By eliminating low-value work from your life, you can focus on more important things. Get rid of difficult customers and focus on driving your business instead.

To get your new year started right, I’d like to share with you what I’ve been taught by homemade bread, lawn mowers, and cheap customers. They’ve all taught me my time is valuable, and I have to protect it.

Bread

In this economy, money-saving tips and articles are hot. You can read such advice all over the web. I recently read one of the dumbest articles I’ve ever seen on this exact topic. The basic premise was you can save a lot of money by doing things yourself. The example they used was one of making homemade bread.

The basic math they used was you buy four loaves of bread per month at $2, which comes to about $100/year. Their brilliant idea was buy a bread machine for $60 and ingredients for about $10–15 a year, and you’d be saving bread in no time (pun intended).

 …