83 CAS Growth: 10X Is Easier Than 2X

🔍 Why 10x Growth Is Easier Than 2x for Your CAS Firm | CAS Minute

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📢 Most firm owners think 10x growth sounds crazy—but what if it’s actually easier than 2x? Inspired by Dan Sullivan’s book “10x is Easier than 2x,” this episode shows you how to simplify, focus, and transform your CAS firm for exponential growth.

✔️ The 5 principles of 10x thinking

✔️ How to eliminate complexity and scale smarter

✔️ Why the top 10% of your business holds all the leverage

✔️ Building systems, pricing, and brand that can scale without you

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 – Why 10x Growth Is Easier Than 2x

00:23 – Applying 10x Thinking to Your CAS Firm

00:40 – Focus vs. Volume: Identity Shift from Service Provider to Strategic Operator

01:42 – Keep the Top 10%, Eliminate the Rest

02:30 – Doing Less, But Better: How Focus Multiplies Growth

03:32 – People, Process, Pricing: The 3 Drivers of Low Profit Clients

04:56 – Growth Through Constraint, Not Complexity

05:49 – Simplified Services, Smaller Teams, and Scalable Packages

06:49 – Prototype for 1x, Build for 10x, Engineer for 100x

07:56 – Delegation, Process Playbooks & Scalable Onboarding

09:15 – Replacing Founder-Led Sales with Productized Offers

10:47 – The 10x Vision: What Would It Take to Serve 10 Clients at Full Revenue?

11:41 – Eliminate the 80%, Narrow the Offer, Scale the Systems

12:58 – Final Thought: 10x Isn’t About More Effort—It’s About More Focus

✅ Key Takeaways:

✔️ 10x growth requires subtraction, not addition—focus on what matters most.

✔️ The most scalable firms are built on constraint, not complexity.

✔️ If a client, process, or tool doesn’t align—cut it.

✔️ Replace “doing more” with doing less, better and at scale.

✔️ Founder-led sales only scale so far—invest in brand, offers, and productized delivery.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] You're out there building your firm, trying to grow it and take it to the next level just like me. And so we're trying to figure out like how do we actually grow our firm really intentionally and not just work more hours and add more stress and chaos to our lives. So we're gonna break down and talk through how 10 X is easier than two x based on the book by Dan Sullivan, right here.

[00:00:23] So we're gonna break down how to apply. The 10 X is easier than two X framework to your cas firm. We're gonna cover the [00:00:30] five core principles of 10 x growth, how to rethink time and talent, and then why simplifying your business model may actually be the secret to exponential growth.

[00:00:40] we're really digging into the concept of focus here. We're, we're digging into the concept of shifting identity and not just strategy. You really can't become a 10 x firm if you've just got the mindset of, Hey, if we continue to add more, we'll continue to grow, which would be more of that. Two X operator mindset, two x growth.

[00:00:58] You know, we're really thinking [00:01:00] about it through the lens of more volume rather than 10 x growth. How are we adding more value per unit sold per hour that we work, per contract that we sign? So this identity shift is that we're, we're not really looking at it through the lens of being a service provider.

[00:01:17] We're trying to become strategic operators. We're trying to build a firm that that delivers transformation. So as, as a CAS firm, how do we stop selling deliverables and start owning outcomes? We've talked [00:01:30] about this a lot through sales strategy and how to deliver higher value more CFO type services. But realistically, if we're looking to 10 x, you have to change your entire philosophy of growth towards that.

[00:01:42] As I'm continuing to build my firm and we have two XD each year over the last few years, it's really difficult to get into the mindset of like, oh yeah, it's just easier to 10 x. Like that just seems asinine, right? You can't just get into the mindset of we're strategic now and now you're 10 x. But [00:02:00] what I try to think about is like, what does the firm look like if I only kept the top 10% of what we do and eliminated the rest?

[00:02:07] The top 10% of what's driving value and profitability and growth and then eliminate the rest. That is a really difficult concept to, to dive into, a difficult concept to focus on and then actually operationalize. But if you focus on those things, you have a higher likelihood of being able to achieve that growth outcome.

[00:02:26] When we talked about focus earlier, focus is really the multiplier based on the [00:02:30] book. What most of what we're doing is actually a distraction to the growth initiative, whereas focus is the key ingredient that actually keeps us moving down the path of 10 Xing. Now, a big concept here that comes from the book and that other folks like Alex Hormoze talk about is that two X growth comes from doing more, but 10 X comes from doing less but better. So we're trying to eliminate all of the things that don't scale or create leverage for the firm. So we're, we're, we're thinking about how do we 10 x by [00:03:00] actually doing less, by removing more from our plates.

[00:03:02] By saying no more, most people, including myself over the course of the last number of years, have thought, well, if I step into this role, if I take this opportunity, if I take on this client, it's actually gonna help me continue to move towards the goals that we have to two x or to just grow organically.

