The Value of Your Time

One of the things I work on with my private and group coaching clients is time management. As salespeople we need to protect our time like a mother lion protects her cubs. We need to constantly be focused on revenue generating activities. That said, I often find the people I work with waste their time because they don’t know the value of it.

I can take my shirts to a dry cleaner. The dry cleaner will clean and press my shirts for about $2.00 each. If I take in 5 shirts per week my cost is $10.00.

Or, I can wash my shirts in my washing machine then iron them myself. Let’s set aside the fact that the dry cleaner will press them better than I’ll hand iron them. If each shirt takes me 5 minutes to iron that’s 25 minutes. Plus the time it takes me to load them into the washer, then transfer them to the dryer, then bring them upstairs, set up the ironing board, fill the iron with water (for steam) and wait until it warms up. Let’s make that another 10 minutes. That’s 35 minutes for me to wash, dry, and iron 5 shirts. Let’s say I bill out my time for $500/hr. Washing, drying, and ironing my shorts cost me over $250.00.

I live in a beach house so I don’t have a front or back lawn, but when I owned my last house I had both. I could have spent an hour once a week mowing and edging the lawn. (Cost = $500.00) Or, I could pay a company to send over a bunch of guys who get it done in 10 minutes, do a better job, and the bill is for $100.00. If I pay someone else to do it, I’ve saved $400.00 because my time is valuable.

My VA costs me $10.00 per hour. I pay her to do things that don’t need my attention or expertise. The $10.00 an hour I pay her is nothing compared to me not having to use my valuable time (worth $500.00 per hour) to do stuff she can do for me.

Stop wasting time doing things that can be done by some else…as well or better, for less money.

Your time is VALUABLE. Treat it that way.