2,000 Percent Living Lesson Ten: Improve 2,000 Percent Solutions Again and Again

Repeat the 2,000 percent solution process
annually to enhance benefits
from the solutions you developed
by twenty or more times.

Again I will build you, and you shall be rebuilt, ….

— Jeremiah 31:4 (NKJV)

A common mistake of 2,000 percent solution creators is
to move on from the solution they have developed and
never improve it. If that first area is the most important
one for accomplishing their goals, such a diversion of
attention can be a very costly missed opportunity.

This point is so important that the eight-step 2,000
percent solution process culminates in the instruction to
repeat the first seven steps.

You probably don’t even have to wait very long before
starting to improve: One of my students was able to
create a second 2,000 percent solution for the same
problem within just a few weeks of completing the first
solution, expanding total benefits by more than 400
times.

I fear that many people forget or ignore that eighth step.
In so doing, people are denying themselves a
tremendous amount of benefits and satisfaction. Let me
provide some examples to demonstrate how valuable
repetitions of the first seven steps are for a given
problem.

Imagine that your first 2,000 percent solution was to
expand sales volume for a business by twenty times
while using the same amount of time, money, and effort
that you have been employing. We’ll assume that this
business was selling $100,000 in annual volume. After
implementing the 2,000 percent solution, business
volume expanded to $2,100,000.

While that sounds exciting, those who care about profits
will be even more thrilled. Since volume expanded
without any additional marketing costs, profits grew by
a lot more than twenty times. If we assume that pre-tax
profits had been $5,000 and marketing expenses had
been $10,000, the volume expansion caused profits to
grow from $5,000 to $305,000, an increase of sixty
times.

As you read this example, I can imagine that you are
beginning to think that perhaps you should begin work on
a solution to expand sales volume for a business. Hold that
thought for now while we look further into the importance
of repeating the initial seven steps of the 2,000 percent
solution process.

As a result of the first repeated 2,000 percent solution,
sales volume grew from $2,100,000 to $44,100,000 (an
increase of $42,000,000 compared to an increase of
$2,000,000 for the first solution). For those who prefer
profits to revenue, profits increased from $305,000 to
$6,605,000 (an increase of $6,300,000 compared to
an increase of $300,000 for the first solution).

But don’t stop there. Let’s look at the sales growth from
a third 2,000 percent solution. In this case, sales
volume grew from $44,100,000 to $926,100,000 (an
increase of $882,000,000 compared to an increase of
$42,000,000 for the first repetition). The profit increase
is from $6,605,000 to $138,905,000 (a much larger
increase of $132,300,000 compared to a gain of
$6,300,000 for the first repetition).

Are you ready to measure the benefits from a third
repetition? Sure you are! This time sales volume
expanded from $926,100,000 to $19,448,100,000 (an
increase of $18,522,000,000 compared to an increase of
$6,300,000 for the third solution). Profits grew from
$138,905,000 to $2,917,205,000 (an increase of
$2,778,300,000 from the third solution).

Money may not impress you as much as it does some
people. Let’s look at a parallel example spelled out in
human terms. Imagine a charity that provides for
orphans. Let’s assume that the charity is initially serving
ten orphans. Now let’s assume that the first 2,000
percent solution is aimed at increasing the number of
orphans served with the same quality of care while
applying the same amount of time, money, and effort.
As a result, the charity’s services expanded from
serving ten orphans to serving 210 orphans.

Now, let’s repeat the 2,000 percent solution process.
With the first repetition, the number of orphans served
climbed to 4,410. There are a lot of orphans in the world.
Let’s do a second repetition of the 2,000 percent solution
process. Now, the number of orphans being helped grew
to 92,610. That feels great, doesn’t it?

Let’s repeat the process again. This time, 1,944,810
orphans received aid. With a few more repetitions, every
orphan in the world can be helped. Wouldn’t that result
justify repeating the process a few more times?

