by Angie Mohr

Created on: April 17, 2008

As I was growing up, my grandparents were always a large presence in my life. They tried to share their life experiences with me in order to guide me to an easier existence than they had. They used typical "grandparent-speak" in order to convey their lessons. My grandmother was the budgeter, the bookkeeper, and the home economist of the family, so of course, her teachings revolved around the "a penny saved is a penny earned" philosophy. As I went through university and immersed myself in business, accounting, and economics courses, I realized that, after taxes, a penny saved is more than a penny earned. Sometimes, old-fashioned wisdom and common sense still applies.

That's not always the case, though. My grandfather's teachings were naturally about earning an income, as he was the "bread-winner" of the family. His favorite aphorism was "time is money". This was particularly true for him. He was a commissioned salesman for a large Canadian aluminum producer and his income was a direct correlation to the time he spent out visiting clients. Some of my favorite memories when I was young revolve around sitting in my grandfather's car with my grandmother, waiting for him to finish a client meeting in Aurora or Lucan or Kingston or some other Ontario city I had never previously visited. Grandma and I played word games~ she would choose a large word and we would have a set amount of time to see how many words we could make out of it. The car always had the pleasant familiar combination of warm leather scent and the sharp metallic aroma of Grandpa's extruded aluminum samples.

But I digress. The "time is money" lesson has been taught to several generations. Spend more time at work or on your business and make more money. This is definitely the case for those who are paid hourly for their services. But when you own a business, the time/money connection derails. The money that flows into your business is from two sources: your work as the manager of the company and the profit you make as a business owner. Let's say for a moment that you weren't directly managing your company. Then all the net income in your business wouldn't have any connection to the time you spend on the business. It would be passive income, meaning that it would still flow if you were on vacation or otherwise occupied.

Most small business owners emerge from a background of exchanging labor for money; otherwise known as having a job. It can be a struggle to diverge from that model but, as a business owner,

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