[00:03:18] But in reality, saying no to a lot of those things. A lot of those opportunities that I've had over the last few years have actually enabled us to continue to grow because we're more focused on what we're doing internally. So we're trying to [00:03:30] eliminate everything that doesn't create scale or leverage.

[00:03:32] We need to only work with those clients that align with your vision, your mission, your values, your pricing, and the model that you've set up to advise them, the model that you've set up to serve them really well. If they don't align with that, great. No, it's a distraction. It's not helping us create scale.

[00:03:49] So those high leverage actions that we can take, we need to look at those low profitability clients, get 'em off the plate. I went through a big exercise with our client roster last [00:04:00] fall, and we identified a few clients that we didn't think were that great a fits for us. Now, when I look at those low profit clients, I believe that there are three core areas that are driving low profitability.

[00:04:10] It's people, it's process, or it's pricing. If it's a pricing problem, then that's on the sales department to go back and figure out why did we, why did we scope this so wrong? Or maybe it's a process we don't, we don't actually have a good process set up. Our onboarding processes weren't set up in a way to enable success for this client and how to [00:04:30] serve them really well.

[00:04:31] I. Or it's a people problem, you just don't have the right skill sets and people on the engagement to create profitability. So I can really distill down into one of those three core areas why we have a low profit client. Now, if there's issues across all three, then there's probably an indicator that it's not a great client fit and or there's a qualitative factor with a client that's causing one of these things to be imbalanced, and that could just be simply not a good values fit.

[00:04:56] So 10 x firms through the book [00:05:00] talks about being built on constraint and not complexity. So if you're two x-ing and looking to add more to your plate, you're just looking to add more clients, add more bodies so you can service more. That's really just based more on how do we increase complexity, how do we increase volume and not necessarily the constraint.

[00:05:15] And so what, when I think about this through the lens of CAS firms, we don't want to be bloated with services, bloated with tech, and bloated with headcount realistically.

[00:05:23] We want to create constraint. By tightening the focus, we actually want to have simpler pricing, more [00:05:30] clear packages and smaller teams. And so if we can distill down like you've seen in a lot of firms, do into pod structures, it creates a much more streamlined management structure. If you have very clear delineation in your scoping, and maybe that's set up through a package pricing strategy that creates a lot of simplicity for your clients, and then ultimately pricing that in a really easy to scale way. Now, I don't think you have to have a three tier pricing strategy to create more simplicity and create a constraint in your business. However, you need to have a lot of [00:06:00] clarity around scope, which means you need to know what services you're offering really, really well.

[00:06:05] Now, when we look at constraining the business, creating more simplicity, we're trying to do this because it forces creativity and innovation.

[00:06:12] when you force creativity and innovation that allows you to start to expand the aperture of like how you operate within those constraints within a simpler pricing structure, how do you message that more clearly? How do you, how do you take these packages or take this, this scope and what you actually serve and distill it to the [00:06:30] core problem that the client is facing.

[00:06:32] And then how do you actually message that to bring on new clients? And so you have to become a little bit more creative on how to take something simple and message it really, really well. Same thing with smaller teams. We need to be a little bit more innovative on how we actually manage, how we compensate, and how we attribute those teams to serve clients really, really well.

[00:06:49] Now if your firm requires a hundred people to scale, you, you maybe have already lost. But you can build a model that scales with 10. Now what I mean by that [00:07:00] is you wanna build the scalability early. If you're, if you're looking at going backwards in time and trying to reintroduce that, it's gonna be very difficult.

[00:07:06] One of my favorite quotes comes from DJ Patel, who is the chief data scientist for, uh, Barack Obama. And he says, you want to.

[00:07:13] Prototype for one x, build for 10 x and engineer for a hundred x. So effectively what you're trying to do is. Even if you have 10 people today, you wanna engineer something that will scale with you to a hundred times that. Now, obviously it's really difficult to do that, [00:07:30] but you go back to the systems and processes and communications and pricing and services that you've set up and say, will this operate really, really well?

[00:07:38] If I 10 x the number of people, the number of clients that I have in my business today? If you can see a line of sight towards that scalability, you're doing pretty well. And all of this leans into leverage being everything. You can't just 10 x with a linear input. So a linear input being number of hours increases over time.

[00:07:56] Thus revenues increase over time. You, you really can't just scale. [00:08:00] If every new client requires a. Requires a proportional increase in time. So the 10 x firms are really looking at building those repeatable processes. We're delegating delivery, and then we're creating a brand based on inbound leads. So we're not creating a brand that's forcing us to go to market.

[00:08:17] We're creating something that creates momentum. For us, and that can be done a variety of ways, but ultimately from a services standpoint, you're so reliant upon your, your people, your processes, your technology to be able to [00:08:30] scale that. If you focus on that early on, it allows you to create upward scalability within your framework.