You may wonder if these two examples demonstrate
anything other than how to multiply by twenty. As a
counterpoint to that thought, realize that most things
become easier with practice. Why should creating 2,000
percent solutions for the same problem be any
different? The next section provides an example of that
point.

Multiple 2,000 Percent Solutions Spread
a Book’s Message

But they sent me this message four times,
and I answered them in the same manner.

— Nehemiah 6:4 (NKJV)

Since many people don’t believe that any 2,000 percent
solutions are possible, why would they believe that
repeated 2,000 percent solutions can be achieved? Well,
seeing is believing for at least some doubters.

To provide some evidence, I repeat here and expand on
an example from The 2,000 Percent Squared Solution
(Mitchell and Company Press, 2007) involving
inexpensively attracting more readers to books produced
by the 400 Year Project.

In 1998, a best-selling author friend told us that it was
important for attracting readers to distribute tens of
thousands of free copies of business books either just
before the book is published or right after publication.
Tom Peters, coauthor of In Search of Excellence
(reissue edition, Warner Books, 1988), tells the same
story about one aspect of how that book became a best-
selling blockbuster.

When The 2,000 Percent Solution was being written,
my coauthors and I heeded that advice. Before
publication, we sent out thousands of draft copies for
advance reading. After publication, we sent out
thousands more free copies of the completed book to
influential readers. In addition, we created a Web site
for the book and put all but two chapters online there for
free reader access. The cost to do this sampling was over
$40,000. We estimate that these activities have directly
yielded 20,000 people who have read some part of that
book.

That means our cost per reader for just this activity was
about $2.00. Since royalties from a traditional publisher
on books like ours are usually around $2.00, this was a
money-losing proposition unless this distribution yielded
sales of at least 20,000 additional books. In the case of
our friend, this expense was no concern because his
company had paid for this sampling. Our costs, however,
came out of our personal pockets. We needed to do
better.

For The Ultimate Competitive Advantage (Berrett-
Koehler, 2003), Carol Coles and I decided to create a
2,000 percent squared solution (the equivalent of
creating a 2,000 percent solution and later adding a
second 2,000 percent solution, a combined improvement
of 400 times) for increasing the number of readers and
reducing the cost of doing so.

For that book, we only provided free advance copies to
those who helped us create the book. Our cost for those
copies was about $1,200.

We then wrote brief articles based on the book and
arranged to have them published in prestigious journals
and magazines such as Leader to Leader, Chief Learning
Officer, and The Journal of Business Strategy. We next
condensed the articles and turned them into brief guides
that Amazon.com publishes for free. In the first two
years, we estimate that over 30,000 people read some
part of that book through these efforts. We estimate that
total readership through this approach will swell to
100,000 people by the time The Ultimate Competitive
Advantage has been in print as long as The 2,000
Percent Solution has been. If that occurs, we will have
produced 100,000 readers at a cost of $1,200. That
means our cost per reader will be $0.012. The first
book’s campaign cost us 166 times as much per reader
as what the latter campaign did, and we will actually
draw more readers with the new, less expensive effort.
These estimated results will provide us with a 66,000
percent solution compared to our first approach (16,500
percent lower cost per reader multiplied by 400 percent
more readers).

You might wonder why we didn’t do these things for
The 2,000 Percent Solution. First, we didn’t realize how
costly the promotional effort would be on a per-reader
basis until we saw the results. Second, the first book
didn’t lend itself to being published in journals and
magazines. Third, the Amazon.com guide program did
not yet exist.

For a forthcoming book I am developing, that sampling
solution has been further enhanced. The prelaunch will
involve a daily blog in which the material will be tested
for reader reaction. I estimate that more than 200,000
people will have read some part of the book through the
blog before the book is published, and the cost is only
the electricity to post the blog entries. I will also reuse
the Amazon.com guide feature that worked well for
The Ultimate Competitive Advantage to add another
100,000 readers at limited cost. Book publicity will
probably draw another few hundred thousand people to
the blog samples. I also plan to send millions of free
excerpts by email to people who subscribe to various
complementary online newsletters. I should be able to
increase the number of advance readers by several
hundred more percent. Since I carry advertising on the
blog, I have a revenue offset to the costs. If enough clicks
occur from the blog to advertisers’ sites, this sampling
program may well turn out to be free. Clearly, I should
be able to attract over 2,100,000 advance readers at
less cost than with The Ultimate Competitive
Advantage. As you can see, repeating such a process on
the same or a similar problem can be profoundly
valuable in making further improvements.

