Story Tuesday: 10X Everything

We’re at week 11 and this series is coming to an end but this is my personal favorite part of the series so make sure you read it. After a series of struggles and hardships, in a span of a few months, some events lead to an amazing experience of Armando and myself that felt surreal. This entry is a gap between 2018 and 2019 that changed the way we think, talk and did business.

Part 11: 10X Everything

If you have been following our page or personal accounts for some time now, you would have come across us using items with the words “10X” on them. The term 10X comes from a book called The 10X Rule written by Grant Cardone. The 10X Rules is two-fold and basically means that you must set goals for yourself that are 10 Times more than what you think you want and also take 10 Times the action you think is required to get to that goal. Armando came across this book when he was looking into Grant’s real estate business and philosophy. He began reading The 10X Rule and absorbing all the information that it had and later moved on to more and more books from Grant Cardone.

He listened to the books day and night and more than once. He got pretty much obsessed with the content Grant was providing. That’s when he came across an Ambassador’s program that Grant was offering. The program allowed you to get coaching along with other entrepreneurs and interact with Grant’s team. He applied to the program and was accepted and was even given access to Cardone University for a  very special price. Cardone University is an online and interactive training hub that allows you to learn the content and be tested by the program to determine if you are retaining the information. For the purpose of the timeline, this happened in the first three months of 2018.

This new rule is what lead to the summer employees and us finally getting our official space. It had been a dream of many years to finally get employees and be able to step away from the office and work still getting done. Grant says that even though on paper an employee may appear to be an expense, in reality as long as that employee is doing their job properly, they should be making you more money than what you’re paying towards their salary. Sounds confusing? It's not. You hire an employee to buy time, so when we hired someone to help, all the work that Armando once did alone was now taken away from him and was still being done, leaving him to get other tasks that he once was never able to do. With all the new “free time” Armando was able to do way more. He did way more live streams playing mobile games, created more ads for local and regional customers. He even had time to read and go to the gym, all with the show running smoothly. Had it not been for this book, who knows how long it would have taken us to get employees.

The employees were hired in November of 2018 and when I realized that the workload was so much and the demand was still so high, it hit me that it was really happening. That’s when I decided to buy my ticket to the 10X Growth Conference 3. Armando had been talking about the event for what seemed like forever but in my small 1X thinking, it seemed like it was not going to happen for me. That all changed when I saw how the new employees were able to come in and take over the business with ease needing very little help from us. Another very important factor was the fact that on Black Friday Grant slashed all his entrance fee prices. So I took advantage and purchased the ticket without even thinking about all the logistics. How did I decide on buying event tickets without permission from work and without airline tickets or hotel confirmation? Frankly, that’s the only way I can get myself to make those types of decisions. I’m an overthinker and if I were to stop and think about the details, I would discourage myself, so I’ve learnt to go with my first instinct. The logistics would all fall into place, especially since Armando was also planning on going since he had a free pass for being in Grant’s Ambassador program.

We didn’t get our tickets and Airbnb until January 2019, just a few weeks before the event. and that’s when it hit me that we were going to the largest business conference in the world. I've represented Belize at large scale events before but to represent my business among 30 thousand people from more than 50 countries was all new to me. We arrived the night before the event and went straight to the stadium for our passes. It still hurts me to think about it, but we were about 5 feet away from Grant Cardone himself but missed our opportunity to get pictures with him. We were on the phone with a relative when he passed and it wasn’t until he got into the building nearby that others ran towards our direction shouting for Grant in hopes of him coming back out to take pictures. Today Armando still gives me the stink eye because it was my bright idea to make the call the same time Grant was about to pass by.

At the event, I learnt so much because compared to Armando, I had only read 2 of Grant’s books and hadn’t heard much of the content from the other speakers like Tai Lopez, Russel Brunson, John Maxwell, and Ryan Deiss. It was all a new experience for both of us as information was being thrown at us and we had to scatter to pick up whatever we could. One of the most meaningful parts of the event was when we were invited to a special information meeting were business owners and decision makers. The meeting was organized for Grant’s team to get a chance to make a sales pitch. The item being pitched was the Cardone University, but it was on sale for businesses to get multiple accounts. This package allowed us to have employees registered on the course and be able to monitor their progress. Armando jumped on the deal quickly, without working out the numbers as what is now our most used method of making a decision, and signed us up for a 2-year contract at an amazingly low deal. This deal was rock bottom and we can cancel at any time. We would have not been able to attend the event had we not hired employees to manage the business while we were away for the weekend.

We returned home excited and with new motivation and drive that we tried to transfer to our team. Today the team is still required to do 3 lessons daily before showing up to work. This means that every day they are expected to consume information that Grant teaches while we also learn from the same courses. It is very important to us that our team learns as much or even more than we know, we show them that learning must happen daily, we also show them that getting a side hustle is not a  bad thing, but that is encouraged. It is encouraged because Grant teaches that to survive in this world you need multiple streams of income. My team might not remain a part of the team forever, their goals will change and one day they will say their good-byes, but our hopes for them is that when they leave, they will reminisce on their A&S days and say, “all that I know today is thanks to my family at A&S”.

This entry ends in February 2019. Next week we will be finishing up the series so you will be hearing of all the plans we have for the remainder of 2019.