The Golden Ratio: Nature’s Example for Perfecting Your Business

In the Internet business industry there are many tricks and tips and strategies and methods and tactics and courses and so-on and so-on. But who’s to say which ones are really going to be effective? Nature itself might just have the right answer. You may be surprised to find out where you and your business currently stand in relation to the Golden Ratio.

 

What is the Golden Ratio anyway? Well, the quick answer is that it may just be nature’s most perfect number. What does this have to do with business or Internet marketing? Well, we’re all trying to achieve some measure of perfection in our business… when it comes to balancing our time and concentrating on the right mix of tasks, why not start with what makes nature tick!

 

Most top-tier Internet Entrepreneurs explain that one of the keys to their success is by managing their time to complete the various tasks they have in their business in an effective manner. For example, John Reese recently claimed that you should spend 60% of your time on growing your business and the remaining 40% managing it. When he made that statement I’m quite certain he didn’t realize how close he was to meeting the Golden Ratio. He’s perfected time management.

 

So first, let’s talk about what the Golden Ratio is, then we’ll talk about how it applies to you and your business.

 

The Golden Ratio is based upon the Fibonacci series of numbers. It’s a sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers. The sequence, for example, occurs as follows:  1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181, and so forth, to infinity.

 

Fibonacci was an Italian mathematician who lived nearly 1,000 years ago, but had developed this sequence of numbers that he initially applied to the cycles of growth and decline to predict rabbit reproduction! He eventually realized that there were mathematical relationships that existed among the numbers in the sequence beyond the first 8 numbers. For example, in dividing 55 by 89 you get the result of .618. Dividing 89 by 144 gets the same result as well and this pattern continues infinitely. Another relationship is the division of 89 by 55; and 144 by 89, both of which equal 1.618. This continues to infinity, as well.

 

In nature, the plants don’t know about the Fibonacci sequence - they just grow in the most efficient way they can. However, many plants show the Fibonacci numbers in the arrangement of the leaves around their stems. Some pine cones also show the numbers, as do daisies and sunflowers. Palm trees even show the numbers in the rings on their trunks. Why do these arrangements occur? In the case of leaf arrangement, it may only be related to the maximizing of space for each leaf, or the average amount of light falling on each one.

 

Further, the Golden Ratio has been observed in the arrangement of branches along the stems of plants and of veins in leaves. Likewise, it’s found in the skeletons of animals and the branching of their veins and nerves. The Nautilus shell, whose construction proceeds in a logarithmic spiral, also has each new chamber proportioned by the Golden Ratio relative to the previous one. Man’s own measurements, the ratio of height to width is proportionate to the ratio as well.

 

We see the Golden Ratio in mathematics and the arts. Since the Renaissance, many artists and architects have proportioned their works to approximate the ratio—especially in the form of the Golden Rectangle, in which the ratio of the longer side to the shorter is the Golden Ratio—believing that this proportion is aesthetically pleasing. The ratio is also used by Wall Street investors as a means to indicate the support of a price level of a stock or commodity they are interested in validating for growth potential before they invest.

 

What does this ratio have to do with our business? Well, as I noted in the above example from John Reese, in our Internet business, the time we spend on the list of activities we have can significantly impact the success or failure of our business. You might not be aware of this, but you need to spend a considerable amount of time each day to truly be successful online. If you’ve bought into the plan of making a massive amount of money by working part time, then you’ll end up frustrated, disappointed, and probably poorer as a result. This being said, you don’t want to focus a whole lot of your time on the wrong tasks. Likewise, you don’t want to schedule too many tasks. There’s a natural balance.

 

First of all, you need to determine how many hours you realistically have to perform business related items each day. Since sleep is roughly the Golden Ratio to your awake-time, try to make your awake-time as efficient as possible. Bunch all of your daily business activities together, since it’s not very efficient or effective to do some tasks here and some there.  You’ll need to schedule a definite “business time” for yourself each day. Move all the personal stuff on either side of that, but be consistent. Having a routine keeps us moving effectively by knowing what’s next.

 

Of course, one way to manage the items on your task list would be to delegate portions to others. But what if you’re a one person team? If you can afford it, use services like elance.com or guru.com to delegate some of your tasks out. You need to be as efficient as possible with the time you’ve got. The worst thing you can do is go in circles trying to accomplish it all without a defined plan. I don’t know about you, but I hate having to redo anything. Those are hours of your life you can’t get back.

 

So what’s the point of the Golden Ratio? It’s significant enough to occur in naturally in our world. It makes sense to apply the same symbiotic relationship to how we conduct our business. Most of your time should be spent working those things that are most important to the creation and growth of your business. All other things can and will distract you form achieving your goals.

 

The ratio says we should work our most important tasks 61.8% of the time and the lesser important tasks 38.2% of the time. To simplify the ratio, we’ll use a 60% - 40% time split and address the areas you should concentrate your time on while developing your business.

 

• 40% should be spent CREATING content for your website and business (i.e., auto-responder email messages, blog entries, article generation, video creation, etc.)
• 20% should be spent GROWING an Affiliate Program for the products you create around your business

 

If you’re just starting, these two areas should dominate your “business time” each day. This doesn’t mean that you should spend 60% of the 2 to 3 part-time hours that you dedicate to your business each day, unless you just want to coast and don’t want to see any business growth. If you really want to succeed and reach the level of income you dream about from your business, then you need to spend 60% of some significant portion of your time working your business. The following areas are important to an established and productive online business, but not when you’re a fledgling Internet business and still developing your site. However, once you’re established, you’ll want to spend the appropriate amount of time to performing these duties.

 

• 15% should be spent SETTING UP and MANAGING media campaigns (i.e., Pay-Per-Click, etc.)
• 10% should be spent TESTING the effectiveness of your SEO, opt-ins, etc.
• 10% should be spent RESEARCHING areas to boost your business, looking at competitors, seeing what’s new in your niche
• 5% should be spent RESPONDING to email & support related items associated with your business

 

The key to making this time planning a success is by writing down your tasks, categorizing them, then FOCUS on each… knocking them out one-by-one until you’ve crossed them all off your list. The necessity to put things off and having to return to them later is distracting, to say the least.

 

However, when you’ve launched your new business and are beginning to see significant growth, you can then scale back the amount of hours you dedicate to the business or you can delegate portions out… but keep the same ratio. This doesn’t mean that you can rest on your laurels though — you need to do it all over again by starting a new business venture!

 

Do yourself a favor, whether you’re just starting online, or are a current Internet Entrepreneur with limited success, or are seasoned veterans… tweak your routine and the amount of time you spend on it to this ratio and do a split-test on THAT!