Many years ago I wrote an article called “Challenging the 80:20 rule”.

In it I pointed out that the 80:20 rule doesn't always work.

There are plenty of sectors, for example, where 20% of your customers don't make up anywhere near 80% of your sales. Often more like 50% at best in many retail businesses for examples.

Or they make make up 80% of your sales this year, but a different 20% will make up 80% of your sales next year.

I kind of regret writing that article.

Not because it was wrong. It wasn't.

But because I worry that some people, after reading it, might have abandoned the whole idea of 80:20, which is not what I was trying to say.

My point was that you need to be smart in your application of 80:20 and to check it with data rather than blindly assuming it always works.

In my case for example, I definitely don't have an 80:20 rule with my clients. Because right now (as of 2017) most of my focus is on Momentum Club and its members, the most anyone can pay me most of the time is $97 a month. I don't have any “mega clients” who pay me a ton more.

But while I don't have a client 80:20, I absolutely do have a product 80:20. And I have a marketing 80:20. Most of my subscribers and new customers come from a very small number of marketing tactics I use and almost all my customers go through my email marketing process.

That means that I can really focus my time on mastering and using a handful of marketing techniques. And I save a ton of time by not doing the rest.

Do you have an 80:20?

It might not be in your client base, it might be in your activities. Or your products. But there will be one somewhere if you look hard enough.

Find it and you can save a ton of time and get better results by cutting out the stuff that's not high value and doing more of the stuff that is.