Ralph and Lauren skip the small talk and jump right into one of the most overlooked (and misunderstood) topics in digital marketing—how to actually set up standard events, custom conversions, and the Meta pixel the right way. Spoiler alert: most businesses are getting it wrong! Whether you’re running an eComm store, selling info products, or trying to generate leads, your tracking setup might be holding you back from scaling like a boss. Ralph even admits they found mistakes in their own accounts—so yeah, nobody’s perfect. But don’t worry, they break it all down, agency-style, so you can stop leaving money on the table and start feeding the algorithm what it really needs. If you want Meta to work for you instead of against you, don’t miss this episode!

Chapters:

• 00:00:00 – When Two Marketers Walk Into a Podcast…
• 00:00:27 – The New Year Hype Is Fading—Now What?
• 00:01:12 – The Four C’s That Separate Winners from Wishers
• 00:02:47 – Why 10X Goals Force Better Decisions
• 00:05:52 – Stories That Prove Small Thinking Won’t Cut It
• 00:09:19 – The Moment Commitment Gets Real
• 00:16:38 – Courage & Capability: The Price of 10X Growth
• 00:19:35 – Your Why Is Either Fuel or Dead Weight
• 00:23:22 – The Takeaway That Could Change Everything

LINKS AND RESOURCES:

• Episode 663: How to Make Your Present Better by Making Your Future Bigger
• 10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy
• Tier 11
• Mongoose Media
• Tier 11 Jobs
• Perpetual Traffic
• Marketing Performance Indicators™ Checklist
• Perpetual Traffic on YouTube
• Tier 11 on YouTube
• Connect with Lauren on Instagram
• Connect with Ralph on LinkedIn
• Follow Perpetual Traffic on Twitter

Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Perpetual Traffic? Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on iTunes and leave us a review!

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Read the Transcript Below:

How “The 4 C’s” Will Catapult You to Your 10X Goal in 2025

Ralph: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the virtual traffic podcast. This is your host, Ralph Burns. I’m the founder and CEO of tier 11 alongside my amazing co hosts.

Lauren: Lauren E. Petrillo, the founder of Mongoose Media.

Ralph: So glad you joined us here today.

Ralph: today we’re going to be getting into some of the deeper aspects of a show that we did right after the first of the year, when you were fresh, perpetual traffic, listening, you’re fresh with all your ideas.

Ralph: You’re like, all right, I’m going to have a kick ass 2025. You made your goals. You’re all excited. It’s the first week you listened to our show. You’re like, all right, how do you make your present better by making your future bigger? Sounds good. This 10x is easier than 2x books, seems pretty cool, maybe I’ll get that over on Amazon.

Ralph: You’re rolling! So you put together your 10x goals. And then you tell your [00:01:00] team and your team says, are you crazy? And here’s what happens next. There’s a part to the book where I think Dan Sullivan, talks about sort of the levels. That a human being goes through, and he talks about these four C’s the four C’s formula.

Ralph: And if you Google four C’s, it’s taken him like 15 years to figure out like what the actual four C’s are. But when it comes to setting a 10 X goal, like we mentioned in that episode, and how important that is, because. The big part of that, that I came out with is you make your present better by making your future bigger. And I love that phrase, that turn of phrase by Dan Sullivan, who I think is really brilliant. And because it has energized me, and when I tell people about our 10X goal, And when I espouse this methodology to like our clients or other people that I’m [00:02:00] speaking with, or like my peer group, they all kind of look at me with that hairy eyeball.

Ralph: Like, that’s crazy. And I can’t do that because it’s too big. And that’s precisely the reason to do it. So today we’re going to get into that a little bit more. And how to kind of take step two after listening to that initial show. And we’ll obviously leave that in the show notes over at Perpetual traffic.

Ralph: com. We’re going to get you to the point where you are very confident. To the point where you reached ultimate confidence, which is sort of the last of the four C’s, which we’ll talk about here in just a second. Makes sense. So far.