Again, why didn’t I use these methods for The Ultimate
Competitive Advantage? First, blogging hadn’t become
popular and I didn’t yet have the large online reader
following that I do now through my Amazon.com book
reviews. Second, because journalists are more
interested in my writing now than before, advance
publicity works better. Third, authors and owners of
large subscriber lists are more eager to permit me
access to their readers than previously. Fourth, the
readership of my blogs had to grow enough to create a
large advertising revenue source to offset any remaining
costs.

Since developing that plan, I have realized that some of
the future books about the project can be adapted so that
sponsors would benefit from distributing excerpts or even
entire books to their customers and other stakeholders as
gifts. Sponsors would pay for the right to do this.

Assuming that the book’s appeal is to consumers, such
sponsors could extend the reach of the book to over fifty
million people who would read some of the book. Even if I
never sell a single copy of the book to a bookstore or
individual, the launch would be highly profitable.

Why didn’t I work with sponsors earlier? This solution is
primarily available for books conceived to be distributed
in this way. My earlier books were designed to maximize
the content, not the distribution. I realize now that more
readers can be attracted by combining the two
approaches.

If I later repeat the 2,000 percent solution process again
by arranging for advance translations of each book that is
suitable for such broadscale reading, these sponsorships
can make the book available to those who don’t read
English well but can read another major language well.
Extending sponsorships in this way could increase
advance distribution to well over a billion people and
provide an even larger profit.

Why didn’t I provide for advance translations earlier?
It’s very expensive to hire people to translate books,
and many such translations aren’t very well done. I now
have a number of highly knowledgeable former students
and clients who are willing to translate my books for
free as a labor of love or in a partnership to share the
royalties on a contingent-fee basis. I expect that I will
have enough such supporters to allow future books to
benefit from many translations into major languages
before publication.

As you can see, each 2,000 percent solution opens up
new possibilities for better solutions to the same problem
through repeating the eight-step process. Also, new
opportunities arise after time passes that weren’t
available earlier. By repeating the 2,000 percent solution
process, you can take advantage of both advantages.

Reductions Can Lead to Geometric Expansions

Then He said, “What is the kingdom of God like?
And to what shall I compare it?
It is like a mustard seed,
which a man took and put in his garden;
and it grew and became a large tree,
and the birds of the air nested in its branches.”

— Luke 13:18-19 (NKJV)

Some people may mistakenly believe that repetitions of
the 2,000 percent solution process will lead to smaller,
not larger, benefit gains. Believing that, some will feel
justified in not repeating the process. I certainly endorse
not repeating the process where the benefits won’t be
worth the time, money, and effort that you put into
them. Let me caution you that while decreasing benefits
may appear to be the case when you look only at direct,
first-order effects, the total effects will usually be just
the opposite.

To demonstrate how decreasing benefits can lead to
geometric gains, let’s consider a cost-reduction example.
Let’s assume that we are eliminating costs to supply some
service provided by either a nonprofit organization or a
for-profit company. If the costs begin at $10,000 a year,
a 2,000 percent solution will take those costs down to
$400 a year (96 percent of the prior level). A repeated
2,000 percent solution reduces the annual costs to $16.
A second repeated 2,000 percent solution leaves annual
costs of $0.64 and so on.

Now, those direct results clearly show that the cost-
reduction benefits decline with each solution. The first
solution saved $9,600, while the second solution removed
only $384 in costs, and the third solution took away
$15.36.

