Beyond 10x: The Exponential Power of Ease - EP 040

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What if success didn’t have to come from constant hustle and hard work? What if the real key to exponential growth was actually ease?

In this episode, I’m diving into the power of exponential growth through ease and satisfaction. I’ll break down the myths of hustle culture and share how shifting from force to flow can transform the way we do business. We’ll explore the importance of an abundance mindset, simple yet effective strategies for creating more ease, and why sustainability matters for long-term success. If you’re tired of grinding and ready to embrace a more aligned, fulfilling way to grow your business, this episode is for you. 

Let’s redefine success—not by how much we struggle, but by how much satisfaction we create along the way.

Episode Takeaways:

• Exponential growth can be easier than incremental growth when approached strategically.
• The 10x mindset focuses on high-impact actions rather than constant busyness.
• Hustle culture often misleads us into believing more effort always equals better results.
• Shifting from force to flow can revolutionize how we approach business.
• An abundance mindset creates opportunities for growth and innovation.
• Simplifying business strategies often leads to greater success and clarity.
• Sustainability ensures long-term impact and avoids burnout.
• Integrating ease into work enhances creativity, productivity, and joy.
• Measuring success through satisfaction can redefine traditional business metrics.
• Embracing pleasure in business can drive exponential results.

Key Insights:

“The 10x mindset isn't about pushing harder. It's about finding the path of greatest alignment and flow. It's about working with the natural energies and systems rather than against them.”

“When we operate from alignment and ease, our capacity for impact actually expands.”

“When we align with our natural gifts, when we design our businesses around what brings us joy, when we honor our need for restoration and renewal, we tap into a kind of power that hustle culture could never access.”

Resources I Mention:

• 10x is Easier than 2x - by Dan Sullivan & Benjamin Hardy 
• Hammersmith Designs - https://hammersmithgraphics.com/

Connect With Me:

• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @RachelAnzalone
• Facebook: Rachel.Anzalone
• LinkedIn: RachelAnzalone

Question for Your Reflection:

How can you simplify your approach to achieve greater impact with less effort?

Did this episode resonate with you? Share it with another visionary leader who needs to hear this message, and don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps other impact-driven entrepreneurs find their way to our community.

Remember: Your pleasure is your power. 💫

Ready to step into the pleasure revolution and transform how you do business? Let's explore how to maximize impact, profit, and pleasure in alignment with the new paradigm. Schedule a time to connect with me right here >>>

Episode Transcript

Hello and welcome to Pleasure and Profits. So far this season, we've been diving into the satisfaction strategy framework. Those three essential elements of impact, profit and pleasure that create the foundation for a soul aligned and sustainable business. We’ve talked about the emergence of a new business paradigm. One that recognizes the power of feminine wisdom and prioritizes collective wellbeing over constant hustle.

Today we're exploring a concept that might seem counterintuitive at first, but has the potential to completely transform how you approach your business.

The idea is simple yet profound. Exponential growth can actually be easier than incremental growth. Or as Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy put it in their book, 10x is easier than 2x. It's often easier to make a massive leap forward than to take small steps. 

Now, I know what you might be thinking. How can 10 times the results possibly be easier than doubling what I'm doing now? Trust me. I had the same reaction when I first encountered this concept and I was actually really hesitant to read this book. But when I finally did, I realized that this approach aligns perfectly with everything that we've been discussing about the collapse of hustle culture and the rise of more aligned sustainable approaches to business and how the “just enough” trap that I talked about last week keeps us from seeing what's really possible when we shift our perspective.

Let's start by digging into the difference between incremental thinking and exponential thinking. When we operate from a just enough mindset or even a 2x mindset, we're essentially asking, “How can I do more of what I'm already doing?” This approach keeps us stuck in existing patterns and systems. We end up working harder, pushing more, and often burning ourselves out in the process. The “just enough” mindset, or even the 2x mindset is grounded in scarcity, the belief that there's only so much we can accomplish, and so we need to set realistic goals.

It also has a tendency to lead to overwhelm. There are literally infinite things that you could do to increase your revenue incrementally. And figuring out which ones you should do can create massive overwhelm and often results in total inaction. 

On the other hand, there are very few things that you can do to 10x your business. Shifting to 10x thinking narrows your focus to the actions that will actually make an impact, not the infinite possibilities that are out there. The 10x mindset forces us to ask completely different questions. How can I create exponentially greater results with the same or less effort? What would have to be true for me to achieve these results? Who would I need to become to create this level of impact? This shift is transformational because it moves us out of the realm of incremental improvements, which often require the same energy as truly transformative changes. And into the realm of reimagining what's possible.

And here's where this connects so beautifully with the feminine leadership principles that we've been talking about. The 10x mindset isn't about pushing harder. It's about finding the path of greatest alignment and flow. It's about working with the natural energies and systems rather than against them.

