I want to share with you something I learned a few years ago which could really help you move forward with your business and financial goals.
With there being only 24 hours in a day and everyone having different energy levels, time seems to be in a very short supply when you really need it the most.
To be successful, you will need to do more than the average person… at the beginning at least.
Once you have systems in place and have built multiple income streams you can take a back seat more.
There are two quotes I read recently which I want to share here and they are…
“Successful people work 80 hour weeks for a couple of years so they do not have to work 40 hour weeks for the rest of their lives.” – Bob Proctor (Or words to that effect)
“On average if you work 13% more than the average, you’ll make 40% more than the average” – Warren Farrell Author of “Why Men Earn More”
The truth is, the more you do at the beginning, the better your life will become.
But what if you do not have an abundance of time?
What if you have life and financial circumstances which prevent you from spending more time on those things which will help you to have a better life?
I may have the answer for you…
Have you ever heard of the 80/20 rule?
The 80/20 rule is a universal law, also known as Pareto’s principle – named after the mathematician who discovered it – which states that 80% of outcomes (or outputs) result from 20% of all causes (or inputs) for any given event.
80/20 basically says that 80% of your money comes from 20% of your work.
In business, 80% of a company’s profit comes from 20% of their sales. 80% of their output comes from 20% of the workforce.
This rule is seen throughout our lives and in the world around us.
20% of the UK road network regularly carries 80% of the traffic.
20% of the animal kingdom have supremacy over the other 80%
20% of nations use up 80% of the resources.
20% of professional footballers earn 80% of the money.
20% of social media influencers will be more successful than the other 80%
20% of the population earn and control 80% of the wealth … and 20% of that 20% earn and control 80% of the 80% so on and so forth.
The figures are not always 80/20 but they are thereabouts.
This really is the way of life. It just is.
Now, with 80/20, you can understand more on how your own life works.
You can see what you do with your time and which of your actions have the biggest impact on your life.
For example: as part of the 80/20 principle, 20% of your work time generates 80% of your income.
This means that out of an 8 hour day, 1.6 hours generates roughly 80% of your income.
Roughly translated, this means that there are parts of your work… certain tasks… which yield more profit.
That is unless you work for someone else and are being paid an hourly wage, then there are certain tasks and pockets of time where you are generating more profit for your employer.
Understanding the 80/20 rule means that you can identify which tasks pay your more, and those which pay you less.
So what would happen if you spent more of your time doing more of that important 20% work?
The answer…
You would earn more money.
Once you have figured out which tasks make you the most money, how do you spend more time doing them when you have a full day of work and a large list of tasks to do?
The answer…
Outsource your other tasks.
What you should really outsource…
I am sure you have heard of outsourcing before.
A lot of people online are constantly saying that you should outsource jobs to free you and your time up. Which is great business sense… but these people often tell you to outsource the wrong work.
They tell you to outsource the work you cannot do such as build a website, write a book, create a book cover, format an eBook or run advert campaigns.
It makes sense, especially if you do not know how to do any of these things… but here is the problem… those kinds of jobs can be very expensive to outsource.
They can cost several hundred pounds, sometimes thousands of pounds to have done… yet these jobs are often the 20% which will bring in the 80% of your earnings.
So here is another idea…
Instead of outsourcing the work which will generate you 80% of your money… why not learn how to do those tasks and outsource the more menial jobs which HAVE to be done regularly and can be outsourced for only a few pounds?
Jobs like shopping, cooking, cleaning your car and cleaning your house.
Where you will pay several hundred pounds to have a short report written, you will pay something like £30 to have your house cleaned. Maybe you have a younger family member who will happily do your big supermarket shop for £20.
Outsourcing both of those jobs could in fact give you at least another half day to work more on those 20% tasks which bring in 80% of your income.
We spend a lot of time doing general living and household tasks. There is no getting away from them, these tasks need doing. Cars need refueling and kitchen cupboards need restocking with food.
But because of the nature of these types of jobs – requiring no special skills or knowledge and are very easy to do – people cannot and will not charge you a lot to do them.
You wouldn’t pay someone £200 to clean your house for a couple of hours or pay someone £100 just to put £20 worth of petrol in your car and pump the tyres up. Would you?
These are low fee jobs… and they need doing, regularly.
Yet, these simple everyday life jobs can rob us of hours of time each month.
Those hours could have been used working on those 20% tasks which generate more of the 80% money.
Mike Shreeve, copywriter to many of the top internet marketers like Russel Brunson, used to pay a person to fill his car with fuel and cut his lawns leaving him to focus on writing sales letters which made him tens of thousands of dollars.
He also used to pay someone to read his emails and to forward any to him which would need a personal reply. The others were either deleted or answered with a generic reply which suited the question.
I am not saying that you cannot or should not outsource important tasks if you really do not know how to do them or need them doing fast. But if those tasks are vital and have the potential to earn 80% of your income, you really should know how to do them and how they work.
What can an extra 8 hours do for you?
Mike Shreeve is also a 6-figure a year fiction writer. He knows how to run Facebook advertising campaigns yet he pays someone to run his advertising campaigns for him so that he can focus on writing more books.
Over 8 hours, his ad-guy may set up several ad campaigns for several books, check stats and do some campaign tweaking at a possible cost of $300 – 500 (I guess). Over that same 8 hours, Mike might have written half or maybe even finished the first draft of a book which may go on to generate tens of thousands of dollars – maybe more – further down line.
Even though one sale of a book on Amazon pays him only a few dollars compared to the possible hundreds he pays to the guy running his ads… the overall income generated by his books sales is far greater.
The more books he writes, the larger his portfolio is, the more books he can sell. So it makes sense for him to focus on his writing and pay someone else to do the other tasks.
It makes more sense to focus your time on the most important tasks which will be expensive to outsource and to outsource the other cheaper time sapping dull jobs.
So, before you rush to outsource all of your vital and profitable work at a cost of thousands, why not outsource those less exciting tasks like shopping and cleaning to people who would happily do them for far less?
You will save a lot of time and money, and you will be able to focus more on the work which really makes a difference to your life.
Plus… you are giving work to local people, which is good for the local economy.
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