My Step Mother is an interesting type of person. She was brought up in a poor Catholic family where the man does the work and the women do their best to look after the children and be good house wives.

One of these tasks is to make the most out of very little money, this often means that nothing is thrown away…. old clothes, boxes, you name it, it gets stored somewhere on the slim chance that it will have some use in the next 50 years.

So why should you care about my step mother? how does all of this have anything to do with your business?

I have learned one of the most important business secrets due to the way my step mother behaves……. YOU NEED TO DELEGATE TO NOT BE RELEGATED!

I will explain. A few months ago I saw my step mother in the kitchen repairing a clothes peg. She had taken out the spring and was putting it all back together one by one. It took her around 30 mins to do this task, but then I was informed that the pegs are at least 15 years old and for a pack of 100 brand new replacement pegs it would cost no more than a few euros ($5 max).

Now bear in mind that she is no longer poor.

This got me thinking… to fix just two pegs per year would take one hour of her time, but she earns around $30 per hour, so in that hour she could have earned enough to buy 600 brand new pegs.

That is when I learned that to be a successful business person you have to do two things:

1) Know the EXACT value of your time
2) Delegate any work that is not worth that amount per hour

To this day my step mother thinks that she has saved some money by spending an hour fixing two pegs, but in reality she has wasted at least $30 by doing this pointless task. It is important you apply this method of thinking to your own business. You may think that by doing all of your accounting & paperwork yourself you are saving $300 per year in accountants fees, but if it takes you an entire weekend to do the paperwork then it is a waste of your PRECIOUS time.

There is nothing more important than time! even money comes second to time. Don’t believe me? Would you accept one million dollars if it meant you would die the next day?

So next time you are doing link building, content writing, your accounts, or any other task that could be done by someone else, ask yourself whether you are actually saving or wasting your time and money.

Dean