What could be wrong with curing the common cold? I mean, wouldn’t you have a line of customers circling the globe, with their runny noses, achy muscles, and hacking coughs? Everyone gets colds. Nobody likes catching a cold. They’d do pretty much anything to be free from all that sniffling. You come up with a cure, and you’d be more popular than mom with a vat of homemade chicken noodle. Your cure would sell like hotcakes, and you’d be a gazillionaire overnight. Right?

Well, maybe not. At least not if you wanted to run this as an internet-based business.

Internet marketing breaks many of the rules that govern traditional bricks and mortar businesses. For example, in most of those businesses, the goal is to appeal to as many people as possible – to cast a broad net. In some network marketing businesses, even, affiliates learn to consider anyone within arm’s reach as a potential customer. Fast food joints are the perfect example – side by side with greasy, salty fries, you’ll find skim milk, fruit cup, and salads. The aim is to please everyone.

It’s not like that at all for online businesses. In fact, Pareto’s rule really shines in this context. You remember Pareto, he’s the guy who figured out that 80% of our results come from 20% of our efforts. In this case, the idea is getting huge results from a tiny market.

Internet marketers have a name for this – niche markets.

Rather than trying to appeal to a huge market, you aim for a very narrow market. For example, imagine a bricks and mortar store that sells one thing: plans for building different kinds of doghouses. How long do you think a business like that would stay in business? Even if it was smack dab in the middle of the most pet-friendly community in the world, there’s no way it could generate and maintain enough foot traffic to make the rent.

However, online, a business like this might flourish. Dog owners from all over the world, if they want to build their pup a house, would probably look online for some sort of how-to guide. The genius who meets this need – a very narrow need within a small sub-group of people – could sell doghouse plans, without paying rent for a storefront, without paying for shipping (if the plans are delivered electronically), and without paying employees (any help needed could come via freelancers).

This business model is beautiful in so many ways. First, almost everyone has some hobby, specialty, or expertise that’s of interest to a niche market. If you’ve ever made anything good, you know other people want to know how. Maybe not everyone, but you’d be surprised how many people around the world might be interested enough to buy a little eBook showing them how.

It’s an ideal way to monetize a hobby, interest, or even a struggle or illness. When people are dealing with a disease, disorder, or any other sort of pain, one of the first places they go is online to get information.

The key is finding a niche market that meets these qualifications:

• They are very, very interested in your topic. Maybe it’s a source of pain for them, maybe it’s something that promises them hope for change, or maybe it involves a hobby or interest that nears obsession for them. A quick trip through the magazine area at a bookstore is pretty revealing. There are magazines for interests you probably never even knew existed.

• They are willing to part with some money to learn more. There are some topics people want to learn about, but they don’t want to spend any money on it.

• They are easy to reach, because they go online looking for what you’re offering. You might find them congregating in forums and chat rooms, discussing the topic, complaining about the lack of solutions, evaluating their options. Their passion for the topic compels them to spend time online searching for solutions.

An internet business isn’t something you want to jump into without any training – but with a bare minimum of tech skills, anyone with a computer, internet access, and a hobby or interest can build a business.

After you’ve heard the adage “work smarter, not harder” for the gazillionth time, you probably want to gag. Reading Timothy Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek, you’ll find it again; this time, swallow the gag reflex and pay attention.

It comes in the form of Pareto’s Law, the 80/20 principle (another teaching point that’s been around the block more times than a new driver in a Mini Cooper). Never mind. You really do need to learn this principle – and put it to use – if you want to boost the bottom line and still have time for a life.

Even just the title of Ferriss’ book should be enough to nudge your imagination. What would you do with a workweek that only lasted four hours or less? If it’s really a possibility – and it is – it’s worth taking another look at something that actually works, and not just looking, but putting it to use.

Here’s how it works: Pareto says you get 80% of your results (good or bad) from 20% of your input (what you do). In business, it can look like this: 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers. That means that you’ve got a dead weight factor of 80% among your client base. They’re requiring an inordinate amount of work, and are only producing a small portion of your revenue. Translation: not good.

