10x is Easier Than 2x with Benjamin Hardy

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like No Straight Path. Today, we'll be breaking down why 10X is easier than 2X. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Benjamin Hardy and to EO Fire Studios. Dr. Benjamin is an organizational psychologist and author of eight books, including three with the legendary entrepreneurial coach, Dan Sullivan. As a PhD student, he was the number one blogger on medium.com from 2015 to 18. and over that time, his blogs were read over 100 million times.

0:39Wherein he grew an email list of hundreds of thousands of people. Also during his PhD, he and his wife Lauren went from zero to five kids in one year. That was 2018. Three of whom were adopted from the foster system. They now have six kids, live in Orlando because Lauren is a Disney buff. And today for our nation, we'll talk about what to do if we want to 10x our current self. Increasing quality, decreasing quantity of our actions. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about experiencing 10x the vision, creativity, and innovation that we're currently experiencing and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Benjamin and our sponsors.

1:15Business Made Simple, hosted by Donald Miller, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Business Made Simple takes the mystery out of growing your business with episodes like how to get out of your day-to-day operations without crashing your business. Listen to Business Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know that most leaders waste up to 70 % of their time on tasks they shouldn't be doing in the first place? It's time to delegate those routine tasks to a Belay VA. Learn how to make the most of your time and maximize your results today.

1:46Text FIRE, that's F-I-R-E, to 55123 to download your free guide to a productive work week. Benjamin, say what's up to FIRE Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with? What's up, Fire Nation? Happy to be with you. Happy to be with JLD. What do I believe about success that most people don't believe? It's good to always be seeking a future and to never feel satisfied. I've heard that a lot. And I frankly don't believe in it. That's not to say that I don't have massive future self and exciting meanings to fulfill. But this whole idea of that there's this massive gap to fulfill, to me that devalues the past.

2:30I'm always learning from and massively grateful for my past self. My future self is a different person who I'm learning from and growing into, but I get nothing out of devaluing my past or my present to get me where I want to go. Fire Nation, we're talking about why 10x is easier than 2x. And I want to start with a bang, Benjamin. I want to talk about the fact that most people are scared. They're scared of what they consider impossible goals. So share why striving for impossible goals is actually easier than going for the smaller ones. I'm going to give my son Caleb as an example. My son Caleb is a 15-year-old tennis player.

3:06He loves tennis, plays like four or five times a week. So his goal, which is a realistic goal, there's a difference between a realistic and an impossible goal. His realistic goal, which he believes is realistic at least, is that he can play college tennis. And that's his goal. That's what he's shooting for. That's what he's going for. Well, recently, his coach asked him, why don't you change the goal? And why aren't you going for pro? And he just never really even thought about it. And so afterward, I was sitting, we drove home. And I asked Caleb, I said, Caleb, I don't care if your goal is to go pro if your goal is to go college, whatever, whatever you want to do.

3:39It's your choice. But I said, I have a question for you. I said, do you think your current trajectory, your current path would get you to college? He said, I think so. I'm pretty sure. I said, what about pro? Do you think your current trajectory would get you to pro. And he said, absolutely not. Absolutely not. And so this is where it kind of goes into the idea that bigger, seemingly impossible goals, and there's a lot of research behind this, even in a decision-making theory called constraint theory, but bigger goals simplify the process enormously. So in the case of where we live, Orlando, Florida, it's a mecca for tennis.

4:13Realistically, there are probably hundreds of coaches and academies that Caleb could turn to to get to his goal of going to college. There's a lot of opportunity. There's a lot of potential. There's also a lot of margin for error that he doesn't really have to even deal with or think about if he wants to go for college. But JLD, what do you think? Do you think that there's more coaches that could get him to the pro level in Orlando or less? More. There's actually less. There's way less. I'm sorry. It was a poorly worded question. I'm still confused, but go ahead. Yeah. The question is, are there more coaches that could get him to the pro level or are there more coaches that could get him to the college level?

4:52The college level. Yeah, 100%. And that was a terrible question. I'm so sorry. That's actually the key point is there are enormous, there's so many options to get to the college level. There are very few to get to the pro level. And that's actually what makes it very useful is that if he really wanted to go for pro, it would dramatically simplify his process because almost every option would not get him there. And so it's actually a truth filter. It's like almost all the coaches are not actually good coaches. And so it immediately eliminates all the decision fatigue, it eliminates all the waste.

5:27And it also highlights all the aspects of his current path and process that are slowing him down or stopping him. So like having higher goals, it highlights the few options or paths that are actually useful. So him going for pro would actually be the most effective way to get to college because he would then have to go for better coaches. You'd have a much better, tighter process. It's just so much easier and simpler to go for higher goals. One thing that I know Fire Nation is, is action takers. We love taking action. We love putting one foot in front of the other. I think we really understand what you're saying when striving for impossible goals is actually easier than a lot of us believe it is because of something that you just shared.

