REMEMBER THE TIME: Scheduling & Time Management

The story of the “Parable of Talents” as told by Jesus in Matthew 25:14–30 contains very important lessons about wisely using what you’ve got in order to gain more.

Succinctly, some rich guy entrusted his fortunes to the care of his three sons. He divided it in proportion to their capacities to handle it. This was before paper money or plastic, so money had weight. Imagine one was a bodybuilder, another was a construction worker and the other was a track runner. All three sons are relatively strong. However, if you were to load them to capacity, you would not give them all the same weight lest they drop any, and what is dropped is loss. Imagine you had deposited your money into three accounts and then left it alone for ten years. When this rich guy returned to check on his money, he found the son he had given $300,000 had turned it into $600,000 through wise investments and enterprising skills. The one he gave $200,000 had turned it into $400,000, proving that he could handle more. The one he had given only $100,000 was afraid he would lose his father’s money, so he locked it away in a safe so that he could return it securely when his father got back. Now back to your money in 3 accounts after 10 years. Your trip was actually a successful business trip and now you have come back with millions to deposit. If you come back to the same report, would you deposit more into your Son (A) account and your Son (B) account? And what would you do about your Son (C) account with the same $100,000 sitting in it that you deposited 10 years ago?

Jesus said this rich guy did probably the same thing. He took his money out of his Son (C) account, closed it and deposited it into his Son (A) and Son (B) account. He then says to Son (C) “To he who has, more will be given, and to he who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.”

So what does this all mean for you in relation to a starting entrepreneur? Many of you will be starting your journey with various levels of resources just like the rich guy differentiated how he divided his riches among his sons. Some of you will have plenty of money, plenty of time, plenty of connections and Grade A credit. Some of you will have just a little bit of money, a little bit of time, a few close friends and only the honor of your word as credit. I am writing this to tell you that it doesn’t matter how much you have nearly as much what you do with it. You could live only 39 years like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and change the country, or 99 years like some unknown geriatric in a nursing facility hoping you will have attendees at your funeral. You could live 33 years like Jesus and change human history. It is not about how much time you have, it is about what you do with it, and it is being spent away second-by-second as you are reading.

Among the resources you will be starting with, time will be your most valuable. This is because it is what your human life is made out of. How you spend your time is how you spend your life, and that is indeed finite. Once it is spent, you can not get it back like you can recover loss money or make more money. You can not make more time. What you give your time to is what you give your life to. Hopefully, it is to activities which will expand you and anyone else who is connected to your life. Not only that, on a daily basis, it is one of those rare resources which are equally distributed among every human being. Everyone who will be living this day to the end is getting the same parcel of 24 hours. What people are doing with those 24 hours is what is making all the difference in the world. Underline the preceding sentence.

The rich not only use their time shrewdly, efficiently and with a measure of thrift, they use other people’s time in the same manner to enrich themselves. They are called employees, and they usually micromanage every minute they are paying for. If you do not use your time well, be sure that someone else has a better plan of how to use your time, and most people will choose to sell it for cheap as opposed to using it to enrich themselves. Don’t hate the game. Play it or lose. If you use your time more efficiently and productively, just like “The Parable of Talents” more time will be given to you in the form of other people’s time you can buy and more of your own time to do with whatever it is that your please. When you build a company and systematize it to operate independently of your time, you can use your 24 hours to cruise the seven seas, climb the highest mountains, bask under the sun on white sand beaches, read the ancient wisdoms, hang glide in the clouds, raft the fierce rivers, perform the noble acts of your soul, create magnificent works of art or give more of yourself to your children or your lover with the time you have remaining on this planet. You can finally live life on your terms to its juiciest and fullest potential.

On the reverse, just like in “The Parable of Talents” if you do not use your time well, it will be given to others to use for the purposes named above. Is it not true that you are either self-employed or an employee of someone else if you have not yet managed to escape the necessity of work? Even If you are a recipient of unemployment insurance or other means of government assistance to cover your sustenance or you are wealthy, I still beg the question: what are you doing with your time? Who is employed to you? Is it taxpayers or those you are paying to do some valuable and necessary work?

If you are currently selling your time, hopefully you are getting the best price for it that you can get. Even then, be sure that you are being paid far less than what it is really worth. What is your time worth? What is your time worth to those who love and maybe depend on you? Your time is worth all that you could be, do and have to the benefit of yourself and others if your were not under the obligation to earn money. Your time is worth that which you would do so earnestly you would pay any price you could afford in order to do it. What would you do with your time if you didn’t need to earn money? Would you lie around and wait to die? If so, you are already dead and I don’t preach to dead people. But, for those who are alive and still thirsty for life, what would you do with your life? Then that is what your time is worth. For some, you can not adequately put a price tag on it, though is there someone who is doing something similar to what you aspire to and what are they getting paid? You time is worth that if you had to attach a price tag, understanding that not all values can be measured in money, and the richest of values can never be.