Lauren: I’m here with you.

Ralph: You’re here with me.

Lauren: I see what you’re saying.

Ralph: I see what you’re saying. I love that. so one of the things that we had mentioned in that show is that seemingly impossible goals eliminate Merely incremental gains. So when you set a 10 X goal, you’re not just wanting to increase your sales [00:03:00] by let’s say 10%, for example. because if you want it to increase.

Ralph: By two X or by 10 percent or by 20 percent this year, there’s probably hundreds of ways in which you could do that and breaking away from that, like, you don’t know which one of those, let’s say there’s 50 different solutions. So if you’re a business, you’re like, I could. Up my paid traffic. I could work on my SEO.

Ralph: I could start doing email. I could, figure out that SMS thing. I could create a chat bot. I could add a marketing team and start doing content marketing. I could start posting on LinkedIn every morning and write a long diatribe, or I could go on Facebook or Instagram or I could verticalize into some other niche and I could do this.

Ralph: I could do that and I can do all these other things. The point is, is like there’s hundreds of different opportunities. There are hundreds of different choices if you’re looking for an incremental gain. And one of the things that Sullivan talks about is that this eliminates that, that narrows down your choices, because if you’re going to truly choose to go [00:04:00] 10 X, it’s not because you have a better social media strategy that might be a part of it as a general rule, but it forces you to think differently.

Ralph: And he brings this up in the book where this guy. Alan Bernard, who is one of these high thinking intellectuals, and he says at, Joe Polish’s genius network, spoken there a number on a number of occasions.

Ralph: Great group. He actually has this example in there because I think the strategic coach and genius group are really pretty close when it comes to like their methodologies. Joe Polish posed this question, which is, okay, if I wanted to increase profits by 10%, how would I do it? And Alan Bernard, who is an intellectual said, that’s actually really a bad question because of precisely what I said before.

Ralph: what Alan Bernard says is that in order to get 10 percent better, there’s 1000 things I could do. The goal isn’t big enough to create real specificity. But if you want a 10 X goal, there might be [00:05:00] One or two things that you could do, maybe only one, and that forces you to think differently with this and impossible goals make you consider very few solutions and it’s not something probably that you’re doing right now.

Ralph: It’s something that you haven’t thought of, so a big goal. It helps you identify, it forces you to identify very few solutions to make that change, whereas smaller goals, you’re not really sure which one of the multiple options you have. To get you to that goal. So therefore 10 X is easier in theory and in practice than two X.

Ralph: how does that strike you? Examples that you may be used or maybe things that, when you were reading this book, what you thought of when you heard all of that.

Lauren: Well, I know when I was reading this book, a lot of examples that they brought through were in order to get to 10x, you have to radically change what you are personally working on. And, The piece that was easier was the delegation side. So if there’s something that you’re better at removing [00:06:00] the 80 percent frustration and delegating it to an assistant or hiring someone, the who not how, was really relevant for me as I was listening to this book.

Lauren: but it also brought up, an example, you and I talked about briefly, there’s a film called the thief and the cobbler, which was, This film that was worked on for decades, and it was all about quality over quantity. That’s referenced in the book so much that if you’re going to go for 10x, you have to go for quality.

Lauren: Whereas a lot of us will go for quantity early on because quantity is easier. they talked about so much in the book how you have to give up and walk away from the stuff that doesn’t align, that doesn’t fit the standard of where you want to be with 10x. so while I was going through the book, I was personally thinking of R. Leaps that we’ve made at Mongoose Media and the who’s that contributed to those leaps and the how that happened most of the time was getting myself out of the way. and the example of the thief and the cobbler, this, film that was done, [00:07:00] think it was like Richard Williams. Yeah, who had been working on it for decades.

Lauren: It was potentially going to be that 10 X in animation and in film, but was an example where. The people around them didn’t see the vision and wanted the 2x only that’s A Aladdin esque knockoff film was ultimately produced in the end. Nowhere near what the actual idea of what the film would be came about.

