Ep4 The 10-Year Vision: How Elite Performers Think Beyond The Noise

Joe Blackburn  0:00  
We want everyone to aspire to cross the 100 million dollar mark in their assets or their net worth? Well, if you got 25 people doing that, 50 people doing that, they're super power in that, and they all learn from each other, the people that come into the lion they're not good with being good. They're after greatness.

Jason Croft  0:16  
Welcome to the lion's edge, where top performers sharpen their teeth. Hosted by Joe Blackburn, founder of The Lion, who is relentlessly dedicated to helping business owners lead multi million dollar teams and me. Jason Croft, I transform unseen entrepreneurs into industry leaders by developing their market gravity. Each week, we reveal proven strategies and raw insights to help you maximize your business, multiply your wealth and make your family indestructible. Now let's create your edge. All right, all you amazing lions out there. Welcome to the show. Joe Blackburn, what's happening,

Joe Blackburn  1:01  
chilling and killing just like a lion.

Jason Croft  1:07  
Nice. I like this idea for this, this topic that we're talking about here, we've touched on it a little bit in past episodes, about having the goal, having that vision to go towards. And something you mentioned just last week in the line. You all went through your 10 year goals, and I think the idea of goals overall, and then, especially when you get to 10 years beyond, and especially when you're talking business, there's a misconception a little bit of, either you're trying to plan out your details of your business 10 years from now, impossible, or you're, oh, well, I could never know, so I'm not even gonna think about that. And I think both are wrong in terms of, yeah, so, so what's that process? Why even take people into this 10 year mindset, this goal, that vision, in the first place, and kind of, why, besides just being a round number, like, well, I got to that 10 year mark.

Joe Blackburn  2:17  
Well, we want them first of all, just to dream it. You know, everyone has dreams. Everyone does. You know, Gruden says you should be everyone's nightmare. You know, so to ruin their dream. But everyone has a dream. A lot of them are unclear. Most people just, you know, go about their day, go about their life, react all these things, pressure, stress, all those things start to take hold on you when you live that way, number one, because you're reacting to what is happening. So where it came from, and we did it in our first in person in Tampa, Florida. We called it a 10 year dream. And what, it actually starts to do is, first of all, when you think out that long, I mean, even if you thought back a decade, like, what were you doing? What was your health like? What was your family like? All these, you know, where were you in? The wealth spectrum, all these different things. And you kind of become present. It's dramatically different. So when you're in the fray or in the fight thinking out, okay, let me dream what life's gonna be like 10 years from now, and that allows you, first of all, to see yourself differently. You know, we talk about self ideal, the ideal self as the first key to success. So I just wanna see what my life's gonna look like 10 years from now, and I can see how I am now, and then I can start to make adjustments. So we have everyone start to write out talk about your family 10 years from now. Talk about your business 10 years now. Talk about your wealth, your health. You know how you celebrate, how you give back? I mean, that's a big one, by the way, because that one kind of caught me off guard when we did this last week. People have big aspirations, not only in them, but in what they want to contribute. So I start to build this dream. It's not a like you said. It's not a business plan that I check off. It's what do I want this to look like? And that does a lot of things. First of all, it makes you more aware, you know, your RAS or whatever that thing is. It starts to pick up more it gives me a little more self confidence, because I have a 10 year track record, and I guarantee you you're way further along than you were 10 years ago. But it starts that process of thinking bigger. And I think we get in this, you know, habit of compressing what we think about based on what's happening right now, and if I give you a perspective of 10 years from now, what's stressing you, what seems big you're you're gonna think is funny, like the one of the the exercises we do around goals, what a lot of the feedback is, is what I thought was big and what I thought was not doable. So much is now. Like, what I do every day. So just going out 10 years in the future allows you to have that perspective, and then we want to look at it. Okay, can we compress that? Number one, is it really gonna take a decade? Is your dream big enough? You know, on our call last week, there were a couple people and mustard principle always applies in the line or like that, ain't big enough? And it was because they knew the person they're like, you're you are bigger than that. You have bigger capability. So then try to dial then you can get a little more tactical or granular, and dial that down into what I want to do this year. And so it takes the weight of the bigness, and it starts to, you know, dial it down, you could break it into 90 day segments. What do I gotta do today? So like 10 years, somewhere in the middle, one year, 90 days today. That's called a flight plan, by the way. And it makes it easier for me to execute, but it also keeps my mind bigger, and when I hear other people talk about what their dream is. It also empowers me, because now I have other people with the belief system that they can do it as well. So it was pretty impressive hearing everyone's and I, you know, I have them do it individually. That's probably the first time we've done it as a group in the last 12 months. And it's something you probably ought to revisit. You know, every once in a while, like mine's two years or three years old now, and it's totally different. My dream has changed, so keeping an eye on it, but I still see how big this can become.

