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- The Performance Doctor: Money Isn’t About Time
The Performance Doctor: Money Isn’t About Time
The Founder OS Part 1 of 7: The secret 99% of entrepreneurs have missed.
Thomas Kauffman
August 26, 2025
Over the last few months, I’ve stopped trading hours for dollars.
It’s been the most challenging change I’ve done in practice, and it’s taken some practice - no pun intended; but has opened up quite a few new opportunities.
Most founders think money is a reflection of time spent.
The more time you spend with a patient, the more you can bill.
That’s true… until you run out of time.
Time is not infinite, and neither are you.
If you are like me, you want to spend time with your family, enjoy a few hobby’s, travel, save and live the good life while still helping patients.
You can’t quite do that, if you continue to trade time for money.
This is where 99% of founders will fail.
Most founders will stay broke because they will continue to sell their time instead of their results. Trust me, I started here too.
And unless you are selling to the ultra rich, or running a super high volume practice… you will burn out.
A few weeks ago, I came across a talk by a gentleman named Myron Golden. Where he made this point quite clear for me: “Money is just a certificate of performance.”
That is, your performance at producing outcomes.
The more valuable the outcome, the more money follows.
I am not going to tell you that you need to charge $350/hr or sell a personal training program for $6,500.00. (You could)
But I am going to share with you, one of my favorite stories about value:
A very old train engine broke down, and no one could repair it.
The owner of the train wanted it fixed fast.
They hired a brand new graduate from a prestigious university, and after days of inspections, pulling apart components and testing. He still wasn’t able to fix it. Thousands of dollars wasted.
Weeks went by.
Finally the owner heard about a retired Mechanical Engineer with over 30 years of experience who lived near by.
The Mechanical Engineer hesitated, and told the owner it wouldn’t be cheap, but that he could do it.
He asked a few questions, and inspected the engine very carefully, from top to bottom, front and back.
After seeing everything, the engineer unloaded his bag and pulled out a small hammer.
He knocked on something gently. Tap, tap, tap.
“Start it up,” he said.
Soon, the engine came to life again.
The engine has been fixed!
A week later, the engineer mentioned to the owner that the total cost of repairing was of $20,000.
"What?!" Exclaimed the owner "You did almost nothing. Give us a detailed bill."
The engineer sat down, grabbed a pen and paper and wrote down:
- Tap with a hammer: $2
- Know where to tap and how much to tap: $19,998
— Author Unknown.
This is the importance of appreciating one's expertise and experience. Those are the results of struggles, experiments and even tears and failures.
If you do a job in 30 minutes, it's because you have spent years learning how to do that in 30 minutes.
You are owed for the guaranteed outcomes, not the minutes you spend on something.
When you shift from trading time → creating outcomes, everything changes.
Now, here’s a quick exercise for you today.
Take about 30-45 minutes to think about this and save it somewhere, it will be useful later.
Write down 10 outcomes your clients get because of you.
Outcomes, not activities
Speak in transformations
From ____ to _____ in _____
Anchor your identity to service, not survival.
Reframe your elevator pitch
I help [avatar] go from [pain] to [result] in [timeframe] using [mechanism].
Next Tuesday: We’ll be diving into offers.
Until next time,
In health and strength,
Dr. Thomas Kauffman
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