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The Business Owner's Journey Podcast host: Nick Berry
Production Company: FCG

[Image Gallery: American Entrepreneur Nick Berry]

Transcript for Dr. Benjamin Hardy: The Science of Scaling and Why 10x Changes Leadership

00:00 Science of Scaling overview

04:37 Founder bottleneck and self-deception

07:18 10x growth mindset explained

09:22 Scale vs growth in business strategy

14:50 Identity shifts for scaling a business

20:18 Building elite teams for leverage

22:49 Raising the floor and letting go

26:55 Simplifying leadership roles

28:22 Scaling without sacrificing family

32:11 Hiring A-players and leadership leverage

36:58 Scaling.com and real business scaling

Benjamin Hardy (00:00)

I think that the beauty of scale, if done right, is that it forces higher leverage, right, including a better team. Your role actually should simplify. I'm not gonna say, by the way, I'm not gonna say you won't work more for a bit, but what I'm saying is for you to go 10x, you'd need a better team. And so you would need a better team or partners, et cetera.

who, you your role actually has to get simpler. One of the major reasons people don't scale is because they are the bottleneck, right? They don't build an exponential or a powerful team and their role is to spread throughout the whole company. They're the bottleneck everywhere. Like, you can't do that if you're gonna scale. Your role actually has to become more narrow and more focused. Even Peter Thiel talks about this. in Zero to One.

Nick Berry (00:58)

Dr. Benjamin Hardy is an organizational psychologist, a multiple time bestselling author and the co-founder of scaling.com. When a business can't scale or they stop scaling, is the problem, the market, the model, the team, or the leader? This is an episode that really landed with me, because the topic that's been on my mind so much lately, identity, using goals and time as tools and thinking bigger than what

feels comfortable. I've already re-listened to this episode a couple of times before it's even gone live And I wasn't re-listening necessarily as a host. I was re-listening for myself.

This is just a fantastic, a loaded episode. You can expect to learn how the science of scaling exposes where leaders are lying to themselves. The real difference between growth and scale. How setting these 10X goals can simplify your role or should simplify your role rather than expanding it. What raising the floor actually means in business. How to use impossible goals as filters rather than pressure.

Whether scaling really requires sacrificing family or balance, why elite teams are a power law and not a nice to have, the best and the worst ways founders become and stay the bottleneck, what letting go really looks like when you're serious about scale,

and how identity shifts shape strategy long before the results show up.

This interview is so valuable for me and I think it will be for you too. Let's get to it.

Nick Berry (02:19)

science of scaling, I think for me is probably it's in that short list of the most impactful, you know, five or six books. It's with like my E-Myth, Traction, things that really changed. They just landed with me. And so I appreciate it, first of all. so here's when I knew I had a winner in my hand.

It's like, I don't know, 15 pages in or something like that. And it says the primary reason why companies don't scale is the same reason people don't scale because they're lying to themselves. And I'm like, we're keeping it real. I like this. So let's talk about that. Now you guys, you've you've had people coming into your program. You've had to see or been able to see a lot of people go through this epiphany. It's probably not something that everybody takes the same way. Right.

How does that typically go?

Benjamin Hardy (03:03)

So is the epiphany of operating from the impossible or the epiphany that they've been lying to themselves?

Nick Berry (03:08)

that

they've been lying to themselves.

Benjamin Hardy (03:10)

Yeah, you know, it fits really well with the concept of raising the floor and just acknowledging that so much of what we're spending our time doing or not doing is the wrong thing. And we have our justifications and our excuses for it, but the beautiful part when you start going for scale rather than linear growth is that it just forces you to reckon with that stuff today. It forces you to look in the mirror. And that's really what raising the floor is all about.

Yeah, it's constant humility training. That's the fact of it. Even the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset is that a growth mindset means you're exposing yourself. Rather than hiding, which is what the fixed mindset does and pretends everything's okay, it's like the growth mindset says, crap, I'm looking in the mirror and I see it all, and that's the whole point. so it's good, because then we can start to deal with it, right? All progress starts by telling the truth.

as they say in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Nick Berry (04:10)

Yeah, when people come to your into the program, are they, for the most part, are they ready to kind of have that moment? Or do you have to do, they typically need a little bit of work, a little priming to be able to get through it.

