As an entrepreneur, sometimes it’s easy to get into the trap of focusing on making money rather than on delivering value.

Making money and delivering value are often confused because they often go together.

It’s important to remember that as entrepreneurs we get paid for bringing value to the market.

Sure it takes time to deliver value but here’s the catch – as entrepreneurs we don’t get paid for time. We only get paid for value.

If we deliver a huge amount of value to the marketplace, we get a huge payday.

If we flop, we make a loss.

That’s a risk most people aren’t willing to take. They want to get paid per hour worked.

They want to avoid loss at all costs. Making gain to them is a nice-to-have but their real objective is pain avoidance.

If nothing else that’s probably the one thing that distinguishes entrepreneurs from others – Entrepreneurs play to win. Most other people play not to lose.‍

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Bringing Value To The Market

The money we make as entrepreneurs is an automatic side effect of bringing value to the market.

If our focus is on bringing value to the market, this will stop us from making all kinds of foolish mistakes. We’ll treat customers with the long-term in mind rather than just making a quick buck.

The products we create or the services we deliver will not be half-baked. Focusing on the cause (value) rather than the effect (making money) will lead to much greater long-term success.

The more times we deliver value (i.e., get a customer), the more we get paid.

Don't Get Distracted By “Playing Business”

“Playing business” is when you do things that LOOK like you’re “busy” – but that aren’t producing the result that you want – which is getting customers.

Some examples of this include getting your business card perfect, tweaking the colors on your website, and checking your email and voicemail constantly. These are examples of “playing business.”

Instead of playing business, you must DO business.

Winning in business requires a “trick” that you must learn to do.

The trick involves continually bringing your focus back to the ONLY activities that deliver value.

These activities are innovation (aka creating products) and marketing.

Doing Business Is About Getting Customers

We don’t create products and do marketing just to do them.

Each of these activities is actually about an even more important activity: GETTING CUSTOMERS.

When you get customers, it means that you have sold something. It means that you have delivered enough value that someone is willing to pay you for it.

The “trick” of bringing your focus back to products and marketing is actually about getting you to continually do the things that bring you MORE CUSTOMERS.

The battle you must fight every day is a battle with distraction, interruption and “playing business.”

If you allow yourself to be distracted from your work to get customers, your business WILL FAIL!

What commonalities are we distracted by? Things that are more fun, more urgent or things that we think we’re supposed to be doing.

We are wired with a rationalization mechanism that rationalizes all the things that we do when we play business.

There are really only a few activities which you need to do every day to get customers, but you need to do them well instead of playing business.

Your view of time affects everything you do in your business.

For the entrepreneur, time is NOT money. Value is money. Time is just one of the inputs it takes to deliver value to the market.