Be Obsessed or Be Average

INTRODUCTION

My entire life people have been telling me that my obsession with success is a bad thing.

I’ve been called a work addict, compulsive, obsessive, never satisfied, out of balance, tyrannical, and impossible to work with. I’ve been told I’m too demanding and that I have unreasonable expectations for myself and others. I have had professionals suggest that I have ADD, ADHD, OCD, and much more. Friends and family have told me to chill out, calm down, relax, and take it easy.

The reality is that no matter how much I have tried to squelch or control my obsession with success, it has been the one thing most responsible for my being where I am today. My obsessions have taken me from lost and broken in every way at the age of twenty-five to owning five privately held companies with sales of $100 million a year, being named one of the top ten most influential CEOs in the world, and being a New York Times best-selling author of five books, an internationally acclaimed speaker, an attentive husband, a doting father of two girls, and a contributing member of society.

I am not bragging—I just want to make perfectly clear that what I’ve achieved in life is not because of some particular invention, luck of timing, inside deal, or special intelligence. I am where I am today only because I embraced my obsession with success.

That being said, before I gave myself permission to fully own my obsession and harness it for good, denying my obsession almost killed me. I learned the hard way that denying your obsession or being obsessed with the wrong things can be very destructive.

I’m going to share my story about discovering my obsession and how that alone has given me this super life. I will share with you the tools I’ve discovered along the way to put my obsession to work for me. I want to give you permission to be completely and unapologetically obsessed too—regardless of who you are, where you come from, what your family is like, or what your crazy big dream is.

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Before I wrote this book, I wrote The 10X Rule, a best seller about the importance of thinking and executing at massive levels. In short: If you are going to have a budget for a project, you should set it for 10X what you initially considered; if $1 million is the amount of money you want to earn annually, then you better set a target of $10 million per year, in order to get close to where you desire. The 10X Rule was ultimately about multiplying your goals to achieve any objective.

After I released The 10X Rule, so many people wrote me saying things like, I am trying to 10X my business and I am having trouble staying with it or This 10X thing is throwing my entire life into disruption. That’s when I realized that there was a missing piece to the puzzle—the idea of obsession. Obsession is the missing piece, that mind-set that will allow you to apply the 10X rules in your life and business.

Sure, you can be successful without being obsessed, but you can’t reach the levels of success I am talking about without being obsessed. It’s the single common factor that super successful people around the world share.

To show you how to become obsessed and harness that obsession to build your own success, I’ve broken this message and guide down into manageable chapters.

The first chapter of Be Obsessed or Be Average explains how obsession saved my life and why it’s so important. I define obsession and what it means to me. Chapter 2 will erase the conventional wisdom that average and safe are all you can achieve and explain why you need to replace mediocrity and doubt with a burning, purposeful, animal obsession. Then in chapter 3 we’ll look at how you can identify your own obsession. I’ll walk you through some key exercises you can use to find out what you really want most in life.

The next chapters build on that foundation, guiding you through the tough process of beginning to follow your obsession. I’ll prove why it’s important to feed the beast of your obsession in chapter 4. In chapter 5 we’ll explore why you need to starve the doubt, block out naysayers, and embrace haters. Chapter 6 talks about all the ways you can learn to use your obsession to dominate—your past, your thinking, your money, your area of expertise, and your brand. And chapter 7 explains why playing it safe is the most dangerous thing you can do—and how to stay dangerous against great odds. These principles will guide you in your quest for success.

Then we’ll shift to practical business advice that will help you make your obsession real, not only to you but to everyone around you. In chapter 8 I’ll share my world-renowned sales knowledge to help you understand the importance of sales to realizing your obsession and how to become a monster marketer, promoter, and salesperson. Chapter 9 will focus on winning customers—and how you can overpromise and overdeliver. In chapter 10 we’ll turn to the people you work with, especially employees, and I’ll show you how to build a culture around you that is totally aligned with your obsession. We’ll close out chapter 11 with advice on how to be a real leader—or in my words, how and why you must be a control freak. These are all the practices you will need in order to not just maintain but grow your obsession into a thriving, lucrative, and powerful business that can maybe even create an entirely new industry or disrupt an existing one.

