February 16, 2018

The 95/5 Principle [Ep 34]

18 minutes

This week on The Flip King CEO, Joe Evangelisti delves into a concept that you’ve maybe heard about, but never quite knew how it worked for you. Maybe you’re looking to be more efficient or maximize your work time as either a business owner or an employee. The 95/5 principle, simply put, is spending the majority of time on high-gain activities: The things that help you focus on growing revenue, or hiring or growing. If you feel like you’re stuck in the quote-unquote hamster wheel, trying to grind through transactions without being able to take the time to focus on the big things your company needs, then 95/5, and this episode are going to blow your mind.

How to practice 95/5

If you’re a business owner, 95 percent of your time should be focused on increased revenue, increased opportunities and increased sales. Anything that is about contributing to and improving your bottom line—that includes training your people—that’s what 95 percent of your time should be devoted to. The challenge that a lot of business owners have is they find themselves getting sucked into responding to emails or getting bogged down in admin activities. As Joe says on this episode of The Flip King CEO, he moved his office to his home office so that he wouldn’t get swept up in the day-to-day. As he says, “You can run a business without being in the business.”

95/5 means maximizing your time

So what do you want to be concentrating on for that 95 percent of your time? You want to be thinking about increased sales, increased volume, simplifying business processes. You need to focus on all of the things that will make your business more efficient and, in the end, more profitable. As a CEO, we should be constantly thinking about how much our teams produce, and then how they can do that more efficiently and more quickly. If you’re struggling to come up with the time to go over these big-picture, essential aspects of your business, you need to listen to this week’s episode of The Flip King CEO.

Get in a huddle

Once a day, Joe holds what he calls a “huddle call,” with his team. It’s only 15 minutes, and it allows everyone on the team to say what they’re working on, what’s being purchased, what needs to be purchased, etc. You need to identify the peak performance indicators for your business, and then focus on those. So, what do you do for the five percent of the time? That’s when you go over your books and make sure they’re copacetic. Don’t get bogged down in checking on every check. As Joe likes to say, “delegate and elevate.” There are loads of great tips in this week’s episode of The Flip King CEO.

Drama stays in the 5 percent

Don’t get caught up in the drama. Whatever is happening in personal lives or in the gossip corners, stay out of it. There’s no time for that. What you want to be focused on in the 95 percent of your time is the data. If someone complains that a client hung up on them, that’s drama. But why the client was upset? That’s data. Stay focused on the data, and not the drama, for 95 percent of your time. If you find yourself getting caught up in too much drama, or too much small, transactional tasks, you need to listen to this week’s The Flip King CEO and get motivated.

Outline of This Episode