Jason Croft  6:32  
Oh, yeah, and there's a couple of layers here to this that are they're multipliers. When you do this in a setting like the lion number one, you're not in a vacuum. You can see other people's hear other people. So you do like you mentioned, you start thinking bigger and like, Oh, yeah. Why am I? Why am I thinking that way? And I think what 10 years does as well is that it we, we all feel, you might listen to this show, anybody in the line, anybody in that world, we all have that feeling that if I am exactly the same 10 years from now, something's horribly wrong, correct, right? Not that, not that we're not grateful for now, and who we are now, all of that stuff. But if we are that stagnant 10 years from now, so that automatically, we we think, you know, out in the future, we think bigger. What can we do but something that it does, besides getting everyone else's point of view now you're, you're held to it a little bit. Oh yeah, you get a bigger and we all need that again. People listening to this show, people in the group, they're already high achieving people. And we still need that. Hey, yeah, doing, what are you doing? And it helps you. Now, if you, if you're allowed, and you, you do think big, you put this vision together, there's a little bit of just like, cool, how the hell am I gonna do this well? And you have that guidance of just like, Oh, it is this simple. You do this, this, and this. So I think all of those things come into play in this kind of setting. Well, I

Joe Blackburn  8:27  
think when you get the reaction from people hearing your dream, and it's not, are you fucking kidding me? It's, it could be bigger. Wow, like you i So I'm a I'm giving away my secrets to the lines. So I watched the Chiclets on our calls when people are talking. I watch them a little bit, but I watch how other people react to what's going on, and you can see it. It's like a light up, like, Oh my gosh. I you know. And think of your perspective of other people. You meet them three times a year, and you see them on some calls and everything, but you're not hearing how big they actually want, and that's like a, you know, a turbo booster in the fact that now you got 25 people all trying to cross a big finish line. And you've said it out loud, so you know, if you might, let's say you get a little complacent, or you take your foot off the gas. Now, other people are like, Hey, man, you said you wanted to be a, you know, 100 million in net worth, or you were gonna build a business that does 10 million in revenue. I mean, so it once it's out into the inner circle. Specifically, now you've got other people's skin in the game. That's, that's pretty powerful, you know, we, we want everyone to aspire to cross $100 million mark in their assets or their net worth. Well, if you got 25 people doing that, 50 people doing that, there's super power in that, and they all learn from each other. So I it felt timely. I think one of the things that hadn't that I decided to have everyone kind of checkpoint it and do it, was. Like, you know, you get out of that first quarter in the year where you've kind of re acclimated to the real world, ran hard, and now it's like the accumulation of we were talking about it before, travel, sports, vacations, coming up, school getting out. You know, you've lost an employee or fired something. You know, you've had all this. So now it's like, I get like, here on the problems. And I thought it was time to just kind of okay, take a step back. Let's take a big look. Now we can come back and get granular. And the dichotomy of it is you only have today. So like today's all you got. However, if you don't have a big vision or a big dream, today's much harder. So if you want to make today easier on you from a psychological standpoint, and more crisp in your execution. Have that out there, but don't waste today. So it's, you know, it's not like, Well, my dreams gonna come true if I just sit here. We know that's not gonna happen. But it really, it really helped, almost like, take the cover off of everything that was going on for a moment now, people, I'm sure, have