"But I don't have time!"

“I don’t have time!”

It’s an almost universal complaint.  

Jobs normally fill up anywhere from 40 to 60 hours or more of waking hours every week.  Transporting kids and helping with their homework, paying bills, buying food, maintaining a home and maybe a yard -- it’s almost miraculous that some of us find a moment to contribute, recreate or even just to pause and enjoy a sunset.

So HOW could one ever find the time to launch and maintain a business?!  

Yes, it would be great to get off the treadmill -- spinning from commute - to job - to commute - to dinner pickup or preparation -to all the demands of home, family and community - and then back to the commute again.  Or some variation of the above..

“I don’t have time!”    Right?

Let me tell you a short story:  

Once there was a 44 year old woman working as the Admissions Director of an upscale independent school that she’d helped to found 12 years earlier.  She was the sole provider for two healthy, highly creative children, a boy 7 years old and a daughter 4 years old.  She felt that she had waited so long to be a mother, and now she was missing so many seminal moments of her children’s lives.  She worried that she wasn’t really there to guide them through the rough spots, celebrate their triumphs or even to model for them the values she believed were crucial to their long term happiness.

And, of course, there was NO TIME and little money to do what so many people advised:  Start building an asset.  Make sure to develop compounding multiple income streams.  Lay a foundation so that -- in the not too distant future -- there WOULD BE TIME to do what she loves the most with the people she loves the most.

It reminds me of the story about the man whose house flooded due to a burst pipe.  He began bailing and bailing and bailing until he dropped in fatigue and awoke to find himself afloat in his kitchen, and the water still rising!

The moral of the story:  sometimes the best first strategy is to go find the water main and shut off the water.  

And when you’re on the transactional income treadmill and you feel like you can’t stop bailing, the best strategy is to begin -- however gradually -- to solve the problem at its point of origin.  

The point of origin of having no time is NOT ENOUGH TIME-INDEPENDENT CASH FLOW.  

A purely time-dependent income -- you show up or the $$$ doesn’t -- means there’s NEVER going to be enough time to feel like you’re living the life you want to be living.  

A time-independent income  -- you build an asset with multiple income streams and the $$$ begins to flow and grow whether you’re puttering in the garden or surfing in Hawaii -- means your life can be your own personal masterpiece.

Back to our 44 year old woman.  Despite initial trepidation and severe skepticism, she launched her business with a loving and dedicated team.  She still had a job, so it was a matter of finding 15 minutes here, an hour there on a consistent basis, and accepting coaching and assistance -- but she hung in there, and two years later she was able to turn in her keys at work and devote her time to ushering those two kids through childhood, as well as exploring other passions like gardening, writing and travel -- and to passing it forward and helping other people who were feeling stuck and time-bereft to find a better way.  

That woman is me, and it’s been over 20 years that I’ve been able to enjoy an uncommon personal freedom AND expanses of time that are mine to design.  I have the great privilege of calling my own shots, making some amazing memories and making a difference.

Now, when people say to me, “But I don’t have time,” I say, “It’s not that you don’t have enough time.  It’s that you don’t have enough TEAM!” A leveraged income is the key, but a team provides additional leverage when you need it the most -- when you’re still bailing.