6. Scale Beyond Yourself

Chapter 6. Build something that can scale beyond yourself. Level 5 leaders set up their successors for even greater success in the next generation, whereas egocentric level 4 leaders often set up their successors for failure, Jim Collins and Good to Great. The United States wouldn't have scaled to the superpower it has in the past 250 years without George Washington. Not because of what Washington did, but far more importantly because of what he didn't do. After serving his two terms as the first president of the United States from April 30, 1789 to March 4, 1797, Washington proactively stepped down as president. Though this was the design of the republic from the beginning, even still it was tempting for people to make Washington into a king. Washington knew that in order for America to scale, let alone survive, it couldn't be dependent on him. It couldn't be built around one person. That would cripple the system. It would stop the process of freedom and self-determination they were striving to create. In the Broadway musical Hamilton, Lynn Manuel Miranda beautifully portrays Washington's son stepping down in the song One Last Time. One last time depicts Washington inviting Hamilton in as his scribe to write to the American people that he's stepping down as president and what he hopes they do with the country they are building. In the scene, Hamilton is shocked, even disappointed by Washington's decision. After going back and forth with Hamilton, with Hamilton essentially begging Washington to continue as president, Washington explains why he can't with one statement. If I say goodbye, the nation learns to move on. It outlives me when I'm gone. A year after finishing his second term in 2018, President Barack Obama recorded a special version of this song One Last Time, wherein he read the portion of the song that directly comes from Washington's written address. For the remainder of this chapter, you're going to learn a crucial lesson of scaling, one that stops many people from creating something truly special. To scale both effectively and efficiently, you can't be the centerpiece. You may be the visionary, but if your business operates more like a monarchy with you as the king or queen rather than as a republic with many extremely smart people involved and invested, more chances of scaling are slim. If you're more committed to impact, purpose, and growth, then your own role in it, then you can create something that can scale far bigger and beyond yourself. I've had to learn this lesson from firsthand experience multiple times. I've seen how brilliant entrepreneurs and leaders fail to cross the chasm of good to great. Because they can't get beyond themselves, they fail to attract the level of talent and teamwork needed to aggressively scale. If you don't have the right people on your team, you won't scale. Yeah, you can have a nice business. You can make great money, but your results will be puny and slow compared to what they could be if you had teamwork with world-class talent just as committed as you. Superwhos are required to scale. A great lay operator commands several times the wage of an average lay operator. But a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer, Bill Gates. Some interesting and controversial research in the 1960s revealed that top software engineers didn't produce double or triple the average ones. They were 10 to 100 times more productive than the average engineers in terms of code quality and speed. Other research consistently shows that the top 1 to 5% of salespeople typically generate the majority of revenue, usually over 95%. In the book, the 80/20 individual, the consulting and performance expert Richard Koch explains that results in the world are generated by ultimately two things, ideas and individuals. Koch further explains that individuals not companies are what produce results. Of this, Bill Gates similarly stated, "Take our 20 best people away and I will tell you that Microsoft will become an unimportant company." Gates' statement is profound when you consider that Microsoft has nearly 230,000 employees. Koch goes on to explain that when considering the world as a whole, less than 1% of the people who have ever lived have made over 99% of the impact on the world's direction. The CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings, shared how Netflix was able to scale at the level in speed it did. In the early days when budgets were tight and they needed to quickly solve a particular problem, Hastings had a decision to make, which he describes. With a fixed amount of money for salaries and a project I needed to complete, I had a choice. I could hire 10 to 25 average engineers or I could hire one rock star and pay significantly more than what I'd pay the others if necessary. Since then, I've come to see that the best programmer doesn't add 10 times the value, she adds more like 100 times. In 2003, we didn't have that much money, but we had a lot to accomplish. We had to think carefully about how we'd spend the little we had. For all creative jobs, we would pay one incredible employee at the top of her personal market, instead of using that same money to hire a dozen or so more adequate performers. This would result in a lean workforce. We'd be relying on one tremendous person to do the work of many, but we'd pay them tremendously. This is the way