Is 10x Really Easier Than 2x?
By VICKY BROWN
I rolled my eyes the first time I heard that 10x is easier than 2x. Of course I did. It sounds like exactly what somebody says on a stage right before they try to sell you a course. Ali Abdaal even admits he’d read the idea before and waved it off. But I was watching him talk with his CEO coach, Eric Partaker, this morning, and the logic held up so well that I stopped rolling my eyes and started doing math on my own company. If you run a business and you’re staring down the fourth quarter a little behind on your goals, stay with me. This might change how you spend the next few months.
Why 10x business goals are a design problem
The idea goes back to Astro Teller, who wrote about it years ago, and it goes like this. When you chase a little bit of growth, you do more of what you’re already doing, just a bit better. A few more sales calls, a slightly higher price, a slightly bigger audience. That’s tinkering, and tinkering works fine at that size.
But when you chase ten times, more of the same can’t get you there. Period. You’ve stopped having an effort problem and started having a design problem. Eric uses a Cessna to explain it. You are not going to 10x your altitude in a little training plane, no matter how hard you shove the throttle forward. You need a different aircraft.
And then there’s the line that really got me. If your current business could 10x, you probably would have done it already. Ouch, right? Because if working harder at the current model could have gotten you there, you’d be standing on the mountaintop with a drink in your hand. And you’re not. Neither am I.
“..Which goals are so big that no amount of effort inside your current model will reach them“
Why working harder is the wrong move when you’re behind
Here’s where my own head went, and I’d bet money yours goes there too. Two years ago we put a three-year plan in place. It’s what people call a BHAG, a big hairy audacious goal, which is a fancy way of saying a goal so large it’s slightly rude. Let’s call it what it is, it’s a 10x goal. And so far, we’re falling short.
So my brain, being a brain, started yelling one thing on a loop. Get things done. Like, done done. And I know exactly where that energy goes, because I’ve watched it happen to me and to a lot of owners I’ve worked with. You pile more onto the list, you work later, you squeeze every last day out of the quarter until it begs for mercy.
Now, if you’re thinking, well, that’s what being behind calls for, I’m going to push back. That’s my take, based on what I’ve lived through, and every business is different. But when the goal is 10x and you’re behind, running the same plan harder is almost never the answer. You can floor a training plane all day long. It still tops out where a training plane tops out.
So the question I keep asking is whether I’ve been chasing a 10x goal in a 2x plane. I don’t have the answer yet. I’m saying it out loud anyway, because I’d rather ask an uncomfortable question in October than get a painful answer in January.
What the fourth quarter is actually good for
Most owners treat October like the runway to the holidays. The year is basically decided, so let’s land this thing gracefully and go eat some pie. And if you’re thinking, it’s October, nothing I do now moves a full-year number, okay, sure. It moves it less than it would have in February. I’ll give you that.
But it can still move the decision. It moves what you stop doing, what you finally commit to, and what you walk into January already knowing. You always have choices, and this is the last quarter where some of them still count for this year.
So if you have a leadership retreat or a planning session on the calendar, here’s how I’d spend it. Three honest conversations. The first is what’s still live. Which goals can you actually still hit, and what would it take with the time you have left? Name the goal, name the number, and name the person who owns it. Vague goals are just wishes in a nice outfit.
The second is what you let go of, on purpose. And I mean on purpose, out loud, in the room. Don’t let a goal quietly die and hope nobody brings it up. Say this one isn’t happening and give that energy back. Your team has probably been carrying it around like a grocery bag with a hole in the bottom, and they’ll be relieved.
The third is the uncomfortable one. What needs a different aircraft entirely? Which goals are so big that no amount of effort inside your current model will reach them, and what would have to change about the model itself?
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The people question hiding inside the big goal
That third conversation almost always turns into a conversation about people. In the video, Eric asks Ali what the 10x seats are, meaning the handful of roles that matter most to hitting the big goal. Then he has Ali work out what those people would cost and when he could realistically afford them. I loved that. It takes a giant, slightly terrifying goal and turns it into a hiring timeline, and a hiring timeline is something you can actually do something about.
Which brings me to the HR piece, and this is where a lot of big plans quietly come apart. If next year means new people, new roles, or new pay structures, two things deserve a real look before January.
The first is wage and hour, which is just the set of rules about how and what you pay people. California’s minimum wage goes to $17.40 an hour on January 1st, up from $16.90. The salary you have to pay an exempt employee is tied to it, at twice the state minimum wage for full-time work, and for 2027 that works out to $72,384 a year. “Exempt” just means a salaried person you don’t owe overtime to, and they only qualify if they clear that number, along with some other tests. I’m not an attorney, so check the details for your situation. But if you’ve got salaried folks you’ve been treating as exempt, it’s a whole lot cheaper to find out in November than in February.
The second is your handbook. Think of it as the written version of how you run your company. If you’ve added people, changed how you pay or schedule them, or picked up new tools since anyone last cracked it open, it’s probably describing a company that doesn’t exist anymore. And you’re the one who gets to explain the gap. Fun.
Here’s why these two slip. They’re nobody’s job. They sit in the founder’s head, on the list of things you know you should do, right underneath whatever you’re currently obsessing over. Big goals rarely get stalled by the big dramatic stuff. They get stalled by the small stuff nobody owns, quietly eating the time you meant to spend on the really important things.
The thing that got you here
So that’s where my head is. Fourth quarter, a 10x plan that’s behind, and a retreat a couple of weeks out. And the thing I can’t stop turning over is this. A goal that big can’t be reached by doing what we’ve been doing, because if it could, we’d have hit it already. Which means somewhere in my business there’s something that got me here, something I’m comfortable with and maybe even a little proud of, that’s also the reason I haven’t gotten any higher.
I’d bet there’s one in yours too. So what is it? What’s the thing that got you here that won’t get you there?
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