We think procrastination means laziness.
But often it’s just the first step that feels impossible. How do you make your clients move ahead quickly and recommend you more often than ever before?
Let’s find out how this principle works.
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Note: (This is an unedited transcript)
One of the earliest speaking engagements I ever did internationally was in Sydney, Australia.
The speaker that went before me made a pretty tepid presentation, but at the end of his presentation, he said something that got people to stand up and run to the back of the room and get whatever he promised. So what did he promise?
At that point, I learned a very crucial lesson. He had promised them a bonus that was of extreme value, and so naturally they got up and ran. Over the years, I thought, well, that's the lesson.
That was the most important lesson of all.
But there was a secondary lesson hiding in plain sight, and I didn't pay attention to that until quite recently. And for want of a better term, I'll call it the 90-10 principle.
Now, of course, you've heard of 90-10 somewhere or the other, but just listen to this one, because it's very useful whether you're teaching, you have a product or even a service. So what is this 90-10 principle about? Remember the guy who stood up, made the presentation, and then gave them a really important bonus?
Well, the bonus was very crucial, but what was also important was how he was going to implement that bonus. He was going to install the software on their computer, test it, and see that it ran. And then they would just have to press a few buttons, and they could use the software as they pleased.
In essence, what he had created was a 90-10 principle.
He had done 90% of the work for them, and then they just had to do the remaining 10%. And how is this important? Clients come to me all the time, and they'll say, I don't know what to do, I don't know where to start. And many of us think that this is about procrastination.
But the reality is that people get stuck at the beginning, not at the end. A friend of mine, Marina, who lives in Florida, she said to me, I would love to draw, but I don't know what to draw. And you think, well, there are so many sources.
But when you're on a course, the teacher gives you the assignment and tells you how to go about it, looks at all the mistakes that you could possibly make, and then all you have to do is the final bit.
In the article writing course or the storytelling course, people have to come up with stories. And in the past, I would make them get the stories, refashion the stories, cut it down to size, and then somehow connect it to their article.
And this was almost 90% or 100% of the work. And people struggled day after day. They do their work, but they struggle. And it hit me at one point that I have to give my clients 90% of whatever it is that they have to do, so that they can do the important part, which is the last 10%.
The question that arises is, how do you apply this to services, products, and to training?
Let's say you are a copywriter. You want all the information from your clients, because of course you have to write the sales page. And let's say you generate a questionnaire which has 20 questions. Based on what you know, you pre-fill the answers and you send it to them.
So you read whatever information they send you, you fill the answers and you send them a draft. And then they only have to correct what's wrong.
In fact, we had to deal with this situation when we were redoing our kitchen, because the person, the kitchen person, kept telling us that we had so much choice. She kept telling us, we have thousands of handles that we can juice from. We have this kind of doors, and we have that kind of cabinets.
And it left us flummoxed. We couldn't get started. But what if she had, as a service, just given us three options? Well, we could then go from there. We could somehow work our way and say, oh, we don't really like this. We like that.
So she would have done nine-tenth of the work, and then we could have just done one-tenth. So it works really well with services, but doesn't work with products. Recently, my sister-in-law got a very fancy and expensive knife.
And one of the things that I often say to people is you don't want to sharpen the knife, because when you sharpen the knife, you're taking the middle of the knife. Instead, you want to do what lots of butchers do, which is they hone the knife every day. They hold it up and they go, they're not sharpening it, they're honing it.
But the question is, is she going to hone the knife?
And the chances are no. That's because 90% of the work hasn't been done. When she was buying the knife, the person selling her the knife should have shown her how to hold the honing blade, and how to get the best out of it and not destroy the knife.
So, they would have not only sold an additional product, but they would have given her that demonstration. And then, maybe they could have even told her, okay, let's put an alarm, let's set an alarm every three days, so that you get into the habit of it.
Let's do this for just two weeks. And after that, it becomes normal. As things stand, she has the knife. She has no honing blade. She has no technique. Guess what?
That knife will have to be sharpened. It will probably take a few months, but they're going to have to take that metal off the knife. And that's a pity, because when nine-tenth of the work is done, when 90% of the work is done, then it's not very hard for you to go ahead.
Most people get stuck with that level of procrastination simply because the starting point has too many factors, there's too much to learn, it's too much of an uphill climb, but it's just frustrating.
Even with training, as we had the examples of giving the stories so that they just have to create the continuation or giving them the reference cartoons so that they just have to look at it and then create cartoons of their own, that's very crucial. But even small things count. Sometimes a client will ask you a question that seems like a very silly question.
They'll say, I have this program on the iPad, which is called Procreate, and I can't move my images from this folder to that folder or, as Procreate calls it, from this stack to that stack. And you think, surely, you can go on YouTube. Surely, there is some kind of manual.
But here's the very crucial bit. That client is learning to draw. They're learning to overcome their frustration at not being able to draw.
They want to do something very perfect. So, there are so many things that are going through their head and so many things that they have to do. If you can just meet them 90% of the way and say, here are the steps, and this is the only thing you have to do, well, they do it.
And if we want to summarize this podcast with a single line is that clients don't procrastinate at the end.
They procrastinate right at the beginning. So whether it's services or products or training, do 90% of the work for your client, and then give it to them, and watch how they complete the 10%, and they move faster than ever before.
And this is what's happening on this podcast as well. When you listen to the podcast, notice how you're not downloading the podcast. You're not having to find the podcast and do all of those steps.
In fact, it gets downloaded and presented to you, and then you just have to press one button. And that's why you listen to the podcast. Now, imagine if we had to go through all of the steps.
You'd never listen to the podcast. You'd be out on the road. You'd think, oh, I don't have the time to do this. I don't have data. There are all of these problems. And these problems got solved for you, which is why you're listening to this podcast.
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