we have hired the majority of employees at Netflix ever since. The approach has been remarkably successful. We have exponentially increased our speed of innovation and output. Hastings argues that for creative roles and results-based roles like sales, your best bet is to hire absolutely top of market no matter the cost. It's been noted that no matter how much you're paying a top level performer, you'll get ballpark 16 times, whatever you invest in them, often lots more. Working with super talent does at least two things for you and your organization. One, it elevates the expectation and floor of everyone involved, and two, it creates slack in the system or margin for error. Take for example the Golden State Warriors basketball team. On February 6, 2025, their record was 25 wins and 26 losses, placing them 10th in the Western Conference standings. During the post-game interview that night, Steph Curry was asked about a pivotal trade that had just occurred. The Warriors had traded for Jimmy Butler, a notable star from the Miami Heat who could score, defend, and energize teammates. How do you feel Jimmy will change what's going on with the team, Curry was asked. The biggest thing it does is create expectations, which I love, Curry said with a rise smile. I love being in that kind of environment, whether you get it done or not. That is meaningful basketball where we all thrive in. Being a superstar on your team elevates the expectation. You can't just keep getting by. The floor goes up. If you're not looking for elevated accountability and expectation, you probably won't want to partner or work with super talent, though that's what you'll need to scale and win at the highest level. Over the next five to six weeks, Jimmy made a massive impact on the team. During their next 14 games, they went 12 and 2, going from the 10th spot to the 6th in the Western Conference. Marcus Thompson, a beat writer covering the Warriors for the Athletic, discussed even his own surprise a month after the Butler trade, referencing Andrew Wiggins, the excellent player the Warriors traded for Butler, Thompson stated, "There is a difference between an all-star and a superstar. These things are categorically different. With all the drama going on in Miami the past few years, I'd forgotten that Jimmy Butler was a superstar. This instant he's one of those guys and he doesn't even have to play well and you can feel it. He's just on the court and by virtue of being Jimmy Butler on the court, he will punish you if you let him. If you don't, then Steph will punish you. The moment he got there, you could feel the vibe change just by him being there. He's impacting one of the greatest offensive weapons in the history of sports. You can see it. Steph is a different dude. Steph is a monster. The day they got Jimmy, Steph took 36 shots. The next day he took 32. That's the first time in his career he's taken 30 shots and back-to-back nights. Thompson is making a few key points here. First, bringing on super talent changes the entire feel and expectation of the environment. But also, because of the extreme capabilities they bring, they elevate those around them. And when you're putting superstar with superstar, such as Butler with Curry, now all of a sudden the whole game looks different. It's been noted by Steve Kerr, the Warriors head coach, that because of Steph's incredible abilities, he creates enormous margin for error for the rest of the team. The business term for this is slack. When you have slack, whether financial, talent, leverage, etc., it means you have space. You have degrees of freedom others don't have. According to Dr. Sim Sittkin, having slack, particularly in financial resources, is highly advisable when committing to an impossible goal. That gives you the time and space to learn, innovate, and iterate your path and process as you're stretching toward the goal. Importantly there are multiple forms of slack, and when you're creating pathways to your goal, bringing on various partners who have key leverage you don't have, whether capability, resources, connections, etc., can be the resource you need to scale. The most powerful way to create slack is by working with superhooves, those who can create results no one else can. Of course there's one key challenge to bringing on superhooves to your team, and I've seen it many times in the companies I've advised. You can't have rock stars working with average employees. The cultures and mindsets don't mesh. If you want to have world-class superhooves, you first have to be world-class yourself. Tens don't work for eights. You have to make a decision, either you're working with a world-class and high performing workforce, or you're working with average employees. There's a clear distinction in world-class team members and partners versus average employees. The world-class team members don't want to be managed, but they absolutely want to be led and to lead. World-class talent is committed and accountable to results more than process. Conversely, average employees want the security of process to fall back on because they aren't committed to results. They're committed to their own security and comfort. This reality is a truth that organizations of all sizes have to face if they want to scale. To reach a massive new level and get there quickly, you're going to need very clear objectives and better team members