So, when we're thinking about 10X, when we're thinking about taking our company to the next
level, I've been on this relentless pursuit to learn how to co-create with the Lord.
You know, it became very clear to me that Jesus is the key. You know, when you look
through the whole mechanism, you realize very quickly that, you know, when Jesus, He taught
us in a very specific way, you know, that He wants to be our yoke partner. And so you
have yoke permission that comes from your yoke partner and you have yoke learning. And
the reason I'm hyphenating all those words is because I want us to see, you know, that
there is something very special in the way that we partner with the Lord. You know, we
may, you know, I think last month we gave you a table of, you know, what all the different
partnerships with, you know, what all the different routines, kingdom routines are
like. And so this week, you know, this week we want to talk briefly around the routines,
the routine I'm just simply called lightness. It's interesting that as we've studied last
year, Matthew 11, that that verse in 28 that says, come to me all your weary and heavy
laden, those who are pulling a heavy load. And then at the end of it, it says, because
my burden is easy, my yoke is easy, my burden is light. So how did we go from a heavy burden
to a light burden in two verses? What transpires for you to go from heavy burden to light burden?
Well, what the difference is, Jesus got inserted, you know, and when Jesus gets inserted, he's
saying, hey, this, you say, well, it's so hard to to learn how to partner with the Lord.
And Jesus said, no, no, no, no. My yoke is easy. My partnering with me is the most logical
and the easiest thing you can possibly do. Isn't that an amazing idea? Just think of
just think how we right there blew through every religious excuse about why you can't,
you know, because God never tells us what we cannot do. He only ever tells us who we're
becoming and what we can do. And he makes it easy. He initiated something. Imagine if
you initiated some fun thing with your kids, but then you made it so hard they couldn't play.
Why would you do that? You're a horrible parent or you're just clumsy or something.
He's neither of those. And and so this idea that what so the so here's the prompt.
Right. We said every executive kingdom habit has four components as a prompt, has permission,
has practice, has and it's about a person. We know what person might be coming.
So what's the prompt when I feel my burden is heavy, when I feel stuck,
when I feel I've hit a capacity in my business, what's my permission? Matthew 11, 28.
You know, come to me and with your burden, with your being heavy laden, I will give you rest.
So rest is the key that activates my yoke with the Lord and sets me up to learn from him directly.
He's gentle. He's humble. And I find rest for my inner being.
We talked a lot about rest at at the School of Leadership yesterday.
And we're talking about that because God is at rest in you. He invites you to be at rest.
So what does rest mean? It means you're not doing your own sweat.
This is not my own self-effort, my own self-reliance, my own.
It's all up to me. That's what rest is. So what are we going to do?
What's the practice when we feel that? Well, we reset to rest.
And so great question to ask. Jesus, how does our partnership work in this situation?
That's a great question to ask the Lord about your business.
Jesus, how does our partnership work in my business right now in this situation?
Some of you in like a rebooting mode.
Some of you are trying to launch your business and take it where it needs to go.
And then what do you want to teach me that would make this burden feel light?
I love that question. Lord Jesus, what do you want to teach me that will make this burden feel light?
Because we know that rest activates our yoke. It sets us in right position.
It's very difficult for us to be in partnership with the Lord when we're stressed out of our minds.
It's very difficult to hear him. It's very difficult to even see what he's doing.
Because we're just our brains are just in a in a very, you know, non receiving state.
And so what is beautiful in this particular case is what's happening.
happening is God wants us to reframe this. Whenever things look hard, one of the things
we love to say at Brilliant is, what if you reframe it? What if you work backwards or
turn the thing upside down? This seems impossible. What if it isn't? Well, we'll never get to
10x. What if we can? That simple question of what if, because what it does is you're
introducing the God of possibility. Jesus introduced his Father as the Father of possibility.
With God, all things are possible. He didn't say all things are certain, all things are
quick, because you have to be involved. It takes your will to be part of it. So in that
sense, it's such a great question. What if this 10x-ing thing can actually be easy? Well,
we're finding out more and more, especially from some of the latest business materials,
from the latest cognitive sciences that we're learning, that when you try to 10x something,
it turns out to be a lot easier than 2x. Think of it this way. Let's say last year it took
you 100 transactions to do what you did. And I say, I want you to 2x it. Most of us are
immediately depressed, because what? I did 200. Do you know how much work it was to do
100 transactions? You want me to do 200 transactions? Are you out of your mind? You know, it's just
why? Because and I love that the way Dan Sullivan puts it, he says, because when you 2x something,
you go to your past, you consult your past. What have I done before? And how can that
extend into my future for a 2x? When I talk to you about 10x, there's no past reference
to that. So you just jump the curve. And now you're in creative mode. Now you're inspired.
