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10x Is Easier Than 2x
What It’s About
Why aiming for 10x growth is paradoxically easier than aiming for 2x. Dan Sullivan, the entrepreneur coach behind Strategic Coach, and organizational psychologist Dr. Benjamin Hardy take down incremental thinking. 2x means doing more of the same. 10x forces you to drop 80 percent of your activities. The book is about what you keep and what you cut so that 10x becomes possible.
Three Key Ideas
Drop 80 Percent to Grow 10x
Reaching 10x requires eliminating the 80 percent of activities and clients that consume energy but block disproportionate growth.
Unique Ability as the Core Asset
Sustainable 10x growth comes from identifying and protecting the rare activities only you can do that energize you and generate outsized results.
Identity Drives Strategy
A 10x leap is fundamentally an identity shift, and entrepreneurs who plateau usually fail to update their self-concept, not their tactics.
Read a Sample
10x Is Easier Than 2x
Chad Willardson was doing everything right. By any outside measure, his financial advisory firm, Pacific Capital, was a success. Revenue was growing, clients were loyal, he had a team of ten, and his calendar was so packed he had to schedule bathroom breaks between client calls. He was pushing hard toward the next level, meaning more clients, more products and more complexity, and he was tired in a way no vacation could fix.
Then, at a Strategic Coach workshop in Chicago, Dan Sullivan asked him a question that stopped him cold.
"What would you have to stop doing," Sullivan said, "to 10x your business?"
Willardson started to answer, and something uncomfortable happened. The answer wasn't "work harder." It wasn't "hire faster." The answer was "eliminate most of what I'm currently doing." That meant the high-maintenance clients who took up 80 percent of his time but brought in 20 percent of his revenue. It meant the service lines he'd added because diversifying seemed smart. It meant the operational meetings that kept his team busy but didn't move anything forward. The whole way he ran Pacific Capital had been tuned for 2x, for doing what he was already doing, a little faster and a little bigger. Nobody had ever asked what his company could actually become.
Who It’s For
- Anyone who has built a successful business but feels stuck grinding harder for only incremental gains.
- Anyone who wants a clear framework for deciding what to stop doing, not just what to add.
- Anyone who has hit a revenue plateau and suspects the ceiling is structural rather than a lack of skill.
- Anyone who is willing to question whether the busyness they have optimized for is actually what they are best built to do.
About the Author: Dan Sullivan, Benjamin Hardy
Dan Sullivan is the founder of Strategic Coach, a coaching program for entrepreneurs he launched in Toronto in 1989. Drawing on coaching experience that dates back to 1974, he built Strategic Coach into one of the most influential entrepreneur development programs in the world, with over 20,000 clients across North America, Europe, and Australia. His core focus is on what separates entrepreneurs who keep compounding growth from those who plateau.
Benjamin Hardy is an organizational psychologist and bestselling author who earned his PhD from Clemson University. This book is his third collaboration with Sullivan, following Who Not How (2020) and The Gap and the Gain (2021). His research background in identity, future self continuity, and human development gives the book its psychological depth alongside Sullivan's coaching frameworks.