than you currently have. A lot better. Are you willing to let go of some or even many of your existing team members in order to scale? The answer for many people, based on their actions, is no. They don't have the stomach to disappoint or hurt people, so instead, they have a linear business. You can't go halfway on this, either you're committed and will get rock stars who will help you scale or you maintain an average workforce. If you try to mix the two, it won't work. For example, with Floor Coverings International, FCI, the Floring Franchise company I've consulted with and discussed in chapter 4 of this audiobook, we taught the franchisees that if they wanted their business to grow more aggressively, they'd need to let go of their current salespeople and hire better ones, even replacing their entire sales team with a single superhoo. When a leader is only half committed to an A level player, meaning they keep the culture and expectations lower, that A player won't stick around. This reality smacked the face of one new franchisee. He hired an A player, but didn't set them up for success. This new franchisee continued as an operator and manager, rather than leader, and within a few short months, this A level salesperson left wanting a better opportunity for growth. The scaling framework is three parts, frame, floor, focus. The frame is the objective, a seemingly impossible goal and timeline. As the goal is so high and urgent, it forces a far more aggressive filtering process, hence the floor rises. The floor is a new and higher cutoff of viable options, which for the impossible goal are much less than the smaller or linear goal. Thus, the natural process of attempting an impossible goal is that it forces your floor extremely high, requiring you to let go of what you were previously doing and who you were doing it with. This doesn't mean you fire your whole staff, but if you want to see something interesting, take some time to establish a seemingly impossible goal and watch how your team reacts when you present it to them. It will be very telling who is committed and serious and who wants status quo. Ultimately, your ability to scale largely comes down to the people you have on your team, as well as the people you partner with. To achieve impossible goals and rapidly scale, you'll need team members and partners who have leverage, meaning they can produce results. Impossible goals require leveraged partners. Give me a place to stand in a lever long enough and I will move the world. Archimedes, Polymath and Inventor from Ancient Greece. This audiobook started with the story of a politician who utilized space to achieve his political goal. The entrepreneur and inventor Elon Musk has been very explicit about his goal of getting humanity to Mars for a long time. That's the goal shaping his decisions and direction. That's the goal that led him to buy the social media platform Twitter, get involved in the 2024 election and embed himself in US politics and government reform. I'm not here to say whether going to Mars or how he's going about realizing that is a worthy or moral endeavor. Musk's story is explored for strategic and scaling purposes not political or moral ones. No one can deny his genius at scaling. The economist Lord Maynard Cain stated, "worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally." To realize his impossible goal of getting to Mars, Musk became willing to risk his own reputation and wealth by getting involved in the 2024 US elections. Though risking his wealth and reputation aren't exactly new for Musk, becoming political led many who previously revered or respected him to strongly question and even vilify him. Some now think he's a monster. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, there became growing concern and debate over the topic of censorship, particularly in US politics, culture and social media. Increasing evidence suggested the government was manipulating platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google to suppress information and steer public opinion. As Mark Zuckerberg later recounted in an interview, it just got to this point where we were like, "No, we're not going to, we're not going to take down things that are true. That's ridiculous." Both politics and society were hard skewing toward increased regulation and conformity, where in any form of disagreement was at risk of censorship and cancellation. This was something Musk, as one of Twitter's biggest users, was becoming aware of and concerned about. Due to both his frequent use of the platform and the size of his audience and engagement, he noticed every algorithmic and technical change made on Twitter, even subtle ones. Once he saw various figures whose viewpoints opposed Twitter's agenda literally censored and removed from the platform, Musk began to believe the First Amendment, Freedom of Speech, was possibly in jeopardy. He felt if we lost freedom of speech, all other freedoms would eventually fall with it. The seeming regulation of speech was just one of the signals to Musk that something needed to happen. Government regulation also concerned him, as increasing laws were limiting his ability to innovate and scale his companies, SpaceX and Tesla. The final kicker was the ballooning US debt, which Musk believed could lead the country to utter ruin and bankruptcy. These converging factors led Musk to a