12: Leveraging the Pareto Principle (80/20)

Zach Smith: (00:00) Funded Today Nation, welcome back to yet another episode of the Funded Today Podcast. Last time as you might recall we talked about the most important factor that will ultimately determine your success or failure, listen to Episode Number 11 to catch that if you’ve not already done so, and thank you so much to those of you who have given us five star reviews and detailed ratings those really help us spread our message and allow us to reach more listeners just like you. Now in today’s episode we’re going to talk about a “Paradox” is it really better to be lazy than hardworking? Is it actually possible to get 16 times better results in your personal life, and your business doing less work than you are doing now, I think we’ve got an answer for you today that’s going to expand your mind and inspire you to test this tried and true principle out for yourself, so let’s get started.

Announcer: (00:51) The Funded Today Podcast is hosted by World-Renowned Entrepreneurs and Business Experts Thomas Alvord and Zach Smith. To get help with your next big business idea or to take your business to the next level go to fundedtoday.com.

Zach Smith: (01:05) Welcome back to the Funded Today Podcast, I am Zach Smith.

Thomas Alvord: (01:07) And I’m Thomas Alvord.

Zach Smith: (01:09) And in our last episode we and in our last episode we talked about the most important thing determining your success or failure and it’s not what you think checkout “Episode Number 11” on the Funded Today Podcast for that answer, and remember please rate us leave a comment or two on our website and tell us what you thought of that episode and any of our other master classes too. You got a topic or an idea or a special guest you’d like for us to bring on the show those ratings and reviews are a great place to let us know. We read every single one of them personally and they are one of the things that inspire us to keep on producing these high quality master classes just like this one. Now for today’s special episode is it really possible to get 16 times better results with the same amount of effort we’re convinced and by the end of the show we think you’ll be too. Now Thomas one of Funded Today’s core values is under promise over deliver, 16 times better results?

Thomas Alvord: (02:07) Very, very, interesting when I learned about it was 10 years ago and I heard somebody throw out the name, and I thought Oh! that’s interesting and I thought nothing of it, and now as I’ve dived in and really looked at this and researched it, and read books on it I realized oh my goodness this isn’t a theory this is a true principle that literally defines how life, how business, how the universe operates and it’s incredibly powerful and I learned you know what, being busy isn’t virtuous. We live in a society or a culture here at least in the US and many other places that has this notion by the sweat of eyebrow idea right you’ll work all the days of your life, and that if you’re not working it’s not good in a way it’s ingrained in our society, but when you step back and you look at it you realize being busy isn’t virtuous.

Zach Smith: (03:11) I think a story illustrates this very, very, well. This is a story I heard listening to a talk by “Richard Koch” and we’ll talk about him quite a bit in this episode. There is a Pression Officer by the name of “Erich von Manstein” he says there is four types of officers and I want to tell you about each of them, the first one…

Thomas Alvord: (03:36) And to clarify real quick he’s not speaking allegorically, he’s not speaking academically, he was actually an officer I believe it was actually for the Nazis and he was pretty high up so he’s actually saying here’s what I’ve observed it's mind-boggling it’s completely backwards but it’s so interesting.

Zach Smith: (03:53) And I think that’s an important point that you raise as well. We tried to not do theory on the show, we try to focus on fact based research and observations and studies that we have applied in our own lives or in our own businesses, I think this is a good example of that, and he says there’s four types of officers. The first are “the lazy stupid ones” he says you can use these types of officers under certain circumstances but for the most part don’t bother him leave them alone its okay. The second type “the hard working intelligent ones” he says these are great, they’re good for staff officers, they’re not going to be your big time leaders, they’re not going to be the greatest in anything but they’re going to get stuff done they’re going to be process oriented you need them. The third the “hard working stupid ones” these are the most dangerous, these people are a menace they need to be fired at once they create irrelevant work but everybody involved. And finally the fourth the “intelligent lazy ones” and here’s the Paradox he says these are suited for the highest offices in the land the highest offices in the military you want to have these guys do everything why? Why is this Thomas intelligent lazy ones?

Thomas Alvord: (05:17) When this story shared a lot of times people laugh and I wonder if the reason people laugh -- my wife was the one who shared this with me. She said in every joke there’s an element of truth that’s why something is funny, because it’s slightly different from what you would normally expect but there’s an element of truth in it. Deep down inside there is an element of truth but yes it’s a great question why is this so I want to step back and if we haven’t discussed it or said it explicitly yet what we’re discussing on this podcast today is what’s called the “80/20 Principle” or “The Pareto Principle” and understanding this principle will help us understand why this military officer said that the intelligent lazy ones are suited for the highest office okay.

