Knowledgebase

Time is money. At least that's what the old adage says.

Here is a quick test to see how much chance you have of reaching your goal income this year. Step 1 -- what is your goal income? Step 2 -- how many hours do you want to work each month? Step 3 -- divide your goal income from step 1 by the hours from step 2. The answer equals what your time is worth by the hour.

For example, let's say I want to earn R40,000 each month, and I'm happy to work 200 hours each month. Simple mathematics (40,000 divided by 200) means that I must earn at least R200 each working hour.

This simplistic example means that the only chance I have of getting to my goal income this year is to immediately start valuing each hour that I work as if I was already earning that income. Otherwise, I will continue to earn less for each working hour -- and that will conspire to keep me even further away from my goal income, won't it?

This is important because many business owners believe that the only way to get things done is to do it themselves. But any work that we do that doesn't generate our hourly income goal is wasted. In fact, it is even worse than that. We are sabotaging our own incomes!

I am stunned by the number of people that insist on doing things that they know will bring in less than they want -- but do it because "it's bread-and-butter". And as long as they continue to waste time doing work that is below the value of their time, that is all that they will earn.

Surely it would be better to not work these lower value hours? At least then your time could be spent planning and dreaming and plotting ways to break the R200/hour hurdle (or whatever hurdle you have set yourself). It's amazing what you can dream up when you need to get somewhere in a hurry!

We business owners are especially good at employing people to do these lesser value tasks -- and then insisting on doing it ourselves because we can do it faster! We don't think of the true cost to ourselves of doing the work that we have given to others. "Ah yes," I hear you say "but they don't do the job properly anyway."

In that case, maybe we should ask ourselves a few direct questions. Firstly, does that job need to be done properly? In fact, now that we're on the subject, does that job need to be done at all? What value does that job add to your clients -- those people actually helping you towards your income goal. And if that job is indeed important, and isn't being done correctly, surely it's time for some retraining [or a parting of the ways so that you can employ somebody that you do have confidence in].

Written By:
Peter Carruthers
Business Warriors