American Express Open Forum recently launched a video series interviewing successful business owners called “Inside Successful Small Business”. As part of this series they talked with Jessica Banks and Mihae Mukaida, founder of Rock Paper Robot. Specifically they talked with the founders about knowing when to outsource certain tasks to experts to free up your own time.
Key: You can make more money but you can’t make more time. You have to spend the money on the things you need in order to free up your own time and make your business more efficient.
Rock Paper Robot is an engineering boutique that specializes in kinetic furniture, lighting and installations. Kinetic furniture is any kind of decor that moves or has some illusion of movement. Their clients include individual buyers as well as commercial spaces.
At first the founders looked for every way to save money by doing things themselves. One example of how this backfired was when they tried to build a table even though they were not master finishers or woodworkers. The project ended up taking up a ton of time and did not come out the way they wanted at the end.
They then went to a friend just down the hall and in one day had the entire project finished and better than before. If they had paid him from the beginning the project would not only have turned out better but would have been done quickly.
The founders now realize that you really have to spend the money you need to in order to get the job done. What you’re really spending the money on is your time.
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You can find more video interviews like this here.
This interview was sponsored by and originally published on American Express Open Forum.
