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The Pareto Principle Presently…

You may have heard of the 80/20 rule which was made famous by a very smart Italian
guy during the time of the Renaissance (middle ages).

Pareto was doing some research on how things happen in life and made a startling and
accidental discovery.

He found a pattern, which was as good as gold, to the way things occur in nature and with humans.

As luck would have it he saw 80% of results coming from only 20% of the efforts.

This has a couple of implications.

1. 80% of your effort is in essence ‘wasted’
2. 20% which is very little effort gives possibility for a massively successful business

I’ve come to believe a more winning combination today is 90/10. Because it seems to me 90% of my
results come from only 10% of my efforts.

The tricky part, the results alchemy, is figuring out which 10%-20% of your efforts yield the lion’s share
of your results and profits.

Each business is different in which activities lead to the profits. But basically your customer acquisition
and customer retention activities will be the highest ROI in your business. Of course, you have to find
quality products they want to buy or develop them yourself.

Take it from me, talk is cheap and discovering your true 10%-20% activities will make you more profits
and free more of your time for family than you ever dreamed possible.

I believe strongly that you should have a few core activites on your list.  Paid and free traffic should be on it. Paid traffic is without doubt the fastest way to get visitors to your site, test you sales process, and ultimately make money.

Also, you should definitely start thinking of them as visitors or viewers. Traffic is a very unpleasant thing to be stuck in and noone likes being called traffic. When you change your mindset it shows through in the content and connection your website has with people.

Back to the topic at hand…

So beware the gurus who speak in absolutes. “this is the only way to go, this is all you need, one traffic tactic fits all.” Because it is always (my use of absolute) a good idea to spread your risk. I can think of no instance (absolute) where maximum risk in only 1 ‘basket’ is a good idea but invite you to prove me wrong on this absolute.

Having only 1 stream of website visitors can be very hazardous to your business health. So get out there and use both free traffic and paid traffic methods. Imagine it like the idea of “multiple streams of income”. Instead you want “multiple streams of web visitors” from different sources to spread your risk.

However, you should know how to do each method and if you don’t hire someone who’s expert in that method. Don’t waste your time learning “57 different methods”. Just get good at 1 and put it to use to make some money. Then once that is producting steadily learn another method and add it into your funnel.

I was reading this article on blog commenting yesterday which is a very powerful strategy.

The author was espousing that you never pay for advertising.

Always beware of absolutes (I know I just used the absolute “always”).

Because I’ve seen very little in life or business that is absolute. There is always (absolute) a way to make something work. You just have to determine whether it is worth your time or money investment to learn it yourself, if you’re a do-it-yourslefer, or pay someone to research and find the right people to hire, or do your own research and hire the people already skilled in that area of need.

You can definitely make paid advertising work for massive ROI. WHen you know your business and market, after you’ve done tremendous testing and optimizing, there is almost no investment out there that can garner you the mega returns that investing in advertising can.

Most investors are happy with a 10% annual return on their money (about 5-6% after inflation and even less when taxes are taken out which is amazingly bleak) and absolutely ecstatic with 20% return.

These returns pale in comparison to the 65%, 223%, and even 1014% plus ROI (return on investment) you can get with paid advertising. Absolutes part 2 coming Thursday…

Spartans were absolutely dedicated to the Spartan Nation. THe only way they could get a headstone on their graves was for the men to die in battle. The women could only get it by dying in childbirth.

You want to foster this kind of loyalty and dedication to the cause of your business.

There are a few ways to do this.

People are crying out for leadership in business and in life. So be their leader. It’s your business, noone cares more about it than you. When you give them a strong leader to follow and a mission they can believe in they’ll galvanize behind you and your mission.

They’ll work far harder on a product and process they believe in than they ever would just “working a job”.

Recognition is a key tool in your business “war chest”. WHen you have an employee who does an exceptional job on a project recognize them publicly. It’s been said “men will go through more hell for recognition and status than money alone”.

