Do you want to achieve extraordinary success? What if the secret lies not in working harder, but in thinking bigger?
Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy’s book, 10x Is Easier Than 2x, reveals why pursuing 10x growth actually creates a clearer path to success than attempting modest improvements. Their approach challenges traditional thinking about goal-setting and personal development.
Discover how aiming for exponential rather than incremental progress can transform your business, career, and life.
The Transformative Power of 10x Growth
Sullivan and Hardy explain three reasons 10x growth is more achievable and transformative than 2x growth:
1. 10x growth makes you work smarter, not harder. When people try to achieve 2x growth, they typically do so by increasing their work and effort—putting in longer hours at the office, for instance. This approach is tiring, and it doesn’t lead to meaningful changes to how you work. Pursuing 10x growth is such a monumental task, however, that it drives you to rethink your approach. You simply can’t work 10 times harder or longer, so you’re forced to find new ways to work smarter. This ambitious level of growth sparks your creativity, helping you think up transformative solutions and continually grow yourself and your company.
(Shortform note: Alphabet’s X research division refers to the pursuit of 10x growth as “moonshot thinking.” Like Sullivan and Hardy, the head of X, Astro Teller, argues that 10x improvements push creativity and require bravery—the kind that put humans on the moon. X applies this thinking to tackling global problems and developing new technologies, and doesn’t just try to incrementally improve existing solutions. Instead, their teams rethink the approach, coming up with radically new ways to address challenges like providing internet access to remote areas (Project Loon), reducing carbon emissions (Project Foghorn), and revolutionizing transportation with self-driving cars (Project Waymo).)
2. 10x growth provides focus. There are many ways you can achieve 2x goals, which makes it harder to determine where you should best focus your efforts. This often leads to scattered efforts, wasted resources, and slower progress as you try different approaches. In contrast, 10x goals are so ambitious that most approaches wouldn’t work, revealing only a few paths you could take. This instantly narrows the field of possibilities to only the most transformative ideas, allowing you to take more decisive action and not waste time on low-impact efforts.
For example, a small bakery trying to double its revenue might consider extending hours, adding products, increasing marketing, and so on. With so many options, the bakery might waste months testing different approaches or spread itself too thin trying everything at once. But if it aimed for 10x growth, the bakery would need to think bigger, and there are only a few ideas that could achieve this scale, like franchising nationally or becoming a large-scale supplier. This clarity helps the bakery focus its resources and energy on the most impactful opportunities rather than getting distracted by smaller improvements.
(Shortform note: As Sullivan and Hardy write, having 10x goals reduces the number of paths you take, which streamlines your approach. Research shows that having fewer options has the added benefit of leading to decisive action—in one study, when shoppers were presented with 24 flavors of jam, only 3% ended up buying, but when they had a choice of just six flavors, 30% made a purchase. Experts explain that this is due to decision paralysis: When there are too many choices, people get overwhelmed comparing all the possibilities and end up making no choice at all. By narrowing your options, ambitious 10x goals prevent this from happening, giving you a clearer way forward.)
3. 10x growth means less competition. Most people set achievable targets, creating a crowded field of competitors all striving for similar outcomes. Since fewer people are aiming for ambitious 10x goals, you’ll have a better chance of success.
For example, let’s look at how this works for a personal trainer. Most trainers might compete for clients in the $50-$100 per session range, creating an overcrowded market where dozens of trainers fight for the same customers. But imagine a trainer who aims 10x higher—targeting high-end clients at $500 per session. This trainer would need to develop premium expertise, create unique programs, and deliver exceptional results. While this seems harder at first, there’s actually less competition at this level because few trainers put in the work to reach this market, making the path to success clearer for those who do.
(Shortform note: Why do we often settle for moderate, achievable goals? In The 10x Rule, Grant Cardone says that growing up, we’re taught to be realistic and set goals based on what others think is possible. This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy—when you set average goals, you put in average effort and get average results. Like Sullivan and Hardy, Cardone argues that you’re more likely to achieve 10x goals because, unlike smaller goals, they energize and motivate you to push through obstacles. To tap into the motivating power of 10x goals, he recommends writing them down in the morning and at night to keep them fresh in your mind.)
