Here is a thought experiment:
What would you need to do to 100x your sales?
Early in your career, it may seem obvious.
If you’re not profitable, you need to get to a profit. Then it’s just more of the same.
That’s where we often get in the habit of setting mediocre goals—the next increment.
Regardless of industry, most businesses need to undergo structural change to grow exponentially.
What would it take to get your sales to an order of magnitude greater? The system you are employing likely won’t get you there.
One of my favorite quotes is from the architect Daniel Burnham:
“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood, and probably themselves, will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone, be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency.”
The 100x mindset
When you think in the frame of 100x, you will see that a different structure may be necessary. Your business today may not scale to where your products could take it.
Getting to seven figures isn’t a 100x goal. A 100x goal is to build a business system that reliably produces seven figures of profit in a highly uncertain industry.
What would need to be different in your business?
Do you have a multi-million dollar product and production process?
I have multiple clients that net seven figures.
When we started working together, they didn’t have those profit levels, but they always had the potential. We just built the system to 100x.
In many of the cases, we needed to adjust the business in such a way that, at first, it shrunk in revenue. Rarely did the profit decrease. In over 90% of the cases, the business became more profitable on lower sales. Then BOOM, things began to build, and cash flooded the bottom line.
Do you have a nurturing and retention system that could be 100x your audience?
Let’s look at that.
Let’s say you have 10 people that buy everything you make. Going 10x isn’t easy, but it’s only 100 people—you’ll get there, but 100x is 1000. What would the carryover effect be on the market if every time you alerted those 1000 people about a launch, they went into the market and bought your book?
I’ll tell you what would happen. You would routinely put your books into the top 100 of the store without a penny of advertising.
Do you have the audacity to plan for 100x?
I know that sometimes I can be a downer when I highlight how tough it is to succeed in publishing. I tell you this because the gurus don’t, and by knowing, you can be in a better position to act and not think small.
Frame what I say as a way to prepare for success, not as a warning of failure. On the whole, the market continues to get bigger and bigger, so there is room for more success.
Did you know the Bureau of Engraving and Printing prints 541 million dollars of banknotes every day?
Now, 95% replace used notes, but that other 5% means 9.8 billion dollars of cash comes into the economy every year. So why not just decide how much of that you want and go get it? They are going to print another new 27.5 million tomorrow.
All kidding aside, if you make your one-page business plan audacious in its scope and structure and then execute it, you may just find yourself with 500x or 1000x the results.
Read: Coping With Productivity Slumps and Anxiety as a Creative