BE OBSESSED OR BE AVERAGE by Grant Cardone

• I am where I am today only because I embraced my obsession with success.
• The 10X Rule was ultimately about multiplying your goals to achieve any objective.
• Obsession is the missing piece, that mind-set that will allow you to apply the 10X rules in your life and business.
• When you learn how to control and focus your obsessions, you will become a powerful and unstoppable person capable of making all your dreams a reality.
• Obsession itself is not a deficit or a character defect; it’s a gift!
• Your obsession is the most valuable tool you have to build the life you deserve and dream of.
• Those succeeding aren’t necessarily smarter than you. They don’t work harder than you. So why them and not you?
• Never allow anyone to tell you how well you are doing when you know can do more.
• The obsessed embrace the fact that they—and only they—are responsible for their success. You and only you can settle for less.
• No one feels sorry for you. No one is going to help you.
• Your potential expands and reveals itself over time as you discover more of what you’re capable of.
• I have always secretly believed I was capable of doing unbelievable things.
• Those who convince you to be satisfied are either very confused or extremely dangerous.
• Those who suggest you should settle for less than your potential are doing so because they are trying to make sense of a decision to settle for less in their own lives.
• Remind yourself you aren’t the problem. The problem is the world we’ve living in.
• There’s a popular saying that you are the composite of the five people you spend the most time with. Look around: If the people you see aren’t screaming success, they are validating average.
• People are lazy because it is tolerated.
• If knowledge is power, and I believe it is, then the issue is that most of us are getting the wrong knowledge.
• Remember: People who try to persuade you to give up are not trying to help you. They are trying to make sense of why they gave up.
• Average is a failing formula and it works for no one, no matter how much they try to make sense of it.
• Unhappy people can’t teach you how to be happy. The poor can’t teach you how to get rich.
• An average person can’t teach you how to be exceptional.
• Never take advice from a quitter.
• Stand up and claim your greatness. Because no matter how much concern or love another person has for you, they don’t have your dreams.
• There’s no such thing as obsession lite. There is no such thing as part-time obsession. If you want to lead the pack, you need to abandon the idea that some other, milder version of obsession is an option.
• There is no sense of balance for those bitten by their obsessions and doing something spectacular.
• Regardless of your industry, obsession is mandatory for the kind of success I’m talking about.
• When you identify why you want to achieve something, you can fully and completely get obsessed with achieving it.
• You don’t need to like what you do to love what you do.
• It’s important to figure out what those obsessions are that are worthy of your attention.
• Once you know what your purpose is at this time, you can stop your little acts of denial and self-sabotage that are keeping you from going forward.
• Writing goals down daily is a great tool for staying focused, recommitting, and rebooting, because the destination will be changing a lot.
• Goals are something you seek to achieve, whereas purpose is the reason you do something (your North Star, the reason why you do what you do).
• The goals of the obsessed are always a bit out of reach.
• Write your future in order to achieve it.
• Having a great life is not going to be easy. Having a great life takes effort.
• What you pay attention to is what you get. And the more attention you give something, the more you feed it, the stronger and more powerful it grows.
• In life and business it is vital to pay attention to the things and people that are working for you and ignore the things and people that are not.
• Stay focused on what allows you and your business to grow, and invest no time, energy, or resources in those things and people that don’t.
• You need to face, master, and channel your obsessions into an engine of massive, energized momentum for the success you desire.
• Wake up and go to sleep focusing on your goals. Write them down every morning and read them every night until they become a part of you. Once you internalize them, you will see everything around you as a means of achieving those goals.
• Keep your attention constantly focused on the future rather than the past.
• The easiest way to feed your beast is to spend time learning something new or learning how to be even better at something you’re already doing.
• Priorities are so screwed up when it comes to money, at so many levels, it’s no surprise most companies never make any.
• One of the reasons I’m successful is that I’ve always been obsessed with taking care of my finances and made money a priority.
• If you have assets or inventory that are worth money, put those assets to work making you money.
