Trading Time With Your Future Self (Nathaniell, Inc.)
More and more these days I look at "working" on my business as "investing". More specifically, I'm investing time. I'm investing time into my business now, so that I can enjoy the results of that investment at a later date.
It's kind of like regular investing, where you might put $100 into the stock market now, with the plan that it will give you $110 in the future. It's like buying $1000 worth of Bitcoin now, with the expectation that it will give you $10,000 in the future.
When I'm dedicating time to my business right now (rather than watching Netflix or brewing beer), my expectation is that that I'll be able to do the fun stuff later, so I should put in the work now.
Buy why is having fun later more valuable to me? Why wouldn't I want to have fun now and put in the work later?
Trading Shares Of Stock In Yourself
An interesting concept I read about this weekend is the idea that YOU are a company. You have resources. You produce goods. You have value, measured in time.
My expecation, as Nathaniell Inc, is that my time will have more value in the future. For one, I'll have less time overall. I'll still have hobbies, but on top of that I'll also have a family which will also require some time. I'll get tired more often. I'll be older as well, with fewer years ahead of me. My time will become more scarce therefore more valuable to me.
In addition, I'll be more of an expert. Like a business which requires physical resources, The mental resources of Nathaniell Inc will be in higher demand as well. For example, right now if I did affiliate blog consulting I might charge $100/hour, but in 10 years I might charge $200 per hour, and after another 10 years (with a total of 30 years in the business), I might charge $300 per hour or more! My time will have more value to others.
What Are You Doing That Could Benefit You Even If You "Fail"
When we work hard now, with expectation of a reward in the future (money, time), we are essentially trading current time for future time. We are doing something uncomfortable now, with the intent of being able to do something ejoyable later. That "future time" is more valuable than our "current time".
The way I see it, I'm selling shares of Nathaniell Inc. today to things like writing articles, analytize Search Console, and managing virtual assistants. In the future, shares of Nathaiell Inc will be much more expensive. I'm currently on sale baby!
I don't know if the analogy tracks exactly, but I thought was an interesting framework. I like to think about investing in myself and increasing my value over time.
What are you currently doing to invest in yourself and your business?
PS. Let's not forget that Premium+ just launched, and that's a real easy way to purchase knowledge for your business! $795/365 = $2.17 per day for access to the most powerful affiliate education in the world. Upgrade here!
Recent Comments
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Hi Nathaniell, great post. I think it all stacks up, as long as one enjoys the thing you are investing your time in. If not, it is still a waste of time, and you cannot recoup time anytime in the future. Once the moment has gone, it is gone. You are brilliant in recognizing that your time will probably be scarcer in the future. It will if you are planning to have a family. After my son was born, I couldn´t understand what the heck I had done with all the free time I had had before having a baby.
Haha. I've got a son on the way, so I'm looking forward to suddenly realize how much more time I have in the day now that I have to juggle more responsibilities. I'm sure I waste a ton of time now that I'm not even realizing!
Great post, Nathaniell. Our time is valuable and comes at a cost.
Any "loss" in hard cash by renewing some months early to Premium Plus is covered by not losing time searching for additional, similar knowledge elsewhere on the net.
Where I am living an average fee for consultant services is around $120 pr. hour. That adds up pretty quick, "wasting time" elsewhere, when the resources are already here on the WA platform, included in the price plan for Premium and Premium Plus.
I wrote some more around my considerations on this topic yesterday, answering to a question to me on Cassi´s blog post; To Be, Or Not To Be, Premium Plus? That Is The Question Roy
Wow. $120 per hour for consulting. I need to jack up my prices! LOL j/k.
You are correct. The price of $99/month to have access to the community is definitely a trade off, in a good way! You trade $99 for access to a treasure trove of tools in ONE area, and you don't have to go looking for them every day. Plus, you get access to amazing Wealthy Affiliate members like us and everyone else commenting on this blog post who are engaged and excited to build online businesses.
Where else could you get something like this? I haven't ever seen a Facebook community rival WA engagement by far!
Yeah I love the sales pitch I want the nitch or the website CEO
To be looking for me and to ask me what values I can bring for his company. I'm a asset to many company's when it comes to
Work load and planning or even creating a whole get down set up for any one that can pay me for my bid on the job.
Hi Nathaniel.
Do you have any info about how the hosting will be different for premium+? I do not mean number of sites and visitors as I can see that in the overview.
But do you know if there will be any difference in speed, support, and overall performance of the premium+ hosting?
I don't know the details of that Mikael. Well, I do know a bit, but I'm not sure what details has been released yet. I do know that there's more to come, but I'm still getting used to the new platform and Premium+ features as well.
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Great way to look at it. I've actually used some 'design' skills at my day job. Designing documents, .pdf's, training, the newsletter for one of our clients. I feel that my skills are much improved since I've worked on my websites. And I've gotten awards with a monetary value for some of them just recently.
But I've also thought of work on my sites, creating articles, as a way of investing in their future income potential. Heck, why not design sites for others with my creative skills? There are so many ways this business can spring us forward. Thanks, Nathaniel.
Paula