This week, we’ve been exploring the concept of going 10x in our business and in our lives, as outlined by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy in their book 10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less. Today’s post is a powerful narrative of bringing this idea into reality.
1: It was 1983. Shortly after getting married, Linda McKissack and her husband, Jimmy, “took out a massive loan to start a restaurant similar to Dave and Busters,” Dan and Ben write.
Jimmy had worked in hospitality for nearly ten years. He saw an opportunity and was confident the new venture would be a success. Unfortunately, the Texas economy crashed, and the restaurant fell on hard times.
The couple had to sell it for $600,000 less than they owed on it.
Ouch.
Jimmy wasn’t sleeping at night. “I don’t want to go to bed,” he told Linda, “because bankers call in the morning so when I go to bed, it becomes morning too soon.”
At the time, she was in her early twenties and knew nothing about business. But she understood they were in a difficult situation.
“You know I’m a hard worker,” Linda told Jimmy. “In our family, one job isn’t enough, we always have two.”
Jimmy suggested Linda go into the real estate business. “A mentor of mine once told me a long time ago that if you want to make a lot of money, real estate is the way to do it,” he said.
Growing up, Linda had never lived in a home that was owned. “I don’t even know what real estate is. How do I go into real estate?” she asked.
Jimmy suggested she take some college courses, take the real estate exam, and get a license.
So that’s what Linda did. She passed the exam and joined a real estate brokerage while continuing to attend seminars. Before long, she did about 30 real estate transactions and made around $40,000 in commission revenue annually.
“One thing she noticed while listening to the successful real estate agents at the seminars was that the top agents in big cities had their own personal assistants,” Dan and Ben write. “This was intriguing to her because none of the agents in her own city had an assistant.”
So, she hired an assistant to handle all her paperwork, logistics, and scheduling. “Quickly, Linda felt the incredible freedom of no longer doing all the detail work,” the authors write, “which she both hated and was terrible at.”
2: There are two critical strategies at work here. First, the Pareto Principle or the 80-20 Rule: 80 percent of our results typically come from 20 percent of our efforts.
Second: Who Not How, one of the core practices of Dan Sullivan’s Strategic Coach program.
“Rather than staying caught in the 80 percent she didn’t love,” Dan and Ben write, “she invested in ‘Whos’ to handle the 80 percent, as well as to organize and manage increasing aspects of her business.”
“Linda had freed herself from literally dozens of hours per week of ‘job work’—her then 80 percent—that drained her energy and wasn’t the linchpin of her biggest results,” they write. “Releasing her 80 percent created a surge of commitment and excitement to go all in on her 20 percent, which was working directly with people who either wanted to list and sell houses or people looking to buy houses.”
What happened? Linda doubled her revenue within one year of hiring her assistant.
As Linda’s business grew, the assistant was now swamped with work. So, Linda and her assistant analyzed all the tasks that had to be done. The assistant then chose those activities that she loved, and they hired a second assistant to take over the rest.
“Every time we hired an assistant,” Linda remembers, “revenue doubled again the next year.”
Linda kept attending seminars where she learned that the top national agents specialized. “Linda didn’t love working with the buyers but totally loved listing new properties,” Dan and Ben write, so “she decided she’d become a top listing agent and hire a buyers’ agent to handle the buyers.”
“The listings are where all the leverage is,” Linda says. “Because all my listing could sell in a single day. By working with the buyers, though, I could only do one sale at a time. So, becoming the top listing agent gave me tons of leverage.”
She began passing all of her buyers to her buyer’s agent and splitting the commission 50–50.
“This was a huge relief for Linda, because working with buyers took up an enormous part of her day. By hiring a buyers’ agent, she immediately freed-up another couple dozen hours per week,” the authors note.
Once again, Linda had shed the 80 percent and focused on the 20 percent. “Her business grew so much that she hired another buyers’ agent and eventually another after that.”
She also brought a marketer on board and invested in marketing and branding. “By 1992, Linda was the number one real estate agent in her city,” the authors note. “Her business had gone than 10x since 1986. She was now doing over $500,000 in commission revenue.”
Was this the end of her evolution? Not even close.
“Linda was also starting to get frustrated with her current brokerage,” Dan and Ben write. “Not only did they take a huge chunk of her earnings—20 percent, which was now over $100,000—they also continually put roadblocks in the way of the growth she wanted.”
Linda wanted to add her name to the signs in front of the houses she was listing and use her phone number in her marketing.
The answer from corporate? No, and no.
“Her brokerage was being 2x and stuck in the past way of doing things, the authors observe. “Ironically, the brokerage also wanted Linda to stay 2x herself. Her 10x mindset was threatening the status quo and her company did everything they could to box in Linda’s innovation and expansion.”
When we have a 2x our mindset, our goal is to maintain. Not evolve. We stay in our comfort zone. We do things the way they’ve always been done.
