4 Questions to Accelerate Your Growth

People have odd hobbies, and I’ll tell you about one guy’s before we get into 2 complimentary concepts (10K Work and 10X Growth) that you need to know in order to ask 4 most excellent and revealing questions.

Next to extreme ironing or hobby horse competitions, Wally Wallington’s penchant for moving heavy objects seems almost normal, and by heavy object, I don’t mean 100-pound barbells but a 20-ton barn. Wallington set out to prove that the ancient Celts (think: Stonehenge) and the ancient Egyptians (think: pyramids) could have moved huge blocks of stone with tools available at the time (think: levers, counterweights, and pivots).

You’re probably familiar with this famous quote from Archimedes: “Give me a retired construction worker from Michigan and a place to stand, and I can walk 40,000 lbs (or 18,000 kg) of old wood across the yard.” Okay, that’s made up, but Wallington accomplished some amazing feats of… well, moving… through manipulating leverage.

Embracing Strategic Laziness

That’s a fascination I share with Wallington, though mine had less to do with force multipliers and more to do with what I’ll call “strategic laziness.”

Even in my early teenage years, I looked for ways to get the maximum output, or an A, with minimum input. I didn’t cheat because that would have spoiled the game, so from the first day of each class, I looked for patterns and tried to figure out which assignments I could safely ignore.

Because if it didn’t count toward the final grade, why bother?

I was trying to get better results with less effort and little did I know that looking for levers would become an enduring fascination, one I’ve already written about in this post for freelancers and other solopreneurs.

Doing $10K Work

It’s June 2022, and I’m sitting in Khe Hy’s workshop at Craft+Commerce and listening to him talk about about $10K Work. (The full essay, “The magic of doing $10,000 per hour work,” is definitely worth your time.)

“$10 work is work you can do hungover,” Khe said with a smile. “You can answer email hungover.”

The question that comes next causes inbox zero junkies like myself to squirm in our seats: “What is 1000x more impactful than inbox zero?”

Your $10K Work.

$10K Work is to solopreneurs what levers and pivots are to Wally. Once you start looking for principles, concepts, and other metaphorical levers, you’ll find them hiding in plain view, often in the writing of lucid thinkers and high achievers. $10K Work is one of those concepts because it provides a way to filter through all the projects and tasks clamoring for attention and isolate the handful with the greatest potential impact.

Khe broke down tasks for a filmmaker he’d coached:

• $10 – Running errands
• $100 – Editing film
• $1000 – Storyboarding
• $10,000 – Fundraising

She can’t finish a film without editing. That’s obvious enough, but what if she were to court investors and bankroll a $10 million project instead? Securing funding would change the trajectory of her career.

The importance of fundraising when Khe broke it down so neatly, and you can guide yourself through a similar process:

• Find the work that gives you the most leverage.
• Spend more time doing that.
• Grow faster.

So why don’t more of us narrow our focus this way more often? Well, we’re prone to bike shedding. To use C. Northcote Parkinson's original 1957 example, we’ll spend more time discussing the plan for the new bike shed than the new nuclear power plant. That is, we’ll spend most of our time on what is least important.

For that reason, $10K Work is a filter we must keep using, knowing that it’s all too easy to relax back into this law of triviality.

Robert Brault described the plight of so many capable and distractable freelancers and creatives:

“We are kept from our goals not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal.”

Plenty of less talented people with narrower focus accomplished more than wildly talented peers with the chronic problem of spreading their attention across too many different plans and pursuits.

One last observation about $10K Work before we move on to the next concept…

Your $10K Work may involve doing less but better, or it may involve acquiring certain skills. In our filmmaker’s case fundraising represented the skill, rather than incremental gains in the craft of filmmaking itself, that could catapult her career to a higher level.

None of us disputes the value of other skills in the business context, such as writing, sales, software engineering, public speaking, and design. One well-delivered speech can spread an idea or catalyze a movement. How much further did the message of “I Have A Dream” spread because Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. understood how to captivate an audience? One well-designed product can turn a company like Nest into a household name.

Yes, certain skills give you exponentially more leverage, and inside of a business, certain tasks and projects give you exponentially higher returns.

Now, some of you might be thinking that this sounds hard, but in his book, 10X Is Easier Than 2X, Dr. Benjamin Hardy argues that 10x growth is easier than 2x growth. Here’s a much-simplified version of his argument:

• If you want to double your income, you can do that a million different ways. You end up putting 5% of your effort into 20 different things.
• But if you want to 10x your income (or writing output or weekend barn-moving exploits), the field of viable strategies narrows to a tiny number. If you were to put 50% of your effort into just two of them, then each strategy would get 10x the time and effort.

Thinking in terms of 10x thus eliminates the anemic 2X strategies and ensures that you spend your time and effort only on high-potential opportunities. The 10x concept is a pair of magic spectacles you put on to produce strategic blindness.

Of course, the question is, what could happen in your business, finances, and life if you spend most of your time on $10K Work and discarded 2x strategies in favor of 10x ones? First, you have to extract the insights. Asking these 4 questions may be your $10K Work:

1. What is my $10K Work?
2. What could transform my business?
3. What is my primary limiting constraint?
4. Which 1 or 2 strategies could truly 10x my growth?

When you’re ready, here are ways I can help you:

1. Free Money. A pricing and money mindset guide for freelance creatives. If you’re unsure about your freelance pricing, this is the book for you.
2. Morning Marketing Habit. This course will help you build an “always be marketing” practice, become less dependent on referrals, and proactively build the business you want with the clients you want. My own morning marketing habit has enabled me to consistently make  6 figures as a freelancer.
3. Custom Business Roadmap. Gain clarity, confidence, and momentum in your freelance or consulting business.
4. Business Redesign. Raise your effective hourly rate, delegate with confidence, and free up 40 hours a month.
5. Clarity Session. It’s hard to read the label when you’re inside the bottle. I've done well over 100 of these 1:1 sessions with founders, solopreneurs, and freelancers who wanted guidance, a second opinion, or help creating a plan.