Time Is More Valuable than Money

If you're an entrepreneur, you likely have money tied to your goals and aspirations. That's perfect. And I'd like to dedicate an episode to a currency that is even more valuable than money. Time. You see, you can always get more money, but time is a currency that can't be multiplied, saved up or invested for later like money can. It's the currency that has immense value. Because when you truly own your time, you find that you have the actual benefit people have been seeking when you when in pursuit of monetary wealth. You're listening to the Universe has yous Business. It's the podcast for rising entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and change makers who are here to achieve more while letting the universe do the heavy lifting. And I'm your host, Andrew Donovan. Well, I am loving this episode topic. I've been taking notes all morning. This has been on my mind a lot lately. But because I'm really thinking how I like to spend my time as an entrepreneur, you see, I'll give you a little tip about something that's unfolding in my life right now. We're preparing to sell a business and I won't talk about which one it is or anything like that. That will come later. But as I'm going through this process, I'm asking myself, well, what do I want to do in place of that? Cause that takes up some of my time. And so I've actually been journaling about things that I love, passions that I have that I'd like to invest more time in. And that's really where the inspiration for this episode came. But I'll tell you, if you were to rewind maybe seven, eight years ago and find Early Entrepreneur Life of Andrew Donovan, you would find an entrepreneur who was super, super invested in increasing his monetary wealth, not his time wealth. And that has really shifted a lot for me now, in fact, thankfully, and, and I'll talk about this in this episode. But one of the things that I grasped pretty early on in my entrepreneurial journey was this idea that time was a resource that was really what we were seeking to have an abundance of. Because I mean, you could have a thriving business, but if you're a slave to it all the time, if you're a slave to your business, then you're missing out on rich relationships or hobbies that you want to do, or self care. You don't have time to invest in taking care of your body or your spiritual, mental, emotional, well being and the people that you love. I mean, then what's the point of having a thriving business, right? And so this is thankfully something that I grasped pretty early on and I have a few just little nuggets that I think that you will really enjoy. Now, you already know, if you follow me on any platform, you know that I love money and I think that money is just such a nice thing to have more of because it gives you lots of options. But I think that the best combination is when you have actual time freedom and then you've got plenty of money to spend and be generous with and do interesting things with during all the time that you own. How does that sound, my friend? So let's dive right into this content and talk about a few of these nuggets. So first of all, have you ever considered that time is a currency? It's a currency that you actually have true, finite amount of. That's what makes time a really interesting topic because like I said in the introduction, you can always get more money, but you can't get more time. You've got 24 hours a day. And yeah, we could get into the idea of Einstein time and flexible time and things like that, but in a basic sense, you have 24 general hours in a day. Correct. And that's it. So unless you've figured out how to tap into it, time flux, and you've got 30 hours, in which case, please DM me. Well, then you're operating off of a finite amount of time. And I'm not going to talk to you about ways that you can maximize your calendar or productivity. We'll do that in other episodes. I just want to talk about how you can live your fullest life as an entrepreneur when you start to put time as the most important currency in your business and in your life too. All right, so when you think about the way that we talk about time, we frequently say the term spending time. How do you spend your time? Or how do you waste your time? And so we want to spend our time wisely, of course. Now, when I look at a lot of entrepreneurs, schedules, patterns, how they show up in their business worlds, I find that a lot of them are spending their time in urgent, non important, busy and joyless activities. If you remember the book the 7 Healthy Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, he shows a time quadrant where you've got different types of time. And he says most people spend their time putting up fires. They do things that are urgent but not important. And so that's when that's the kind of entrepreneur who opens up their email first thing in the morning and they've got two or Seven emergency emails from other correspondents, from customers whose orders got messed up, or someone can't access their account, or someone's product came damaged or some employee has some urgent question and they immediately jump into putting up fires. And they never get into the sink of putting important long term stuff first. And I also put on this list that a lot of entrepreneurs spend their time doing busy things. I have met so many entrepreneurs who are busy, busy, busy, but if I look at the quality of their activities, it's very low production and it's not a lot of activity that sets up long term gain long term benefit, long term stability. They're just busy all the time. And so those are the entrepreneurs who are constantly labeling their files in their office or organizing things, cleaning