Inspiration and Wisdom

The Pareto Principle

"The Pareto Principle: The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes, what are called the "vital few."

Live the Pareto Principle Lifestyle (Thanks to James Clear)

Relationships

Who are the people that have the most positive impact on my life? Spend more time with them.

Priorities

What are the few actions that have the most positive impact on my day? Prioritize them.

Learning

What are the few information sources I learn the most from? Focus on them.

Stress

What are the few sources that cause most of the stress and friction in my life? Eliminate them.

The Pareto Principle

Personal and Business Finance
Want is a Weak Word

In the great book A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck, there is a scene where the simple farm boy from whose perspective the book is written sees a beautiful coat he wants. He tells his father that he wants it. His father’s response was simple, yet profound: “Want is a weak word.”

Knowing what you want, as long as your reasons are sound and motives are pure-is a start, but it won’t move you one step closer to getting what you said you wanted. It’s what you do about what you want, that decides whether or not you get it.

A want is a dream. A dream with a date is a goal. An action plan drives your task list, and those tasks achieved make the goal happen.

Want is a Weak Word

Starting and Scaling Your Business
The 9th Absolute to Starting and Scaling Your Business is Your Systems

Systems are simply how things are done. The only alternative to them is mind reading. You cannot get mad at employees / team members who don’t do things the way you, the owner, did them or visualize them, if you don’t have initial training on systems and then ongoing system manuals for how things are to be done.

Michael Gerber, in his epic book The E-Myth Revisited, talks about how to create systems. They usually start as checklists. You just make a list of how you or whoever normally does the work, does the work. Those checklists end up in a 3-ring binder or in a digital file that can be accessed at any time by the people doing the work.

The key to repeatable success, and what sets franchises apart, is uniformity in work, in goods or services. Uniformity is achieved through training on systems, and then an adherence to systems. In some ways, your company will only be as good as its systems.

The 9th Absolute to Starting and Scaling Your Business is Your Systems

Tech Talk
How Much of Your Budget Should Be Spent on Tech

According to Gartner, an American technological research and consulting firm based in Stamford, Connecticut that conducts research on technology, most small businesses, which make up over 99 percent of surveyed companies, and nearly 83 percent of total IT dollars, will spend upward of six percent of their revenue on IT, while larger organizations typically spend around three percent of theirs.

You will have two budgets in your company-the Startup Budget (what it takes to get open) and your Ongoing Budget for monthly operations. Both need to have line items for technology, both for machines and devices, and for software and subscriptions. Some subscriptions will be for software you will run, like Office, and others will be for CRM management, anti-virus, and other things depending on your type of business.

How Much of Your Budget Should Be Spent on Tech

Spotlight on a Business
Les Schwab

Born in 1917 in Bend, Oregon, Les Schwab came from humble beginnings. Orphaned as a child, he was a self-made man and believed in old-fashioned hard work. Les built his business from one store to hundreds of locations across the western states, making Les Schwab one of the largest independent tire businesses in the United States.

He didn’t do it alone. Les provided his employees with training and opportunities to grow and succeed, both financially and personally. Les believed in treating customers like family.

Although Les passed away in 2007, his vision remains at the core of the company’s culture:

• Give people more for their money

• Reward employees for their expertise and hard work

• Earn people’s trust and everyone benefits.

Today, the company has over 7,000+ employees and it sold a few years ago for almost 3 Billion Dollars.

Marketing Magic
Pattern Interruption

Your job when marketing is to get “the open”. This means in an email campaign they open the email and click on the active link or button. You want the person opening the physical mail to not throw your direct mail piece away. You want to get the scroller online to stop scrolling through search results. You need to get the car driver to look at the billboard ad twice. How? By using a visual picture or a headline as a “hook” that makes their brain want to know more.

What can you do to make people interrupt their normal fast paced routines. High quality visuals do it. Humor does it. Large fonts and bright colors do it. You will have to figure out what does it for your brand, in a way that is “on brand” for you. One things is for sure, if you cannot interrupt patterns, you cannot make money. Gary Vaynerchuk says: “Money goes where people go.” People go everywhere, all the time in this fast-paced world, unless you can interrupt their patterns.

Pattern Interruption

The Boss Sauce - Managing
Self-Care - You Will or You Won’t

When you read the title above, what did you think it meant. Did you think it meant you will either do Self-Care or you won’t? That’s not what it meant.

It means this: You will either do Self-Care or you won’t thrive as a person or in your business, and ultimately you won’t survive. Do you think I am exaggerating? I am not.

You will either build rest and relaxation activities into your life, or you will burn out mentally and physically. You will become short tempered, ill more often, gain weight, get high blood pressure, and ultimately have a heart attack or stroke. Then you will die or be disabled. That is what business can do to people-but it doesn’t have to.

Self-Care means taking care of yourself and valuing yourself enough to do that.

When you have a self-care schedule you become a better, and healthier, person. This will provide positive benefits to your relationships and your professional life.

Self-Care activities are you caring for you. It can be: time away from work, a walk in the woods, massage, facial, comedy club or movie theater, workout at the gym, counseling, vacation, weekend getaway, etc… In short, it has to be something you enjoy and that makes you feel better after you do it, and you cannot rely on the idea that you’ll do it later “when you have the time.”

You need an actual Self-Care schedule and then the discipline to not cancel items on that schedule to “work on the business.”

Self-Care - You Will or You Won’t

The Last Word

Love yourself, we are told, and you should - but you should also analyze yourself and be critical of how you think, act, and behave when those thoughts, actions, and behaviors violate your morals and standards, or the rights of others. Self-love without self-awareness is useless. You should be the one that holds yourself accountable, so that others, who might not be as forgiving as you, don’t have to.

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