2. Go for the triple double. A triple double is doubling your business three times. In other words, it’s an 8x increase in your business. Whoa.
Imagine for a moment that your business is 8x its current size. What’s your immediate, visceral reaction?
Excitement? Fear? Challenge? Not worth the effort?
Achieving a triple double goal is not nearly as important as what you and your company become along the way. Done in good faith, here are a couple benefits of this stretch goal.
First, growing 8x can increase your impact 8x. And even if you fall short, you will likely be much further ahead than if you set a more conservative goal.
Now, some coaches will bust your chops and hold you accountable for hitting the goal even if you’re miserable in the process. I coach my clients differently. I help my clients set inspiring goals—loosely held. Why loosely? Because I’ve found that the harder you press on your goals, the more elusive they become. You start acting from a place of need and scarcity, which constricts your ability to operate from a position of expansion, flow and possibility.
I love this old Zen Buddhist teaching story:
A young but earnest Zen student approached his teacher, and asked the Zen Master, “If I work very hard and diligently how long will it take for me to find Zen.”
The Master thought about this, then replied, “Ten years.”
The student then said, “But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast? How long then?”
“Twenty years,” said the Master.
“But, if I really, really work at it? How long then?” asked the student.
“Thirty years.”
“But, I do not understand,” said the disappointed student. “Each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?”
“When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path,” replied the Master.
Be inspired by the goal, but not so fixated on it that you lose sight of an unfolding path that might lead to an even better outcome.
Second, going for a triple double requires you to shift from incremental thinking to exponential thinking. Incremental thinkers focus on incremental growth. They look for ways to grow 10–15% per year. Sure, that’s nice growth, but you’re simply not going to hit a triple double by growing 10–15% per year, so you need a new framework for thinking about growth.
It took my old business partner Ron Carson more than 25 years to go from $0 to $1 billion in AUM. When he switched to exponential thinking, he went from $1 billion to $20 billion in just 10 years.
What was the difference? He used leverage. Not financial leverage but people leverage. Instead of trying to grow by building his own team—which was effective but still incremental—he became an acquirer of other firms and a money management platform for advisors who wanted to outsource investment management.
By breaking out of incremental thinking, Ron was forced to come up with a new strategy that would give him the possibility of growing 8x, or in his case, 20x.