Why 10x Goals Are Easier Than 10% | Price Pritchett
Timestamps are as accurate as they can be but may be slightly off. We encourage you to listen to the full context.
Podcast Summary
In this powerful episode, Price Pritchett reveals that 10x growth can be just as challenging as 10% improvement, fundamentally challenging conventional wisdom about achievement and success. (05:16) Pritchett shares his personal journey from running a steady consulting business to becoming the nation's top merger integration expert through what he calls a "quantum leap" strategy. Rather than grinding harder on the same path, he discovered that breakthrough results come from changing your entire approach - much like a fly pounding against a window when freedom lies just ten feet away through an open door. (47:48) The conversation explores why our doubts stem from habitual thinking rather than accurate thinking, and how managing your remembering is more powerful than trying to manage your future. (19:41) Pritchett emphasizes that quantum leaps require us to become childlike again, willing to fail repeatedly like a baby learning to walk, and that less negative thinking matters more than positive thinking for creating breakthrough results. (23:12)
- Core discussion centers on the counterintuitive principle that exponential growth (10x) can be as achievable as incremental improvement (10%), requiring a fundamental shift in approach rather than increased effort
Speakers
Price Pritchett
Price Pritchett is a renowned psychologist and business consultant who holds a PhD in psychology and completed a year-long clinical internship working on a psychiatric ward. He transitioned from corporate psychology to become the nation's leading merger integration expert, building his consulting firm from incremental growth to industry dominance through quantum leap strategies. Pritchett has evaluated hundreds of executives throughout his career and is the author of the bestselling 36-page handbook "You²" (U Squared), which has been helping professionals achieve breakthrough results for over three decades.
Lewis Howes
Lewis Howes is a New York Times bestselling author, entrepreneur, and host of The School of Greatness podcast. He's a former professional athlete who has built a media empire focused on helping ambitious professionals achieve greatness in their personal and professional lives. Howes is known for his engaging interview style and ability to extract practical wisdom from world-class guests.
Key Takeaways
10x Can Be As Easy As 10% - Change Your Game, Don't Try Harder
Pritchett reveals that pursuing 10x growth can be just as challenging as seeking 10% improvement, but with exponentially greater rewards. (05:16) The key insight is that small improvements and quantum leaps both require effort, but quantum leaps force you to abandon your current methods entirely. When you set a truly audacious goal, it becomes impossible to achieve through your existing approach, forcing innovation and creativity. Rather than being the fly pounding against the window with increasing intensity, quantum leaps require you to turn around and find the open door that leads to breakthrough results.
Make Your Move Before You're Ready - The Planning Graveyard
The biggest killer of big dreams is the planning phase, where people get stuck preparing endlessly instead of taking action. (12:32) Pritchett emphasizes that there will always be reasons to wait, always something that makes the timing seem imperfect. The chapter "Make Your Move Before You're Ready" highlights that anything significant you've achieved in life, you didn't know how to do when you started. Children master walking, talking, and feeding themselves not through methodical planning, but through willing experimentation and learning from repeated failures. (13:47)
Manage Your Remembering - Control Your Mental Traffic
Instead of trying to manage your future, focus on managing what you remember and dwell upon from your past. (18:44) Pritchett explains that you can choose to revisit either your failures and embarrassments or your successes and moments of strength. Most people indiscriminately allow negative memories to dominate their mental space. You have two voices in your head - a hero voice that focuses on strengths and accomplishments, and a villain voice that dwells on mistakes and weaknesses. (19:44) The coach closest to you is the voice inside your head, and you get to decide which voice gets the microphone.
Less Negative Thinking Beats More Positive Thinking
Research shows that reducing negative thinking is more impactful than increasing positive thinking for breakthrough performance. (23:12) These operate on two separate scales, not opposite ends of the same spectrum. About 70% of our negative thinking goes unperceived, embedded in daily habits through what Pritchett calls "the five C's": complaining, criticizing, concern (worry), commiserating, and catastrophizing. (24:25) Like trying to clean dirty water by adding more clean water instead of removing the dirt, you must eliminate the negative mental traffic rather than just layering positive thoughts on top.
Become Childlike Again - Embrace Naive Ambition
Every person has made quantum leaps before reaching school age - learning to speak, walk, and feed themselves through pure determination and willingness to fail repeatedly. (13:38) Children don't study methodology or worry about embarrassment; they simply know what they want and persistently experiment until they succeed. (53:10) Pritchett advocates for "naive ambition" - the fearless pursuit of seemingly impossible goals without over-analyzing the downside. Adults become risk-averse and self-conscious, but quantum leaps require recapturing that childlike willingness to fall a thousand times while learning to walk, never once thinking "maybe walking isn't for me."
Statistics & Facts
- 78% of Americans label themselves as optimists, while only 17% identify as pessimists, but the actual split is closer to 50/50, with many people being overly generous in their self-assessment. (21:30)
- About 70% of our negative thinking goes unperceived by us, so embedded in our daily behavior that we're not even aware of it happening. (24:22)
- In a famous 50-year longitudinal study of nuns, the optimists lived 10 years longer than the pessimists, making pessimistic thinking more dangerous than smoking (which takes 5.5 years off a man's life and 7 years off a woman's life). (64:30)
