WS1878 10X is Easier Than 2X Part II | Whitney Sewell

In today's episode Whitney Sewell delves into the concept of Ten X thinking and its impact on real estate syndication. He discusses how the constant desire to work harder can be a hindrance to thinking differently and how a shift in mindset is crucial for achieving greater success. Whitney shares insights from a book that challenged his thinking and prompted him to reassess his approach to success.

Key Points:
- Continuous Process of Improvement: Whitney emphasizes the importance of a continuous process of increasing quality and decreasing quantity in all endeavors and discusses the challenge in maintaining this mindset.

- The Power of Focus: He draws on the example of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates to highlight the significance of focus in achieving success, and how it has impacted his own mindset.

- Shedding the Two X Identity: Whitney explores the difficulty of shedding a limited mindset and the importance of surrounding oneself with individuals who are at the level one aspires to reach. He stresses the impact of one's identity and the standards they hold for themselves.

- Setting High Standards: Whitney emphasizes the need for defining and choosing one's own high standards and the commitment required to raise these standards. He discusses the impact of this on personal growth and entrepreneurial journey.

- The 80/20 Principle: Whitney delves into the concept of the 80/20 principle, urging listeners to identify the tasks in their lives that fall into the 80% and 20% categories, and the value of hyper-focusing on the 20%.

- Ten X Goals: He discusses the benefits of setting Ten X goals, including the promotion of nonlinear approaches, fostering leadership and teamwork, and the importance of being comfortable with being wrong in the pursuit of growth.

Wrapping Up:
Whitney encourages listeners to adopt a Ten X focus in their pursuits and invites them to share their feedback and suggest topics or guests for future episodes.

To provide feedback or suggestions for the podcast, listeners can reach out to Whitney Sewell via email at info@lifebridgecapital.com.

Tune in for more insights and discussions on commercial real estate, syndication, and entrepreneurship.

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Transcript

Whitney Sewell [00:00:08]:

It's a constant battle not to think, I'll just work harder. I'll just work harder and make it happen. Or, yeah, to increase my income or increase whatever you're trying to do, I'll just go work harder. It's a constant battle to think differently. Continuing our series today in ten x is easier than two X on your daily real estate syndication show. I'm your host, Whitney Sewell. This will be a brief segment, but I want to keep going on this. I love this book.

Whitney Sewell [00:00:40]:

It did challenge me in a number of ways and want to dive into how it's challenged me and what has changed and how it's made me think differently.

Whitney Sewell [00:00:48]:

Right.

Whitney Sewell [00:00:48]:

We talked in the last segment on how we did that.

Whitney Sewell [00:00:52]:

Right.

Whitney Sewell [00:00:52]:

How the podcast made me think that way. Obviously, before reading this book, that was what was happening.

Whitney Sewell [00:00:58]:

Right.

Whitney Sewell [00:00:59]:

But this has been a great reminder that I've not been thinking this way often enough, but we're going to dive in a little further today. And going ten x involves a continuous process of increasing the quality and decreasing the quantity of everything you do. So think about that, right? A continuous process. It's not a one thought and done, right? It's not a check the box and it's done even. It's a continuous process. And like I said, I have to remind myself constantly to have this filter, like we talked about last time. And it's really a filter. What I find that a focus, right.

Whitney Sewell [00:01:38]:

And focus is so crucially important to scale and to do big know. I was thinking about, actually, it reminded me, there's a story about when Warren Buffett and Bill Gates met. And I think, I think it was a meeting that maybe Bill Gates'father somehow set up with Warren Buffett. I don't know the whole story behind it, but ultimately they met. You've probably heard the story about how, I think it was Bill Gates asked Warren Buffett one word to describe his success or how he got there or something like that. And actually they both wrote down this word, a word on a piece of paper, turned it over, and then they both turned their paper over and they both said focus. So I don't know if you've heard that before, but, man, I do believe there is a lot of truth in that, in being able to focus. And thinking through this book has helped me to, I think, focus more, and I have to continually remind myself, and I think you probably do as well.