For example, let’s say you would choose to live as a physician and heal the sick. After enough research in that field, you come to discover those in that field are paid an average of $100,000 annually for the sake of computing round numbers. That’s $923 per week. If you find out that they work on average 60 hours per week, that is then $32 an hour. Now, you may not at present have the credentials to enter into that field and demand $32 an hour, albeit you can if you choose to get those credentials. It will just cost a certain amount of time, money, energy and focus. There are always opportunity costs; things you must give up in order to gain something you would rather have. Whereas you presently see you can not afford those time and attention requirements because of the job you are working now, what is your present job currently paying you to do something you love much less? Subtract that figure from your $32 an hour you could be earning and that is the amount you are discounting yourself. If your are presently earning $15 an hour, then you are discounting, selling yourself short by $17 an hour of your precious time. If you want to become the master of your time, you have got to stop doing this right here.

How does one do this short of quitting their job tomorrow and getting paid $0 an hour for their time?

The answer to this question is to be found within how you are using your unobligated time. That is where your wealth lies. A deal being a deal, once you are under contract for employment, whatever wages you have agreed to, that is the deal and it is important for you to honor your agreements until the time comes for you to be able to bargain for higher wages or another opportunity opens up for you to be paid closer to what you are worth. You fulfill your end of the bargain at least 100%. Your loyalty and honor will pay off when it is time for your employees to be loyal to you. In the meantime, own your decisions to discount yourself, and work like you are worth $32 and hour and work 60 hours even if your employer schedules you for only 40. The remaining 20 hours a week, commit $32 an hour worth of work to yourself, and let nothing interfere with it, unless it is paying you $32 an hour or more. What shall be the basis by which you should allow an interference with your self-employment schedule, other than dire emergencies?

• Will it make you money, $32 an hour or more?
• Will it save you time which can be used to make more money?
• Will it improve your health, lessening poor health conditions as a time and financial liability, boosting your energy, focus, mood and look and thus efficiency and effectiveness to work? 
• Will it provide you the inspiration and motivation that you might need? If you are no longer excited about your work and the future it is creating, it may be worth spending the time and even money to get yourself re-ignited.
• Is it a tithe in service to someone who needs it? It is a good thing to volunteer no more than 10% of your self-employed hours to help others who could use your help and will make good use of it in the service to others (paying it forward) and yet can not afford to pay you. Because time is money, you consider it a donation at $32 an hour. You can actually write this off as an in-kind donation on your taxes. Not only is this healthy for your spirit, it can help in the art of networking and ennoble your reputation. Many doctors and lawyers are known to do a certain amount of pro-bono work in this regard and whenever they do, they give their full value. 

From all this, it is important for you to arrive at the notion that your time is not free, without value. Value your time. It is always at a cost to someone, and when you are on your self-employed hours, the cost is yours unless you have a client.

To make this real, I have heard of people writing themselves I.O.U paychecks redeemable 5-10 years into the future when they could afford to pay themselves back for all their hard work. You’d lend yourself money, right? You’re good for it. If you don’t have good credit with yourself, then stop right here for perhaps the source of the immense crapola in your personal life you might be struggling with right now. Go no further until you work on that. Always be able to bet on yourself if no one else. Start billing yourself now as you build your business and keep your eyes on that check you wrote yourself.

How much time should you employ yourself per week? As much time as you have available, and even then it won’t be enough, so do the best you can. Everyone starts with a bank of 168 hours per week. Subtract from this your working hours per week. The average 40 takes you down to 128 hours. The average person spends 7 hours per week eating, so that takes your bank down to 121. You should sleep 56 hours per week which debits your account down to 65 hours and that should include sex. The average person spends 10 hours per week commuting to and from work which leaves you with 55 hours. Another 14 hours per week we spend grooming and dressing, leaving you with 41 hours. Give yourself an average of 12 hours per week for chores, shopping, cooking and running errands and you are down to 29 hours. At the bare minimum, you can work half of that at 15 hours per week and give the rest to yourself for leisure time if you are okay with taking your time to succeed and smelling the roses and enjoying the journey as you do. If you’re really hungry and can focus, you can cut the gestation time of your success in half by working those 29-30 hours per week which constitutes a second-full time job and take a quarterly 3 day to 1 week vacation to rest yourself.

Whatever your commitment is, begin to schedule all of your 168 hours and then stick to it, just as you would a budget. As things come up, schedule them, but let your employed and self-employed bank be your last account to pull from if you must, following guidelines listed above. Believe it or not, there is enough time to go around.

If you are ready to get right to work on building your business and devoting the hours necessary to the first step of researching and developing your business plan and execution strategy, then you are a perfect candidate to begin working with at The Baldwin Business Institute. When you are through, you will be prepared to move right along with doing the work you have planned for yourself and you will be able to move along progressively with a schedule devoted to the work, one foot in front of the other, one day at a time, stepping in the direction of your success. Register now at thebaldwinbusinessinstitute.eventbrite.com . 10 student limit. Summer Class starts June 24th. Registration deadline is June 10th.

Why Most People Die Before Age 25

YOU BETTER WORK! Professional Work Ethic & Discipline

Professional Work Ethic & Discipline

“You don’t work, you don’t eat.” used to be the hard, unforgiving rule for those who farmed. It is still true today for entrepreneurs in the throes of establishing their enterprises.

