1078: How to Stop Playing Small and Achieve Your Greatest Goals with Richard Medcalf

Pete Mockaitis
Richard, welcome back!

Richard Medcalf
Hey, Pete, it’s good to see you again.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s funny, the last time I saw your face it was on LinkedIn, and you were hanging out with Richard Branson at his island, and I was like, “Whoa, these strategic initiatives Richard has been talking about seem to have paid off for him.” Can you tell us a bit of the story there?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, and actually what I’d like to say is, it’s true, but I like to say it, which is that Richard Branson, actually, was the first person to officially ask me for a copy of my new book, which I think is quite a nice story to get. Yeah, I’ll tell you how that happened. I was realizing, I was thinking, “You know what, I need to be doing a bit more speaking.”

So, I pinged a few people that I knew, including one person who’d been on my own podcast, The Impact Multiplier CEO, and I pinged him. I hadn’t spoken to him for a couple of years. He’s a CEO, runs a really interesting business in the US, a very successful guy. And I said, “Hey, just wondering, if you know any events? Are you part of a CEO forum, a YPO group, some kind of group that I might be able to speak at because I think I’ve got an important message?”

And he said, “Oh, I can’t believe I didn’t think about you. I read all your newsletters, I think they’re amazing. I’m a big fan. I’m doing this event at Necker Island. You should come and speak there.” Necker Island, obviously, being Richard Branson’s Caribbean hideaway. So, first of all, I must admit, I feel, “Yeah, he’s just kind of, like, he’s just being nice. I bet you he hasn’t looked at any of my emails.” And I went back and looked at my email software and, sure enough, he’d been religiously opening.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, you see, “Open. Open. Click. Click.”

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, well, not all of them, which is good, because it wasn’t just an automatic thing, but I can see that he was actually, yeah, very regular. Yeah, so he was running an event for 50 entrepreneurs and business leaders on Necker Island. So, I thought, “Hey, that’s like a bucket list opportunity, right, to go and do that.”

So, yeah, so that’s what happened.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s phenomenal. Well, I would say, here you are, really, you are taking time for those strategic initiatives. You’re walking the talk. And I remember you said, and it’s really stuck with me. “Our high-impact strategic initiatives are usually the things that no one is asking from us.” It’s, like, it requires that proactivity, and your story just illustrated it.

You proactively requested referrals, which can be uncomfortable for some people, you know, open yourself up there. And then that person was not exercising proactivity, it’s like, “Oh, I should have thought of you.” And the same thing happens to me when people ask for referrals. It’s like, “Okay, of course. Yes, Justin did an amazing job with my mortgage. Oh, he would like referrals? Of course, he would. We all do.”

But it does not occur to me to, actually, engage my brain and connect him to opportunities until he actually asked. And so, that’s often how it goes. And if you do so, you might end up hanging with Richard Branson.

Richard Medcalf
And, yeah, what you were saying was in my other book, Making Time for Strategy. I have this phrase, “The most important project is the one that nobody is asking you for.” Exactly your point, because it’s generally the thing that we have to generate because it’s not in the current horizon. Everyone’s asking us for all the things that we’re currently doing, basically, and yet the most important project is going to be a capability that only we can see.

And I’d actually go even further now, which is that there’s the most important projects, but there’s also the most important shift in ourselves, is also something that nobody else is asking from us. So, The 10X Reckoning in many ways, which is the name of the book, but it’s really about the personal reinvention that has to go along with going for the next-level goals, going for the thing that scares us, going for the thing that would really make a difference.

So, I’ll give you an example. It’s a minor one, but going back to Necker Island, because we were talking about that. So, there was a moment when… so Richard Branson was kind of circulating a little bit in the group. He wasn’t there all the time, right? He had other things to do.

And after a couple of days, I was like, “You know what, I’m never going to speak to this guy. You know, he kind of comes in and people kind of go over and talk to him. I’m not going to queue up, you know. I don’t want to be that guy.” And my Britishness was coming in, and I kind of thought, “Okay, fine. It’s going to be a lot of great people in this room. That’s fine. I don’t need to get a selfie with Richard Branson or whatever.”

