5 Minute Biz Magic: Your Time Is Running Out

Starting or running a business can be overwhelming, there’s always some task or some decision to make, and the buck stops with you. So I’m always a fan of any way to make things easier, simpler, and cost less.

The interesting thing is that most entrepreneurs are obsessed with the costs of the business. In any case, even if you aren’t the most savvy with financials, on a basic level, you probably know when your next payments are coming in, how much is in the bank, and who you currently owe money to. And things always cost money, and as the business grows, it requires more, larger and more frequent amounts of money, it seems.

Stop for a moment, and think about your time. The awesome thing about time, is that a) it is a renewable and free resource to you, b) your personal time, 168 hours, is always there, c) nothing you can do can decrease (or increase unfortunately…) the static amount of time you have each day / week / month. Perhaps because time is such a constant element of life, we may not appreciate it at its fullest value….

For example, if I were to ask you RIGHT NOW, “What have you spent the last 168 hours doing?”, it would be a tough call. You probably have a general sense of what you did last week, but probably not an hour-by-hour playback of where your time was allocated. Not spent, but allocated, which is a more intentional use. This is because for many of us, time isn’t managed as closely as our funds. Yet as an entrepreneur, time is ALL you have, especially in the beginning when there is a lot of “down time” and waiting for things to take root. And most successful people live by the mantra, that “time is money”.

For anyone who’s participated in the TenX Sprint or Marathon, you know how specific and passionate we are about teaching entrepreneurs to look at their available time, with as much value as they do their finances. And the reason for that, is because how you use your time every day, is directly tied to how much money you are able to bring into the business in the form of revenue and funding.

Without getting your time under control, it’s too easy to get caught in the catch-22 of entrepreneurship: you can’t move forward without X, Y, Z resource (money / cofounders / a sale / that press article / the prototype being completed, etc.), but you don’t currently HAVE A, B, C that you need, in order to get it done.  So in the meantime, a lot of frustration occurs and a lot, lot, lot of time is totally wasted.

Similarly, when it comes to investing in stocks, time management is crucial. Monitoring the stock market, conducting research, and analyzing trends can be time-consuming, but it’s necessary to make informed decisions about where to invest your money. For example, if you’re interested in investing in aapl stocks, you’ll need to dedicate enough time to staying up-to-date on the company’s financial performance, upcoming product releases, and other relevant news. By efficiently managing your time, you can ensure that you make smart investment decisions and maximize your returns in the stock market.

Well, forget that approach. Because one thing that you ALWAYS have, is time. And plenty of it. Figure out where you need to invest your available time, in order to generate cash. Sometimes we dink around on easy or comfortable tasks for hours and hours, or get distracted by dramatic or unrelated things, and fail to invest even the tiniest amount of time into the tasks, projects, and efforts that have the highest financial ROI. I’ve never seen a business person, who was actually consistently putting in at least 5 hours per week on sales efforts, and 1 hour per week on managing their budget, who felt out of control or desperate about the business. Why? Because sales and managing funds are the kernel of being a business owner, and in reality, it takes such a low amount of time and effort to actually attend to those tasks.

So for today’s 5-minute magic challenge, we’d encourage you to take a clear and detailed look at where your time is going. Don’t cop out and make excuses that you’re just not good at time management, or that you’ll get to this task when you “have time”. You have time now. The question is, where are you allocating it? And where do you need to allocate it, in order to move things forward in your business?

And for extra bonus points, why not schedule out FIVE HOURS this week in your calendar to work on closing sales, and ONE HOUR this week to tackle managing your budget? Oh hey… super star! If you actually choose to take this challenge, please drop us an email (info@tenx.org) and tell us how it went, we’ll be glad to hear! For extra bonus points, sign up for our upcoming SPRINT program, which includes a full skill session on Time Management.

This 5-Minute Biz Magic was written by TenX’s founder, Carolynn Duncan. If you enjoyed this post and want to suggest a topic / problem for another 5-minute magic solution, please let her know.