Lauren: But yeah, the book makes you question yourself and decisions you’ve made had a very, very clear mirror. You’re like, okay, looking back at that, how would I have done it differently? It’s super enlightening. I’ve really enjoyed the book.

Ralph: So that’s a great example of somebody coming with a 10 X goal and then the peer group or you know, the organization or maybe his coworkers or whatever it is, whoever he collaborates on that particular type of, assume it’s was it a screenplay or was it a book or was it sort of a combination of the two

Lauren: he wrote a script and then was designing And he was using an animation style that was [00:08:00] outdated. Like technology had advanced during these decades of production and he would work with different studios and different networks to continue funding of this project. Granted, he was, over budget and over deadline. Every time so it was a difficult relationship for studios to work with what he was creating and everything that he had worked on has now developed such a cult following that people are like, we want to see what the 10 X was because they were innovations he made.

Lauren: knowing where he wanted to go and where he wanted to get, he made decisions that most people that are going for two X or incrementality growth wouldn’t make the same decisions, but he was doing it based off of. The vision, the long term projection, and because of that, because people know what he was working on, there’s this, desperate desire for people to find where the video, where the film would have gone. they’re, like, frames per second. He was matching the number of frames [00:09:00] per second that a real action film was doing, which was, like, four times more expensive, more time consuming than anything had ever been done to that point.

Ralph: So think to inspire people on your team in order to get to this point, there is a leap of faith here and whenever you start any new endeavor, like you don’t necessarily know if it is 10 X, you don’t know whether or not you’ll succeed. Because you have never done it before, so you don’t have what Dan Kennedy will sort of mix and match these a bit and something that he calls the four C’s formula and in the book, he messes around with which is first and which is second, which is third, which is forced.

Ralph: So we’ll sort of put it in order here to a certain degree. But it’s like, If you have done this 10x thing before, you have the confidence. The problem is, you’ve never done the 10x thing before.

Ralph: So you don’t have the confidence, but what you do have when you make that 10x [00:10:00] goal. You have the commitment. So I look back, it’s been 15 years now since I’ve been an entrepreneur today is actually the anniversary of my independence day when I was fired from the corporate world for the very last time.

Ralph: And I wallowed around for three, four years, trying to figure out what I wanted to do, ultimately creating an agency about 10 years ago. The point is, is like, that was thank you. So that was One of my more recent 10 X jumps because I had no idea that was always something when I was working in the corporate world.

Ralph: I was like, I wonder if I can actually make it as an entrepreneur. I wonder if have the smarts to create a business out of nothing and. Back then, 15 years ago, there was no such thing as virtual companies like I think there was like one other software company that did it nobody did it in the service based business.

Ralph: Everyone said it can’t be done. I had a lot of two ex thinkers that were sort of getting in my way. I was like, you know, no, I sort of see this thing called Facebook this really about 10 years ago. I’m like, I’m gonna build an agency around this [00:11:00] thing

Lauren: Hmm.

Ralph: people like you’re crazy. it’s nothing, it’s a social network.

Ralph: How could that ever really work? But I knew that there was things that were there, but didn’t necessarily have the confidence in being able to do it. What I did have is the commitment because I was like, I have to do this. It was literally, it was my wife told me, and I said this to you in the pre record, it’s like I needed to pay the healthcare insurance, which was 1800 bucks a month.

Ralph: I was like, that was my main goal when I started this business is just to pay the health insurance. So I was committed. I was committed not to go back to the corporate world. I burned the boats. Burned a lot of bridges and I was committed fully to this new thing. So this is like one of the 10 X process, just from a personal standpoint.

Ralph: So in the book, Dan talks about commitment, how important it is, because it’s a foundation of the whole 10 X process. And it requires this desire for transformation and willingness to sort of shed your old identity, shed the person that you used to be and embrace the new person who’s about to commit this journey.

