Seven years ago I sat down with a consulting client who told me he wanted to 10x his revenue in the next 12 months. He had just finished his first year breaking seven figures, and felt like it was now possible to push for significant growth.
It was early in my consulting career and I should have spoken up sooner, but in that moment I knew what he wanted to do wasn't possible. It's not that 10x growth isn't possible in one year (although it's very unlikely), it's that all he had was ambition and a stated goal.
It takes a lot more than that to accomplish a feat as large as 10x revenue growth.
Needless to say, that client never hit his goal. And seven years later still hasn't achieved his 10x goal.
What I've learned since my work with this client is that any ambitious goal must be met with a plan. And it can't just be any plan, it has to be believable.
Why believable matters
A lot of people want to skip right to taking action toward their audacious goals. And they end up creating a lot of activity that may or may not get them where they ultimately want to go.
Then there are people who will focus so deeply on the goal itself, and try to "manifest" it into existence, as if there is some magic formula that they unlock by just deeply wanting something enough.
I think it's much simpler than that.
I believe that if you believe the story you are telling yourself about how you will accomplish your believable plan toward your audacious goal, you are more likely to subconsciously accomplish your work toward that goal than if you do not believe it.
The conscious mind processes information at a much slower rate, handling about 40 to 50 bits of information per second.
The subconscious mind can process vast amounts of information simultaneously. It handles about 11 million bits of information per second.
Think about the vast difference here.