So let me ask you, think of your revenue of last year. What if you 10x that this year?
So you can't do the same thing you did last year, right? You need to do different things.
So here's what happens. We look at those 100 transactions. And then I might ask you,
was most of the money in some of the transactions? Like, did you find out that five of those
transactions produced 30% of the business? And the other 95% produced the other 70%?
Was there a disproportionate effort? Did you do something specific last year? Think about
that. What did you do last year that specifically produced a disproportionate revenue? Because
I bet you that of your 100 transactions, they didn't each contribute 1%. No way. In
fact, there were a handful of them that produced a whole lot more. Well, why don't you identify
those and take it from that point?
So here's the interesting thing. When we start thinking 10x, we step into possibility. We
step into kingdom. Now let's add the kingdom part of this. Most CEOs learn that when we
overthink things, when we overanalyze it, we lock ourselves into a complex mental state.
We're trying too hard. Trying harder is not the way to grow a business. At all. We overthink
it. We overengineer it. We try too hard. As a result, many times we have victory snatched
right out of our hands just as we're trying to get it going. It's because what we're doing
is we're trying to take 1x and make it 2x. It seems like a logical thing to do, but it
isn't. One, you're not wired that way. I loved what the CEO of LinkedIn said. He said, I've
come to learn that part of the business strategy is to solve the simplest, easiest and most
valuable problem. And actually, in fact, part of doing strategy is to solve the easiest
problem. There's a problem that you solve that's actually quite easy for you.
So when a strategy is so complex, and when a business grows, complexity comes. I don't
know. We teach this stuff and we find ourselves in complexity all the time. Because with growth
comes complexity. And we know that complexity is the enemy of clarity. And if we don't have
clarity, we don't have simplicity and then we don't have speed. We're trying to get to
simplicity to drive speed. So how do we make this? What is the simplest way to achieve
be fun? What if you can actually like doing it? Well here is the secret to the answering that
question. It will only be fun if it's got a 10x element. Now I'm picking randomly 10x but you know
Jesus has a completely different method right? Hey you you're responsible for for 10 talents
I'll give you 10 cities. That's a heck of a lot more than 10x. How much is a talent right?
A few thousand dollars. How did you go from a few thousand dollars to running a city?
Which I assume is hundreds of millions of dollars. So God doesn't even think in 10x
he thinks in million x. So okay let's step into his world with baby step number one called 10x.
Baby step number one. So why don't we do this?
We don't do this because we don't see ourselves this way. So to help us do this I've created a
four-step co-creation process for kingdom CEOs based on Matthew 11 and I've come up with a
simple acronym called RISE. R-I-S-E and here are the pieces of it. Firstly
R stands for recognize the possibility. You know here's what God does. I've asked the Lord
to explain this to me. How do you present us with possibility? And the way that the Lord has been
teaching me this is that every time you find yourself in a situation the first thing I had
to change was God isn't measuring how many months or how many years I've been in business. He's not
measuring that. He's only measuring movement. You move from this to this. You move from
you know 10,000 a month to 100,000. You move from 100,000 to a million. You move from a million.
He's only measuring our movement, our growth. He's not measuring time. It doesn't matter to him if
it takes 10 years to make that movement or 10 minutes. It literally doesn't matter to him and
the reason it doesn't matter is because the possibility existed the first day you saw it.
So why didn't it go faster? I want to answer that question. Here's the first thing I said well Lord
why do possibilities matter and he said because of beauty. So what happens we get in a situation
may even look negative to us right so our downstairs mind our old nature will look at and
say oh this is problematic and this is stressful and this is hard and this is difficult but your new
nature in Christ sees it completely differently. So it's like hey Lord attached to this moment
you've already to this temporary problem you've already attached a beautiful eternal possibility.
What do I mean by eternal? It means that he's involved. He's in it with you. That means that
he's himself binding and committing himself. That's why we say promises are the currency of
heaven. Promises are the currency of the kingdom because God gives you a promise to fulfill a
possibility. What happens with that possibility is we have to see okay that means Lord you're
inviting me into this new space so it looks beautiful to you and desire is born in you.
