Grow Your Business–Read Good Books

One of the characteristics of successful business people is that they are always reading and learning.  One of the easiest ways to adopt this habit for yourself is to listen to audiobooks.

I just finished listening to the audio version of a very thought-provoking book.  And I want to tell you about it, so that you can benefit from some of the ideas in it too.

The book is “The 80/20 Individual” by Richard Koch.  The 80/20 Principle is called the Pareto Principle, and it is the idea that 80 percent of your results often will come from 20 percent of the resources or efforts.  In “The 80/20 Individual”  he takes this idea and applies it to entrepreneurial ventures by proposing that 80 percent of your results and success will generally come from 20 percent of your your actions or skills or talents.  Koch also suggests that you can often achieve even greater levels of success by identifying and focusing more of your time and energy on this high value 20 percent.  You can do this by outsourcing or hiring other people whose special 20 percent skills and strengths complement your 20 percent areas.

Coaching Action Tip:  Spend some time thinking about what your strengths or talents might be.  Which of these might be the core 20 percent what can give you the greatest results?  What do you enjoy doing that you are also very good at doing?   These may also be clues to your core 20 percent areas.

In addition, think about the tasks or actions that are not using your20 percent best gifts or strengths.  Who else could you find to do some of those tasks so that more of your time and energy could be applied in your core 20 percents areas?

I invite you to leave a comment here about this article and its implication in your life and work.

 

Tagged as: audiobook, Books, Business Success