Genius thinking?

 

I’d like to tell you a story about a VC funded company. 

The company is very fast-growing and has traffic coming from all over the place. They do SEO, paid traffic, above the line, and a bunch of other stuff. 

They’re crushing it – over 80,000 uniques per month. 

I sat in a meeting with them to find the best opportunity for their situation.

And in 25 minutes, we had the answer.

The execs were stunned. Dumbfounded actually. They’d be bouncing around various ideas for months… and then I come in and nail it almost immediately. 

Am I a genius? Do I have a special talent?

Ummm, no. Quite far from it lol. 

So how did I identify their best opportunity?

Using the 80/20 principle. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It means that 20% of your input creates 80% of the output.

But pay attention. I did something slightly different. 

I sat down and asked the client about their main traffic sources, products, and audiences. This is how I got the 20% that I was looking for.

But it wasn’t enough. 

Because this is a COMPLEX business. 

So I dug deeper. 

And I went down another level of 80/20. 

I asked about the top segments of the top target market. Then we went deeper into their traffic sources. 

For the mathematically inclined, we used the “64/4 principle”. 

i.e it’s the top 4% of input that gets 64% of the results.

But I didn’t stop there. To identify what will hit the ground running, I dug even deeper to the “50/1 principle”.

i.e it’s the top 1% of input that gets 50% of the results.

This selection process helped me identify the opportunities that can get the biggest results for the client. 

And it can do the same for you.