Hello again. Usual format: story, action point, more detail.

The fairy-tale (warning: conceals powerful truths)

Once up a time a man left his job to start a small company, to give himself freedom.

Every day he worked *in* his business. He delivered the services, called prospects, even did the accounting.

One day he realized that he had a job, like the one he left, but with less freedom, less security and less money. The only thing he had more of, was stress. His one relaxation was reading business books (are you this driven too?) and he discovered the 80/20 principle.

Because of that, one week he decided not to cold call prospects. Instead he spent the time working on his USP instead. Of course, he lost out on a bit of work, but ...

Because of that, armed with a great USP, from then on he needed less time trying to persuade prospects. This gave him time to improve his sales processes until they started to call him. Then he found the time and cash to hire an assistant to free up yet more time.

Until finally he worked exclusively *on* his business. Which made it really easy to sell. That made him lots and lots of money. Which realized his dream of freedom. (Go on, what do you dream of?)

Action

Some tasks are worth a measly $10 dollars an hour. Like the one you enjoy most of all: cold calling. Some are worth $100 per hour, like solving a problem for a client. Below are a list of $1000 dollar per hour tasks. Get into the habit of starting your day by earning $1000 per hour with one of them - plan and prioritize your day the night before.

The back story

An Italian economist called Pareto noticed in the 19 century Italy that 20% of the people owned 80% of the land. It got even more interesting. The top 4% (20% or the top 20%) owned around half the land. It’s not always 80/20, that’s just the name that stuck. For example, today, 80% of wealth is generated by 9% of the world’s countries - an 80/9. And 19% by the USA alone - just 0.5% of the World’s Countries - an 19/0.5.

It’s not just the wealth of people, of countries. It’s the value of your time. Fixing stuff on your website vs creating marketing tests vs judging the results and taking action. Talking to unqualified prospects vs talking to a qualified prospect vs negotiating with a qualified prospect. In each case the worth to you is maybe 100x from first to last.

For the geeks among you, these all have a power law distribution.

Yet we seem to be built to think of averages - normal distributions. Perhaps because we see them more easily. Sure, there is one 7 foot 7 inch guy on the world, but most of us are under 6 foot. If it were a power law, we’d have someone 210 feet tall.

Yet there’s just as much power law stuff in the universe as there is normally distributed. Land, wealth, roads. Customers.

Yes, customers. How can you apply this? For sure, if you sell ten $10 000 websites, you’ll have one customer who would spend $100 000 with you. You only have to work out how to deliver that much value.

And yes, if you could build a $100 product, you could sell 1000’s of them. Nice! Especially if you can automate the sales process.

Don’t believe me? Starbucks do. They’ll sell you anything from a $3.78 Tall Latte, to an Ascar Professional by Nuovo Simonelli coffee machine for $1295.00. Via a Moccamaster at $289.00, a Softpour 8 Cup at $59.95, a Classic Pour Over Brewer at $12.95. Down to a and a Venti at $5.31.

Do I follow my own advice? In my first business I have products for sale at $199, $299, $399, $4999, $30000 and $300000 so that customers can sort out for themselves how much they want to spend.

There are two great books on how to use power laws in your business. The original is The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch. Then there’s the more targeted follow up 80/20 Marketing by Perry Marshal. It’s up to you, but I would make time to read these.

Your time too has an elastic worth. Perry gives this list of $1000 per hour tasks that I promised you: .
1 Planing and prioritizing your day
2 Negotiating with a qualified prospect
3 Building your sales funnel
4 Judging marketing tests and experiments
5 Delegating complex tasks
6 Writing sales copy
Take the challenge to do more of these and your business will grow.

Next? Let’s talk about more about a $10 000 per hour task. Or {unsubscribe}.

Yours, Matt.