even the bigger goal of the billion. But then shaping that back, we've really clarified one of the things that's really cool is you. When you have an impossible goal, massive future. What I say is, is that that that massive goal sets a really high floor, and the floor means you can't say yes to a lot of things, because the goal is so high that most things won't get you there, most strategy. You don't know how to do it. That's why it's impossible. But most of the things you're doing right now won't get you there. And so the floor is high on what you say yes and no to. And so we've set a really high floor for this company. Their leaders very adamant. Like we don't go below the floor anymore. Like we don't say yes to those types of clients. And even certain team members are going to say no. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:16:27) - You know, difference between successful and really successful people is really successful. Say no to almost everything. They have a really high floor and filter. Same thing. But anyways, to the idea of properly categorizing the past, framing the past because of our impossible goal and what we're trying to accomplish in 2024. Q1 has been about figuring out what's above that floor. The strategies above that, you know, in ten X is easier than two x. That language would be figuring out the 20% right versus the 80%. The 80% would be below that floor that we've got to get rid of. But we want to find and figure out and then better execute on the few things that will get us to the billion.

Jasmine Star (00:17:01) - Can you break down that 80 over 20 for the listener real quick? Yeah, because I don't want to pass over that. That's like a huge that is a huge benchmark in the book.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:17:07) - Yeah. And we'll go deep into it. But yeah 8020 principle. Pareto principle. Very famous business idea that you know and I use this idea loosely, but just that 80% or more of your success or your results is going to come from like very few of things of what you do, they call it the essential for you, which is what we'll call the 20%.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:17:24) - You know, you can think about this in terms of people like 20% of your, you know, 20% of people in your life are creating 80% of your success, right? Or 80% of your happiness, you know, and so it's just it's finding and filtering for those few things that are, that have the highest leverage and impact and honestly stripping out everything else.

Jasmine Star (00:17:41) - How does one find that?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:17:42) - By having an impossible goal, genuinely, you want a goal that's so high that because it's so high, almost everything you're doing right now won't work? So if you you know and I will. I love this because it gives a little more context. And then I'll kind of share how we use these ideas to help them properly frame their Q1, because they were they they organized it in such a way that it it was going to lead Q2 and the rest of the year for disaster. But the main idea here is, is that if you're going for a small goal, even A2X goal, because the present and the future looks so similar, you know, honestly, two X may feel big, but it's not that distinct.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:18:19) - It's not that different from who I am now. And honestly, it's taking the present and just creating more of it, just a little bit bigger. And so one of the framework, the core framework of ten X is easier than two XS is that if you go for two x you can keep 80. Of what you're now doing. You know, if you think about growing this podcast by two X, or if I think about doubling my book sales or doubling revenue, I don't have to change that much. I do have to figure out a new 20%. That's just an analogy. But I have to figure out a few new things. But honestly, a lot.

Amy Porterfield (00:18:45) - Of what's already working.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:18:46) - Yeah, it's like it's just maybe double down on what's already working, you know, and so you really don't have to change that much to go to X. It's not very creative. It's certainly not disruptive to your point. And so it's it's very much a linear approach. Take the past present and use that to create a very similar future, maybe just a little bit bigger of a future.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:19:02) - And so when you really think about A2X goal, a big problem with that is, is that it's not it's not distinct enough to actually help you, parse the 20 from the 80. And so you can't fully know what are the best things because it's just not a good enough filter. And so making the goal so big that you honestly don't fully know how to do it, and then asking really hard questions from that future, like what would have to be true to begin pursuing this impossible. There's actually, interestingly, a lot of research on impossible goals. And I'm going to actually just this is where I think I should just share the analogy of my son Caleb, because I think this is the easiest way to do it. So I love the quote. It's from Anais Nin. She says, we don't see the world as it is. We see the world as we are, right? Have you heard that we don't see the world as it did? One of my psychology professor said, if a if a man says a woman is beautiful, he's actually describing himself, does that make sense? Because he's describing his perspective, right? Yeah, he's describing his preference.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:19:57) - Right. If I say that car is amazing, am I describing the car? I'm mostly describing my perspective. And so we don't see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. And they call that a frame or a frame, a mental model. We see the world through a perspective, a frame. And so. One way of really looking at this is my son Caleb is a high school tennis player. We live in Orlando, Mecca of tennis, tons of tennis. He loves tennis. He wants to play college tennis. And this is kind of one of the first stories I told to explain impossible goals in tennis is easier than two x. But his coach really challenged Caleb. His coach said, Caleb, what is your goal? And Caleb said, my goal is to play college. And his coach pushed back and said, why isn't your goal to go pro? And from my view, the pro goal absolutely is an impossible goal. And impossible goals are like the definition of it.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:20:43) - They actually in psychology they use the word stretch goal. Yes, but stretch goal is a pretty weak term, and the actual definition is a goal that is unattainable from your with your current perspectives, capabilities, resources like you don't know how to do it and it actually is an unattainable goal. And so that's how I would view Caleb going for pro if it seems like an impossible goal. But after that conversation, you know, the big idea here is, is that there actually probably are in Orlando. Conceivably probably a thousand effective pathways to get him to college, even in Orlando. The high schools are pretty strong. He could play for almost any of the high schools, and he'd get good coaching. He could go to a ton of the different academies, get good coaching. Obviously some are much better than others, and we would still want to like filter for the better ones. But if he was going for college, there's a lot of possibilities, a lot of possible pathways of getting there. Whereas if you genuinely went for the pro goal, just speaking of Orlando, the like the realistic pathways would fall to maybe zero, maybe 1 or 2.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:21:44) - Like maybe there's 1 or 2 realistic coaches that could get him there. And so if you use that future called a ten x future as the frame, right, the perspective that you now make decisions by again to the idea of floor, the floor is so high in terms of the standard of what you can say yes and no to that. If we actually went for pro. Almost all of the options for college would be no goes. Like almost all the options would not help him achieve the goal. And so if we let that future dictate what we say yes to no to in the present, it would allow us to find and filter for the best options that have the highest likelihood of getting us where we want to go.

