The 10x rule ffirs indd I 3/14/11 10: 22: 47 AM ffirs indd II 3/14/11 10: 22: 47 am the 10x rule The Only Difference Between Success and Failure Grant Cardone John Wiley & Sons, Inc

107
Exercise
What are some ways you can expand that only require 
energy and creativity, not money?
When have you ever benefi ted from contraction?
When have you expanded your efforts? What results did 
you see?
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109
CHAPTER
15
Burn the Place Down
O
nce you take 10X actions and start getting traction, you 
must continue to add wood to your fi re until you either 
start a brushfi re or a bonfi re—or burn the place down. Don’t 
rest, and don’t stop—ever. I learned this the hard way after 
achieving a lot of success and then resting on my laurels. 
This is a commonly made mistake. Do not do it! Keep stack-
ing wood until the fi re is so hot and burns so brightly that 
not even competitors or market changes can put your fi re out. 
Your fi re has to continue to be stoked, and that means more 
wood, more fuel, and in your case, more actions. Once you 
start operating like this, it will become almost second nature 
to continue—because you are going to be winning. It’s easi-
est and most natural to continue taking massive actions when 
you are winning—and winning is only possible with massive 
actions.
When you begin to “heat things up,” you’ll quickly 
become aware—even obsessed—with the possibilities before 
you and will start to see new levels of positive results. Your 
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110
THE 10X RULE
actions will start to perpetuate themselves like a fl ywheel that, 
once it gets going, continues going. Newton talked about the 
law of inertia: An object in motion continues in motion. Keep 
taking action until you can’t stop your forward momentum. 
You might even fi nd yourself operating on less sleep and food 
because you are literally subsisting on your adrenaline gener-
ated by your victories. It will be about this time that people 
start offering you admiration—and then advice. Be particu-
larly wary of those who suggest you have “done enough” or 
who advise you to take a rest or vacation. Now is not the time 
for rest and celebration; it’s time for more action. Andy Grove, 
one of Intel Corporation’s fi rst employees, coined the saying, 
“Only the paranoid survive.” Although I’m not recommend-
ing that you spend your entire career in a state of paranoia, 
I do believe that you must stay committed to taking action. 
Even after achieving successes along the way, continue to take 
more actions in order to exceed your goals. The time to cel-
ebrate or take vacations will come. Right now, you must keep 
adding wood until the fi re is burning so hot that no one—and 
nothing—can put out your successes.
One of the problems with success is that it demands 
continuous attention. Success tends to bless those who are 
most committed to giving it the most attention. It’s somewhat 
like a lawn or garden; no matter how green it gets or beautiful 
the fl owers, you must continue to tend to it. You have to keep 
mowing, trimming, edging, watering, and planting; otherwise, 
your grass will turn brown and your fl owers will die. That is 
the case for success as well. There is no retreating for those 
who want to create and keep it. It is a myth to believe that the 
successful get to “kick back” and stop making the very efforts 
that have brought them fulfi llment in the fi rst place.
Always keep the four actions—doing nothing, retreating, 
taking an average amount of action, and taking massive action—
in mind. The 10X Rule means you are going to create success in 
quantities great enough that you are constantly in total control. 
The wannabes and people who get close are the ones who quit 
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Burn the Place Down 
111
adding wood and then backed off. Massive action is designed to 
move you past your peers and off the “treadmill.” The best way 
to quit worrying about competition and uncertainty is to build 
a fi re so large and so hot that everyone in the world—even your 
competition—comes to sit by your fi re for warmth. Keep in 
mind that most competition is created by those who are unwill-
ing to operate at the higher levels of action, who merely imitate 
others’ efforts. There can never be enough wood on your fi re. 
You can never take too much action or accumulate too much 
success. There is no such thing as being talked or written about 
excessively, being covered too frequently, receiving too much 
authority, or working too much. These are simply claims that 
mediocre people make in order to justify their own decisions to 
be happy with the status quo.
How can you ever take too much action when you have 
an endless ability to create new actions? Look at the big play-
ers on this planet. None of them ever “runs out” of energy, 
efforts, people, ideas, or resources. They enjoy the gifts of 
abundance because they create abundance in their enterprises. 
So instead of resenting them, admire and emulate them. If you 
do, you’ll fi nd that the more you commit to new actions, the 
more creative you will become. It is as though your imagina-
tion opens up, and new possibilities just pour from it. It’s not 
even necessarily the creativity that is so brilliant but the ability 
to take massive action that it prompts.
I recently met with a very high-profi le PR fi rm in Los 
Angeles whose members suggested that I was in danger of 
being “overexposed”—something I thought was an extremely 
strange concept. The notion of overexposure—the idea that 
you can see or hear too much about someone—is based on 
the concept that a person doesn’t continue to generate new 
ideas and products. The underlying belief is that an over-
exposed person or product will somehow lose its value. But 
consider the following: Coca-Cola is known by almost every-
one on planet Earth. You can fi nd the company’s products 
in almost every store, bar, airplane, and hotel in the world. 
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112
THE 10X RULE
Is it overexposed? Should it hide its products? Should the 
company hold back in fear that Coca-Cola will lose its value 
because too many people are hearing about and using it? This 
seems to be a fairly ridiculous way of thinking. And there are 
countless other examples of products and companies that 
prove this point—Microsoft, Starbucks, McDonald’s, Wells 
Fargo, Google, Fox TV, Marlboro, Walgreens, Exxon, Apple, 
Toyota—and even some athletic and celebrity personalities. 
Although overexposure is usually not the problem, obscu-
rity certainly can be. Remember: If you don’t know (or know 
about) me, then it doesn’t matter how good my product is or 
how low my price is. And even if this were the case, I would 
rather be overexposed than face obscurity.
The sad but true fact is that most people don’t even get 
in the neighborhood of building a bonfi re. They’re either 
miseducated, socially programmed to settle for less, or fear 
that their actions will somehow get “out of control.” I promise 
you that this will not happen. You must build your fi re so big 
and so hot that you not only burn the house down but incin-
erate everything in your path. Go all the way—and then keep 
going until your fi re burns so hot that people stand in admi-
ration of your ability to take action. Don’t worry about the 
resistance you’re afraid you’ll face from either the market or 
your competitors. They’ll get right out of your way once they 
see that you’re a force to be reckoned with.
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Burn the Place Down