And then, of course, there was a moment when we were having lunch on the beach and he was around and it was like, “Okay, I can go and sit down.” I’m being told to sit down, “But if I sit down now, I’m not going to get to talk to Branson because he’s not ready to sit down and all the rest of it.” So, long story short, but I kind of, I went up to the bathroom, I got my phone out and I did a few things.

And, therefore, in the moment, when he was then ready to come and sit down at the table, I was like, “Great, let’s go.” And I walked around and sat myself right opposite him and we had a great chat. I actually pushed him, asked him some little provocative questions, and I shared some common stories. My father is a hot air ballooning fanatic, so I’ve gone across the English Channel from the UK to France on a hot air balloon.

So, I know he’s gone around the world on a hot air balloon, but, you know, still, made a build a bit of rapport and talks of some stories. And then, at the end, I managed to get the, again, I get a photo with him, which, again, all those things were quite edgy for me because I don’t want to be that guy, the guy who’s edging his way onto the photo or be getting in line or whatever.

Pete Mockaitis
And inconveniencing other people.

Richard Medcalf
Exactly. And it feels like that. And, yet, it’s like, “You know what, if I don’t dare make the ask, who knows what would happen?” And often, our next level is making an ask that feels a bit uncomfortable, right, pushing on a door that feels a bit uncomfortable.

As you said, asking for that referral, getting the selfie, whatever it is, those are the things which do open up new doors because we’re having a conversation now because I got the selfie, well, you know, because I got the photo with him. So, one thing leads to another.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it got my attention and it got the LinkedIn algorithm’s attention, so, yeah, here we are again, and I’m delighted to be chatting again. So, okay, so The 10X Reckoning is the book, and you sort of shared a smidge of the big idea here, in terms of our own transformation. How would you articulate, what is this reckoning and used for?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, right. So, I guess the first context is, my main role in life, my main gig is not actually writing books. It’s working with high-level leaders, founders, chief executives, power players, people who are super ambitious, people who secretly want to, often, they want to change the world.

And there’s this part of them that knows they’re capable of another level. But there’s a problem. And the problem is pretty one of three things. The first is you’re stuck. You’re actually stuck in operations. I remember my first book, Making Time for Strategy, that was really talking about that topic. So many people in many levels in an organization realize they can’t get to the next level because they’re just so busy managing the existing responsibilities that they have.

And even at the very top levels of organizations, people are just completely maxed out very often. So, they’re stuck in operations. So, how can you 10X when 1X is already taking everything you’ve got? That’s the first kind of problem. Second problem is when you start to realize you’re playing safe. So, playing safe is, “You know what, life is good. Life is comfortable. And I can just keep doing this.”

So, it’s actually, certainly, starting to play safe because you say, “I know there could be another level, but, ah, could that be too much sacrifice? Is that going to risk my family, my health, my relationships? I don’t want to sacrifice what I had to do in the past because I don’t need to anymore. I don’t need to do this.”

So, there’s a fear that if we go for it, it’s going to just cost too much, be too much risk, too much reinvention. And so, people often go, “Ah, you know, perhaps I should just dabble for a bit or just take on a few interesting side projects. Just keep going as I’m going but not really go for the thing that would actually excite me.” That’s what I call playing safe.

And then the third one is when, actually, people do have a big inspiring vision, but they’re just going slow on it. Their team is not delivering at the pace, the momentum, the ownership that they need to really make it happen. I’m talking to somebody today, an amazing young entrepreneur, but who’s achieved a lot, and actually does have a world-changing mission that he’s on.

And yet, he said to me, “We’re just not tracking right now on it. And, yeah, I dug in a little bit.” He’s being a bit nice. He’s tolerating a few things in his team. He’s not necessarily giving them the full expansiveness of his vision, etc., we can go into the details. But he realized that he was not necessarily leading at the level he needed if he was going to galvanize people around his big vision, and so, that’s going slow.