Amy Porterfield (00:22:19) - Okay, so I have a question about that. Then if we're making these impossible goals like going pro for your son, what are some tips that you have to what questions do you ask? What do you look for. Because as you said, we don't even know how to get there.

Amy Porterfield (00:22:31) - And I think that's the point. Daunting part.

Jasmine Star (00:22:33) - That's the part I don't like.

Amy Porterfield (00:22:34) - Ben, I want you to take that part out. So how do I what do I, I don't know what to do when it's an impossible goal. What are the tips? You have to figure that out?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:22:42) - Yeah, absolutely. So I want to get there. And I also want to make sure we talk about making the pass better okay. But but I want to get there. One thing I'll say though, one of the things that they say in the research, which I agree with and this fits with your idea of disruption. So in the book, Good to Great Jim Collins famous book, he talks about the idea of bag. Yes. Right bag is a goal that let's say and let's define bag. Yeah I will.

Jasmine Star (00:23:04) - Okay. Yeah. The acronym. Yeah okay.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:23:07) - You go ahead.

Jasmine Star (00:23:07) - Big hairy audacious goal bag.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:23:10) - Great bag. Big hairy audacious goal. Basically it's an impossible goal. Yes, yes.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:23:14) - Let's get to the moon in ten years. Bag. Right. No clue how to do it, but it's it's measurable. It's powerful. It's impossible. And we don't know how to do it, so let's figure it out. Like that's a bag. Ten years to 30 years is what they say. My and Jim Collins is very specific. He says the only purpose for setting a goal this big is because it disrupts your company in the present.

Amy Porterfield (00:23:33) - That's the point.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:23:34) - That's the point is that the goal is so big, so inconceivable that it forces you. It forces a lot more honesty on the business right now and says, fetch almost nothing we're doing right now. It's going to get us to that bag. So let's, you know, so to the idea of Caleb going pro, what are the few things that might get us there? Let's start exploring those okay. And so it leads to it leads to exploration and learning of things. Like as an example, if a company wanted to genuinely ten x in a year, you know, and I do have some fun stories about that even ten x in 60 days.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:24:05) - You know, there's some I'll I've got some things.

Jasmine Star (00:24:07) - I want to know. But I was.

Amy Porterfield (00:24:09) - Like I want that.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:24:10) - But but the but the fun thing here is, is that its purpose is actually what it's what it says in the literature, which I love is it creates a crisis in the present. Yeah. Because you don't know how to do it. And then you start to really analyze everything going on in the current business from the goal rather than taught it. This is key. You always want to come. The future is what determines the present, not the present shaping the future. So you want the arrow to come backwards from the future? Yes. So you always want to operate from the future okay. And so because it's so big so it's so impossible like Caleb going pro, it's like okay, let's just look at everything on the table. Right. Let's be honest, most of the stuff absolutely wouldn't get us there. And so that's what it does. But then it leads you to a lot of unique learning.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:24:52) - You know, the learning and exploration of let's start looking for information and ideas that are closer in that ballpark that I would never have been looking for or filtering for. You would never have been looking for that stuff without the goal. And so it leads you on an exploration and on a learning process. And that's one of the main reasons you said an impossible is it leads you to learning unique, interesting things that other people aren't learning because they're not going for the goal. Think about Elon Musk going for Mars. Like how many things does he have to learn and solve to even attempt that goal that he wouldn't be learning if he was going for some other goal? And so it leads to unique learning and the building of knowledge, resources, etc..

Jasmine Star (00:25:27) - On that note of resources, and I want to go back to reframing the past, because I don't think that we can actually move towards a future if we don't reframe the past. Would you agree?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:25:34) - It helps massively. It helps massively, I agree.

Jasmine Star (00:25:37) - Okay, so as we're defining that ten x goal and we don't know how to do it, what if you get to a point to where you realize that there's a couple things that you could start cutting away and then start doing to achieve the ten x goal, but you realize that you can't cut away some of the stuff that's funding where you are right now.

Jasmine Star (00:25:54) - Like, yeah, was that clear enough? Because I felt like it was like, no.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:25:59) - No, no, no, this.