up their email inbox or I don't know, setting up, doing things that keep them busy but not super productive. And then very importantly, I find a lot of entrepreneurs who are invested in activities that aren't really joyful. And to me, that is like the basic definition of an unsuccessful business to me. Because if you're not finding joy in what you're doing, then what the fuck are you doing? Do something else. Correct. So what can you do to live in a business world that you're creating where time is a currency that you're able to maximize, a currency that really works for you, that is your best friend, a currency that you have a synergistic relationship with? Now, I just gave you a little hint. I said I talked about doing joyless activities, but what about doing joyful activities? I truly believe that joy is the best use of my time as a human being. And doesn't matter if we're talking about my business or my marriage or my friendships, I am always looking for where is the joy? And you might be thinking, oh, well, that sounds good and good and wonderful, Andrew, but some of us have to live in the real world. Some of us have kids that are little shits or some of us have business partners that are betraying us and we've got to fix the relationship. Or some of us aren't years into our business and we haven't sold millions of dollars of products. And so we don't have the luxury of lots of time. We've got to sacrifice and push through the obstacles of early entrepreneurship so that we can get to there. And I'm gonna say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop. Because earlier on in this episode, I told you why I decided to make this episode. I was fortunate enough to learn the value of time early on as an entrepreneur. Some of it was from learning productivity systems like Stephen R. Covey and how he teaches to manage time. Some of it was learning how to do certain concepts like time blocking and, and learning the value of maximum output for my effort. But mostly somewhere along the line, it was really in my study of the law of attraction. As an early entrepreneur, I learned that joy is the quickest way to manifest things. And conveniently, it's like this ironically intense price to pay, quote, unquote, intense price to pay to get what you really want. So if you want a thriving business, if you want to impact thousands of people, if you want to have millions of dollars, if you want to have a beautif, a house or a retreat center where you heal lots of clients, whatever, if you want some stuff, the fastest way to manifest it is to live in joy now and then. Oh no, you had to live in joy. That sounds so hard, right? And so I really caught onto this idea early on, thankfully, and it provided me incredible benefit because I started putting my focus on where the joy really was in my business. And so what that did for me as an entrepreneur is I started looking for areas of my businesses where my talent served best, areas where I was good, things that I was good at, and that brought me joy. And so when I say that I think that joy is the best use of my time, I want to share just a few details here. So I wake up in the morning and I went through this phase actually last year where I didn't really use an alarm clock. And it was nice to do a little experiment, but I really wanted to just let my body wake up when it felt joyful to wake up. And now I actually, now I'm back in the routine of using an alarm clock. But I started using the alarm clock again because it felt joyful to use an alarm clock. I don't ever wake up in the morning and say, ugh, I have to get up at this time. Truly, I choose what feels joyful to me. And you might be thinking, well, some of us can't do that because we actually have to show up for work. And I totally show up for work. But I've constructed this life with so much intention about doing what feels the most joyful that I have created the luxury of being able to wake up when it feels joyful to wake up. So right now it feels joyful for me to wake up at 6:30 in the morning. And here's what I do when I wake up. So first thing that I do is I meditate and I set a timer on my phone for 15 minutes. I play this beautiful track by Jonathan Goldman called the Ultimate Om O M. Or I play a virtual air conditioning track just from Apple Music. And it's literally just a recording of an air conditioner. It's like sh. And I just listen and still my mind quiet my mind for about 15 minutes. And my intention there is to just be in a space of complete neutrality, to be in thoughtlessness, because I know that in the absence of ego, mind spinning and working up a bunch of thought, I know that in the absence of that busyness, my soul self gets to present beautiful energy and vibrations and intention, and thought comes to me instead of me, projecting my own thought from my own brain. And that's where I receive a lot of inspired ideas. And I love starting my day like that. Then I like to do a little bit of journaling. I like to make lists of positive aspects. Sometimes I'll calibrate to a specific emotion or energy. And so I'll write on my journal, calibrating to satisfaction. And then I'll just write a page about what satisfaction feels like to me and really tune into that. And so after I've done that, then I go to the gym. And I'm usually at the gym for literally two hours. I work out for about an hour and a half. And then I sit in the steam room and just stretch my muscles and decompress. And again, you might be thinking, wait, this is a lot of time. Yeah, it actually is. It's like three to four hours a day, depending on how much time I spend meditating and journaling and getting ready for the day. And it's become such a joyful process for me. So on days when