I had a firsthand experience of this about six years ago when I realized that I had incrementally grown my consulting business to maximum capacity. I had been so focused on growing little by little, client by client, that I hadn't considered that the cap of doing business the way that I was doing was nowhere near what I actually wanted to create.

And when I finally reached the point where I realized I couldn't actually grow anymore, I realized that I needed to either accept that I had maxed out my growth or that I needed to completely change the way I was doing business. I definitely was not ready to settle for where it was at. And so I needed to shift to a 10x perspective to step into the next season, the next iteration of my business. And once I did that, the first thing that happened was I started making the same amount of revenue in half the time.

So let's talk about why hustle culture gets this so wrong.

One of the greatest myths perpetuated by hustle culture is that more effort equals more results. We've been trained to believe that the path to success is paved with sacrifice, with struggle, and often with burnout. But what if that's completely backwards?

What I've observed both in my own journey and with working with clients is that pushing harder often creates diminishing returns. When we're operating from a place of depletion, our creativity diminishes, our decision-making suffers, and our ability to see opportunities becomes clouded. Research has actually shown that chronic stress and burnout drastically reduce productivity. 

But beyond the productivity cost, there's a sustainability gap created when we buy into this hustle harder narrative. As we discussed in episode 28, when we're constantly pushing without replenishing, we eventually hit a breaking point. And when that happens, all the momentum that we've built comes crashing down. 

This reminds me of my recent conversation with Sheri Salata, where we talked about the trying trap, this idea that we can stay perpetually in the state of trying without actually reaching our goals. The 10x mindset interrupts this pattern by forcing us to think differently about how we approach our work.

So now, let's explore three fundamental shifts that allow us to access this exponential power of ease.

The first paradigm shift is moving from force to flow. Traditional business approaches often focus on pushing through resistance, overcoming obstacles through sheer willpower. But what if instead we learned to identify and follow the path of least resistance? When we're aligned with our natural gifts, our core values, and the actual needs of the marketplace, we create a kind of momentum that doesn't require constant pushing. This is what I mean when I talk about embodied wisdom in business, learning to listen to the signals from our body and our intuition about where energy naturally wants to flow. about water for a moment. Water doesn't fight its way through a landscape. It finds the natural channels and flows effortlessly through them. And yet over time, water is powerful enough to carve canyons through solid rock. Water always gets where it's going. 

I can give you countless examples of occasions where I learned to let go and release and go with the easier option and things magically worked out in the best possible way. I historically have been a hard worker. I've shared that before. And so even when I first started working for myself, particularly when I started supporting other people behind the scenes in their businesses, I brought that character to the game. I was a person who would do everything I had to do to make sure the deadline was hit. I would stay up all night. I would burn the candle at both ends to make sure that the checklist got done, that the expectation was met, that everything that was needed was taken care of. 

And this, as you can imagine, is not a sustainable way to operate. And I remember very clearly an experience where there was a deadline for a client. We had a meeting, I think it was on a Thursday morning at 9 a.m. I was supposed to show up at this meeting with a whole plan mapped out for where we are going in the next phase of a campaign. That was my job, that was my responsibility to show up with that. And the week had been so busy that I just hadn't gotten to it. And the night before at 10 o'clock, I was exhausted. And I thought I either have to plan to stay up probably till two or three in the morning to get this done in order to show up to this meeting and say, “I did it. I have it. Here it is.” Or I need to just walk away and accept that I'm going to show up in the meeting unprepared, and I'm going to let them know that I didn't get it done, but I'm going to let them know when I can get it done. 

And just the thought of that, the thought of giving up at that moment instead of pushing through until one or two or three in the morning, just felt like such a relief. And I made the decision to do that. I just decided I will, you know, I'll take the failure. I'll let them know I didn't get it done. And I just let go and trusted that it would work out fine in the end and that I would get it to them when I could get it to them and that they would be okay with that. 

And the next morning when I showed up for that meeting, the very first thing the client said was, we changed our whole plan, we're doing something completely different. And I realized that if I had stayed up until one or two or three in the morning to finish the work that I was supposed to have gotten done, it never would have gotten used anyways. It would have all been for nothing because the whole plan changed. And that was the first time I remember thinking like, “Holy shit, if I just listened to myself and I, instead of trying to push through this, I just trust that it's going to work out.” And heard this said and I've repeated it again and again, you know, do the best you can every day, no more, no less. And if I trust that, then things work out. And then it became a game. And then I started experimenting with that of like, what if I just did what actually felt aligned and what felt good to do? And every single time, things work out in the absolute best possible way.

So if you want to experiment with this, a practical exercise I invite you to try this week is to notice where you're pushing in your business versus where things are flowing naturally. Just observe the moments where you feel like you're forcing yourself to do something and maybe take a step back and assess, why am I forcing this? Does this actually have to be done now? Could it wait? Does it not need to be done at all? 

