49. My Highlights from 10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan
Hello, and welcome back. In the previous issue we explored how to harness your identity and alter ego (your “Inner Batman”) to achieve peak performance. And in this brief issue I share my personal highlights from legendary consultant, Dan Sullivan’s short book 10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less.
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By the way, I’m Kevin Kruse, founder and CEO of LEADx and NY Times bestselling author of 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management and the forthcoming 11 Secrets Successful People Know About Goal Setting. Welcome to Success & Significance - my take on health, wealth, and relationships (my “3 to Thrive”, read more here). Hit the Subscribe button below to join over 20,000 members who get weekly practical advice and wisdom from the world’s most successful people.
Dan Sullivan, the world's leading coach for highly successful entrepreneurs, wants you to know that achieving 10X growth is exponentially easier than striving for 2X growth. Most find this idea confusing at first because simply imagining 10X growth causes them to think they need to do 10X more work to achieve it. However, being a 10X entrepreneur is nothing like what most people think.
What got you here won’t get you there. To quote the actor Leonardo DiCaprio, “Every next level of your life will require a different you.”
2x is exhausting and soul-defeating. It’s extremely difficult to put the pedal to the metal and grind away for inches of progress. By contrast, 10x is so big and seemingly impossible that it immediately forces you out of your current mindset and approach. You can’t work 10x harder or longer. Brute force and linear methods won’t get you to 10x.
10x isn’t about more. It’s about less.
Just as 10x isn’t about more but less, 10x is also not about quantity. It’s about quality.
The most fundamental qualitative change is internal, your vision and identity. By changing these, everything else you’re doing simultaneously changes as well. You take your internal and emotional evolution and externalize that in the form of refined standards and results. 10x becomes your perceptual filter for everything you do.
Anything that’s not 10x doesn’t meet the filter and gets released from your attention. According to constraint theory, the greatest human bottleneck is attention. Our attention is our most finite resource, even more finite and valuable than our time. Indeed, the quality and depth of our attention determines the quality of our time. Most people’s attention is scattered, tugged, and seemingly never right here and right now.
“This is actually a really bad question,” stated Dr. Barnard. He then continued: “There are literally infinite things I could do to grow my profits by ten percent. The goal isn’t big enough to create focus and specificity. If, however, you asked, ‘If you wanted to grow your profits by ten times, how would you do it?’ that would be a much better question because there are likely to be very FEW, maybe even only ONE way to create 10x growth. Indeed,
Dr. Barnard encourages people to make their goal so big that they believe it’s impossible.
“What about making $ 10,0000,000 profit in the next 12 months,” Dr. Barnard suggests. “Do you believe that’s possible?” “I don’t think so,” the entrepreneur responds. “That goal,” Dr. Barnard presses, “It would be impossible, unless. .. What conditions must be true for $ 10,000,000 profit in the next 12 months? Then ask yourself how can you create these ‘unless’ conditions to make the impossible, possible.” The entrepreneur lists conditions that need to be present for that impossible goal to become believably possible. Dr. Barnard points out those conditions and strategies are where the entrepreneur should focus if they want the highest return on time and energy. Everything else they’re doing is noise.
Conversely, with a 10x goal, only a limited number of strategies or paths will work.
“The only way to make your present better,” said Dan Sullivan, “is by making your future bigger.”
2x is working in the business. 10x is working on yourself and working on the business. 2x is trying to optimize the horse and buggy, getting millimeters and inches for your efforts. 10x is stepping back and inventing the car, like Henry Ford did, where you’re getting miles for the same efforts.
Impact > Income,
Kevin 🙏
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