Introducing the 10% Principle

Before we go into the inner makings of this life-enhancing-business-building-easy-to-use tool, and before we go into what makes me qualified to share this principle with you (keep that resistance with you but give me 3 minutes. Read on) – I want to clearly tell you what this principle is, so that you will take something from this blog post as early as… NOW:

The Ten Percent Principal, in short, is this:

It only takes 10 percent more effort on whatever you do, to improve the scalability of the effect of what you are doing

I know you might be thinking. That’s it? What’s so Ninja about that and how is that related to Influencer Marketing. Allow me to make you a promise here and now. By the time you finish reading this blog post, all of the legit skepticism will be gone and instead, you will own new set of glasses. Whenever you use these, you will see opportunities to bring value to more people. When you increase your influence by providing value, you improve the end results by much. 

Let’s call the 10% principle from now on 10p. Fair? Here is another way to describe what the 10p is all about in its essence:

When you provide value to more people, you grow your Influence

You grow your influence through providing value to more people. Stupid Simple. Lets keep it that way.

In this blog post, we will dig deeper into what is the 10p, how to leverage it for Influencer Marketing, 10 tried-and-tested ways on how to add 10% of efforts to improve scalability and more.

Why should you improve scalability (and what qualifies me to talk about it)?

Scalability is really needed only when you want to achieve more in life, make a dent in the universe, but one that people are actually affected by. There is a lot to be said for quality over quantity. I honestly think that quality is more important. Period. In most cases that I could see someone struggling in business – and the signs are usually that their business just barely covers their family’s basic life needs – they usually have a quality issue and not a quantity. They think they need more customers. They don’t. What they need instead is a better product or service. 

But in some cases – you do have an amazing product or service and the quality is sufficient. Pass few years – and you do so much stuff – yet the results are mediocre on the business level. Time to work on the quantity too! The best thing about the 10p, is that for so little amount of extra effort you get to reach more people. Given enough time that you implemented this principle and the results start to accumulate.

 So what makes me qualified to share with you this principal and teach you it’s inner workings? Great question. I am glad you asked. Here is how I used this principle to create a 6 figure a year, online based, content-oriented business in parallel to running a service-based local business. I saw this principle in action on a daily basis. And it’s beautiful. It’s also beneficial too.

Let give the numbers to talk for themselves. When I created my first podcast-centric business I had no clear end results under my radar. I had a rough idea of what my first product can be… a live, online course on SEO for the podcast listeners. But my research with the tribe showed they need something else entirely – a full blown business course that will cover topics like adwords, facebook marketing, email marketing, business automation and yes, SEO. I made my first $11k after 3 months of podcasting, in May 2016. After the second season of my podcast, still within 2016, I launched the course again and made another $11k. A total of $22k.

While this might sound nice to have (would you say no to $10k within 3 months of starting a new business?) the fun part started after accumulating the 10p by applying the principle again and again and again. On the second year of the business, it created $100k through launching eight online programs. This includes one high-end live program, one membership site, and six video courses with content partners, all in one year. Mind you, the tribe size is extremely small – about 1.5k subscribers. That’s $66 for each email subscriber. During that year the podcast had merely 24k downloads. This means that if you look at the product as the podcast and not the courses and online programs, people paid $4 to listen for each chapter during the second year of the business. What made this possible is the consistent implementation of the ten percent principle.

In order to understand the overall scheme of things, we need to analyze a few simple examples of the 10p.

The naive example is the coffe cup story, also known as the Naive Implementation.

The Naive Implementation of the 10 Percent Principle – how to add value and reach more people

By now, I find it easy to find ways to add 10% effort and by that reach more people. That’s because there are certain ways that simply works, and that after practicing them it starts to become obvious and you start to notice what gives you best bang for your time.

We will start with the Naive Implementation – Bragging – through the coffee cup story. Imagine you are at your home office. It’s morning time and you are ready to start your day with some tasks that you are super excited about. But first things first – you need to fix some coffee for yourself. You take a cup, a good one this time, fill it with coffee, take a saucer this time (who knows why) and position it all in front of your laptop. Suddenly it hits you, this Deja vu feeling. You have seen this picture before on stock photos but this time it’s real – it’s actually real and its your cup and your laptop: 

Starting my day with a nice cup of coffee. Black. No sugar.

I love blogging don’t you?

Have a good one.

BOOM

Bragging is always easy these days, usually through social media. The problem is earning the rights to it through providing value. Scaling up the end results of something you did is like a multiplier. You invest ten percent more time and can get x times more effect on people’s lives. But if the initial thing you did wasn’t so meaningful, even if you multiply it by x it will still be mostly useless.

Now let’s take the other end of the spectrum. If you just did something truly amazing, would sharing the story about it look like bragging? It wouldn’t, as the mere story brings value to people in the form of inspiration, entertainment or education. Stories are keepers, especially the good ones.

Climbing the Ladder of Value – Inspiring, Entertaining, Educating

There are many ways to add 10% more effort to climb the ladder of value. We will start with inspiration and continue from there with examples on entertainment and education.

Inspiration is invoked in many situations but I find that the best way to show someone that you are three steps ahead of him in a narrow certain way that is interesting. Not ten steps ahead, as this creates alienation. Just three. This suggests to your audience that you are reaching out with an open hand, trying to help out those around you and that in general – you care.

Here are three quick examples of Inspirations, just from the passing week.

Mind you – the base premise is that the following graphics or posts were things I needed to do anyway. By adding a post to some graphics I need, or by adding graphics to a textual post that I need to post, I invest 10% more effort and get to reach more people.

Inspiring through being ahead: 

The three examples here show me being ahead of the game, but not in a way that is beyond reach. Being a leader with stuff like: hey I was requested to give a tip on a video for a balloon company, or I have arranged a face to face balloon meeting (known as a balloon jam) with the latest balloons available (Chrome). Or even that I create balloon art and picture my family with it (while giving credits to the creators of the designs).

Inspiring through vulnerability (the I need your help tactic):

People love helping out, and visual people love choosing what works better. So from time to time I will ask the tribe for their opinion. This is a win win – as on my side, I get my audience exposed to my branding on both options. On the audience side – they have fun and feel they are helping to build something. People love supporting the things they helped to build. So grant your peeps the gift of helping you out, and you will see how they want to support you later on.

Inspiring through stories:

Stories are the best. They establish your values and make you seem human (which is important in case your persona is 100% online and that you don’t meet your tribe that often. Stories has to be specific, with a time stamp and proof, and ideal, you need to tie them together to a “better future” or a stepping stone so that the reader knows what to expect in the future too.

Inspiration through Entertaining:

Entertaining works on another level. It is designed to make people happy, make them laugh or invoke an emotion (any emotion works, including sorrow, fear, suspense, love, etc). Entertainment has been used a long time before the internet or Online Influencer Marketing existed, and as long as there are humans around this planet, there will be a need for it. 

Sometimes Stories and Inspiration merge together. This is not about the end results. It’s about the process.

Inspiration through Education:

Education is the best. Whenever you do something that requires knowledge or skill, documenting the steps for the purpose of sharing it, later on, is easy. Releasing it for free is easy. Selling it after some time becomes a predictable process too. There are so many ways to share high-value knowledge with people. You can use a pdf, a well-formatted pdf (a.k.a an e-book), a designed picture, a youtube clip, a webinar or a free course. Some of the later options like doing a webinar or a free course sound like a lot of work, and it is, but it is a stepping stone that is 10% more than the effort invested on previous steps. 

Providing value to people at scale, which is the goal of the ten percent principle, can be involved with making money too. For example, you research the web on a topic or have the knowledge in advance and create some infographics for your site.