So, The 10X Reckoning is really this moment when you have this choice, “Am I going to settle for being stuck or just playing safe or going slow? Or am I going to do the reinvention that I need to actually ignite my life’s greatest work and go for that?” I call it a 10X goal. It doesn’t have to be about the money. It doesn’t have to be a financial goal, but it’s about, “Am I going to go for the quantum leap, fulfill my potential, really do the thing I want to do? Or am I going to settle and kind of fade away?” And that’s the 10X reckoning.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, you’re in such an interesting position when you talk to so many high-achieving individuals to be able to identify this as a theme or pattern. Because, often, high-achieving individuals will not share some of these deep-down desires with others because they’re likely to get, “Oh, come on, you’ve got it all. You’ve done it. You’re in a great spot. Stop complaining. Be grateful.” People might say that or they just fear that others would say that.

And so, could you perhaps give us a story that illustrates this phenomenon in terms of someone who has achieved a lot, but they’re in that plateau, and then the transformation, the stuff they did to do that 10x reckoning?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, I can. So, a client I was working with, I still work with, who, actually, when I started working, he was actually an employee in his business and was actually the head of a business unit, and basically founded this whole business unit. It’s like a digital brand within a larger company.

And he grew this business from zero by himself, built the team out, created it into a seven- or eight-figure business. And we were working together on scaling this business, growing it out with his role as managing director in this company. But I could tell he was frustrated.

He was frustrated that the company, the shareholders were not ready to invest in his tech business because they had the cash cow business. They didn’t want to, like, spend money on investing in this high-growth potential tech business. And so, he felt he couldn’t really play the game the business was designed to play.

And what I really said to him was, “Look, you can’t stay in this situation. You can’t stay just being frustrated because you haven’t got the decision-making or the decision. So, I think you’re either going to have to leave this business or you’re have to buy this business, or something, because right now, it’s not working for you.”

It was a hard process for him because he had to kind of, first of all, have a think about, “What is my identity? Am I an employee? Am I a business owner?” He had a young family. He was not financially kind of independent, so he had a mortgage to pay.

And so, it took a while, it probably took, I’m going to say three- to six-month journey for him really to kind of get to the place as we worked together, for him to go, “You know what, I am actually an entrepreneur. My identity is a business owner. And I am not just a managing director, I’m a CEO and I’m a builder and actually I need to make this thing happen. Because if I don’t make this thing happen, I’m always going to regret it and wonder what could have been if I don’t do it.”

And so, he ended up going to his boss, basically, or his bosses and then their shareholders, put a deal on the table to buy out the business. And I said, as soon as he made the decision, to buy that business, even if the deal fell through, even if they didn’t want to sell, he’d already won. He’d already won the game because he’d become the kind of person that would put a deal on the table to buy out the business.

And, of course, to do that, he also had to build new relationships with investors. He had to get an entrepreneur co-founder, potentially, or co-investor to work with him and help him navigate this new world. But the point was that, by the time he was actually ready to put a deal on the table, he’d become a new version of himself.

And, of course, the conviction and commitment that was suddenly was there because after prevaricating for a few months, he’d finally gone all in. He’d finally raised the game and he was like, “Okay, let’s do this. I’m buying this business.” He put the offer in. I tell you, we had conversations over about three to six months, and he was like, “Ah, the deal is off.”

The first time it was like, the guy just said, “I’m deleting this email,” and didn’t even read it. It was like, “Okay, this is not going to happen.” But he persisted, he went through other channels. Finally, there was a conversation. He was like, “No, no, we’re not selling the business.” He went again. Finally, it was like, “Well, we might sell the business, but not at this price.”

Went for it again, and finally, it’s going to be signed. And then he rang me up, “No, the deal is completely off. It’s all fallen through.” And then finally, “Actually, it all happened,” and he actually bought the business. And now he’s scaling it. And so, for me, it’s just an example because of what happened wasn’t just… it wasn’t just he needed a better strategy. He didn’t just need a better plan. He needed to become the kind of person who would do that.

And that’s like the 10X reckoning, but that’s the moment when you’re like, “Am I going to just play it safe, keep doing it?” He could have kept doing his current business. He’d still be managing director of a growing tech business with a good span of control. He could have stayed there, but he would have been impressed. But he just knew that for him that was settling and not going for it to see how far he could go. So, that’s just one example that comes to mind.

Pete Mockaitis
So, becoming the person, let’s zoom in to, “Why do we not become that person?” and “What is to be done in order to make the transformation?”