gotten back into their normal routine, but if you're gonna hit that 10 year dream, you gotta change some of the things you're doing. So I found that pretty fascinating. And we've got some newer people in there, and I got, of course, my phone's blown up throughout our whole call, and they're like, holy shit. I didn't know, you know, like, it was kind of their first merry go round. I think they understood what they were getting into, and now they see what we're talking about. These people are not kidding around about building greatness. And you know, there's another there's a couple people in there that you know are shout out to Gary. You know, Gary's one of those people that his his life's pretty damn good, and he's super capable. And it was like, I'll just use him specifically. He got a little pushback, like, man, you could do so much more. But I think one of the things we run into when we're on our own, it it can be good enough, and then it stops becoming about money. And if I've got accountability and I'm part of something, and I have capability, you know, the thing that I, I call complacency is a silent killer. The thing that you start to battle more and more after you have some comfort, is, how much further do I go and why? And I don't, you know, I don't ever see them or me saying, Okay, I've made it, but you can't always be in a state. It's weird. You can't be in the state of mind. I hadn't I've not made it. It's just now, what can I do? I've done this. I've climbed this mountain. Now what? And it becomes more about what you're capable of, versus getting just to check points. I i call it, you know, your gap to potential. I don't know if I didn't coin that, by the way, but if, if I'm always going here and I keep going up and I get close, well now, if I'm here, what do I do? Do I stay here? Do I die here? Or do I now go here and it from the contribution standpoint, and it's hard to wrap your mind around, especially that far out. But if you're passionate, and they all are like everything, like I wouldn't say, everything, almost everything, was in contribution, about helping people that can't help themselves, the youth, I mean, you could see their heart where it is. Well, if you stop here, and ultimately it becomes about contribution. How much more could you give? Maybe you don't need to put 100 million in the bank. I don't know, but you could give 10 million, 20 million, 30 million. I mean, you go either side of me down here and to the major cities, it's one and eight gets mugged, and there's a lot of hungry kids. I know what I want to do. I mean, you know, I don't have to spend 100 million. However, there's a lot you can do, and the world will always have people that you can help. So it's kind of put your brain around that, versus, okay, I've made it, and I'm good. I mean, I talk to people every week that are good. They're good. They go on vacation and have a pretty good business or job, and their family's decent, and they're good. This the people that come into the lion they're not good with being good. They're after greatness. They want, they want to do more than they ever thought. So putting the perspective around that time frame has really helped us. I sometimes take it for granted and think it's not that important to them most of the time. I'm right on this one, I was a little wrong. Like, that was, like, my they were like, I'm glad we did this. Like, this helped me. Yeah, so I'm done great, by the way,

Jason Croft  14:35  
but you're not. Oh, okay. And I love that. I think it's, I feel like it's a, it's a Jim Rohn thing that's talked about, you know, it's not just a goal. It's like, who you become, yeah, getting to that goal and it, and I love that concept. It also expands out into Who do you. To get to know and be around, right? The bigger you get in terms of vision, right? And then who you have to be. Now you're attractive to folks thinking that same way and after those same bigger goals, and that helps you reach your bigger goals more and more. So it's this expansive, abundant aspect of things that just are great ways to keep your mind on an ongoing basis, beats

