Time Is Of The Essence
By JD Esajian on February 10, 2014
Everything you do in business, and in life, will cost you either time or money. You may certainly get something for your time, but once you use it, you will never get it back. In a perfect world we would have a deep supply of both, but since we live in reality, you often need to choose what is most important to you. You can either spend money to leverage some of the tasks necessary to grow your business or you can spend the time to do them yourself, limiting you from focusing on other areas. There may not be a right or wrong answer, only one that is best for your current situation.
The most successful investors would rather spend their money than their time. By having 10 people do tasks for you over the course of the week, you are freeing up dozens if not close to a hundred hours every week. If you use this time to network and secure deals, it is being used wisely. If you are just spending money and sitting at your office playing online, you should not complain when you do not see your business growing or growing at the pace you would like.
The biggest shock for new investors is the amount of work needed to succeed. Anyone may be able to close a deal or two a year if they fall in their laps, but to grow a business that can survive any shifts in the market you need to look at the big picture. Marketing, lead generation, property evaluation, maintenance, accounting and many other daily tasks need to be constantly done in order to grow a business. Since you can’t clone yourself, you need to either be an expert time manager or you end up neglecting some of these tasks. The alternative is to leverage some of these to free you up whatever areas you are strongest at. That being said, your time will be better spent preforming more important tasks.
The most common excuse is that these tasks cost money. Between Craigslist, Odesk and Angieslist, there are many websites that provide inexpensive labor or services. Of course you get what you pay for, but tasks like lawn maintenance on rental property or small clerical stuff can be done by almost anyone. Even if these take you only a few hours a week, it is taking time away from the bigger picture – closing deals. If you focus too much on the big picture and neglect how you get deals in the first place, you won’t have any deals to evaluate. You need to look at the big picture and sometimes take a small step back to take two giant leaps forward.
After years of the real estate market struggling, we now may be coming into a sustained recovery. That being said, time is of the essence and you may only have a small window to take advantage of this market. You can always make more money and close more deals, but in times when the market is good, you need to take advantage of it and use your time to make money.