Your New Release EP6
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[00:00:00]
Stacey Ishman: Welcome back to your new release,
the podcast where we take bold ideas from books,
business and beyond.
I'm Dr. Stacey Ishman, a physician coach,
and your guide to building a career
you don't need to escape from.
And I'm here with my friend and co-host,
Kirsten Bombdiggity
coach, consultant,
and all around Muppet Ninja,
who's known for helping
high achievers and entrepreneurs
step into the next version of their careers
with clarity and confidence.
Today we're diving into
10 x is easier than two x
by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy.
This book flips everything
you've been taught about
growth on its head,
and we're here to break it down
whether you're trying to get promoted,
build a scalable side hustle,
or just reclaim your time from the grind.
This conversation is for you.
We'll unpack what
10 x thinking really means,
why it's actually easier
than incremental improvement,
and how to apply it
in your life,
in medicine,
or as an entrepreneur.
Let's get into it.
Kirsten Bombdiggity: Thanks, Stacey.
Stacey Ishman: Why thank you. Kirsten,
[00:01:00] did you like that?
I managed to throw
Muppet into our intro.
Kirsten Bombdiggity: I love it.
So for those of you
that don't know,
I am a chat GPT junkie
and I love it.
And I was building out a quiz
and I asked it to create
a prompt for that quiz
and without me having
ever even talked about
any of these three things,
I just about wet myself and giggling
because it said that in the
output that it needed that
the creating,
it needed to think Lisa Frank Peloton
instructor and Muppet therapist.
And I just,
i'm embracing that as
my favorite self
until the end of time.
But let's get back to
this amazing book
'cause we wanna keep
these episodes nice and short
so that everybody can enjoy them.
And I freaking love this book.
I love it focuses on just
trashing the stuff that doesn't matter,
like the 80% of stuff
that's busy work that
keeps people getting stuck
and it focuses on just the 20%
of what's really going
to transform [00:02:00] everything.
20%. Let's move the needle
fast and hard.
And your brain comes to
different conclusions,
and that's what I love about this.
So the book, as far as what
I wanna tell people the book is about,
it's all about how
to focus on that 20%
and how to focus on
money, relationships, purpose and time,
which are the four freedoms
we all need to be focusing on
when we're figuring out
how to create those favorite lives.
Stacey Ishman: Wait, can you hold on a second?
So can you just explain
the 20 versus the 80%
and why we're saying focus on 20%?
Kirsten Bombdiggity: Yeah, so the 20% is
what we're gonna focus on.
That actually moves the needle
versus the 80%,
which can include all
the busy work that a baby.
So we want you to,
Stacey Ishman: it's a Pato principle, right?
So maybe not what you pulled from it,
but what I got from it,
Kirsten Bombdiggity: yes.
Stacey Ishman: If you use a Pato principle,
20% of your work actually results in
80% of your progress
or your revenue
or whatever scenario
you're talking about.
So that's the premise and
that's why we care about the 20%
Kirsten Bombdiggity: yes, what she said.
Stacey Ishman: Okay. And what are [00:03:00] the four things?
Kirsten Bombdiggity: The four things, they are,
our four freedoms are made up of
time, money, relationships, and purpose.
Yeah.
Stacey Ishman: And how does that in your mind?
Kirsten Bombdiggity: We want to expand those
four freedoms and that will keep us
from working 10 times harder
and rather just makes everything
fall into alignment so that
we're getting superpower, moving the needle results.
Stacey Ishman: I love it.
Kirsten Bombdiggity: But doing all of that,
then we like become the
person who naturally achieves
those results instead of
grinding in our current identity.
Stacey Ishman: So the hardest part for me is
honestly figuring out how to
let go of the 80%,
because there's a lot of stuff
that is enjoyable that's in the 80%,
and that's the problem
is when you start doing that,
you have to get rid of
things you like doing.
So it might be.
Sitting on Canva,
making the world's most beautiful thing.
Yeah, i'm pointing at you, Kirsten.
Or it could be a
project that you're
doing out of guilt,
like I've been known to do this,
where you take out,
you say yes to something
you don't wanna do
whether it's a paper or
a [00:04:00] journal review or
whatever it might be.
In my world.
Or non-pro promotable tasks.
Will you like,
will you arrange the party?