This also saves you big bucks since you have a psychological tool in your belt and not just the money reward to entice better work out of your people.

People love rewards and will go to great lengths to get them. The Spartans knew this, you need to use it to improve your business.

This is the final piece in the “Spartanize Your Business” for success series.

For ways to grow your business get social media marketing strategies.

“Ferocious Spartan way — applying ferociously effective techniques to your business”

You do want to have the Spartan type of ruling class in your business just NOT OVERTLY. The Spartans had what was called the Homoioi which was the 10,000 member war your class that made the rule. They had a middle class of about 50, 000, and a working poor class of around 250,000 (Helots which they routinely strangled to death as a rite of passage before their boys could become warrior men).

You’ll want to have this type of pyramid structure in your business. However, you don’t want it to be overtly known to your employees.

You want to encourage feeedback and creative problem solving at all levels of your business organization. The sales reps talking on the phone may find a missing chink in the marketing which is taking them mountains of time to deal with live. A simple letter of explanation could be added to your marketing series to clear this up and free volumes of time for your reps.

A good idea is worth hearing no matter what level it comes. Just have an organizational chart people can refer to, stay organized, and foster an environment where your employees want to be members of and support your “state” which is your business.

For ways to grow your business get social media marketing strategies.

“Ferocious Spartan way — applying ferociously effective techniques to your business”

The Spartan women were unrivaled in their beauty. Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world, was originally Helen of Sparta. The social system she grew up in quite radical and weird.

The boys and girls were kept almost exclusively separate, in same-sex groups, up until the time they were 17 to 18 years old. Then they were only brought together in arranged marriages in order to breed, with the goal of producing more Spartan boys to be warriors.

So don’t erect a wall between your customers where you and your company are “one sex” and your customers are the “other sex”. Make it as easy for them to interact you and your employees as you can.

Otherwise, you’ll experience a Spartan like interaction where the men came to be with their wives at night, and then had to return to their barracks as soon as the seed had been planted. It was a running joke that a Spartan man never saw his wife in the light of day until he was 30 years old.

Obviously you don’t want a prolonged period of being unable to “see your customer in the light of day”. Of course you want to know what your customers want right now and right away.

With the tools available you can survey your customers and know what they want almost instantly. So there are no excuses.

For ways to grow your business get social media marketing strategies.

“Ferocious Spartan way — applying ferociously effective techniques to your business”

The French during the time of Napoleon were also very enamored and based their system on the Spartan way. The founding fathers of our country, America based our government on the fact that the purely democratic Athens failed because pure democracy is a failed system. So they look at the Spartan way and why it was so successful for so many years stability.

They had a somewhat aristocratic ruling class elected by the people to represent them make decisions for them was the way to go. The many checks and balances present in the Spartan system were greatly admired by our founding father

You can model your organizational structure based on this. You will no doubt be the final word on your marketing schedule and other sales and marketing decisions. However, it’s good to have checks and balances even if it’s just your business coach advising you to do this or not do that.

Having advisors you trust (and are more successful than you) and will listen to, enacting their advice will be key to your success especially when first starting out in your new business venture.

Setup an oligarchy type structure with you at the top as ultimate decision maker and have a support team you can consult with so you don’t get blinded by your own beliefs. SOmetimes you are TOO CLOSE to a situation to make a good decision.

For ways to grow your business get social media marketing strategies.

“Ferocious Spartan way — applying ferociously effective techniques to your business”

They are credited with inventing the “boot camp”. Many people in the business world and especially seminars use the term boot camp because it sounds better in people’s minds than “attending a seminar” and “attending a 3 day training”.

A boot camp sounds exciting and energetic. This common gathering place allows smooth learning of sales and marketing as well as a place to drill and role play with other like minded people.

It could be considered the first and original organized mastermind group.

You’ll want to have these type of retreats for your sales team, marketing team, executives, your own personal mastermind of advisors, and schedule a bootcamp training for your customers.

