10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less

by Dan Sullivan

10x can indeed repel 2x.

Chad exhibits a quality that only the world’s top achievers do: the ability to rapidly accept a new identity.

He let go of being the guy who made hundreds of cold calls a day. He let go of being the first in the office and the last to leave. He let go of being one of the top dogs at one of the biggest financial firms in the world. He let go of needing to always be available and look fancy in a suit. He let go of being the guy who answered his own emails, attended client meetings, or even had his own office. He let go of seeing busyness as a status symbol. He let go of trying to please anyone that wasn’t in his 20 percent.

Your identity is fundamentally two things: it’s 1) the story or narrative you have for yourself, and it’s 2) the standards or commitments you hold for yourself.

your identity as a person is what you’re most committed to.

Letting go of 80 percent of your identity (including activities, situations, and people) can feel like an enormous loss. Letting go of who you’ve been, how people have seen you, and how others have related to you can feel like you’re losing a big part of yourself.

humans have an enormous aversion to loss.6 We fear and avoid loss far more than we seek gain.

Loss aversion primarily manifests itself in three specific forms—1) continuing to invest in something unprofitable simply because you’ve already invested in it (i.e., sunk cost bias),7,8 2) overvaluing something you own, believe, or have created simply because it’s yours (i.e., endowment effect),9,10,11 and 3) continuing to do something you’ve previously done in order to be viewed by yourself and others as consistent (i.e., consi...

Elevating your identity and standards is primarily emotional and thus qualitative, which is why psychological flexibility is so crucial to 10xing. To be psychologically flexible, you become increasingly comfortable and adaptive to situations and challenges which are initially uncomfortable to you.

You commit to the standards you want, even when it’s uncomfortable for a brief time. By embracing your emotions rather than suppressing them, your identity quickly adapts to your new standards and you reach a place of acceptance.

“Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for ‘realistic’ goals, paradoxically making them the most time and energy-consuming. It’s easier to raise $1,000,000 than it is $100,000. It’s easier to pick up the one perfect 10 in the bar than the five 8s.” — TIM FERRISS

When you begin thinking in terms of quality over quantity, you funnel your energy better. You stop burning yourself out pumping out more and more, or doing a million different jobs as a rugged individualist.

Instead, you focus on your 20 percent and get really, really good at what you do. You build a team around you to handle what would have been your 80 percent.

To reach the level of quality that produces exponential results, you need to think exponentially bigger and different. You’ve got to have a vision and standards big enough, and specific enough, that the quality you’re creating is funneled toward that.

Most people miss the gold coins around them because they’re focused on finding the bronze coins. They’re committed to the bronze coins. Their identity is wrapped up in the bronze coins. They’re optimizing themselves and their lives for bronze coins.

You get what you’re focused on.

Here’s where it gets really interesting, though, when you dissect what Jimmy is explaining, and honestly, when you simply break down the core message of this book: despite the fact that all people are driven by their goals, and that we all form a level of proficiency in whatever we focus on, the counterintuitive truth is that massive ambitions are easier than average goals. In other words, 10x is easier than 2x. As Jimmy described, when you think exponentially, it’s no longer about the amount of effort you put in. Instead, it’s about where your effort is directed,

“When 10x is your measuring stick, you immediately see how you can bypass what everyone else is doing.”

They aren’t trying to do 100 things decently. They’re trying to do one thing at a level that’s never been seen before.

You stop following the crowd. You shift toward quality rather than quantity and stop competing with anyone.

“Your behaviors are usually a reflection of your identity. What you do is an indication of the type of person you think you are—either consciously or nonconsciously.”

requires a much higher degree of mastery and focus. You can’t continue juggling as much. You need more time to connect bigger dots.

People make the leap of hiring far too late. By hiring even a personal or digital assistant, as Clear did, you can immediately free up space for your 20 percent, which work is higher value and higher leverage than the 80 percent busy tasks. The longer you wait to get a Who, the slower your progress will be because you’ll be mired in the 80 percent. This not only keeps you split focused, but slows your mastery of the 20 percent.

To make something 10x better involves deep, deep work. Innovation occurs as you break everything down and put it back together in a simpler, easier, and better form.

Innovation happens by focusing on the 20 percent that’s most relevant to the problem you’re trying to solve.

your video or product only needs be 10 or 20 percent better and, importantly, different, to get 4-10x the results of even the “best stuff.”

They aren’t competing with anyone else. Instead, they’re choosing their own standards for themselves, committing to their 20 percent, and building a team around them to manage the rest.

You can be good maintaining the 80 percent, but in order to become great, you must go all-in on the 20 percent and commit to greatness.

every day moving forward, he would write in his journal exactly what he wanted.

By becoming comfortable and unapologetic about wanting what you want—which is a skill you continually enhance—you also learn how to identify and develop what Dan calls your Unique Ability. When you embrace your Unique Ability, you stop worrying about what other people are doing. You stop competing entirely. But also, you realize in the realest sense who you truly are.

A crucial aspect of “wanting what you want” is that you absolutely do not need to justify your desires to anyone.

Wanting is about abundance and creation.

Wanting requires no justification.

Wealth is what you want, not money. But if wealth is the important thing, why does everyone talk about making money?

In simple terms: wealth is value. Wealth is something that someone wants—whether that be a physical commodity, information or knowledge, or some form of service. Value is qualitative and subjective, not quantitative and objective like money is. You can become 10x more valuable and thus wealthy without directly having 10x more money. And indeed, money follows wealth.

10x occurs as you create more wealth, or value. You do this by creating value that is qualitatively different and better (i.e., innovative) than what currently exists in the market.

Wealth and freedom are about value. In his program for high-level entrepreneurs, Dan teaches 4 Freedoms that are about value: The value and quality of your time The value and quality of your money The value and quality of your relationships The value and quality of your overall purpose

10x is the means, freedom is the end.

10x is a qualitative game of increasing the value of your freedoms—and to do so by creating the wealth (skills, knowledge, products, etc.) you intrinsically want to create, and then sharing that wealth with the specific people who increasingly value and appreciate your value.

you focus on building transformational relationships, not transactional ones. Everything you do is about transforming yourself and the unique value you can bring and providing your increasingly unique value to those you want to form transformational relationships with.

“The people most likely to grasp that wealth can be created are the ones who are good at making things, the craftsmen. Their hand-made objects become store-bought ones. But with the rise of industrialization there are fewer and fewer craftsmen.

Needing is reactive, whereas wanting is creative.

Committing to what you want most is the only way to be free. If you do anything out of perceived need or compulsion, then you don’t feel it is really your own choice, but rather, you feel the choice is being made for you. You’re being the victim or byproduct of something external.

You do what you want, because you want to.

When you operate in the world of needs, you always have to rationalize and justify what you’re doing. You can’t simply do something because you want to. You may want a new house, or to go on a six-week vacation, or to chase some dream. Yet, if you’re operating based on need, you likely won’t do any of these things because they can be hard to rationalize.

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”

Wanting what you want is intrinsically motivated. It’s doing something for the sake of it, not because you have to rationalize it.

a “hallmark of good leadership” is making “unpopular decisions.” Eliminating the 80 percent—whatever that looks like for you—will be unpopular for many people in your world.

There is enormous external pressure to keep the 80 percent in your life, because the 80 percent represents security but not freedom.

People don’t get what they want because they’re too busy seeking what they believe they need. They become busy chasing means rather than directly choosing and living their desired end.