I was lucky enough to be interviewed last week by Andrew, where we dug into some practical lessons-learned and shared stories and tips.  The video is embedded below.  So grab some holiday tofurkey and get ready to be productive…

Andrew and I discussed 11 specific and tactical tips for winning back time in the workday.  Below I’ve pasted the video interview.  On Mixergy.com, you’ll find a full transcript, an MP3 version, as well as a many (much more ; ) helpful videos for entrepreneurs.

Happy to answer any questions in the comments.  Meantime, enjoy your Turkey Day!

Flickr photo credit: jdlasica

Remember when we had homework and tests?  It was tedious and difficult to get A’s.  But even without a report card, the best results require the same struggle.

I hated high school, but I recall my last two years idyllically: most days I arrived by 7:30, attended seven classes, ran competitively at the track, and then spent 3-hours in a nearby university’s computer science class.  And I did well, even if my moniker “dot com” was hardly offered with affection.

While I enjoyed the subjects, let’s be honest—few of us would’ve labored through so many chapters or worked out so many math problems if it wasn’t required.  The proof: the concept of “practice” is no longer in most of our vocabularies.

Nope, now we just do.  Do it right, do it wrong—business (or nearly all our activities) are about showing up and giving it a shot.  Mind you, I get to grade my team and I rarely let a B result out the door, but in this case it’s easier to be the teacher than the student.

As the teacher I have no trouble forgetting about the competition (as Seth Godin advises), but I still have to do my own work.  I can certainly show up and move things forward (“minimum viable CEO”?) , but the things that will make the most impact feel more like homework.

The difference between a B and an A+ may be 100 customers vs. a million.  Showing up is just lip service.  Pitching 50 journalists, writing 100 customers, creating another video…no one will ask me to do it, and no one will grade me if I don’t.

But it’s not just about work and making a startup succeed.  It’s the willingness to do something that’s seriously tough, even if the light at the end of the tunnel is far away and you may damage your ego in the process.

To be clear, I’m not talking about taking on more—no, ambition creep can be toxic.  I’m talking about taking the things that you’re reasonable/passable/or even good at, and bringing them to the next level.  (For me, that’s writing/marketing, and Spanish.)

As I approach my thirtieth year, I want to still be able to step up to the plate with the difficult things.  Not in response to someone asking me to, but because it’s the only way I’ll be happy with myself and will make a substantial impact before the next decade is up.

Growing up may be a struggle, but it’s also a myth.  We’re never grown up, and it’s never too late to take things to the next level.

But there are two common problems that will sabotage any distributed team’s progress.  We fight them every day at AwayFind, and here’s what we’ve learned.

A big part of remote (er, any) work is a need to communicate frequently, or even over-communicate.  But in a distributed team, there are two communication challenges that lead to big problems.

First, let’s make some assumptions:

• Others on your team have more experience with some of the things you have to do
• The work you’re completing now will change before it’s presented to customers

These are true in any company with a handful of people.  And depending on the degree to which you address these assumptions through communication and feedback, your team can sometimes suffer from:

• Over-perseverance – fighting through every new challenge completely on one’s own
• Over-polish – perfecting what one’s working on before offering it up for feedback

I love having a team that works hard and gets stuff done, so perseverance and polish are generally great traits…but when they lead to slow work and re-work, that’s both frustrating and dangerous.

And on remote teams, these two traits are even more prevalent.  First off, people who are attracted to remote work are often independent people who enjoy working through their own challenges.  But more importantly, in remote work there are far fewer casual check-ins:

• We’re less likely to ask for help form our colleagues when we don’t run into them
• We’re less likely to see a project before it’s finished when it’s not right in front of us

Think about it—when you’re working in the same room you see what they’re working on and hear their frustration.  We’re quick to help one another out and to address problems at earlier stages.

Now this isn’t merely an argument against distributed teams (I’ve long been a fan), rather it’s a warning to prevent these problems from occurring in your distributed team.  As a remote worker, you need to:

• Find a way to share your work well before it’s completed…and be open to reviewing others’ work while its unfinished
• Ask for help from your colleagues when you’re working with a new tool or technology…and regularly check in with others on your team to understand their skills and where you might be able to help

There is not a month that goes by where I don’t learn of someone who struggled with a project I could’ve helped with… or a feature that could’ve been corrected before it got to its present level of polish.  These things can set us back DAYS or WEEKS, and they kill me because they’re avoidable.  Fight back NOW.