Ralph: And [00:12:00] you don’t even know where it’s going to end up. And the next part to that is, I think the most important part is. Once you’re committed You show this commitment, then the big thing is having courage to be able to step into it. And that’s the hard part, is that I think there were a thousand times I wanted to quit.

Ralph: but I kept going. It’s like when I first learned to play guitar when I was 13. I wanted to quit like a thousand times in the first like three months, but I kept going. That was another 10x leap. he keeps saying, it’s like. even though what you want to do right now, you’ve never done it before.

Ralph: Think back to periods of time in your life where you actually did do 10 X and that then gives you a slight degree of confidence. He goes all the way back to reading, like when we were like, little kids, 34 years old, you probably were reading when you were two, but I think I read when I was like.

Ralph: For, but anyway, the point was, it’s like, you’d never read before. this is a whole thing. that was one of your first 10 X [00:13:00] leaves. First time you walked, if you really want to go back to basic stuff, so he says that should give you the confidence, at least initially that you can achieve things that seem impossible. And not necessarily for the task at hand right now, but because you’ve done it before in a variety of different capacities, does that make sense?

Lauren: Yeah, I like how he had brought in examples of the non business leaps, because in the book, while it’s predominantly focused on how you grow and scale your businesses to stratospheric success, he brought in examples of the personal side and, the importance of like, you don’t want to limit your growth only in one area.

Lauren: But like with your guitar playing skills, with your language skills, with your interpersonal relationship skills, all of that matters because, who doesn’t want 10 X growth in all aspects of their life? It all of it makes sense. I think one thing I would add to it is the piece of the courage. Like, I’m grateful you’re sharing the moments of when you wanted to quit because he had talked about when you have the confidence, you’re excited because you already have it.

Lauren: Whether you’re borrowing [00:14:00] it from a pre existing use case of yours, or because you’ve already stacked your team with people who are doing it. Like you, Ralph, have incredible talent on your team who have grown. Huge brands, huge brands, like you have people that have been doing stuff that we want to do, but don’t have the experience.

Lauren: So you’ve got the confidence with your who’s, but the piece I really enjoyed about the courage was courage doesn’t always feel good.

Ralph: I don’t think it ever really feels good, you

Lauren: Ah,

Lauren: the aftermath feels good. I think at least,

Ralph: confidence. That’s

Lauren: yeah.

Ralph: you have courage to do it, like you doing standup,

Lauren: Oh my gosh.

Ralph: that’s a 10 X leap,

Lauren: Oh, for sure.

Ralph: up. Oh, a hundred percent. So in the book, he talks about using those examples. you want to make a million dollars this year, or you want to do that, like

Lauren: I want, I want a million cash for meet Lauren.

Ralph: cash, like that’s your thing, us is 10 X, [00:15:00] our valuation this year.

Ralph: It’s like a massive goal because we want to be able to reach more businesses and help them, those businesses to achieve their vision. And we’re going to do that by greater influence. And the metric that we’re using is a valuation metric. Because we’re in the finance world, we’re looking at, private equity and a lot of other things that are sort of along the way.

Ralph: The point is, it’s like, these are things that we’ve never done before. Like when you stepped on that stage and we left links in the show notes for a couple of shows back of you actually doing it. It’s like, that was courage. You didn’t really have the confidence yet because you’d never done it. But

Lauren: You say courage, maybe insanity. It was a lot. my body was, having a lot of reactions before I went on

Ralph: but you did it. I would, submit that that was a 10 X personally that’s where you’re. Quasi confidence comes from because you can lean back into those things, which gives you more courage now,

Lauren: Like I’ve confidently spoken on those stage. I spoke on whether 70, 000. Viewers at once, and this was done through Meta and that was like a huge 10x because the largest room I’d spoke to [00:16:00] before was like a hundred. so yeah, leaning in on like other areas helped provide squonfidence. Is that what you’re saying?

Ralph: confidence.

Lauren: like fake level of confidence, um, to like psych me out before I had to Suck up the pain of the courage of like, ah, I’m going to get through this. But I knew at the end of the day, I just need to prove to the world. I was funnier than Kossum.