Benjamin Hardy (04:23)

We just like the scaling framework teaches, we have a very high filter for who we let into scaling.com as a program. So we won't let someone into the program unless they've already read the book, gone through the paradigm shift of scale versus growth, right? And now they have a 10X goal or more that they're gonna go for. So we won't let someone into the program unless they have a 10X goal and that they're gonna go for in three years. I've been in a part of enough programs which were more like

Nick Berry (04:37)

Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Hardy (04:49)

country clubs where people were talking about business, but no one was really doing anything, that we didn't want that to be what we were. So we actually won't let someone in unless they've already gone through the paradigm shift and they're like, okay, I want a 10X or more, I want to do it quickly, and I'm willing to now go through that process of being honest with myself, raising the floor and being held accountable. So even still, even still for all of us, it's a nonstop process. For me,

I let a few things go last week that I'd been hesitating to let go of for relational reasons. the more you get serious about it, just about your future and letting the future shape who you are and what you do, over time, your kind of rationalizations go away. it's kind of like the peeling of the layers of the onion, know? And so it takes time.

Nick Berry (05:34)

Yeah, it's a muscle, I guess, right? It's like you get stronger over time, but you do have to stay committed to working on it. can see it atrophying pretty easily too.

Benjamin Hardy (05:36)

It is.

I'd be interested for you, Nick, what hit you and you gave a very generous compliment on the book, putting it in with some really good company of books, but what was the paradigm shift for you or just the confrontation for yourself as you were reading it?

Nick Berry (06:03)

So I think in the last probably six months or so, so I, I exited my, my last business at the beginning of 2024 and then it spent the time since then just trying to make sure that like I figure out what the next chapter is. And I don't, want to default back into the exact same thing just because. So I just wanted to take some time, get separation and get clear headed. And so I've

started going down this path, doing more advisory work. And, but what I realized as I was reading this, the book was that I was still kind of like tiptoeing around the big enough, and you're still not thinking about anything, about the things that I'm setting my sights on, it's just not big enough. And, you know, the using the,

the goals and the time as tools like that all that lands with me really well. think, you know, intuitively some of those things I, it wasn't as jarring to look at them that way, but to look at it at another altitude, you know, it's when this part of what I do is help other people see these things. like, you know, for me to have to sit there and look in the mirror and wear it is. it's part of that.

like humbling experience of entrepreneurship and continue to try to like lean into and learn and explore in your blind spots. So that's that's one thing. And then the other aspect, and maybe you can help me with this, is like, there's part of it that I'm having a hard time reconciling with the thinking in bets. And it's like, taught yourself to

to try to anticipate and to think about the different paths of the future. And you're kind of like thinking about things in bets, but then now by raising the floor, I'm trying to like eliminate all of those fallback options, right?

Benjamin Hardy (07:57)

So by the, so by, just so I understand the concept of thinking in bets is that you've got like a lot of different, call it lines out in the water, trying to catch fish, is that the idea?

Nick Berry (08:05)

Yeah, basically.

Benjamin Hardy (08:07)

Yeah, think that that, I guess the question would be what's the main reason you would think in that way? What's the main reason for having a lot of nets out in the water, or like lines out in the water?

Nick Berry (08:19)

I mean, I guess probability, so I think the, thinking of bets concept, is probably less, directed at the, the, the goal and more directed at the, the paths to get there. It's, know, it's from Annie Duke's book about, when you're dealing with incomplete information and you're trying to make choices. And that's kind of what you're doing.

constantly as an entrepreneur is figuring out how to navigate when I've only got a part of the information that I like to have. I guess for me, I had tried to make that a muscle that I continue to train all the time just to be able to be a good decision maker more of the time.

Benjamin Hardy (08:53)

Yeah. What I would say is the benefit of the scaling framework that's taught in the science of scaling is that its job isn't to eliminate all options, but it's to eliminate the dead end choices. its job is to push you to the extreme end of the bell curve and to say, you're going to go for an impossible outlier goal. So let's raise the floor to that level where the only options that we're considering are the ones that far out there. We're applying the power law.

Right? Where it's like, we're only looking at the paths that could get us there. I'm not sure which one it's gonna be, but we're going to strip out all the dead ends that can't get us there. And so, know, John Doerr, who is a venture capitalist, helped Steve Jobs, he helped the people at Google, he said that a goal properly set is halfway reached. And so the reason for that is that a goal properly framed eliminates the majority of options. It eliminates the dead ends that really we shouldn't be fishing in anyways, because those

even though those ponds are there and they may have some fish in them, we already know that there's not enough juice to squeeze out of those ones. And so that's part of the idea of looking ourselves in the mirror and being really honest is, yeah, it's nice to have some of those bets out there, but let's be honest, some of those really don't have that much power. so let's just, those ones are not power law options. And so our goal requires power law pathways or just really high leverage ones. And so…

The beautiful part is it allows you to start stripping the majority of those out, 80-20 principle, right? Let's strip out the majority of them because the majority of them aren't really gonna get you very far anyways, so why invest time, energy, effort, resources in them? Let's go find the pathways with the highest leverage as it relates to our goal and what we're trying to accomplish, and then let's really dive into those ones. So I would just say that most pathways turn out to be dead ends and to Annie Duke's point, Which she wrote about in her book,

Nick Berry (10:37)

Yeah.