However, if the activity from which costs are being
eliminated is one that limits the organization’s overall
success in other activities that the organization would
like to do more of, the benefit picture may look a lot
different from the absolute size of the cost reductions.
Let’s assume instead that this cost is to obtain donations
for a nonprofit organization or to attract new customers
for a for-profit company. I’m sure that you agree that
such costs can never become too low.

To grow faster, some of the money saved may be used
by the leader to increase spending for that activity.
Clearly, the organization can simply keep the same level
of absolute spending and grow twenty times faster.
When that happens, the revenue and profit benefit
effects are similar to the first example in this lesson that
addresses the benefits of organizational growth.

With a big cost reduction, it may be the case that each
repetition of the 2,000 percent solution process allows
the organization to afford a twenty times increase in
absolute spending amounts. When that occurs, the
benefits increase at the same rate as a 40,000 percent
solution rather than a 2,000 percent solution.

When, then, will decreasing amounts of reduced costs
not increase benefits exponentially through repetitions
of the process? That limitation happens only when there’s
no reason to expand the level of this activity or some
other activity to gain some other benefit.

There’s also a fallacy in looking only at reducing costs:
That approach assumes that zero cost is the best level
that anyone can reach.

As you can see from the book promotion example in the
preceding section, many activities that normally have a
cost associated with them can be turned into a source of
profits by creating a new revenue stream. In this
context, problem solvers can instead focus on creating
multiples of positive benefits (such as profits) in addition
to taking costs to near zero.

While it is beyond the scope of this book to further
explore this point about turning costs into profits, I can
share with you that research by The Billionaire
Entrepreneurs’ Master Mind (for which I serve as the
coordinator and head researcher) has established
hundreds of ways that activities which incur costs and
require investments for most organizations can be
turned instead into sources of profit exceeding all costs.
Future business models for nonprofit organizations and
for-profit companies alike will probably feature such
highly beneficial approaches for turning cost centers into
profit centers during repeated 2,000 percent solutions.

Repeated 2,000 Percent Solutions
Can Be Done More Rapidly

So they went out quickly from the tomb
with fear and great joy,
and ran to bring His disciples word.

— Matthew 28:8 (NKJV)

If you are a runner, you know that through daily practice
you gain conditioning so that you can run farther at a
higher speed. If you like to solve crossword puzzles, you
know that the more of them you solve that are edited by
the same person, the faster and more accurately you
can solve the puzzles. As you learned from Lesson Five,
the right kind of reading practice can also increase your
speed and understanding.

Creating 2,000 percent solutions provides the opportunity
to follow a similar improvement path. You should expect
that each time you work on a 2,000 percent solution for
the same activity, the amount of time involved should
decline by anywhere from 10 to 20 percent. If you also
work on a large number of 2,000 percent solutions, you
will see that these accumulated experiences further
improve your speed. In addition, if you work on a 2,000
percent solution for an activity that’s similar to one
you’ve already read about or created a 2,000 percent
solution for, you will see an additional improvement in your
productivity to further reduce the time required.

In some cases, you may also engage people you want to teach
the process to for help in creating the repeated solution. In
this kind of assisted problem-solving, your total time
involvement may be quite small even when you are still
relatively inexperienced in the 2,000 percent solution
process.

How fast can a 2,000 percent solution be created? I don’t
think we know yet, but it’s probably quite fast. I almost
certainly have more experience in this activity than
anyone else at this time. In some of my classes, I’ve been
able to identify a 2,000 percent solution in as little as a
few seconds’ thought and then to explain the solution in
less than fifteen minutes to someone else in enough detail
so that the other person could implement the solution.
I’m sure that such rapidly developed solutions are made
possible by inspired guidance from the Holy Spirit and
thousands of hours working on 2,000 percent solutions,
as well as by a deepened appreciation of the universal
principles that are present in ideal best practices.

With experience you will find that repeating the 2,000
percent solution process annually for the same problems
won’t take up too much of your time. Realize, too, that
each repetition will flood you with exponentially added
resources that can be applied to developing new solutions
that will further reduce how much time you need to
spend on each repetition.

Copyright 2010 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved.