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June 10, 2021
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How you spend your time forecasts your future

To soothsay your future, look at how and where you spend your time today.

Listen to Pavlo Phitidis discuss the impact that the way we spend our time has on the future of our business in this podcast from The Money Show:

 

 

We have a choice on how we spend our time. Maybe the best way to highlight this is to use an athlete.

Think of a Mixed Martial Arts, tennis or football pro. They know that their peak income generating lifecycle is around 10 years. Smart athletes ensure that they spend their time maximising their earnings over that period. They focus all their time on maximising their performance during gameplay. They adjust their lifestyles to maximise that time and spend none on anything that they can outsource or have offered to them at a level of expertise greater than theirs. So, they hire a nutritionist and a cook to maximise their fuel intake to perform at peak. Without their help, they’d spend time understanding nutrition, shopping for food and preparing meals. Over 10 years this might well consume 16,400 to 17,300 hours. Time that could be spent improving gameplay, performance, and earnings.

This week, we had a session with a business owner growing fast. It was so refreshing to hear his concerns about how he spends his time to ensure the best application of it to maintain his growth rates. A brief analysis suggested that there were better options, most of which he was not even aware of.

All businesses traverse a development lifecycle. How you spend your time over that lifecycle matters and it must change.

  1. In start-up – spend it chasing deals and cash flow

  2. In early stage – confirming your vision and identity

  3. In build stage – creating a system of delivery

  4. In empowering stage – securing a team

  5. This gets you to a place where you can enjoy organic growth. Changing from doing to leading is now imperative.

  6. In grow stage – finding that next level

  7. In value stage – migrating your business to exit

The problem we all face is that habits develop, conventions entrench and perspective wanes. An inability to see the wood for the trees compounded by not recognising that time runs out carries a regrettable cost that can never be recovered.

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