startling realization, one that terrified even him. He would never get to Mars if he didn't get involved in US politics. This was not his initial intention, but he couldn't see any other way. His commitment to reaching Mars led him to begin privately acquiring shares in Twitter in 2021. By mid-2022, the Twitter board accepted Musk's offer to buy the company for $44 billion. During the due diligence period, following the accepted offer, Musk was visiting his kids in California. They asked him why he was buying Twitter. They didn't use it and felt him buying the platform was a bad idea. I think it's important to have a digital public square that's inclusive and trusted he explained to his kids. Then, after a brief pause, he goofed. How else are we going to get Trump elected in 2024? Although this last comment was made jokingly in the moment, in retrospect, it clearly wasn't a joke, despite him being a lifelong Democrat. Buying Twitter was a chess move in Musk's grand strategy of getting to Mars. Once the deal was finalized and Musk became owner, he immediately began applying his five-step algorithm to simplify and remodel Twitter, eliminating most of its then existing processes and people. Naturally, he was met with extreme resistance. Within a month of owning Twitter, he fired 80% of the staff and removed much of Twitter's processes, which he stated was "painful and not fun at all, though necessary." During one interview around this time, he was asked, "So how do you run a company with only 20% of the staff?" Musk replied, "Well, it turns out you don't need that many people to run Twitter." The interviewer pushed back, "But 80%, that's a lot." Yes, if you're not trying to run some sort of glorified activist organization, and if you don't care that much about censorship, then you can really let go of a lot of people it turns out. While applying his algorithm to Twitter, he had a conversation with some of the top engineers and asked them about the parent excess of server farms. Why do we have three server farms, Musk asked? We only need one. We need all three, the engineers insisted. Why? We need the others for backups and caching, they explain. "No, we don't need three," Musk said. "I want us to get rid of the two in Sacramento." "That will take at least six months." "No, you can do it in six weeks," Musk pushed. With a scaling mindset and utilizing time as a tool, Musk said, "You can complete this in six days, not six months." After seeing that they were more committed to Twitter's past than its future, Musk fired them two days before Christmas. The next day, Musk was flying on his private jet from San Francisco to Austin to be with his family for Christmas. Mid flight, he told his pilot to turn the plane around. He decided to go up to the server facility in Sacramento himself. The guard at the facility was shocked, not knowing why Elon Musk, the new owner of the company, was there on Christmas Eve. Musk and his bodyguard made their way to the servers. Once there, he turned to his bodyguard and asked, "Do you have a pocket knife?" "Yeah," the bodyguard said, handing it over. Musk then cut the cables to the servers himself and immediately shut them down. The changes he made to Twitter, including its name to X, were unpopular, both inside the company and in the broader culture. The company lost most of its advertisers and revenue. After nearly two years owning the company, the whole thing looked like a colossal failure. By the end of Q3, 2024, X's value had dropped from the $44 billion he paid for it to just over $9 billion. Due to the seeming failures at Twitter, or X, people began to wonder whether Musk had lost his edge. Maybe he'd even lost his mind. His leadership and mental state were questioned. Investors, friends, and even those closest to him were becoming increasingly concerned, especially as he voiced his radical political opinions online. Some pundits and influencers said Musk's extreme wealth had inflated his ego to unchecked levels, leading him to make irrational and dangerous decisions. However, as the 2024 US elections loomed in air, it became obvious that Musk was up to something. Despite previously opposing Donald Trump, Musk calculated that if he was ever going to colonize Mars to elevate humanity, helping Trump become president was a crucial, though unexpected, path. Understanding the massive risk, particularly to his electric vehicle company Tesla, he publicly stated that he was endorsing Trump and that he felt freedom of speech and all other freedoms hung in the balance. Trump was Musk's big bet to get to Mars and it had massive potential upsides and downsides for Musk. He further explained on the Joe Rogan podcast that if Kamala Harris won the election over Donald Trump, that he Musk wouldn't be able to get to Mars and that he might even lose his companies due to government oversight. He's gone as far as saying that if Trump hadn't won, that civilization would be lost. As he stated on Rogan, I think this is existential to the United States. It's existential to democracy. Once you lose freedom of speech, you lose democracy. Game over. That's why I bought Twitter. I'm not saying whether or not you should believe Musk, but clearly he believes himself and has a huge vision for the future of Earth. As Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGBT once described a SpaceX tour Musk had given him, the