Money vs. Time
You're starting an online business (lets say a website of average complexity) and you can choose between:
Which would you choose? Which choice would lead to business success quicker?
If you asked me this question back in 2004 when I was starting SportsLizard I would have answered #1, no questions about it. "You need to spend money to make money" or something like that. Ask me the same question now, however, and I'll take #2 any day of the week.
Why? Because I essentially have been in both situations and one thing I've learned is that time is far more valuable than money.
When I graduated college, I chose to run SportsLizard part-time while working as an engineer full-time. My logic was that I could use my job to fund my business...if that makes any sense. But I found that after working 50 hour weeks, many of which had me traveling all over the place, that it was hard to accomplish much of anything. It took me weeks to do something I can do in a half day now.
Even with more money, say for advertising, I was unable to properly put together and track an advertising campaign. So I was left with a lot of frustration and that ultimately led to me leaving my job.
Time is one of the great equalizers - no one, no matter how rich can cheat time. Donald Trump has the same 24 hours each day to do stuff that you do. He can't "buy" more time. He can pay a lot of people to work for him, which in essence might appear to be "buying" time, but he's not. HE is still limited in what he can accomplish in a day to the same 24 hours as you and I. It amazes me what some people accomplish in the time that others seem to carelessly throw away.
As YE's we might not have all of the resources that other people and businesses have. But if you are lucky enough to have the time to focus on your business like I do, you should look at it as one valuable resource that you do have. How you use that resource is up to you.
- $25k in cash but you can only spend up to 10 hours per week on your business
- Only $1k in cash but you can spend up to 70 hours per week on your business
Which would you choose? Which choice would lead to business success quicker?
If you asked me this question back in 2004 when I was starting SportsLizard I would have answered #1, no questions about it. "You need to spend money to make money" or something like that. Ask me the same question now, however, and I'll take #2 any day of the week.
Why? Because I essentially have been in both situations and one thing I've learned is that time is far more valuable than money.
When I graduated college, I chose to run SportsLizard part-time while working as an engineer full-time. My logic was that I could use my job to fund my business...if that makes any sense. But I found that after working 50 hour weeks, many of which had me traveling all over the place, that it was hard to accomplish much of anything. It took me weeks to do something I can do in a half day now.
Even with more money, say for advertising, I was unable to properly put together and track an advertising campaign. So I was left with a lot of frustration and that ultimately led to me leaving my job.
Time is one of the great equalizers - no one, no matter how rich can cheat time. Donald Trump has the same 24 hours each day to do stuff that you do. He can't "buy" more time. He can pay a lot of people to work for him, which in essence might appear to be "buying" time, but he's not. HE is still limited in what he can accomplish in a day to the same 24 hours as you and I. It amazes me what some people accomplish in the time that others seem to carelessly throw away.
As YE's we might not have all of the resources that other people and businesses have. But if you are lucky enough to have the time to focus on your business like I do, you should look at it as one valuable resource that you do have. How you use that resource is up to you.
posted by Adam McFarland at
9/10/2006 08:36:00 PM
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