The last two chapters of the book talk about how to sustain your obsession over time. In chapter 12 we look at the power of persistence as your obsession matures and morphs into something beyond what you can imagine today. And before I let you go to change the world, in chapter 13 I will share final tips and techniques on getting, being, and staying obsessed.

We’ve all read the generic books that tell you to follow your dreams. But while those books might offer inspiration, they don’t tell you how to really make a permanent change in your life. This book will be brutally honest. It will tear down the cocoon of average that has been spun so tightly around you by society. It will help you unleash the power of obsession and then teach you how to take care of and direct your obsession to achieve your most powerful dreams.

Whether you are an entrepreneur, business owner, trailblazer, freethinker, artist, athlete, inventor, salesperson, creative, or engineer, I know you are someone who strives for success and refuses to settle. This book will encourage and fuel that can’t-quit, won’t-quit, accelerator-to-the-floor monster ambition inside you.

I will help you establish your brand and business and show you how to grow it to staggering heights despite all obstacles and competition. This is because obsession is the critical component of success—senior to strategy, pricing, timing, competition, or people; it offers the method for living in true freedom and total control of your life—personally, financially, and emotionally.

When you become unapologetically obsessed, as I am, you’ll be at your very best: hyperfocused, persistent beyond understanding, creative to the point of appearing magical, and with an insatiable determination to win that not only attracts great talent but also brings out the best in others. This level of obsession doesn’t mean you are selfish and self-centered; it means that you’re finally operating at the levels you were always meant to and that you can pull others around you up to their full potential and possibilities.

The obsessed are the industry builders, disrupters, titans, game changers, and living legends others admire and wish to emulate. The obsessed don’t just make the world go around. They make the world worth living in.

It’s my goal that this book will influence you and millions of others around the world to create a new movement. A movement where we give one another permission to embrace and fuel our obsessions.

Imagine if every person on earth threw themselves fully and completely into their positive obsessions without reservation, regret, or apology. Overnight the world would be a different and better place. With everyone so focused on their own production and creating their own success, there would be no time for war, drugs, or other wasteful, unnecessary destruction. We’d all hit levels of success previously thought impossible—and inspire one another to do more and be more.

If you’re all in, ready to take responsibility for your life and your business, ready to change your own future and the world, then turn the page.

CHAPTER 1

OBSESSION SAVED MY LIFE—AND IT WILL SAVE YOURS

For you to understand how I became successful and learned about the amazing power of obsession, I first need to show you how denying my obsession almost ruined my life.

It’s not a pretty story but it is my real one. And I wouldn’t be surprised if you found some parallels to your own life in mine.

THE ROOTS OF MY OBSESSION

I didn’t have a father who could lead me to the land of the rich, lend me a million dollars for my first real estate deal, assist with political connections through introductions at country clubs, or show me the ways of business.

My parents were the children of Italian immigrants who came to America in the early 1900s. Dad was the first in his family to attend college. He was an ambitious young man with an entrepreneurial spirit who believed the American dream was within reach, starting with a little grocery store he and my mother operated.

Dad was obsessed with success because he believed that taking care of his family was his first duty. From a very early age I got that my dad’s number one mission in life was to provide for his family: putting a roof over our heads and making sure we had food, clothes, and an education.

A few years before I was born, Dad took on an ambitious plan to start his own life insurance company with a couple of partners. I don’t know all the details of what happened with the life insurance company, but his partners ousted him and he wound up in a tough situation. At forty-two years of age, my dad found himself out of work with three kids to support and twins on the way (me and my twin brother, Gary). He had to start over. He decided to use the little bit of money he had in savings to become licensed as a stockbroker, embarking on yet another new career.