Benjamin Hardy (10:44)

The amateurs are people that continue to throw good money after bad hands, right? And so, know, amateurs play more hands than pros. They play bad hands and then they stay in bad hands longer and they lose more money. And so the point of the goal properly framed or going for scale, going for 10 or 100X growth in a few years is that it forces out a lot of those bad options in the first place. That's the raising of the floor. That's the being honest.

That's the stripping out the complexity and just stripping out the pathways that don't have that much power and they're not worth our time anymore, even though we may have invested a lot in them or they still might be able to have some juice. There may be some juice in there, but it's not worth it. not, it's a 10 X cost to the pathways you could be taking instead.

Nick Berry (11:32)

Yeah, it's ⁓ not so much an all or none thing. The idea is to have fewer of those options remaining, right?

Benjamin Hardy (11:39)

Yeah, it's just to strip out the paths that don't have the power to get you very far anyways. And now we can really confront those and say, should we really be continuing to say yes to this one? And the best thing you can do is strip it out so you can put your energy towards higher scale potentials.

Nick Berry (11:41)

without the noise.

Mm-hmm.

How did you know you were onto something with this concept? Like at what point did your light bulb come on and you're like, we've got something special here.

Benjamin Hardy (12:05)

It's very generous of you, So what happened was is when I wrote 10x is easier than 2x, I knew it was special. That book, because I had to go really far. Like I wrote that book with Dan Sullivan and I love Dan, but that idea was never fully fleshed. That idea was never really clarified. That's why I wanted to write that book is because I wanted to do the hard work of clarifying it. And so I…

I learned a lot writing that book, but then what happened was is, the beautiful part about writing a book and the frustrating part about writing a book is that when you go out and teach it, you see where you made your mistakes. And so in going and teaching it and having hundreds of thousands of people read it, which was amazing, I'm my biggest critic. And so when I look at something and I say, okay, say 300,000 people have read the book, right? I'm talking about 10 X is easier than two X.

My question for myself as the writer is how many of those went 10X? Right? Or how many of them, you know, they liked it but they didn't fully apply it. And if I'm honest with myself, probably five to 10 % of people really went for 10X, let alone went 10X. I'd say probably 5 % went 10X and only 10 % went for 10X. And so then I had to look at myself in the mirror and say, okay, so people are, they like the idea, they're compelled by the idea, but they're not fully taking it seriously.

And that's what I have found in general with entrepreneurs. And that's why I'm now distinguishing between growth and scale is because I'll go teach this framework, talking about the science of scaling to people, and it will be a revelation to entrepreneurs that they've never actually gone for scale. They've never gone for scale. You know, they've gone for linear growth. If they have a $2 million business, they're going for $3 million. They're not going for $20 or $50 million, right? They've never actually gone for scale, let alone let that goal shape their path.

and direct their team, their strategy, everything they do. And so it's just been interesting. So I knew I was onto something before, but then when I saw the reaction, both positive and negative to 10x, I realized, okay.

There's actually a conversation that's never really happened and that's that people don't actually know what scale means. That surprised me, that people don't actually know what it means. Therefore, they really don't even know what strategy is. I was surprised by that because I figured there's just so much talk on this. There's business schools throughout the world. There's probably over 100,000 business books published every year, right? And it just became…

I became shocked that no one's ever actually clearly defined it and clearly distinguished it and how to do it. And so that was where I started to get, and in the beginning angry, and then afterward just said, okay, well, guess it's got to be clarified.

Nick Berry (14:50)

So were you finding that the people who were not choosing scale, was it intentional or it was not intentional because they didn't really distinguish between the growth versus scale?

Benjamin Hardy (15:01)

One of the things that we did in 10x is easier than 2x is we talked about the difference between quantitative and qualitative, right? And again, it's a different book. I think that the science of scaling is a much more mature book than 10x is easier than 2x. It's a much more mature and much more complete thought than 10x is easier than 2x. with that book, I think that people, because they got so excited about the idea and also the recognition that 10x is not just external with like revenue, but it's a transformation.

And that's why we were talking about it as a qualitative change. I think a lot of people thought that they were going 10X when they weren't. Like a lot of people would say, I'm 10Xing. And it's because they actually are going through an inner transformation, which is huge. But they're not actually going for tangible 10X, whether it's in revenue, something very specific, going for a real goal. And my belief just as, know, even just going into the psychology of it is that the goal does shape the path.