• Once you cut waste out of the organization, never look at that again, and instead focus on increasing income. You can’t grow your company by making it smaller—you need to grow the top line.
• Get obsessed with your financial success and getting your money right—or be punished.
• If you’re really obsessed with feeding the beast and being successful, it’s important to surround yourself with great people who respect and understand this.
• Every order should come with a target and a deadline.
• Anything worth doing is worth doing every day.
• Either you or your manager needs to walk into your sales office every hour to make sure that the team members aren’t off doing their own thing again.
• If you don’t have time to celebrate your staff and their successes, then you have your priorities wrong.
• You better get obsessed with your team’s success, or your people will soon slack to below average.
• Bury your employees in sales messages and feed them whatever they need to have the energy, motivation, and confidence to make that extra sales call.
• Doubt is the dream killer. Most people are so filled with doubt they are unable to believe in themselves enough to become obsessed with their own success.
• I believe in the saying “If you are the most successful person in the room, you are in the wrong room.”
• When you are clear on your purpose, you will never burn out.
• People are vacation starved because they believe “time off” is going to renew them. The only thing that is going to ultimately renew you is getting reobsessed with your purpose.
• Don’t let someone else tell you how you should feel about your obsession with success.
• The whole concept of having balance in your life is ridiculous. I am not trying to balance my life—I am trying to blow it up.
• Obsessed people demand it all and get it all.
• They are concerned about you first, and their instinct is to protect you and themselves. That is why most of the advice you receive will not be supportive—it is aimed at preventing you from doing anything that involves risk.
• Unsolicited advice givers are people who know about everything but have never done anything.
• Understand that naysayers are trying to protect themselves from being reminded that they have relegated themselves to an average life.
• A guaranteed indication that you are onto something and making things happens is getting and having haters.
• You must be willing to cross the safety line in life and in business.
• No one creates an explosive business or the next big thing by staying inside the lines of what people expect of them.
• Success is the ultimate revenge against the haters, critics, and naysayers.
• Massive success is the ultimate revenge.
• Dominating your space starts with you and spreads to the people who work for you, then to your customers and competitors. Becoming the overwhelming presence, the example, means you must be the leader in all areas. If you can dominate your own thinking, your employees’ thinking, your competitors’ thinking, and the public’s thinking, then you own the space.
• You can’t dominate your business or life—hell, you can’t even create a corporate or family culture—unless you dominate your own mind-set. You do this by learning to control your thinking, your actions, and your choices.
• The best way to gain confidence is to dominate your space and everything in it.
• When you neglect to dominate and control yourself, you can waste years of your life.
• Develop the capacity to break down and analyze each area of your life so that you can dominate those that are most important to you.
• Kids don’t need hours of your time; they just need some of your time.
• Stop wasting time on tasks that don’t matter.
• Pay someone else to do tasks that aren’t a part of your obsession. Your time and your focus are precious, so treat them that way.
• Don’t forget: What you are obsessed with will become a reality.
• It’s not true that it takes money to make money. The truth is that it takes courage to make money; 80 percent of all millionaires today are first-generation millionaires.
• Making money, keeping money, and then multiplying money requires a monster commitment, dedication, and an obsession with growth.
• Be obsessed about your people doing well, and you will become a giant in their lives.
• Become an authority on something and get your message out there.
• The reason so many people fail with social media, marketing, and even traditional advertising is that they underestimate the effort required to dominate their niche.
• The only way to reduce risk is to take risk.
• Comfort is your biggest threat—because in your effort to find it or maintain it, you lose out on making gains toward your potential.
• The only way to guarantee your safety is to become obsessed with being the most dangerous person in your space. If you aren’t dangerous, you are a threat to no one and will be pushed around by competitors, customers, vendors, employees, your spouse, and even your kids.
• Comfort is the enemy of the obsessed. To be dangerous, force yourself out of your comfort zone, literally—try a new city.
• People borrow money to travel for adventure but call it stressful when they need to move for opportunity.
• There is no growth in staying where you are. There is no opportunity in comfort.