[00:08:37] Now some tactical items that you could do there is building A-A-C-F-O Playbook for delivery consistency. I think Jody Gron and the team at Summit had done a phenomenal job of doing something like this. They actually have a training course on their own CFO Playbook on how to do this. Same thing with Michael King.

[00:08:54] He's got a great CFO education framework that he's built, that he runs firm wide for himself. [00:09:00] Another way that you can think about this tactically is just automating, onboarding and reporting. How do we create better rhythms of communication for our clients? A standardized report that we send to them every single month, and then what are the key points that we actually walk through with our clients to drive that value?

[00:09:15] Now, a lot of firms early, early on are also founder led sales. So the individual that came out and started the firm, they're the ones leading the sales efforts They're driving all of the sales, so we actually need to get to the point where we start to replace that founder led sales [00:09:30] with more of the productized offers and brand presence. So you need the brand to displace the, the face, the name of the founder, even though there is still a lot of synonymous.

[00:09:40] Value between the two. I mean, you look at big companies, you look at Jeff Bezos and Amazon, you look at Elon and Tesla. Their actions as individuals are driving the stock prices of the company. Now, we won't go down the path of the political ramifications of what Elon's done. I. But you can see how there's still value in having attribution of a human at the helm [00:10:00] to drive that brand presence.

[00:10:01] However, when I talk about the productized offer, I'm not necessarily talking about the productized service. So the productized offer is just walking through the process of saying, Hey, how can I offer something to a prospect that will really entice them to jump on board with us? Maybe that's some sort of a guarantee or cash back, or who knows what that looks like, but.

[00:10:22] You're starting to displace that, that 100% founder-led sale rhythm to something that can start to drive its own [00:10:30] momentum. Now, when we're looking at at at focus here, when we're looking at. At leverage, we're trying to, to create a 10 x vision on the things that actually matter. So most firms don't actually 10 x because they don't have the clarity, they don't have the the courage to define what that even means for them.

[00:10:47] Now, what that means, like if you go back to your vision, what's your ideal revenue? What's your ideal headcount? What types of clients and services make that possible? Now once you like go back to your vision and start to do that, if you could only [00:11:00] serve 10 clients per year, but hit your target revenue, what would that look like for your firm?

[00:11:05] I. So meaning we're trying to simplify this down to if you can only serve 10, what does that look like? And then if you can take that blueprint of what that looks like and start to scale it beyond that 10, then I think we're starting to get to the point where we can have this mindset where we can 10 x our firms.

[00:11:19] Now I. Realistically, in a services based business, 10 Xing is very, very difficult. You know, we're we're looking at year long strategies to get to the point where you can actually [00:11:30] enact 10 x outcomes. However, the framework itself is very applicable to be able to drive towards that level of scale. So if we can start to action this today, what does it look like?

[00:11:41] We wanna define what our 10 x outcome looks like. Maybe that's revenue, maybe that's freedom of time. Maybe it's a team size. And then we wanna identify the 80% of our firm that you would eliminate in order to hit that. And again, maybe it's not 80%, but you need to eliminate something, some excess in [00:12:00] your firm today to be able to hit that.

[00:12:01] Maybe it's a type of service that you offer, maybe it's.

[00:12:04] Some internal communications that you would change around. Once we've got that done, we wanna narrow our offer. We wanna take our offer set and move it into like one or two, three repeatable, scalable services. If right now you dabble a little bit in tax, a little bit in CAS, a little bit in CFO, a little bit in other areas of the business, we wanna like distill that down to like what are the one or two things in these services that we wanna retain that we think can [00:12:30] create a really compelling offer set.

[00:12:31] And usually this is based on the pain point that the client is experiencing. Once we've got that nailed down, we wanna spend 80% of our time on client relationships. We wanna spend it on marketing, we wanna spend it on systems. And so if we're spending our time on the things that are driving value, the relationships, the, the branding and marketing, and then the systems to drive that, we start to create a little bit more focus on how to actually spend time on the things that will scale.

[00:12:58] One last action [00:13:00] point I will leave you with is that if you could drop one piece of busy work today and never pick it up, what would it be? There's a lot of ways to displace that busy work. You can hire somebody to come on and help for that. You can just set it aside and focus on it for a smaller, inc, more incremental period of time, across a month, across a quarter, across a year, instead of having to stress about it over and over and over again, day in, day out.

[00:13:26] fundamentally, what we're talking about here is like 10 x growth isn't [00:13:30] about your effort, it's about your focus, it's about your identity, and it's about your capacity to leverage. If you wanna scale your CAS firm exponentially, you have to think like a high performance operator rather than a high output accountant.

[00:13:45] I hope that's helpful for you to start, start cutting. To start simplifying, start thinking of the version of the firm that you need to create a 10 x firm, and I would highly recommend. Pick up this book by Dan Sullivan. 10 x is easier than two x more next time[00:14:00]