The biggest attraction to entrepreneurship is strangely not money. If your lifestyle and satisfaction requirements are modest, it can be paid for quite easily with a suitable and stable 9-5. Want more and need more? You can appeal for a raise, seek a promotion, another company or increase your education and skill sets with an investment out of your pocket. However, the final decision to change your circumstances will rest in the hands of someone else. To get what you need, you will have to perform on someone else’s terms. This does not sit well with everyone, especially in many cases where people are treated unfairly in the bargaining process. You could wage a futile quarrel with the company with which you own nothing. You can resign and hopefully find a more fair and just company to work for or you take matters into your own hands.

The decision to take matters into your own hands is in essence your declaration of independence. Just like this nation had to, you can expect to engage in a revolutionary war in your own life in order to truly become your own boss and be able to write your own paycheck. As reminded, most who wage this warfare are defeated and return in short order to looking for a boss in someone else.

Having the freedom to work as much or as little as you choose to is not a license to not work at all or take it up with the discretion of leisure or when it is convenient. If you are going to be your own boss, be a boss. You will have to develop your will to require yourself to often do what is challenging, exhausting, uncomfortable and inconvenient. Can you ride your own back to bring out the richness that is buried with your immense potential? This will is called discipline and you will suffer defeat without it. You can bet on it.

Just like the upper body strength it takes to master a pull up, the same is true for the discipline needed to be a boss. Everyone has a lazy and scared part of themselves that for some uncanny reason is habitually and addictively drawn to activities that do not produce riches, but instead drains money, time, health and energy even though it makes us feel so good. If you want to develop the discipline muscle of a boss, you have got to be able to master the habit of independently pulling yourself to do what is going to make you money. For some, that muscle has got to be trained.

You may have some rudiments of these muscles in place if your are already a good employee. You show up for work on time every day. You get get your work done in an efficient manner and your meet or exceed quality expectations without pressure from management. That’s professional work ethic when you do all of this without complaint because you don’t believe in getting something for nothing. If you can be honest with yourself that you are falling short of this standard, this is where your training can begin. You are not ready to be your own boss if you would not hire someone just like you.

The second thing you do can do in addition to striving to be a better employee as matter of habit is to surround yourself with people who have stronger boss muscles than you and strive to keep up with them. These people tend to be athletes, military personnel and other seasoned entrepreneurs who are hungry for success. Next, distance yourself from slackers if you can not yet overcome their influences. These are those who live by excuses. They influence you or attempt to influence you to engage in their go-nowhere, dead-end activities that drain money, time, health and energy which are your most vital resources with no return on investment. You can ask them or yourself, “Is this going to make me money?” “Is this going to save me time?” “Will this be good for my health?” “Will this inspire me?” Celebrate when it is time to celebrate, but work when it is time to work so that you will have more to celebrate.

Many of the trials of the roaring 20s is in overindulging in the freedoms of being an adult and neglecting the responsibilities which comes along with those freedoms. You will have to get yourself up for work and pay your own bills to truly be grown. The same is true if you really want to be a boss. Not only that, the disciplines you can develop from being a good employee will need to be kicked up a notch to succeed as an entrepreneur. You may go from working 40 hours a week to sometimes 60, 70 or 80 hours a week. This is why it will be important to love what you do. When you love your work, you will find the energy, focus and passion to max out as it may be required of you to succeed in the beginning.

Start with something as simple as training the habit of commitment. “Let your yes be yes and no be no. Anything more is from the evil one.” -Jesus of Nazareth (Matthew 5:37) After you have given your word, let it then be so, no ifs ands or buts. “You can make excuses and you can make money, but you can’t make both.” -Ziad K. Abdelnour The market does not buy excuses, only results. Write that down and put that on a wall somewhere.

The Baldwin Business Institute is another avenue by which you can begin training your professional work ethic and discipline. Much of the investment of $300 to join our mastermind class is to ensure that you take the material seriously and apply it so that your investment will be far greater by boosting the survival chances of your business idea from 4% to 60% or more if your discipline muscles increase. While planning, you will get to practice having regular work to complete directly in the development of your business idea which will pay off in the future. Because we will build together, you will benefit from having a support and accountability team. Until you have the muscle strength to pull yourself, having someone beside you and front of you to be accountable to can be a crucial element to your development. As one of your instructors, you will find me to be an encourager. I don’t beat people up. Consequences will do that if you think that you can cheat the rules of business. However, know from the outset that I do not hear excuses of any kind. When it comes to results, expect me to be as unforgiving as the customers of your market. You will have the opportunity to get ready for them through me and my partner, Steven T. Austin who will be your other instructor. It is in this that you will learn the crucial value of customer service. Great customer service is the result of professional work ethic and discipline. This is the reason the work is spread out over 12 weeks to to give you sufficient time to build your muscles. Think of it as a your runway before you take flight on your own.

Ready to get it?! Register now. www.thebaldwinbusinessinstitute.eventbrite.com

Summer class starts June 24th.

Denzel Washington: See Ya At Work!