Jasmine Star (00:25:59) - You guys got it.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:26:00) - No, this is this is a perfect question. And I'm a dog. Tag it because it's one of there's, there's there's 2 or 3 common questions when we start talking about this. One is what how do we how do we actually fund it when we're going to like have to strip away? Or maybe we don't even have the resources, period. Right. Maybe we don't even have the resources to build a rocket, right? Or maybe we don't have the resource, but also if we're going to start letting go of things that are no longer relevant to the goal, those things are actually creating our current funding. Right? And again, sometimes you don't purely eliminate them. Sometimes you can sell them as just one example. I was talking so so do the idea of bag. There's a lady named Shannon Sisco. She wrote a book. She has a whole process called metronomic.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:26:40) - I love it, but she has a concept she calls Three Hag. She kind of just. But it's taking your bag and then pulling backwards and saying, based on that, what's the most important things we can accomplish in three years? My belief using time as a tool is just take your bag, which you think is 1020 years away, and turn it into your three hag, right? Because time is a tool. It's not a reality. So let's just take your the vision you think is going to take you 20 years. And let's just actually go for it in three, because by going for it in three, we're going to have to let go of at least 80% of what we thought was required to achieve it. Right. It's going to force a lot of the cutting of fat on, you know, an Elon Musk talks about like the very first thing you want to do is you always want to question your assumptions, question your requirements. Because he says most people are optimizing a thing that shouldn't exist.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:27:25) - What I mean by that is we're spending a lot of time growing something that shouldn't exist, because it actually and I'll call that the 80%. It actually isn't helping us get to our real goal. And so when you make a goal that impossible, whether it's so big or whether it's so close, it actually allows you to let go of things that shouldn't exist that you're spending a lot of time growing. I'll just give myself as an example, I actually was growing a YouTube channel, and I'm not against YouTube. I actually think YouTube is a phenomenal tool. But for me, when I got really clear about my my future self, I was pouring a lot of energy into YouTube and I realized this is something that actually shouldn't exist. It should exist for a lot of businesses and for a lot of people. But for me and my goals, my path is going to be very different. So it allows you to strip away the things you thought were required to achieve your goal.

Jasmine Star (00:28:08) - But how did you.

Amy Porterfield (00:28:09) - Figure that out? How did you say, oh, YouTube isn't for me? What were the questions you asked? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amy Porterfield (00:28:13) - She looked into.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:28:14) - Okay, I'm a possessed and I'm a, I'm a I'm actually going to just talk about the past for a second just because I have to. But this is perfect. No, no no benchmark this benchmark this just because I want to get to this. So we're going to talk about okay resources risks and how did you figure it out okay. Let me sources risks and how to figure it out. Yeah. Because that was your question. I just want to quickly say with these ideas in mind that the impossible goal sets this really high floor, really high floor, and the floor is the dictator of what you say yes and no to. And for an impossible goal, the floor is so high because almost nothing will work, right? Most coaches for Caleb won't get him to pro, so the floor is really high. Most of those are no. So we got to look for and find the ones that might get us there again. It's still a very impossible goal, but when you start looking for and finding those new knowledge or resources, right then, then that's really where you want to build your mastery.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:29:06) - By the way, one of the ways I look at it is, is that your system is your floor. They're the same thing. It's what you can do consistently. And so like it's what you're really good at. And so when you raise the floor really high, you're not good at it, you know. And I'll give. But let me just give this example because I think just helping organize the past and then we'll go truly. So this company that I'm working with, they had an impossible goal, which we're going for in 2024. And we then had a team meeting. I train their leadership and we would you know, it started with and they've read the gap in the game. So they're like, all right let's start with wins. You know let's start with our progress. But because we're not actually trending towards the goal for the year. Yes. Their top leader basically said, all right, here's where we're at. We're nowhere near our goal. Like in terms of like trending, like we're not trending towards the goal at all.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:29:52) - So Q1 was a disaster. Q2 better be a lot better.

Amy Porterfield (00:29:55) - Okay.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:29:56) - That's how we started the meeting.

Jasmine Star (00:29:58) - That's that was daunting okay.

Amy Porterfield (00:29:59) - Yeah.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:30:00) - And I'm like. All right. That is a very bad past we just created. Yes. Like this is not going to help us create a foundation that's going to help us go for impossible goals in Q2. And so I said let's we actually took and often in meetings, people like to start with wins and stuff, but truly they spend like two minutes and they're like, all right, let's get to the future. And it's like, all right, that's cool. We like the future. But I'm like, we're spending an hour on this because I really want to know what the heck happened in Q1. I want to know about it. I want to understand it, and I want you to better understand it. I want you to better see it. Because if I can better understand your Q1, we can ten x what happened in Q1 in Q2 effectively.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:30:42) - But I first want to know what truly happened. And right now is all I hear is we're nowhere near the goal. It was a bad quarter, so I gave them some time to think about it. What was the most important things we learned? What were the most important forms of progress? One of the things that happened with this company is, is that they are so much clearer on. The floor for their company, what that means and how to actually start achieving it. They would be equivalent to Caleb finding that coach, and now he's learning how to work with that coach. We are now learning what's required above where they're trying to go, and if they master that, they're going to be $1 billion company in three years. So one of the things that they do this is a franchise company. It's a flooring franchise company okay. So within this company there are 300 franchisees all throughout the United States. Right. And so these franchisees, they sell flooring could be carpet, could be other things.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:31:29) - And the average franchisee has a business doing about $700,000 a year, 700,000. So I'll call that their floor since that's their average. That's really good. They're really good at creating that, you know. And so 14 of their franchisees are above 2 million. One of them's 10 million. So we said in order to actually achieve the billion dollars in three years, their new floor has to be 2 million rather than the average being, you know, 700,000. It's got to be 2 million. And so then we have to ask, well, what's the difference between these two groups? The ones that are 2 million and above always have at least one phenomenal salesperson in their business that we call them. We call them a beast. Right? But like, this is a salesperson who can get at least $1 million of sales by themselves. The difference between the 700 person and the 2 million is that the $700 person, you know, this is like a who not have a question. They do not want to hire that beast because they're a lot more expensive.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:32:25) - And if they hire that really good sales person, then their role shifts the franchisee and they've got to put more in the marketing and feed the beast. This is what I call this my language. And so they hire bad salespeople and and they and then that turns them into micro managers. Whereas if you hire a really phenomenal person. Then you shift from manager to leader because they don't want to be managed. You just give them an impossible goal. And as a leader, you've helped them achieve the impossible. But you've got to feed the beast. I'm only explaining to the difference because in Q1 of this, this of this year, because they're now clarifying this, they're actually learning what's required to master above the floor. They never were doing that before because they only had 14 out of 300. They actually weren't good at creating entrepreneur franchisees or entrepreneurs at that level. They were really good at creating managers. And so we learned, no, you got to set the floor and we got to get good at getting all of these people up there, or getting rid of them and finding new franchisees that will get there.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:33:17) - And so again, reverse engineering this and learning. The big difference is, is that the people to get to get to a 2 million, you've got to invest in this epic. Who and I honestly believe that this is true of every business. If you want to go tens and even there's a great book on it called the 8020 individual. But like, you really need to bring in elite people, like elite people. And and B players will not hire A players. But so here's here's just the big idea is, is that in Q1 we looked at it. And because they're really focusing on this, they helped 15 of their franchisees add one of these beasts okay. And so we know that if they do that and if they help that franchisee focus and grow, all 15 of those are going to be $2 million plus companies this year. They're not there yet. So we're not trending yet.