Ralph: And, uh, well, you’ve done it on a stage now and you’re on YouTube proving that. All right. So the next part of it is laughter, commitment, courage, doesn’t really like do these in order. But in my opinion, this is sort of in order is now that you’ve got the courage, as you take courageous action and you pursue those 10 X goals, you start developing.

Ralph: New capabilities, new

Lauren: So that C is capabilities that third C.

Ralph: Yeah. So capability is that third C. and this is about, expanding your knowledge, continuously leveraging that courageous spirit as you gain more capability because of your courage, you [00:17:00] then.

Ralph: Gain more confidence, which then creates more capability. Which creates more confidence, and it’s this sort of cycle. It’s almost like this flywheel effect that starts to take place. Once you get momentum moving towards that 10 X goal that ultimately helps you to reach it. So When you talk about these 10 X goals, if you’re taking our advice and you’re really wanting to do this, and this podcast is not for people who are just want to stay put. if you are not growing, you’re going backwards. In my opinion,

Lauren: Well, I would almost argue if you’re not growing at least 12 percent year over year, I didn’t come up with the statistic. I don’t remember where I had read it, but it was Economically standardized that if you’re not growing 12 percent you’re going backwards.

Ralph: a hundred percent. Yeah.

Lauren: 112 percent

Ralph: Yeah. I would say, personally, I think you have to sort of look at yourself and think I was talking to one of my friends about this this past weekend, like he comes across as just a like a happy go lucky. Nothing really [00:18:00] bothers him. But I know internally, he’s got this burning desire.

Ralph: To succeed, drive forward, provide for his family, reach the next levels of success. He’s in the corporate world. He’s like a, VP of whatever he is. he’s like reached higher levels and he’s constantly pushing forward. He’s like, why am I so stressed out? Cause they’re like, I know who you are.

Ralph: You are this person that underneath this veneer of, just, easy going, relaxed, laid back nature, like you’re this killer underneath. I mean, if you are that way, you don’t know any other way than to set sort of 10 X goals or at least shoot towards those bigger goals. But the beauty of this is that, And when he says, make your present better by making your future bigger, I’m a big believer in that, because once you start to gain the confidence, you have the courage, your present becomes better.

Ralph: Like, you feel better about yourself. You shed the last person that you were, you’re no longer that person that you were before. And [00:19:00] as you demonstrate capabilities and achieve your milestones in that 10 X goal, your confidence continues to grow. And that makes you a better human, in my opinion, as long as you don’t go all the way over to the point where you’re like, you know, a cocky SOB,

Lauren: Well, I mean there’s gonna layer that in in some capacity because ego is just always there to creep up from behind. Um, I think there’s also the underlying foundation that matters of why. You want the 10x growth and what are you going to do with that 10x growth? I mean, I’m for me personally, I don’t know how much we’ve ever talked about it here, but my ultimate goal is to help create an entrepreneurial library in the JDCs.

Lauren: In the United States, juvenile detention centers are stocked with old books and outdated educational programs that don’t necessarily create jobs that these kids have the capabilities for. So something near and dear to me is that I would like to install a Linda like learning system in the juvenile detention centers so that individuals can.

Lauren: [00:20:00] Succeed in their entrepreneurial skills, their marketing skills, their sales skills in legal pathways after getting out of prison so that they don’t have to assume their record is their resume and they’re reliant on a job at Walmart or a job at a gas station, which are great jobs in and of themselves, but there’s so much talent and potential that those children don’t have.

Lauren: Resources to test those markets to so like, that’s why I want the money. That’s where I want to put it. So I know that’s my personal wife. Now, like, is that million dollar 10 X goal? No, it’s a big goal. But the 10 X for me is where I want my company be so that we can develop something. That’s a nationwide rollout supporting thousands and thousands of incarcerated youth.