I'm. And it's basically every day when I'm really meticulous about my morning process, my morning routine, I start my workday and I'm just feeling. Just energized and focused and ready to go. And so by the time I start work, I'm in this space of just feeling like I've cared for myself and a feeling like I put joy first. Therefore, other joyful things. I know law of Attraction is listening and is bringing them to me. So that's how I use my time. And I also prioritize joyful hobbies, joyful relationships. And of course, when I'm working, I am very specific about doing work that I enjoy. So most people, most entrepreneurs that I've met are victims to time. They argue for their limitations. And it usually sounds like this, well, I've got to put in the time now so that I can have what I want later. And that really comes from an old, outdated, and still perpetuated scarcity mindset that says, well, you've got to sacrifice now to have what you want later. And that's actually not even how law of attraction works. Law of attraction doesn't say, oh, she sacrificed for a little while, so now she can have some of the good stuff. No, Law of attraction says, this is the vibe you've been putting out. Okay, here's more of it. That's it. Law of attraction says the average sum of the vibe that you have been being. All right, well, here's some more of that average sum of the vibe that you've been being. And that's really why it was so important to me early on in my journey to prioritize joyful uses of my time. And so I've literally had days where I've. In fact, earlier this year, Geoffrey and I were just working through some important boundary setting in our marriage, and it was really hitting me hard emotionally. It was some stuff that has produced some of the healthiest parts of our relationship, and we're loving it now, but in the moment, it was so intense for me. I was just so upset about some of. Just some challenging things we were working through. And I had this day where I had a whole day scheduled for work, and I was just feeling so joyless and so out of sorts. I wasn't myself. I wasn't able to focus. And I just said, you know what? I'm gonna clear my day. And I literally moved all my work activities, all my appointments off the calendar, and I went for this long bike ride up the canyon in a canyon near our home here in Salt Lake City. And the fresh air, the mountains, the river running, it was so joyful to me, and I let myself have that time. And in those moments, I just. Some of the clearest epiphanies about how to show up differently in my marriage came to me how I could be more of the spouse that I want to be and how I could be the attractor of the kind of marriage I want to be. And I also had some of just the best ideas come to me about business. And it was stuff that would totally not have come to me if I had just sat down and said, well, I'm a slave to my time. Here's my calendar. I have to get my work shit done, so I'm gonna just buckle up and just push through this. I don't do that. It's because I know that there's some productivity that comes from muscling through things, but it's not the most productive way to go about things. And so I prioritized getting myself in a completely different energetic space. And for me, canyon cycling and all those things about the canyon and moving up through the mountains and the sweat and the using my cardiovascular system and my muscles and all that, like it's so joyful to me. And so it was such a good way for me to use that day. Now you might be wondering, well, what if you're an early entrepreneur, you're maybe a one man show, Maybe you don't have employees yet, maybe you have a very small team or just a couple contractors, but it's a small operation and so you've got a lot of stuff that's on your shoulders, a lot of things on your plate, a lot of burden that you have to bear. If that's you, one, you need to learn to prioritize joy. Two, systems give you time freedom systems, meaning you have standard operation procedures. You don't reinvent the wheel every time something needs to be done. That is a great way to free up a lot of your time. And so there are things like writing pre written customer support emails. Every time I have a new business that's one of the first things that happens. And it's pretty easy because people start sending emails and every time we respond we just save it in a Google Doc and as a little template. And then it makes it really easy to not spend so much time responding to emails because people usually email the same thing. I can't log in or my books came damaged or my order's missing. Right. Or do you ship to Zimbabwe? So we write pre written emails, that's a system. We also create systems for how everything in the business is done. And so we have systems for how we create our social media content, we have systems for how we map out our product launches, systems for how we create new products. Anything that happens on a normal basis in the business deserves a system, a formal system that the appropriate people are aware of. And if you're the only person in your business, well then you're the person. You should be aware of your systems. And I love that because well, if you don't have to think about it every time it's done, there's already a system in place that frees up so much bandwidth. And if you're not a strategic mind, meaning if your natural strengths palette isn't creating systems, well other people are. In fact, that's one of the biggest things that I do for entrepreneurs. I teach people monetization strategies. Strategy is really another word for system. And so there are people that you can turn to to learn from, to learn systems that will help you gain more time. Also, number three is outsourcing