Vilfredo Federico was an Italian Economists, in the 1800s he researched and looked and found that about 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population, and he thought that’s interesting, so then he went and he looked at other countries and he found the same distribution. If you went to France, or the UK or other places 20% of the population owned 80% of the land, this doesn’t apply just to land ownership as more and more people looked at and researched what’s called “The Pareto Principle” or “The Pareto Distribution” they found that this phenomenon applies literally to everything in life as a kind of interesting almost bizarre example if you go look at pea pods in a garden 20% of the pods are going to have about 80% of the peas, weird but that’s just how it is. If you look at traffic on the roads 20% of the roads get 80% of the traffic, if you look at the time that people are on the roads. Most of the traffic happens during -- well I should say 80% of the traffic more or less happens during 20% of the time in a 24-hour period or if you look at a one year period you’d find the same thing. 20% of the countries have 80% of the world population, so what is so incredible about this.

Zach Smith: (07:59) Thomas 20% of the population pays 80% of the tax.

Thomas Alvord: (08:04) Exactly and what’s so interesting is not necessarily the distribution although that’s interesting and it will vary here and there but it’s typically around 80%-20% then it doesn’t have to be 80%-20% right it literally could have been 15%-60% which basically says 15% of the pods have 60% of the peas, right? The 80%-20% doesn’t need to equal a 100 it just happens that that is the case but here’s the key takeaway in why this matters this principle is basically saying there are inputs, there are efforts, there are things that you do that other people do that have a disproportionate output, and that’s why they also call “The Law of The Vital Few” there’s a few levers you pull, there’s a few things you do that they will have a disproportionate outcome, and so you have to look at those things that are the vital few. You do this little thing and you get this result and that’s where you can say you can increase your efforts or your output I should say - not your efforts you don’t want to increase your efforts, you want to increase your outputs by 16-X is basically if you look - if we were to do math here and usually math is easier if you can see it, but taking in 80%-20% let’s say you have two inputs, that give you eight outputs. Another way if you were to do fractions is basically saying for every one input you’re getting four outputs, following me so far. Now on the flipside you have the 20% that gives you 80% of the results, you also have 80% of inputs or 80% of the effort that only gives you a week 20% of output so in another way 8% of the inputs are giving you two not percent, but eight inputs are giving you two outputs and again if we were to use division you have four inputs for one output. So literally with 80%-20% there some inputs will call it one input that gives you four outputs, other things you do where you could have four inputs and you’ll only get one output and that is a difference of 16 times for the same number of inputs, one of them is giving you a 16 times better result and that’s what we want to focus on, if that makes sense and that’s the Power of “The Pareto Principle”.

Zach Smith: (10:45) I kind of had a aha realization moment right as you were talking, when I went back and listen to you talk about the 20% of the pods in a garden have 80% of the peas, I thought to myself that’s natural. No gardening technique made that happen there was there was no farmer who forced it to be that way, and a lot of 80%-20% if we look at it in nature is natural, nature natural right well then why might that be well I thought well they’ve had thousands or millions of years to become that way to evolve and then I thought well if nature applies 80%-20% so efficiently why don’t we as humans try to apply that ourselves and see if we can learn a thing or two, and that’s kind of what I want to do to wrap up that officer story, it’s much better to be lazy - what a silly paradox or is it few things really matter but those few things matter more than anything else, and if you’ve got a lazy officer who’s intelligent he is going to focus on the most important things using his mind to get everything done and get rid of all the fluff.

Thomas Alvord: (12:03) Even when we were preparing for this podcast I mentioned to Zach - Zach who is one of our sales reps who you say would be the most lazy that we ever had?

Zach Smith: (12:17) Oh yes and a name immediately came to mind and we chuckled and we laugh and then we thought man we need to do a better job of asking our self the 80%-20% questions because this particular sales person didn’t work very hard at all.

Thomas Alvord: (12:33) But he would close clients for $150,000 and we’re like whoa-whoa we only have $15,000 or $35,000 packages right now, but because he was so lazy he thought how can I make more money and he was closing clients right and it latterly shows that silly paradox as Zach has called it.