Richard Medcalf
There’s various answers to that and it depends on where we’re starting from. Actually, in the book, you’ll see there’s different chapters have just different starting points in terms of what’s the question you’re asking yourself.

So, “I’m successful. Am I done?” or, “Free me from this golden prison. I’m stuck in my golden prison,” or, “10X will be too much sacrifice,” or, “Do I have what it takes?” or, “Is this vision just too big?” or, “Perhaps it’s, am I the only one who cares?” There are some others, but my point is all these are slightly different thoughts that we have that make it feel hard for us to really go for that next level.

So, what I say is we have a default future. Our default future is generally pretty good. And this applies again at any level, whether you’re a CEO or a founder or whether you’re mid-level in a company, you’ve got your default future. You know, 80% probable. You kind of got your life mapped out a little bit. And it’s 80% probable because you basically know how to do it. You basically know how to do it, right?

So, it’s just more of the same, “I’m going to work, I’ll do this, I might get a promotion,” or, “I’m going to keep growing my business and keep working hard, and we’re going to grow it.” And some people, business leaders I work with, they can say, “Oh, I’ve got old plans. We’re going to 3X my business in the next three years.” Sounds impressive, but it’s still their default future. They’ve got the plan. They know how to do it. They’re just working the plan.

And so, often we go, “Well, that’s it. I’ve got my plan. I know how to do it. Let’s just get on with it.” And so, it then just becomes a question of working hard. And that’s fine. But the question is, “Well, do we want to stay in the box of our own making and work within those parameters?” I’ll give you an example. I’m thinking about a cleaning lady that we used to have. Well, actually, it wasn’t even cleaning lady. Let me rephrase that. It was childcare when my kids were young. Childcare.

A great woman, a wonderful person. Her daughter ended up also becoming a nanny, childcare as well. Obviously, nothing wrong with that. It’s great. Fantastic. But if the situations had been changed, if that lady had been a lawyer or something, perhaps her daughter might have become a lawyer. I’m not saying a lawyer is better or anything, but I’m saying that it’s a different box. You’re operating within a different frame of reference, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, understood. Like, your phrase, default future, that makes sense, in terms of, “Oh, okay, this is sort of what I know, what I’ve seen, what naturally follows for me to just go ahead and do.”

Richard Medcalf
Exactly. And so, what stops us from becoming the person? So, first of all, it’s a bit of a question of imagination. It’s like, “What would be my preferred future? What would be a future that would put a silly grin on my face and feels a bit embarrassing to say because it feels completely unrealistic?” Until you get to that, then why would you really bother going through the pain of an experimentation of actually trying to change?

So, the first thing is finding a preferred future which really lights the fire under you. That’s why I call it, “Ignite your life’s greatest work.” Like, “What would be your life’s greatest work, the thing that actually is exciting and important and impactful for you?” So, I might’ve mentioned it in a previous conversation we’ve had, I can’t remember.

But the reason I do what I do is because of my sister, Georgina. She was mentally, physically disabled. So, I had an Oxford education and a high-flying career and moved countries and had a family and all the rest of it, and she needed 24-hour care. And she passed away at a fairly early age. And we had the same DNA, fundamentally, but we were given very different hands in life.

She couldn’t speak, had epilepsy, she had autism, she had all sorts. She was paralyzed from the chest down when she was 20. A lot of stuff. She was inspirational, though, in terms of the magnetism that she had. She made friends. She was determined. She made things happen despite having very little. And people loved her, even though she couldn’t contribute economically or in any practical way.

And so, for me, that kind of instilled in me a conviction that if the world’s most capable leaders who’ve got all these opportunities don’t make the world a better place and don’t really play full out, who will? And I include myself in that. I’m like, “Well, you know, I had all these opportunities and responsibilities. So, am I just going to use my skills to help some company increase their business performance by 2% or help somebody get a promotion?”

Nothing wrong with those things. It wasn’t the story I wanted to tell my grandchildren in the future. I wanted to say, “You know what, I worked with this leader, and look at the impact they had,” or, “I worked with this person, and look at the ripple effect they had.” So, the reason I talk about this is this is my life’s greatest work, right? This is what I’m here for, is to take high-achieving leaders and help light a fire under them so they can see bigger, dream bigger and make moves they need to become the person they need to be to create their next 10X.