These problems no doubt exist in every company…but in remote teams they’re even more prevalent and pervasive.  And if you want to work with people in different offices, you need to proactively combat these issues and architect a culture that supports early feedback and casual sharing of ideas.

While these aren’t the only challenges in distributed teams, these may be the biggest.  If you focus on them head on, perhaps you can reap the rest of the benefits…and join me on my next trip to Buenos Aires.

It’s no secret our greatest asset is time and our greatest predictor of success how we spend it, yet most of us have grown into our roles and task lists without giving it much thought.

Where do we kick ass…and where do we struggle?  Where do we have leverage..and where are we a replaceable worker bee?

At a dinner the other night, we got on the topic of "what are you best at?"  An interesting question perhaps, but it led to a couple better, more specific ones:

• In what area are you uniquely skilled, relative to others?
• Of your unique skills, which can you leverage the most for impact?

Take two minutes to consider your answers.

Though there’s scarcely one right answer, it’s likely that your responses will not be how you spend most (or even much) of your time.

I believe my answer is my ability to offer feedback and communicate advice in a way that’s useful and specific.  With my team that comes in the form of product vision, specifications, and feedback.  With the outside world it comes in the form of speaking and writing.

And as I look back on the past decade, my only regret is that I haven’t written more, created more, and shared more.  Like many of you reading this, as my team and responsibilities have grown, I’ve dealt more with unplanned situations, rather than setting my own agenda.  But, as I wrote a few months back, that’s not the way to make a difference.

How about you — are you spending most of your day in an area where you kick ass and leverage your time?  Any advice, for you or for me, for how to get back on track?

Don’t be that guy.  Founder or not, everyone should be able to represent their startup.

I find this all too often—people work to make a living, but no one puts them through the training necessary to represent the company—neither as an employee nor as someone speaking on its behalf.  If founders can’t sell their employees on their idea and get them to understand it clearly, then employees are severely handicapped at succeeding in their jobs.

I’m going to an event tomorrow night that’s about employee equity—what’s great about the event is that it’s targeted to people who work for startups and need to better understand their compensation.  It’s an event for people who aren’t just in biz dev or on the management team.  More events need to be targeted toward the regular folks who do much if not most of the real work.

One of those events needs to be on pitching, on selling, on the elevator pitch, and on why on earth they’re working at a startup.  I’m not slaving away for a dream because I want a quick buck, and I don’t think anyone on my team is.  Right now we’re not to the point where we can look back and say “it’s beautiful, it’s done,” but whether or not the baby’s ugly, I expect my whole team to stand behind it.  And to understand where things are going.  Is that too much to ask?

I hope someone (or, heck I will) puts on an event about this.  And that we all invest a little more time in the people who work with us on the vision.  Regardless of one’s role in a company or the company’s stage in the market, this is crucial for so many parts of a company’s success.

Flickr photo credit: tantrum_dan

For a time I wasn’t sure where I belonged…and then I realized that I could choose my community regardless of location.  Maybe if we all worried less whether our needs were fulfilled nearby, we’d see just how much we can be part of, and that there are no walls or beltways to stop us.

Polyamory’s Not So Bad

There’s an endless stream of discussion about the best place for startups.  An abundance of local sites and discussions.  All of this creates awareness and camaraderie…but also a sort of blindness.   Communities help us to grow, but they don’t have to define or limit us, and we get to choose where we call home.  Why not sleep around?

Successful startups and active community groups are everywhere.  But for the success of your business, it comes down to knowing who you need to know.

My Facebook groups is an interesting sample—Baltimore Tech, DC Tech, and two private groups related to startups.  It’s kind of a metaphor for my general approach—get out there in the community, but find what’s best for your business, not just what local community has to offer.  Note that I’m not even in a San Francisco based group, and I’m not sure that that matters.  Maybe I’ll start one.

Create your Own Community

I started Ignite DC partly because I knew the folks at Ignite Baltimore.  I started Bootstrap Maryland because I saw the education on the west coast that DC wasn’t getting.  I got to be one of the first social media “experts” in the area because I didn’t want the region to miss the boat.

Most of what I’ve done that’s been good for my community came from somewhere else.

It’s great that so many in a region like DC/Baltimore are now offering so much support for startups.  But it’s a piece of the puzzle, and locally it’s still very difficult to address at least two of the most core startup challenges today: funding and distribution.  (And there’s a lot to learn elsewhere about partnership, culture, customer acquisition, and even team dynamics.)

