The Surprising Simplicity of 10x Growth
Seemingly impossible goals are more practical than possible goals because impossible goals force you outside your current level of knowledge and assumptions. 10x goals enable you to clearly identity the 20 percent of things and people in your life that are producing most of your results, and the 80 percent of things and people in your life that are holding you back.
Going for 2x growth means you can keep 80 percent of your existing clients, roles, behaviors, and mindsets. Only minor tweaks are needed. Going for 10x growth means you must eliminate 80 percent of your existing clients, roles, behaviors, and mindsets. 10x requires a full-scale transformation of yourself as well as everyone and everything around you.
2x is linear—to continue growing requires more effort. It’s working harder, not smarter. It’s quantitatively focused—you’re just doing more of what you’re now doing without respect to quality, uniqueness, or transformation. 10x is non-linear—enormous growth does not require more effort, but often requires less, but better. It’s qualitatively focused—you’ve elevated your vision and focus such that you’re now transforming the value and impact of what you do for increasingly specific people.
Every time you make a 10x jump, you do so by letting go of your current 80 percent and going deeper into a more powerful and concentrated 20 percent. Letting go of your 80 percent generally involves hiring Whos to take over your 80 percent, and to systemize and organize what is repeatable so you can innovate what isn’t repeatable.
10x the Quality of Everything You Do
Going 10x involves the continuous process of increasing the quality and decreasing the quantity of everything you do. Defining and choosing your own minimum standards, no matter how seemingly impossible to yourself and others, is fundamental to experiencing a 10x transformation.
Jimmy Donaldson’s three ingredients to his 10x process are: 1) thinking exponentially and non-linearly bigger, 2) hyper-focusing on quality over quantity, and 3) building a team to handle the 80 percent so you can focus and improve in your craft.
10x goals are easier than 2x goals for many reasons. 10x goals are less competitive. 10x goals require you to focus on very few things rather than many, which improves your brain’s ability to focus—research shows that continual task switching makes flow and high performance basically impossible
10x goals promote non-linear approaches which produce novel, innovative, and competition-free solutions. Finally, 10x goals foster leadership and teamwork, wherein you stop doing everything yourself, managing others, or needing to be right.
Creating 10x results doesn’t require you to be 10x better than everyone else. Even being 10–20 percent better (and different) from everything else can produce 10x bigger results than even the outliers of a particular niche or field.
10x Embraces Abundance and Rejects Scarcity
Society trains people to believe freedom and creativity are scarce resources to compete for. This is not true because money is a finite resource, while wealth is an infinite resource. When you choose freedom over security, then you embrace a life where you choose exactly what you want, rather than vying for what you think you need.
Living a life based on intrinsic wants enables an abundance mindset that allows you to create the wealth and life you want, without needing to justify to anyone why you want what you want. Living a life based on external needs enables a scarcity mindset that causes you to compete for the limited resources you believe you need. People who live based on need feel they have to justify their actions so that others will accept them.
You must make a choice here and now: Will you continue living in the “needing” world where you must compete for scarce resources and justify everything you do, or will you embrace the “wanting” world where you freely choose, create, and get what you want? You can only go 10x by embracing a purely wanting approach to life, because 10x isn’t inherently something anyone needs, but only something you can have if you choose the freedom to want and create it.
Your Unique Ability is a central and core aspect of who you are, which can only be uncovered and developed by embracing what you most want. Being in a flow state occurs when you embrace your Unique Ability because you’re not overly editing yourself based on external approval, attachment to outcomes, etc. Instead, you’re just purely free to be and do and create as you want and in the way you want. You’re completely free and energized as a result and the byproduct is inspired creativity. This is also why and how you transform and expand your Unique Ability to otherworldly levels, wherein you become uniquely skilled and masterful at what you do.
When you embrace and take your Unique Ability seriously, you immediately remove yourself from ever competing with anyone again. You appreciate the truth that you and everyone else are unique individuals who can never be replicated. Rather than trying to be like other people, your objective becomes to peel away the layers impeding you from being the most expansive and evolved version of yourself.
Uncover Your 10x Past to Clarify Your 10x Future
Many high achievers are prone to being in “the gap,” wherein they constantly measure themselves and their experiences against unreachable ideals. This makes them feel terrible and unsuccessful, regardless of what they’ve achieved.
Ideals are like a horizon in the desert. They provide illumination and direction but are unreachable. No matter how many steps you take toward the horizon, it will continually move out of reach. Ideals are the same. They are useful for direction, but you shouldn’t measure yourself against them.
Being in the gain is a twofold concept that enables you to effectively measure your progress and transform every experience you have into greater learning, meaning, and growth. To be in the gain, you only measure your progress backward against where you were before. You never measure yourself against anything external—whether that be your own ideals or other people.
One application of a “gain” mindset is reviewing your previous 10x jumps. In so doing, you can also clarify the 20 percent of each stage, as well as the 80 percent you powerfully let go of.
By reflecting on your previous jumps and “connecting the dots backward,” you’ll firstly see that you’ve gone 10x many times before. This will normalize 10x for you, helping you see that you can continue going 10x in the future, as you have in the past. Additionally, in examining the 20 percent of each 10x jump, you’ll be able to see and appreciate how you’ve been developing your Unique Ability to this point.
Build a Self-Managing Company
There are at least four core levels of entrepreneurship that you’ll need to pass through to go 10x again and again. The faster you go up these levels, the faster and easier each following 10x jump will be. Level one entrepreneurship is being a solopreneur or micromanager, where you’re a rugged individual who either does all the How yourself, with very little Who. Or, if you do have Whos, you micromanage them, stunting your own freedom and growth, and stunting their autonomy and growth.
Level two entrepreneurship is evolving beyond the rugged individual to becoming a leader who applies Who Not How. By applying Who Not How, you begin operating far more in the 20 percent of your 10x process—which is your Unique Ability. You fully trust the Whos to handle the Hows of their various roles, and you don’t micromanage them. You give them autonomy and trust with clear vision and standards.
Level three entrepreneurship goes beyond applying Who Not How in all aspects of your life to creating a Self-Managing Company. In a Self-Managing Company, you’re no longer managing or leading the day-to-day aspects of the business. Instead, you’ve trained up or hired leaders to lead the team and business for you. You’re still a visionary and leader of the business as a whole, and you’re not entirely disconnected. However, increasingly more, the business manages itself without you, freeing you entirely to be in your Unique Ability—where you’re exploring, expanding, innovating, and collaborating. You’re transforming yourself 10x, and, as a result, the vision and freedom in all of your company expands 10x continuously as well.
Level four entrepreneurship is where, in your Self-Managing Company, everyone is increasingly encouraged to operate in their own Unique Abilities—their own 20 percent of the 10x vision. When people are autonomously operating in their Unique Ability, they become incredibly skillful and valuable at what they do. They become self-managing and self-governing leaders themselves, continuing to go above and beyond the call of duty and to focus on results, not being busy. They take responsibility for being as valuable to themselves and the team as they can. They feel trusted to go all in on their Unique Ability and become as valuable and powerful as possible. As a result, they multiply themselves by getting others to take over their 80 percent. They do this again and again, and now you have a self-multiplying unique ability team.
If you’re not going 10x, then the best people will not be attracted to working with you. 2x isn’t exciting or motivating to the best Whos. If you go into 2x mode, you’ll be left with a lot of people working with you who simply want a job. They don’t want 10x transformation and growth. They certainly won’t be expanding their role and going above and beyond. They won’t have the trust in you as their leader or emotional commitment to their organization. They won’t go 10x beyond the call of duty. Instead, they’ll do as little as possible.