I've often found that when I'm trying to force myself to do something, that if I just let it go and take a break or let it sit for a day or two, then when I come back to it, I might actually be really excited to do that thing. It just was that the timing wasn't right. My energy wasn't right. And could accomplish so much more and better by just letting it go for an hour or a day or a week or a month even sometimes. 

So if you want something really concrete to practice with this, get yourself a piece of paper, make your two columns on it. In one column, write down all the activities throughout your day or throughout your week that feel like you're pushing a boulder up a hill. On the other, write down the activities where time seems to disappear and the results seem to happen easily. And then ask yourself, how can I design my business to maximize the flow column and minimize the time and energy that I'm spending in that pushing the boulder up the hill column.

The second paradigm shift is moving from scarcity mindset to abundance mindset. The just enough or 2x mindset is often rooted in scarcity thinking, the belief that there are limited resources, limited opportunities, limited clients, and so on. This creates a constraining effect where we're constantly trying to protect what we have rather than creating what's possible.

The 10x mindset by contrast requires abundance thinking. When you set a goal that's 10 times bigger than your current reality, you're forced to let go of the notion that your resources are fixed. You have to start asking different questions like, who could help me achieve this goal? What systems could I create? How might this goal actually be easier than a smaller one? This shift also moves us from “either or” thinking to “both and” thinking.

Instead of believing we must choose between impact and profit or between growth and well-being, we begin to see how these elements can actually fuel each other.

I recently had an experience with a graphic designer who I've worked with for years and years and years. In fact, I think she is the very first person that I hired in any capacity to support me in my business. Her name's Angela Hammersmith and her business is Hammersmith Designs. Angela was the first graphic designer that I hired to do some work for me when I had my holistic wellness center. Back in, I think 2010, Angela is someone who I refer clients to again and again. And so over these last 15 years, Angela has shifted from working primarily with small businesses in her local community, designing ads for the newspaper and brochures and business cards, to creating entire design branding packages for online entrepreneurs, for New York Times bestselling authors, for people who are speaking on big stages, for people who have massive audiences, the scope of her work has dramatically increased. 

And we spoke in December about her goals for her business for this coming year. And one of the suggestions I made was that I really felt like she could increase her prices pretty significantly. And Angela's response was, no, no, there's no way that she could increase her rates, definitely not for her existing clients. She was fairly certain that her existing clients would not be okay with the rate increase, that she would probably lose business or upset her existing clients, and that there really was no way that she could do this.

After much discussion and I think a lot of consideration on her part, she decided to go ahead and increase her rates. And I messaged her a few days ago, and she let me know that she had increased her rates successfully with absolutely no pushback from her existing clients. And first of all, I'm so happy for her because I think that her work is fantastic and she's a brilliant graphic designer to work with, always delivers quality work. I'm always happy to recommend her. And she absolutely could be charging more for the work that she's doing and increase her revenue without increasing the number of hours that she's working. 

And so, she’s a great example of somebody who had sort of a story in her head that she had to find some other way to increase her revenue, whether that was getting more clients, doing more work, et cetera. And in reality, she was able to make a really small adjustment and increase her revenue quickly and easily. Just by allowing for the possibility that that abundance is there and entrusting that if a client were to choose to leave because her rates had gone up, that that would be okay. There would be another client to come along. 

And this is really a fantastic example of shifting from a constrained scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset. Making a shift and then just allowing it to flow and unfold.

One of the most powerful aspects of abundance thinking is how it transforms our approach to collaboration. When we believe that there's enough for everyone, we can be genuinely generous with our resources, our knowledge, and our connections. And paradoxically, this generosity often creates exponential returns.

The third paradigm shift is moving from complexity to simplicity. There's a common belief that scaling a business means adding more - more products, more services, more marketing channels, more team members. But often the path to exponential growth is actually through strategic subtraction. The most successful businesses I've worked with have found ways to simplify their operations, focusing intensely on what they do exceptionally well rather than trying to be everything to everyone. This requires the courage to say no to good opportunities so that you can say yes to great ones.

Complexity drains energy and creates friction in your business. Every new offer, every new marketing channel, every new team member adds coordination costs and cognitive load. Simplicity, by contrast, creates space for mastery and for excellence. Do one thing and do it well. Once you've mastered that and created the systems to allow for leveraging, then move on to the next thing and not a minute sooner.

When I was working in the restaurant industry, I worked for a company that had big aspirations for opening more locations, for expanding exponentially. And when I became a director of operations and started overseeing multiple locations, the first step, of course, was to get my locations operating in the absolute best way that they could. What resulted was that the owner of this company observed that he was now able to expand an entire territory that they had had rights to but hadn't opened locations in because the locations that were there weren't operating great. And he hadn't found somebody who could get them operating at peak performance, much less trust open new locations in that area.

