On May 20, 2013 at approximately 3:30 a.m., John Beede was rudely awakened by his alarm. He had been dreaming about enjoying the most amazing cup of hot tea he had ever had, while eating some delicious warm pastries in a local cafe.

As he began to awake from his slumber he realized the awful reality that it was just a dream—a cruel dream. There was neither tea nor any scrumptious pastry, but instead he could hear the strong arctic wind that sounded like a freight train and reminded him where he was. It was the type of wind that threatens climbers not to go any further. As he began to stir, the extreme cold seeped into his sleeping bag and snapped him to reality. This was the day—the day he would remember for the rest of his life. If he made it back to tell about it.

Nestled at 23,500 feet at Camp 3 on Mount Everest, after 45 days on the mountain, nine months of training and 17 years of dreaming it was time for John to start the final leg of his journey.

John is an expert climber and one of the few who have climbed the seven summits—the highest single mountain on each of the seven continents. In his life he has climbed over 100 mountains, but only one remained—the most magnificent mountain on earth, Mount Everest. And the mountain held all his respect.

Just like the morning rituals of the Sherpa, John prepared his mind in the few minutes he had before dressing and leaving for this important feat. This morning, like every other morning, he listened to a talk about mind over matter from a motivational speaker and then read a few messages from family to inspire him for what he was about to do.

John had prepared physically and he was in the best shape of his life, though the time on Everest was beginning to take its toll. He was ready for summit day. He had perfected the technical aspects of climbing and could manage ropes and his climbing tools with the best of them. His focus was on his emotional and mental endurance. He would have to handle the negative voices in his head and the ramifications of other people cracking under the sheer emotional, mental, and physical stress of climbing in the death zone.

Oh yeah, the death zone. That is the roughly 3,000 feet of mountain from Camp 4 to the summit that is the most treacherous terrain on the planet. This is the altitude where airplanes fly and where the oxygen needed for life just doesn’t exist. Each climber has less than 48 hours to climb from Camp 4 to the summit and back down to Camp 3 (see Figure 1.1). In fact, the year of John’s climb, nine people died in Everest’s death zone. Through his binoculars, John watched one climber perish attempting a climb. He would see six other dead bodies in all as he climbed, a devastating blow to the psyche of even a world-class climber.

They reached Camp 4 at 26,300 feet by 11 a.m. for a rest. Can you imagine resting in the death zone? Though the rest helped, every climber was focused on the final push to the summit that started at 7 p.m.

The first steps out of Camp 4 committed John into the blackness of the frozen Himalayan night sky. The next 30 hours would mark the culminating moments of a 17-year mountaineering and climbing career. This was his final “testing ground” of self-discovery and personal growth. Since the mountain wasn’t about to lower itself to his level, it was his opportunity to rise up to the demands presented by the climb.

John pondered to himself, “Do I have what it takes? Could I perform at my best in the most extreme environment on earth? Can I balance my skills, physical strength, emotional endurance, teamwork, and safety judgments?” Step after grueling step, the truth sunk in to him. John thought, “every person needs his or her own personal proving place; this is mine.”

That night would be one of the most intense of John’s life. The only comfort was that he was not alone. Nuru, one of the most coveted Sherpa guides, had climbed right beside him since base camp, and together they reevaluated the weather for the right window to summit.

Each climber was given two canisters of oxygen along the way, one in the beginning and one stored higher, both supposed to last 10 hours each—enough to take them from Camp 3 to the summit and back down safely to Camp 2. John, however, had an issue with his oxygen. His first canister only lasted 3 hours, not 10. An oxygen canister is threaded like the cap of a screw top bottle, and the rubber threads on John’s tank began to warp from the extreme cold, failing to seal properly, causing the oxygen to leak.

Nuru, his Sherpa, did what he was trained to do—he climbed higher to get the other fresh tank that was stored for the upper levels so that they could continue the climb. As John waited, the colors around him began to fade. His red coat became gray as his eyes began to shut down due to lack of oxygen. Nuru returned in the nick of time.

The new oxygen tank took him as far as the Hillary step, but no further. The extreme cold caused the oxygen to leak on this tank as well. He was out of time and was advised to turn back. The most frustrating part was that John could hear climbers celebrating the summit just meters away from him. He was just too close to give up. His Sherpa tried a serendipitous last resort fix, as he dipped John’s canister into a container of hot tea to melt the ice and make a seal. John’s dream of hot tea, which had begun at the break of day, now gave him just enough oxygen to get to the next level. He eventually reached the summit at 5:48 a.m. on May 21, 2013, a testament to his courage and to the ingenuity and wisdom of his Sherpa (see Figure 1.2). He is one of the few who have braved the weather and faced death with every step to make it through the death zone and back to do what very few on the planet have ever done—summit Mount Everest.

