The 80/20 Principle or Pareto Principle was discovered in 1897 by an Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto while he was searching for patterns of wealth and income in England.

What he found was that 80 percent of wealth was enjoyed by only 20 percent of population. Additionally, it was consistent in different countries and in different times.

This has been found in present day as well and in almost any activity that we perform, business or otherwise.

In other words, 80 percent of your results in a given activity, are generated by 20 percent of your input or effort. Just same, 80 percent of revenue or profits are generated by 20 percent of your efforts or sales.

The 80/20 relationship can also easily be documented in personal achievement and happiness. Most people have never taken time to count their achievements or much less figure out what makes them happy. If they did, they would have realized that there are very few things that contribute to most of their happiness. They would also have found that there are very few things that they have done that has resulted in most of their achievements.

Growing up I often heard my best friend's father Nick say, "Show me who your friends are and I'll tell you what you are!"

Well, that was usually followed by a long speech about why his son Frank should not have hung out with certain people.

I was like a second son to Nick so I would get to listen in on Frank getting yelled at. By that time, I had already been homeless and off streets and working my way through High School, so I never thought of hanging out with types that Frank did. Of course I was no angel but, I chose my friends as carefully as I could.

Frank never got point back then, but Nick knew very well about power of association.

You see Nick, grew up only son of an entrepreneur and brother to six sisters. Since he was baby boy, he got a lot of attention and love from his father. Although all of children did, Nick got just a little more.

Nick's father owner of a motel and a construction company could rival strength and attitude of strongest of strongmen of his day and even ours. He grew up with same mentality of his father AND strength to boot!

The problem with Nick was that he associated with street gangs of his day and didn't listen to his father when he gave him same speech, "Show me who your friends are and I'll tell you what you are!"

Associating with wrong people didn't end there though, later in life he ended up associating himself with some of most ruthless mobsters around and as time went on, Nick gained both wealth and bad habits these guys had.

Finally days came when his acquired gambling addiction took all of wealth away. Although he could have lost his life many times, it took loss of his money to finally stop associating himself with these people.