There isn’t a need to move.  And there’s a lot of value to growing together.  But that will never be enough.  You can define yourself by your location.  Or you can define yourself as the one who makes things happen, wherever those you need to know reside.

Consider which community can help you the most in 2011.  Or create a new one.  But just because things are looking good where you are, don’t forget to look around.

Don’t fire your team after reading this, but do consider how to get to a better place.  Growing (with) your team is as important as building your product.

Investors and Entrepreneurs

When investors look at startups, they discuss the idea and the market, but ultimately they’re betting on the team.  An idea is a sheet of paper and a market is a spreadsheet–only a team can create a product that serves its customers.

We entrepreneurs somewhat grasp this—we accept that our assumptions about product and market could be wrong.  We talk of concepts like prototype and beta to describe the product, and we try out our early visions on different size customers from varying industries, conducting interviews throughout the process.  But what about our team—what words do we use to describe the hodge-podge, ever-evolving group we’ve assembled to become the next Google?

If you look yourself in the mirror you get yourself, flaws and all.  We have the team that we have, and if we think carefully about it we know that there are weaknesses.  Maybe it’s experience, maybe it’s personality, maybe it’s motivation… but whatever the case, both skills and chemistry don’t just magically come together.  Much like the product we build, a team starts with a prototype and comes to maturity in different shapes and sizes throughout the product lifecycle.

But we don’t usually act on this knowledge, we just focus on shipping on testing.  The extent that we think about team is to look out for the connected cofounder and then the ninja UX guy, hoping that more skills and horsepower will come together like puzzle pieces.  But people are raw materials, not pre-fabricated components, and there will be holes in our company beyond just technical skills.  The puzzle will start to take shape but it won’t be the shape we pitched to investors (or ourselves) once upon a time.

Teams Change

People change.  People work together differently.  People leave.  These are all options for our businesses.  We all get caught up in “lean startup” hype, but all the processes we’re attempting to put in place are carried out by a team.  And maybe the changes you need are deeper than development processes.

Maybe.

The Reality of a Team, of my Team

I’ve run several organizations and worked for all sorts of managers, but I don’t always know what’s best for my team.  Even when I do know, I can’t (or don’t) always follow through.  I try to do what’s right with the circumstances and resources.

That means listening to issues with technology, process, and communication.  That means working together on quality control, personality conflicts, and personal matters.  And one by one my team has worked together to address these issues, reassign roles, and sometimes let people go.

My Team Came Out of Beta

Think about Google for a second.  We place them on a pedestal for their engineering culture, quality of life, small teams.  Whether or not that’s the case, it’s how many perceive them.

I’ve had my share of issues in my companies for the past 8 years.  Sometimes my team didn’t deliver or it took way too much “management”; sometimes I could’ve done better.  There were a lot of reasons for that.  My biggest mistake was probably being too patient, leaving people in roles they weren’t ready for.

But working together with my present AwayFind team, who’s been growing steadily since June of last year from 2 to 3, to eventually 6 full time people…our most recent release was a beautiful thing.  We worked smarter, relied on each other, and gelled.  Every product role that we need today is met, and I feel pretty damn good about things.

Right about now a giant thank you is in order—you guys seriously rocked.  And what you did had little to do with me.  I don’t what I’d want for a better group.  Thank you.

My Team is about to Enter Another Beta

But it’s not over.  As Tony Wright articulated in Startup Founder Evolution, the role of product and business development have to shift as a product company evolves.  So, very soon, we’ll hire and change a little.

We as founders with small teams should recognize that as our companies change we need more engineers, more business people, and we need to let some people go.  We need to pay attention to issues with development process, keeping people happy, and making everyone feel a part of things.  I’ll be very up front and say that the team building AwayFind today is very different than what it was when I began it as a side project at SET Consulting.

I’m proud of how we’ve evolved, and look forward to what’s ahead.  Keep your eyes open and be ready for these changes, because with the right team you really can be something great.

As of July 17, SET Consulting has a new owner.  As of August 30, I’ll have a new city.  (this logo above is SET’s original 2002 logo…)

SET Consulting is a New Company

I’m excited to still be part of SET, a business that began 8 years ago and inspires me to this day.  I’ve spent the past week introducing SET’s new president to clients, responding to leads together, and building a plan for the next several months and it reminded me just how much I love the team I’ve grown up with, the clients who have become family, and the meaningful challenges we’re solving.  From 2 hours per week at $50/hr to 6 figure contracts with Fortune 500 and government clients, it turned into a real business.