But will you arrange every party
all of a sudden takes a ton of time.
And so those are the 80% things.
Gimme an example of
some of your 80% besides,
I know Canva's, one of them.
Kirsten Bombdiggity: I do,
I love me some Canva.
I think that for me it is all about,
it's, it becomes a hierarchy,
right?
Like I,
I love being in canva,
but that isn't going to
meet like the top dopamine hitters
of my human identity.
Like for me,
it's all about,
I love being able to invite people
to step into their favorite
versions of themselves.
That's never gonna happen,
logged into Canva.
And so what are the things
that are gonna help me?
Yes, I wanna be having
those conversations with people,
but what am I doing
to let people know
that I even exist.
So many coaches out
there right now are
amazing and yet
as just Ibec would say,
like they're the best hidden secrets.
And [00:05:00] so you have to be able to,
one, as a successful coach,
you have to be able to support yourself.
You have to be able to
pay your mortgage,
make your car payment,
whatever it is.
So if what you're doing in that 20%.
Just has you in a little
tiny echo chamber where you
just have a couple of clients,
then you're not thinking 10 x.
So what is it that we can do
that figures out
how do I make sure that
my voice is heard as far
and wide as possible?
Stacey Ishman: I love that.
Now, what I think
we've skipped over is
10 x is easier than two x,
which is the title of the book.
We have focused on the how,
not the what.
Kirsten Bombdiggity: Yes.
Stacey Ishman: And so I'll say,
I think that's the part
I really love about this
is the basic concept,
which is to do something
twice as well, or
to make twice as much or
go twice as long.
You usually just need to do
a little bit of what you're doing,
but better.
So it's working harder,
it's grinding it out
like you had talked about earlier,
incremental growth.
If you wanna do something 10 x better,
if you wanna make 10 times more money,
if you wanna write 10 times more papers,
you actually really have to
think about [00:06:00] doing it a different way.
And usually there's some
different strategy you have
to come up with.
Yep.
It requires elimination.
You have to get rid of things.
That's that 80% you talked about.
But you also have to think
about different strategies.
And that's the part I love
about this book is that
if you're thinking about
what do I do
if I go from making 20,000
on that project to 40.
That probably requires
a little more work.
But if I have to go
from 20,000 to 200,000,
I need to come up with
a whole new strategy.
I need to be selling to a
different audience or
something different like that.
And so that's the basic
premise that I really like.
And the quote they make is,
you can't do 10 x by doing more of the same.
You have to become
a different person with
a different strategy.
So tell me what you think about that
in terms of the identity stuff.
Kirsten Bombdiggity: I love that 'cause
I think it isn't just about
what's gonna make that kind of money
or but it's also even with
something as simple as our like
private, personal, like relationships.
So if you're married,
you're not thinking about
what's gonna make this marriage,
twice as good.
You're gonna come up with
very different answers
than if you say,
what's gonna make this marriage
10 [00:07:00] times better than it is today.
You're just drawn to different evidence,
you're drawn to different ideas.
And 10 x kind of eliminates
wrong choices because
like obvious and energizing responses
come into play rather than
grudge and we could do this like
a different kind of energy is
activated in your nervous system
when you allow yourself
and give yourself the permission
to think with blow the doors off,
what does this even look like?
And I think that's
what I was with,
like when I was working
with Semi-Retired MD as their
Chief Experience Officer.
It's like I just kept seeing people
run into the wall and
I was trying to think,
okay,
how do I do this?
And really,
so my 10 X was like,
I'm gonna quit this job and
I'm gonna go do what I wanna do.
I wanna help people understand
that play makes learning easier,
that play makes transformation easier.
So I have these doctors who
are now doing coloring books
and getting piñatas in the mail and,
weird ass stuff that,
that would never have happened
[00:08:00] under the constraints of
my previous position.
Stacey Ishman: No I love that point.
I'm not sure about the piñatas.
I haven't really seen
one of these yet,
but we'll get there.
Also she sends people
potatoes in the mail.
I have not heard them,
but I know others have been
surprised by the spontaneous
potato delivery in any case.
But I do the concept you made
because I also think
one thing in academic medicine
we forget,
is we oftentimes are
clinically good at a million things.
But we forget that
if you have to have an
academic focus,
you really need to do less.
