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“I want to start a shoe business,” Sam told me.
“What kind of shoe business are you thinking about?” I asked him.
“I design shoes. I want to manufacture them and sell them online,” he replied.
“But it’s going to take me six months to get this off the ground…” he continued.
But I stopped him there. Two years ago, I came up with a concept I call the 1–50 rule. The idea is simple:
What can I do in one day that will yield 50% of the results I’m looking for?
So I asked him this very question:
“Sam, what can you do in one day that will make this business operational?”
He was thrown aback. Everyone is thrown aback when I ask them this question. This is, of course, intentional.
“That’s impossible,” he said.
They all say that.
Wouldn’t you?
Think about a big project you are thinking of doing and about all the things that are necessary to see it through.
It’s overwhelming, isn’t it? And now this kid is telling me to do it in one day? Buddy, this project can only be done in a year!
Wrong!
It will take a long time because you allow it to. But it’s not your fault. This is how we are taught to do projects. You write overwhelming documents about every little detail of the project. Then you dig deep. Too deep.
If you’ve done projects of a decently large size, you know things never go according to plan. You readjust constantly. Adaptability is the name of the game. In time, the plan goes to waste. Back to the drawing board! Months later, the project isn’t done yet. In fact, it was closer to finish three months ago.
Sam was about to repeat that mistake.
I asked him: “what do you need to do to make it happen?”
He listed a few things like:
Find a business name;
Design a logo;
Incorporate the business;
Build an e-commerce website;
Build a mailing list;
Design shoes;
Find a manufacturer;
A marketing team;
Run Facebook Ads; and
A few more things.
Sounds reasonable, right?
To most people, it does. But think about the 1–50 rule here.
What is Sam’s goal?
He wants to sell custom-designed shoes online.
What items from the list above actually contribute to this goal? What are the most impactful ones? Which ones could he do that will make his a dream a reality and yield 50% of the results he’s looking for?
Here’s what we came up with:
Design shoes;
Find a manufacturer; and
Build an e-commerce website.
It turns out he already designed a few pairs, so the first item was already taken care of.
Finding a manufacturer has to be complicated right? (1) How do you find one? (2) How do you know they’re good? (3) You have to fly out to meet them, right?
Well, a very simple Google search led to this one for example:
It turns out, that website has manufacturers on any type of product. We literally found over a thousand shoe manufacturers:
Most of them replied within less than 24 hours. He didn’t even have a business name, logo, website, etc. He had nothing but his designs. Some were willing to work with him.
But then, what happens with inventory and the website? Surely that can’t be done so quickly?
Wrong again.
Using Shopify, for example, you can create a fully operational store in a single day. If you use the concept of dropshipping, you don’t need to worry about keeping an inventory. Here’s how dropshipping works:
Within 24 hours, he contacted manufacturers and got a positive reply from some of them, he had a basic online store ready, and he could ship products directly from his supplier without keeping an inventory.
24 hours prior to that, he still thought that had to take six months to get there.
That’s the power of the 1–50 rule in action.
The 1–50 rule can be applied to any project. I’ve used it for two purposes for my projects:
Make money fast; and
Get feedback fast.
Sam now has customer feedback and a better idea of what’s important going forward. If not for the 1–50 rule, he’d still be doing paperwork with no clue if his idea made any sense.
When I first wrote about the rule, people were telling me they liked the idea, but it doesn’t apply to their project. Their projects were too complex, they said. Most of the time, it wasn’t true. They just were not thinking outside-the-box enough.
Now, some projects are complicated. I wouldn’t try to build a rocket to go to Mars in a single day. But that being said, I would try to use the 1–50 rule to test a variety of ideas on different aspects of that ambitious project. All projects can be broken down into smaller sub-projects.
When you limit yourself to a single day to realize a big project, it forces you to think creatively. Traditional means don’t work in that context. You have to throw out the window any concept that’s holding you back. You have to think about the results in a more systematic way.
‘a’ yields 15% of the results
‘b’ yields 5% of the results
‘c’ yields 15% of the results
‘x’ yields 10% of the results
‘y’ yields 30% of the results
‘z’ yields 25% of the results
Which one of these can you take that will add up to 50% and that you can do in a single day?
That’s how you have to start thinking.
If you look back at Sam’s list again, how would you estimate his percentages, knowing that his goal is to sell custom-designed shoes online:
Find a business name;
Design a logo;
Incorporate the business;
Build an e-commerce website;
Build a mailing list;
Design shoes;
Find a manufacturer;
A marketing team;
Run Facebook Ads.
My answer was that designing shoes, building the website, and finding a manufacturer was about 50% of the results he wanted. It’s one answer. I’m sure there are others.
Knowing what 100% of the results mean is crucial. Without that, you can’t know what 50% even means. With any project, you should figure that out first.
Next, list all the action steps and what results you think it will bring to the project. Add all that up to 100%. From that list, figure out what actions don’t take much time but contribute most to the result.
Now, take action.
I know this sounds overly simple, but it has to be. Humans tend to overcomplicate things that can be easy. Make your life easier. Go to market faster. Get feedback faster. Apply to 1–50 rule to your projects.
You can do this!
For more information about the 1–50 rule, please check: