Success creates opportunities, but not all of them are right for you. In episode #1202 of The BIGG Success Show, learn a simple framework to decide what deserves your yes.
[George] One of my earliest businesses was a construction business. We found two houses that we planned to buy, remodel, and sell. (“Flipping” wasn’t a popular term back then.) The seller was facing a significant cash flow squeeze, due to over-expansion.
We completed the acquisition of the two properties. But then, another opportunity presented itself. It was a vacant lot that we could build a speculative (“spec”) house on. So, instead of building a house for a specific customer, we built the house and then looked for a buyer.
My initial instinct was to pass on the spec house. But I’m not a “pass” kind of guy. Besides, all three properties made me feel like saying “No” would mean missing out on an opportunity to make more profit. So I said, “Yes”.
At first, it felt energizing. Productive. Successful even.
https://biggsuccess.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/How-to-Know-Which-Opportunities-to-Say-No-To.png430448George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Fosterhttps://biggsuccess.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/BIGG-Success-Nurturing-Your-Inner-Entreprener.jpgGeorge Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster2026-06-02 08:38:332026-06-10 17:21:37Knowing When to Say No to Opportunities
When we think talk about capital for a business, we usually think about money. One timeless wealth-building secret is to use other people’s money, commonly referred to as OPM.
A lot of businesses fail in 5 years or less. We’ve survived 14 years.
It’s not been easy, and it’s not come without great challenges: We’ve survived the great recession, and the great pandemic. Not to mention the common obstacles to business growth. But we are still here, so let’s pull out the Professor’s whiteboard for our top 3 business survival tips…
In the hit movie, Wall Street, Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas) said to his protégé, Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen):
“The key to the game is capital reserves. If you don’t have enough, you can’t piss in the tall weeds with the big dogs.”
How’s your access ability?
We hear it all the time – cash is king. But it’s not just cash that matters; it’s also access to capital.
Large companies generally have that. Small business people often don’t.
So it’s crucial to manage your cash flow wisely. Make sure you’re getting a return on every dollar that goes out your door. Because…
Even if an outlay goes to your Income Statement as an expense,
it should still deliver a return to you or it’s not worth spending the money.
In addition, build up your reserve borrowing capacity. Protect your credit rating like you would any other asset. Then you’ll be able to take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves.
Watch your debt ratios so you could always tap into some money if need be. But also be aware that …
https://biggsuccess.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Leverage-this-instead-of-finances-for-BIGG-Success.jpg244465George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Fosterhttps://biggsuccess.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/BIGG-Success-Nurturing-Your-Inner-Entreprener.jpgGeorge Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster2013-05-14 05:00:512021-11-15 14:29:09Cash Used to be King
Last time, we looked at the two most common ways to analyze a potential project. We focused on the money side which works great for business decisions because the cost of time is included implicitly.
But if you’re a business owner, do you include the value of your time in your calculations? How about when you’re making a personal decision? It’s important to add time into the equation.
To do that, follow this process:
Step 1: Estimate project hours. How much time will you spend if you do this project?
Step 2: Select your alternative activity. What would you do if you weren’t working on this project?
Step 3: Calculate your opportunity cost per hour. Your opportunity cost per hour is the amount of money you could earn (or not spend) per hour on the alternative activity you chose in Step 2.
For example, if you would watch TV instead of working on this project, then that time wouldn’t be valued at much. Maybe, instead of watching TV, you would clean your house. Now that’s worth something!
How much would you pay somebody to clean your house? How many hours would it take you to do it yourself? Divide the amount you would pay someone to do the work by the number of hours it would take you to do it yourself to get your opportunity cost per hour.
Step 4: Determine the total cost of your invested time. Multiply the number of project hours (Step 1) by your opportunity cost per hour (Step 3). That’s the value of the time you will invest in this project. This should be added to the money you will invest to find your total investment.
Example – Getting certified (Part II)
Let’s look at the same project we considered yesterday – you decide to go back to school and get certified for some specialty. Here are the details:
Cost: $2,000 Incremental income: $2,000 in Years 1 through 3 (then you retire) Opportunity cost of your capital: 6%
Now let’s add in the time component. Assume that, if you put the same time into another activity instead of this certification program, you would expect to earn $2,000. That’s the opportunity cost of your time. So instead of an investment of $2,000 (as mentioned above), your investment is really $4,000.
Payback period doubles
We see that your payback period is two years. You’ll be fully compensated for your invested time and money by the end of the second year. But remember, when we didn’t factor the value of your time into the equation, your payback period was only one year. So it doubles in this case.
Net Present Value falls
We said yesterday that calculating the Net Present Value (NPV) was a better way to determine whether or not you should do a project. In this case, with the value of your time factored in, the NPV is about $1,300 as shown in this screenshot from Microsoft Excel:
As you may recall – if our NPV is greater than $0, then we take on the project. That’s the case here so we would want to do this project. In fact, even factoring in our time, this project – under the assumptions we’ve made – would return 23%. That’s a pretty good return on our time and our money!
But not nearly as good as the 84% we thought it was when we weren’t placing any value on our time. That’s why it’s so important to include our time. As we said, businesses do this implicitly because they have to pay people to do projects. But when we’re taking them on ourselves, we have to be sure to place the appropriate value on our time. We forget this too often … to our own detriment.
Now you have the ammunition you need to determine whether or not you should take on that project you’re considering!
We thank you so much for reading our post today. Join us next time when we share a magic elixir we just discovered … it’s success in a can! Until then, here’s to your bigg success!
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
