Four Questions For Finding Multipliers

I have a formula that anyone can use to discover the multipliers in their business or their life. It starts with looking at any activity and asking yourself four questions:

1. Is there a way we can do this 10 times faster?
2. Is there a way we can do this 10 times easier?
3. Is there a way we can do this 10 times cheaper?
4. Is there a way we can do this to get 10 times the result?

Your answers to these questions give you a scorecard.

Not as difficult as it seems.
You might be thinking, “Ten times?” It may seem high, but 10 times is a lovely number. People say, “I can get you twice the results.” Twice the results — that’s okay, but 10 times really grabs the imagination. At 10 times, it’s not a difference of degree; it’s a difference of kind. It’s big stuff. And if you can pull that off, even in a small way, you have the keys to a much bigger future.

Maybe you can’t get an activity going 10 times faster, but you can get it working twice as fast. Maybe you can’t do it 10 times as easily, but perhaps three times easier is within reach. Perhaps you can’t do it 10 times cheaper, but you can get it down to twice as cheap. And maybe achieving 10 times the result isn’t possible yet, but you can get three times the result.

Look at those numbers again:

2 + 3 + 2 + 3

Add each of those smaller numbers up, and you’ve achieved a multiplier of 10.

Get back four weeks of time.
Another area where people can really benefit from this multiplier effect is in the way they use their time. Say you’re able to eliminate some activity you shouldn’t be doing anyway and free up five hours of your week. If you work 45 weeks a year, you’ll save 225 hours. For an entrepreneur who works 50+ hours per week, that’s like getting four weeks back — just by freeing yourself up from one activity!

You don’t just get rid of the activity, either: You also free yourself from the demands that go along with that activity. So there’s a time savings, and also a psychological and emotional savings.

With all these savings, you get a real burst of energy, and start looking for more efficiencies: “If I can do that with this one activity, maybe I can do it for another and free up two more hours.” Well, multiply two hours by those 45 weeks, and you’ve just freed up another 90 hours.

That 90 hours, moved into a much more productive activity — just thinking time or preparation time — can be devoted to multiplying something that’s much more valuable.

Getting ahead of the world.
Any part of what you’re doing, if looked at from this perspective of “faster, easier, cheaper, and bigger” results, is amenable to getting some kind of multiplier. That’s really exciting, not just because you’re getting a better result, but also because you get the sense that you’re kind of ahead of the world: Other people are getting slowed down by all kinds of complexity in their lives, and here you are winning the race against complexity.

Start where you are.
You don’t have to look far to find the multipliers all around you. Just analyze a week of your time, look what you were involved in, and ask the questions — “Easier? Faster? Cheaper? Bigger result?” — and you’ll see all kinds of ways to create breakthroughs. If you keep doing this week after week, you’ll gain a real sense of momentum — just from doing simple things.

It’s an exciting way to approach the future, expecting that you’ll always be finding multipliers close at hand.

Have you identified any multipliers with these questions that you could use right away to create breakthroughs in your business or your life? Please share!