The goal shapes the process and the beauty of going for a real scale goal. So if you're at 2 million revenue, you should be going for 20 to 50 million revenue in the next few years and letting that goal shape your company and shape your direction and shape your team. If you're not actually going for the tangible scale, then you might be lying to yourself even more. You might actually think you're doing a lot when you're just going through inner epiphanies, but you're never actually translating that to

tangible process. I don't know where people went off. think that even for us, I'll give an example actually of someone in scaling.com. Part of the framework of the science of scaling is to set an impossible goal. We want people to set a goal that seems impossible because then they're no longer operating from their past. They're no longer operating from their assumptions and now they've got to go find a more leveraged pathway.

that they've never been thinking about before. And they've got to think about what would actually get them to scale. So there's a guy in our program, and I'm not gonna name his name, but he's got a $10 million company. And they do a really awesome service for people. And they've got a great product, what I should say. And he didn't want to take the idea to its full conclusion. It took them 20 years to get to 10 million revenue. And they've got a great company, profitable.

But when he read the Science of Scaling, he didn't quite want to set a 10x goal. So didn't want to say, I'm gonna get to 100 million. He said, I'm gonna go for 5x in two years. So he said, we're getting to 50 million in two years. And that was a powerful enough goal to reshape their process. Because the beautiful part about operating from a goal like that is that he had to ask himself, what the heck's gonna get me to 50 million in two years? They've never grown like that before.

He actually had to acknowledge that the core products that they had couldn't get them to 50 million in two years. But there was a more unique, more up-level product that he absolutely was confident could get them past 50 million in two years alone. So what he did was, and the beautiful part about this guy was he actually implemented it very quickly. He rose the floor, told his team, we're no longer selling the core product.

even though they had six million in pipeline business, even though their whole team was optimized on that, even though that was what they were known for, he's like, we're gonna go this new way and we're going all in on this new way. And so what came with that is that he had to fire even their top salesman who was more optimized for the old path, the old product and who wasn't gonna make the transition. And they let go of $6 million of pipeline business that had been built up that was gonna come through. over the next 90 days, they lost almost $6 million of business.

but by redirecting their focus on the new products that could get them to 50 million plus in two years and building the team around that over 90 days, they actually replaced their income in those 90 days. They went from 10 million to somewhere around 15 million to 16 million-ish, but they also 10x'd their pipeline because the new pathway was a better pathway. And so what he said to me was he said, Ben, I actually was fearful to set the true 10x goal.

He said, but now he said, realize we're gonna way overshoot our 5X. he said, the team I have now is, he said, based on our math, we're gonna probably get to around 130 million revenue in the next two years. And so, it's there, people are afraid. And he applied it, he applied it quick, but even still, he was afraid to set 10X. But now he's gonna shoot past 10X because he's fully implementing, he's raising his floor. He's really thinking about what's gonna scale.

He's willing to transform their company, redefine their company, and build, to his point, raise the floor and let go of the stuff that creates any form of friction to that scale. so it's pretty fun to see when stuff like, when someone really takes it seriously.

Nick Berry (19:33)

Mm-hmm.

Sure, I can imagine. But I mean, there probably should be some apprehension, right? Like it's kind of the idea is we're going to have to get away from what we're comfortable with to look at this from a different angle. So it may come with some anxiety or fear.

Benjamin Hardy (19:54)

100%, 100%. Yeah, I mean, if your goal doesn't scare you, it's probably the wrong goal. If you're not, some degree, a lot of people, one of the things that Dan said, which I love Dan Sullivan, who I wrote three books with, said, everyone wants confidence, no one wants courage, right? And so, everyone wants the guarantee. Everyone wants, prove to me that this path will work, and that's not where courage is. Courage.

is the willingness to try something that might not work. And that's really what it is. How could there be risk if it's guaranteed? But what the beautiful thing is is that when we're talking about scale goal, when we're talking about 10X, I'm talking about the goal and even time, and you've already mentioned it, as a mental filter. So you don't actually have to commit in the beginning. What I would actually prefer is for someone to actually just use it as a mental exercise. Almost like if you study Einstein,

Almost all of his experiments were developed through mental experiments. Strategy and pathways thinking are the same. Just as an example, whoever's listening to this, wherever you're at in your company, say you're at five million revenue, wherever you're at, literally 10X your revenue and say, how would I get there in three years? not they have to commit to it, not they have to get scared about it, not they have to get angry about it, just literally say, what?

How would you get there in three years? One of the things that people typically think is that it's gonna take 10 times more work, and it's not. It's gonna take a higher leveraged different pathway, just like the one I just shared with the guy. He couldn't get there the same way. And so the beautiful part about using a goal as a tool rather than as something that you define yourself by and as something that stresses you out, use it as a filter. Use it as a tool to say, what would get you there?

And you might not initially know, but say, well, what would? And actually think about it. And could what you're doing now get you there? And how much of what you're now doing could get you there? The beautiful part about a goal properly set as halfway reaches is that if you look at the present through the frame of scale, through the frame of 10X or bigger goal in a short period of time, back to the idea of options and most of what you're doing right now can't get you there. Most of what you're doing has no validity to that goal.