How do you put this principle to use to boost your profits?

1. Track everything.
First, you’ve got to be able to know which clients are the most profitable. If you’re not keeping track of this info, start. If you’re in an MLM selling health and beauty products, you need to know which clients buy the whole anti-aging line – on the autoship plan, and which buy the occasional mascara, if you call them… after seven attempts to reach them. It works the same way for every business – product- or service-driven, from haircuts to custom-built private jets. That same 20% of your customers are easy. They know what they want. They buy it from you. They’re happy. You’d better know exactly who they are.

2. Know that 20% like you know your own dog.
You want to be able to pick these customers out of a lineup because you know them so well. What makes them such great customers? What trends do you see? How do they like to be contacted? What are you providing that compels them come back for more? How did you find them? Where can you go looking to find more just like them? By taking the time to get to know them, you can learn a lot – it’s time well spent. Essentially, by learning all about these customers, you form a blueprint for your ideal customer. With this blueprint in hand, you take the first step in designing your customer base.

3. Be picky.
When you’re new in business, you’re so grateful to have anyone come through the door that you’ll put up with a lot just in hopes of making a sale. It’s not a good precedent to set for your business, but it happens. The trick is moving away from that as quickly as possible. Given the choice, why would you gather unpleasant, high-maintenance, penny-pinching customers who tax even your best customer service person’s patience? Instead, you could assemble a group of loyal, quality-driven, appreciative clients who value what you provide and make doing business a pleasure. It’s a matter of choosing quality over quantity, at first.

4. Get into cloning.
Well, not really. But you do want to redirect your efforts from how you used to do marketing and sales – anyone with a pulse – to attracting more who fit the blueprint of your ideal customers, and by spending more time and energy on the customers you’ve got who are already ideal. You can find more of these precious gems by asking for referrals, by going where they go and doing what they do, and by doing everything you can to provide exquisite service to them.

5. Systematize it.
You’re probably not in the position to just go willy-nilly firing clients who don’t meet your dream come true blueprint. But you can definitely make sure that your new clients are the ones you choose. Set up a ranking system so you’re able to keep track of your clients and their profiles. Customize your service so you spend the bulk of your resources on the most productive clients – while still providing excellence to your B-list clients.

It’s always possible that today’s 80%-er may become tomorrow’s best client – or they may introduce you to that dream client. Regardless, your goal is to provide excellence to all clients, while actively pursuing the ones that’ll make your life easy and your business boom.

How Timothy Ferriss’ 4-Hour Workweek can help you get a life – now.

How many times have you heard the story about the guy who worked his whole life, dreaming of the day he could retire and finally take his wife to see the world, spend the winters somewhere warm, just do whatever he wants to do… and he drops dead one year after he gets the golden watch?

Or what about the workaholic who gets the big office, the great car, and the vacation home she never has time to use? Or her assistant, who’s putting in the hours, an expert at looking busy, living for her two measly weeks of vacation?

What do they have in common? They’re delaying life.

Don’t feel too sorry for them. It’s what they’ve chosen. They may not even realize it, but they’ve designed their lives to be this way.

Why on earth would anyone choose this? Because it’s a lot less frightening than the alternative – designing a life they truly want. Hiding behind work, behind busyness, seems noble and normal. Blindly devoted to the iron rule of a 40+ hour work week, most people happily die the death of a drone rather than doing something completely different.

Timothy Ferriss’ 4-Hour Workweek is a masterpiece – a manifesto, even – that attacks the assumption that work for its own sake is a perfectly acceptable substitute for living a life of your own design. Through a four-step process of definition, elimination, automation, and liberation (DEAL), you can free yourself to pursue a life you choose.

Oh, but there’s the rub!

What do you want? Most people are pretty clear about what they don’t want in life. In fact, they spend a lot of time complaining about it. But it’s easier to stick with what you’ve got than to draw up a whole new blueprint for your life.