If you were at the church gathering on Monday night we've got into this quite a bit.
So the idea of this is you're in your present business structure. What's the possibility
the Father's talking to you about right now? Now the reason why that isn't an easy conversation
is because most of us start with what we think is possible. What we want the possibility to be.
I didn't say that. I said his possibility. With God all things are possible. He didn't just say
all things are possible if you can see they possible. This wasn't some new age Jedi mind
trick. This was the Lord saying I'm involved. I bring all the reasons of heaven. Do you know
what's possible for the Lord right now in your situation? So thing number one is to get his
brilliant perspective on what he calls a beautiful possibility for you. Let's take a second there.
Does that make sense to you? Father what is your beautiful possibility for me? You don't have to
ask him for this year because he doesn't mind if it takes you a year or 10 years. He wants you to
go up level. What the 10x thing does is it stretches us out of our past and drives us into
our future because there's no record of us jumping. We've never done this 10x before.
You know what the difference between confidence and courage is?
Confidence feels good.
Courage doesn't.
Courage is doing it without feeling good.
Now, in the Kingdom, we get to take bold action because we have His permission.
So, let's go through this step-by-step.
Firstly, Lord, what is the possibility?
And then, here's what I've found all the time.
I say to the Lord,
Oh, we can do this over five years.
And the Lord said, I don't mind if it's five minutes or five years.
That will happen.
Let's not worry about the outcome.
Let's not focus on outcome.
Let's focus on who you're becoming or who your team needs to become to pull off that possibility.
Okay, well, that leaves us to the eye of rise.
You have to inherit the gift.
So, Father, I need a 10X gift
because we know in the Kingdom everything starts with a gift.
So, Father, I need a 10X gift.
What 10X gift are you giving me right now?
In other words, God is going to upgrade your identity.
You know, you're focusing on operating from that new identity rather than striving on who you were last year.
So, good news is, the person you were last year died and every morning you start fresh in Jesus.
How cool is that?
Why is this important?
Because identity sets the boundaries of reality.
Or simply put, identity creates reality.
A 2X person will not create a 10X reality.
This is the number one mistake I see prophetic people make.
They get a word from the Lord.
It's a big word and they go passive.
I'll just wait.
Well, he does because it's not up to me anymore.
He's going to do it all.
No, it's called co-creating.
But if you don't buy into the 10X thing, you will not take downstairs 10X actions that are as big as the possibility.
What do we do?
We say, oh, the Lord gave me this big word.
Right?
Hey, we've all done this.
It has a horrible theological name.
It's called believerism.
It's a horrible thing and we all do it.
We've all done it at some point.
What happens is when something didn't work, we try to believe God for even more.
If you found yourself doing that, stop that.
Put that all aside.
Start again.
Say, Lord, what right one thing, what gift are you giving me right now so that my new identity.
And then you step into that identity.
Remember, we're not practicing stuff in the kingdom to become someone.
We're practicing something in the kingdom because we are someone.
You are a new creation in Christ.
All things are possible.
So you're stepping into that person and say, okay, Lord, what person do I have to be to receive this 10X?
So let's just make it simple and say the Lord says, yep, last year you did half a million dollars.
This year I want you to do five million.
And as I said, I made up the this year part.
And the reason is because he doesn't measure time in that way.
He only measures movement.
So that's the kindness of God to us, right?
If it takes three years, okay.
He's fine with that.
But, hey, wouldn't it be cool in three years' time if you had five million, even if you were half a million last year?
Wouldn't that be amazing?
Wouldn't it be amazing if it took 10 years?
It would still be amazing.
Wouldn't it be really amazing if you did it in six months?
So what's the difference?
And that leaves us to S of rise.
You have to step into the permission.
We have to, and I like the Lord when he gives me a big, bold promise.
I know that his promises is his word of honor to us.
He's saying to you, this is my word of honor to you.
And the Lord binds himself to that promise in you.
So I like to ask the Lord, what's my permission right now?
Now, this has an interesting regulation effect.
It regulates the actions you take.
Because I want to operate within the permission and the authority of my yoke in Christ.
I want to be, you know, I want my yoke permission.
I don't want permission I'm giving myself.
I want permission because I found my permission I'm giving myself is either way overstated or way understated.
I don't seem to nail that down.
