finding the time to be an entrepreneur

Hi, I’m Adrian Fleming and because I’m a serial entrepreneur I take on projects and challenges like becoming an author with my book…

And people ask me…

how do you find the time?

There’s no point in pretending that being an entrepreneur is easy, at least to start with as you need to learn new things, look for opportunities and make things happen, but…

I often hear people say that they can’t find the time to do something, but when it comes to the average person in the UK, and I doubt that other countries are much different…

…the reality is we actually have too much time on our hands and what we have done is fill it up with things that have little or no positive impact on our lives.

Let me just ask you a question…

If you wanted to become better at something, whether that was a sport, a hobby or even being an entrepreneur…

…how much time do you think it will take from a “standing start”, with you having no experience, to being competent at it?

I’ll even throw in the fact that you can have experts help you too, as I want to make it as easy and quick a process as possible.

I did quick search online and looked at being able to play guitar…

…something I don’t know how to do, but having recently talked with somebody on this very subject, with them telling me it was a lifetimes work and they never stop learning…

…which I fully appreciate, I thought this was a good reference point that you could relate to.

So let’s be more specific, I was looking to play the acoustic guitar at a level where I could play a few songs quite well, at least well enough to impress others.

Well the general consensus, remember I know nothing about playing guitar, is with a bit of practice in 3-6 months you can play songs rather than just chords, notes and simple stuff and…

…within 2 years you could be playing most songs and even start to improvise. !In fact the best guide I found on the subject was at theguitarlesson.com

Anyway, let’s assume that you will be playing the guitar for an hour a day Monday to Friday and a couple of hours a day at the weekends, so 9 hours a week.

This means that in about 100 hours you could be impressing your friends and family with your guitar playing ability…

..it may not be rivalling Jimmy Hendrix, but it’s certainly not bad for a beginner and at this point you could start to show others what you had done and show them how to do it too.

So now let’s look at making money and being an entrepreneur, because I think this is actually easier than playing the guitar.

I would say this because I can’t play the guitar, but I recon that if you put 100 hours in to being an entrepreneur…

…I could make some significant changes in my skills and ability, I know you could too..

So where can you just find 100 hours like that, we are all busy and living in an increasingly hectic and stressful environment?

The answer is simple; the time is…

all around us

Here in the UK, and I’m sure other countries are broadly the same, there are all sorts of studies and research and the answers vary, as you would imagine, but broadly speaking…

…the average person spends about 45 minutes commuting each day.

75 minutes on Facebook.

20 minutes on Twitter.

Which is part of about 3.45 hours consuming media online.

4 hours watching TV

And you have over an hour listening to the radio and 20 minutes reading.

This makes a total of about 8 hours a day, taking in to account the fact that we now multi-task, being on social media while watching the TV.

So let’s make sense of this…

…if you just used the commute time, which let’s face it is often wasted time and some of your TV time, a little less time surfing the Internet and checking up on social media and…

…the 20 minutes of reading was used to read something of value to being an entrepreneur, you can easily find…

…every single day, as an average person in the next 7 days…

25 hours

You could be over a quarter of way to that 100 hours, in fact if you really focused…

…and stopped wasting time on checking out celebrity gossip, sports results, or car reviews, like I’ve been known to do, you could be over half way there.

in a week

Let’s just put it another way, if you are paid, the average salary here in the UK of about £26,500 or about $42,000…

…and converted that in to an income per hour, so working 35 hours a week, 46 weeks a year after holidays and time off that’s 1,610 hours at about £16.50 or $26 an hour.

Simply put, your downtime is at a basic level costing you £875 or $1,400 a week, that’s over £40,000 or $64,000 a year!

But I don’ want to spoil all your fun and here’s the thing, going back to my guitar example from before…

…if you spent the 3 months, so 13 weeks focused on your own ability and skills as an entrepreneur you will have invested in the region of 700 hours in yourself …

…and that’s not at the expense of time with your friends and family, holidays, visiting events or what I would call important things.

Personally, I took the TV out of the kitchen, and so listen to podcasts and audiobooks while eating my breakfast and dinner – that gives me about 1 hour a day to make improvements.

I’ve cut down on reading car magazines, I just read a couple, of them now and instead use the time to read magazines like Success, Entrepreneur and Inc. which I have sent over from the US.

I’m still old fashioned in that I like print, in fact I love print and absolutely see it’s value vs. digital content, but that’s another story.

I’m lucky I don’t have a long commute, but I do spend time in the car heading to meetings and even fun events, so use this time for not just audiobooks and podcast but also audio training too…

…in fact when I used to live in the US, so back in the early 1990’s I listened to Tony Robbins’ cassette tapes in the car to and from work as it was a 25 minute trip each way.

I guess that each week, with virtually zero negative impact on my social and family life I consume over 20 hours of audio and…

…read about 3 hours worth of material that adds to my own skills and capabilities.

And still fit in the odd TV show, watching a bit of sport, meeting friends, going to events, walking and playing with the dog and spending time with my family.

I have even turned other tasks like cutting the grass or working out in to a multi-tasking opportunity and I highly recommend you do too, because…

…with little or no effort and virtually zero monetary cost, I invest over 1,000 hours a year in being a better and more effective entrepreneur just in this area.

Then on top of this I do other things too because I not only know it’s the right thing to do, I enjoy it too, much more than watching TV shows I have no interest in or have seen before.

The other thing with self improvement in an entrepreneurial way, is that done correctly, the effect multiplies the results…

…maybe even makes them exponential and the value you generate in an hour isn’t just that £16.50 or $26.00, because…

…entrepreneurs don’t earn that an hour, they can earn £100s or $ or more an hour.

So being average at the start of your journey, when it comes to time, is actually a real advantage and proves that…

…you don’t need to give up you existing job, if you have one, or the things you absolutely must do each and every day…

…all you need to do is make the most of, what I would call dead, or wasted time and if you ask me…

…to shift from being average to being exceptional is something we can all find time to do, therefore the only barrier to this is…

you