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You never run out of money.

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Perception is not reality.

We experience running out of money all the time. But that experience is not reality. Nobody runs out of money, we just think we do.

What is the real issue? We experience running out of money but what we really run out of is time.

Money can be printed and you can always figure out how to get more of it yourself. There are almost endless ways to increase your income.

You Can’t Manage Time
But you only have 168 hours in every week. No matter what you do, you can’t print or accumulate any more of it. However, “Time Management” is not even possible. If someone is selling you a Time Management seminar – run.

The only thing you can manage is your priorities. There are no excuses, there aren’t even reasons, there are just priorities. You eat, sleep, breathe and go to the bathroom because they are priorities. Time can’t be managed, but you can decide what is most important to do with the 168 hours you have each week.

More Money In Less Time
The business owner’s game (and really everyone’s game in business) is “How do I make MORE money in LESS time?” If we are playing the “More money in MORE time” game that we were all taught to play – “just work really hard and you’ll be successful” – you’re going to wear yourself out and not ever make the kind of money you want.

If you could create another 168 hours in your week, you could easily double your income. But again, you can’t manage time, only your priorities. What are you doing to make MORE money in LESS time? To do that, you’re going to need to figure out how to make money come in while you’re sleeping or on vacation. There are a few dozen ways to do that (outlined in my first book, Making Money Is Killing Your Business) – only one of them includes hiring employees.

Stop Playing Office
Stop trying to manage your time. Successful people figure out how to make more money in less time by changing their priorities and deciding the money-making part of their business is more important than the “playing office” part of their business.

Almost all of us waste at least 50% of our time playing office – doing things that will never make us more money, and doing things that are not the highest and best use of our time. But we “feel” productive doing them.

Manage Your Priorities
Stop trying to manage time. Manage your priorities. You’re likely to make a lot more money that way.

What is one way you are playing office right now? What other priority could you focus on to make MORE money in LESS time? Answering that question is a great way to start making money while you’re sleeping or on vacation.

Don’t experience running out of money. Figure out the few priorities for the 168 hours you have each week that will make you more money in less time.

The Industrial Age is Dead – Time is the New Money

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The Industrial Age is Dead – Time is the New Money

As a business owner, you’re likely carrying a lot of baggage from the Industrial age (1800-ish to 1965-ish) that won’t fully go away for decades to come. He who makes the rules wins. You need to stop running your business on Industrial Age rules.

The Industrial Age brought us two incredibly bad ideas that led to many other bad ideas:

  1. Retirement
  2. Separation of work and play

A few weeks ago we said retirement is a bankrupt industrial age idea . Here we’re saying separation of work and play is a bad idea.

Time vs. Money
A young web designer friend of mine just one year out of college was given a huge pay raise by an ad agency, from $48,000 to $69,000. The company saw him as indispensable and didn’t want him going anywhere. A few months later, as winter approached, he quit. They wanted him there 8am-5pm and in the winter the only time to ride a bike was in the afternoon.

He would have worked in the evening, and that would have had no impact on the company, but they were stuck in the Industrial Age that valued money over time, and couldn’t see it. They were giving him the same tired “I’ll trade you money for your hours” deal that was dominant in the Industrial Age. He now runs his own very successful company and goes for a run or bike ride in the middle of the day any time he wants.

The Old (and Returning) Normal
For thousands of years people lived where they worked (over the storefront, on the farm) and played where they worked. Community was built around work and small markets. The kids ran and played, learned and worked there, the grandparents helped out – everyone was involved.

And there wasn’t much separation of work and play in the process. We look back and have a dreary and incorrect view of what life before “jobs” was like. What we miss is that above all else, we had community, something we’re only now beginning to recapture.

Humans as Extensions of Machines
It’s easy to see how this happened. During the Industrial Age, machines needed humans to become extensions of them in order to serve the machines properly. The machines needed people to be there all the time to run them, so we created humans in the image of machines. That “condition” was spread across all vocations, and “jobs” that separated work and play become the norm, even where there were no machines.

The Silent Generation – the worst label ever given
And it all worked in response to the needs of the machine, not the person. As the companies that owned the machines became huge, the pervasive need was to serve the corporation, and we were told to shut up, sit down, live invisibly, be loyal, don’t make waves and go out quietly. The generation which lived at the pinnacle of the Industrial Age, who are now in their late 70’s and early 80’s, have been labeled by marketers and sociologists as “The Silent Generation.” Can you think of a more condemning label? But it accurately reflects the damage the Industrial Age has done to us as a culture.

Time is The New Money
The Industrial Age taught us to value money above time. Giant Corporation, Inc. wanted you to focus on making money, not on having time to do anything with it. They needed all your time to run the machines. In the 21st Century we will understand that riches may equal money, but wealth equals freedom – the ability to choose what to do with my time. We will understand that money does not give us freedom, only time can do that.

Do you have time (wealth) or just money (riches)? Stop focusing on making money (see my book, Making Money Is Killing Your Business on the same subject), and intend to be wealthy instead. You’ll actually make more money and have a lot more fun in life, too.