Time Management Tips for First-Time Entrepreneurs

Welcome to the glamourous life of being a founder — a life where you’re the first to be blamed and last to be paid, first in the office and last one out. It’s pretty amazing though isn’t it?

To help you out, here are three time management tips that can help you navigate the life of a first-time entrepreneur. Two of these tips are from hustle-gurus while the third is my own practice. Let’s get started!


Work Smarter Not Harder

If you haven’t heard about Tim Ferriss’ “4Hour Work Week”, it’s revolutionary. In his 4 Hour Work Week book, he introduces the D.E.A.L.

Definition: Replace self-defeating assumptions.

Elimination: Forget time management; learn to ignore the unimportant.

Automation: Learn to put cash flow on autopilot.

Liberation: Create freedom of location

Tim’s strategies make me look at my time as an investment. You only have a certain amount of time capital to spend each day, so you can use his D.E.A.L model as a due-diligence tool to decide, if I can be outsourced or automated it, or if that task is worthy of an investment of your time.

His D.E.A.L model has been working more for me as my business has grown, but at the early stages you have to do everything regardless of the available time capital.

Get. Shit. Done.

The other hustle guru is Gary Vaynerchuk and he’s got a very simple time management strategy, “You are one-hundred-f*****g percent in charge of your life. Stop f*****g b******g!”

Some people may not like his style but if you know Gary V, you know his videos saying “I don’t have time is not an excuse” or “If you have a full-time job, you are not an entrepreneur” or “Your time is the one thing you control.” Basically, stop complaining about not being able to manage your time and just make it work. Cut out anything that’s not your business and hustle your f******g ass off.

Find Your Groove

There are a ton of time-management “experts” who make YouTube videos, write books, etc. proclaiming that they have the answer for time management and how effective their method is.

After watching and reading loads of different expert opinions, I’ve come to the conclusion that not a single expert can accurately tell YOU how to manage your time.

They’re fantastic motivators with great strategies and ideas, but at the end of the day, YOU need to do what keeps you healthy, hungry, and hustlin’. Try a bunch of different things, and as some random millennial once said, “You do you.”

If you’ve got some strategies that are working for you, let’s connect! I’d love to hear them.

Alex is the founder of Ulyngo, an award-winning marketplace platform that enables universities to facilitate, manage, and monetize student-to-student commerce on their campus. Alex was the Global Student Entrepreneur Award Winner for Orange County and rated Top-25 Student Entrepreneur in the US by Entrepreneurs Organization. He is 22 years old and lives in San Francisco.

Posted by Melissa Brown

is a Product Marketing Manager at about.me. She recently traveled the world for a year and now works remotely from sun-lit, plant-filled cafes in her current city.