The reason is I'm overreacting in a kind of a believerism way.
I'm underreacting is not having enough faith and trust way.
So simple way we can set that all aside, make it relational.
Remember when you're struggling with the stuff, just make it relational.
What would you tell your church?
child do the same thing. So here's what I'm asking the Lord. What's my permission right
now? And the Lord will say, I want you to write the plan or I want you to call Sun Tzu
or go and meet Sun Tzu. Get on a plane, go somewhere and go meet them and I will make
a way for you to do that. And it's really interesting. Sometimes the Lord will say,
I want you to write up, let's say, the Lord will say, do your four square analysis. Dollars
versus effort. Remember the four squares? And we know high effort, low dollars is quadrant
four. We identify quadrant four first, then we identify quadrant one. Quadrant four,
what is low dollars and high effort? Get rid of that business today. Okay, well show some
grace. Tomorrow, end of business. Get out of that business. Why? It's fighting you and
keeping you in 2X. It's locking you into 2X is what it's doing. See quadrant four isn't
just because it isn't profitable, it's because it makes you a 2X person and keeps you in
a 2X level. I never saw this before until the Lord showed me this. There are things
we do that keep us in 2X mindset, in a 2X identity. But if I'm looking for 10X, now
I'm looking at quadrant one. What was lower effort that scales but high dollars? And so
I have a conversation with the Lord. I said, Lord, are any of these products the ones you
want us to do? And the Lord said, no, I'm giving you a new product. Maybe that's the
answer. Or, no, that product I gave you, I know you've got it as a three right now. It
can easily be a one if you attach this. So now we're in this co-creating mode with Him.
We're co-creating products. Who will we present this to? Who's this for? What's the avatar
of the person who's going to use this? You can see how very relational co-creating is.
It's not God tells you, you go do it. I think by now we're past all that at this group.
We're past doing things for God. The most cursed thing ever done to believers. Because
we're always on our own and we're always falling short. And then we've got this notion that
there's this magic pathway. Because in your brain, if you're doing things for God, you
think you're on this perfect pathway and His perfect plan. And if you step out of the plan,
you step off the yellow brick road, well, you're an idiot. Or, which we'll never say,
God's plan sucks. But we don't say the last part. We just might feel it. So there's no
fancy yellow brick road with perfect pathway. We have to get up in the morning, turn left,
not right, go to this or that milk, buy that thing and eat that cereal. There's no such
life in Jesus. I don't know where this all comes from, but it doesn't exist. What does
exist is for freedom. Christ sets you free. Everything in His partnership is to make you
free. That's what it's about. Then when you're free, He wants to co-create and invite you.
Take my yoke. He didn't say, I'm forcing my yoke. You have to take my yoke. He invites
you and says, hey, I'll exchange all that stress stuff for rest. So you and I, I will
teach you. Learn from me. And don't worry, I'll be gentle. I'll be humble. You won't
feel small doing it. You'll feel big doing it. This is a very different mindset when
you go with, as opposed to the perfect pathway thing, which we got sold theologically, what
if we step into adventure with God? What if it's about story and journey and developing
a story and a journey with the Lord that can take twists and turns? Because He makes all
things. He is so confident in Himself that even if you're making wrong decisions and
even if people sue you or whatever, all their free will is exerted in your world. God can
navigate through all that complexity and He's so confident in Himself He says, I love
this, all things work together for the good of them that love God and called according
to His purpose. I got you. God's plans don't change, but the route getting there might
based on people's will. Well, I stepped off the magic pathway. Well, there isn't a magic
pathway, so there is no yellow brick road. The whole thing's a sham. Forget that. That
isn't how He is. He doesn't want to be with us in a robotic sense where at best you can
call that being a great servant. And Jesus said, yeah, but that's not you. I no longer
call you servants. I call you friends. Why? Because the servant doesn't know what his
master's doing. If you feel like you don't know what the Lord is doing, guess what? Guess
what mode you're in? Okay, abandon the servant mode. God, tell me what to do. I just want
to be an obedient servant. No, no, the Lord says, I want a friend. I want a yoke partner.
I want to co-create with you. Let's go and do this together.
So Lord, what is your dream then?
And this shocking analysis hit me when I realized God needs me to actualize His dreams in my life.
He doesn't need me overall. His purposes are regardless of me. This is true.
But in my life, in my call, in my purpose, He needs me to act like a friend and be a yoke partner.
