The Secret Of Valuing Your Time

I once heard a well-known marketer speak about how to value your time and how most people get it wrong. He gave the following example which I really liked: He wanted to go to a rock concert of a famous band. His friends had spent the night in their vehicles so they could be some of the first people in line to get tickets. They had to wait all day until they were finally able to get the tickets and they were bragging to him how they got great seats for only $50.

Well… this well-known marketer still wanted to go to the concert so he found someone selling similar tickets for $150 and ended up purchasing them. Of course, his friends ridiculed him for spending $100 more than they did for the tickets and told him that he should have waited in line with them.

However, this smart and wealthy marketer knew that his time was far too valuable to spend a night in a van and waste his day standing in line. It was a much better investment of his time to shell out an extra $100 for the tickets so he could be working while the others weren’t.

To tell you the truth…

When I first heard this I didn’t fully understand the concept of valuing my time and I would have rather saved the $100. However, the reason I thought this was because I didn’t have much money and like most new investors I had a lot ,more time than money.

But after a few years of investing I finally understood how to value my time and these days I purposely try and take my time management to the extreme. For instance, I have a virtual assistant that runs probably 90% of my real estate business for me. I also never answer my phone and never talk to a seller before my assistant has screened them and I know they’re highly motivated.

I also hire private contractors to do almost everything for my rental properties…

So I never have to go out to them, and I’ll gladly pay someone $100 to go fix a problem instead of me having to drive out to a property for a problem I could easily fix myself for $30.

I realize if you’re new this may be hard to understand, but if you’ve been around for a while you know exactly what I’m talking about. Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of valuing your time is that it allows you to only focus on “high dollar” activities so you can grow your business and make more money.

(The investor who does everything with his properties and is still fixing toilets and answering his phone every instant it rings will likely never become wealthy.)

So the next time you’re trying to be cheap and save a few bucks you should ask yourself, “is this really worth my time, just to save a few dollars, or should someone else be doing this for me?”