Zach Smith: (12:55) What can we do to spend time creatively on the few essential and little or no time on the massive minutiae that engulfs all of us most of the time, and think about it do you really think somebody like Warren Buffett, Marcus Lemonis, Bill Gates, Elon Musk are crunching numbers or talking to somebody about something so small, or answering emails, no these guys are focusing on the one big thing that they need to accomplish every single day it just makes sense, if you want to be great if you want to be famous if you want to have this remarkable life think about what these guys must be doing. There’s a quote by Ronald Reagan and it goes like this it's true hard work never killed anyone, but I figure why even take the chance and you can laugh of that, I love what Thomas said that his wife taught him anytime you tell a joke if you chuckle or you smile or you laugh it’s partly because there’s some truth to it and I think that’s the case there to.

Ronald Reagan was the President of the United States when he said this I believe, he’s talking about not working hard, oh no and I remember growing up, I mean my dad was a roofer, and a contractor and then he was a schoolteacher, and my mom was always about work hard, work hard, work hard and I absolutely work hard I still do but I had these principles ingrained in my mind that if I was in the one swing in the hammer work on the nail gun tearing off the roof I was somehow lazy or bad and it wasn’t until I got older that I realized wait a sec if I pay a couple people $20.00 bucks an hour, and I get four or five of them up there to do it I can make just as much money as if I was the one working with them. It was the first realization of 80%-20% in my life and I had to shake off all of these principles of you got to work hard, sweat of your brow that’s the only way you’re going to succeed is, if you’re the one doing it if you don’t do it then you’re lazy and sometimes even now and I think maybe many of our listeners feel this way too, I don’t know oh I’m so lazy I’m not I’m not working, I’m not the one writing, I’m not the one talking to the clients, I’m not the one selling, I had to do that the more I let go the more I realized the Power of Pareto Principle. The more I realized that most of life especially most business life is basically my minutiae.

Thomas Alvord: (15:29) And there’s research Zach that also has shown where big companies they tell their people look on the weekend don’t work take a day 24 hours you don’t check your email, you don’t do any work the research shows that they become more productive and get more important stuff done, and generate more revenue. What super interesting regardless of whether somebody is religiosity, it’s kind of interesting that there’s a Sabbath Day to take a break across so many different religions the point is though “less is more” another one of my favorite phrases “less is more” and by doing less and again this doesn’t mean you just don’t work it just means you don’t stay busy you’ll still be working mentally or doing other stuff, but you’re not involved in that minutiae that you get dragged down and bogged down in all of the stuff that ultimately does not give you those outputs that matter.

Zach Smith: (16:26) There are so many good ways of saying that, “finding the vital few in the trivial many” “deploying your energy more intelligently” getting results not just a bit better but way better 16 times better, so let’s get down to the nitty-gritty now because it’s pretty difficult to determine the most important things, so how do you go about doing it? How do you figure out if you’re even working on the most important things that’s the topic that we want to kind of spend a few minutes on right now? How to determine the 80%-20% in your life so that your actually working on the most important things, the things that matter to you, and like I mentioned they’re very difficult to find.

So one of the first tasks that I came up with that I like to do in my own life that I think everybody should do is you got to perform an audit, maybe it’s because my degree is in accounting, so I’ve got to use an audit term but I audit I simply mean to ask yourself a few questions, what is my goal or desired result? So what are you trying to do? Am I my trying to start a business, am I try to start a new division in my business? Am I trying to pivot away from something in my business, am I trying to dunk a basketball? Am I trying to become a professional spikeball player? Yes I am actually. What’s actually getting us these results, and look at your life what are you doing. So let’s take let’s take spikeball we’ll make it fun. Spikeball what am I doing if I want to become a professional spikeball player to get me those result? And I can think in the last week what did I do? Well I played for a couple hours on Saturday, I hit against the garage last night for an hour, are those getting me closer? Yes perhaps, I watched three or four hours of training videos from some of the other pros to see what they were doing, and if my goal is to become a professional spikeball player and I’m analyzing what am I doing to get those results then I’m on the right track and I am applying 80%-20% now conversely I could say I want to be professional spikeball player and I look back in my last week and I have done absolutely nothing, well I’ve watched Monday Night Football, I ate a bunch of junk food, I worked a bunch of my business, I didn’t even pick up a ball, I didn’t even go out and play. Easy to do perform an audit, but before even perform an audit you’ve got to ask yourself one question what is my goal or desired result? Do that for everything in your life.

