By: André Larabie, CBC, MBA, PhD

Normally, we think about creating our own businesses for different reasons such as being independent and not being accountable to anyone, that is, being their own boss, also to develop our own ideas and see them grow and, of course, to generate a higher income than those who work a regular work.

However, this requires a lot of energy, time and investment, all of this implying a price that not everyone is willing to pay and therein lays one of the main differences between the success and failure of a business.

In the history of entrepreneurship, many “magical” methods have been developed that lead to absolute success and without error. However, the reality is that there are no easy paths for what is required, in addition to the aforementioned change of mindset.

In this sense, there is the 10X method that basically consists in visualizing your business as if it were 10 times larger, if it had 10 times more production and if it had 10 times more profits. This means that our way of thinking should be to generate 10 times our current revenue instead of thinking about the amount of earnings of last month or even last year. All this involves an analysis of our company and identifying the resources within it that allows us to take it to this goal of 10 times larger.

Here are some suggestions for carrying out the 10X method that generally apply to most businesses:

• Are we pointing to the right niche? One of the main obstacles that entrepreneurs usually encounter is that their product or service is not focused on the target audience that can benefit most from it. That is why the main thing to grow about our business is choosing the right people to whom we offer our product since this can lead to a substantial increase in our sales.
• Do everything to the scale of your ambitions. If we are talking about applying the 10X method it means that we have to make a 10-fold effort. For example, if I sell a liter of lemonade a day, I must now produce 10 liters and try to do everything possible to sell the 10 liters. If I want to take my local business to a scale that covers the entire state, then I must implement advertising that covers the entire state. It’s all about balancing our efforts with our respective aspirations.
• A team is more than the sum of its parts. A single person cannot carry out all this effort that this method requires, so it is necessary to form a group of workers who share the vision of business growth and work accordingly. Of course, you also need to surround yourself with the best and the brightest that you can find in order to make a substantial difference.

You might be asking yourself if the 10X rule applies to you and your business; the reality is that this is a strategy that can be applied to any type of business, big or small, which is something that can be very beneficial for you because it means that you can make your brand bigger and much more successful as you go along regardless of its current state.

You must also think about the large-scale benefits of acquisition for business growth and here we present you some of the most important that you need to put into consideration:

• Faster growth. Of course, one of the biggest benefits that we’re going to get with this procedure is faster growth and that works very well with this rules because the latter usually establishes that we must improve our business ten times in two years time, so the faster we can do it, the better.
• Market power. This is another element worth taking into consideration given that it makes for a stronger presence in the market; the more acquisition for business growth you do, it’s a lot likelier that you’re going to have more market shares and this is going to result in what it means to achieve your own business goals.
• Reducing barriers in order territories. When you obtain another business through acquisition, you also get the possibility of having their experience and knowledge on other topics, which is something that ease your way into their area of expertise that you may not be very familiar with.
• Better financial gain. By acquiring another business, this becomes a short term measure to gain a lot more financial power and have a wider degree of influence with your brand, which is something that can help you to implement the 10X rule in much better fashion.

Overall, this is a strategy that might seem daunting at first, but only requires a better understanding of what you want to achieve and the tools at your disposal to make it happen. If you work hard, understand what you’re doing and strive to make it happen, this is a very attainable goal.