Time is money – well…may not always be true

Since childhood we are taught this phrase. As a matter of fact I also use it frequently to tell my folks to keep them focussed on not wasting time. But within this phrase is a fundamental flaw of a linear relationship. If you will spend so much time …….you will get so much money.

But there is a very large leverage that is available to us which can multiply the value of time and make its value with money non-linear. The fractal nature of 80:20 can make, some “time” worth more in money than others.

This typically happens with mentors, coaches and customers who are willing to help you. To some ,like coaches, you can pay to learn something, to others you first give and then get.

I distinctly remember that when I was in my first year engineering in university, I was just not able to pick up a subject called Engineering Drawing. Maybe the professor’s wavelength and mine didn’t match and I flunked badly. Then my brother identified another professor and I took coaching from him and he taught me so well that not only did I excel in engineering drawing, for years after and till now I can explain the the structure of a mechanical system so clearly.

The amount of time that I spent in coaching was much less than the time I spent in taking the classes in college. But the impact was far more dramatic.

In our company, while we have a team which does scouting for accounts, our fastest and more profitable business happens because of referrals that we get because of our relationships. This is true for any company. If you manage relationships well, you can get massive dividends. The time spent on managing the relationships can give you returns far far higher than what you would spend in scouting for business linearly.

But to build relationships, you need to always be willing to give first, to help people first rather than go wit an entitlement attitude. Not all people you help will reciprocate, but those who do will more than compensate for the others. So go out and build relationships.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Leverage – Sales

Leverage, Sales, Time

For a sales person, the biggest consumable she has is time. If it’s gone or wasted on worthless prospects or prospects who are only out there to take “gyan” or knowledge then your income reduces by that much.

For most people who work for someone else, they sell their time for money. With sales people the advantage is that they can get incentives which can really multiply their earnings. So there is a lot of leverage on their time. And the more leverage that they can build, the more they can get rich.

So one is clearly identifying the accounts you want to work with. Sometimes the company would decide this and you have little options. Sometimes the company that you work for may also limit the products/services that you are allowed to sell. That makes life a little more challenging.

In that case the other big leverage that you can get is by using referrals. If you can create happy customers and they can refer other customers to you, then you can get an amazing amount of leverage on your time. Happy customers are always the best source of new business because then there are less hurdles to cross even with the company you are referred to.

Most sales people however feel scared to ask for referrals because they think the customer is doing them a favour. I also used to feel the same way and used to ask it in a very apologetic manner. However, has a friend asked you for help identifying a good “Chinese” restaurant. You have felt happy to recommend a restaurant, if you have had a good experience. This thought was brought out to me by Dean Jackson and Jay Abraham and since then I keep thinking about various ways to be in front of my customer when they are having a conversation where I can be of help. Think from this angle.

Everyone has a time constrain, but for sales folks it has direct impact on their earning capability so choose your customers well and figure out ways that you will create happy customers and then create ways to get a steady state of referrals.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Time flies

Affirmative action, Decisions, life

Due to the way the pandemic is playing out one never knows when the next lockdown will take place. I have started looking at time more like Before Covid (B.C) and After Covid (A.C).

These days I become nostalgic quite often (maybe it has to do with my age or maybe with restrictions in place I don’t get time to spend) and tend to keep going back to the journeys we took as a family because now taking national or international vacations has become almost impossible due to new variants of Covid coming up all the time.

While I had visited the US many times, I took my family for the first time to the US exactly two years back. We entered the US at Washington DC and had the opportunity to see the lovely celebrations and decorations around the White House with the Christmas tree and the toy trains criss-crossing each other on the lawns between White House and the Obelix. We also visited Capitol Hill and took the tour, which was an eye opener.

I wonder if I had delayed taking my family during that trip, given the Covid situation, I may not have been able to go, till I don’t know when.

The critical thing here is time – it waits for no one – and there’s never an “opportune” time. Time is what it is. You need to grab whatever comes your way and put your best foot forward.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Time is a relative term – Good or Bad

arrogance, ego, Karma, Time

I think it was Einstein who spoke about time being short or long depending on the relative situation. If you were with you “girlfriend” it would seem shorter and if you were sitting on a hot stove, it would feel so long before you could switch off the stove.

I have a different take on time. Not to contradict Einstein. But thinking of time in a totally different way. After spending more than 50 years on earth, I have realised life goes through different phases like the weather. And they happen to everyone, like the weather.

When things go wrong with us, we tend to blame others for some trigger or the other. Suddenly the people who caused that trigger to happen, become “BAD” people. My take is most people are not bad. Its the specific “time” of our life which is good or bad. And times change, like weather changes.

The other way of also looking at this is that, when we like to transfer the blame of something, anything, to someone else….it means that we don’t have faith in ourselves. And till you don’t have faith in yourself, you will never learn the lesson which life teaches you. And life will keep giving you those lessons till you learn the lesson. The more arrogant you are about things, or bigger the ego, the more difficult it is to handle these things.

As Dan Sullivan says, till you learn the lesson, the “bad” thing which happened to you, the brain will keep relieving the issue and cause you more and more pain depending on the circumstance you are in. Once you decide to see what was the learning and how you will utilise the learning, the pain goes away.

NLP Professionals and Tony Robbins etc. have a different way of handling this issue. Some of it ], I have used and has worked. However Dan Sullivan’s rational explanation appeals most to my brain and therefore I have tried to utilise it more and more.

So “first lesson ” – Most people are good – times are good or bad and second, you can make BAD times – not so bad – if you get the learning out of the whole experience. Since times will change, anyway, its best to be equanimous in whatever situation you are and get the best out of it and bid for the time to change. As part of the Karmic cycle, I believe, when you do “good” even during these “bad” times the suffering is lesser and the change is faster.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!