And that's its primary benefit is now you can start to strip that stuff out and say, well, what could get me there? Where would we need to optimize? Where would we need to focus? And it's going to force you to simplify your focus and it's going to force you to elevate your focus on something to the idea of the power law, much higher impact. and so that's, that's really its whole point is it's the, the framework's job is actually just to straight, like straight narrow you on a path that, that is scalable and for you to face all the facts that most of what you're doing isn't right now.

Nick Berry (22:34)

Yeah. I mean, I think it does that really well. and it's very simple.

It's simple, not necessarily easy because a lot of it is that looking in the mirror and that part of it can be tough. Which part do you feel like the entrepreneurs tend to struggle with the most then

Benjamin Hardy (22:41)

Agreed.

It's always raising the floor.

Yeah, well, the first hard one is actually aspiring for scale. I've heard that ambition is in low quantity. Most people are not that ambitious, to be honest with you. So to actually go for scale, whether you're gonna 10X or 100X your company or your revenue or whatever it is, that's a barrier.

But getting past that barrier and just saying, I'm actually gonna go for this and I'm gonna use the goal as a tool. The second major barrier and what I'll call the crux is actually raising the floor and beginning to eliminate the stuff in your business or in your life that is a clear contradiction to that. And letting go, even as like a psychological or a spiritual principle is kind of the point. Like learning how to let things go is hard. People are.

People hold on to stuff, they hold on to grudges, right? They hold on to all sorts of stuff for too long. They hold on to business models that don't work. You know, they hold on to things that did work, that won't work for very much longer. Letting go of things and letting the past be the past versus letting the past be the driver is the crux of psychology. That's why I wrote it this way, is because raising the floor means letting go of your former self, even the things that you're a master of, that you spent years mastering, but are no longer

that potent. You can still take the learning from it, but you can't take the model of it. You got to move on and do something that's better. so people have a real hard time letting go of things. They have a hard time disappointing people. They have a hard time firing team members that can't scale. But raising the floor is the crux.

Nick Berry (24:11)

Mm-hmm.

And so I think the crux, you said that's from Rumelt right? you're going into.

Benjamin Hardy (24:24)

Yeah, Rimmel wrote

two great books, one's called Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, the other one's called The Crux. But the crux is just the hardest part. The crux is just another word for it's the hardest part, and it's the core part.

Nick Berry (24:30)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. And so that's what, what was with the, another one of the challenges that as I was, had kind of gone through the thought exercise for myself is the, probably the part where I would not, I definitely am not, would not be ready to let go right now is it would, for me to 10 X, it would require me making changes to my life. Like with my family that I'm not prepared to,

Benjamin Hardy (24:59)

Like what? Give an example.

Nick Berry (25:01)

out in effect where I live.

Benjamin Hardy (25:03)

It really would.

Nick Berry (25:04)

Well, think it would. ⁓ I thought that until you, probably yes. ⁓ Well, to get proximity to, so we live in Florida. Our families are in Kentucky and we don't have family nearby. have a three year old daughter. So I would probably have to be in proximity to them.

Benjamin Hardy (25:07)

So to go 10X in your company, you'd have to move? You'd have to move?

Why? Tell me more. Let's talk about this.

Nick Berry (25:30)

So we have family closer by to help out with my daughter. Yeah. Yeah.

Benjamin Hardy (25:34)

But why? Are

you assuming you're gonna have to work three to five times as much?

Nick Berry (25:39)

Not that much, but more. Enough that I feel like that would be jeopardizing the family balance. That's my biggest concern, is the family balance.

Benjamin Hardy (25:50)

I think that the thing that… No.

Nick Berry (25:52)

Am I giving you all the signs? Am I exhibiting

all the signs that you see?

Benjamin Hardy (25:56)

No, I love what you're saying.

I think that that's a false requirement. I think that the beauty of scale, if done right, is that it forces higher leverage, right, including a better team. Your role actually should simplify. I'm not gonna say, by the way, I'm not gonna say you won't work more for a bit, but what I'm saying is for you to go 10x, you'd need a better team. And so you would need a better team or partners, et cetera.

who, you your role actually has to get simpler. One of the major reasons people don't scale is because they are the bottleneck, right? They don't build an exponential or a powerful team and their role is to spread throughout the whole company. They're the bottleneck everywhere. Like, you can't do that if you're gonna scale. Your role actually has to become more narrow and more focused. Even Peter Thiel talks about this. know, Peter Thiel talks about in Zero to One.

all about how you have to, I actually wanna show it to you. Can I show my screen here?

Check this out.

