“Principle #612: Eighty percent of your results come from twenty percent of your efforts. But eighty percent of your problems come from twenty percent of your relationships. ”
“For today. Write down three small things you will finish before noon. Not big things. Small things.”
Inside was the complete set of one thousand cards—the original set. And a new card, handwritten in Kop’s shaky old-man script, paper-clipped to the top:
“Finish what you start. Cut the leeches. Push one inch. That’s nine hundred ninety-seven principles you don’t need to worry about.”
She laughed. Then she wrote it down.
That night, Eddie made a list. He stopped answering three phone numbers. It felt cruel. But within two weeks, his calendar opened up. He landed a contract worth more than all the time-wasting clients combined. By year three, Eddie had his own small agency. He hit a plateau. Revenue stuck at $180,000. He couldn’t break through.
Eddie thought of his cousin who borrowed money and never repaid it. The friend who called at 2 a.m. to complain. The client who took six meetings and bought nothing.
Eddie smiled and pulled a worn index card from his wallet.
In the summer of 1962, Arthur “Kop” Kopmeyer—a man who looked less like a guru and more like a friendly accountant—sat in his cramped Detroit office surrounded by three thousand index cards. Each card held a single idea about success. For thirty years, he had read everything: biographies of Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller; ancient Stoic texts; sales manuals; psychology journals. He distilled it all.
Years later, a young woman asked him, “What’s the secret to success?”
“Principle #612: Eighty percent of your results come from twenty percent of your efforts. But eighty percent of your problems come from twenty percent of your relationships. ”
“For today. Write down three small things you will finish before noon. Not big things. Small things.”
Inside was the complete set of one thousand cards—the original set. And a new card, handwritten in Kop’s shaky old-man script, paper-clipped to the top:
“Finish what you start. Cut the leeches. Push one inch. That’s nine hundred ninety-seven principles you don’t need to worry about.”
She laughed. Then she wrote it down.
That night, Eddie made a list. He stopped answering three phone numbers. It felt cruel. But within two weeks, his calendar opened up. He landed a contract worth more than all the time-wasting clients combined. By year three, Eddie had his own small agency. He hit a plateau. Revenue stuck at $180,000. He couldn’t break through.
Eddie thought of his cousin who borrowed money and never repaid it. The friend who called at 2 a.m. to complain. The client who took six meetings and bought nothing.
Eddie smiled and pulled a worn index card from his wallet.
In the summer of 1962, Arthur “Kop” Kopmeyer—a man who looked less like a guru and more like a friendly accountant—sat in his cramped Detroit office surrounded by three thousand index cards. Each card held a single idea about success. For thirty years, he had read everything: biographies of Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller; ancient Stoic texts; sales manuals; psychology journals. He distilled it all.
Years later, a young woman asked him, “What’s the secret to success?”
YOU CAN HAVE WITH PHOTOS!