Whitney Sewell [00:02:40]:

But obviously you've probably heard the saying, too. How you do everything, anything is how you do everything. And again, I think personally, I struggle with that statement, because there are some things that I'm not as particular about, but there's a lot of things I'm very particular about, maybe the way it's done or the way a job is done, or expectations about different things. There's some ways I wish I was more particular about certain areas of my life or habits, whatnot. But shedding your two x identity can be difficult, because as people, we have the tendency to avoid loss, overvalue what we currently own, and desire to be seen as consistent. So I find often you're still surrounded, right, by those same people or those same expectations. And often they may not even be expectations, actual expectations of the people around you, but it's what you're assuming are the expectations of the people around you, and you're trying to still meet that expectation, right. And it may not even be a true expectation, and it may be at times, but often it's because you're not changing who you're surrounding yourself with and who are those people that are at the level that you're trying to get to, right.

Whitney Sewell [00:04:06]:

And we've talked about that so many times on the show. How are you working on that and changing that? So you are shedding that two x identity, but you're ultimately surrounding yourself with people that are ten xers, right. That are not just doing it or not just thinking it, but actually doing it, right. And I think thinking it is the first key. Your identity is the story you believe about yourself and the standards you hold for yourself. So what do you believe about yourself? So where does your confidence come from? And I hope most of you know this, but the Lord is my confidence, and I have to remind myself of that also. He's been faithful every time in the past, forever. There's never been a time he has not been faithful.

Whitney Sewell [00:04:56]:

And so, against what most self help books, entrepreneurial books would tell you, or ten x books or 100 x books or whatever, when they're trying to get you to think that way, right? They're going to tell you to love yourself, believe in yourself, all those things. Well, I think most of that is. There is a lot to the mindset there, but I think baloney, because the Lord is my confidence, and he is the only reason that I've been able to do any of this stuff in real estate and have the stamina to keep going is only because of him. But I quickly feel like I can do it on my own, right, and move away and quit thinking about man. The Lord is my strength and my help. I hope he's yours as well. But defining and choosing your own minimum standards, no matter how seemingly impossible to yourself and others, is fundamentally fundamental to experiencing a ten x transformation. So think about defining and choosing your own minimum standards.

Whitney Sewell [00:06:02]:

What is that for you? Have you been purposeful enough to even think through that, much less write some of those standards down? Almost reverse engineered.

Whitney Sewell [00:06:13]:

Right.

Whitney Sewell [00:06:14]:

How to get there. We've talked about that as well. But how do you do that?

Whitney Sewell [00:06:16]:

Right.

Whitney Sewell [00:06:17]:

Well, start thinking about it. Right. Maybe by the end of the week you're going to write some things down around that specific thing. So the standards you believe. We talked about this a little bit earlier, but that you believe others have for you.

Whitney Sewell [00:06:31]:

Right.

Whitney Sewell [00:06:33]:

It's a hard part to think through or to move away from others project their standards on your whole life, and eventually you have to be willing to not care about what others think or about it, and you have to set that standard for yourself. And if you're still around the same friends you had in high school, there's a good chance that they're not thinking this way. Or maybe they've not pushed or grown themselves, pushed to grow themselves in this way. And so you have to think through van, what is pushing you? Who are you surrounding yourself by? It is so important. I've seen it personally time and time and time again, and I've had to have been a part of masterminds where I've kind of outgrew them, right. But they were really good for me at that stage, potentially in my growth and in my entrepreneurial journey. And I actually have met, there's guys that I was in a mastermind with six or seven years ago that when we met, we were at very different levels when I was thinking one guy specifically way ahead of me, and I just talked to him a week or two ago and he's still way ahead of me. But we've both grown a lot, but neither of us are still in that mastermind.

Whitney Sewell [00:07:48]:

Right.

Whitney Sewell [00:07:48]:

We found other places to keep growing, to surround ourselves with people who are way ahead of us.

Whitney Sewell [00:07:54]:

Right.

Whitney Sewell [00:07:55]:

And it is a continual thing of looking and searching for those groups, those people who are going to mentor you and push you and are going to help you to raise your standards.

Whitney Sewell [00:08:07]:

Right?

Whitney Sewell [00:08:07]:

Your minimum standards are going to go higher and higher and higher. I hope they do. Anyway, evolving yourself to the level of a higher minimum standard requires commitment and courage, which eventually leads to the development of new capabilities and confidence. No doubt about it. That's exactly what happened, right? I went to this mastermind, I met all these people all of a sudden, I'm encouraged. I'm creating different habits in my life because of these people. I'm reading different things because of these people who are pushing me in different ways. I'm performing in different ways in the business because of the things I'm learning, things I'm being pushed by.