and delegating. If there's a task that needs to be done in my business that doesn't bring me joy and that I'm not good at, I don't do it. I outsource it. I hire it out. Early on in my business, I would hire freelancers on fiverr.com that's F I V E R R 2 Rs R fiverr.com I would hire things out, like helping with different website needs or different design needs. And then I started hiring team members. And so now I of course, have across multiple businesses, multiple teams. And we have people who are really good at the things that I'm not good at. We have people who love doing the things that I hate doing. And so that is a result of me being that dedicated to doing joyful things in my business and to letting time be driven by the number one priority of joy. So what you really need to get good at is focusing on what you're good at and what brings you joy. And if you will practice this, if you'll make this a priority in your business and set aside arguing for your time limitations. I cannot tell you how many entrepreneurs I have seen go from business idea to business idea, opportunity to opportunity, and their most frequent defeating component is time. And they say, oh, I just don't have time because of blah, blah, blah, and you got to stop talking about how you don't have time. I remember one lady that I worked with for years, every conversation was about how she didn't have enough time and she never had enough time, but it's because she wouldn't stop telling the story about not having enough time. Tell me, friend, what does Law of attraction say when you say, I don't have enough time? When you say, I am just too busy, everything's grabbing my attention. Everyone needs something from me. What does law of attraction say? Okay, well, here's more. People who need stuff from you, you say, I'm too busy. And Law of attraction says, okay, here's more stuff to keep you busy. So what would happen if you stop telling those limiting stories about time being the thing that you don't have enough of or that's working against you? What instead if you started telling the story about time being someone, something that you have a Joyful relationship with what if you started talking about areas of time in your life and your business where things are working for you, where time feels good, where you're spending your time in joy. And if you got a bunch of areas that aren't where you want them to be, okay, that's fine. They are what they are. But stop telling those stories and start telling the stories of where time is a joyful component of your experience. And then what does the law of attraction say? Okay, well, then here's more joyful time, right? That's how it works. So I'd like to give you, leave you with the call to action here. First, I'd like to invite you to write down one to three SOPs, standard operating procedures that you can implement into your business. And we'll put these in the show notes too. So you're going to write down one to three standard operating procedures. And these are basically systems or operating procedures that you can do things that will help you run your business without having to take more time to rethink them every time they need to be done. Next, identify the top 20% of activities that you're best at. The things that bring you the most joy and that produce the most. You know the 8020 rule. It says that if you have 100 hours that you work, 80% of the results came from 20 of those hours. So what did you do in that 20% of your time that produce 80% of the results? And next you're going to write down a plan to outsource and delegate everything that's not in that top 20%. So the 80% of stuff that takes up your time, that's the most unproductive stuff that you do. You're going to start to outsource and delegate that or maybe just eliminate a bunch of it to get all together, because maybe it might not even matter if it was missing. Okay? No one would notice if it was gone. And then finally, I want you to spend about 15 minutes, maybe longer, if you're having fun with this journal, how you'd like to use your improved time freedom. And I don't want you to think, okay, I freed up 10 hours in my week, now I've got to work harder during that 10 hours. If it feels really fun and exciting to identify some new work activities that you can add to that improved time freedom, that extra space, cool, go for it. But what I really would like this to be for you is a moment to just tap into the energy of more joyful time experiences, more joy in your life in your business. And so if you had more time freedom, what would be really joyful for you? Maybe you pick up some hobbies you've been neglecting. Maybe you do more of those activities that you're really good at in your business. Maybe you would do a little bit less business and a little more time in your marriage, whatever it is. With this improved idea of time freedom, what's ideal for you? What would be the most joyful way to spend more of that time? All right, my friend, so if you need those four call to action items again, they're in the show notes. Check them out. Do them. And if you found value in this episode, please do me a favor. We thrive with ratings and reviews, so scroll down to the review section on Apple Podcasts. Just jot down a quick note or two about a nugget that you took away from this episode. Leave us a five star review on whatever platform you're on. And of course, if you've got colleagues or friends who would benefit from this episode, hit that share button. That's how we spread the message. All right, my friends, well, thank you for joining me on this episode. Much love to you and happy, joyful time to you. Much joyful time to you. All right, talk to you soon and see you on the next episode. It.