At this “external” boot camp you host with your customers you can survey them and get direct answers of what concerns them and what keeps them up at night.

Then you can show them how your problem solves this or make a product that will solve it.

For ways to grow your business get social media marketing strategies.

“Ferocious Spartan way — applying ferociously effective techniques to your business”

Discipline

The Spartans were renowned for their displine. They were the world’s 1st truly professional soldiers. IN your business the value of disciplining your focus and maintaining a professional, structured schedule is paramount to business success.

Here are a few of the things the Spartans made famous (I’ll be talking about in this 6 part article series):

Boot Camp — commonplace to work, drill

Oligarchy — you run your business, few select advisors

Avoid what brought them down — rigidity, stubborn loyalty to the old way, unwillingness to study others, lack of innovation, lack of willingness to bring in ideas from travels abroad

Exposing — babies carefully looked at by elder, any deformities or weaknesses the baby was left to die

Dedication & Loyalty — state is above all (breeding this in your organization)

The Spartans were a fierce and ferocious race of Greeks that flourished from 1500 B.C. to about 380 B.C. their downfall is mostly due to their rigidness and stubborn loyalty or old way that was clearly failing.

Many of their footprints remain in our lives today during the Renaissance the peoples of Florence Italy were greatly enamored the Spartan way and Spartan wall.

For ways to grow your business get social media marketing strategies.

Today is about starting out your business to make money blogging, ecommerce, or website. At the beginning stages of your new venture you can (and probably will) experience frustration and a feeling of being lost. So in that time of frustration when you want to pull your hair out remember this:

“Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.” -Marcus Aurelius

Marcus was a very wise man and considered one of the top 5 emperors (and leaders) in Roman history. He did not get to the top overnight nor was it easy.

And neither will your ascent to the top of your market be easy or overnight. Persistence bashes through the resistance you’ll come up against when starting out.

Ever feel like this:

Don’t despair. Keep putting to work the system you are following and the results will come.

There is always some initial friction and resistance when entering a new market. That’s just natural.

People resist change and since people are what make up businesses and organizations, businesses resist change. The businesses already in your chosen market will resist allowing you to compete with them. They want to keep all the profits and things they are doing the same.

Have your plan mapped out (I love to use Mind Meister) on a mind mapping web-based site. These are the easiest to use and many are free. This way you can collaborate with people the world over.

You can have an international MasterMind team. Or you can just work together with your cousin Millie in Atlanta. It is adaptable and easy to use. You’ll both be able to see the vision and work together much faster and be on the same page.

Mind maps are very cool. In my experience one of the biggest determinants of success is having an organized plan that you put into action and execute. Especially when working in groups everyone has to be on the same page and fulfilling their part of the plan.

The mind map makes it easy to assign various parts of the plan to the person responsible for that part. Then you do what works best…giving a person a well defined task and allowing them the room to complete their work.

Of course, you check in with them for progress updates and set a deadline before assigning the task.

Partnerships work best when all partners feel they are doing equal work and have equitable deadlines. It starts to break down when you (or one of your partners) feels like you are pulling more than your share of the weight.

Staying in contact on a pre-determined schedule keeps things smooth and allows everyone to work.

You are the leader. So lead your team.

THis means you have to be the planner, set things up, and oversee the whole project.

It is a responsibility but follow the basics I have outlined here and you will be successful.

I know all too well the challenges that managing a strictly virtual team who you’ve never met in person presents. It can be done and the organization of the project is the critical factor. Also, knowing the commitment level of each team member and where the project ranks on their priority scale is essential info for you to know.

Quick tip: I recommend having a trial period with people you are going to work with (assuming you’ve never worked with them before). This allows you and them to see how you will work together and whether the arrangement is doable before you sign any paperwork and get locked into something that’s no good.

Follow my advice and you’ll find that your projects go smoother, with less drama, and get completed on time more than you’ve ever experienced in the past.

You’ll make money blogging faster, sell more products on your ecommerce site, or have more business on your regular site than you can handle.