And this is such a glorious life, so upgraded away from the doing things for God stuff as a servant.
So, what if this year in your business you experience God in that way, in a 10x way?
And that leads me to E.
Okay, so S was step into permission, E was execute bold action.
So, ask the Lord, so Father what bold action do you want me to take to co-create with you?
Now here's the most amazing thing that no unbeliever has, that this is your kingdom advantage.
Not only do you now have the Father's permission, you have Jesus tied in yoke with you.
The Father's gone before you and prepared every good way for you to walk in.
And then the Holy Spirit's got nine power gifts He's like throwing in there.
We need a miracle, we need healings, we need a word of knowledge, we need a word of wisdom.
He's like in there just loading you up for this experience.
So, now what happens is when I have this permission, I have high expectation because I'm stepping out and expecting God to show me His favor.
Right? I'm expecting His favor to go before me and make a way for me.
I know I have your favor because I'm in Christ, so I don't earn the favor, Jesus is in there for me.
So, I'm just going to let your favor go ahead of me in this.
And I'm going to let my expectations rise.
Well, be careful if you raise your expectations too high because you might get disappointed.
I'd like to shoot that theory in the head.
That is the most worldly bit of tripe I've ever heard.
Like God would do that.
Like you could expect Him to be kinder than He actually is.
That you would expect Him to show you more goodness.
I don't even know where the theological frame, that is such a hellish idea.
And I say that because I'm amazed how many pastors say that.
I don't want to tell people that because then they raise their expectation.
What if it doesn't work?
I don't know.
So, I want to say this.
In this process, be careful of one trap that I've learned.
Don't focus on outcomes, focus on the partnership.
Focus on how you're doing it together.
Because in my view of 35, 36 years of building businesses,
I can tell you it's never worked out on the time scales the way I thought.
In fact, pretty much nothing.
So, I can pretty much tell you that if there is a magical way
in which you know six months or a year in advance, then it works out like that.
If anything, it goes way better than I have imagined.
Or the thing died.
Or it took a different turn.
Or we changed to something else.
There was some learning involved.
And even if it was my own mess or my own stupidity or my own ignorance,
God said, no worries, no worries, I got this.
I'm so confident.
I'm going to make this promise available.
I'm going to work all things together for your good.
Still.
It's okay.
That's why it's called redemption.
God isn't interested in restoring.
You know, Robin and I were talking yesterday about his business.
And I said, you know, it's easy to want to restore back to.
If you've been at a previous high and you're lower than that now,
then you want to get back to.
Yeah, don't do that.
There is no back.
And Robin, I'm so appreciative that you brought that up
right in the beginning of the call.
There is no going back.
Because that's a 2X idea.
That's a historic thing.
And here's the thing, when God redeems you,
he puts you back to where you would have been had you not been interrupted.
You arrive at 5 p.m. with all the workers and you still get full pay.
Because he's that kind.
That's the difference between restoration and redemption.
Restoration is restoring what was.
Redemption is restoring what it ought to have been all along.
That was in his heart.
That's a much higher thing.
So the redeemer is with you.
Some of you right now need to partner with the redeemer.
Some of you need to partner with the healer.
You got hurt in this process.
Especially if lawsuits are involved.
Some of you, because that's very offensive, lawsuits.
Some of you got betrayed.
And so you need to know God is the faith.
Some of you need him just to be your anchor because the future is so uncertain right now for you.
Whatever the partnership is, make it 10x. So maybe it's not 10x in dollars, maybe it's 10x in your confidence in him.
Maybe it's 10x in the quality of the friends he starts to surround you with.
Because what I've learned is we all, in the world, Dan Sullivan put it this way, I thought this was genius.
He said, most people do not believe they can have an impact on the world.
In other words, they're 2x people. Very few people believe they can actually make a difference.
So guess what? The 2x spot has a lot of competition. There's a lot of people fighting for that space.
If you go for the 10x spot, that's open territory. Very few people are chasing to be there.
So I hope today, I hope you're inspired to do the rise. To rise with the Lord to the new level.
To recognize the possibility. Inherit the gift, a 10x gift that's of that level.
Step into 10x permission and take 10x bold action.
You can't have a 10x promise upstairs and a 2x execution downstairs. That's called a triangle.
You've got to make it a square.
You've got to match the boldness of your actions with the bigness of your promise.
Your end of the reading.