Joe Blackburn  15:31  
the hell out of worrying all the time, you know. And I tell I say, it's something to keep on hand, because when you are super stressed and you are feeling overwhelmed, or you're in a, you know, a shit storm, so to speak. Pull your goal or your 10 year dream out. Look, take a look at it. Is this that big a deal right now? I do it all the time, you know, I I have five children, and everything in life going on, just like everybody else. And once in a while, I'm like, God bless America. I'm, you know, I'm irritated, whatever, and I just kind of okay, this isn't a big deal. It's not a big deal. No one's gonna care. You know Tony Robbins, so talking to Ronan Robbins, two of my heroes. You know, Tony, it's a you're gonna laugh about this 10 years from now, so you might as well laugh now. You know, we have a 92nd rule. You can only be pissed for 90 seconds. I i use the rule sometimes more than 90, but not much. But anyway, I mean, it just, I it's a great tool, and it's, it's one of those things, you know, it's weird. The all of this is very psychological. I mean, all success is in your mind, and it's the thing that gets neglected the most because it isn't demanding it of you in the moment. It's not something that, if I don't do this, I drop dead, or my kids starve, or anything like that. So it's it's easier to not do it like anything else that's good for you. It's just easier to not do it's the most important thing, the mic. I It's been the biggest challenge in what we do is getting people to get the habits of the mindset things because of their actual physical demands in their job and their family and everything else. And there's some people that are religious about it. There's some people that dabble in it, and there you can see a difference. And there's days when I don't get around to it, you know, William had to go to basketball this morning. I didn't write my goals down here. I'll admit it. He had to go early. It threw me on my routine, and I just I didn't do it. Now, I could call it the 90% rule. Anything you do 90% of the time is basically the same as 100 if you look at the actual results. Diet, you know, you know, you get a cheat day business, you're gonna have a bad day. 90% consistency. I mean, I came from the financial planning world where there's something called Monte Carlo simulating and even at 80, you had 100% probability of not outliving your money. It's kind of the same math. Just do it very consistently. You'll get about the same results. So don't beat the shit out of yourself when you miss a day like that's there's another side of that spectrum, right?

Jason Croft  18:06  
That's the other mindset piece to that too. It's if you do stay in that routine, and the more you do it consistently, it's really just easier. You know? It's a human thing to make it like feel more strange to not do it when you get to that level of habit. But absolutely right, not that's the problem with, you know, you skip a day or this and that, and then you beat yourself up like, oh, well, might as well not do that anymore. I can't even

Joe Blackburn  18:34  
I mess one day. I've blown that, right?

Jason Croft  18:37  
So to wrap this up, though, what's, what's step one for somebody that to go put this into action, they've developed this 10 year goal. How do they now connect it? You talked about that flight plan. How do they connect that to? Well, affecting today. And

