Buy-Havior is always written by me, not Chatgpt!
Early in my entrepreneurship days, I sat in a business conference and heard an adage I hadn’t heard before:
If someone can do something 80% as well as you, hire them and let them do it.
This was eye-opening to my high-strung, perfectionist, parentified, eldest-daughter hard-working self.
The advice was primarily about scaling: letting go of some ropes so you were free to grab bigger ones as your business grew.
But I find myself using this rule all over the place – not just in hiring. And it’s become front and center in my AI strategy work as well.
This week I’m in Virginia working with the leadership team of an accounting/bookkeeping firm and this question is at the center of our work:
If a robot could do 80% of your clients’ bookkeeping tasks tomorrow, what is the 20% that just became even more valuable? And how do we restructure your offer suite around THOSE exact insights?
(This is the exact, most important work every expertise-based business owner needs to focus on right now – and is what I do with both solopreneurs and larger companies. More details here if you need a guide through the noise.)
Similarly, in teaching my AI Incubator, I realized that I do this somewhat automatically when I work with AI, and I needed to do a better job articulating this to my clients. The 80/20 rule allows me to avoid a lot of AI-frustration.
In short: if the bot can produce something that’s 80% decent, I’m not only ok doing the final 20% revision – I see that final 20% as the true VALUE. That’s what makes the work worth it.
(Don’t worry, this weekly newsletter is the exception. These are entirely written by me, not katie-gpt. Thus the bad jokes and occasional typos.)
When we expect 100% quality from our employees, our kids, even our AI…we end up disappointed. But if an AI saves me 80% of my time on the more dreaded tasks of business…then the robot and I can still high-five at the end of the work day.
Do you apply this 80/20 rule anywhere in your life? I’m curious – write me back and tell me where, if you do.
A just-for-fun summer prompt today:
Prompt it Like It’s Hot: (Your weekly cut/paste prompt — work brain off, holiday week incoming in the States)Snap a photo of your desk right now. Don’t tidy it, don’t stage it, don’t move your three slowly-moldering coffee cups. (The mess — or the suspicious lack of mess 🧐— is the data.)
Upload the photo to your favorite AI and paste this:
Psychoanalyze me based on this photo of my desk. Give me the full panel: what would Freud say? What would Jung say? What would Marie Kondo say? Does my desk spark joy or give them panic attacks?
Then send me the most fun thing it tells you. I’ll be reading surrounded by three empty La Croix, seven unopened pieces of mail that look vaguely important and therefore should be avoided, the four bracelets I wore yesterday, six fidgets, fourteen pens, and a partridge in a pear tree.
The AI responses were pretty funny. Claude literally wrote Freud with an accent. (“Zis desk does NOT spark ze joy!”)
PS: I’m out for the holiday next week. See you on the flip side!
Warmly,
Katie
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