This is one of the most important business lessons that I think Dana and I have learned to date! Time is valuable! You only have so many hours in the day and all of those hours have to count! It can be difficult to balance family life with business life especially when you are running a small business....the reason being; you are not only doing what it is that you do (for us it is planning/coordinating) but you are also in charge of all the logistics of running a company! In big companies these jobs are divided out to various employees who have strengths/degrees that pertain to these tasks. When it is your company you are constantly learning a new skill or fixing something that didn't work the first time because, well, you can't be an expert at everything!



Our first lesson about the value of our time can be seen here, remember the post where we broke down hourly how much money we made on our first paying gig! Well we were 'paying our dues' as they say and we didn't have kids occupying our time back then...so it all worked out! On a complete side note...there is nothing like kids to make you feel like time is precious and in limited quantities! Today is Ada and Mason's first day of preschool! When his teacher sent us a letter in the mail, Mason said to me "Mommy, I can't believe it! I can't believe I am old enough to go to school!" Me neither buddy!

Could they be more excited?!

Another time this concept comes up is when we are in charge of the design for a brides wedding....we always set a budget and try to stick to it; but sometimes the brides design ideas don't quite fit into the budget we have allotted! Well, we always want the bride to have her dream wedding....and we want to be the ones that make it happen... but it is always an internal struggle! We want to fit the budget and are tempted to just cut into our profit to make it happen....but then we have to look at the time aspect...The convo. normally goes something like this:

C:  "Dana, (she is the bleeding heart in these cases normally) How much time do you think it would take us to drape that garage ceiling in fabric, install twinkle lights, and fashion crane shaped napkins for all the guests?

D: "I don't know...all of Thursday and the majority of Friday"

C: "Who is going to watch the kids?"

D: "Well we can hire a babysitter...."

C: "Then it is unreasonable to think that we can only make 60.00 on the service when it is costing us over 150.00 in sitting fees"

D: :"I know but the budget......."

Thus the "Our time is valuable" conversation comes into play! I think it is important in any business to first love what you do but secondly be adequately compensated for it! If not you are really just running a charity organization....and paying taxes for nothing!