Jasmine Star (00:34:02) - And you need the on ramp to get the sales person fed and all of that stuff before they're actually closing.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:34:07) - But just the really simple idea here is I then ask them these questions. These are really good for helping them frame the past. So I said, okay, so you just added 15. And we know that this is the crucial lever. This is the 20% that's going to get you above that floor. And so I said before Q1, so at the beginning of the year, how many of these beasts or these amazing salespeople did you have throughout all these franchisees? They said 21. This is a business that's been around for 50 years. So I said, let me get this straight. In all those 50 years you added, you had 21 of these amazing sales people in the whole business. And now in Q1 alone, you just added 15. Wow. I'm like, that's to me, sounds like you made the right progress. And you've. But also last one is this I said this and this is a really important framing question. I said, if we were to go all the way back to 2023, and if you're 2023 self at January, or to hear about what you just accomplished in Q1, what would they think? And they said we would have never thought it was possible because we would have never seen how to do that, like we would have never even known how to look.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:35:10) - We would have that again because they were so muddled in their own 80% and so muddled in, you know, but because the goal was so high and it forced clarity around that floor, and then it forced us to say, we're only doing things above that. And that helped us find, okay, the difference is, is we need to get a lot of these sales people. Now we're building a system around that new floor, which is getting all of these people. So the amount of progress that they actually made was more progress in that quarter than I'd say they've made in terms of learning growth potential and what's going to set them up, probably more growth in that quarter than they've had in the last 5 or 10 years. But again, remember what the leader said at the beginning? We're not trending. It was a horrible quarter. And so that's how you properly frame your past is you actually look for what is the most effective things we actually learned. Another beautiful question is how am I different from who I was? You know, they could say, how are we different from who we were at the beginning of the year? I could also ask, just in a simple way, how am I different from who I was last week? What do I now know? How am I different from my past self? The reason this is beautiful is because it helps me realize I'm not my past self.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:36:10) - I'm not attached to that same identity. I'm not that person. And by and again, remember, it's the present that creates the past. And so by actually thinking about that, it's just like gratitude. I'm looking for what I'm happy for. If I'm looking for how am I different? How am I better? I'm now creating a past that shows me how much I've grown in the past week. And now I can see, wow, I'm massively different from my past self. This is really useful foundation for creating a future self that's massively different than your present self. So this is just, I think, one useful way. I know that was a long and I really I'm really I hope that I, I hope I hope that wasn't too.

Jasmine Star (00:36:43) - Much I just I actually it wasn't enough. So I just feel like so much gratitude. I feel so much gratitude. I feel like I could be nice to myself, man, when I think about what happened, like.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:36:56) - Let's talk about this. Let's talk about this.

Jasmine Star (00:36:58) - When I think about because I feel like it's not happening fast enough, whatever it is, sure. It's not happening fast enough. Yeah. And I think to myself that I led leading up until 30s ago, looking back and saying I wasn't good enough, wasn't good enough guys, when dang, like there is a former version of me who would look at what I did in my in my year and be like, I can't believe you just did that. But for me, I'm I'm that leader who says it's not enough. Let's go to the future. And I just have not given myself the grace to say, who have I become? What have I learned and what am I letting go of? And I have just feels so free. I feel so good. It's like, man, you took us to church and we talked about reframing. We talked about reframing. Then we were going to talk about resources. Yeah, Amy, I didn't want to I didn't want to cut off if there was a question.

Amy Porterfield (00:37:42) - Go somewhere and we'll get there. Yeah. I want to talk about some of the myths that come up around success when you're going through this process, because I'm assuming a lot of myths, a lot of challenges, a lot of limiting beliefs will stop you from any of this happening, just like Jasmine had said, like, oh my gosh, I need to give myself grace. So I do want to explore that as well. But where should we go?

Jasmine Star (00:38:02) - Well, I, I really like this idea that we had we were focused on reframing and then we were going to focus on resources. And then we had talked about building. And so in my mind I wanted a third. so I would just say like restructuring, but we could come up with like a different, if we think that that.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:38:16) - Risk is a big one.

Jasmine Star (00:38:17) - Oh, that was risk. It was because people.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:38:19) - People always okay.

Jasmine Star (00:38:20) - So what we.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:38:21) - Did add one thing to you lose. I don't think because you said a version of your past self.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:38:27) - Some. You know, the beautiful part is you can just keep going back, but like some version of your past selves would look at what you've done in the last year or even in Q1 of 2024. And we're speaking. Amen. And in some version of your past, F would look at it and it would not even it would blow their minds because the things you're doing were way outside the reference of what they were even thinking was possible. And so what I'm arguing, though, is this that version of your past self isn't very far back. I used I used them at the beginning of 2023 is the example I could have used them halfway through 2023 is the example just less than a year ago. And if even even if that version of them looked ahead, they still wouldn't believe what had just happened. That's me.