And SET now has a chance for its second life. John Lucke is the new owner and president, and he has the chance to grow SET into an even more successful company.  I’m happy to say that our existing clients have nothing to fear and new business is coming at a rapid pace.

If you spend a long time on proposals or reports in Word, or presentations in PowerPoint…or if your company is migrating from Office 2003 to 2007 or 2010, please let me know.  The SET team is ready as ever to help you kick ass with Microsoft Office templates, automation, and training.

In case you were wondering, AwayFind is now a fully independent business.  We’ve got 10 people pounding away at something beautiful, and I’m of course still serving as CEO.  I’ll keep pounding away on AwayFind, just in a new city.

I’m Moving, but not Leaving DC & Baltimore Behind

I’ve made DC and Baltimore my home for the past 11 years.  In the past 3 years I’ve traveled about a quarter of the time, and tried to come home and share what I learned.  I don’t plan to stop, at least not in 2010.

I’ll still be hosting Ignite DC 5 on September 30 and Bootstrap Maryland on October 27.  I’m participating as a mentor in DC’s next Founder Institute and I hope to check in with the Greater Baltimore Technology Council and the Baltimore Angels regularly.  I’m not selling the house or taking the car just yet, either.  I’m going to try to still play a role here.

Why Move?

Last summer I was deciding between San Francisco and Barcelona to spend a couple months.  I went with Barcelona because I thought that I wouldn’t get an escape in SF, that I’d be too immersed in the technology scene there to get a chance to breathe.  I’m really glad I spent my summer in Spain , but I was wrong.

This past year I’ve taken many trips to San Francisco and realized that while it’s got a strong tech scene, it’s got much more.  I’m excited about the dance scene, the perpetually perfect running weather, the diverse beauty of Golden Gate Park, the European cafes, and the healthy and balanced lifestyle that people respect and appreciate.

But I’d be lying if I said that Silicon Valley wasn’t a big part of my move.  And I know I may end up as yet another example of the inability to run a startup in DC.  But that’s not so.  Silicon Valley does justify a move at a time when I have to be careful with my finances and my company’s direction, but I’m going there because of the whole picture and the fact that I’m ready for a change.  But back to the eternal San Francisco and DC/Baltimore debate.

DC and Baltimore are Great Places to Start a Business

Certain things are easier to do in San Francisco and certain things are easier in DC.  Raising money, finding distribution partners for the consumer internet, or staying up on platform changes are unquestionably easier in San Francisco.  But finding technology talent, spreading a message, or effecting policy change are likely easier here.

Both DC and San Francisco are cities that people come to from far away to make a difference.  Both are full of independent, liberal, idealistic people who want to make their mark.

And don’t forget Baltimore—it’s got a small technology community, but it’s the most cohesive technology community I’ve witnessed.  There aren’t factions, there are just friends.  The respect I have for people like Dave Troy and Mike Subelsky in the way they’ve put on events that really bring people together…I just don’t know a community so giving and with open-arms.  Starting a technology business in Baltimore you’re going to find real support.  And you can buy a row house there that won’t break the bank, a block from the water, and with neighbors that want to know you.

I love you, DC and Baltimore.

I just feel like the difference I want to make will be easier in San Francisco.  While I’m proud to have sold a small business where I made a good living, I want to grow a big business where I make a big impact.  It just so happens that most of the companies and people who are involved with email and communications workflow are out there—and I want every advantage I can bring to AwayFind as I want to significantly impact the way people communicate for the better.

Lunch together, Party Time, Cole Valley, Etc

If you’re in the area, I’d love to meet up on August 28th when I have a little informal going away get-together.  I’d love to catch up a little and also introduce you to some other great people. You can RSVP at this Facebook invitation.

Also, if you want to meet up in August and if you’re willing to come to College Park, I’m happy to buy you lunch. Old friends and new are welcome.

Or come visit in San Francisco after the summer—I’ll be in Cole Valley, near the N Judah and Golden Gate Park!

Sorry to cram so much into this blog post.  While only a few of you will likely notice my move, I do care a lot about the DC/Baltimore community…and want to share what led me to these decisions.

