Time.

It’s something that we seem to never have enough of, only to then not know where it went.

We, as humans, have decided that in our civilization that we need a way to track things, such as the exact moment the Sun is going to set on April 24, 2024, in Phoenix, Arizona. Time is the reason we have Leap Years and, my personal pet peeve, Daylight Saving Time.

However as Internet Marketers we sometimes forget that people out there have time restrictions that we have probably gotten away from. While we may not have to get up at a certain time each morning (other than to let the dogs out) others do. Others probably go to bed at a certain time because of their schedule the next day.

I’m a member of a Toastmasters group in the Dallas area. At the moment I write this sentence, 6 out of 8 meetings have run late this year. Ironically there is one member who joined as a guest on the first meeting of the year. This means that 75% of the meetings that have happened while they have been a member have run late. I’m actually surprised this person joined, because at the very first meeting they asked me if the meetings normally ran late. Seeing as how this hadn’t been a problem in the 18 months I’ve been a member, I said not to worry. How wrong I turned out to be.

I saw another example of this the other day on a webinar. It’s held every week, and a lot of the regulars are used to some chit chat between the host of the webinar, and that weeks guest. 5 – 15 minutes worth of banter back and forth, that really does serve a purpose, isn’t unusual. However, this particular webinar went 40 minutes before the training kicked in. Don’t get me wrong, some of the nuggets that were dropped during this period were very valuable. However, the webinar was advertised as lasting 1 hour.

As you might imagine some people started complaining. One mentioned they were on their lunch break, and had to go back to work at the top of the hour. Another had to pick up someone from the airport. Another person let out some vulgarities on the chat room, and left. Again, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that there was no valuable information in the first 40 minutes. However, a particular training was advertised, and that part of the webinar didn’t get going until 40 minutes into the hour.

Time. We do silly things with it sometimes. However let’s not forget that everyones time is valuable. While you may not have something urgent and pressing, and thus could afford to be 10 minutes late to an event, for someone else that could cost them a job, or a sale. If you say your going to be somewhere at a certain time, you need to be there. If you are going to call someone at a certain time, you need to call at that time. We have the technology now to send messages by talking to our cars. How hard it would it be to send a message to someone that you are running late? At least they would know, and could adjust their schedule.

I know many people will disagree with me here, but it’s important to respect the time of others. Do what you have to do in order to respect their time, and in the process you’ll gain their respect.