Ralph: Amazing. Yeah. mean, if you don’t have sort of your own personal, why, this is a Simon Sinek thing, sort of golden circle, the why, the how and the what, that, the 10 X is kind of a how, driving towards the why. So, from a business standpoint, we want to help all businesses achieve their vision as their organizations.

Ralph: And we do that. [00:21:00] We achieve our vision as an organization, but what that creates is for me is. wealth within the organization, but also wealth for the people that we’re serving

Ralph: and also wealth for the people that they are serving in a greater degree of whether that’s emotional or, monetary or business depends on individual situation.

Ralph: But my personal why is I want to eliminate Alzheimer’s and dementia. I have constantly been, and this is, I’ve never said this on the show. Like my mother is actually suffering from it right now. My dad died of it. And. It’s in the genes. So it’s personal. And we have donated a tremendous amount through tier 11 through the past five years for those ends.

Ralph: And there’s so much work that needs to get done. It’s not like just writing checks. It’s getting involved in it. I have a medical background. I understand like the huge challenge it is. I also understand like those diseases aren’t money makers for the pharmaceutical world. So the pharmaceutical world backs off on a lot of them because it’s not A chronic treatment, it’s [00:22:00] something that happens and then it’s almost too late

Ralph: and it’s hard to really diagnose.

Ralph: It’s one of those really challenging things. We also have a lot of investments in the cancer realm just as a company, but the point is that sort of a personal why for me, aside from sort of the business. Why? So if you can sort of figure that stuff out, a lot of this stuff flows back. Like, why are you doing 10 X?

Ralph: Are you doing 10 X just to do it? So you can drive a Lamborghini and you can, live in a mansion somewhere.

Lauren: which is okay.

Ralph: which is okay.

Lauren: says in the book, it’s what you want, not what you need. that was for me one of the most important aspects, because when you’re saying, I need something, it’s coming from a scarcity mindset, where you’re like, I want something. It’s from a place of abundance. So, even if it’s because I want a Lamborghini, that’s what you want,

Ralph: That’s okay.

Lauren: And live it. Own it. build your want list. I think one of the examples he said, someone wrote every single day what they wanted. And almost over the course of 9, 000 days, I think they missed 12 times, they became like a [00:23:00] professional wantist almost, so it’s like What are you committing to wanting?

Lauren: Ideally, your why is awesome and helps the world a better place. But if, your want is a Lamborghini, do you baby boo?

Ralph: That’s okay. To each his own.

Ralph: So suffice to say, we like this book an awful lot and 10x is easier than 2x written by Dr. Benjamin Hardy, and Dan Sullivan, highly recommend it. We’ll leave links in the show notes.

Ralph: I’m not even going to put an affiliate link in there because it doesn’t really matter. Like just go get it for crying out loud. Get the audible

Lauren: got it from the library. I use Libby.

Ralph: library. Yeah. That’s awesome. you use in the library is so clutch. anyway, what’s the app that you use?

Lauren: I use Libby because it has connected to my Orange County library card. Yeah. Yeah.

Ralph: read the book. we’ll leave a lot of links in the show notes here. And obviously if you haven’t listened to the previous episode over on 663, we’ll leave that as well, which sort of explains this whole concept. So, I’m sure we will get back to this and keep coming back to this this year and also give you updates on our 10 X [00:24:00] progress.

Ralph: Love to hear about your 10 X progress as well. If you’re adopting this, you’ve read the book, leave. Comments on our Spotify. I was about to say like leave a review on Spotify, which I suppose you could, you could leave a star rating everywhere you listen to podcasts. And of course, we’ve got a really robust telegram group, which I guess is blowing up over, especially on the Google side.

Ralph: Maybe we can have a conversation going on this as well.

Ralph: So all the links we’ll leave over in the show notes over at perpetual traffic. com. Make sure that you do subscribe to our YouTube channel, of course, but you’ve already done that. That’s perpetual traffic. com forward slash YouTube. So on behalf of my awesome cohost, Lauren E Petrulo,

Lauren: Ciao!

Ralph: until next show, see ya