Jasmine Star (00:39:08) - It can happen fast.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:39:10) - It does happen fast. And I will even argue, you can get so good at this and call it squeezing the juice out of the past that even a week ago, my past half a week ago, I could look at this week, you know, say it's a Friday and I'm just reviewing the week.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:39:24) - If I go back to the beginning of the month, the beginning of April. Right. And I'm just thinking about the myself at the beginning of April, looking at my week, there are things that did happen and things that are happening that even myself a month ago wasn't even able to comprehend. And so you get really good at this. And I just think it's, you know, but that's a pass now that they can use to say, all right, we got 15 beasts. What's the impossible goal? Because we know that's the 20%. We ultimately did set the impossible goal for Q2 to get 50. Wow. And and even if we just did 15, 15, 15 and got 60, we'd be on track for hitting the billion in three years. But now they're going for 50. And they're again using that as the filter for determining what they say yes and no to as a team. So anyways.

Jasmine Star (00:40:06) - Are right. I feel like I just I feel like, can we have a moment of silence? I want 15.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:40:10) - Minutes on the.

Jasmine Star (00:40:11) - Right. Because if you talk about squeezing the time, for what it's worth, me yesterday, me yesterday couldn't imagine myself, my past self. Yes, I couldn't imagine all the goodness that has transpired and how like I feel fundamentally, energetically changed. So thank you. Now let's go into I'm still tapping here the resources because somebody is listening and saying that ten x like I'm $1 million, I want to do 10 million by next year. But what would be required of me to let go to hit the 10 million is the thing that's currently funding me right now.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:40:39) - Yep yep yep. So this is a really awesome question. It's common. So let's look at it. One of the things that I think is really interesting is, is that the future is a tool. This is important to realize the future is a tool. As an example, Caleb thinking about the future to of going pro to generate pathways. Right. But the future is also actually oddly, the source of the resources.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:41:01) - It's weird. It's I look at the future.

Jasmine Star (00:41:04) - I think I need a minute.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:41:05) - I know future.

Jasmine Star (00:41:06) - Yeah, the future is a source of resources. It is.

Amy Porterfield (00:41:09) - How so.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:41:10) - What? Because think about it. So you've heard of the concept of like supply and demand. Yes. So you know you you you have certain supply and that generates demand. Right. If there's low supply in stuff, you know it might have high demand. So psychologically it's actually the opposite. Psychologically it's it's demand that creates resources. So like you've probably heard it said, when the Y is strong enough you will find the how. Yeah. Or also you'll find who. And so that why and the depth of it and even the specificity of it is what creates the how. It's also what creates the resources. And so, you know, if there's a reason, as an example, if there's a reason that I've got to make $10 million in the next 30 days, that's a future that's now demanding me of me to find that $10 million that I otherwise wouldn't have needed to even look for, figure out, or solve had I not had that future.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:42:00) - And so the future determines what resources are needed. You know, Elon Musk, I apologize to use him twice, but he needs to figure out billions of dollars of funding and even rocket technology and innovation to achieve his goal. All of that's coming from his goal, all of the creation. Can I give you an example, please? I'll give you an example. So there is a and this is someone who actually almost ten x 1060 days. And so this is a really fun example. So this is a guy in South Carolina who has a property management company okay. So he has another business as well. But this is a property management company. So if you own 2 or 3 houses and you don't want to deal with the like the renters, you let them manage your company. You let them manage the house, right. They handle the whole thing. So when I met him, so I did like a challenge at the end of 2023. So it was for the last 60 days of 2023, November and December.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:42:51) - Okay. And so it started on November 1st and it ended January 1st. Okay. So we had 60 days. He came in. And at that time his property management company had two employees, phenomenal employees. Again, this is a smaller business. It was doing probably low six figures, but they had 60 properties under management and it would take them two years to get there, you know. And so they probably had 20 or 30 clients. You know, some of them had one house, some of them had 3 or 4. And so he meets he he enjoys the challenge. He learned some of these ideas. I'm sharing that the future is what determines the present. And basically I say set an impossible goal for the next 60 days. And then let that be the determining factor of what you say yes and no to, and go find those better pathways. Right. And so he was listening to this, thinking about it. And ultimately he set the goal of having 500 properties under management by the end of the year.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:43:41) - So going from 60 to 500, almost a ten x. That feels.

Amy Porterfield (00:43:44) - Impossible.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:43:45) - It is impossible. Yeah. But again, the idea of impossible is that it's impossible again from the context of your current self. And so based on your current knowledge, resources, based on your current, you know, knowledge team, etc., and you don't know how to do it. And so he went to his team of two and he said, here's the goal. We're going to have 500 in the next 60 days. I don't know how we're going to do it, but let's start strategizing again from the goal. Let's start figuring it out. What do we do? Future.