• Regardless of where you live, you need to make it a point to constantly meet new people.
• If you’re not constantly connecting with new people, who are more influential and smarter, you are putting yourself in harm’s way.
• Investing in a new business venture is dangerous. You are putting your time, energy, resources, and name at risk in order to make money. But you are also at risk when you work for someone else and/or invest in someone else’s ideas. Why not pour everything into your own business?
• Shift your energy into offensive spending and investing. Be obsessed with putting every ounce of your energy, time, money, and other resources into the accumulation of new income.
• No one who has made a great contribution on this planet rests on their laurels.
• Fear is an indication of what you should do, not what you shouldn’t do.
• don’t expect fear to go away and don’t try to eliminate it. Use it. The obsessed life is not about reaching a state of peace and balance. It’s about constantly moving in the direction of your fears and possibilities. Fear will always be there, so the question becomes what you will do with it.
• The obsessed life is about constantly moving in the direction of your fears and possibilities.
• Sales is not a department, a career, or someone’s job. Sales is the god of any business (no disrespect intended).
• Companies die because they are unable to sell products in quantities great enough at prices high enough.
• In fact, never asking for the order is one of the top reasons sales organizations fail.
• If you are not obsessed with closing, you won’t. Go into every sales situation and customer interaction believing you can close the sale.
• Reward those who achieve and penalize those who do not.
• Numbers don’t lie; people lie.
• Success needs your constant attention. Ignore it and you will not get it.
• My goal every morning is to get my sales team doing one amazing thing, not a hundred half-assed things.
• If you leave your sales team to their own devices, they’ll be corrupted by their own doubts and insecurities.
• Only criminals don’t deliver on what they promise.
• If you are not the greatest out there, you need to become the greatest.
• Become obsessed with being the best. Then when you overpromise, it’s not bragging—it’s the truth.
• Once you are fully committed and quit hedging, creative solutions will show up, I promise you.
• You are creative to the degree you are committed. And you are successful to the degree you make that commitment known to the world.
• Put yourself and your product out there, over the edge of small thinking, and go big.
• The obsessed are willing to be reckless. They are willing to create and manage chaos in order to get growth. They are geniuses only because they are courageous.
• Commit first and figure the rest out later. In the beginning your need to have order and have it all figured out is going to kick you in your teeth.
• Everything you’ve ever accomplished started with a “first time.”
• You need to think and operate based on a goal of selling your product and generating income, not wait forever for every piece of your product to be perfect.
• Your pitch can always be improved on, shortened, made to hit harder, to get more attention and be more effective.
• People are so busy trying to solve some problem from the past that they miss the opportunity in the moment.
• Get obsessed with exploiting every weakness of your competition. Use every possible advantage to separate yourself from the mass of average, where businesses are indistinguishable.
• Always make sure the buyer gets more value than the money exchanged.
• People don’t buy price: They buy the product, the solution, the people, and the company. Price is just a piece of the puzzle used to evaluate a product or service, and this is true with all your other value offers.
• The ultimate value-add is you.
• Tell the world you are the best. Sure, it is going to cause people to think you are “too this” and “too that.” But just as you never take advice from people who have quit on themselves, the person who says you shouldn’t brag has nothing to brag about. Tell the truth about how awesome you are. And then deliver on that truth.
• Simply put: To be the best, you must surround yourself with the best.
• You can’t grow a business without hiring people who share your obsession.
• All great organizations have great people! All of them.
• Great organizations are never one-man operations.
• Businesses are made of people, not just machines, automations, and technology. You need people around you to implement programs, to add passion to the technology, to serve customers, and
• Do great things and those who want to do great things will find you and want to work with you.
• Super businesspeople make recruiting one of their top priorities.
• Hire people who want to make money and make a difference—not just people who have bills to pay.
• You cannot and should not take care of other people’s financial problems.
• The entrepreneurial employee will always focus on the opportunity, not just the money.
• Your job is not to take care of other people’s confusion; your job is to keep the confused out of your organization.