Whitney Sewell [00:08:41]:

Right.

Whitney Sewell [00:08:41]:

It's affecting not just me, but my entire family, all of our employees, right? So it's changing a lot about who we are because of raising that higher minimum standard, right. Taking that courage to do that and committing that level of commitment to raise that standard. So it's crucially important, we're going to get in a little bit here to what's called the 80 20 principle, right? You've probably heard of this. If you've not, I encourage you to look this up. We talked about it even during, maybe even the last segment. But it's worth thinking through and the tasks that you do. So, Jimmy Donaldson's three ingredients to his ten x process are, number one, thinking exponentially and nonlinear, linearly. Bigger.

Whitney Sewell [00:09:32]:

Right.

Whitney Sewell [00:09:33]:

Number two, hyper focusing on quality over quantity. And number three, building a team to handle to 80% so you can focus and improve in your craft.

Whitney Sewell [00:09:44]:

Right?

Whitney Sewell [00:09:45]:

So think through that. Building the team. Right. Delegating the 80%. And I would ask you, do you even know what the 80 and the 20% are? What is involved in that for you? One tip. I often tell people, even some people I've mentored, it's always an issue of time management for myself as well. It always has been, it probably always will be. It's a fight, right.

Whitney Sewell [00:10:12]:

To keep my calendar as minimal as possible, right? So I'm still keeping what's most important, right? Being at home or with the kids, spending time with the kids and my wife and being involved in our church. Those things that it's so easy for me to quickly fill my schedule up so fast and so much that the most important things really the reason, right. We claim we're doing all this stuff for our family, our kids, whatever. But if they're really that important, we're going to make time for them as well. You're going to see that time commitment also. But I ask you to, guys often, or that I've mentored what's in your 80%. And this week, let's start writing things down throughout the day. What have you done? What are you working on? What are you doing?

Whitney Sewell [00:11:03]:

Right?

Whitney Sewell [00:11:04]:

Do you know? Most people have no clue. And then we're going to talk through that 20%. Right? What is that 20%? What is that thing that you love to do that you are passionate about. And let's dive in there on those skills, even that we're going to start to cut up into 80 20, right. And start delegating as well so we can get hyper focused, right. Like we've talked about, ten X goals are easier than two X goals for many reason. Ten X goals are less competitive. Yeah, less competitive.

Whitney Sewell [00:11:36]:

There's so much there we could talk about. Ten X goals require you to focus on very few things rather than many, which improves your brain's ability to focus. Research shows that continual task switching makes flow and high performance basically impossible. Ten X goals promote nonlinear approaches which produce novel and competitive free or competition free solutions. So finally, ten X goals foster leadership and teamwork, wherein you stop doing everything yourself, managing others. Or here's a big one needing to be right. So that's a big one for most leaders, especially when you're so focused on Ten X. If you're that kind of individual, you can think you're always the right one.

Whitney Sewell [00:12:21]:

But if you're going to ten X, guess what? You better understand you're going to be wrong often and it's good. Not that you're wrong often, maybe, but that you're trying enough that you are wrong, but also that you're surrounding yourself with a team of people that are doing that 80%, maybe even part of that 20%, a lot better than you, right? And so hopefully you are wrong in ways that you're pushing forward. You're pushing hard forward hard enough that you're making some mistakes. However, you're surrounding yourself with people that can come along beside you. And I've done this and have to do it. I have to know that people around me are better at what they do than I am because that's why I hired them, right? And that's what I need them for. I want them to be so much better at these things than I am, right. Creating ten X results doesn't require you to be ten X better than everyone else, right? Even being ten to 20% better and different from everything else can produce ten x bigger results than even the Outliers of a particular nitrofield.

Whitney Sewell [00:13:25]:

So again, I hope this is just encouraging you, pushing you to think differently, right? To have a Ten X focus. It's very different thinking. It's a different way than most and probably most of us were raised to think. We'll try to continue this series. I hope this is encouraging to you. Would love to hear from you. Please email me at info@lifebridgecapital.com would love to hear what you would like to hear on the podcast. What is it that you're struggling with in your business right now? What would you like to know more about whether it's commercial real estate, syndication, entrepreneurship? I would love to know so we can provide that content for you and open to any suggestions that you have or guests as well.

Whitney Sewell [00:14:08]:

Have a blessed day.