Amy Porterfield (00:44:15) - Yeah, pulling from the future.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:44:16) - Yeah, yeah. You always strategize from the future. Because if you're strategizing from your current situation, that's again what we call Truex. You're just trying. They couldn't actually achieve the 500 by approaching it the same way they did to get to 60. Because you just we just don't have time to get.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:44:33) - You know, get it by ones and twos. Okay. And so ultimately they started looking at their Rolodex, looking at things and even again, to the idea that the impossible goals lead to exploration of new solutions or ideas or knowledge that you wouldn't have been looking for had you didn't have the goal. So ultimately, of course, they started looking for people with hundreds of houses. just, you know, the strategy, the idea that came from that and then beginning to look for where do these kind of people are, how do we get in touch with these kind of people ultimately. And he also added to team members. So basically when you have an impossible goal, it's going to be a fundamentally different level of commitment than you've ever committed to. Because the goal is so big, you're going to have to commit. And big part of commitment is investment. You're going to have to you're going to have to be committed more than you've ever been committed to. This is what scares people. This is the idea of risk as well as resources.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:45:19) - Where do we get the resources to make this investment? Right. So anyways, he did add two team members because he was so committed to the goal. He's like, I know we can't do it with just you two. So he added two A+ players and basically this is a really big difference between leadership and management is is that managers manage the process, whereas leaders give a very I'll call it impossible goal. And so, you know, leaders help people achieve things that they didn't think were possible. And they show them how they support them in doing it. Like that's pretty much the definition of a transformational leader. And so he gave them the impossible goal. And he said, you guys figured this out. Solve it. I'm here to support. I'm going to be trying to solve it too. And so he didn't give them the how because the how they didn't know. Right. But he gave them the goal and it was inspirational. And ultimately they ended the year with 320. Right. So they didn't finish the year with the 500.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:46:08) - But they did find way new, amazing ways of finding people that they weren't deploying before. And they did find one person with like 160. They found someone with like 75. Whatever it was, they found like 3 or 4 big clients that took them to 320. And so in those two months, they over five to their business. That's huge.

Amy Porterfield (00:46:29) - Okay. I have a question about that. Would you say it's fair to say that because one of my questions was I'm a little bit of a Debbie Downer with this question. But what happens when they don't hit that goal. Yeah. So they had 500. What what do you say. What do you feel. What what goes on there. But I think I'm learning that they hit 300 and something. I'm going to guess here they had 320. They are different people. They are a different business. And they are way ahead of where they would have been if they tried to exit. So maybe the goal is not necessarily to absolutely hit the 500, but it's who you become along the way.

Amy Porterfield (00:47:03) - Am I on the right track?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:47:04) - I think you're on the track. So remember this. And this is something that always hits people. The past and the future are tools.

Amy Porterfield (00:47:09) - Past in the future are tools.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:47:11) - They're tools. And so if they five x to their business in 60 days and because they didn't hit the target that that they were using as, as the filter for their present, remember the future is just a tool for operating in the present. So they use the future as a tool. It's not a reality. So who there is no reality of them with 500, okay. There is no reality right? That's a tool that's a lot better tool than if they were going to go for 100, which would have been more their trajectory. Right. The 500 is a tool. They hit 320. Now it's their choice in the present how they frame that. Remember, the present determines the past. And the past is a tool. And so if I feel like a loser and I frame it that way, that the last 60 days were awful because we didn't hit our our tool of an idea of a future that never existed.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:48:00) - It was just an idea that I'm using to shape my decisions in the present. And so, yeah, this is one of the one of the things that people often say is, okay, if I'm gonna go for impossible goals, you know, what happens if I don't hit it? You know? Exactly. It's like, what does that have to do with anything? The past and the future don't exist. They're tools. Like, literally, they are tools.

Jasmine Star (00:48:17) - So you and I were having a conversation and we probably will because it's life and business in the future. And you love girl. You love big goals. Like huge goals. Yes, as do I. But if in the future, for some reason you don't happen to hit a goal, even though everybody knows Amy Porterfield Taylor. So goals. If for some reason there is a goal that you do not hit and you're trying to be optimistic and you're saying, but it's who I became in the process. Number one, I would be like, that's great.

Jasmine Star (00:48:40) - Continue watching the Hallmark Channel. I love that that's like your higher self. I would also say in December, you did more in December than you had done in the previous 11 months in December because you had landed those people. So it's like, okay, sorry you didn't hit it, but you just did more in one month than you had done all year. So I was just like, yes, we can be thankful for who we are, but we could also be like, look at those comments and zeros that like, probably would not have existed. Have you not pushed ourselves? See, like you and I are very tactile. Yeah, we like being warm and fuzzy, but we also be like, mama likes money toys.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:49:10) - So like, I need to land it.

Amy Porterfield (00:49:11) - I think that's what landed it. You just hit 320. You would have never done that if you did not go.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:49:17) - Back on for you know, you wouldn't have. They'd be probably like 65. Yes. And they wouldn't have had the two new team members and all of the new knowledge and capability.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:49:26) - Yes, yes to grow. So this is where so yes, yes and yes. You know, but this is similar to. Even have the big company that asking about the franchise company was would have framed their past was, you know, they were not trending and so they didn't actually analyze and didn't see the data actually added those 15 pieces. So they didn't realize how much growth and development. Now with this one, they had added one client with 170. That's that one client alone was over. It was almost three x their business just. And so think about the capability of being able to do that. And so but think about it again similar to what I was saying with the prior one. If we went back. So say it's right at the end, right on January 1st, and they're at 320 and they get to choose how they frame it. Yes. Right. Okay. How are we gonna think about this? We didn't hit the 500. So. All right, well, let's go back to your past selves back in October, before you even thought about this and before this man.

Jasmine Star (00:50:18) - If we had talked.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:50:18) - To your October self.

Jasmine Star (00:50:20) - They would say like, no way. I'm just saying mine, you know?

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:50:23) - So we're out there January 1st off and we're we're sending a letter back to their pass off, which is in October, and saying, hey, just so you know, we're gonna have 320 in this business. Yeah, this person was 60. Would have been like.