“That same year, while Linda was bumping her head against the ceiling of her 2x situation, the real estate company Keller Williams was going throughout the United States recruiting all the top agents in each city,” they write.
“One of the benefits of shifting to Keller Williams was that they had a cap on what they took from each agent, which at the time was $21,000,” the authors note. “Rather than penalizing growth as her brokerage did, Keller Williams incentivized growth. “
Linda jumped to Keller Williams. Doing so meant she had to leave behind 52 of her current listings. Her old brokerage owned those homes.
But not for long. “48 of those listings ended up telling the old broker that ‘if she’s leaving, we’re leaving with her,'” Dan and Ben share. “She ended up completing those 48 under Keller Williams.”
What happened next? “Over the next six years—from 1992 to 1998—the Keller Williams franchise which Linda worked at went from being insignificant and unknown,” they note, “to becoming the top producing real estate office in the city.
“Linda also became the #1 agent in all of Keller Williams throughout the country, doing 200-300 transactions yearly and making over $800,000 in commission revenue.”
Linda then bought the Keller Williams franchise for which she worked.
“By this point,” they write, “Linda had already gone 10x several times: from growing herself as a solo real estate agent to getting her first assistant, then several assistants, and eventually hiring other agents and a marketing team.
“Each time she let go of her 80 percent to pursue her next-level 20 percent, she was going through the process of a 10x jump. . .
“Being a franchise owner of Keller Williams represented the beginning of a new 10x for Linda,” Dan and Ben observe. “Her new 20 percent became recruiting all of the best agents around the city and building a powerful culture in her franchise. Rather than getting commissions solely on her own business, she’d now get commissions for every commission in her franchise.”
3: Which set the stage for Linda’s biggest evolution of all.
In 1999, Keller Williams CEO Gary Keller called Linda. He told her he wanted someone to expand into the Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky region. There would be an opportunity to create dozens of new offices.
“Becoming a regional owner,” they write, “would make her direct partners with Gary Keller. She’d split the royalties of every transaction throughout the entire region 50-50 with Gary.”
This opportunity became Linda’s biggest 10x opportunity yet.
To do it, she would need to spend most of her time in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. She would recruit new franchise owners and then help them get their new offices up and running by attracting talented agents to join the office.
“She hired her brother-in-law, Brad, who’d been a successful sales manager for several companies and wanted to be in real estate to manage her businesses.”
This new strategy required her to invest significant portions of her income to keep things going.
“It was a step back to step way forward,” Linda recalls.
But in time, her Return on Investment would be 10x or 100x larger than if she had stayed where she was.
Linda “knew that to succeed at this next level, as with each of her previous levels, that she’d need to evolve herself and her capabilities,” they write. “She needed to become 10x better and more capable at her new 20 percent, which stretched her greatly.”
In addition to identifying and recruiting the best talent, she also became an expert at providing “training and support to all of her franchise owners,” the authors note, “helping them overcome challenges, setbacks, and obstacles, and continually raising their mindsets for what they could be and do.”
In 2011, once again, Linda hired a team to replace herself and take over her prior responsibilities. Her “new” 20 percent “shifted to continually expanding herself as a leader and training her regional team,” they write, “helping them become better leaders themselves. . .
“Every time we go 10x, [we] let go of a previous 80 percent and go all-in on a new, more expansive 20 percent,” Dan and Ben observe. “Each 10x jump brings us closer to becoming world-class within that 20 percent. Then, leveraging the growth and freedoms we’ve now created, we make another seemingly impossible next jump.”
At the writing of the 10x is Easier than 2x book in 2022, Linda had 28 active offices, over 5,000 active real estate agents, and over $14 billion in annual revenue.
Here’s what Linda had to say about the 10x concept after reading an early draft of the book:
“When I look at it, I see my whole life’s trajectory. I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh! I had no idea this is what was happening!’ Also, it makes so much sense how you’re explaining it, that 2x is so much harder. I tell my agents all the time, ‘Why won’t you let go of what you have to go get something bigger?’ But realtors especially just want to hang on to what they’re working on. It’s just so limiting. . .
“This book is just so good! Because no one really gives you the fundamentals of a path to 10x. They just talk about 10x. And it’s a hard concept. Honestly, it’s always been a hard concept for me and others to get our arms around. In the real estate world, people are like, ‘Oh my, the 2x was so hard! Now you want me to do 10x?!’ So they see it like, ‘Gosh, you’re asking me to do something when this was already so hard.’
“They don’t realize that 10x is something totally different. 2x was just the launching pad to 10x, where you’re now doing something totally different than you were before, and you’ve let go of what you were previously doing to go all-in on something bigger.”
More tomorrow!
___________________
Reflection: Are my goals 2X or 10X? If the former, what would a `10X goal look like? How does it make me feel?
Action: Journal about my answers.
What did you think of this post?
