Finding value down to the minutes
by Annette Bau
Ms. Bau is the founder of MillionaireSeries.com and AdvisorMarketingPractices.com. She is also the author of four books and numerous best selling products including “The 7 Principles of Becoming a Millionaire for Life, Powerful Lessons to Create Wealth, Health and Happiness”, “101 Insider Secrets for Marketing to Affluent Women, How to Get Your Share of This $20 Trillion Market” and many other marketing, business and success courses. Connect with her at millionaireseries@gmail.com.Reprinted with permission
One of my earliest career mentors gave me some great advice. He would ask me what my time is worth and and how much I wanted to earn per minute.
Initially, the question caught me off guard and caused me to wonder why the question mattered. I mean who cares what the value of each minute is worth! After some consideration, I decided it couldn’t hurt to answer the question and thus decided my time was worth $2.00 a minute. This translated to $120 an hour, or $249,600 a year. Later, I revised my goal to $7 a minute, or $873,600 a year. I did not know at the time just how important asking, “What is my time worth” would be in my career.” It became a driving force and motivator for the success I have experienced in my business and life and the best news is that it can be for you too!
While my results ultimately exceeded these initial goals, these questions have been an instrumental factor in my becoming financially free. These questions have also helped me realize how critical it is to choose carefully how to spend our time. When we say “yes” to something, we are either directly or indirectly saying “no” to something else. Therefore, we should always be saying “yes” to HVFDAs (high value fixed daily activities). We also need to say “yes” to the most productive course of action. Say “yes” to useful actions. Say “yes” to actions that are in alignment with our goals. Say “yes” to the choice that helps us stretch to the next level. When we say “yes” to these types of choices, we are saying “no” to the wrong choice. We are saying “no” to LVFDAs (low value fixed daily activities), which are low value and low impact. They are often useless tasks that waste our time. We are saying “no” to distractions that lead us away from our goals. We are saying “no” to anything that is holding us back from reaching our destination.
We need to delegate tasks to our staff when the task needs to get done but is not the best use of our time or is an ineffective use of our time as the leader or visionary of our company. As the leader, we need to seek out opportunities that allow us to find a new client, make the extra sale, or expand our business. Let’s look at a real world example.
Two stories
Kelly and Taylor both began their promising careers in the financial services 15 years ago. Fast forward, Kelly has a million dollar advisory business and amazing life. Taylor is living hand-to-mouth and on the verge of bankruptcy. So you may be wondering what went wrong and more importantly what you can do to ensure it doesn’t happen to you.
Kelly began her career with a solid plan. She planned her work and worked her plan. While she and Taylor spent about the same amount of hours per day working, Kelly’s hours (and minutes) were spent on HVFDAs, high value fixed daily activities while Taylor spent his time on LVFDAs that made him look busy but did very little to progress his business. While subtle, the differences over time were mind boggling and can be achieved by any advisor willing and open to doing the work. It brings us to the point of this insight: understanding the value of each minute. We need to continually ask ourselves this questions, “Will this choice allow me to achieve my goal or will it keep me from it?”
Each minute, we need to ask ourselves this question: “Will this allow us to press forward towards our goal or are we sliding back away from it?” When we choose the right action and understand the value of each minute, we can’t help but improve our results.
