Incremental vs Exponential Growth

When Dan Martell was on TwoBrain Radio, he said:
 
“It’s easier to 10x your business than to 2x your business.”
 
And a lot of people thought he meant, “Aim for the moon and you’ll land in the stars” or something like that–just a basic “set your sights higher” message.
 
Those people are wrong. Dan was talking about the difference between Incremental and Exponential Growth.
 
When you sell a service, it’s not enough to be better; you have to be different.
 
You need to have a monopoly on your service. You need to be the only gym in town doing X.
 
As Peter Thiel hammered again and again in “Zero to One,” simply being better at something means incremental change. It’s incremental because most clients won’t change gyms for incremental change; most non-clients won’t be able to tell the difference. This is what starts price wars: when clients and future clients can’t see a difference that justifies a higher price, they’ll go with the lowest-priced option.
 
Now, you’re probably thinking, “Well, I’m way better than the next guy. Why does ANYONE go to his gym instead of mine?” And the answer is: the difference is mostly in your head. It’s not obvious to the client OR the future client. Sorry. You see apples to oranges: they see Macintosh and Braeburn.
 
Can you double your revenue by being incrementally better–by having cleaner bathrooms, better coaches and classes that start right on time? Yes. But you can’t 10x your revenue that way.
 
To 10x your revenue, you need something that no one else is selling. This removes price pressure, because you’re no longer competing with anyone.
 
I don’t sell gym access because other gyms can sell it for $19 per month. I sell coaching, because they can’t.
 
I don’t just sell group classes, because the spin studio on the next block does that for much less.
We sell a prescriptive process, because NOBODY does that.
 
We have an InBody because no one else does.
 
Are there other CrossFit gyms in town? Sure. None of us are the same. Look at Baltimore: there are now five TwoBrain gyms in the city. None are the same. They get together every few months and help one another. Sometimes they take pictures.
 
Why don’t TwoBrain gyms compete? Because they’re not in competition. Each one is capable of 10x the average gym, because they’re all unique. They can all be “the best” at what they do, instead of trying to be “better” than the others. That means exponential growth–growth by a power of 10–instead of incremental.
 
Can you 10x, or are you satisfied with incremental growth forever?

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