I hope to see many of you in the coming weeks.  And this is far from goodbye!

This year is a similar theme, but it comes from a very different basis—the word is swim.  I’ll explain after the jump…

IOU in 2011

Last year I tested a lot of things, and I gave back a great deal to my community.  I’d like to believe I figured out a formula for pulling through with my company, and I know I was able to contribute to the DC startup and arts scenes in positive ways.

But as I mentioned recently, AwayFind is in a sprint right now.  We’re building something pretty-frickin’-amazing, but we’re not charging yet / earning revenue.  When the livelihood of both you and your team are on the line, and when you don’t have much time to prove that your application has a market, that’s where you need to focus.

So, unfortunately, that means that in 2010 I may ask for things from you to help me get through this year and be able to give back more.  I’ll still be running Bootstrap Maryland and Ignite DC, but if things go well this year then next year I’ll be able to do so much for you all in 2011.  So, while this isn’t my theme for 2011, I want to thank you in advance because I’m betting the farm and could use your help.  More on that in future blog posts…

Back to the Theme: Sink or Swim?  I choose the latter.

I remember when I bought a house in 2005.  Turns out that wasn’t the best time to buy, and I ended up having a combination of respectable debt (mortgage) and less-good debt (home equity line + money owed to my family).  Within 12 months I paid off all the less-good debt and my business was kickin’ ass.  I was a little worried though.

Right now I’m in a sink or swim stage with AwayFind.  Sure, there’s no reason why the product would disappear, but the next six months will predict whether it’s a viable business in its current form.  As such, my team and I will be doing everything we can to put ourselves on the map and grow our userbase.

If you’ve ever had employees, you know that there’s no greater feeling than being able to support them in exchange for their hard work.  Even when times have been tough in the past (it’s been almost 8 years now), I’ve never withheld payroll.  And I don’t want to.  I want to hire and grow and make an impact on the world

I know what metrics I need to reach.  I believe I know what’s best this time.  And I’ve got a grasp of how to push things forward that one can only have when they’re at this stage in the game.  So, with every decision I make in 2010, I’ll be asking, how will this push us forward on our critical path to gaining more paying users–how will this help us to swim.

It Ain’t Glamorous

I’ve been thinking a lot about Tom’s Shoes business model—every pair of shoes you buy, they donate a pair to someone who needs it.  There are ways to give back creatively, and I want to explore that.  If 2010 is a successful year then 2011 will be an opportunity to try out some of these business models and to give back so much.

It ain’t glamorous to defer wonderful dreams solely for the sake of the mundane “stay in the black” concept, but that’s what I’ve got to do.  Reading Chris Brogan or Seth Godin or Tim Ferriss and their many acts of good and ambitions, it’s nice to learn about what we can do when our business is higher up Maslow’s hierarchy.  But that’s not the focus right now.

What’s your theme?

Since I wrote this article last week I have been thinking more and more about Chris Brogan’s concept of three words and about how I defined a more idyllic theme for last year.  And I think I stumbled upon something pretty big with regard to using themes to guide our decisions—perhaps even my own raison d’être.  More on that soon.  I am excited for 2010, even if I have to concentrate a bit on my own business.

I hope you have a pretty awesome year in store for you.  That you can grow your business and give back.  What’s your theme going to be?  Is there anything I can help with now?

Flickr Photo Credit: zen, Yafut

There is a time to sprint, and not just because you want to work harder.  Consider this:

An Exercise in Human Resources

Assuming 9 months of work to create a product, which would be the best hiring strategy?

1. 1 developer working for 9 months
2. 3 developers working for 3 months
3. 5 developers working for (just under) 2 months
4. 9 developers working for 1 month

I’d bet most people would go with the middle options, but why?

• Their gut would tell them to dismiss the first option: 9 months seems too long to wait, maybe the market will have changed, perhaps having only one developer would put them at risk
• They’d probably dismiss the last option: 9 developers is probably really expensive, and it’d likely be difficult to catch a big mistake and alter it without spending too much on rework

The last option is a bit extreme, and for all but the most experienced of project managers with the most firm and well-thought specifications it’s likely unreasonable.   Chances are the middle two are the best options.  Both for the reasons above (which you likely considered) and also for a set of reasons that I want to stress below.

