Friday, July 12, 2013

Time is NOT money

It’s official – I am now sick of the phrase ‘time is money’. And, yes I am as guilty of saying it as anyone else.

Everyone seems to say it but as far as I can tell it seems to be mostly used as an excuse for being lazy rather than for good management practices.

When you are starting a company the one thing that you have that doesn’t cost you money is your time.

The fallacy in the ‘Time is money’ phrase is that if you are not specifically earning money for your company in any given hour, then your time is not worth money. But it could be spent doing things that will help the company earn money in the future – and saving cash by not paying someone else.

Let’s go back a step. When you still working in a corporate role you are used to having service providers for pretty much everything you need and can go through a process of getting a budget to pay for your resources.

This all changes when you have a startup. Here are some examples.
  • Why spend $1000 on a website design when you can plug and play with Wordpress, Weebly or Wix. Just go check out websites you like, including competitors, take the time to learn the basics about layout and go ahead.
  • Use a simple spreadsheet for most processes, tracking inventory and keeping your books for the first while.
  • Need to fit out your office – assemble the flatpack furniture yourself.
  • Do your bookkeeping entries in the evenings and save on fees.
  • I know many professionals who pay for cleaners, gardeners, people to wash and iron their clothes. This all makes sense for a lawyer who is billing 10 hours a day, but for the rest of us it is just an expense.
  • I know a lot of entrepreneurs who manage to talk experts into giving them a day or two pro bono on issues that are important to them. That’s a good use of time too.

To be a business owner is to realise that the one thing you can give a company is your time. This is one of the key differences between an employee and an owner. An employee works the hours they are required to, and doesn’t want to do anything more. That’s fine, that’s the contract.

An owner, or even a manager has to go above and beyond that. If you have a share in the profits then you have to earn that. Simply doing the normal 40 hour week is unlikely to suffice.

So, stop waiting to have the money to pay for someone else to come and fix your problems. Learn how to do things yourself. Sure you will make mistakes, but you’ll also learn what works and what is important.


Also, if you want to use your time better, you need to learn to stop being busy for the sake of being busy. Learn to prioritise and work on the things that are most likely to help the business make a sale, improve its products or services, or learn something to make yourself more productive and effective at your role.