“There are decades when nothing happens;
and there are weeks when decades happen.”
Vladimir Lenin

Recently, I was sitting down with a client for a quarterly strategic session.

I wrote on the whiteboard all the 12 mo. goals we had set together at the beginning of the year. In January he’d said these goals were BHAGs (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals) for him, goals that he thought would be extremely difficult to achieve before the end of the year.

However, here we were, at the midway point of the year and every one of them had been attained or would be completed within the next couple of weeks. What was he going to do with the second half of his year??

His company will grow by over 70% this year and he will have reduced his work hours by about 50%. And while that’s awesome, it’s been accomplished mostly through linear thinking.

While I certainly admired what he’d done in a brief period of time, I challenged his approach. “We’re not thinking big enough. It’s time to start thinking exponentially rather than linearly about your future.”

We spent the next 45 min. discussing questions about how he might grow from $17M at the end of 2024 to $50M over the next two years. THAT blew his mind.

That was a number he had never even considered possible, much less accomplishing in 24 months.

As I watched his mental wheels turning, I quickly realized he already had the answers inside  himself.

Twenty minutes earlier, getting to $25M felt like an enormous leap. Now he was coming up with ways he could double his previous “Everest-like” number.

Over the past few months, I’ve been thinking about time as it relates to true impact.

It’s so easy for the days, weeks, months, and years to go by and not have made the progress we really wanted.

Have we accumulated three years of experience, or have we accumulated one year of experience three times?

What kind of goals are you pursuing?

Linear Goals:

• require incremental thinking,
• are created by first focusing on where you are in the present and projecting how you might get where you want to go in the future,
• start with taking action based upon past performance and former ways of doing things.

Exponential Goals:

• require exponential thinking,
• are created by starting with the future you want to create and then working your way backward,
• start with taking action based upon questions that cause you to live into? 5x-10x goals.

There’s nothing wrong with incremental growth or thinking. You can build a solid business that way.

But what if there was a way to short-cut the timeline to higher levels of success? What if you could accomplish 5x-10x more than you are currently, without 5x-10x the effort?

Exponential thinking starts by asking exponential questions:

• How can we make more progress this week than all last month?
• How can we make more progress this quarter than all last year?
• How can we make more progress this year than in the previous five?
• If you had to find a way to increase/grow/create ________ in your business, while reducing your responsibility and time by 50% in the process, how would you make that happen?
• What one opportunity (new hire, new product/service, type of clientele, etc.) would make the greatest contribution to 5x’ing your company over the next 2 yrs.?

I could throw out a dozen more like this, but you get the point.

If your business isn’t moving forward exponentially, a strong contributor may be that you’re choosing to live into and ask linear questions.

Want help thinking more exponentially about your business?

Reach out and schedule a time to chat.

I’ll ask you four questions that will help unlock you from linear thinking and give you the confidence you need to take the next steps to make your exponential future a reality.