Time is the most valuable commodity we have as humans and managing it well result in the best life possible. By Tim Walterbach #000353

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Time Management

By Tim Walterbach

Hi! My name is Tim Walterbach with IBBTalks. I will be talking today about time management. As you can see this house behind me has been put together over the last six months and I probably have one more month until it’s completed. To get this done in a timely fashion so that it can be profitable, it takes some thought, some pre-planning. So first of all, the most important thing in time management is personal time management. You’ve got to get a hold of your schedule. I know of too many sub-contractors that roll up on the job at ten o’clock and then they’re rolling up the cords at two o’clock and they’re wondering why they can’t get anything done, and why their prices have to be higher than the next guy. Sometimes they complain about some of the other sub-contractors that work longer hours. They complain about some different nationalities that work harder sometimes than they do and I tell them, I say listen, they can underbid you because they’re coming at 7:00 in the morning and they leave at five o’clock and so they can knock 30% of their price and undercut you. It’s based on how much time you have on the job, whether you’re profitable or not. So it starts with starting your day right.

For me, I get up before the sun comes up and so first thing in the morning what I try to do is spend a little time in God’s work, to spend some time reading and praying to kind of plan out in my day. I ask God his opinion on how to address certain situations. Asking for directions, seeking guidance, wisdom, justice, knowledge, understanding, all the things that God promises. Particularly, I always read a proverb in the morning, it seems to always have something to do with my business day that day. So personal planning, you know, personal time to plot out the day it’s probably the most important thing. But I put myself even though I’m self-employed, I put myself on a schedule, I’m leaving the same time every morning what generally is about 7:00 a.m. in the morning. And it gives me time to get to the job site, get set up before others come, before other sub-contractors come and then I don’t quit until, you know, late in the afternoon. As an entrepreneur, as a business owner I try to be the first here and the last one to leave.

Then, you know, to do a project like this, if you just go into it haphazardly without having that timeline always in the back of your mind of when things are to be done, that six-month project can creep into nine months really easy. So it begins with, for me, putting a budget together and from that budget then I know, then I kind of, on the side of the financial budget I put a time budget and I’ll have a timeline. Now there’s all kinds of systems for timelines and you can google that and there’s a lot of them. But I’ve just adjusted to my needs and most importantly even after I write it out is that internal time clock that’s always working in me. You’ve got to develop that, you’ve got to. If you’re going to be self-employed, you’ve got to be more disciplined than the average person. I remember I first started a business and I was working out of my house. I realized that I was kind of getting to the office later and later and taking longer breaks and I realized that this was not going to be very productive after a while, you know. There’s a proverb says the diligent shall be made rich, the diligent shall be put in charge. And so I realized that I had to discipline myself because I didn’t have a boss that was going to lay out a schedule for me.

So, what I’d do even though I worked at home, I’d get up, put my suit on, put my suit and tie and like I was going to work. And once I went into my office everybody in the house, my wife was raising her kids, knew that dad was at work. And it kind of set me and as a good precedent for me for the rest of my life, that if I’m going to be in business for myself I’ve got to master my schedule. You know there’s a friend of mine said, we were talking about being entrepreneurs and how much we have to work and he said, “yeah you know what I like about being in business for myself, is I get to work whatever hours I want. Whatever 80 hours during the week I’m going to work, I can work” because that’s if you’re going to own your own business it’s not going to be 40-hours we go. You’re going to put in 40 hours with everybody else but you got to prepare beforehand and you got to prepare and take the care of things afterwards also. So if that’s your calling in life, that’s your goal, know that you’re going to be a little more disciplined than the next guy. So I hope this was helpful to you and thanks for joining us!