I’ve recently been reading the book Happy Sexy Millionaire by entrepreneur and BBC “Dragon” Steven Bartlett. Candidly, I preferred his second book (The Diary of a CEO), but during my reading, one message stood out. This was the simple but impactful notion that time is our finite resource. What’s most valuable to us, Bartlett points out, is not how much money we have, but how much time.

Wealth means different things to different people, but it can usually be distilled into the following definition: being able to spend as much of your own time as possible on things that are intrinsically valuable to you. Whatever these things may be – travelling, parenting, cycling, fishing – they’re the experiences or activities you’d always choose first. Usually, they’re the things that don’t happen because other demands get in the way.

When we think of wealth, we think of money, and that’s partially correct; but if we get to the heart of the matter, money is only a means to an end. Having financial weight allows us to pay people to take care of those less important, obstructive things, like cleaning our house, mowing the lawn, or handling day-to-day business admin. Money is merely the key to our time. If you’re truly wealthy, therefore, you can unlock the time to achieve your goals.

What Bartlett shares is a valuable life lesson, but it can also resonate in a business context. As a practice owner or manager, what value does your time have? What counts as the best use of it, and are you wasting it?

First (whether you’re examining your life or your business), it’s essential to know what you really want to be doing. Perhaps you’re a practice owner who’d like to get back to surgery, rather than paperwork. Or perhaps you’d prefer to spend more time with your family, while keeping your practice running in the meantime. Work backwards to define what’s important to you, so that you can discover how to do more of it. In this, it might be helpful to dip into the wisdom of brand guru Simon Sinek, considering the central point of where your passions lie and why you do what you do.

Money and time have a symbiotic relationship, with each feeding and being sustained by the other. Yet for most of us, we’re more likely to do things that save money, rather than preserve time. We typically value time less, even though it’s the most important of the two. Across the many services we offer at Hive, we can help to save and create both, in equal measure. Depending on your setup and circumstances, you may benefit from just one or two of the following suggestions, or there could be gains from all.

• Running a diagnostic (across your practice, financials or marketing). This means taking a deep dive with one of our consultants to identify what’s working in your practice, and how you should be spending your time. This helps to streamline your approach, cutting out unnecessary and unprofitable processes, which in turn saves you money as well as hours.
• Looking after your finances, building money to support your wealth. We consider things like tax savings and Average Daily Yield to maximise your potential for profit. By doing this, you could preserve enough to pay for an associate or hire a business manager, leaving you free to do other things.
• Taking care of compliance will give you an estimate of your tax bill for next year. With this in mind, you can save what’s necessary and avoid both nasty surprises and excessive caution.
• Providing management accounts, which help track whether you’re meeting your goals. Here, knowledge is power – seeing where you are allows you to seize opportunities, course correct earlier, and learn from what’s gone before.
• Building a personal budget to help calculate your cash requirements. This is an exercise we often carry out to test whether incorporation will save money, but it can be equally valuable for practice owners. Seeing the cost of what you want to do within your year (e.g. taking two family holidays) allows you to budget effectively and spot opportunities to save time.

We’ve all heard the saying “time is money”, and it’s entirely true. However, the real secret to building wealth is to flip the entire notion on its head: turning money back into time. If you can do this disproportionately – creating more time for your money – so much the better. This can be through major gains or many small steps. For instance, you might find that commuting first class allows you to work as you travel, which generates more money than it costs.

So, whether you’re looking at your business or personal finances, or your diary for the day, consider what you’re spending and if it’s the right use of precious resources. Ask yourself what you’d rather be doing today, and why. If something isn’t adding up, a chat with us might help.