6:07But what do we need to start doing today if we're action takers and we want to become 10x our current self? Beautiful question. One of the major differences between 10x versus 2x. So if you're going to go for 2x growth in anything, as an example, like I've got, you know, my books have sold, you know, x amount of copies. So if I want to double that, right, then most of my strategy can stay the same, because to go for double, I don't really have to change that much. And so if I'm going for 2x, what that means is that I'm pretty much operating from my past, and I'm using my past to dictate my strategy for the future.

6:40And it's not really going for that much of a change. It's a marginal change. So kind of looking at it from the 80-20 perspective, if you want to go for 2x growth, you can actually keep the 80 % of your life. You can keep 80 % of what you're doing right now and who you are if you want to go for 2x. There's not that much change, whereas 10x is fundamentally different. 10x is not based on the past. It's actually based on a seemingly impossible but really compelling and exciting future that you want. And 10x is so big, it's a much higher filter that in order to go 10x, and this goes straight back to my story with my son, Caleb, only the best 20 % of what you're now doing can stay.

7:1780 % of your current life situation habits are irrelevant at 10X. So 10X weeds 80 % out. And so I think a really useful thing, number one, is to define what's the 10X you most want. And it doesn't always have to be quantitative. It can actually be qualitative, meaning like maybe you want to shift your focus and do something different, something that's more meaningful. But you let the future, not the past, you let the future become the filter for what you do in the present. And because the future is so big, it's a much higher filter, meaning there's a lot less options. And so how I look at it is, is the 80 % of your life right now, there is 80 % of everyone who's listening to this life right now that is irrelevant to their 10x goal.

7:56And so the more honest you are about that, the more you can start letting go of that 80%. And that 80 % is your past self. It's also your security blanket, the 20 % is what you want to go deep on. And if If you go deep on that 20 % and get 10 times better at that, then 10 times bigger takes care of itself. So it's like, what's the 10x you want to go for? And what's the 20 % that if you went all in on, which is freedom, you could actually start being who you want to be and creating that. But it's going to require that you let go of the 80%. And so for everyone here, what is that 80 % that's your past self, but not your future self?

8:30And how can you start peeling away some of that, letting go of some of that? See, I love this Fire Nation because I frankly couldn't do everything when I launched Entrepreneurs on Fire back in 2012. I wanted to be the first daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs that caused so much focus, so much dedication. It was all consuming until I was able to build the team and the process and the systems. Then I was able to branch out and do other things. But that was the key that I drilled in on, which many people called impossible. And again, this was my coach, my mastermind leader, they said, it's impossible.

9:00But guess what? I was able to do it with a ton of hard work and focus and over time, build up the exact team processes, energy that I want to give to this business that I'm talking to you about right now. Now, one thing that I really want to get into is the fact that you believe in increasing quality and decreasing the quantity of our actions. This is what we've been kind of talking about already with the focus, but let's really get into what you mean by increasing quality and decreasing quantity. How can we actually do that day to day? A lot of it has to do with your attention. So as an example, if someone's caught up in the 80%, whatever that means, like they're caught up in distractions, et cetera, most people's attention is quite surface level these days.

9:48A lot of that has to do with the distractions we have, but also a lot of it has to do with just that we're doing too many things. We're focused on quantity in today's world over quality. And so if you want to go 10x, you really do want to focus on quality first, which is getting 10 times better at something like I'll give an example. So Steve Jobs, when he innovated the iPod, he innovated music, right? So it back in the day, back in the 90s, like music was on CDs, and you had to go to the store and buy a CD, you only wanted one song, right? But you bought the whole CD, because that was the only way to get it, you had to take it home, you now have this big bag of CDs, and 80 % of the music on those CDs, you didn't even want, And so he actually focused on quality, a qualitative change.

10:26It wasn't that he focused on quantity, let's find a way to help people get 10 times more CDs. No, it's let's focus on how to make it 10 times easier to get the music you want. And so it was a qualitative change. And anything that's truly good and valuable is really about quality. But in order to reach that level of quality, just as you were saying, you've got to go to that level of focus. And so it's mostly about attention. We have a massive quantity of attention, but a really low quality of attention. In order to get 10 times better at something, to become a master at something, to develop mastery, you've got to actually go deep into something.

11:02And so it's really, I would invite people to really think about when it comes to quality over quantity, mostly about attention. Where's all your attention? And how can you give more quality attention to the things that actually matter? The things in those 20 % could be relationships. It could be activities. It could be skills you want to develop. It should be related though to the 10x you want. So it's really about attention. Fire Nation, are you focused on attention? Are you focused on increasing quality? Are you focused on decreasing the quantity of your actions? So many people are quote unquote busy every day, all day, but who's really being productive?

