Clay Cook

For a few years now I have been trying to balance my life better. It used to be largely all work, then all leasure, then all kids (and immediate family), and then work + kids. I have never been good at balance, I think I have an addictive behaviour.

Anyway, about 6 months ago I got a post-it note and drew a circle and split it into four quarters and wrote down four items that I thought I needed to concentrate on to have a happily balanced life. Since then it has been growing and growing, showing me that to have a truely happy balanced life I need to make time for a lot of things! Here is the list I have come up with to date…

1. Family time
2. Time with Rachel (wife)
3. Time with Children
4. Time with friends
5. Time alone
6. Work (Vibe Capital, Minti, ineedhits, Gooruze)
7. Admin (Finances, cash flow management)
8. Excercise
9. Spend time outdoors
10. Hobby (Movies)
11. Be well rested
12. Healthy Diet
13. Education/Learning

It is impossible for me to fit all of these into a single day, so I try and spend some time on each item each week.

Feedback?

• What do you think I have missed?
• Do you try balance your life?
• Is your life completely out of balance?
• When you are running a start-up is it even possible to have life balance?
• When you have a young family is it possible?
• Is this just a crock of shit?

Everyone knows this, but very few do it!

Smart and successful people know that your most precious resource is your time… you need to place a value (ie: a $$$ figure) on your time and start outsourcing your life more!

The general rule is… if you can get someone else to do a task for less than what you can earn while they are doing that task, then outsource it ASAP!

Rachel (my wife) and I outsource far more than anyone we know. For example, some of the people we outsource certain life and business tasks to are house keepers, cleaners, nannies, personal assistants etc. Some of the tasks include cleaning, baby sitting, shopping, grocery delivery…

If your time is worth $250/hr, then why are you cleaning your house 5 hrs per week? You could have a cleaner for $20/hr and you could be spending the time with your family/kids, or working to increase your income and net worth? Unless you love cleaning of course

This is how I work out my hourly value…

Calculate your net yearly income (ie: income after tax), add your estimated increase in net wealth for the year, then divide this figure by the hrs in a year that you have time to do things (ie: 10 hrs/day, 5 days/week, 48 weeks a year = 2400) = $x/hr in hourly value

Lets run an example…

$65,000 (lets assume a $90k income) + $100,000 (lets assume an increase in your home equity of $50k and an increase in your portion of the net worth of the start-up you have founded of $50k) = $165,000 / 2400 hrs = $68.75/hr . So if you can get anyone to do something that you dislike doing (and they do a comparable job) then outsource it ASAP and create more value.

Note: These is a very basic equation and everyone uses different metrics to measure their hourly value, however hopefully you can use this as a starting point and work out what works best for you. For example, you may include total yearly income (including tax) if you are looking to outsource a task that you can use as a tax deduction (ie: a business expense). You can also add an opportunity cost element into the equation to account for the potential of a greater increase in expected net worth the more you are able to free up your own time.

Note 2: Do not outsource tasks that you enjoy doing and actually improve your quality of life (ie: spending time with your kids)

Note 3: You can take this to the extreme by outsourcing the running of your company to free up your time to think of and start up your next company. This is exactly what I have done with ineedhits. We have a great team of people running ineedhits, and it freed up myself and Rachel to start property investing, start a family, and also Vibe Capital and Minti. Caution on this one… you need to really plan this well. It took us about 3 years to find the right person and implement the succession plan.

People hate on Jason Calacanis a lot.

My view is… I really like him (although never met him personally). He is successful (Silicon Ally, Weblogs Inc, Mahalo), probably has a net worth around 30-50M, speaks his mind, and 99% of people are just pure jealous.

He truely is the king of internet spin and has been able to build a brand over a number of years through hard work. I find it interesting that he has just quit blogging, and has started a limited (750 people) email list. He has done this because blogging has become so saturated and the crowd has turned on him. He will get a clearer message through his emails.

What’s interesting to me is that at the same time as he is quitting blogging I am starting to test it out again. I agree with him that it is saturated and very hard to be heard and noticed, however what I like about blogging is that your views and thoughts are recorded and can be found through the Search Engines and re-read. A few people will likely subscribe to this blog feed.. however how many of them are really going to check it regularly… probably as little as 1% ?

In regards to an email list… great idea, love it… in fact I started one about 12 months ago myself. I should get it fired up again too and do it quarterly. The thing about email is that it is more personal, and it is far more direct.. straight into people’s inbox! Just be sure to have very easy unsubscribe functionality.

Anyway – follow him on twitter.

Note: Was surprised to find that he has shut down his blog (“server not found” error messages). I know he said he was quitting, but I thought he would still leave up his old content. Oh well, well done on him. On to new and better things.

My last post was Feb 2006, wow that was a long time ago!

I have certainly been busy since then, here is a super quick snap shot in no particular order…

1. largely focused on launching Minti
   
2. lived in Silicon Valley for most of 2007, then moved back to Perth
3. Vibe Capital acquired a fairly sizable stake in Market United and then Market United was acquired by Q Ltd
4. raised a fairly small round of funding for and then launched Gooruze – an online marketing community
5. through Vibe Capital we also launched Refurber – a home improvements community
6. angel invested personally in a bunch of web 2.0 tech companies – see right hand column for links
7. in March 2008 had our second child (yes – another boy)
8. lots of other stuff – probably worth checking out my twitter feed