[00:14] Darren Jamieson: Welcome to the latest episode of the Engaging Marketeer podcast. As this is the last podcast of the year, I thought I would do something slightly philosophical and forward looking. That said, we will also descend massively into a rant, so do not worry, you are not going to miss out on that.
I wanted to ask the question, what is more important, money or time? Money or time. Most of us are in a constant chase, a constant hustle, to find more money.
[00:46] Darren Jamieson: But it is not necessarily what we really want. I think the answer to the question of what is more important, money or time, depends on what you have most of. What do you have more of in your life right now?
It is often described that the fundamental difference between the rich and the poor, and I do not want to start generalising or stereotyping here, but the general difference is that poor people swap their time for money, whereas rich people swap their money for time.
[01:24] Darren Jamieson: If you do not have money and you need money, you go out and work. You spend five hours, eight hours, twelve hours a day, whatever it is, working to get money. You do whatever you can to earn money and it uses up your time.
Whereas if you are wealthy, you value your time more than money. You do what you can to get time back by spending money for it.
[01:47] Darren Jamieson: You might have someone come in and clean your house. Someone might mow your lawn. You have people wash your car, clean out your guttering, paint your property, whatever it may be. You do not want to do it yourself because you want to spend that time doing other things.
I remember when I was in my early twenties, my nephew was at university in London.
[02:11] Darren Jamieson: He would have been about eighteen or nineteen at the time. This was around the turn of the millennium because I remember going down for the big millennium party in London.
I was shocked that my nephew was paying someone to iron his shirts. Someone would come to his university flat, pick up his shirts, take them away, iron them, and bring them back.
[02:33] Darren Jamieson: I could not get my head around it. He was paying about seven pounds a shirt at the time. I remember thinking, why are you doing that? Why are you spending money on that?
It was because he valued his time more. He was earning money online, so he was doing fairly well, but he did not have the time and wanted to pay someone else to do it.
[02:47] Darren Jamieson: That is the mentality of somebody who becomes very wealthy. And he is very wealthy now, many years later. Twenty five years on, he is a millionaire.
You can probably guess that from that mentality. Swapping money for time, not swapping time for money.
[03:05] Darren Jamieson: The reason I am referencing this now is because literally today, when I recorded this, and I am recording this ahead of time, not on Boxing Day, but I hope you have had a good Christmas, I had a one to one meeting scheduled.
It was meant to be at eleven o’clock online, to talk about events they run and something we could potentially do together.
[03:30] Darren Jamieson: This was the second attempt at this one to one. It was booked two weeks ago and then rescheduled about two days beforehand. That was irritating, not disastrous, but it meant my calendar was blocked out and I could not offer that time to someone else.
Today came around and, as I always do, I confirmed the one to one by email at the start of the week. No reply.
[04:11] Darren Jamieson: I messaged again that morning, just checking it was still going ahead. No reply. I logged on for the one to one and they did not turn up.
This was a BNI member, based in Birmingham. No message. No explanation. Nothing. That massively irritated me.
[04:27] Darren Jamieson: It set me off on a rant that I have been on all day. You can replace money. If money is wasted, you can earn more.
What you cannot replace is time. You can never get time back. It is irreplaceable.
[05:18] Darren Jamieson: My time was wasted today and it pushed me into thinking about why this annoys me so much, especially as it has happened multiple times over the years.
I remember walking to a meeting once and getting a call from the person I was supposed to meet, saying they had to reschedule because they booked another meeting.
[05:52] Darren Jamieson: Not a previous meeting. A subsequent meeting. In other words, they met someone else afterwards and decided that was more important.
That person never got a second meeting with me.
I do not put up with that.
[06:13] Darren Jamieson: We have had similar issues with podcast recordings. As you may know, we have guests on the Engaging Marketeer. If you think you would be a good guest, please reach out via the website and tell us why.
But if you get booked, make sure you turn up.
[06:55] Darren Jamieson: We had someone recently whose assistant emailed to cancel on the day, saying the diary did not sync and they had another meeting booked. Again, a subsequent meeting.
That is not acceptable. You do not cancel something booked first because of something booked later due to a diary error.
[07:23] Darren Jamieson: When people cancel on me without a genuinely unavoidable reason, I do not allow rearrangements.
I posted about this on LinkedIn and I would genuinely like to know your thoughts.
If someone has an unavoidable emergency, hospital, accident, something truly serious, of course you rearrange. Things happen.
[07:48] Darren Jamieson: But if it is a diary conflict, forgetting to put it in the calendar, or simply not turning up, then no. Absolutely not.
If you do not respect my time, we do not rearrange. You had your opportunity.
[08:27] Darren Jamieson: Do you give people a second chance if they stand you up? If they cancel at the last minute?
This is not just about me. If someone books a podcast interview, that is an hour of my schedule. I only do one or two a week.
[09:05] Darren Jamieson: There is prep time beforehand and follow up time afterwards. That is around two hours of my day.
My team then have editing time scheduled. The social media team schedule content. Thumbnails are created. Everything is planned around that one recording.
[09:46] Darren Jamieson: So when someone casually cancels and asks to rearrange because they cannot manage their own calendar, it disrupts my entire team.
That is why this matters.
I told you this would be a rant.
[10:03] Darren Jamieson: It started as a philosophical question about time versus money and ended with me complaining about people. That is exactly what you came here for.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments. If you are on YouTube, comment there.
Do you give people a second chance if they stand you up, or is that it?
For me, time is far more important than money.
You have been listening to the Engaging Marketeer. I will catch you on the next podcast.
