Robert Brents - ODKLNT

So many blogs, so little time…

Once again, 80/20 to the rescue: try “80% of the value you get from blogs will be in 20% of the blogs you read (and subscribe to)”, and ”80% of the value you get from blog posts will come from 20% of the posts you read.”

Here are my top 5 favorite blogs right here and now:

Havi Brooks and Selma’s “Destuckification”
http://www.fluentself.com/
Sassy, hip, practical … and that’s just the duck!

Chris Guillebeau’s “The Art of Non-Conformity”
http://www.chrisguillebeau.com
His Manifesto: “279 Days to Overnight Success” is free and affiliate-link-free, too!

Sign-up page for Paul Myers’ great business newsletter
http://www.talkbiznews.com/
“First things first: Put your wallet back in your pocket.” Beautiful.

Viki Anders’ “Investment Trading Systems Reviewed”
http://investmentsystemsreviewed.com/
She buys them - she tries them - she reviews them; plus, no affiliate links! It’s much more than a review site…

Leo Babauta’s “Simple Productivity”
http://zenhabits.net/
Latest: “All the Advice on Happiness You’ll Ever Need in One Post”. I couldn’t wait to read that one!

In 1998 I left my 8-6 job as an IT project manager to become an Independent Contractor (IC).

I quickly learned that cash flow management is a critical skill!

As an IC I also learned the importance of diversifying – having more than one client for whom you work regularly, rather than have one or two “big fish” clients.

In retrospect that seems so perfectly obvious, but it was a lesson I had to be taught more than once before I learned it thoroughly.

A bit later I’ll give two examples from personal experience to illustrate this.

In 80/20 terms, if 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your clients, and if you only have 5 clients, then one of your clients is the source of 80% of your revenue. If that client suddenly goes away, so does 80% of your income.

I know this probably sounds like “well, duh, any idiot could figure this out”, but it’s amazing how the simplest, most fundamental things can escape your attention when you’re scrambling around 60 – 80 – 100 hours a week trying to get an IC business off the ground and keep it afloat and pay the bills.

It’s even harder to pay attention to a fact like that when the revenue is flowing in plentifully and bountifully and consistently.

As Tony Robbins said, “When people succeed, they tend to party. When people fail, they tend to ponder.”

It’s not always exactly 80/20, OK?

Sometimes it’s 90/10 or 70/30. But the basic ideas still pertain.

Virtually every success I’ve ever had has been the result of paying attention to the effects of the 80/20 Rule.

In this blog I’m going to share a number of those results - mine and other peoples’ I know about personally - in the form of case studies to make this real vs. a bunch of theory.

I am going to throw in little tidbits about Vilfredo Pareto, the 19th Century economist who first recorded his observations about the effects of the 80/20 rule.

Pareto observed that 20% of the Italian population owned 80% of the country’s wealth (very similar to the US at that time). From this initial  discovery Pareto extended his observations to a very wide variety of things from his tomato garden to the Italian railway system.

All of the examples / case studies I present in this blog are intended to help you prosper, be more successful, and use your time and money more effectively.

As I get better at this bogging thing, I intend to present some of this information in the form of videos and audios … but for now, I’ll have to content myself with print media.

I am not a professional blogger. I am a professional Internet business person. My specialty is Internet business start-ups. Quick, simple, inexpensive, and effective - for people who want to replace the income they get (or were getting) from a traditional 8-6 job, and for people who want to create an additional income stream for various purposes like debt payoff, education, retirement, whatever.

This blog is about how I use the 80/20 Rule to accomplish that objective.