Marcel Legros - Play the Game of Life

Talk to My Butler

I was at a barbecue many years ago when I ran into an acquaintance of mine. This fellow was a highly successful and creative computer sciences professor for a local university. He earned a lot of money, had nice things, and was highly accomplished in his field at a young age of thirty-five. Secretly, I always admired his lifestyle and wished I had the same for myself. What struck me about this guy was even though he had an immense amount of work on any given day, he still had a lot of free time. He spent time with friends and played music at his favorite pub almost every night.

I asked him how he managed to fit all of it into his life and have such incredible balance. His answer was simple, “I pay other people to do things that cost me a lot of time.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“I haven’t done my own laundry for almost 5 years now,” was his immediate reply.

“Doesn’t that cost you a lot of money every month? How can you afford it?”

“Laundry takes 2-3 hours of my time every week if I do it myself. I get paid $60 an hour when I work so it’s cheaper to pay someone $25 a week to do it for me. I save at least $95 a week if I work in the time saved.”

This blew me away. It turned out that he also paid a chef to shop, cook and freeze his meals every week. He saved at least 10 hours in the kitchen and supermarket by paying someone else to do it for him. He smartly used that time to earn more money and at $60 an hour, he saved $250 a week!
I know that not everyone makes $60 an hour or has the ability to extend billable hours into his/her free time. This idea works wonders if you are a small business owner, independent entrepreneur, consultant, or contractor. The process of converting time into money is simple.

Estimate what your time is worth as a dollar-per-hour figure.

• Make a list of all tasks that eat up a lot of time in your week. Use an activity log to find the time leaks. I explain time leaks and the activity log in the post “Slow Down, Get More Done”. Other activities to look at for savings would be house cleaning, mowing the lawn, or shopping for gifts.
• Find out how much it costs to pay a professional to do the same activities you’ve identified in the previous step.
• If the cost to pay a professional is less than what you are worth per hour, then you can potentially save money by hiring the pro to do it for you. If it costs more, you may still be better off outsourcing the work. You should still outsource if higher productivity is required to complete long-term goals.

You Must Follow Through

I say “potentially” in the final step because it assumes that you will convert that freed-up time to do billable work. The temptation is to take the extra time for leisure. If you use that time to watch tv or take a nap then, congratulations, you just lost a lot of money. If you have money to burn, then that’s wonderful - go have another nap! This idea will work wonders for you though, if you decide to apply it well.