So, that’s what I want to say. First thing is, like, you can’t go for it until you’ve got a real reason to go for it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I really love that notion of a preferred future that would put a silly grin on your face, because I think that just really captures the visceral, deep down, force, umph, internal motivation, drive, where magic happens, and also highlights a place where we might be very quick to say, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, that’s silly. That’s not practical. I shouldn’t worry about all that. I shouldn’t deal with all that.”

But when you put it that way, it’s cool. And the 10x reckoning, I’m imagining, for many, this would involve just radical departures from what they’re doing. It’s like, “You know what, I’m actually not going to make my business 10 times in revenue. I’m going to go be a pastry chef because that puts a silly grin on my face.” And so, I guess what we’re 10xing is joy or passion or…

Richard Medcalf
Well, actually, for me, the word is actually contribution. So in the book, I talk about how you play a different game. Probably haven’t got time to go into it all now, but very often we end up playing scarcity games, whereas we need to play kind of different sort of game. And the way to build that, one the elements in it is your impact KPI.

So, very many people in this business, especially business leaders, like when you say, “Well, what’s your 10X goal?” They go, “Oh, add a zero to my revenues.” Now there’s nothing wrong with that because you could make a lot of big things happen when you do that. Fine. But finance is the fuel. It’s never the destination.

So, the question is, “Well, what impact do you want to make in the world if you added a zero to your revenue?” So, yeah, sure, you can have a bigger house and a bigger car, but at some point, that’s not people’s drivers. And if it is, it’s never going to make them happy anyway because they’ve already got enough, right? So, at some point, to some degree.

But the real driver is like, “What’s the impact you want to make in the world? What do you want a 10X or 100X in terms of impact?” So, if you’re being a pastry chef, it might be, “I just want to create amazing food. I want a 10x number of amazing meals that people have because of what I do.” It could be that, right?

I mean, if you’re an artist, it could be, “I just want to create the most beautiful pieces of art that bring 10x more joy to people in their lives.” But I find that, if you end up saying, “Oh, I just want to relax on a beach or whatever,” it means you’re playing the wrong game. If you end up with a kind of like, “I just want to 10X my freedom,” again, it’s like, “Well, is it freedom from, like freedom from having to do the grind?” I totally understand.

But let’s say you’ve got the freedom, now what do you want to do with it? And at a certain point, you’d have done all the cruises and traveled the world. Fine. And what do you want to 10X? And so, the impact KPI is a way of saying, “If you could just have one metric about the impact you want to make in the world.”

So, for me, it’d be something like leaders who have dramatically scaled their impact, right? Leaders who have 10x their impact. That’s what I want to measure. And, obviously, along the way, if I help enough leaders do that, the revenue and the finances, that’s going to come along. The danger is we try to pursue an ego goal, which is just like, “I supposed it’d be good if, I’m a vice president, I want to be a senior vice president,” or, “I’ve got a business that’s 100 million. I want to make it a billion.”

I mean, it’s like, we just add a number on, because we can’t think of anything else to do. Whereas, actually, when we think about impact, what’s going to light our soul up, then we start to resonate.

Pete Mockaitis
So, lay it on us, let’s hear a few folks who have had their 10x reckoning and what was the metric they selected?

Richard Medcalf
I’ll start with a fairly random one actually. So, one client literally has an enterprise catering business. And, actually, when I first worked with him, he was kind of thinking of just wanting to sell and get out of it. But actually, I helped him realize that his business actually did deliver on a great purpose, and perhaps he should connect to that.

And, actually, he realized that the purpose of that business, at least, was just to create delighted customers. It sounds really basic, right? But he said, “But this is different. It’s not just how many meals have we shipped or people have we served. It’s, like, how many people have we actually delighted?” That was really important for him.

And so, suddenly, it’s like, “Well, are we even measuring that? Do we even know how many moments of delight we’re creating? Or do we just know how many meals we’ve shipped?” It’s a very different focus. Now, one of my clients runs a tech recycling business, fundamentally, so, for him, it’s, like, literally, how many amount of landfill that’s reduced? And my client in another business, climate-related, is around carbon emissions reduced.

