I’m Wasting My Time!
Well, now I'm in a pickle! Now that I am actually forcing myself to do everything that I'm supposed to do each day, according to my own daily list, suddenly I have no more time!
I'm sure you're familiar with the old adage "Time is money", right?
BULL!
That phrase implies that time is equal to money, and nothing could be further from the truth. Here's the skinny - you have a finite amount of time in this world. If you waste an hour, that's an hour you can never get back. However, if you "waste" $100, you can easily earn another $100 to replace it.
The fact is, time is worth about 10 times the value of money, if not more. Let's try a little exercise, shall we?
How much do you earn per hour at your job? If you're full-time online, make a best guess as to what you are "worth" per hour. Now write that number down. Before I went full time online, I was getting paid $25 per hour, so I'll use that.
Next, estimate how much time you spend on tasks for your business that *could* be done by someone else (virtual assistants, contract writers or programmers, etc) - I'm talking about anything that's on your daily list (remember that from earlier in the week?) that doesn't ABSOLUTELY have to be done by you. Let's take a look at my list…
1. Check and answer emails
I spend about 3 hours a day doing this.
2. Check and answer support requests
I have support staff in place for most of my products, so this is just for people that either don't know about, or choose to ignore my online ticket system. Probably about an hour a day.
3. Write new content
This is something I'm really working hard on - I'm easily in for 2 hours per day on this one
4. Work on old projects (software that is already released, but I have upgrades planned for)
About 4 hours per day
5. Work on new projects
About 4 hours per day
6. Spy on friends and competetors
About an hour per day
7. Spend time with my family
About 2 hours per day
Whoa now - that's about 17 hours per day. And that's just about right. Now, out of those tasks, what could possibly be done by someone else?
1. Emails - yep, someone else could do them.
2. Check and answer support requests - yes, someone else could do this.
3. Write new content - yes, I could hire a ghostwriter for most of my articles and blog posts (except this one, of course)
4. Work on old projects - someone else *could* do this, but it would be much quicker if I did it myself - I know the code, understand what needs to be done. But, we'll say yes to this as well.
5. Work on new projects - yes… if I could find a couple more programmers that I trusted.
6. Spy on friends and competetors - yes, if I were to train someone properly, he or she could do this for me
7. Spend time with my family - nope, I'm the only one who could do this.
So, adding everything up, that's 15 hours per day I'm doing things that *could* be done by other people.
Now, let's multiply that by my theoretical hourly worth… 15 x $25 = $375 per day I am "wasting" doing things that I could hire other people to do.
If I work 6 days per week, then over the course of a month that's $9000 of "wasted" time (don't misunderstand me here - the things on my list are things that *must* be done to support a growing business… when I say "wasted time", I'm referring to the fact that I am doing it myself instead of paying someone else to do it.)
Ok, look at your numbers (you HAVE been participating in this excerise, haven't you?!?). Take a look at the monthly value of your time. Would you be willing to pay that much in order to free up your time? Time that can be spent with your family, or developing new products, or working out new JVs?
In my case, would I be willing to pay $9000 per month to two or three people in order to free up my time? You're gosh darn right I would! If I could concentrate solely on developing new products and services, I could easily make enough to pay for the hired guns, and then some.
I believe that this is the hallmark of an internet marketing "newbie" - wanting to do everything themselves because then it won't cost anything…. these folks end up wasting their time (once again, "wasting" in the same context) doing menial tasks when they could be doing much more productive things.
Yes, you can design your website yourself for free… but why, when you can slide a few Franklins to Dave Mizrachi and end up with a killer website design? Is the $300-$500 Dave charges worth the hours you DON'T have to spend designing it yourself? What else could you be doing while Dave is designing your website? You could be tweaking your sales letter, working on one or more JV deals, developing a new product…
Now, I'm not so far removed from the "real world" to understand that there are plenty of people who are doing their best to bootstrap themselves with as little money as possible… what I've been writing about does not apply to you folks. For you, I say do what you need to do to start getting some monthly cash flow coming in. But be prepared to reinvest your profits in outsourcing as soon as you can. Here's an example:
Say you build your business up part time so that it is making a pretty steady $3000 per month. You're wanting to get away from your full time job as soon as possible, but $3000 just isn't really enough to make that happen yet. What if you were to hire people to take care of your business for you, and pay them $2000 per month to do it? You'd be left with $1000 positive cash flow each month, with almost no need to do work for that $3000 per month business. Since you no longer have that work to do, you can *do it again*! Build up another $3000 per month business, and then pay someone else $2000 per month to take care of it for you. Now you have a $2000 positive cash flow each month… and you're free to repeat it over and over until you're in a solid position to quit your job.
Is this strategy easy? Of course not - if this stuff were easy, everyone would be doing it. But, it definately works.
Time is not equal to money - time is infinitely more valuable than money, because if you use your time wisely, you can leverage it to make more and more money.
So, with all that said… I have a few openings available 
Seriously, I'm going to try and outsource as much of the stuff I have listed above as I can. If you happen to be a writer, a programmer, or a virtual assistant, and you would like to help me out, fire me an email at marc AT profitstudios.com
Respectfully,
Marc