Mount Everest is not for everyone, and many people in a climbing group don’t make it to the top. Although John Beede did make it, he explains that the two months of preparation and climbing on the mountain can wear people down. “Most people don’t realize that you have to attempt Mount Everest three to four times before making it to the top to acclimate your body.” There is no way your body would make it without this acclimation strategy. He says, “The people who are strongest physically don’t always make it, but rather it is the emotionally strong, the ones who can work as a team and are willing to help others, who seem to thrive.” More than anything, he emphasized, a successful climb depended on the experience and quality of the Sherpa as guide. John is still climbing mountains and spends the rest of his time speaking to leaders on how to live and lead in the midst of obstacles.

Aiming Higher

Our goal for this book is to help you climb your own leadership Mount Everest—whether that be to lead a team, run a division or a company, or raise a family at a higher level. We want you to aim higher in your view of yourself and those you lead. We want to be your Sherpas on a journey of intentional living, to help you be the best leader in all the spheres of influence in your life. And, we want you in turn to learn how to become a Sherpa for others. We aim to get you to a place of 100% health and influence, which means we need to help you acclimate to higher levels on your journey of growth and self-awareness before effectively leading others up their mountains.

100X

So, how do we get you to 100% health in your leadership, and is it even possible? We want to introduce you to a symbol that can be used by you inside your world to help shape the intent of people becoming healthy leaders. That symbol is 100X.

The phrase 100X is simple and deep all at the same time. The number 100 simply means reaching 100% of the desired health or personal transformation of a person, encompassing their emotional intelligence, mental ability, and holistic leadership strength and effectiveness.

The hallmarks of a leader at 100% could look like the following:

• They are secure in who they are and confident with their abilities while remaining humble to those they serve.
• They are consistent in the way they lead so that people can count on them.
• They are self-aware and responsive when they have erred.
• They are intently for their people, not against them, or solely for themselves.
• They have something to give others because they are full of the positive even in the midst of difficult circumstances.

Although 100% is rarely reached, the aspiration of being as healthy as a leader can be should be your goal—the ability to know yourself and lead yourself in order to be the most effective person/leader possible. The leadership journey is similar to that which John Beede experienced with Nuru, his Sherpa. We are simply your guides, focused on helping you become the consistent, healthy leader you would love to be. This journey, like climbing the highest mountain, will help you acclimate at higher levels of living and leading. Some of the exercises in this guidebook will make you feel like you don’t have much oxygen as we encourage you to face yourself and your tendencies in order to push you higher, but if you commit to getting truly healthy and allow the process to do its work, you are going to find yourself climbing at levels that were once unattainable.

And the X in 100X? The X stands for multiplication—the intentional transfer of knowledge, wisdom, and skills to those you lead. Once you journey up the mountain yourself and prove that you have what it takes, you will become the Sherpa for those you lead.

Put together, 100X is a formula for leadership success—transformation of the leader and multiplication to those you lead. Some of you might be at 70%, as you are generally healthy in your leadership, but may not be multiplying or helping others climb in the way they need. We are inviting you to climb Everest every day for the rest of your lives and learn how to be a Sherpa to others at the same time.

Become, Build, Lead

To do that well, you will need to become well rounded in three fundamental areas of your life. You will need to:

1. Become a leader worth following, not one people must follow because of a job or just because you are their boss.
2. Build leaders worth following because every organization needs much stronger leaders to be able to sustain and grow.
3. Lead organizations (or cultures) that people want to join. People have a choice and we will help you create teams and organizations that people want to attach their names to.

We have seen too much—too many leaders who are focused on their own leadership but have given very little to helping others win. We have also seen the leaders who decimate everyone they lead. We will address this as well.

In The 100X Leader you will experience a holistic view of becoming a person that people want to follow. To get there, we must jump in to real life and work on real issues that might be hard, but will certainly be good.

Leaders in Real Life

Every one of us has our realities that we must live with every day. We have partners, bosses, marriages, kids, friendships, clients, and more to navigate through on a daily basis. Throughout the book we will be sharing many real-life stories of transformation and multiplication as we attempt to show a better way to live and lead.

