The 80-20 Rule to Building a Portfolio

I own at least nine amazing suits, but 80% of the time or more, I gravitate towards my navy blue, well-tailored, mandarin-collar suit. I’ve had it for about 6 years now. I call it my power suit. I mean, just look at my face! Powerrrrrrr..

We’ve all heard about the Pareto Principle – 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. It’s been coined as one of the “most important concepts in modern entrepreneurship”, commonly cited instances of the include:

• 20% of customers generate 80% of business’ sales
• 20% of marketing efforts generate 80% of sales
• 20% of employees create 80% of the output
• 20% of software bugs cause 80% of software crashes

The point is that large results come from small efforts.

How does this all relate to building a portfolio? Let’s assume that you’re just starting out with little to no relevant industry experience. For now, exposure is a reasonable currency.

Let your work do the work

When I first started CVP Group, I was obsessed with creating high-quality television commercials and great visuals. I wanted my work to be everywhere, on every channel, and every platform. I wanted my works to be described as ‘cinematic’. Yikes, what an ego!

Those were the times when we considered shooting 2 to 3 videos a month a ‘good month’. It didn’t matter much if we didn’t pay ourselves. It’s what we had to do to build a decent portfolio to attract high profile clients.

Fast forward to 2020 – as a company, we’ve produced over 350+ videos. There’s a good mix of corporate videos, event highlights, animations, podcasts and television commercials. But I’ve come to the realisation that whenever a client asked to see our portfolio, I fish out the same few links that best reflect the quality of our work and our capabilities.

When you’re first starting out, it can be difficult to say no to high profile clients with small budgets, or just any client in general. But your goal shouldn’t simply be to create as much as you can for the sake of populating your portfolio.

The best thing about starting out is that opportunity to start on a blank canvas. This is your chance to define the way you want your works to be perceived, and how you want your brand to be remembered. This is your chance to find that 20%, and you can easily do that by:

• Carving out your niche and then constantly working at it to become the best
• Identifying your target audience and their needs
• Paying attention to your competition

I started out with a vision of creating television commercials, but we’re now mostly creating corporate videos and internal-facing videos. These videos help bring in the dough, and who’s to say we can’t combine great visuals and storytelling for corporate jobs? There’s our 20% – high-quality visuals for corporate stories. When you find that 20% and you hone that 20%, work comes to you like bees to honey...or bears.

Choose your clients wisely

Sometimes, the lowest quote wins and other times, their old friend they went to school with wins the bid.

When you work with clients who are purely price driven, hostility breeds. Every small detail has a cost attached to it that they’re extremely hesitant to pay for. I’ve had a client tell me that ‘even his wife can shoot a video with her phone’. Wow...

You’re not giving your best to clients when you feel resentful, annoyed, under-appreciated, or under-paid. Don’t take on projects where you plan to half-ass the project because you need the cash. Everyone suffers when you do this.

You should be working with clients who treat you like a partner beyond the vendor-supplier relationship. Pursue clients who value your work and acknowledge the number of hours you’ve put into perfecting your craft. There’s respect and admiration on both sides.

As a company, we’re constantly trying to build better relationships with the clients we already have. We try to come up with engaging content that’ll keep them updated on the latest happenings through EDMs and status updates. It’s a lot easier to build on relationships that you already have, than to go out and foster new ones.

After thoughts.

In 2020, the bulk of our revenue came from the same 3 to 5 clients. They’ve kept us out of the red despite the pandemic.

When you find a client that you love, and one that loves you back, work hard to keep that relationship. They become your advocates and will likely bring you with them wherever they go, recommending your services to their colleagues and friends. I cannot stress how important word of mouth is for your business.

At the end of the day, think about what matters to you. How do you want to feel after a project has been done and delivered? How do you want others to feel when they work with you?

The difference between you and any other content creator is your ability to pause and think strategically about your next move, that you understand that productivity is more than ‘being busy’.

And yes, I wrote this article in one of my suits.

;)