Thanks to his work ethic and obsession with providing for his family, his new venture started to pay off. He bought a new car that he was very proud of, a Lincoln Town Car. Just after my eighth birthday, we moved to a new home on a sprawling one-and-a-half-acre lakefront property. We owned a boat for fishing and water-skiing and a riding lawnmower. Doctors, who at that time were the most successful people in the community, lived on both sides of us. My dad’s hard work and success at the stock-brokerage firm had gotten our family firmly into the middle class. I often overheard my mom and dad talking about how we had made it. Even as a young kid I knew something special had happened.

The next two years with my family at that lakefront home were an amazing part of my childhood . . . but it didn’t last long. Only a year and a half after my dad bought his dream house, he died of a heart condition at the young age of fifty-two.

My mother found herself a widow at forty-eight years old with five kids, a little bit of life insurance money, and a big house in the country that required constant attention. My mother had no professional skills she could use in the marketplace to bring in new income. She had dedicated her life to being a wife and mother. And now she needed to figure out how to conserve the money my dad had left and stretch it long and far to get all five kids through college.

This was a big challenge, as my mother had no college education and did not have income earning potential. She had grown up in the Great Depression and didn’t want to see her family have to struggle the way people had then. So my mom became obsessed, if you will, with making sure the little bit of money my dad had left us would be enough to get by.

She saw everything as a future expense and a threat and quickly began to downsize. She immediately put my father’s dream house on the market. We were forced to move into the city, to a tiny brick house on a tiny lot, surrounded by houses that all looked exactly the same. The lake was gone; no more boating, fishing, crabbing, and hunting just outside our door. I was crushed.

In our new house there was grief—we all missed my father. On top of that, though, my mom was scared, and I could feel it. There was constant fear around her. While other boys my age were out with their dads playing sports, hunting, and fishing, I was at home watching my mother clip coupons, always worried about the cost of basic necessities and so on. My mom could make pennies bleed. Her scarcity mind-set was part of everything we did.

At the same time, Mom was constantly reminding me of how very, very lucky and grateful I should be for all that we did have. She would claim, Your father got us into the middle class—we have more than most. I would hear this over and over. Never take any of this for granted.

I tried being grateful for and appreciative of all that we had, but it never sat right with me. The whole thing seemed so screwed up to me. I was ten years old, my dad was dead, the dream house was gone, mom was living in fear, and I was supposed to be grateful? I wasn’t grateful—I was pissed!

I didn’t know it then, but this time seeded what would later drive me in life. As much as I loved, admired, and appreciated my mom for what she did for me in making sure we had clothes, food, and a roof over our head, I didn’t want to live my life in a constant state of worry. At the age of sixteen I vowed to my mother, When I grow up, I’m going to get rich so I never have to worry about not having enough money. And when I do, I am going to help a lot of people. This middle-class thing sucks. I am going to get mine!

As soon as I said it, I knew I sounded like a spoiled, ungrateful, disrespectful, rebellious, snot-nosed, punk teenager. My mother had that look on her face that every parent gets when a kid crosses the line. She was furious, disappointed, and frustrated. Still, I felt an overwhelming sense of powerlessness, knowing I couldn’t do anything about anything at the time.

My flare-ups became more and more common. And the more I had them, the more I knew I was both wrong and right. I knew I should be grateful—so many other people had less than us. But I also knew there was truth in what I was thinking. Why should anyone have only enough money to get by—and still need to worry about money? When things would cool down, I would try to explain to my mother that it wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate everything she did for us or that I wasn’t grateful for everything we had. The reality is I would continue to have this push/pull, right/wrong argument about scarcity and money with myself and others for years to come.

Anytime I had a blowup, my mom (and later my girlfriends and friends) would always say the same thing: But we have it so much better than others. I never understood that response. First off, what do others have to do with my life? Second, anytime I compared myself with others who had more—people who were really living the life—my mom, girlfriends, and friends would come back with Don’t compare yourself to others. There was no winning.

I would tell myself over and over, One day I am going to make it big. But I quit telling my mom this because every time I did, she would reach down, hug me, and say, Why can’t you just be grateful for what we have? And then she would start telling me again how