What you’ll learn in this Multiplier Mindset blog post:
- The importance of creating a 10x vision for both business and personal growth.
- The framework for working smarter, not harder as an already successful entrepreneur.
- The strategic thinking framework that over 20,000 successful entrepreneurs have used to build their 10x visions, plus bonus strategies to stay focused, measure progress effectively, and adapt to change creatively.
It’s no secret that every entrepreneur wants to grow their business. Entrepreneurs are famously ambitious and driven. But creating a business growth plan can be difficult. There are many business growth strategies out there, and it can be hard to know which one is best for your business and, more importantly, which strategy will grow your business 2x or even 10x.
At Strategic Coach, we help entrepreneurs think about their thinking. We don’t focus on marketing tactics or “growth hacks” because at the end of the day, most entrepreneurs already understand how to grow their businesses. What they need is to slow down and expand their thinking.
That’s why we emphasize the importance of creating a 10x vision for your life and your business. It’s the best way to grow as an entrepreneur while also growing your company. Your 10x vision will force you to do things differently because you can’t be anchored by what’s going on right now or by whatever structure, habits, or results are informing how you operate.
The good news is, you already have a vision in your head! You just need to get it out—and we can help.
Vision: The best business growth strategy.
Creating a vision is not nearly as complicated as it may seem. It all comes down to shifting your mindset and getting clear on what you’re ultimately looking for in your life and business. Dan Sullivan boils it down to one simple sentence: “Always make your future bigger than your past.”
This simple mindset is the best business growth strategy. It’s particularly important to recognize and focus on the “bigger than your past” segment. To give yourself direction on what you want to do going forward, you need to utilize the most important learning and growth experiences from your past.
Ask yourself, “What has been working in my business? What has been my biggest area of learning?”
Think of that specific learning and keep it in mind throughout the creation of your vision and the growth of your business. Looking back on your biggest learning moments will always help to provide direction on the best way to move forward and grow.
The best business growth strategy plan is the one that pushes you out of your comfort zone so you reach a higher level of “normal.” If you can just focus on making your future bigger than your past, you’ll continue to gain momentum and grow your business.
But as valuable as this mindset is, it’s not quite enough. Let’s talk about how to get a little more strategic with your vision and why that’s so important for business growth.
Creating your bigger future.
In becoming an entrepreneur, you made a fundamental decision to cross an invisible “risk line” where you moved out of operating from the security of the “Time and Effort Economy” and into the “Results Economy.” In the Results Economy, there’s no guaranteed income—only the opportunities you create for yourself. This decision is brave. It’s bold. And it puts you in the driver’s seat for your future freedom, success, and happiness.
But with every jump in your entrepreneurial success comes the inevitable potential for increased complexity. It becomes more and more important to create a framework for determining what freedom means for you—a framework for working smarter, not harder.
At Strategic Coach, we look at entrepreneurial freedoms in four ways:
- TIME: Being increasingly in control over your time and having the freedom to devote it to whatever activities you choose, both personally and professionally.
- MONEY: Having confidence that there is no upper limit or restriction to how much money you can make.
- RELATIONSHIP: Aligning yourself with the people you want to work with—people who give you energy and support your bigger future.
- PURPOSE: Creating an entrepreneurial company that’s not just for your business career, but a vehicle for increasingly living your life the way you want to live it and achieving the things that are most important to you.
Successful entrepreneurs are constantly resetting and refining what represents freedom in each of these areas in order to create a future that’s bigger than their past. You’ll do this too, as you build out your 10x vision.
At this point in your 10x vision planning, ask yourself Dan Sullivan’s R-Factor Question:
“If we were meeting here three years from today, and you were to look back over those three years to today, what has to have happened both personally and professionally for you to feel happy about your progress?”
This question will project you out of your present circumstances into a 10x future—one where your results happen 10x faster, 10x easier, 10x cheaper, and 10x bigger. Looking back, what would you change now?
You get to decide what’s important and what’s not in your growth journey—the future is your property. And once you’ve decided on these important items, you can begin crafting a plan with goals and intentional action items.
Getting started with your vision.
There are three key mindsets that will help you stay on track with your goals and on your 10x vision focus.
The Gap And The Gain
When you set a goal in business or life, you need to have some way of measuring your progress to determine whether you’ve achieved the goal. We’ve found that there are two ways to measure success, and only one will lead to increased productivity, team satisfaction, and an optimistic outlook for everyone in your business. Check out this blog post to learn more about The Gap And The Gain.
The 80% Approach
At Strategic Coach, we don’t aim for 100%—we aim for 80%. We believe there’s no such thing as 100% because we learn and grow on the first attempt, which means our “ideal” 10x vision result is always changing. Expecting perfection leads to paralysis, not action. In fact, there’s room for great teamwork when we do our best 80% and then hand the project off to someone whose talents will take it the next 80%.
Being Creative vs. Reactive
Fast change is not only possible, it’s inevitable. So the question becomes, are you going to be creative with that experience or reactive? Whether the consequences of change are good or bad will be entirely a function of your mindset. If you adapt your mind to thinking 10x no matter what happens around you, you will have a creative experience. You’ll feel like you’re on top of events and will actually enjoy them.
The bottom line.
It’s important to remember why you became an entrepreneur in the first place. Yes, you need to grow your business—but you also need to focus on growing it into the business you desire. Unlike most people, you have the freedom to create your ideal lifestyle. Your growth as an entrepreneur should be fun, and growing your business should be enjoyable.
That all starts with having a 10x vision.
If you’d like to talk with someone about your entrepreneurial vision, you can always schedule a free Discovery Call with one of our Membership Advisors. On that call, they’ll get you started on your 10x vision by helping you determine your dangers, opportunities, and strengths, and then use that to figure out what’s possible in the next three years for your business.