11:34Who's really focusing on what really matters? We have a lot to talk about unique ability, 10Xing, vision, creativity, innovation, and more when we get back from thinking our sponsors. We all want the same things for our business. more leads, faster sales, and better insights so we can serve our customers at the highest level. One thing we all don't want, to waste time and money trying to figure these things out. So what's the solution? A CRM that's easy to set up and customize sounds too good to be true, right? But this CRM exists and it's called HubSpot. What sets HubSpot apart is it's easy to use and integrate instead of wasting days or even months trying to figure everything out.

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12:44That's HubSpot.com. Did you know that most leaders waste up to 70 % of their time on tasks they shouldn't be doing in the first place? You know, like managing routine details, scheduling meetings, replying to emails, and processing reports. If this sounds familiar, then I have the solution for you. It's time to delegate those routine tasks to a Belay VA. It's time to take back your time and spend your days casting vision, growing revenue, and scaling your business instead. Belay has been helping entrepreneurs scale and succeed for over a decade through fractional, highly vetted US-based virtual assistants, bookkeepers, and social media managers.

13:21It's time to give away the administrative tasks so you can start accomplishing more and juggling less with Belay. And to help you get started, Belay is offering Fire Nation, their resource, your personal guide to a productive work week for free. Learn how to make the most of your time and maximize your results today. Just text FIRE. That's F-I-R-E-2-5-5-1-2-3 to download your free guide to a productive work week. Benjamin, we're back. And I teased before the break, unique ability. You believe that we need to clarify our own unique ability, which will help us increase the money that we're paid for this ability.

14:02Tell us more about this. So this is a classic Dan Sullivan concept. Dan Sullivan, obviously the founder of Strategic Coach. He's been coaching entrepreneurs for 50 years. Unique ability is one of the core kind of ideas that he has to help entrepreneurs peel away the layers, right? So we've already been talking about getting out of the 80%, getting into the 20%. Well, what is that 20 %? Who's your 10x future self? A good way of looking at unique ability is it's kind of peeling away the layers of the onion, and it's that which you most want. It's that which you have most intrinsic motivation towards, and that which you have the ability to develop mastery in, but also the desire to develop mastery in.

14:36And so part of peeling away the layers, kind of like in the analogy that we kind of used in the book and just the analogy I think of when I think of 10X or taking a big leap is the David. So this is Michelangelo when he was asked by the pope, how did you create the big 17-foot statue David? He said, well, I just stripped away everything that was not the David. And so unique ability, at least as I understand it, is about stripping away everything that you think you need or everything you think other people think you need and solely focusing on what you most want. that which is most intrinsically motivating, that which is most exciting, that which you think has infinite upside, right?

15:13If something doesn't have massive potential of growth and opportunity and progression, then it's probably not unique ability. One thing I will say, though, is unique ability isn't just one activity. Like as an example, I certainly like love writing books and stuff like that. My unique ability isn't writing books, although it can be applied to writing books. It's really about how I approach what I do in the way that makes it unique. This is why I look at it more like mastery. And mastery is not just doing something well. There's a difference between being a master and being an expert. A lot of people are experts, meaning they can do something well.

15:46Being a master means you do something uniquely well. It means you do something that no one else can replicate. They can only learn from. So if you think about someone like the Beatles or like Vincent Van Gogh or even like Elon Musk, these people are masters because they're being really true to themselves. They're being really unique. They're doing it in their own best way and in their own best flow. So it's really about stripping all that away and being in your own rhythm and doing things the best way you can in the most unique way you can and doing it in the way that you want to, not in the way you think you have to or in the way other people do it.

16:15You stop replicating others when you start focusing on mastery. I love that word mastery. And I love when people focus on that word, Fire Nation, because there's so much behind that. And one thing that we did also talk about pre-break is 10xing the vision, the creativity, and the innovation that we're currently experiencing. If we want to do these things, Benjamin, what are our next steps? Obviously, a first step is taking the vision and making it bigger. That goes to, again, back to the example of my son, Caleb. If he actually wants to become a better tennis player, it would help to have a much higher goal.

16:50That would obviously force him down a different path. He'd have to get different mentors, different teachers. In psychology, the development of mastery is a concept called deliberate practice. And deliberate practice is really the idea of purposeful practice towards a goal. It's not about quantity of practice. It's not about quantity of reps. It's about the quality of those reps based on a goal or a standard that you're working towards. And so you could do something a thousand times and literally get no better at it. Like, and this is what, this is kind of the difference between how Malcolm Gladwell talked about.

17:24Malcolm Gladwell talked about doing something for 10 ,000 hours. we all do things for a huge accumulated time and get worse at it like take driving as an example we could you could drive for 30 or 40 years and actually get worse at it and so it's not about accumulation of experience or reps it's about the quality of your experience and reps towards a specific goal so if my son as an example was striving for a level of mastery at the college level his practice on a daily basis and his process is going to look very different than if he was going for a much higher goal. That higher goal would require a much different daily process and practice.