Dan O’Berski is an amazing leader. He is a successful real estate developer in Estero, Florida. Years ago, he made the decision to go on the 100X journey after observing the transformation from a friend who had experienced our process. When Dan first met us, his leadership health was around 70% because he didn’t fully know what it was like to be on the other side of his leadership. Here is how he tells it.

By 2011 we had started a new company and when we started, my tendencies and patterns were to overcome obstacles by sheer determination and activity. We had grown the company from 4 people to 12 in two years and believed we were on the right track, though along the way there were a growing number of casualties. I would cast the vision to anyone that would hear me out and I would communicate the future as if it was a guaranteed reality. This led to unrealistic expectations on how we would get to our future with a group of young and motivated individuals that were trying to read my mind on how to actually get to that vision daily.

I truly cared about these people and wanted to see them accomplish their dreams (which of course would aid my dreams), but there were so many problems—mainly with me. I found myself exhausted from doing all the work they couldn’t do and getting increasingly frustrated with the team when we didn’t reach our goals. I would press them to the point of threatening to fire them or actually releasing them.

My leadership wasn’t healthy and I definitely was multiplying the wrong things. This caused people to see me as a tyrant at times. It seemed to me that everyone was lazy and no one wanted it, as much as I did, which I know now wasn’t truly fair. I probably appeared to be highly successful. The reality was, I was not providing the support or the challenge that was needed for any reasonably hardworking person to reach the outcome I desired.

I made a decision to change. I chose to find people to help me, to act as a Sherpa to help me reach a higher level of leading. They provided me with tools and trained me to use those tools to climb. I’m still not 100%, but I am above an 85% and I know what I need to do to get even higher. I have also started to multiply myself and I realize that I learn even more about myself when I help others grow. To become a Sherpa yourself and get to 100X is the hardest challenge I have ever taken, but I am never going back down the mountain.

The journey contained in this book is full of hope, and some surprises, as we hold up a mirror to let you see what it’s like to be on the other side of you. There is a summit awaiting you with the most incredible view, when you let the process of self-discovery have its way.

Your 100% Health Check

To make the most of the rest of the book, prepare for the journey by taking a quick, unscientific, reality health check for your life now. Rank yourself 1–10 (10 being the highest level of health) on each of these statements.

• I am secure, not insecure, in my ability to lead people, teams, programs, or organizations to accomplish our goals. 1–10 ____
• My personal life is healthy and allows me to be fully present and productive in accomplishing my objectives and goals. 1–10 ____
• I am emotionally intelligent and have acclimated to leadership by learning how to lead people in complex situations. 1–10 ____
• I am consistent in my leadership and not prone to rash emotions or using fear and manipulation to lead others. 1–10 ____
• I know where I am going and what I am responsible for and feel the freedom and courage to lead at higher levels. 1–10 ____
• I am fit to lead, physically, mentally, and emotionally. 1–10 ____

Now, average your scores and divide by six. A score of 7 and above would highlight that you believe you are in a healthy season. A score of 5 and under would mean that there are real issues happening in your life and that you need some help to get healthy enough to continue climbing. Lastly, if you are between 5 and 7 then there are some flags that need to be addressed, as you could easily move up or down based on some circumstances in your life.

100% is the goal. Most of us are not at that number as stress and pressure, missed expectations, hard relational dynamics, kids, and life in general have shaved this number down into something well below. We believe that once you go through the gauntlet of Chapters 2, 3, and 4 that this number could go lower through the realities of self-awareness. And, we also believe that we will help you get to the next level as you begin to work on yourself and acclimate to the higher levels of living and leading.

As Sherpas, we will make sure we help you get to where you have wanted to go but didn’t know how. In the last chapter we will then give you a scientific way to fully analyze your reality and see your true number.

Acknowledging Your Journey to Date

We all have things in our past that have hammered and shaped us into the person we are in this moment. Because we are complex and layered, it is often hard to reflect deeper on your life, but it is important to take a look inside so that you can work on the outside.

One question we love to ask is, “What are the things that have caused you to stop being you?” Here is another, “What is keeping you from being fully alive, healthy, and ready to climb?” Such questions are designed to provoke thoughts that could lead to transformation, as growth is a process, a journey that takes years, even decades.

If you want to know how a leader will act or predict the decisions they will make, you need only look backward to find the people, circumstances, and decisions that shaped them in the past, whether positive or negative, to be the person they are today.

We believe that people become the conversations of those around them, and many of us are culminations of the comments and expectations of others in our life. This book will help frame a better narrative so that you can climb your own mountain.