Jasmine Star (00:50:36) - They wouldn't have believed it.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:50:37) - Right. But now we're calling it a failure because we didn't hit 500.

Jasmine Star (00:50:40) - Stop reaching. I still can't take it.

Jasmine Star (00:50:43) - Was the whole can take it.

Amy Porterfield (00:50:44) - That is powerful.

Jasmine Star (00:50:45) - So when we go through all of this and people are listening as a parting thing, because the books that you and I have listened to and read have led us to a point where it's kind of like coming to another pinnacle, like another peak of your career. And so you have a book coming out. And here's the thing people like Amy and I, Amy, I've told Amy I don't want I don't like when people come on the podcast for like, what we call what I call nobody else calls what I call like the book podcast train, because everybody has like the same conversations.

Jasmine Star (00:51:14) - But you and I had a conversation and you're dropping a book in October, and it's a culmination of a lot of work that you've done. And talk to us about the book, talk to us about achieving impossible goals. And then, like a parting takeaway for somebody who's listening and being like, I'm scared. And I'm not quite sure that I believe that this impossible goal is possible. But if we can tap there for a second in closing.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:51:38) - Sure. Yeah. So Rapid Transformation is the title of the book. The subtitle is actually The Science of Achieving Impossible Goals.

Jasmine Star (00:51:44) - See, this is where the science of it don't do this. Give me the science.

Jasmine Star (00:51:48) - I can't even wait.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:51:48) - Yeah, I know, but, Yeah. And I honestly am. I'm here on a Wednesday in Nashville, I flew here.

Jasmine Star (00:51:57) - You look here, look, here we are. We're months.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:52:01) - From that. And honestly, like, I find out about, you know, this opportunity. I'm hopping on a plane.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:52:06) - I'm flying home right after. I'm having a blast. Like. And so I'm happy to to be here and hang out with you. But it's largely what we've been talking about. You know, the this past, present, future model, what I'll call it, the holistic time model, that model. I had a lot of that understanding when I wrote call it gap and the Gain in ten, but I didn't actually lay out that model of, you know, call it the the past, present, future. I'll exist here. And now I've learned that I didn't create that, you know, there's but just to the idea the future determines the present and the present determines the past. Right. I don't think, honestly, I'm sharing with you. I don't think that that idea has been encapsulated in any of psychology, purely and simply in psychology as a discipline is very scattered, very fragmented, and there's even a lot of interesting ideas nowadays that a lot of psychology actually makes people worse. Of course, you can use it as an amazing tool.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:52:53) - Basically, as I'm saying, the future determines the present. And when you go for impossible goals and you get better and better at this, just like gratitude, you get better and better at thinking about an impossible goal, getting really honest about what you most want. I will say from my view, without an impossible goal and I would. You know anyone who's listening to this, but also YouTube thinking about it, you guys have done it many times where you went for something and you didn't know how to do it, and it was big and you didn't, you know, but you had that that faith, that commitment, that desire, and you figured it out. And the goal did force you to let go of a lot of the things that then existed in your life. And so, you know, when you use the future as, as the goal and as the filter, it does require letting things go. And so one thing I'll just add is, have any of you guys read think again, Adam Grant, have, you know, okay, you gotta read that one just because what he lays out in that book, which I think is beautiful, is think Again is all about the psychology of unlearning.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:53:44) - Right. And so it's to that quote that I showed at the beginning by Mark Twain, where he said, it's not what you don't know that hurts you. It's what you know for sure. That just ain't so and so just as important as going for an impossible goal and learning how to actually do it, and letting go of what you know, just as much as learning how to achieve something that's impossible. It could be a person who wants to start a business. They don't know how to do that, right? Or it could be want to write a book? Whatever their goal is, they don't know how to do it. And so just as important is actually learning how to do that is letting go of the old identity, the old story, even the old commitments that are making up your current life, letting go or unlearning even of old models. Actually, this is one of the things that it says in a lot of the research on going for impossible goals is because, you know, to the idea of the bag, the bag disrupts creates that identity crisis because.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:54:32) - So it forces you to unlearn a lot of your current ideas about yourself, about success, about you know, how to succeed and achieve. You know, if I'm going for an impossible goal, it's going to force me to let go of a lot of what I thought writing a book was. And so that's the beauty of it is it forces you to let go of outdated models, outdated frames and perspectives and ideas. And it honestly, the goal forces you to go and find new and better ones, and so it allows you to learn things you would have never otherwise learned. It's just a beautiful tool. One parting thing I'll just say is there's a really, really beautiful idea that I love in psychology called psychological flexibility. Flexibility. And I think when you really understand time as a tool, it creates that flexibility, even with what with what you were saying to me about, you know, he doesn't hit the 500. And so now he's rigid about how he feels about it. Right? It's like, no, it takes massive flexibility to immediately just create a past that is really powerful.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:55:28) - And so even, you know, and so the ability to set new goals and then think from those goals and, and be willing to look at your current situation, my son Caleb and saying this, this academy no longer works based on that goal to, you know, to to to strategize from the goal and look for new pathways, even a new identity. Right? It takes a lot of flexibility, but also the flexibility of continuously creating the past in such a way that it's benefiting you in the present, even if things appear to be falling apart, even if things didn't go well yesterday, you know, dealing with for teenagers, which I have, you know, often our life looks like a mess right on a daily basis. And it's like, okay. How am I going to decide what yesterday means? It takes a lot of flexibility for me not to say this is exactly what it means, and this is what it always means, and this person's wrong and I'm right. It's like, no, there's a different flexibility.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:56:20) - Yeah. And so I think that this creates a huge amount of flexibility because yes, you need to adopt a new identity to achieve future goals. But at the same time you have to eventually let go of that identity to then pursue the ones beyond them. And so, you know, as an example, me writing these three books with Dan, like I went all in and I was excited about those books because they were completely different from the books I was writing before. And so they led me to different forms of knowledge, understanding and learning that I wouldn't have had had I not gone for those. But while writing those, my future, you know, dramatically elevated such that that collaboration became below the new floor. And so I had to let go of that, including all of the benefits of being there. And that's not my identity anymore, you know. But I'm very grateful for my past stuff. I'm grateful what I learned. But the letting go of old ideas, old stories is a super skill.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:57:12) - And it's it's super important. And I will just say to the idea of risk real quick, be sure it's not that risky. Like genuinely like me letting go of that collaboration. A lot of people told me not to do it, but it was actually my future self that got me into that situation. It's my future self that got me out my next level, future self. And so there's it's just not as risky as people think. One of the things that humans do, and this is just one of the core, what they call cognitive biases is, is we inflate loss, we inflate the downsides, we inflate the risks, you know. And so as an example, that guy in the little business that I was talking about, him hiring those two people. There's risk there because honestly, his business wasn't that big. And. You know. But how risky is it? He's hiring people above the floor. He's hiring people that are better than he's ever hired before. It might not work out, but, like, what's the absolute worst case scenario? Maybe he just makes a little bit more money than he did before.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:58:07) - Maybe he doesn't. Maybe he's a little backwards, but now he's got a lot of learning. The main point is, is that when you let things go that you think are like your resource, right? You're by letting it go, you open that space to actually go and find and solve the stuff above the floor, finding and figuring out the new solutions. And because you're operating from the future, you're going to be fine. Like, you know, I'll be honest, in the last six months, I let go of my what was my core business because I got really connected to that future self. I got rid of my core marketing strategy, my YouTube team. Right. And like, I let go of like. The system that I'm now creating to achieve the new goal is fundamentally different than the system. That was my business before. My business was around coaching and a YouTube channel and X, Y and Z, whereas now it's like very different. It's a lot more simple. I had to let go of that.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:58:54) - One of my favorite quotes, by the way, is the system is designed to defend the system. And so whenever you're operating from the future, you know, like the system doesn't want you to break it, right? You know, like the team didn't want me to let him go. They wanted to stay. And so but in letting go of my my business, over 50% of my income, my income is now. And I didn't know how I would do it, but my income is already way going to be way bigger than it was before. But I would have never known that had I not let it go. Wow. So you do figure things out and the letting things go is just as much a part of the commitment as the investing in the bigger future. And so it's very powerful when you, you know, one just last example, I'm sorry I'm going off, but I shared this idea with someone who is ready to start a new business. He's had a business in the UK for like, you know, 15, 20 years.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (00:59:40) - He's wanting to create this new business and he has this one in the UK and his plan was just to keep it for ten years. And I said, my man, your ten year goal, let's achieve it in one again. Time's a tool. And he said, well if I'm going to achieve it one then I got to sell that business now, he said. I was thinking about keeping that business in the UK, but now if I'm going to do this 1 in 1 year, it makes absolutely no sense to keep this. I got to sell it. I'm gonna use that resource to do this right. And so like, I think that, you know, when you're on to a good idea because it starts weeding out a lot of what you're currently doing.