That’s why the first step toward freedom is definition. The gist of it is figuring out who you want to be, what you want to do, and what you want to have. Without the “I’ve got to get to the office” excuse for cover, you might feel kind of exposed. Who are you apart from your work? How would you introduce yourself as who you are instead of what you do?

The second step is elimination. An honest look at the typical workday shows a lot of time is wasted. In fact, in most cases, the actual work that’s accomplished could be done in a very-focused fraction of the time it seems to take.

For an employee, the goal of elimination is to become so effective that your boss is compelled to give you a raise and even let you work remotely. For the entrepreneur, elimination’s goal is to increase revenues enough that automation and liberation are possible.

So how does elimination work? The first key is understanding the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. Efficiency is being able to get a job done quickly, using as few resources as possible. Effectiveness is about doing what actually gets results.

For the perfect illustration of this difference, just picture a salesperson who hates sales. To this guy, the phone weighs about fifty pounds. He’d rather have a root canal than pick up the phone to make a sales call. So he busies himself doing paperwork. This guy’s got a color-coded filing system to die for – but he’s not doing the thing that’s most productive to the bottom line, making sales. Efficient, but not effective.

There’s so much busyness in most workdays that most of the results we get come from only a small portion of our efforts. It’s called Pareto’s Law, or the law of 80/20 – as in 80% of your results come from 20% of your activity. Or, 80% of your complaints come from 20% of your customers. You can apply the math to pretty much any area of life and it holds true.

Ferriss says that part of elimination is putting Pareto’s Law to good use. If you can get 80% results from only 20% of your work, what’s the point in doing the other, unproductive tasks? Evaluate where your best returns come from, and focus on them.

The other law that comes into play here is Parkinson’s Law. That’s the one that says a job expands to fill the time you allot for it. If you give yourself a seemingly unreasonably tight deadline, you’ll do just as well – or better – than if you gave yourself double the time, filled with time wasters.

Some of the biggest time wasters are so ingrained in our lives that they appear to be hallmarks of responsible adulthood. Things like reading the newspaper every day, checking and responding to email immediately, and going to meetings. Those are just things good citizens do, right?

Ferriss suggests several radical steps to eliminate these time wasters.

• A week-long media fast to break the habit. If you consider how much time we waste reading about or watching things
we cannot control, or don’t need to know, you’ll recognize how much time you could save just by choosing ’selective ignorance’ instead.

• Here’s the biggie that has people quaking in their boots: Check email only twice a day. Ferriss outlines a whole procedure you can follow to make this happen without having people freak out. Anyone who’s drawn to that Outlook ‘ding’ might get sweaty palms just thinking about relative ‘unpluggedness’. But checking email again and again is an obvious waste of time. Plus, responding immediately to email teaches people to expect your immediate attention – no matter what.

• That brings us to the next elimination tactic: Teach people how you want to communicate. We can rank the choices in order of most time-consuming to least. Meetings are a clear number one, followed by phone calls, and then email. If you can avoid getting stuck in meetings or on long phone calls, your productivity will skyrocket.

• Finally, you can eliminate busyness by empowering your people to handle problems on their own. Set some boundaries, and let them do what it takes to keep your customers happy. Push the problem down to the level where it can be solved most directly.

The final two steps are to automate and then liberate.
Ferriss gives jaw-dropping, “why didn’t I ever think of this before?” tips on automating by outsourcing pretty much everything. Some of the suggestions are a little out there – having someone else make up with your wife after you’ve had a tiff – but they’ll get you giving serious thought to making the highest, best use of your time.

The final step is liberation. This is where you learn how to disappear. With much less money or aggravation than you’d ever imagine, you can take exotic trips, live like royalty while you’re there, and come back with a brand new perspective and appreciation for life. The goal is to take many mini-retirements throughout your life, rather than saving it all up for when you turn 67.

The 4-Hour Workweek is one of those books that is so meaty, so wonderfully disturbing, that you’ll do well to read it over and over. In fact, a used but un-marked copy is a telltale sign that someone chose to stick with what was comfortable and familiar rather than to take a step onto the ledge, look out at the view, and choose a life by design.