Buying Time

Everyone always says that you can't buy time; that no matter how obscenely wealthy you become, the day still has just 24 hours (or 86,400 seconds) in it, and you can't hoard them, save them or give them away. And in the literal sense, of course, this is true; time is passing for all of us at a constant rate of one second each second, and the first person who manages to do something about that is either going to die very rich or be burned at the stake by reputable scientists (or possibly both, but that's a different pop-culture reference). Yet from a business standpoint, this traditional view is almost exactly incorrect, which is to say, it is stating the opposite of the truth. Which is to say, everyone buys time, and most of us purchase it almost constantly...

Consider, for example, my day so far. I'll leave out things like our water heater (saved me the effort of building a fire and heating water), indoor plumbing (saved me the time of carrying the water upstairs) and the traffic report (I don't even want to think about that one) and just jump straight to the car, which carried me 16 miles to work in just over 25 minutes. Walking would have taken most of the day, and the 32 mile round trip certainly would have eaten any available time to do my job. Then we went to our favorite breakfast place, where we paid people to cook our food and bring it to us, and clean up afterwards -- another major time savings. Later on, we will pay to use the car to get home (transportation), pay people to cook our dinner (food), pay people to heat and light our house, and pay people to entertain us (television)...

Yesterday, to take an even better example, we paid people to clean our house, including the windows. We've also paid people to pressure-wash the outside of the building, repair some things that were broken, and unclog the drain in our shower - all things that would have soaked up huge amounts of our time, assuming we could have done all of the work in the first place. A few years ago we paid some men to build us a new picket fence (ours was being eaten by termites), then we paid some other fellows to come and poison all of the termites (including the ones that were starting to eat our house). The next time we move, we're going to pay some people to come over and pack up all of our stuff, and then load it into a truck and carry it to wherever we move, and then unload it into the new house.

Now, I realize I've beaten a very simple concept firmly into the ground here; most of you already realize that time is money, and that most service-based businesses are in fact, selling you time - in the sense of doing work so that you don't have to. I call it to your attention because any number of small business owners I have met (teaching, consulting or doing business with them) don't seem to be aware of this distinction. I've met people who actually believe that they unclog pipes with a grace and artistry that no one else can match, or that they have a "special relationship" with motor oil and air filters that no other being can equal...

Ultimately, if your business does anything that people can do for themselves, what you are really selling them is time. It's a completely sound business model - given the choice, most people would rather spend the extra $10 than spend the whole afternoon changing their own oil, and I have in fact used that exact concept to sell people on grant writing services. And by the same token, if you can do something for your customers that is better than they can do for themselves, even if it's only brewing better coffee or scrambling better eggs, then you are also offering them added value for sale. But if time is your main product (as it so often is) then it's important to keep that in mind...

Or your customers are likely to take their business to someone who does...