Joe Blackburn  18:58  
of course, we've got Warrens made them. They're awesome. Like worksheets we get, you know, people fill them out. I hand wrote mine, because I'm cool. Some people typed them. But you know, the first thing you want to do is take some time. It's not hours. Take 20 minutes. 30 minutes. If you want to pull your spouse in, probably be smart and take piece of paper out and just write down what you dream about from a I break, you know, we break it into what we call big bites. So what does my family look like 10 years from now? Do I have kids? Do I have grandkids? Do we live a certain place like, you know, I was sharing with you our first when I first wrote my 10 year dream, we were going to live in North Carolina. I live in Orange Beach, Alabama. So dreams change, so just write out what, what it's like to you know, smell, feel, taste, walk on the beach, holding hands. I don't care what it is. What does my family look like? Do they come home? Do I go to them? Dream it like? What does that look like? And then you can look at your business life, what? What does my business look like? You. 10 years from now, what's my role in this business? Am I, you know, totally separated, or do I own multiple businesses? Have we created something? Just dream your business 10 years from now, then look at your wealth. And wealth, you know, it's a it's a two sided thing. Part of wealth is the actual money and the assets. It's also your life. You know, some people build to sell, some people build to live. I teach simple wealth, you know, I I would prefer to not have a bunch of headaches. I'm just I'm it's how I'm wired. I don't deal well. I'm impatient. So there's different ways to build wealth. But what does it look like, Do you own rentals? Do you own businesses? Have you accumulated assets in stocks, bonds and cash and alternatives? It could be a combination of all those things. But what does it look like? And what do you do now that you're wealthy? You know, my thing is, I'm never going back to an airport. I'm damn near there now like I hate airports. I just hate them. They're dirty, they stink. The bathroom is terrible. The food's brutal. I don't like airports. So my dream is to not have to deal with them and still be able to go all the places I want to go. There were a lot of jets in our 10 year dreams, by the way, which was awesome. I think some people under don't understand the mathematics and the business purposes around jets, but I'm not going to shit on their dream. Great, get a jet. I love it. So what does that wealth look like? Who do I spend my time with? You know, pillars. When we talk about that, it's a lifestyle. I do what I like with, who I like, when I like and we all prosper financially. That is a wealthy lifestyle that is paying the price to get, like you said, around the right people, so that we all prosper together. And then you can look at your health. I mean, you know, I'm no spring chicken. I'm gonna turn 50 this year, and I know I look like a specimen. However, there's things I'm not doing currently that I need to do more of. There's dietary changes. There's, you know, as you get older, you get aches and pains. So if you're, you know, we got kids in their 30s in inner circle. I call them the kids. That was awesome. You know, you have people in your 30s, 40s and 50s will, you know, for me, at 10 years at 60, I'd prefer not to have a bunch of neck pain. You know, that's health, and what's your you know? So how do you take care of yourself? How do you eat? You know, I want to still eat a steak or a burger every day, like that's what. I love it. I look forward to it. I like meat. So then I want to look at, okay, how am I giving back now? Because if I've accumulated a decade's worth of wealth, I have to give to get and I should give without expecting it. So what am I passionate about? Where? Where does everything you know kind of pull at your heartstrings? Where do you you know, I don't cry much. Wasn't really allowed to as a child. It was a good rule, but I have not enforced that at my house anyhow. But you know, like, what? What makes you emotional? Like, where are you going to be passionately giving a decade from now? How are you going to do that? And then, if you do all this, how are you going to celebrate? You know, I mean, are you going to have toys? Are you going to have multiple homes? Are you going to bring everyone home for Christmas on your dime? Are you going to put a big trip on the calendar every single year and fly everyone in? Are you gonna just stay at home and walk on the beach and read books and ignore people? That's a pretty good dream. That last one. Yeah, live on an island, not have to deal with humans. No, it just so if you just took, I mean, I went through that in what if I'm two minutes three, I don't know what the hell it was, but write that out. Start there, then, okay, well, if that's what I want 10 years from now, I probably could do it sooner. Maybe look at five, seven years. I don't know if you're super ambitious. Three. What do I gotta do this year? What do I have to do this year? Like when we do our 10 goals, they're aligned with the 10 year dream. They're categorized the same way. So what do I have to do now in this given year? And if I'm in, you know, the last week of Q or the first month of q2, what do I got to get done by q3 90 days or 60 now? But and then what I could do the next 90 and then what do I do today? Like, that's how you bring it back down on your flight plan, it's how you land, but you got to take back off. So the the flight plan itself, I mean, is, and by the way, is just like any other flight, as soon as you take off, you're off course. The wind changes, the weather changes, the fuel changes, so you adapt along the way. But if I'm tactical down to what I have to do this week today, I can make those adjustments. And that's business like, you know, the one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our of our era, Mike Tyson, said, to get punched in the math, the plan is pretty much over, you know, I get a plan. I go in, I get popped in the nose, and now I gotta readjust. So if you were gonna apply it, start there, bring it back down, and then take flight on this week, 90 days, next quarter, next coming year, or next 12 months. That's how I would do it. And you can do it on piece of paper, if you'd like,

Jason Croft  24:54  
yeah, that's about it. Yeah, you'll need a fancy journal, but Right? Maybe we'll sell you one. Yeah. Well, I mean, like we

Joe Blackburn  25:01  
could, but, or you could just do what you know, list, look at good handwriting, and I write everything in

Jason Croft  25:09  
red. That's how angry you are. Everything has to come on. I don't all caps in red.

Joe Blackburn  25:13  
Everything I see red better than they see blue and black. So I just everything's in red, even my whiteboards in red. So just like that lion back there, Jason, here you go. That's all I got. Awesome. I

Jason Croft  25:27  
think that's great. Like it's, it's really important. And I hope people dig in and grab it, and it's been half an hour today, you know, jump in there and do that and and just feel it, feel that energy that comes from from doing that. It's

Joe Blackburn  25:43  
all there. Just put it on paper. Start there. All right, all

Jason Croft  25:49  
right, lions. There's your edge. Go. Make it count. He's out. You've just experienced the lion's edge. If this episode lit a fire, if you're ready to push past your current ceiling, there's more waiting for you. Want to see what it takes to become a member of the Lion, visit jointhelion.com to discover how successful entrepreneurs become unstoppable forces and make sure you never miss an episode by hitting subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. This isn't just content. This is your edge.

Speaker 1  26:29  
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