Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

Melbourne Minutes & More 80/20 Moments

I’ve snuck down to Melbourne for four days. This trip is for business and pleasure, starting with the two days of work I’ve just finished.

I’ve been training someone who will be marketing BetterEdit.com at three of the largest Melbourne university campuses using posters. This is the first year I’ve attempted to hire people to do this for me and in the past I’ve done it myself, mostly in Brisbane since its within my reach. I’m starting by hiring someone to do it in Brisbane for me and to test whether it can be profitable to have people do it in other cities starting with Melbourne.

If Melbourne works out well the next step will be to replicate in Sydney and possibly Toronto since I will be heading to Canada later this year. I expect the people I hire to do this job won’t likely be able to do it for much longer than a year (if they average a year I’ll be pretty happy) so I’m hoping to implement a system where the outgoing person trains the new incoming person so I don’t have to tramp around Australia and Canada training people.

You may wonder why I need to train people how to put up posters since it’s not exactly rocket science. It’s not as simple as you may think. It’s important to show people how many posters to use per board, where to place them on the boards, when to use small and/or large posters and lots of other little tips and strategies. I’d like to meet every person if I could so I can assess their personality and get to know them but as I said it’s not going to be cost effective to trek all around the planet each time I hire a new person.

I have no idea whether this system will be sustainable or even profitable but you never know until you try. It largely comes down to the people. If I find responsible and trustworthy people it should work out well.

A One Minded Focus - Another 80/20 Rule Example

My focus really hasn’t been on BetterEdit recently. I’ve been pouring all my energy into Blog Traffic King and getting the Blog Traffic School course finished. Spending some time in Melbourne promoting BetterEdit has switched my brain back on to student focused marketing for a couple of days.

Melbourne is bigger than Brisbane. Melbourne has more of everything and I’m constantly reminded of all the opportunities in a city like this. Walking streets from the CBD to Melbourne University presented me with so many opportunities (or at least potential ideas) to reach more international students (my target market). Melbourne has probably close to double the amount of campuses as Brisbane, is littered with student accommodation buildings and places where international students hang out.

In some ways it’s extremely frustrating. The limitations of being a one man show with a mini budget means I can really only spend time and energy on a handful of marketing activities. It just doesn’t work to spread yourself thin and attempt to leverage every opportunity that is presented to you. In fact even if I had a marketing team working for me I could only hope to brush the surface of the all the marketing methods I could test. There’s just too many.

Once again the 80/20 Rule applies nicely in this situation and I reminded myself of this while promoting in Melbourne. While realistically there are no doubt hundreds, even thousands of opportunities to market in Melbourne it’s much smarter if I spend most of my time on a small handful of locations using what works - my posters. If I can locate the 20% of locations in Melbourne where 80% of the international students spend 80% of their time I have the key to gaining massive exposure at minimum cost. Heck I really only need to hit the top 1% of places where 99% of students are and I’ll get tremendous results.

Spoilt For Choice

There was a documentary recently on TV that I caught a bit of during the day that discussed the issue of too much choice. The thesis argued that people are depressed because they have too many options to choose from (when it comes to consuming of course - food, clothes, electrical goods, cars, and so on).

The problem is when presented with so many options when we finally make a decision we end up unhappy because of all the other options we forgo. The net loss from so many forgone options is greater than the satisfaction gained from the choice we make.

This made complete sense to me. I’ve suffered from indecision-itis myself. Being in Melbourne always tends to bring on a recurrence of the problem. I often wish I was hungrier in Melbourne. Why can’t I have two lunches and three desserts? There is so much food I want to sample yet I’m not hungry beyond what you would expect - three meals a day and a bunch of snacks in between.

I remember when I was younger being paralysed by indecision to the point where I just could not feel satisfaction unless I spent a stupid amount of time carefully assessing my options. From this experience I realized that once again I needed to 80/20 my decision making process and focus on making things simple. As a result I consistently eat the same handful of meals (the 20%) despite all the other options available to me (the remaining 80%). By doing this I can make choices quickly and enjoy my choice without worrying about what I have missed out on.

Simple Business

As I’ve focused my mind on Blog Traffic I’ve been able to simplify my routines. My working life is focused on starting a new business and maintaining the current businesses. While I’m constantly thrown new opportunities I can easily decline or ignore them strong in the knowledge that I have to keep the ship on one path or risk it breaking apart.

This simplification process results in me working more productively and keeps my mind very calm. I’m not over stimulated by all the things I “could do” that I am not, both within my businesses and without from potential new business ideas.

Of course you can’t enjoy this sort of clarity until you solidify your choice regarding what your business or job is. However simplification is certainly a mantra you can repeat to yourself no matter where you are or what you are doing. In a world with too many options it’s important to remember you only NEED basic things - it’s your WANTS that create the dissatisfaction. Focus on necessity, focus on the 20% that brings in the 80% of results and everything will work out fine.

Yaro Starak
Simplify maaaaan…