In order for 20% of you to succeed 80% of you have to fail

Thanks Bruce

Its a discussion point not a premiss...

And if everyone was successful at IM then they wouldnt need to buy more (or at least buy a lot less) how to get rich products.

usually highly succesful IM'ers dont buy much, they usually get it given to them either for a testimonial or because the program owner wants them to promote it.

But still its a point of debate

The premise also seems to include the idea of a zero sum game. That is, if someone has the money, then there is none for another person. I am not convinced that is how it really works,

I agree a lot are failing, though thats not my point.

I want to know if people believe that its inevitable for (insert % here) have to fail in order for the rest to succeed

The online world is no different than the "real" world as far as business. I've been in sales all my adult life (25+years) No matter the organization, 20% of the sales force makes roughly 80% of the money. Your choice is whether you choose to do what's necessary to be in the 20%. It's the same online, it doesn't matter what niche you are in.

I can't agree with this statement. To have 100% of the population succeed at anything would completely trivialize the accomplishment, and negate the whole concept of success.

What makes success such an attraction is that it's actually challenging to attain. Look at other things that 100% of the population can do for proof of this.

You don't congratulate people for figuring out how to breath do you?

I agree with you. I do not believe one has to fail for the other one to succeed. I do not believe in failure either. It is all a learning experience, and if we fail is becasue we choose not to do what needs to be done to succeed. I am not saying you will becoem an overnight success without going trhough the learning curve (or what is referred at failure).
Also I know the 80/20 principle applies but that is a bit of scarcity mentality (which I am also guilty of sometimes).

What is failure and success for you guys? If you have the right mindset, you don't fail, you learn from experience. Maybe I quote him too much, but Eben Pagan often says "Everything is a test" and you will fail very often and find some gold nuggets. Only 20% can go to the next level is a more truthful statement. What do you think?

This is true as when I was starting out I was purchasing another product as soon as I finished one. I was already making money through other avenues so didn't need to depend on IM as my sole income for me to live. This allowed me to learn EVERYTHING I could about various avenues in IM.

But after going through a lot of courses, memberships, ebooks, etc it became apparent that I didn't need to purchase everything I came across because I could pretty tell if the information was going to be valuable to me just from reading the sales letter, sales video, promotional material, webinar, etc. And the more products I went through the more I learned about different areas in IM which cut down of the number of products that interested me.

This is basic math were talking about here people. It really doesn't matter what the 95% were doing, or industry there in, failure rate, success rate, etc. Before 5% could succeed, fail, "get through", or what ever, 95% had to fail, not make, quit, etc.

You can say 5 people succeed and that's fine. But if you say 5% succeeded, well that's 5% out of how many? 100, 1000. 100k, 1M? You can't have a percentage of something until you have some larger number to compare it to. Doesn't matter if that larger number is a success, failure, quit, or what ever, before you can have that '%' number you need a total first to arrive at that number. Call that total what you like, doesn't really matter!

Define success?

Success if whatever each individual person makes it. Whether they achieve it is totally up to them and no one else. True making $50 could be a success to someone, but picture yourself as totally unemployed with no avenue for income. Now do you still consider that $50 you have as a success? If so, then your right, you're successful in your own mind. Whether others think you are that might be a different story all together.

Tim Ferriss quite often quotes the 80/20 rule, sometimes in relation to success, sometimes in relation to the minimum effort to get the maximum gain. 80/20 (and greater proportions sometimes!) pop up in life quite often, so I'm not surprised to see it here.

Like many people have said before, I don't think IM is a zero-sum game, where my success = other people's failure.

We as IM'er arn't the entirety of the internet, so even IF we never purchased each others products, we could all still theoretically be successful, so long as we satisfy the niche we are in.

However, I do believe a lot of people fail in IM for the same reasons that a lot of people fail at any endeavour; laziness. There are detractors from the "JUST TAKE ACTION" cause on this board and I understand their objections to it in principle, however there are a LOT of road blocks on the path to IM success... And at every one of them I'm entirely sure a decent chunk of IM'ers stop.

"Perspiration not Inspiration" is a phrase I've heard many times recently, especially I am one of those people who managed to "get by" in life on my smarts till university... I've learnt the hard way that hard work, despite being hard; is WORTH IT.

What happened here?

as i cant see anything political i must assume a post hes been deleted somewhere in this thread.

The reason for the thread was because i have seen and heard the comment multiple times, people actually believe that successful marketers rely on the failure rate to make money.

Its a pretty broad swipe of the paint brush to say that and i was really wondering how wide spread that belief is.

And as there is logical argument on both sides to prove the point, im not sure how you would counter such a belief when its presented.

Ok lets go from here, because this is a logical argument for the premiss.

SIDE NOTE: these are not neccassarily my beliefs...But as an entrepeuner I have to understand the motives of those that do believe this.

Which one?

Do you mean the "Pareto principle" (named for but not by the same Vilfredo Pareto) that 80% of the wealth (or, indeed, any widely distributed resource) is owned by 20% of the population?

Or do you mean some other use of 80% and 20% plugged into some formula, like perhaps "80% need to fail for 20% to succeed" which is not an accurate statement of the principle?

In fact, the "80 fail/20 succeed" idea is tautologous. 100% have attempted. If only 20 succeed, then ( 100 - 20 ) fail. And 100 - 20 is 80. Similarly, 50% must fail for 50% to succeed, and 20% must fail for 80% to succeed. Because no matter where you draw the line on success and failure, the numbers always add up to 100 or less.

The final "or less" is necessary to account for the fallacy of the undistributed middle...