But I will also come back to this…as I’d be willing to bet most people (who aren’t answering this as a purely intellectual exercise) have actually chosen option 1 (solo entrepreneurs who build your own product, this is especially true for you).  Now let’s talk about all the reasons this is a bad decision, and in what cases the last option might even be the best one.

A Month Costs A Lot of Money

If you don’t know your monthly burn (the monthly expenses for your company) then, well, figure them out.  Depending on the size of your company, you might want to include your personal expenses in these numbers as well.  Anyhow, hold onto this number.

If you’re like most companies, you’ll find that a lot of this number comprises money that just seems to disappear every month—most of it may be salaries, but a lot of it is fixed/variable expenses you wish didn’t exist (insurance, office space, transportation, food, infrastructure, etc).  Maybe it’s just 2,000, maybe it’s 6,000, maybe it’s 12,000…but whatever it is, it’s significant.

Nevermind interest fees.  Or the fact that it’s a month of your life.

And of course there’s the the frustrating fact that you can’t put your head down and focus for too long (1 month?  2 months?  4 months?) without allowing the real world to haunt you with its responsibilities, risks, and bills.

Consider this: if you could cut three months of (non-payroll) expenses out of your project by making the project three months faster, how much more would you have available for developers?  How much sooner would your project be ready?

Solos: if you have $60,000 to work with, and gave yourself a year to build your product, consider how much faster and more relevant your product would be with other people on your team…and how much sooner you’d realize whether you were going down the right path and…

Time Flies By…and So Does Your Competition

If you’re in a competitive or quickly changing industry (like, say, web applications) then time matters.  I’ve learned of dozens of companies that have “validated” our market since I started working on AwayFind.  If I decide to slow down for a while, many of our core features would no longer be novel, let alone remarkable.

Cutting edge is no longer a quaint thought.  Every 6 months there’s a metamorphosis in which technologies are available (and which businesses are making money of them to do what you want to do).

Time Commitments Take Time

If you’re still chipping away at the same problem a year from now would you feel good about it?  If your team members also lacked that sense of completion, would they still be there?

When time goes by, there’s a chance you’re going to wander off.  There’s a VERY good chance someone in your team will move on.  So it’s in your interest to get as much done as possible while you have them.

But What About Slow Growth and Learning?

My team worked on AwayFind for a very long time, not putting many hours into it in the beginning.  These are our actual hours (Y axis) over 2 years (X axis):

This shape represents a company that wasn’t so sure how much time it wanted to put into its product, particularly when there was another (i.e., a real ;-) source of income (our consulting business).  It also shows a company that incubated a lot of information before realizing how to respond to customers and try again.

Let’s just assume that I didn’t have another business.  If I were paying 5,000 per month in fixed expenses then that would’ve been $5,000 x25 = $125,000.  If we had moved faster, I could have had access to some of that money.

I will admit that I learned a lot about building a web application and grew many relationships over this two year period.  While the purpose of AwayFind hasn’t changed (escape interruptions while still being responsive), its technology and experience are the difference between MS-DOS 2.11 and Windows 7.

But there are periods on this graph where we could’ve and should’ve moved faster.

So When Do You Sprint?

If you look closely at that graph, you’ll see the last dip before the hours went pretty-much straight up (the dip was May 09).  From that point onward we’ve mostly been chipping away in product development.   Leading up to the first launch we also could’ve beefed up our product development, much more than you see here—it would’ve saved us months and probably $15-25k.

In the last few months I’ve hired 2 full time developers, a Director of Communications, and worked with several consultants.

I couldn’t have just tossed those people in at any time, but as soon as it became clear that there were multiple months of work for a new person, I’ve added that person.

Right now we’re sprinting.  We need to improve the UX on a number of areas, we need to better connect to certain email providers, we need to finish our marketing site.

I see very clearly what needs to happen on the product side, so I just want to move as quickly as possible to get there.

Back to the Exercise from Before…and the Right Answer

The more crystal clear your specifications and needs become, the better in a position you are to divide the tasks amongst multiple people and move as quickly as possible.

Of course, this assumes that you can find the right people for the right price, and that you know how to manage them.  All those things are easier said than done.  But those are relationships and skills that every entrepreneur can benefit from.

We all have a fundamental understanding of how to “control costs.”  But we don’t always know how to “control time,” particularly in relation to how time affects costs and our position in the market.  Next time you’re ready to sprint, do it–you’ll save a lot of money, hit your market, and have a better chance for success.

Flickr Photo Credit: johnthescone