Jasmine Star (01:00:09) - Yes.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (01:00:11) - Sorry if that was a bit long winded.

Amy Porterfield (01:00:13) - So good Ben.

Jasmine Star (01:00:15) - So I just a ton of gratitude, Amy. Like we could not have I mean, I wasn't saying that I picked a better guest, but I didn't do any of the picking you did.

Jasmine Star (01:00:24) - So you could not have picked a better guest. Thank you for that. Ladies and gentlemen, listening to the Jasmine Star show always means that you take an action. So the first action that you can start doing today is to let go. Let go of what isn't serving you, let go of what your future self has and ordained as yours. And then go and ask yourself, what goal do I have? And can I ten x it? What does that actually look like? And then the last piece of action, because we covered a lot. There's a lot of stuff you gotta do after this episode is to actually go back and reframe yourself a year ago, not the childhood stuff that I'm sorry you happen to go through, not the elementary bullying that I'm sorry you had to go through, not through the failed relationships or the miscommunication, but who you were a year ago. Could you imagine where you were today? I don't think so. Why? Why? I'm talking to myself. I make this show for me.

Jasmine Star (01:01:12) - Thank you for the therapy. I'll send you a check. This is what the thing I needed to do. And when I am on a flight home. Dang, my my yesterday self is going to thank my today self. What is wrong with me.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (01:01:22) - Yesterday self is blown away by you today. They have no idea.

Jasmine Star (01:01:26) - No way that girls like girls. Yeah they're girls. Yeah.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy (01:01:28) - They don't even know what the heck you're up.

Jasmine Star (01:01:30) - To y'all okay, the Jazmin Starr show to connect with Doctor Benjamin Hardy. You can find him at his website. You can pre-order his book, Rapid Transformation. That is what I am going to be doing. I am like president of your fan club. Amy will probably like arm wrestle me for that. And I'm like your vice president. I've already known. I don't want to be president. Yeah. The lobbyist she's she's she is the queen. And she is so fine, I fine, I'll be the vice president. you can definitely connect with him on Instagram and on YouTube.

Jasmine Star (01:01:58) - He has so many free resources for you to redefine who you were so that you could step into who you are going to become. May we let go of the past and step into that future. Thank you for listening to The Jasmine Star Show.