By me focusing on optimizing operations at first one location as a general manager and then at two locations and then at three and then at four, eventually what happened was now that these existing locations were operating well, that I had the capacity to go open new locations and to get them up and operating well and then go to the next location and we ended up opening, oh my goodness, I think I opened one, two, three, four restaurants in a matter of less than two years as a director of operations in this territory that had been previously seen as little bit of a lost cause. 

And that was all about dialing in operations at each location first before moving on to opening the next one. If you don't do that, what ends up happening is you just end up with a mess in multiple locations. You end up working two or three or four or five times as hard and really just getting diminishing returns. This applies to having multiple locations, but it also applies to having multiple offers, to growing your team, to growing your departments, to growing divisions of your business, that if one isn't operating well, it is definitely not the time to add more and more and more. 

And the fastest way to exponential growth is to get really good at one thing that you're doing, dial that system in, build the SOPs, have the team that's able to support it so that you can then go focus your energy on creating the next opportunity for growth.

A framework I really find helpful for simplifying is what I call the power of three. So identify, number one, the three clients that you most love working with. Number two, the three offerings that create the greatest impact and profit. And number three, the three core activities that drive your business forward. And then design your business model to maximize these elements while minimizing or systematizing or delegating or eliminating everything else.

Now, let's address a concern that often comes up when I talk about ease in business. There's sometimes a fear that prioritizing ease means compromising your mission or reducing your impact. And nothing could be farther from the truth.

When we operate from alignment and ease, our capacity for impact actually expands. Think about this. When you're well-rested, when you're energized, when you're fully present, aren't you able to bring your best self forward into your work? Aren't you more creative? Aren't you more compassionate? More capable of seeing innovative solutions? Sustainability is the key to lasting impact. If your approach to creating change leaves you burned out and depleted, your impact will always be limited by your personal capacity. 

But when you design systems that generate impact without requiring your constant effort, you create the conditions for exponential change. And the beauty of this approach is that it aligns perfectly with the satisfaction strategy we've been exploring. When impact, profit and pleasure work together synergistically, they create an upward spiral that makes growth feel effortless and natural.

So how do we actually put these ideas into practice?

Let me share a four-step framework that I've developed for implementing exponential ease in your business. Step number one, identify your highest leverage activities. These are the things that create disproportionate returns for the energy invested. For every business, there are a handful of activities that drive the majority of results. The key is to identify what these are for you specifically. Ask yourself, if I could only do three things in my business, what would create the greatest impact? These become your focus area. 

Step number two, design systems that create effortless momentum. Once you've identified your highest leverage activities, the next step is to create systems around them so they don't require your constant attention. This might mean creating templates, developing SOPs, standard operating procedures, delegating to team members, or automating. The goal here is to create a process that continues generating results even when you're not constantly paying attention to it. 

Step number three, build in regenerative practices. Sustainable growth requires regular restoration and renewal. Rather than seeing rest as something you do after the work is done, which it never is, integrate restoration into the core of your business model. This includes both personal practices like meditation and movement and time in nature, and structural elements like sabbaticals or strategic pauses or CEO retreats where you're just escaping for creative time. And of course, celebration rituals, which we've talked about in the past. 

And step number four, measure impact through satisfaction instead of through struggle. Redefine your metrics of success to include not just external results, but also your internal experience. How energized do you feel? How aligned is your work with your values? How much joy are you experiencing? These become important indicators that you're on the right track.

I invite you to take a moment right now, wherever you are, and consider one area of your business where you've been pushing hard with minimal results. Ask yourself, what would a 10x approach look like here? How could I create exponentially greater results by working differently rather than harder? Let this question sit with you throughout the day and notice what insights emerge.

As we wrap up today's episode, I want to leave you with this thought. What becomes possible when we release the struggle narrative and embrace the power of ease?

The emerging paradigm we're stepping into isn't just about doing business differently. It's about being different in our relationship with work, with success, and with ourselves. It's about recognizing that the path of alignment or flow of pleasure is not just more sustainable, it's actually more powerful. When we align with our natural gifts, when we design our businesses around what brings us joy, when we honor our need for restoration and renewal, we tap into a kind of power that hustle culture could never access. We become capable of creating impacts that would be impossible through force alone.

I hope this episode has sparked some new possibilities in how you think about growth in your business. Remember, exponential results don't require exponential effort. They require exponential thinking and aligned action. 

Next week, we'll be continuing this conversation with an exploration of our relationship with the seasons as we approach the March Equinox. If you've enjoyed this episode, I'd love to hear your thoughts. You can reach out to me at [email protected] or connect with me on Instagram or LinkedIn @rachelanzalone. 

Until next time, remember your pleasure is your power. Take care.