Have you heard of the 80/20 Rule? It’s also called the Pareto Principle (named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto) and it says that 80 percent of your results should come from 20 percent of your effort. For example, in your business, a vital few activities result in 80 percent of your income.
Unfortunately for most people, they are stuck on the wrong side of the Pareto Principle. They keep focusing on the 80 percent of their time that delivers hardly any return. Sounds familiar?
Especially if you’re self-employed or your working with the internet, it’s easy to constantly get distracted from your main line of work. In his recent post How To Never Get Anything Done, Dean Hunt the world’s leading Buzz Marketer, described how most people spend more time fearing a project, worrying about a project and avoiding a project, than actually doing it. Luckily, I recently spent some time learning from Dean and another great internet marketer, James Schramko, and one of the main lessons was to create more results with less effort.
Leverage 80 Percent of Results With 20 Percent of the Effort
So, how do you create more results with less effort? One Word: Leverage!
Leverage the vital few activities that create 80 percent of your results. Are you great at interviewing people? Well, one video interview can be a TV show or downloadable video, it can also be a podcast and turned into a report. Imagine what a whole series of video interviews could do? An online TV show, a series of podcasts, a Book and a membership site which combines all these products, can be created from the simple act of filming some interviews.
Think about it, how many activities in your business do you repeat over and over again? Would it be worth filming those activities to turn them into training videos? How many repetitive tasks do you do each day? How can you leverage your time by setting them up once and being able to access them automatically? That is leverage.
What we can learn from Barbie
Do you have a best-selling product? Can you simply replicate it, re-package it and sell it again? You wouldn’t be the first one. Think of Barbie. She started as a single doll, then she was replicated with different clothes – she even kept the same name! And that’ been going on for over 50 years. And to spice things up a little bit, Mattel added Barbie’s friends and family who were just like Barbie, but in different sizes and nationalities. 
The Barbie doll range implements some other incredible leverage techniques: Upselling, Downselling and Cross-selling.
You want to buy more than just Barbie? Well, you can also get her a house, a car, and a horse. You don’t want Barbie to be lonely? Well you better buy her a man (Ken), or at least a friend. You don’t want to buy an entirely new Barbie Doll? Maybe just a new outfit will do.
Lesson: Play To Your Strength
So what is the best way to implement the Pareto Principle and leverage the 20 percent of your effort that delivers 80% of your results?
- Find the vital few activities that deliver 80 percent of your results.
- Determine what makes these results so popular with your market.
- Find out what else your market wants.
- Offer your market these additional products and services as up-sells, cross-sells and down-sells from your original offer.
I’m off leveraging this great blog post by turning it into a video… hang on, maybe it’s going to be a podcast. Or should I save it for my new book…?
How are you going to leverage? Leave a comment below and please share this post with your friends!
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