Thomas Alvord: (18:53) And with that Zach with 80% - 20% it's not just are you doing an audit to see are you moving forward, but of those things you did watching the videos, talking to others, playing games, practicing in your garage those four or five things you did what was - of all those what was the one thing that actually helped you get better and you were telling me the other day there’s a way you can practice where you hit the ball against the wall right what you hit into the spikeball now and then it hits the wall and comes back to you or something?

Zach Smith: (19:21) I nerd out on 80%-20% so again going to spikeball, for those who don’t know a spikeball is sorry I’m so passionate about it but it’s basically like volleyball but with around net that sits a couple inches above the ground and you have 3 hits to try to hit it back on the net, but what I found is I was practicing serving and the ball would just bounce all over the place and I’d get like way less serves in an hour, so what I did is I just brought it out against the garage, I set it up a foot or two away from the garage and then I was able to hit the ball and every time I hit the ball it would bounce right back to me perfectly so that I could get like 20 times more serves in the same amount of time that I had spent previously and then I took it one step further I brought it down to the basement and the basement was even more confined so the ball even had less chances of bouncing or going around, and that’s helped me tremendously to get way better at serving way quicker and it was because I looked at 80%-20% I said how can I make the most use of this hour of time? How can I get the most efficient reps in?

Thomas Alvord: (20:23) And in addition to what you said Zach to perform an audit if I can show one thing even before that which we kind of hit on already to how to determine the most important things, I think the most important thing to begin with is to slowdown, if you don’t have time to sit down and do an audit in the first place you’re probably not working on the most productive things.

Zach Smith: (20:46) You’re in 2018.

Thomas Alvord: (20:47) And to sit down every morning and list out here’s things I need to get done what are the one or two things and really just even the one thing even a couple years ago if you recall Zach we talked about creating a “Pareto Planner”, and it’s kind of different than a lot of other planners we put everything in literally the Pareto Planner would have a place to put all the stuff you need to get done and keep track of it and then for each day you would have here’s the one thing I’m going to accomplish today.

Zach Smith: (21:16) I still think that’s a good idea.

Thomas Alvord: (21:17) We never created it but really that’s the power of it what’s the one thing that’s going to make a different and you’re conscientious, you’re purposeful about it.

Zach Smith: (21:25) There’s one more way to look at it is an audit doesn’t work for you here’s a way to do it, and we do this quite a bit at Funded Today as well. What would be the worst way for me to proceed? What would the worst possible outcome look like? And then just ask yourself what’s the opposite of that? Why do you do this, let me give you a couple examples, the worst way for me to design this particular product feature is to make it so the user never has an idea what he or she is supposed to do. Now here’s what you do, you flip it around the most important thing therefore is to build the opposite of that, something where the user always understands what he or she is supposed to be doing, or the worst way for me to deal with this person who’s having trouble with me at work or this employee or this contractor, or this person on my team who’s constantly arguing with me is to make this person feel dumb and argue with them and make them feel stupid, insecure and have them get all defensive and lash out and that will make us both look terrible, and then again just flip it around. The best way for me to navigate this conflict therefore is to make the person I’m arguing with I change that word arguing into conversing with, talking with trying to understand to feel valued and recognize for their contribution, so we can respectfully discuss our disagreements, that strategy works extremely well.

If you ask yourself that you can usually figure out what the best way is for you to proceed. And then I want to make a point on multitasking in this hustle and grind I hate those words I’m hustling, I’m grinding, I’m burning the midnight oil I hate all that stuff, stop multitasking I get that there are social media I get that everybody feels like they got to get to a million as fast as possible and start the next big thing but patience matters I love what Thomas said slow everything down if you don’t have time to listen to a podcast, to read a book, to go on a date night with your girlfriend or your wife your significant other, if you can’t do those sorts of things you have a problem. We cannot multitask in fact there is significant research that shows that MRI Scans have proven that when we attempt to do two things at once our minds literally are switching attention between those two things, we focus on the one task and then we quickly refocus on a second task but we are never whether were male or female because I know sometimes us men like to tell say oh I’m not a woman I can’t multitask that’s false too, never successfully perform both at the same time. The frontal lobe in our brain controls which act we prioritize and our minds are unable to process to task simultaneously, again there’s nature speaking out I love this observation 80%-20% is in nature and even in our own brains 80%-20% is saying that we can’t do so many things at once. The word multitasking actually originated from computer science and engineering it was the way that they talked about machines processing tasks so it’s no wonder that we as humans cannot do the same thing.