It Always Starts with You

Here is an extreme story from one of our clients who went through the 100X process and rated himself below 20% in overall health as a leader and a person. The truth is that we cannot become Sherpas—100X leaders—until we become healthy ourselves and have learned how to live in that health. A Sherpa who isn’t healthy is a person who is not helpful to others trying to get to the next level. They become a liability rather than a resource for the other person.

Todd found himself knotted up on the floor, wrapped up in his eight-year-old daughter’s Hello Kitty blanket. He didn’t know if he was having a heart attack or a meltdown. For the past 20 years Todd had led a nonprofit that helps turn troubled boys into transformed young men. It was ironic that Todd was now in trouble.

In his words, “What I was experiencing had caught me totally off guard. In reality, this wreckage had been set in motion at least 48 months prior. I was not sleeping at night. My heart raced. I felt overwhelming anxiety. I had lost over 40 pounds. I never felt rested and seldom experienced peace or joy. I was constantly in work mode trying to solve the issues of our nonprofit. That is what you do as a founder, I thought. I was present physically with my family. However, emotionally I might as well have been half way around the world as I was consumed on helping everyone else except me.”

When Todd finally came for help, he was overly responsible, controlled by guilt and insecurities. He was responsible for donors, the board, the staff, and ultimately the kids. Most of his work appeared healthy, even admirable, as he served so many. What most didn’t know, however, was that Todd was dying on the inside and had nothing to multiply.

This is a key point: you can’t give what you don’t possess. Todd didn’t have anything to give. He was depleted and he needed a change. He began filling his time and mind with the start of the EOTE Coffee Company, which is now one of the fastest growing coffee brands in the industry. His way of life was not healthy or sustainable and his crash was entirely inevitable.

Todd shares,

Two weeks after my Hello Kitty crash, I was in Jeremie’s office where I came face to face with the habits and tendencies that were killing me. Even though I had a master’s degree in counseling, I realized that I needed help to get healthy. I was at 20% at best and had nothing to give to others. Who I really was and what I had adapted and learned to do as a founder of an organization were two different things. I was exhausted and insecure. I was trying to be someone I was not. That day was the turning point in my life. I realized that I could no longer operate the same way that I had done my entire adult life.

Over the next 24 months, we took Todd on a journey of liberation and transformation. Todd needed oxygen, and so we had to go to a lower camp to get him healthy before he could begin to climb the mountain again. First, he had to rest, both emotionally and physically. Dramatic changes had to be made. Todd resigned as CEO of the nonprofit and focused on his health and his work at EOTE Coffee. We helped him reset his whole outlook, giving him a new language, tools, and concepts contained later in this book.

As Todd summarizes,

I feel liberated! I am now healthy again and I have come to know my tendencies and patterns so that I can lead myself. When I learn my triggers, I can operate out of truth rather than fear. When I operate out of my strengths, I am confident, energized, and live out of my competencies rather than out of my insecurities. I have been given the tools and language to help me get healthy as a leader. It’s also had a ripple effect throughout my marriage, family, career, and my community.

Multiplication is not the priority when you are not healthy! Personal transformation is a prerequisite for intentionally transferring what you know to others.

Preclimb Checklist

We want you, like Todd, to experience the summit—to experience the joy and satisfaction of leading at higher levels and, in time, guiding others up the summit. Here are our Sherpa recommendations to outfit you for the summit:

• Use the tools that we provide you to increase your self-awareness. Get ready to really know yourself well—the good, the bad, the ugly.
• Get to the root of your personal tendencies and patterns as you become a leader worth following.
• Review your past, especially the positive and negative influences in your life.
• Ask yourself this question: “How have I passed on the negative influences of my life into the lives of others?” And the positive influences?
• Remind yourself of times when your positive influence has had good results and put those actions on your “keep doing” list. Keep track of what works and what doesn’t.
• Put in the time needed for you to acclimate, knowing that you are going to go up and down the mountain before you can lead at the higher levels of a 100X leader to become, build, and lead.

We must all come to terms with the fact that we are who we are. But although we can’t change our yesterdays, we can absolutely affect today and tomorrow, if only we are intentional on our journey.

Where to Go from Here

Most people never even make it to base camp, lacking the resources or the motivation to improve. Those who decide to get to the next level must first make their own journey of self-awareness, while getting to 100% health, as the first climb. The X climb of multiplication comes later.

Because the journey to 100% is the first climb, you must work to become more secure, confident, and humble as a leader along the way. This is not just about you becoming a better person or crafting the life you want for yourself; you influence far too many people throughout your life to make it solely about you. It’s about you not just climbing the mountain, but becoming a Sherpa to those you lead.