I was working with a contractor. He says, he has just too much to do. He can’t get every project completed properly without burning out. I asked him if he knew of the 80-20 rule. He replied, “How does that apply to me?” I said that 80% of your problems probably come from about 20% of your clients. And that 80% of your income comes from 20% of your clients. My guess is it’s not the same 20%. So if you can eliminate the 20% of your problem client base, I guess you would not be burning out. Then we looked through his list of clients, ensuring that one; 80% of the problems were only 20% of the clients. And two, in his case, those problem clients were not the 20% that generated 80% of his income. When we found that the 20% that should be dropped could be dropped, I asked him to drop those 20% in any convenient way possible. Furthermore, I suggested, that taking clients at this 20% problem level wasn’t the right thing to do.
When accepting these problem clients, some part of his brain was telling him that taking this job is not going to be a good thing. But his fear of lack of money, or rejection, caused him to say yes, when he should’ve said no. I think intuitively we know when we’re making a mistake. And if we listen to that little voice inside our heads that nags us, and tells us we are in too deep. We would stop blindly saying yes to commitments we know are going to be difficult, if not impossible to keep. This begs the question, why do we keep saying yes to complex, unnecessary commitments, and accept responsibilities that we know we shouldn’t? I suggest that it is our fears. Fear of rejection, fear of low income, or even fear of letting a client down, can keep a small percentage of unnecessary problem jobs in the forefront of our big picture.