Thomas Alvord: (24:31) In addition to that Zach stopping the multitasking doing the audits, the audits are useful to look forward to see what should I do that will give me the result but it’s also useful to look back even you do both right you look back and you look forward but you want to be focused you want to be purposeful you don’t just go to work and sit down and just start working or sit down and open your email if you do that and you answer two hours of email like the reality is you literally wasted your time like that was a horrible waste of time and I get stuck doing that sometimes, you should batch your email right, stuff like that because the emails not your productive stuff, it’s not closing the big cell it’s making you feel productive, but you’re not. Another thing I had heard before if there’s the thing you keep delaying and procrastinating very often that’s the big thing you need to do, but you don’t want to touch it because whatever -- for whatever the reason is and so you’ve got to slowdown you’ve got to think what is it that is going to make the difference and 80%-20% like we said applies to everything in the world but you can also apply it to anything in your own life to improve your life your personal life your relationships etcetera and Zach has already talked about doing that with spikeball, but there’s other ways that that you can do that.

Zach Smith: (25:58) What do you like about your life? What do you not like about it? Again that almost sounds like a personal audit to me when I ask those questions what do I like about my life now, what do I not like well last year I didn’t like that I was starting to get out of shape for the first time my life, and I said this isn’t good and I looked at my life and I talked about “Holistic Harmonization” on an earlier episode and I looked at the eight to ten things in my life, that kind of makeup who is Zach Smith? Who is this guy? Who is this person? And I rated them on a scale of one to 10, 10 being I’m amazing at those I don’t need to change it, whatsoever I’m happy with how things are going they are completely in harmony with the way I want to be with my lifegoals, and then I had a couple one of them being physical fitness and health that were not great maybe a four or five even and for me that’s terrible because I kind of was an athlete my entire life, and I immediately set about to fix so I hired a personal trainer and by the way even though I have a lot of money I didn’t go hire a personal trainer and pay them hundreds of dollars a month. Here’s a life fact for you, I got a membership of Planet Fitness it was 10 bucks a month $999 or something, and they have a personal trainer five times a week for an hour and a half a day I get personally trained for 10 bucks a month absolutely amazing, so it’s not like that I had all this money and I hired this trainer and fix my life and now it’s all great. I actually did it in a way that pretty much anybody can afford cutback on eating out one day of the week and you could do that, apply 80%-20% in your own life in every possible way and I did that was with every single category in my life I asked what I liked I asked what I didn’t like and then I made an observation and anything that wasn’t a 7 or higher I immediately set about to fix, and then I assessed myself again a month later, six months later, and so on.

Thomas Alvord: (27:50) And with this law of the vital few really what you’re looking at is yes here’s a list of 10 things I don’t like about my life or that causes me stress, or anxiety whatever it might be and the “law of the vital few” would say there’s only one or two of those things that’s causing you pretty much all of your stress, or all of your dissatisfaction. And on the flipside if you look at one of the stuff that I really like to do that just makes my life blossom and makes me happy and you list out everything a “law of the vital few” would say there’s one or two things that give you most of your joy most of your happiness. So just focus on those two things, to change your life you don’t need to change a whole bunch even though there might be a lot of stuff to change it’s “the law of the vital few” and focusing on those few things. If you’re having difficulty in a relationship or something for example right what are the one or two things that yes there might be 10 things that. your significant other or your spouse complains about, but if you really sat down and saw it’s probably one or two things and you could say you know I could change those two things it would make all the difference for them because that’s 80% percent of their frustration or look at what are they like yeah there’s 10 things that this person likes but there’s probably one or two that if you do is going to bring them the most satisfaction show them the most that you care that you think about them “the law of the vital view” you inputs and outputs are disproportionate, focus on the inputs but have a disproportionate output and that’s how you can apply a 80% - 20%.

Zach Smith: (29:28) I love that and here is how you can put Thomas’s strategy into action for you right away. All you got to do let’s take the spouse or significant other because that one really resonated with me, sit down with your significant other or spouse and say hey what are the what are all the things that you wish I could maybe do a little bit better? This isn’t a time for us to get sensitive or matter take offense I just want to write them all down write them all down and then rank them, now obviously I’m a human I’m not perfect I’m not I’m able to get all 10 of these fixed or all 20 of these or maybe for me there’s 100 on the list that my wife wouldn’t like about me, give me two, if there’s twenty if there’s 100 give me 20, if there’s 10 give me two, and so on right applying 80%-20% like Thomas said, and then fix those you can easily fix just those couple things and like Thomas said you will be surprised how quickly your life is better to something just as simple as that.

