Teaching at Digital Marketer Warroom…
I was just recently in San Diego for the Warroom mastermind meeting with Ryan Deiss, Perry Belcher and Frank Kern. We were doing an exercise of planning out step-by-step how we were each going to double our businesses in the coming 12 months.
Ryan, who was running the session said that he heard me say something that morning that was so important that he wanted me to change what he had planned for the afternoon and asked me to teach it to the entire group. It was very well received, so that’s why I thought it would be a great idea to share it with you also.
The Best 80/20 Business Tool for Entrepreneurs
As Business owners and Entrepreneurs we always have multiple projects on the go and more important tasks that we can possibly ever get to. It’s not always obvious which ones will have the most impact on your business and deserve to get your focus and immediate attention.
You’ve probably heard me go on about the 80/20 principle before (the Pareto Principle) and that is for a good reason – because it saves you wasting time and effort on stuff that just isn’t going to produce results. The 80/20 principle effectively says what’s the 20% of things that are going to bring 80% of the results.
I was fortunate enough to work with the amazing business coaches Andrew and Daryl Grant who taught me the best 80/20 Business Tool for Entrepreneurs called ‘The Impact Ease Grid’. As soon as I saw it I remember saying ‘F#ck that’s smart’ – not politically correct I know, but I like to call things as I see them : )
Step by Step How to Do an ‘Impact Ease Grid’
The first step really is to list out the different possible projects that you could be working on (all the things that are either currently pressing for your time or are coming up).
Next we want to draw an X and Y Axis and on the top left write ‘Impact’ and on the bottom right write ‘Ease’ so that we name our Axis’.
Now we need to think of each of the projects from our list and determine where it would fit on the axis.
So if we take project A. Lets assume project A would have a massive impact on the business in terms of revenue etc and is relatively easy to implement. We would plot it up in the top right quadrant of the grid.
Next lets assume project B would have a high impact on the business in terms of revenue etc but is not exactly straight forward or simple to implement. We would plot it up in the top left quadrant of the grid.
With our final project here in this example (but you can have as many projects as you need on your one) lets assume project C would have a low impact on the business in terms of revenue etc but is relatively straight forward or simple to implement. We would plot it up in the bottom right quadrant of the grid.
As you add more projects their exact position of how much impact they will bring and how easy they are to implement will vary. You will ultimately end up with something like the more complex example below.
The projects that end up in the top right hand corner are the best ones to run with as they would provide the most impact to the business with the greatest ease to implement.
Ryan Deiss added some great insight to this the other day. He said “anything below the dotted line is not worth spending time on no matter how easy it is to implement because it’s not going to have much of an impact on the business – it’s not a bridge that can build you to your next income level”.
I hope you get some amazing value from that. I know we use it in our business all the time to make strategic decisions, and all our high level Collective Mastermind members use it too.
I’d love to hear your thoughts below – how could you use this in your business?. Write a comment and join the conversation below.