Do More, Think Less

You can make $10,000 an hour. What’s that, you say? I said that you can do activities that will earn you $10,000 per hour.

I write this column for Financial Advisors who are serving individuals and families, but this is also true for any professional services provider in the financial services industry (accountants, lawyers, etc.).

Many years ago, one of my business coaches, and personal friend for many years, Perry Marshall wrote a book called 80/20 Sales and Marketing. The concepts in that book were among the things that transformed my business.

While I, of course knew of the 80/20 rule, Perry made me see this is more than just a concept. Perry Marshall proved the case, for me, that the 80/20 rule is the most important force of nature for any business.

So what does this have to do with making $10,000 an hour? The point is, the key to success is taking action. I have been a Financial Advisor for more than 40 years, and I’m still a Financial Advisor today. In addition, I’ve been working with other high-end Financial Advisors, who are striving to be world-class, since 2002.

So, I’ve had my own success, and I’ve been able to observe many others in my profession gain success over the years. The difference between the success stories, and the others is they take action. Mediocre professionals never seem to get around to the “taking action” part.

In addition to successful Financial Advisors, I’ve also been able to observe many mediocre professionals over the years. They want to be more valuable to their clients, and they want to acquire larger and more complex clients, but rather than taking action, they’re always thinking and planning.

When I ask them when they plan to take action to implement their plans for success, mediocre Financial Advisors often assure me they’re getting ready to get ready to take action soon. But never today.

Back to how to make $10,000 an hour. I invested 80% of my hours taking action, but not just any action. I identified the 20% of my activities that generated 80% of my revenue annually, and I did those things during 80% of my working hours every week.

In my business, it turned out that just a few phone calls & meetings with a single person drove over $100,000 in annual revenue for our firm the previous year. For example, having coffee 4 times with a single person, about 30-minutes each time, followed-by a 1-hour meeting in my office, generated $61,953 in revenue.

So you do the math. That means 3 hours of my actions drove $61,953 in revenue. In those 3 hours I was earning $20,651 an hour. But is it predictive behavior?

The following year I replicated this by profiling that person & investing 80% of my time meeting with others just like him. After identifying the 20% of my actions that mattered, I met with more of that type person. And, “created” more time by eliminating 80% of of my actions that produced only 20% of my revenue. 80/20 will change your focus to more productive actions.