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Weird “80/20” method to writing great content

Weird “80/20” method to writing great content

Focus on what ACTUALLY matters.

Sam Webster
February 08, 2024

Everything in the world is subject to the 80/20 Principle.

The 80/20 Principle is an idea I think about all the time and people seem to really love the idea.

It was discovered by Italian Economist Vilfredo Pareto in the early 1900s.

He realized that 80% of the wealth in England was held by 20% of the population.

But it was recently made much more popular by author Richard Koch. He realized that the 80/20 principle didn’t just apply to wealth. It applied to everything.

20% of freeways get 80% of the traffic. 20% of customers make 80% of the purchases. 20% runners win 80% of the races…

And as you probably know, 99% of the wealth in America is held by 1% of the population.

When Koch stumbled upon this discovery, he began to apply the 80/20 rule to his life and his work.

It’s the reason he was able to go from working 60 hours a week as a management consultant making six figures... to being worth $400 million while working just one hour per day.

His approach is all about “less is more.”

I know that sounds extreme and maybe even hard to believe. But it’s true.

And thankfully, we can learn from Koch and his 80/20 ways.

He has a 3 step system to achieve any goal. Our goal of course, making valuable content that grows an audience around your love of cars.

Step 1: The 80/20 Destination - where you want to be.

Step 2: The 80/20 Route - the easiest way to the destination.

Step 3: The 80/20 Actions - the first key steps.

Follow the steps in this simple order and you’ll achieve your goal, even exceed your goal... while doing less actual “work.” Let’s apply this model to content creation.

What’s your 80/20 destination? The ability to write content that create a long-term relationship AND turns strangers into followers
What’s your 80/20 route? A easy to understand 3 bucket method to packaging up your ideas.
What are your 80/20 actions? Take your ideas and frame them in a way that fits into one of the 3 buckets.

So let’s talk about these buckets.

Every idea you have for a piece of content needs to fall in one of these buckets. It needs to be framed in:

An Educational Way
An Entertaining Way
An Inspirational Way

Obviously there can be some overlap but pick a bucket and try to stick to it.

Let’s do a real world example and work out some ideas for an Autolab subscriber.

In the last Autolab newsletter I talked about one of the readers named Joshua.

He makes an aftermarket lighting accessory for Tacomas and we were brainstorming some ideas for content.

Here are some thoughts on how he could take the single topic of his lights and fit it into each bucket.

Educational

Talk about the design process of making the accessory. He could touch on general aspects or nerdy specifics. He could talk about the features and benefits of the product. Or he could even make some installation videos.

Entertainment

This is a great way to showcase the lights in action. He could showcase the lights at night in real world scenarios. He could repost videos of his customers using them on trails. He could do durability testing content. Or comparison videos comparing his product to his competitors. Another idea would be doing montage of really beautiful photos or videos of the product. (example of what I mean down below)

Inspirational

This is a great angle to talk about the journey. Highlight all the iterations of the product before getting to the final design. He could talk about his dream of starting a business and how he has done it. He could talk about all the challenges he had to over come to create the final design. Or challenges in manufacturing them.

See how much better this is than “hey i have a good product and you should buy it” ?

Her are some fun examples for each bucket I found while scrolling instagram this morning. Copy these formats and put your own spin on them.