In business same thing make it real simple breakout your revenue if you already have a business where is 80% of your revenue coming from chances are it’s coming from 20% of your sources I mean literally it’s crazy how it works it’s crazy, crazy, crazy how it works 20% of your sales people are doing 80% of your revenue? What are you doing to take care of those 20 percent of your people? By taking care of them better you going to get even better results yes you will we found that in our business, we started listening to them a little bit more and everything got better everybody was happier and we noticed that by taking care of sales people the entire culture of the company improved and everybody was happier. Rank your revenue out figure out where most of your revenues coming from and then double down on that, there are so many ways to apply 80%-20% in every aspect of your life.

Thomas Alvord: (31:12) What are the 20% of your customers that are giving you 80% of your revenue? How do you focus and acquire more customers like them, what are 20%of the services or products that you’re selling that are generating 80% of your revenue? Focus on those and don’t focus on the other things, and don’t try to think for example Oh! I have ten sales reps these top two are doing 80% of the revenue, lets ore ourselves how can we get the other eight sales reps to start performing like them, if you knew that you’re going against nature, you’ve got to just focus on the 20% and nurture that, that’s how you can really grow.

Zach Smith: (31:50) And don’t get overwhelmed it’s really easy to get overwhelmed but 80%-20% says don’t get overwhelmed. I love what “Richard Koch” said he said “strive for excellence in few things rather than good performance in many if you look at life if you look at the people that change the world or the people that you look to and respect they were not a jack of all trades master of none, they absolutely had flaws. Look at Steve Jobs that guy had so many flaws, read the book Walter Isaacson wrote on Jobs, I mean you learn about this guy and there was a lot of stuff about him that maybe wasn’t quite right, but look at what he did, look at the transformative power he had on not only Apple but the entire world if you’re looking to become great, to become renowned, to become world famous strive for excellence in just a few things rather than good performance and many and really if you do that I can promise you that overwhelm and stress, and I’m never going to get all this done. All of that weight that burden on your shoulders will become tremendously less almost immediately as you make that mindset shift.

Thomas Alvord: (33:00) Perfect and if you have that stress you’re not applying a 20% like you can or should, and really 80% - 20% applies to everything. 80%-20% even applies to this podcast you’re listening to right now. What was the 20% of our content or this podcast that gave you 80% of the value or the takeaway, let us know at our website we’d love to hear at fundedtoday/podcast that’s www.funded.today/podcast we read every comment and we’d love to hear from you.

Zach Smith: (33:38) This episode’s product of the week is “American Made Wagyu Beef Jerky” from “Cowboy Star Provisions”. Cowboys Star Provisions has created an all-natural rich and full flavored Wagyu Beef Jerky and get this it’s actually sourced locally from the USA. This project is live on Kickstarter it's actually just about the end, but you will be able to pick it up from their website or Indiegogo-InDemand this team is from San Diego, California and this actually might - if you’re beef jerky guy I got back from hiking Mount Everest and I basically subsisted on Beef Jerky because everything else was so hard to eat and Beef Jerky had lot of protein and a lot of sustenance to kind of get me through things, this might be the best darn jerky ever. Check it out this is American Made Wagyu Beef ending on Kickstarter soon, but you’ll be able to pick it up from their website shortly.

Thomas Alvord: (34:35) My product of the week is “SmartCase” spelled just like it sounds all one word and it’s a protective smartphone case that prevents eavesdropping and camera hacking. So with the camera case it has sliders to cover both of the camera lenses on the front and the back and it actually muffles or covers the microphone so it can’t record, so yes it protects your phone but it protects your privacy, I’ve never seen a case like this it’s pretty amazing you should if you care about your privacy you should check it out that “SmartCase” all one word spelt just how it sounds.

Zach Smith: (35:17) And remember don’t wait until tomorrow get funded today.

Announcer: (35:23) Funded Today is the worldwide leader in a Rewards Based Crowdfunding, on Kickstarter and Indiegogo combined they have raised over $200 million and counting for thousands of new ideas and inventions worldwide, if you got an idea for a new product or invention visit www.fundedtoday.com to speak with one of their experts.