This is for the video audience. I'll read it though for the audio audience. So this is from zero to one. It's called, the section is called do one thing. ⁓ Basically he says that, ⁓ you know, the best thing I did as a manager at PayPal was make every person in the company responsible for just one thing. Every employee's one thing was unique and everyone knew I would evaluate him only on that one thing. I had started doing this just to simplify the task of managing people.

but then I noticed a deeper effect, defining roles, reduce conflict. He then goes into it and stuff like that. ⁓ But the main thing is that as you scale and as you learn the concept of scale, you have to learn simplicity, not just simplifying business models, but simplifying your role. And that's the hardest thing that most entrepreneurs have to, that's one of the hardest things that entrepreneurs have to face is that they're unwilling to simplify their role and build a really good team of focused individuals who are also crushing it.

Nick Berry (27:52)

Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Hardy (27:52)

It's

a really sloppy startup mindset when everyone's involved in everything. You got to get beyond that to scale. And so the only reason I bring that up for you is, you you would have to bring on one or two people that would effectively replace most of what you're doing and they would do it better. And your role would be hyper isolated and focused. So, I mean, yes, there's a period of time where you're working more, I, but to get it where it's really going to go, you know, you're not.

You're not involved in everything.

you'll have to arrange things so that that's non-negotiable.

Nick Berry (28:28)

you know, when you put it like that.

Benjamin Hardy (28:28)

And then you just have to

become more efficient with the time you have at work, which is hard for all of us. Because we're all distracted not only on the noise, on the 80 % of stuff that doesn't matter, the dead ends, but we're also distracted in other ways. And so it'll force you, and I have to face this fact myself as someone with seven kids, right? Is I need to be more efficient with my time. No, I do, because I need to be more efficient with my time so that I can turn off and go be with my seven kids and not let my own, you know, it's not scale.

Nick Berry (28:32)

Mm-hmm.

You don't want to hear my story about one.

Benjamin Hardy (28:56)

often that gets in the way of us being with our kids, it's inefficiency. It's us being distracted and muddled and doing the wrong things. And so if we're simplifying our role and building a really good team so that it's not all built around us, so that the company can go if you're at home chilling with your wife, but also where you're efficient with what you're doing so that you don't work an extra three or four hours longer than you needed to, because you're actually more focused and efficient and just turn off when it's time to turn off and

Get back to it tomorrow and go be with your family.

Nick Berry (29:27)

Yeah. mean, now that having talked through, it's like really creating this constraint, wanting to work from home or protect the amount of time, the balance that have right now is doable in the same way that it would be doable if I said I want to do it and I just need to make sure that it fits into this. I want to do four hours a day or whatever. Like you can create the constraints. Like that's, you're just going to have to raise the floor as to.

the way you're going to approach meeting that goal, right? Even if your constraints are maybe a little over the top, you're making it harder on yourself still, as long as you raise the floor, you're applying the framework that should give you the best chance to hit the goal.

Benjamin Hardy (29:54)

And, end.

100%.

Nick Berry (30:05)

And

now that I mentioned, it being a chance that you hit the goals, which means there's a chance that you don't, I'm sure that not everybody hits the goal, but it seems like the identity shift that goes along with the process, they're probably better off because of that regardless, go ahead or not hit. Is that fair?

Benjamin Hardy (30:22)

say more about the identity shift you're talking about. mean, certainly it's better to be operating from your future self, who you want to be versus your past self and who you've been. ⁓ That's core psychology. So yeah, that identity shift is useful. But yeah, go more into what you're talking about with the identity shift.

Nick Berry (30:29)

Mm-hmm.

Well, it it kind of goes back to the lying to yourself and how it all kind of starts with your identity and being willing to see things for what they are.

Benjamin Hardy (30:41)

Mm-mm. ⁓

Nick Berry (30:48)

And that being the gut punch.

Benjamin Hardy (30:51)

Being more honest with yourself is always gonna go a long way. Yeah, it's not that you have to be critical of yourself. Being rigorous means being more honest, but that doesn't mean you don't give yourself grace. One of the things that's very important is to give even your former self grace. A lot of people are, they let the past drive them, right? That's typical linear psychology where you let the past drive and dictate you. This is a very different form of psychology where you recognize that you're not your past self, but

it's very useful to give your past self grace. I don't need to be mad at my past self last week. I don't need to be mad at my past self three years ago. Instead, I can just acknowledge I'm not the same person and I'm gonna do things differently. So I think you can be rigorous with yourself while still being graceful. You're gonna have to beat yourself up all the time. It's just being honest with yourself. then to the extent you're ready, start making the adjustments that are more in alignment with that better future.

and sometimes it will take courage and sometimes it's scary to make those adjustments. But as you do it and as you get better committed to a better future, you'll start to quickly see the payoff. You'll very quickly start to see the payoff and that's when you start to really grow because now you're investing in better things.