So, sometimes it can be these kinds of goals. So often it’s probably around the people that you’re serving or the impact that you’re making in the lives of those people. So, again, it could be, like businesses that we have turned around, or livelihoods that we have supported.

Some business owners, that’s really what they care about, they say, “Well, what I love is I’m just able to support a thousand people’s families, you know? And that’s amazing.” And for him, that can be their KPI, just to look and say, “Look, I’ve created all this employment in my local area.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I really loved what you said there, it’s like, “Are we even measuring that delighted customers?” And I can relate to that because I can look at my downloads, and I can look at my email subscribers, and I can look at my episode retention. Like, I have a lot of numbers available, and the thing that gets me fired up is, indeed, the transformation. Like, I want to hear the stories.

And so, when we had our thousandth episode celebration, that was really fun because, “Hey, everyone, tell me how the show has been transformational for you.” And hearing those stories was so cool. And, you’re right, it’s that, “Are we even measuring that?” And it’s not the easy thing to measure because there’s nothing inside YouTube Studio or Spotify here that says, “Oh, and here’s how many people were transformed by that content, by the way.”

Richard Medcalf
And that’s why people focus so much on financial goals, because it’s like dead obvious. You just look at your bank account and you can see the number. But at some point, that’s not the right number anymore. It’s a number to keep track on, but it’s not the number one thing you need to be focusing on.

And so, for you, it could be something like, you say, “Well, I want to make people awesome at their job.” Well, you could say, “Well, how many people have got a promotion that they attribute something that we’ve worked on together to that?”

Comes to mind, it could be one idea. But the question is, “what are the stories you want to tell your grandchildren or your great grandchildren in years to come? What puts a silly grin on your face?” And you might say, “Well, hey, you what, I’ve got these many million downloads. That’s okay. That’s pretty cool.”

But you might say, “You know what, I helped 10,000 people actually get a promotion, or something.” And that might put a silly grin on your face. So, I think kind of toying around with this is kind of interesting because, and I do this, I often work with executive teams as well, and I find that, often, they have too many numbers. They have too complex goals.

So, I actually have a way of boiling a goal down into five key things, which kind of come together. It’s not five separate goals. It’s like one goal with five dimensions. But when you have that, then suddenly it’s like this one thing to hit. Whereas, most teams have like, as you said, like, “Well, we’ve got our downloads. We’ve got our email subscribers to check. We’ve got our revenue, profit goals. We’ve got our retention. We’ve got all these different things.” And everyone’s got slightly different combination of KPIs they’re looking at.

But when you’re trying to optimize all that, you almost have no flexibility left to really go 10x. Whereas, you, Pete, might say, “Well, it’s actually my goal was to help, it was the 10x number of promotions that I help people achieve.” If that was your goal, you might say, “You know what, I need to ditch the podcast because I can see there’s a better way to get to that goal.”

Or, “Actually I don’t even care about the downloads because I don’t care. Like, it could be a 10th of the people listen to it, but they’re exactly the people that I need, exactly the right people who are going to take action.” So, the point is when we start to get really clear about what we really want, then we can let go of the other metrics, which are kind of become informative, but not determinative, if that’s a word.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. Richard, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention, any top dos or don’ts, before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Richard Medcalf
Don’t think that your next 10x is going to come from a better strategy. Now I’m a strategist, I was a partner in a strategy consulting company, I’ve done strategy for years. I love thinking strategically.

And there is a strategic component, but that only gets you half the way. The other half is that, Pete, what we’ve been talking about, the personal transformation component. Because if you just do the strategy, you’re still going to be basically operating within the box of your comfort zone, the box that your current self allows you to work within.

So, strategy is great, but it has to be paired with becoming the leader who could actually achieve a 10x future. So, that’s what I would say is like don’t just say, “I need a better plan.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Richard, now can you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, actually, my favorite quote is from the Desert Fathers, the early Christian monks, and it’s a little story. But basically, one monk goes to the Abbot and says, “You know, Abbot, I’ve been praying, I’ve been reading my Bible, I’ve been doing my spiritual disciplines, but what more should I do? What more should I do?”

