What Got You Here Won't Get You There

Last month I put together a Revenue Sprint for a group of founders. Before we got started, I sent out a Google Form with a question that I've asked nearly every client over the last few years:

What would have to happen for your business to 10x in 2027?

The responses followed a pattern. Most people answered with a joke, wrote "I don't know," or found a way to avoid the question altogether. These weren't new entrepreneurs trying to figure out where to start, they were founders who have built successful businesses by almost any standard. They are driven, focused, and exceptional at what they do so it wasn’t as if they lacked ambition but this was obviously a common theme.

Since then I thought a lot about why that question is so difficult to answer and I don't think it's because we lack ambition, I think it's because questions like this force us into new thinking.  We immediately begin trying to solve tomorrows business with todays assumptions, and that's where we get stuck.

Almost without realizing it, our minds begin defending the current version of the business.

“I'm already overwhelmed, I don't want to work 10x harder, that sounds miserable.” The assumption is that a 10x business requires 10x more work because that's how most of us built the business we have today. We worked harder, said yes more often, wore every hat, solved every problem ourselves, and did whatever it took to make it work. Those habits got us here, but they probably won't get us where we ultimately want to go.

After reading through the responses, I realized I needed to answer the same question myself so that I could process my current founder emotions versus someone working with a business and not tied down with potentially false beliefs.

Today, High Achievers has 33 members, 16 who are spread between 3 mastermind groups. If I asked myself how I would serve 330 members by simply doing more of what I'm already doing, the answer was obvious, I wouldn't. I don't want 20 mastermind groups on my calendar every week, and I certainly don't want to sacrifice my family or the quality of the experience just to grow.

As I started thinking through the exercise, I realized something I hadn't seen before. I wasn't limited by demand or opportunity, I was limited by the way I imagined the business had to work. I had unintentionally created a ceiling because I assumed the future version of High Achievers had to look like the current version,

That realization allowed me to shift my thinking, instead of asking, "How do I help 10x more founders directly?" I started asking, "How do I create an experience that helps 10x more founders succeed?" Those are two completely different questions, and they lead to completely different solutions.

That's exactly what led to High Achievers 2.0. Instead of every founder jumping directly into a mastermind, everyone will now starts with the same 90-day foundation. The best lessons, exercises, recordings, and frameworks are available from day 1, founder relationships are intentionally designed instead of left to chance, and masterminds become the next step for some instead of the first for most.

Whether you want to 10x your business next year isn't really the point. The point is to ask a question big enough that it forces you to challenge the assumptions you've accepted as fact. My guess is you won't walk away with a perfect roadmap, but you will probably discover a few things you need to stop doing, a few things you've been avoiding, and a few opportunities you couldn't see before.

If you'd like to work through the same exercise, I put together Founder Framework | The 10x Question, the same framework I use with clients. Set aside 20 uninterrupted minutes, answer the questions honestly, and don't worry about whether your ideas seem realistic. The goal isn't to predict the future, it's to challenge the blueprint you're using to build it.

You may not build a business that's 10x bigger next year, but I can almost guarantee you'll see it differently.

Sometimes that's all growth really is, the same question, a different solution.