Applying The 80/20 Rule To Speed Up Your Business Success
Applying the 80 20 rule to dramatically speed up your business success. So what is the 80 20 rule? You've probably heard of it and it’s called Pareto's law or Pereira's rule. And Wilfred Pareto was a French economist Ed permit, an Italian economist and sociologist where he lived in France and he was known for his Pareto's law in that 20% of the causes or the actions create 80% of the stuff that happens to us, the effect if you will. So 20% of the cause or the input will give you 80% of the output. And why that's important to business is when it comes to the 10,000 hours rule, it takes 10,000 hours supposedly to the common expert to become really great at something.
Of course people want to hire experts, people don't want to hire generalists if you need brain surgery, do you want a brain surgeon or do you want to just a general physician that treats everyone? right.
So in business people want an expert. And if you're being all things to all people you're not being an expert, you're not being a specialist. So one of the best ways to answer the question what do you do as well “I specialize in ________” and what is the outcome you get for those people and why should they care.
You know it's not about features and benefits, it's about outcomes, what is that outcome? So, how to apply this well? Again if 20% of the things you do are going to get you 80% of the results, well we can apply that to the 10,000hour rule. So 20% of 10,000hours is 2,000hours and if we apply that a second time to those 2,000hours, we get 400hours.
So if you're doing your expertise or a specialization and only that all day every day, instead of 10,000 hours it can take you 400 hours to get to mastery, to get to expertise, to get to success, to get to specialist, and the way we do that is by avoiding doing all the things we're not good at- that don't make us money, they're little things, it's small things. You only do the big important things. And you outsource things to other people.
It matters not if you're an entrepreneur or someone in a corporate environment, outsource them or trade them-barter. You are better at presentations- do presentations for people and outsource things like- may be running reports for example instead of presentation, they can do reports for you, you can do presentations, so trade. Or get an assistant if you're an entrepreneur, get a virtual assistant and that way you can have all these things, hire a sales person if you need, hire an assistant, hire whoever you need, marketing people instead of doing it all yourself, because again we can't be all things. We're never going to do a great job doing all these things ourselves
One of my mentors Dan Sullivan usually says “find your who not your how” so instead of trying to figure it out on your own in order to save money, which you won't do, that actually costs you far more money and time if you try to do things all on your own. So if you do only what you need to do, only what you love to do and that we love what you do, all day long then you love your career, your job and sub it or out hire it out or trade it or barter with people or just hire great assistants.
I pay my virtual assistant in the neighbourhood of five six bucks US an hour and I get to do whatever I want in that time- whether it's connecting with awesome people, make calls, plan the future, strategize, create new courses or sit and relax, instead of me doing the things I don't want to do and the things I’m not an expert at. There's a lot of things I’m great at, there's a lot of things I’m not an expert at. One of the things I’m great at is teaching people how to be more influential, how to lead better, how to better influence and more trust, more credibility and that's what I do all day. I don't worry about you know taxes or book-keeping or web development or advertising. Again be careful before you say “oh I can't afford to sub all it out” well maybe you can do trades and barters with people in your own company or externally trades and borrowers create services pay for some hire some. Use upwork.com if you need, use Fiverr to hire freelancers if you just need small jobs or mini jobs or projects.
So do what you need to do because. If you're all things to all people no one's going to think you're a specialist or an expert. And the amount of people who hire you is dramatically less and the amount you can charge or the amount of people will pay you is also dramatically less. You want to help more people, make more money, love what you do- be a specialist, be an expert, be like a brain surgeon for example versus a general physician. Of course not knocking general physicians in any way, be an expert. So if you're doing what you love all day long, think about it, it's no longer work, you're going to be more effective at it, you can get better at it, you're going to love it, potentially work less hours make a lot more money and again to you you're going to have a lot more fun.
The other thing you can apply this to is Tasks and Time. Because 20% of your tasks are going to get you 80% of the results, so why would you do that other stuff, if you're getting 80%of the results from a little bit of stuff important things, why would you do all the unimportant things?
One way to figure out what's important what's not is to Google the word Covey Quadrants or Stephen Covey Quadrants. It actually comes from Theodore Roosevelt. The way he organized his day and his time and prioritized things and I won't get into that now, there's a whole another video I did. But Cubby Quadrants will help you prioritize what's urgent and important, what's important but not urgent, what's not urgent and not important, and what's urgent yet not important. Usually it’s other people's fires and I like to be a little snarky and I say how your lack of planning suddenly my emergency is? I have fun with it.
So again use these and find ways to rank things, write down all the things you need to do in a day and rank them, versus “oh I got so much to do today, I’m overwhelmed” and when we are overwhelmed, we don't make good decisions, we do stupid stuff we shouldn't do or that is not productive. So figure out what you need to do, what's most important, find some way of ranking it, write all the tasks down you need to do every day, make a list, rank it, prioritize it and or use the Stephen Covey Quadrants. I promise you, your productivity will increase and that application of the 20% 80% rule you're going to get way more results. Because 20% of the things you're doing that are important if you do them you're going to get 80% results and you'll easily make more money and have more output with less time. You'll have a lot less time which is amazing, get more by doing less, and imagine that. We're all working ourselves to death.
I think it's time to stop and really enjoy life more. I think these past couple years have shown us that it's critical to enjoy life more and it shows us what happens if we don't.
I hope you have enjoyed this, till next time go have your best day ever. Use this 80 20 rule to help speed up your business success and have you rocket to success without working more, without working harder, because you're doing the stuff that makes the difference. Anyway 80 20 rule, Pareto's law.
Have your best day ever take care
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