You want everybody to know
you for what you are.
And sometimes the nos
are more important than
the yeses for you to get
to exactly where you want to go
and to be known for your niche.
And so if you say yes
to everything,
you are really like a jack of all trades.
But nobody's gonna say,
I want you to be on this committee.
I want you to speak at this meeting.
I want you to be a keynote speaker.
But if you actually,
everybody knows,
okay,
she's known for academic coaching
and so I was actually
saying it to you earlier today
I'm gonna be giving grand rounds
at six places this year.
Last year
I only gave it in a [00:09:00] couple places,
and it's because
I really came down to
I just wanna help doctors
have better aligned lives
in their academic lives
and be more successful
and do it in a way that
they really enjoy it.
And I love that once I finally found
the one area that I felt like
I could really provide service
and value it resonates
and people hear it
and people see it.
And but if I'd walked outta there
and said I'm just gonna do everything
I can to get six grand rounds,
it really wouldn't have worked
because I wasn't serving
a mission
and I wasn't finding
that one most important thing
that I thought could actually drive
my mission and service forward.
Kirsten Bombdiggity: Yeah,
we stopped optimizing
like our current identity
and we instead start designing
like our dream identity.
Stacey Ishman: Yeah.
Kirsten Bombdiggity: Yeah. I think that,
that made me think of
when you were talking with your
time management stuff
about how, what,
what makes you promotable?
And so especially women physicians,
I wanna be the helper,
I wanna be the team player.
So being asked to
grab the coffee
or whatever
that's never gonna get
somebody promoted,
at least onto any committee
that you wanna be a part of.
[00:10:00] And how do you,
when you're coaching physicians,
how do you like,
call them out on themselves,
like where they're getting in
their own freaking way?
Stacey Ishman: So I think that's a
really good example.
I was doing this
departmental coaching
and I'm getting this opportunity
to meet a lot of people
in departments who I
hadn't met before.
And I do a strategy session with them.
And one of them was talking about
how she's not even planning
this meeting anymore.
She's still planning
the social events for
the meetings and
it was really annoying her
'cause she's I don't even
get written down as somebody
on the program that's
part of the program.
Like she's not even
getting the academic credit for
being a course organizer
or any of that,
but she is setting up
the social engagements for it.
And so she doesn't mind helping
with the social engagements,
but it has to have some kind of
value that it comes back to her.
She's happy to be a course director.
She's not even happy to
do a little bit more,
but getting delegated this one piece
that does nothing for her promotion,
doesn't show up on her resume,
just eats her up.
And so she was trying to
figure out why she was
so annoyed by something
and it's [00:11:00] because
she's getting something
without actually getting
the academic credit.
Like she's not so worried
about whether the
attendees see your name.
You want the promotion committee
to see your name.
And so it's interesting,
she just kept saying
she was so annoyed by
this meeting and it took her
a minute to figure out why
she was so annoyed by the meeting.
And it's 'cause
she was asked to do all this
uncompensated work.
And I think if we all look,
there's plenty of things
you do for service.
There's some things
that have great value.
You're doing that for the
greater good of the community
and whatever community you're in,
but you also have to make sure
it's not something
that's taking from your time.
You can't actually pursue
your primary mission.
If it's, if you're spending a week and a half
trying to plan a social event
and you don't actually get to write
the paper you're supposed to write,
it's not serving you.
Now, if you get at least put on the
program and you get to do
something where you're serving
the members and you get
some credit for it with
the promotion committee,
that's a whole different situation.
Kirsten Bombdiggity: So how do you dial that back?
'Cause most of the people
don't even realize.
They're off the cliff until
they're off the cliff.
Like they don't realize
they're running off the cliff
till they are out like wildly coyote,
like way out there.
So [00:12:00] she's already been doing
the social committee stuff
and now she's ready to dial that back.
How does she reclaim that space
and light
and time
and energy
without being considered,
like not a team player?
Stacey Ishman: I think some of it's about
setting boundaries,
but not turning it off today,
right?
Our first instinct is to be like,
oh my gosh,
I'm doing something that,
isn't serving me.
I should stop today.
That's probably not gonna work.
It's not gonna help
the people who actually
wanna go to that social event.
You are providing a service
by doing some of this,
and it's not helping your colleagues
so you don't have to do enough guilt
and this a conversation I have
with a lot of people.
One is,
I'm gonna answer your question.
I think you set boundaries
and I think you set timeframes
that work for everybody.
You're not gonna do
the next three,
but you'll finish this one
and then you'll come up
with maybe sponsor somebody
to do the next one or
ask to be on the program.
You can advocate for yourself
at the same time.
But there's this whole feeling of
guilt that makes this
to a lot of things.
And I've talked to
a lot of people about
healthy guilt and
unhealthy guilt.
And once you look
at your values and
if you're living in
your values or not.
Healthy guilt is when
I'm not doing something
and it's going [00:13:00] against my values.
I know I wanna help my
colleague and I say no today.
'Cause I feel like it's not
the right thing for me.
But then I'm like,
oh, but then I'm leaving 'em in the lurch.
That's healthy guilt.
I actually feel like I wanna
make sure I don't leave
them in the lurch.
Unhealthy guilt is
I never wanna do it in this first place.
This is actually not serving me.
But I'm still gonna do it
in the next three years
because I feel guilty
because somebody
asked me to do it.
That's unhealthy guilt.
Like it doesn't fit your values.
You're not doing what
you feel good about.
So you don't need to waste that energy.
That's absolutely 80% space
in terms of where you're
spending your energy.
So that's the other thing
I talk to a lot of people about
in these situations is
how do you deal with the guilt around it?
Kirsten Bombdiggity: You set boundaries,
it has to align with
how you're comfortable.
It has to come across as authentic.
Otherwise it, we are magnets good or bad,
right?
So we can either
attract what we want.
But I also, one of the things
I love about being a magnet is
that we also repel the stuff
we don't want when
we're strong enough.
And so when you're a weak magnet,
nothing really repels
or attacks.
And so if I am talking [00:14:00] to
I want out of this, tea hour,
I think it's fun.
I think it'd be good to go.
One of the ways that
would align with my
natural communication style,
which would be very
different than yours, Stacey,
is I would say,
Hey, I really.
I need your help with something.
I realized that I'm swimming way
too much organizing this stuff,
and it probably is getting
in the way of me getting promoted.
And so I was thinking that if
I could delegate some of the,
do you have I love inviting
for my personal learning stuff,
I love inviting people in and being like,
Hey, can you help me solve this
problem I'm having,
like people love to help other
people and my,
I give people the benefit of the doubt
that's who we are as humans,
and asking other people
to help you solve a problem
that you're having,
most people are gonna step into that,
in my experience,
a little bit softer than if you just be like,
you know what?
I realize that I suck at this
and this is gonna be the new way
we're going forward.
And so what are some of the ways that,
that you when you realize
you've overcommitted and
you don't really care about
hurting people's feelings,
you just really need the end result.
Like you,
[00:15:00] you have this power authority
about you that is like
this magical blend
of kindness and fierceness
that a lot of women that
I know have not stepped into.
So I wanna hear a more
bold version of boundary
setting that you can model for us.
Stacey Ishman: So one of my favorites is
to actually sponsor somebody
else because oftentimes no,
for me is an opportunity for somebody else.
So a great example of this is
when I was on a whole bunch of
editorial boards and
I was helping figure out content
for journals and I hated
every second of it,
but it is one of those things
that helped with national reputation and
helped with promotion.
And so the best day of my life
was not the best day of my life.
Don't tell my kids I said that.
Just excuse that.
But a great day was when
I actually sat down and said,
I don't wanna do this anymore.
And I sponsored four different people
to be on four different editorial boards,
all of whom were excited.
The opportunity, all of whom
it would help build a national reputation.
And so for me that's a
really powerful way that helps [00:16:00] me
feel like I'm actually turning my no
into somebody else's. Yes.
'Cause I do love that thought
that everything that you say yes to
is saying no to something else.
So you better say yes to the
things you care about.
Or else you're gonna have to say no
to the things you care about.
Kirsten Bombdiggity: And it's really important
that we don't assume that.
Our no's or other people's no's.
Stacey Ishman: Absolutely.
Like I do not like
walking to a cocktail party.
It's like the worst thing on the planet.
But there are people like you
who get energy when they walk
into a cocktail party.
'Cause oh my gosh, did you see?
I got to talk to all those people.