Nick Berry (32:00)

Mm-hmm. Well, so.

Benjamin Hardy (32:00)

You're investing

in the future. You're no longer investing in the past.

Nick Berry (32:03)

Yeah. you'd mentioned like the power law and super who's talk to me about super who's and does everybody need to hire top of only?

Benjamin Hardy (32:11)

Most people won't.

Nick Berry (32:12)

But that's part of the formula, right?

Benjamin Hardy (32:12)

Most people won't, no. Yeah, but if you want

to scale, you should probably have really good people. It makes a big difference, honestly. Having A talent versus B talent is a 10X difference. One of my favorite quotes from a guy named Sam Hinckie is that people are a power law. Even when I read Richard Koch's book, he wrote the 80-20 principle as well as the 80-20 individual.

Nick Berry (32:19)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Hardy (32:37)

just the idea that if you're investing in good people, you're always gonna get a probably five to 10, maybe even he says 16 X return on an investment. So having A minus or B, B level people in your company is gonna cost you an enormous amount. And so if you wanna go for scale, mean, you study anyone who's scaled, the team really matters. And so having a high caliber team, one A plus person is better than five Bs. Like Steve Jobs said that.

I mean, everyone kind of says the same thing with that. And it's very true, by the way.

Nick Berry (33:07)

But

what I'm hearing you say is that it's not just get A's instead of B's, it's A pluses instead of A minuses. It's the very top.

Benjamin Hardy (33:16)

Having a higher

floor makes a very big difference. Having a higher floor on your team makes an exponential difference.

Nick Berry (33:25)

Mm-hmm.

I would expect that one of the obstacles that people run into in the program is they kind of don't want to turn over control. they kind of want, there's something they built themselves into the center of the business and they don't want to let that go.

Benjamin Hardy (33:40)

You're very wise. It's very common. That's why we addressed this, because people like to be in control. They like to be the bottleneck and they've never actually had a real team, a scale team, a C-suite, like people who are phenomenal at what they do, who are just as committed and maybe even largely more talented in various ways. I all those things are core components of scale and building the right team. And again, most people have just never, most entrepreneurs have never done that.

They're used to being the bottleneck. They're used to being the centerpiece. They're used to being the most talented person in there. You know, it's what Jim Collins would say is the genius with a thousand helpers, right? That's not true leadership. And so yeah, you got to get to a point where you, the beautiful part is, and again, I've seen this again and again as well, is when you go for a scale goal, like an impossible goal, like a real goal that's exciting, those goals are what attract the talent to achieve the goal.

Nick Berry (34:05)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Hardy (34:30)

Small dreams don't move big people, right? And so having a big goal is what attracts and is the filter for the right talent to help you achieve the goal. They just have to see excitement and upside and challenge in it, but the goal is what attracts the right people to it. And the people who are on your team right now, who are pumped and excited about it, they can transform and come with you. Some of the people on the team won't want to go for scale. I mean, that happens often.

Nick Berry (34:48)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Hardy (35:01)

but weed themselves out or you'll have to let them go.

Nick Berry (35:05)

Yeah, I think from my experience, both like being the person, you know, the entrepreneur, and then also working with a lot of entrepreneurs, you just get so accustomed to that B player, that whole experience being a part of life. And it's like, can't hardly imagine if everything went very differently.

Benjamin Hardy (35:22)

Yeah, I can't do it. it's the bit one of the biggest forms of leverage aside from really good strategy is a good team. And it's just shocking how incredible things are when you have an amazing team. I mean, it makes a big difference. It really does. And what I'll say to the entrepreneur who's listening and doesn't believe they can have that team is go for a bigger goal and start talking about that goal and watch what happens when you bring on just one really talented person.

Nick Berry (35:31)

Hmm

Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Hardy (35:46)

one really strong who, it'll change you. And when you realize that you can actually build a company and a team of people who are really talented and also fiercely committed and excited and bought in, now you're playing the real game versus, it's just not, it's not really good strategy or scaling to have a, to have a, not an excellent team, you know, and to be dealing with stuff that's below the floor. That's,

Nick Berry (36:00)

Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Hardy (36:10)

You become a leader when you raise the floor, you raise accountability and you say, don't deal with this anymore.

Nick Berry (36:14)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think when you said.

Well, you're talking about a real strategy and playing the real game. I believe it's what you said. Like that, that's it. you're just playing. if you're playing to win, right? That's Rimmel's definition of strategy is something that you can take to market and when you expect to win, like that's the part that we kind of lose sight of. If you're going to go out there and win, you're going to take the best players. So you either tool up with them or you're not serious about your strategy or winning.

