“If you wanted to improve your profits by ten percent, how would you do it?”
I once attended marketing expert Joe Polish’s entrepreneur mastermind group, where he presented this and several other questions.
After taking 5 to 10 minutes to think through Joe’s questions, we had a group discussion. Dr. Alan Barnard, one of the world’s leading experts on constraint theory and decision-making, happened to be in the group that day.
“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, almost nothing you’re currently doing would get you there. To separate the signal from the noise, you need to make the goal big enough to weed-out most paths or strategies. Impossible goals help you identify the ONE or FEW conditions that have the highest possible upside. Those are the areas to focus your scarcest resource - your limited attention on.”
“Seemingly impossible or massive goals are highly practical because they immediately separate what works from what won’t, illuminating the few paths that have the greatest efficacy. Small goals are unable to clarify effective pathways because they are too marginal or linear from your current location. This is a fundamental reason why 10x goals and vision are simpler, easier, and more practical than 2x goals. With a 2x goal, there are too many potential pathways to reach the desired destination. This creates paralysis-by-analysis and makes it extremely difficult to know where to focus your best energy and effort. 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.”
“Without a clear goal, you can’t define the 20 percent that will effectively get you there and the 80 percent that’s taking you some other direction. Even still, when a goal isn’t much different from your current position, then you won’t need to change much to get there. Thus, you won’t need to separate the 80 from the 20, because when the destination or transformation is minor, then very little needs to change about what you’re now doing. This makes it difficult to pin-point where to focus your efforts and change and also stops you from identifying the 80 percent you’re still maintaining that isn’t serving you. Small goals don’t require 80/20 thinking, because small goals don’t require much adjustment from your current approach. Thus, the second requirement for separating the 20 percent that matters and the 80 that’s taking you some other way is setting much bigger goals.”
According to Prospect Theory, humans have an enormous aversion to loss. We fear and avoid loss far more than we seek to gain.
You embrace rejection and learning at the new standard until you reach a place of capability and confidence at the new standard.
For instance, if you’re a professional speaker and your current speaking fee is $25,000, raise your minimum fee to $50,000 and see what happens. Over the next few months, you may get a dozen speaking inquiries, and all of them but one reject your new fee of $50,000. Thus, you got 1/12 at the new standard. Getting this one yes at $50,000 is 10x more valuable to your identity and confidence than getting 12/12 yeses at the $25,000 level, even though in the short-run, you’d be leaving a nice chunk of money on the table.
As weird as it sounds, it’s much easier getting five million views on one video than 100-thou-sand views on 50 videos. . . You could upload one great video per year and get more views than if you uploaded 100 mediocre videos. It’s very exponential. To do well on YouTube, you need people to click your videos and watch them. . . If you get people to click your video ten percent more, and watch your video ten percent longer than mine, you don’t get ten percent more views, you get like four times the views. You have to think exponentially. A ten percent better video gets four times the views, not ten percent more views. Once you understand that, you funnel your energy better and really hyper-obsess over these videos. Triple the amount of time you’re putting into that video cause you’re not going the get triple the views, you’re going to 10x the views. So [I help those I mentor] make their videos really good, and also help them build out a team, like an editor. Cause if you’re doing five jobs, then you can only put 20 percent of your time into each. If you hire an editor, that editor can put 100 percent of his time into that. You can’t spend ten hours per day editing, but he can
Your Unique Ability is how you create value and wealth that is unique and specialized. It’s your radically unique way of doing what you do, such that no one else can compete with you even if they wanted to. Your Unique Ability is also your unique vision and purpose—your “why” for what you’re doing.
Your Unique Ability is where you have superior skills, where you’re completely intrinsically motivated and thus energized and engaged, and it’s also where you see never-ending possibility for improvement.
When most entrepreneurs begin working with Strategic Coach, they find that far less than 20 percent of their time is focused within their Unique Ability. Instead, they’re investing their time, energy, and focus all over the place. They’re caught up in the 80 percent where they may be good or even excellent, but they’re not in their Unique Ability. As someone takes their Unique Ability seriously and shifts the majority of their time to developing it, 10x and non-linear jumps follow.
Although Unique Ability may come “naturally” to you, that is misleading. Committing to your Unique Ability is the hardest and most intense thing you will ever do. It’s pure commitment and courage. It’s never-ending. It’s freedom and how you build your most unique value, which the right people will immediately recognize and appreciate beyond what you can presently imagine.
There is enormous external pressure to keep the 80 percent in your life, because the 80 percent represents security but not freedom. Even still, the greatest pressure you’ll face is internal.
Indeed, as stated previously, a primary reason people don’t go for the 10x upgrades they want is because in the end, they’re too afraid of making those around them who simply wouldn’t get it uncomfortable. They end up buying into the loud agenda of culture and those around them who say they shouldn’t want more than they need. They settle for 2x over 10x and, internally, they can’t overcome the frustration and suppression this creates. Even more, they fail to realize who they truly could have become, the 10x version of themselves that transformed again and again, the David.
To quote Stephen Covey, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
Committing to what you want most is the only way to be free.
A crucial aspect of “wanting what you want” is that you absolutely do not need to justify your desires to anyone.
You can’t be great if you’re content being good.
In order to become the best, you must embrace the art of quitting. Those who become the best don’t hold on to any 80 percent activity or identity for too long.
The rewards are heavily skewed, so much so that it’s typical for #1 to get ten times the benefit of #10, and a hundred times the benefit of #100.
Atomic Habits isn’t 10x better than other similar self-help books, but it is 10-20 percent better and different than the best self-help books. It’s a clear qualitative improvement. Consequently, it gets 10x or 100x the results of even the outliers.
You quit everything that can’t go 10x from here, even if that means eliminating the best of what got you here.
The longer you hold on to the 80 percent out of fear, the slower your 10x transformation will occur. The faster you let go of the 80 percent out of commitment and courage, the faster your 10x transformation will occur.