And I'm like,
oh my gosh, did you see all those people
I might have to talk to?
It's the same with all this other work,
right?
Like you might say
I hate designing this thing
and someone else is
my favorite day is to sit and
design this thing.
I think it's just about finding
the people who you can sponsor,
and if you don't know them,
it's okay to say
this is really not my skillset,
but I would love it
if there's an opportunity to do X.
Let them know what you want.
Let them know what kind of
things that you are looking for.
You're willing to serve.
You're just hoping to serve
in a way that's more aligned
with your values and
your time and energy.
Kirsten Bombdiggity: And when thinking about all
the different ways
to [00:17:00] catapult from that
two x to 10 x,
run it through the four different filters.
Run it through.
If I had to come up with 10 times,
what would I need to change
about how I think about time
with this goal?
What would I need to change
about how I think about money
with this goal?
What would I need to change
about relationships and
what would I need to
change about purpose?
And it really does take us to
different pieces of evidence.
Stacey Ishman: I totally agree.
Can you remind us of
the four types of energy?
Kirsten Bombdiggity: Yes.
Time,
money,
relationships,
purpose.
Stacey Ishman: Okay.
And I will say I probably am,
as I moved through my career,
spend far more time thinking about
purpose than I did
at the beginning.
I think I was really caught up in
just getting everything
going and taking good care
of patients and
like getting my research going
and helping medical students
and residents
and my junior,
like all of a sudden
it just seemed like an overwhelming list.
And I don't know that
it showed the same kind of
focus and purpose as it has as
I've gotten at lease that
groundwork under me.
And I think that's what's so great
about having a purposeful
way to start your [00:18:00] career.
At least in academic medicine,
is to really think about your
values and your vision.
And this is true whether
you're in medicine or
any other career.
If you can start by really
making sure you know
where you want to go,
all of the effort and the energy
you spend are gonna be
getting you there instead of it
being slip shot all over the place.
And I think that's one of
those key concepts here too,
is to eliminate the things
that are distracting you from your ultimate goal.
Kirsten Bombdiggity: And one of the things
that I love about,
like having you in my life is that.
You may have raised
the lever on purpose,
but you don't bucket everything
into like standalone buckets.
When I think of how you
approach problem solving or goals,
it's more like a cake batter.
Like it's got all the components in it,
but it's not like you can
pull an egg out of a cake batter.
And so purpose may be
a big part of your batter,
but it's not like you have
set the other ones off to the side
and the relationships one is
critical for me because it's not just
who you play naked with
and it is really just, [00:19:00] or whatever.
Stacey Ishman: Yeah.
Especially not at work for
you physicians out there.
Kirsten Bombdiggity: Yeah. Yeah.
But it's also the people that
you're having conversations
with when they talk about the
five people you spend the most time with,
that is not a load of crap.
Like it is so powerful when you
change the people that
you hang out with.
You change the people you hang out with,
like it is wonderful to
have people who hold you
accountable to your favorite version
of yourself instead of letting you like,
struggle and just say,
that's okay.
Give people the gift of
helping you give people the
gift of letting you know
when you're struggling,
but choose people who are
in alignment with you so that
like this evolving identity has some fuel.
Stacey Ishman: No, I love it.
Now, any last thoughts because
we are hitting the end of our 20 minutes.
Kirsten Bombdiggity: It's not about harder.
And what the stuff that I do like it,
it is very play,
it is very silly.
And part [00:20:00] of that is because it,
it throws the bumpers off.
So that you can get there
so much faster.
So don't think that it has to be
harder in order to make that
dream come true.
Sometimes in order
to get that efficiency,
you just need to dream more ridiculous,
more playfully,
more joyfully,
turn up the Muppet energy and just let it go and figure out the answers will come to you.
Stacey Ishman: And I think a few quotes
from the book,
I think encapsulate it for me.
One is 10 X is not about working harder.
It's about raising your standards
for what matters,
which I think really fits
with what you just said.
And you don't become 10 X
by adding more to your plate.
You could become 10 X by
becoming more of who you really are.
And so I love that as a
parting thought for everybody.
So here's to becoming more
of who you really are.
Kirsten Bombdiggity: Thanks.
See you next time.
Stacey Ishman: Thank you guys for joining us
at your new release,
and we look forward to
talking to you next time.