Benjamin Hardy (36:41)

True. You're either playing to play or you're playing to win. You know, I think it was Laughly who wrote the book. Laughly who wrote Playing to Win, but know the game you want to play and know how to win and actually commit to succeed. It doesn't mean you have to win every game, right? It doesn't mean you have to be the top of the market, but that you're playing a winning game and you're owning the game you're playing.

Nick Berry (36:45)

There you go.

Tell us what you're doing in scaling.com and what the experience is like and who needs to go check out the program right now.

Benjamin Hardy (37:06)

Entrepreneur doesn't matter your size. You got to be at minimum 500,000 revenue, but there's companies in there. There's many companies doing over 10 million, some even doing hundreds of millions in revenue. Really doesn't matter where your company is, except for you have to be at the minimum threshold of 500,000, but you've to be committed to 10X or more growth in the next three years. You've got to be committed to scale. We won't let you in. So if you haven't read the science of scaling, start there. You can go to scaling.com and you can download the book for free. Listen to it. It's free on

a lot of platforms. can also just get the book on Amazon or Audible, actually listen to or read the science of scaling. Again, scaling.com, it's free. Yeah, there you go. And if it resonates, and if this is the methodology that you're looking for to 10X or more your company, come, tell us about your company, tell us about your goal. And if it's deemed by all parties that you're ready to scale and that you want to be held accountable to that, held accountable to that, if you want to be in a community where scaling is the norm.

then that's who we're looking for. That's our niche, is people who are ready to rapid scale and they know that they're ready. And they're ready to be held accountable to that and they want to be in a community where that's the norm.

Nick Berry (38:07)

So what's the experience like working with you guys? mean, are you, we've talked a lot about the perspective of the leader and setting the goal and, raising the floor. But once they do that, do you play with them in actually enacting the change bringing it to life?

Benjamin Hardy (38:25)

So we have obviously lots of training within scaling.com. Every member gets put with a one-on-one, one of our trained strategists. All of our strategists are to your point, A pluses. We get thousands of applications for our strategists. We only take the best. They've all been entrepreneurs before, very successful. A lot of them have been CEOs. They also have training experience. And so these people are world-class. We never get complaints about our strategists. Trust me, you're not gonna find better trained strategists than at scaling.com.

So you get one of those one-on-one. You at minimum meet with them once a month for an hour, but they are usually in deep touch with all of, we call them scalers. So they're in touch with all their scalers. Then there's group calls multiple times throughout the month where we'll have a group session where me and Blake Erickson, who's the co-founder of scaling.com, will group coach in front of everyone. There's breakouts, there's journal prompts.

Some of those calls are for everyone. Some of those calls are for companies that are just 10 or 10 million and above. Um, and then just regularly we're releasing case studies. mean, all the time we're releasing case studies of people who are implementing this framework to 10 X their company and all industries. Um, it's not industry specific. One of the common questions we get is, know, can you scale my company? My industry is unique. And we always say, uh, the industry standards are never designed for scale, right? Like convergence is where everyone's doing the same thing, right?

We're talking about divergence and we're talking about differentiation. We're talking about strategy. And so we're going to take you away from the majority of what. people in your industry are doing so that you actually can go 10 X because most people in your industry are going to be stagnant and looking for best practices, which is the exact antithesis of strategy. Michael Porter, who invented the field of competitive competitive strategy said that the essence of strategy is choosing what not to do. Steve jobs similarly said that innovation is saying no to a thousand things.

Napoleon said you can spot an amateur because they're trying to do too many things. so, um, the next book I'm actually in process of writing right now is called strategy is what you don't do. so, um, but yeah, we're here to support. have no fluff in the program. Um, we don't want to optimize stuff that shouldn't be there. so everything in there is to guide you in helping you 10 extra company.

Nick Berry (40:42)

Do you know when do you expect strategy is what you don't do to be out?

Benjamin Hardy (40:46)

Probably late January, early February, it'll be released. 2026.

Nick Berry (40:50)

Okay. then ⁓

time as a tool is out now, right?

Benjamin Hardy (40:54)

Yeah, time

is a tool totally available.

Nick Berry (40:56)

Okay, yeah, I think it just.

Benjamin Hardy (40:58)

for free or you

can go on Amazon and audible and get it. an audio only book, but it's you can get it for free as well. If you just type in scaling.com forward slash I time like I think it's time. You could just look up time as a tool on Google Benjamin Hardy and you'll you'll get it for you'll find it.

Nick Berry (41:13)

Yeah, well, I'll make sure that we include it in the show notes. And then what I'm currently on now is be your future self. I really like this. I just like the way you think. ⁓

Benjamin Hardy (41:22)

Dude, you're the man. Dude,

I like the way you think as well, Nick. It's good to be with you, brother, and thanks for the time.

Nick Berry (41:28)

Of course, I appreciate you being here.