thing that sticks in my memory was the look of absolute certainty on his face when he talked about sending large rockets to Mars. I left thinking, huh, so that's the benchmark for what conviction looks like. Musk ended up campaigning heavily to support Trump's election and Trump announced that if he won, he would place Musk at the head of a project to audit government efficiency to reduce waste and increase productivity, the Department of Government Efficiency or Doge. Trump did win the 2024 election. Many people believe that had Musk not bought Twitter two years prior and had Musk not publicly and convincingly campaigned for Trump that there's no way Trump could have won. Within a month of Trump's victory, Tesla's stock value had shot up over 69 percent, growing Musk's personal wealth by over $170 billion, nearly doubling his net worth. As one comedic meme stated, Elon is such a fool. He spent $44 billion on Twitter and all he got was control of all three branches of the federal government. During Trump's inaugural speech on January 20th, 2025, officially becoming the 47th president of the United States, he stated, "We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, planting the stars and stripes on Mars." During the worldwide television production of this speech, the camera flashed on Elon Musk after Trump spoke these words and Elon was as elated as a schoolboy. True to form and questioning false requirements, Musk strongly suggests the United States deprioritize its goal of going to the Moon and instead direct its attention straight at Mars. Given the scale of Musk's impossible goal of reaching Mars, the pathway to get there becomes extremely unique, even controversial. Musk now has Trump and likely the United States government behind his Mars goal. He will likely get huge amounts of funding in this process. I tell this story purely for strategic and scaling purposes. The point is encapsulated in a quote from the leadership expert, Robin Sharma, the bigger the dream, the more important the team. If you want to achieve impossible goals, you're not only going to need to get an audience with some truly incredible people, but you're also going to need a partner with them. Partnering with superhooves or leveraged individuals typically involves meshing visions where an all parties are bought in, unified, and incentivized. If you look at rapid-scaling businesses or movements, you will see key partnerships and teamwork. Often, it is just one person or partner who can 10x or more your vision. You're just one superhoo away from scaling. Consider the company Slack started in 2013, after a strong initial launch, doing 12 million in revenue in 2014. It was Slack's partnership with Salesforce in 2015 that over 16xed Slack's revenue in just over two years, wherein it did over 200 million revenue in 2017. Or the famous story of Nike, partnering with Michael Jordan to take it from Fringe running shoe company to a global powerhouse. In 1984, when Nike made the bold bet on Michael Jordan, they expected $3 million in revenue on the Jordan 1 during its first full year in 1985. Instead, the sneaker produced over $126 million that year, and over the next few years vaulted Nike beyond the running brand they'd previously been. With the Jordan and what came after, they were reframed as the premier sporting brand in the world. Now, at the end of the science of scaling, you've got some questions to ask yourself. What is your own impossible goal? How will you utilize time as a tool? What does your impossible goal and timeline do to your floor? What will you let go of that's keeping you where you're now at? What is your own unique pathway to your impossible goal? Who will you need to get involved that can make your mission possible? Will you stagnate or will you scale? Dr. Stephen Covey said all things are created twice. There's a mental or first creation and a physical or second creation to all things. Creating a new frame or impossible goal using Covey's language is the mental creation. The new future is what shapes the present. The physical creation occurs by first raising your floor and simplifying your system, removing everything that shouldn't be in your physical world. After removing what shouldn't exist, the next aspect of physical creation is creating a model and business that can actually realize the goal. Considering an impossible goal doesn't need to be dramatic or scary. Time is a psychological and strategic tool, not a concrete reality. Your future is the tool you use to filter your present, enabling you to find the signal and strip out the noise. When you truly let the future dictate and direct the present and when you make the future seemingly impossible, the floor will go very high. It will take honesty and courage to raise your floor and remove what shouldn't be there. Then, in order to truly create the system that can scale to your impossible goal, you'll need to make big bets that others wouldn't make. Scaling is not for the faint of heart, but it is for you. You can achieve what seems like 10, 20, even 30 years of growth in the next three. Just simply use time as a tool as part of your impossible goal. Use that goal to force much better decision making here and now. While the world is becoming increasingly caught in a sea of louder and louder noise, you can be the exception. You can be focused. You can scale. Will you?