How much do like what you do right now to make money? Do you wake up at three in the morning, and can’t sleep because you are just so eager and excited to get going on your work? Such people are happy people, and very often they get either rich, famous, or both.

If you don’t have this kind of passion for what you do, you’re wasting your time and your life. Even if your job pays well, hating that job is like living a kind of ‘half-life’. You suffer through the work week and live for the weekends.

I urge you to quit the job you have right now, or sell your business if you hate it, and find something you can be passionate about. If you are just not in a position to move on from the business you are in then I urge you to find the passion within what you are currently doing. Re-ignite it. They say if you do what you love, the money will follow.

Even if you don’t really hate your job or your business, but don’t particularly care for it either, I still say you’re wasting your time. You’re merely ‘running out the clock’ on your life as you wait for retirement. It is said that an artist never retires. Why should they when they love what they do? Their work is their play. But it shouldn’t be true of only artists. The world of business can provide all the fun, creative stimulation and joy an artist gets from his or her work.

All this leads up to an important business concept I’m going to tell you about right now. It’s this: You must be aggressive and proactive, rather than passive and reactive, in order to create higher levels of success. A passive business owner may have a steady supply of customers who support the business, but that business never really takes off to achieve spectacular sales and profits. A reactive business owner only makes a change when something negative happens. They react and sometimes not to their best advantage. If things are going along fine, they’ll just continue to go through the motions.

A proactive business owner never settles for ‘good enough.’ Even if business is brisk, the proactive entrepreneur takes aggressive action to make things even better. For example, a proactive business person makes a single successful sale to a customer, he won’t rest until he does everything he can to make second, third, fourth, and maybe even more sales. That means he or she has to take action. They’ve got to develop new products for those new sales. They’ve got to reach out to the customer with direct mail, a phone call, or key advertisements. They’ve got to come up with a ‘can’t refuse offer’ for those additional sales. They’ve got to test the market to find out where more business can be squeezed out.

I have mentioned this before and it’s worth mentioning again. There are two types
of business people I have found over the years of consulting and coaching. Those
who are interested and those who are really committed to their success. Those who are interested will do what is convenient to them and they wonder why they don’t seem to progress as fast as others do. Those who are committed do whatever it takes to realise their dreams and goals and more.

Time to Take Action

Why not get out your customer list right now? Select the names of 20 of your best customers. Instead of just waiting for them to come in again—get proactive and go after them. Give them a call to thank them for their business, and then tell them about the new product or service you know will make their lives better. Or send them a postcard with a hot offer. Send them a sales letter or send a live person out to visit them. Whatever you do, don’t lay back and be passive. Sure they might come in again and buy from you, at some time on some day, whenever! When you take a proactive stance, you can’t stand waiting! You go out and get them!

I promise you this ‘20 Customer’ exercise will open your eyes. You’ll be amazed at how many extra sales you get, sales you might not have had without taking aggressive action.

The only fuel for a proactive, aggressive business stance is passion, a love for what you do. If you hate your job or the business you are in, you may get aggressive and proactive for a while, but you’ll quickly burn out and go back
to ‘dull normal’ mode.

So do whatever it takes to shake up your life and get passionate about what you need to do to make money. When you do, you’ll make money, and better yet, you’ll have fun while you’re doing it!

Whatever You Do, Stop Wasting Time

Why do you think banks traditionally placed clocks outside their buildings? Because they know that time is money. In fact, it’s with banks that this whole idea of calculating interest rates, based on time, got started. If you have a loan, it’s that inevitable, unstoppable ticking of the clock which is determining how much money you owe in interest payments.

If you really want to look into this more deeply, read up on the history of capitalism and banking. You’ll be amazed. Our entire monetary system rests upon a modern concept of time, which was given to us by astronomers, such as Copernicus, Galileo and Newton. Indeed, it is Sir Isaac Newton’s ‘clockwork universe’ that has shaped our modern conception that time is money, perhaps more than anything else.

Ever wonder why we say: “How do you plan to spend your time?” It’s because time and money are intimately tied to each other. Okay, had enough of the history lesson? Want me to get to the point? The point is that the statement that time is money is far more than a cliché. It’s a basic reality because of the fundamental way we do things.

And I can’t make this statement strongly enough: NOTHING IS MORE VALUABLE THAN
YOUR TIME! At the start of each new day, you are issued a fresh 24 hours, that’s 1400 minutes and 86,400 seconds. If you think of each of those hours minutes and seconds as having a monetary value, and they do, every one you waste is money lost forever. You must start paying attention to your time each day, and how you spend it.

How much actual time do you commit to making money with your business? You don’t know if you don’t pay attention. If you start keeping a daily log of how much time you actually spend on money making activities, you may be in for a surprise. What about all that time spent chatting around the water cooler or the coffee machine? It can be nice, but it earns you nothing. Do you waste time with people? Most do. If you decide to spend 15 minutes shooting the breeze about the World Cup, even if it’s with a client, that time is lost money. And we all know people that are what I call ‘dumpers.’ These are people who call you up or visit personally and steal 20 or 30 minutes just telling you about their problems. It’s great for them because they feel better after unloading on you, at the expense
of your precious time. But you get nothing, except for the reputation of being a ‘good listener.’

There’s nothing especially wrong with that, but when it’s time to conduct business, then you should be doing business. I suggest that no less than 85 per cent of your day be focused on making money, and making things happen for your business. The biggest reasons people waste time is because:

A. They have not internalised and do not remain conscious of the fact that time is money.
B. They simply aren’t paying attention to where they spend their time

Time to Take Action

Play a mental game with yourself, starting at minute one of your next day. Every 15 minutes or so, stop and ask yourself: “Is what I am doing right now moving me forward toward my earning goals?” Do it every 15 minutes.

Set an alarm clock if you have to. A wrist watch with a timer on it that beeps is great for this or even your blackberry. The idea is to shake up your conscious and unconscious mind. Wake yourself up as to how you’re spending your time! Put yourself on notice: “I will stop wasting time!” or “I always maximise my time!” The thing about wasting time is that it’s insidious. It creeps up on us while we’re not paying attention. Before we know it, days, weeks and months are lost in nonproductive activity. You can really get on top of this by keeping a time log for a week or so and recording every activity you do in your business and the amount of time it takes. You will be amazed about how much time you really do spend on non-productive tasks.

Once you get aware of this, once you awaken to the idea that every moment counts you’ll stop wasting time, and you’ll start getting things done twice as fast, three times as fast, or even faster. When that happens, I promise you that you’ll notice a magical effect. You’ll start getting a lot more done and again, this
will seem magical you’ll start making a lot more money and start enjoying a lot more time freedom!

Managing your time during work actually frees up more time to spend with family, loved ones and your favourite non-work activities. So stop wasting time. Ultimately, you’ve only been allotted a certain amount of time on this planet, so why waste it?