YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE?

It’s one or the other.  I know a guy who spent WEEKS doing his own taxes because he didn’t want to pay $300 for something he could do himself.  He *hates* doing his taxes.  He’s not good at it.  The rules change every year, and they are written in Ancient Obscurity to begin with.  So every April he’d spend days poring over them trying to translate them into English, hours on the phone with IRS representatives to be sure that he understood the rule changes, and weeks compiling, calculating, checking, and re-checking his figures.  I dropped by his house one morning some years back and found him sitting on the living room floor surrounded by piles of forms, receipts, and old tax returns, slaving away at a job he hated while his wife answered the phones and took messages for him. 

His hourly rate for his own work was $100.  I asked him how many hours he intended to lose in order to save $300.  There was no way he was doing his taxes in two hours and saving $100.  I gave him my accountant’s phone number. 

The truth of the matter is that you can always make more money.  You cannot make more time. 

If my friend had taken all the hours he devoted to gathering documents, calculating, reading, calling, re-calculating, checking and slapping himself in the head doing his taxes and spent that time on the phone calling prospects, talking to leads, checking in with former clients, networking with other business owners, or even updating his website, he’d have made money.  Instead, he was losing money and making himself nuts in the bargain. 

You’ve GOT to figure out what’s important to you. 

Get some clarity about where you’re spending your time.  Track your activities over an average week.  I guarantee that you’ll be horrified at how much time you spend doing things you don’t like and aren’t good at doing (mostly because you don’t like doing them). 

Even if your small business isn’t yet profitable enough to hire people to do ALL of the things you hate doing, consider hiring a virtual assistant to just one or two of them.  That frees you up to go do the things you do well, and make more money.  That will make it possible to hire the graphic artists, accountants, housekeepers, dog walkers, and auto detailers who need to eat and send their kids to college, too. 

Everyone has their genius.  Your job as a business owner is to play to your strengths and make it your business to spend 90% of your time doing ONLY what you love doing.  Make that your goal for this year – to spend 90% of your time doing what you love. 

Hypnosis Frederick can help you streamline, focus, and plan for your success!