10x Is Easier Than 2x

10x Is Easier Than 2x

Chad Willardson was doing everything right. By any external measure, his financial advisory firm Pacific Capital was a success. Growing revenues, a loyal client base, a team of ten people, a calendar so packed he had to schedule bathroom breaks between client calls. He was pushing hard toward the next level -- more clients, more products, more complexity -- and he was exhausted in a way that a vacation could not fix.

Then he sat in a Strategic Coach workshop in Chicago and 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 answering, and something uncomfortable happened. The answer was not "work harder." The answer was not "hire faster." The answer was "eliminate most of what I'm currently doing." The high-maintenance clients who occupied 80 percent of his time but generated 20 percent of his revenue. The service lines he had added because it seemed smart to diversify. The operational meetings that kept his team busy but moved nothing forward. The entire architecture of how he ran Pacific Capital had been optimized for 2x -- for doing what he was already doing, slightly faster and bigger. It had never been questioned at the level of what his company could actually become.

That question changed his business. He dropped roughly 80 percent of his clients. Not because they were bad people, but because they were 2x clients -- clients who fit the version of Pacific Capital that existed, not the version that was possible. He rebuilt around a narrow, clearly defined ideal client profile. He restructured his team around the handful of activities where he was genuinely irreplaceable. Within a few years, Pacific Capital had not just doubled -- it had grown by multiples that would have seemed delusional the morning he walked into that workshop.