I wanted a clever message to usher in 2024. Alas, I wrote this email instead 🙂
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If you are like me, then you have probably been thinking about ways you’d like to elevate your business this year.
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Increase sales…
Build out your team…
Buy a ‘company’ private jet…
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All worthy goals, of course.
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But each of these…and frankly MOST business goals…focus exclusively on adding or increasing.
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More sales, growing your prospect pipeline, expanding your products/services…
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Instead, I encourage you to focus on SUBTRACTING.
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In other words, what parts of your business can you STOP doing… that will allow you to concentrate more time, energy, and creativity into your most profitable products, services, or target audience?
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​Are there products that need to be cut?
Services that need to be discontinued?
Or clients that need to be fired? ​
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Because chances are, a high percentage of your business stress (and roadblocks) lie in those areas.
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Adding more and more to your business is 2X thinking. It’s the belief that just doing more of what you are doing will lead to twice the growth.
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It’s focused on quantity.
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But 10X growth is all about subtracting. It’s doubling down on the most important aspects of your business.
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The famous Michelangelo understood this principle clearly.
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When the Pope asked about the secret of his genius, particularly in regard to the statue of David, the sculptor explained…
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​“It’s simple. I just remove everything that’s not David.” ​
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10X is all about quality, not quantity.
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It forces you to eliminate all those things that don’t contribute towards 10X results.
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It’s removing everything that isn’t the best and highest use of your time.
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It’s the good ol’ 80/20 principle where you hone in on the 20% of your business that’s driving 80% of your revenue.
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I read this quote from Richard Koch yesterday that hits the nail right on the head:
In case that picture is hard to read, here is the quote:
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​“The road to hell is paved with the pursuit of volume. Volume leads to marginal products, marginal customers, and greatly increased managerial complexity…
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Hard work leads to low returns. Insight and doing what we want leads to high returns…
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Strive for excellence in few things, rather than good performance in many…It is not shortage of time that should worry us, but the tendency for the majority of time to be spent in low-quality ways…
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The 80/20 principles says that if we doubled our time on the top 20 percent of activities, we could work a two-day week and achieve 60 percent more than now.” ​
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So this year, identify which things you can STOP doing and I am confident that you will be amazed at what happens.
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Here’s to 2024!
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-Mark