• Don’t be afraid to look outside the usual channels for new hires. Great people might have really surprising backgrounds.
• Companies that never fire anyone, that do everything possible to have no turnover, are holding themselves back.
• You will not wreck your business by losing people; you will wreck it when you quit recruiting.
• You need to be obsessed with finding unbelievable people, and you need to borrow, spend, and even steal from other businesses to get them.
• If you want a raise, increase the income of your department or reduce the cost of the operation of that department. It’s that easy.
• If you want spectacular people, it starts with your being spectacular by example. You need to be great before they will.
• The only people who don’t like control are those who don’t have it or who have misused it in the past.”
• If you look around, you’ll see that we have a lot of people calling themselves leaders who don’t have any control.
• It is my belief that all true leaders are willing to take control. It takes guts to stand up and exert control over their environments, their people, and their futures. It’s a good thing.
• The willingness to exert control takes courage and confidence.
• If you haven’t been called a control freak at some point in your life, then you have a problem. Those who don’t like control are the ones with the problem.
• Remember, what others criticize are the very things they have given up on.
• Those without control have refused to lead and refused to be responsible for controlling their environments.
• If you refuse to control, someone else will.
• Most managers don’t want to be the boss. Hell, most bosses don’t even want to be the boss.
• Society complains about the control freak when the problem is the millions of managers, executives, business owners, politicians, and parents who refuse to be in control.
• You don’t have to be given responsibility or promoted to a leadership position to exert control. I have never been “given” control—I have just taken it.
• If you see an obvious problem and you’ve got a solution, it’s your responsibility to exert control, to step up and lead.
• As the old saying goes, it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
• In the cutthroat world we live in today, you can’t wait for the authorities to provide for your future.
• Make a decision, be dangerous, and if your boss doesn’t like it, come work for me!
• I believe I know best in everything I do, and if I don’t, I get trained until I have complete confidence and competence in whatever I am doing.
• People will give you permission to quit.
• The super successful don’t just overcome their failures—they use them as fuel to persist.
• The difference between success and failure is staying in the game when others throw in the towel.
• Most people quit right before a miracle takes place.
• When you start depending on horoscopes, you know you are in trouble.
• Those who are truly obsessed are willing to persist when it no longer makes sense.
• “Perfectionism” is nothing but a fancy word for not getting started and not persisting.
• Perfectionists lie to themselves and disguise their lack of persistence by claiming that once it’s perfected, everything will sell itself.
• Sometimes it takes a while to discover the best approach to whatever you’re doing, and only by doing it over and over again do you get it right.
• Quantity and frequency seem to grow the genius: Even after thousands of times doing something, you will still be changing how you do it, because the more you do something, the more you understand and discover how to do it better.
• Better to fall facing forward than to never try at all because you want your first attempt to be perfect (which won’t happen anyway).
• Quit feeling sorry for yourself, quit complaining, and act like a boss.
• Persistence is the characteristic of legends, greats, and geniuses who were called crazy because they didn’t quit when the average person would have.
• Whatever you have to do to keep your purpose burning hot, do it. If it requires money, so be it. If you’re truly obsessed, it will be worth it because you’ll get the results.
• The secret to sustaining the obsession is straightforward: Focus your efforts on everything that will fuel you for the long run, and ignore, eliminate, or block out anything that drains you or causes you to doubt.
• Money, power, fame, and success all follow attention, so what gets the most attention is what will grow.
• How you invest your time is more important than how you invest your money.
• I can’t express this enough: Your purposes will continue to grow, mature, and evolve as you do.
• Attend events where power collects.
• It is so easy to hang with the same people and justify it (“They’re like family”), but it is vital to keep evolving.
• If you’re going to go on vacation, overdose on it.
• You need to be in places where other obsessed people gather.
• If I have done one thing right to keep fueling my obsession, it has been continuing to invest in my own personal education and development.
• Education has a totally different outcome when you get to choose what you are learning.
• Look for problems on this planet you can help with—and go help.