How to deploy your time effectively as an entrepreneur

Originally sent exclusively to The Letter subscribers on August 5. Want to be the first to get my personal newsletter in your inbox every Monday at 7am? Subscribe for free here.

Hey, gang.

We come together in these letters to share wisdom — some of mine, some from others, and some words from the many who have come before us.

The truth is, none of my words are truly mine, even if I think they are. Nor are they yours.

There are no new ideas or philosophies: just new actions and memories reborn as our own.

Words, ideas, and stories are as old as the hills. We often hear things as we go through life, then masquerade as the next Archbishop of Canterbury with our sermons, while our flock listens in.

Like a good joke, you’ll be hard-pressed to remember who told it to you all those years ago, and now you think it’s yours. It’s not.

The collection of tales and one-liners we tell is the largest process of recycling you’ll ever know. Ronnie Corbett and Greta would be proud.

The Two Ronnies may be a reference that goes over the heads of readers of a certain age. (Credit: BBC)

What’s rare is action. That’s where entrepreneurs come in: implementers, go-getters, calculated risk-takers, action-takers, and doers.

You can get diamonds a whole lot cheaper than finding these rare folk - the rarest of treasures.

You’ve got more chance of collecting a 1960s Spider-Man original comic book than meeting any of life’s real action-takers. Sure, you’ll come across many “nearly-there” types, but not “finishers”.

Regular listeners and watchers of my tripe will know I’ve harped on like a sergeant major at roll call: We are a product of our environments; the way we think, act, and behave. It’s a fact.

Just like Spidey learned, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

The trick we must learn is to know who we should and shouldn’t listen to.

Crucially, knowing what to act upon and what direction to take as life presents us with our next decision.

Deploying time is the mastery of mastery in success. Guard it like you're an MI6 agent protecting the king.

That’s our biggest responsibility. Period.

“Fads” are the devil’s work for entrepreneurs. They are our Green Goblin. They’re Superman’s kryptonite.

Why?

Because we’re inquisitive by nature. We listen. We are constantly intrigued, and it could lead us down a path to meet the time vampire - stealing our most precious resource.

Here’s a collection of introductions to the time vampires that have been presented to me:

• Crypto

• “No-money-down property’

• “This deal is unbelievable”

• “You’ll be practically printing your own money”

• Fancy new marketing techniques.

• Fancy new business ideas.

• “Everyone is doing ‘this’, so we need to do ‘this’ as well.”

I rest my case if you’ve entertained conversations like this.

We entrepreneurs are the judge, jury, and executioner of our lives.

We choose to be the judge, then the judged, and then punishing ourselves mentally if we end up with the proverbial wotsit. 

We’re a psychiatrist’s dream. But hey, it works for our kind.

This inquisitive personality, this species that is the “entrepreneur”, means you need to be careful about who you listen to and what ideas you adopt.

…So you don’t go extinct.

Why?

Simply put, people love talking about fads. New diets. New exercise routines. 

“Don’t eat meat.”

“Don’t eat eggs.”

“Eat more meat.”

“Eat more eggs.”

What’s worse, fad enthusiasts now use a Netflix documentary as concrete evidence to back up their claims of why they’re absolutely, positively correct about a new fad.

Human beings love this way of carrying on…

“Choose the new over the successful.”

Older people rarely try new things. They go with the successful over the new. 

You have to really try hard to get them to attempt even the smallest of changes. They absolutely know that a chocolate digestive or Hobnob is the perfect accompaniment to a cuppa.

There’s no need to try new variations. 

It has been a successful choice for many decades, so there’s no need to change now.

While the above may seem trivial, in our world, they can cause real damage—real financial damage and real time loss.

Here’s a collection I’ve assembled of fads presented to me on a constant basis:

• New investments

• Crypto

• No money down property purchases

• Become a coach

• Seminar this and that

• Buy this book and don’t actually read it

• Sign up for this nonsense

• New personal development tactics

• Magic mushrooms

• New thought leaders

• New marketing techniques

• Invest in pickleball

• Buy this business

• Start this revenue stream

• Start this business

All these are time vampires.

Here’s how to make sure you can deploy your time effectively:

• Be so good that your business becomes a product of your brain. Work hard on yourself until you become a master of brilliance.

• Build a business that’s a commercially profitable enterprise that works without you in it, then sell it and go bigger to build a commercial property portfolio.

• The right thing to do is always the right thing to do - not just in the moment.

Fads are presented to me every day. Some smart aleck wanders into my life, desperate to dish out some new discovery. It’s ADHD at its finest.

Many entrepreneurs have it. They suffer from bright-shiny-new-object syndrome.

My strong advice is to only listen to people who are consistent and have 10,000 hours of experience in this new fad—not six months of fad discovery.

Only take advice from people ahead of you or with 10,000 hours behind their idea.

And remember, you’ll always look for the “new” over the “successful”

Hey, it probably served you well when you got going. That’s why you listen.

Your action - your time - is your precious metal. Be careful where you deploy it.

Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

You can make more money, but you can’t make more of your time.

Focus on the successful. And just when you’re bored, rather than using your business as a cure for boredom, consider learning a new skill that will make you even more successful.

Talking of skills, I’m teaching my dog Alfie to “meow” at the moment. I think it’ll be useful for him to have a second language.

Until next week.

To your continued success,