And the Abbot turns to him and he raises up his hands, and fire came out of his fingers or something, and he says, “Why not become fire?” And that quote “Why not become fire?” is really inspiring to me because we can do all this stuff and have our ideas and our plans and, yeah, thinking about things. But then why not become fire? Oh, that makes me go, “Yeah, am I really on fire for this? Or is it just in my head?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Richard Medcalf
Well, actually, the one that’s come up right now is, I think it was, TIME mentioned it a couple of days ago, this one around ChatGPT impacting intellectual ability or ability to study. There was a study done where some people used AI to do a project, and others didn’t. And then they got independent markers. And actually, really interestingly, the people who didn’t do it, got way better scores because there was a soul in it than the people who did use AI.

And then they swapped them around, and they said, “Okay, you now need to rewrite this paper, but those of you who didn’t use AI, you now get to use it as well. And those who did, no, you mustn’t use it for the second paper.” And they found that the people who had used AI the first time could barely remember half of what they’d actually done. And those who hadn’t used it, were then able to kind of perhaps enhance their work and used that to improve further.

So, it’s just an interesting kind of beginning of a thing, but I think, in this world where we’re going through a big… it’s a huge shift, obviously, in everybody’s world. I’m actually running an event in October called “The AI Reckoning,” where I’m bringing a bunch of founders and CEOs to actually wrestle through what it means for business, but also what it means for leadership, because it’s going to make a big difference.

But I think in this world, we have to really make sure that we don’t get AI to do our press-ups for us or sit-ups for us, because that’s actually doing the hard work, the cognitive work, but that’s actually for us. It’s not just about the outputs.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, I was thinking about that with all the Tesla Optimus robot can complete your workout for you, faster, more weight, more reps, more sets, with less rest time. Yeah, have at it.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, so that’s the mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool?

Richard Medcalf
My favorite tool right now is an app called STREAKS. So, STREAKS is simply is a habit-building tool. It allows you to have very simple, on the iPhone, like a few tiles, hit it every day. It reminds you when you are kind of at risk of missing it. I find that’s been really helpful. I’m not, fundamentally, super, super disciplined. And so, a little bit of help to help me actually do the daily work needed to make the big goals happen is really valuable.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget that you are known for and is quoted back to you often, a Richard sound bite?

Richard Medcalf
Of course, you’ve just primed my brain by saying the one you already said to me, right, which is the most important project is the one no one is asking for. That’s definitely one that comes up a lot.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect.

Richard Medcalf
Just leave it there.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Richard Medcalf
So, a lot of places. So, first of all, find me on LinkedIn, where you’ll also discover, as well as random photos of me with Richard Branson, probably not many of those these days. But you might find it funny. I’ve just launched a new little video series called The Richard Metaverse, which is me delivering this content around “The 10x Reckoning,” interspersed with some alter egos from different parts of the alternative realities of the multiverse.

So, LinkedIn is the place for that. And XQuadrant.com is my website. That’s an X, and then the word quadrant. That’s probably the best place to find out everything that I’m up to.

But what I’m going to suggest is, if you’re interested in getting the book, you can grab the paperback or whatever from Amazon if you want, The 10X Reckoning. Or, if you go to XQuadrant.com/awesomeatyourjob, I would actually put a link there to download it for free if you want the digital version. At least for the next couple of months, I’ll make that available.

So, it’s a punchy 75-page read. It doesn’t take very long because I’ve written it for people who are busy and have got other things to do in life, right, have got to get on with things, but, hopefully, it’s a high value per time invested, which is my goal to really shift how you think about your future. So, that’s XQuadrant.com/awesomeatyourjob.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Richard Medcalf
Don’t optimize the wrong thing. We can spend years optimizing in the current box that we’re in and just living out our default future. So, what I really want to suggest is get clear on your preferred future.

And if you don’t actually know how to do that, people can help on that, but get clear about the thing that is going to put a silly green on your face, and start to optimize for that. Don’t feel you’ve got to wait until you’ve got to a certain position, a certain age, a certain income level, because all those things are just delaying tactics. So, find your North Star.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Richard, thank you.

Richard Medcalf
Thanks, Pete.