Everybody seems to be a “social media guru” these days. Like a real world sausage-fest, the “guru-fest” on Twitter and Facebook where four out of every five members claim to be some sort of ninja, jedi, maven, strategist or expert cannot possibly be a good thing. I exaggerate but echo chambers are not productive. What’s an earnest social media consultant to do?

Before you read on, you should know that I wrote this post only for those folks who are totally committed to the social media “industry” and intend to make a difference and long term careers out of this.

The Service Industry Cycle

Great, you’re in a service industry. This happens to every service opportunity. Something new and exciting happens and a few people move quickly to capture the opportunity. Others see money being made, mistakenly think it’s easy money, and then flood the scene.

We’ve reached that tipping point. We now have too many social media gurus.

How did we get here? The lowest barriers of entry ever before seen in history – except maybe for the world’s oldest profession. Anyone can build a website for little money and tell the world he is now a “social media guru” who will show clients how to navigate social networks. Even more absurd, he can go on a social network like Twitter, set up for free, and tell other members of the social network of his expertise. That’s like going to a hospital and having a fellow patient tell you he can cure your ills.

Plus there isn’t some lazy way to verify the quality of a guru like we have for accountants with CPAs, financial analysts with CFAs, or even clever business people with MBAs.

The Sameness of Promises Problem

If you want to be a successful social media consultant, you need to understand the Sameness of Promises problem. Every social media consultant promises the same thing - increased traffic and eyeballs, more buzz (whatever that means), higher search engine rankings, more followers, etc. By merely promising great results, there is no way to differentiate yourself and stand out from the guru crowd.

Now is the time to grow. To do this, you need to do something drastic, something different.

The Consultant as Curator

Fire your clients. Not all your clients, just your bottom 20% clients. Yes you do need to prioritize your client list. You need to be prepared to do this once a year. Your client list probably conforms to the 80-20 Rule: the top 20% of your clients is responsible for 80% of your revenue or profits. Your bottom 20% clients probably account for less than 5% of your revenue or profits.  You might actually be losing money servicing them.

Why fire your clients? When the promises you make are the same promises every other social media consultant makes, prospective clients have little to judge you on. Your client list is one of the few things competing consultants cannot copy. The quality of your client roster will signal to prospective clients if you’re truly a guru. Think of yourself as a curator of a gallery or museum. You’ve got to constantly clear space for bigger and better projects.

Bottom Line

None of this matters if you cannot execute and deliver on those cookie-cutter promises. But I’m assuming you’ve got the chops. I’m also assuming you want to grow and succeed in this business. You have a finite amount of time in a day. In order to get better clients, you have to free up time by firing low priority clients. I’ll leave you to define low priority. Maybe the readers of this blog can help. What are some ways you define low priority? What would make a client less important going forward?

Image Credit: Eric Weaver at Brand Dialogue

So I asked Dan if he thought the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80-20 Rule, might apply to his personal situation. The Pareto Principle states that for many events or outcomes, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Economist Vilfredo Pareto observed many years ago that 80% of the national income in Italy went to 20% of the population. I shared with Dan my belief that the Pareto Principle might apply not only to theories concerning the distribution of wealth in nations but also to jobs, learning curves, and career growth.

I’ve long believed that, especially in the case of naturally motivated and high-performance individuals, it only takes 20% of X amount of time to learn 80% of the job. The remaining 20% of job-specific development requires the other 80% of time investment to learn what I like to think of as the nuances of the job.

Some jobs allow fast individuals to excel almost immediately out of the gate and other jobs take a long time to master. Salespeople can fairly quickly learn the key attributes of the products they are selling, the markets that most need those products, and the selling techniques that work best. The rest of the time is spent prospecting, qualifying, and closing. Medical professionals spend years in school and residency to perfect their knowledge and skill because they cannot afford to make mistakes; patients’ lives depend on their near-flawless execution.

Mark Bonham at Ray Quinney & Nebeker, one of the top venture and securities lawyers in the country, once shared with me that he needed to “bat 1.000″ in his job everyday. Every legal document that he crafts must be perfect because the negative ramifications of a poorly written contract are extreme. Attorneys spend years in law school and as junior associates to become adept in the law. That’s why any entrepreneur who thinks he can just take a legal document template off the Internet and write his own contracts is playing with fire.

Since we’re on the topic of batting averages, baseball has long been considered the hardest sport. A professional baseball player can fail to get a base hit 70% of the time and still be considered for the Baseball Hall of Fame. If a quarterback failed to complete 70% of his pass attempts, he would soon find himself out of a job.

By that logic, venture capitalists have one of the toughest jobs of all. The success ratios of typical VCs are abysmal when compared to baseball hitters. The average venture firm’s portfolio will witness failure rates between 70% and 90% in its investments in startups. Only about 10% of investments will succeed meaningfully. That dynamic brings decision-making pressure most people are not wired to handle.

The venture capital model is one example of a real world phenomenon where the 80-20 Rule cannot be taken literally. The 10% of successful ventures that provide an exit account for probably 90% of the profits. In fact, batting average isn’t nearly as important as slugging average. The 10% of successful ventures need to be homeruns and not just singles and doubles in order to compensate for the frequent failures in the portfolio.

My friends Jared Hutchings and Mark Campbell at Peer Venture Partners understand the Pareto Principle well. Since I first worked with them years ago at the University Venture Fund, I’ve observed that they excel at the 20% of the job that bring about 80% of the rewards. They are maestros at networking for good deal flow, judging the character and appropriateness of management teams, and connecting the dots that help their portfolio companies find the right partners, investors, suppliers, board members, advisers, customers, and business models.

Since personalities and passionate entrepreneurs are involved, venture investment is more art than science. Jared and Mark don’t get bogged down by the mental masturbation that is building complex and inevitably inaccurate financial projections and other time drains that some contemporary venture analysts are apt to giddily do. An old-school focus on the basics also allows them to make quicker, and no less accurate, decisions. This speed is something entrepreneurs appreciate, whether Peer’s answer is yes or no.

I subscribe to Charlie Munger’s Latticework Model of looking at the world. Charlie Munger is Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) and Warren Buffett’s long time business partner. The Latticework Model is essentially about approaching life, investing, and problem-solving by weaving multidisciplinary models of knowledge. I don’t want to be an expert in any one specialty or field. If I aspire to be an expert at anything, it would be to master connecting the dots in many different fields of knowledge to bring about new innovations and solutions. That’s why the Pareto Principle works well for me as a way to approach the world and allocate my time. I can take intense deep dives in relatively short bursts of time to learn about the bulk of different subjects and challenges. Perhaps we’ll see a rise of the generalists – people who can straddle the right brain and the left brain with aplomb, people who are “whole-brainers.”

Back to my friend Dan who has hit the diminishing returns part of the Pareto Principle. I told him that if the money is not good enough to compensate for his boredom, he should find another challenge. Life is too short.