18:00The goal is always what determines the process and the quality and the direction of that practice. And so this is why I think it's really important. I actually prefer the concept of standards over goals, but choosing the standard that you want to live at, and standard is a big part of your identity, but just choosing what matters to you, the level you want to do it, the standard at which you want to do it, and then ultimately, you know, shaping your daily process and practice so that you're actually getting better. That's how I look at it. I love that, looking at Fire Nation. The way that you're going to actually go through this process is very critical.

18:34And one thing that you have, Benjamin, that I'm very interested in learning more about is self-managing company. What is a self-managing company? And why does Fire Nation need to think about creating one? This is, again, another Dan concept. And it fits a lot with a lot of the research on transformational leadership theory. Transformational leadership theory is like one of the core leadership models. But a self-managing company or self-managing team is a really epic way to build a company. And I don't think most entrepreneurs look at it this way. Most entrepreneurs, they're building a company and they still see themselves as the core leader of it.

19:09And even most of them get bottlenecked as the manager of it. And honestly, even people who are running big companies, they're still in the business. business, not working on the business. And because they're in it, they're caught up in that 80%. They're aware of so many things going on in the business. They're the touchpoint on so many different things that they haven't actually freed themselves up. And so part of becoming a transformational leader and building a self-managing team or self-managing company is that you've got to actually trust yourself first. And leadership is really about two things.

19:44It's firstly about trust, secondly, about transformation, but you have to trust yourself enough to free yourself into that 20 % so that you're no longer even aware, back to attention, you're no longer even aware of 90 % or more of the things happening in the business. Like you've actually built a team you can trust to manage that so that your mind, your attention can go deep into getting 10 times better, more innovative in what you want to do best. We'll call it your unique ability. and in the level of master you want. And so in order to do that, not only do you have to trust yourself and free yourself, you also have to have a team that you trust and you empower them to be leaders.

20:22So in psychology, there's a theory called self-determination theory. It's like one of the core motivation theories, but a core aspect of motivation for people is number one, they have to feel competent. They have to feel capable. But secondly, they have to feel autonomous. They have to feel like they have choice and that they're not just being hovered over, but that they have responsibility. And so what happens is when a leader trusts themselves enough to free themselves and they trust leaders or a team enough to handle things and even to make mistakes and to make decisions and to move things forward, then the team starts to trust themselves more and starts to take more initiative.

20:55And they also start to then trust the leader more. And once that happens and everyone starts transforming together. And so I just think that most leaders don't even set out to have a company that manages itself. Like it's never even an intention that I want to create a company that honestly, the day to day manages itself. Like, yes, I'm involved. I'm connecting with the, you know, whether it's a core assistant or a leader, a CEO of some sort. Like, yes, I'm regularly communicating with them and regularly collaborating, but I'm not in their space. I'm not in their zone. Like they're in their zone.

21:28This is what they're leading. This is what they're managing. And it manages itself very effectively. In fact, it manages itself enormously better than if I was there because I would be bottlenecking it. Instead, I'm actually in my space and they're in their space. Fire Nation, there's so many things I love about what Benjamin just shared. One thing I wrote down was this. So please listen up. You have to trust yourself to free yourself. Ask yourself this question, Fire Nation. Do you trust yourself? Benjamin, value bombs galore. Give us a final takeaway. Give us a call to action about how we can consume more of your content.

22:04Then we'll say goodbye. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, obviously just BenjaminHurry.com. I would invite readers to check out the introduction of 10X is Easier Than 2X, the story of Michelangelo and all of his 10Xs and how he stripped away his former self, the 80%, and reached insane levels of mastery, obviously. we wouldn't know who he was if he had just done a million things. It's the utter ridiculous quality of what he did. And there's a lot of research, obviously, on future self and even growth mindset showing that, and I'm just saying this to anyone listening, you can actually get 10 times better at what you want to do than you are now.

22:43Just as probably if you were to honestly look back on your past self, there was a point in time, of course, when you were one 10th as either skilled or knowledgeable or is wealthy or whatever, had as many page views as you now have. So of course you've gone many times in the past, but the key thing here is, is that you can become 10 times better and more valuable, more useful than you are now. And it's an invitation to do that. So I would just challenge any listener, read the intro. If it doesn't blow your mind, literally throw it away. I love that because Fire Nation, you're the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with.

23:17You've been hanging out with BH and JLD, so keep up that heat. Head over to eofire.com, type Benjamin in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. One more time, Benjamin, give us that call to action. Read the introduction of 10X is easier than 2X. If it doesn't blow you away, throw it away. If it doesn't blow you away, Fire Nation, throw it away. Benjamin, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. I salute you, my friend. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors for sponsoring today's episode.