You have three main currencies: time, money, and energy. You could also count experience and connections, but let’s stick with the main three for today—TME.
Let’s talk about money. You need it. Well, you need what it can afford you—food and housing are the two main things. Your money enables you to afford certain things—some are needs and some are wants outside of those needs. By the way, there’s a lifestyle financial exercise in my Schedule Optimizer tool. Reply to this email with “optimize” to get your copy.
Why am I telling you this? I believe time is your most valuable currency. How you spend your time is how you deepen relationships with your family and friends. How you spend your time is going to be how you predominantly impact people.
There’s a quote that says, “People won’t remember what you said or did, but they’ll remember how you made them feel.” And if you think about it, how you made them feel often comes down to the time and energy you invested in them.
Sure, you can impact people with your finances, and I do believe we should steward our finances well. We should use our gifts in the marketplace to create impactful businesses, and a healthy profit will likely be a byproduct of that. But again, it should be the byproduct not the pursuit.
I’ve talked with a lot of seven, eight, and even pushing nine-figure business owners. And there’s a common theme: they want more time. Yes, they can afford all their needs. Yes, they can go on vacations. But what they really want back is time. Time and energy. Even when they have the time, they’re so stressed and overwhelmed by their workday that they have no energy left. Their schedules are chaotic, their teams are misaligned, and they lack focus and clarity. When they get home, they feel bad because they can’t give their best to their family. They struggle to intentionally invest in their most important relationships.
If this sounds like you, here’s what you should do: audit your goals. Instead of defining a metric around your money, start by defining a metric around your time. How much intentional time do you want to spend with your family each week? Then ask yourself: if you are living that life—spending time with your family and going on vacations—how much money do you actually need? Yes, you should invest, save, give, and pay for your essentials, but are you going beyond what you need at the sacrifice of what really matters—your physical health and family connections?
Here’s a simple exercise:
Write down how many hours you want to work in a week.
Decide how many vacations you want to take in a year, how much you want to give, how much you want to invest, and how much you need to live the lifestyle you want.
Then, multiply the hours you want to work in a week by four—that’s how many hours you have to work in a month.
Take that number and divide your financial needs by the number of hours you plan to work in a month. That’s what your time needs to be worth.
Now, reverse engineer your business around that. Create systems, build your team, and optimize your productivity to get you there.
You know what the cool thing is? Over time, the money will follow. But it’s no longer the pursuit. You’ll be re-energized, doing the roles you love in your business, and it won’t be stealing time away from you—it’ll be giving you more energy. You’ll go home excited to talk about your business instead of feeling drained.
If you found this helpful, and if you want my free Schedule Optimizer tool to help you find these numbers quickly, just navigate to the footer of this site and click the link.
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