A former CFO who sold a company for millions started a jewelry business for schedule control. She photographs products herself instead of hiring a pro, spending two days on work that takes a photographer hours. The trade-off: time you can't get back versus money you can always make more of.
Yes. Well, and it's been a really hard lesson for me to learn that my— I used to value money more than my time. You can always make more money, but you can't make more time. And I can, I can give you many examples of where I didn't want to pay somebody else to do it because I could do it myself.
And so how did you make that switch?
Well, I got hit over the head with the spiritual 2x4 one too many times, but, but I started to just recognize. So like, um, when I used to be a CFO of a company, I helped them get sold for millions, and then I started my own business. And I— this was, this was really the taste of having the freedom and the control over my time doing something I loved where I controlled my time and life could not get any better for me. Like my sister-in-law, this was when I was still living in New York, she had just had my niece and the birth was a little difficult. So she would come in from Brooklyn to go to a chiropractor. So I would work all morning. As soon as she showed up, I would drop everything, run over, take my niece in the stroller. We would walk around for an hour. Then the 3 of us would have lunch and she'd go back home and I'd go back to work. And it was like, life could not get any better in my world. So this is like scheduling the time so that it works for you. And so I was— this business that I started, I was selling jewelry that I made because I was helping a friend. And the first pair of earrings I made, somebody bought off my head. I'm like, Wow, this is so much more fun. And I had hired a photographer to take pictures of my pieces for marketing materials. And as my skill improved, my pieces got more complex and got better. I wanted pictures of the new ones, and I am a passionate photographer, so I'm like, I could do it myself. And I did. I replicated his big studio in my one-bedroom apartment. And I did take the pictures and they did look comparable. And it took me 2 days to do what he did in a couple of hours.
So what did you lose by choosing to spend those 2 days on that project?
I could have spent a couple hundred dollars to him again, and I could have made more money. I could have made more pieces. I could have sold more pieces. I could have been doing revenue-producing activities.
