{"id":9598,"date":"2024-04-30T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-30T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=9598"},"modified":"2024-04-29T16:49:43","modified_gmt":"2024-04-29T22:49:43","slug":"building-a-mental-model-for-scale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/30\/building-a-mental-model-for-scale\/","title":{"rendered":"Building a Mental Model for Scale"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>As a teen I worked at Albertsons for a year or two (and frankly sometimes I still feel like I work for them in a different, manufactured-spend like, capacity). One day on the job I loaded groceries into the trunk of a new car for a finance guy in a snazzy suit. He offered some life advice from the world of finance:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>It takes just as long to do a big deal as it does to do a small deal.<\/p>\n<cite>&#8211; Snazzy suited finance guy<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s absolutely true in most business deals, but often it&#8217;s not true in manufactured spend. For example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>You can sometimes send well into five figures using a bill pay service in 30 seconds<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Waiting in line at Walmart to buy a $500 money order can take 10 minutes<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Talking to a credit card company&#8217;s robot to try and push a payment through can take 6 minutes<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Scrolling through a bunch of lame BankAmeriDeals double cash back offers for one that&#8217;s gameable (and will be hard to find) might take 5 minutes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>So, I&#8217;d like to offer a suggestion: For any manufactured spend techniques you&#8217;re active in, start to build a mental model for two things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>How much time it&#8217;ll take<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>How much you&#8217;ll earn<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>With that mental model, you&#8217;re in a good position to know roughly what you&#8217;re wage per minute is for any given activity, and you&#8217;ve got a quick way to decide whether something is worth scaling or even worth your time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Happy Tuesday!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-editorskit-rounded\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"512\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/image-27-1024x512.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-9600\" style=\"width:420px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/image-27-1024x512.png 1024w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/image-27-300x150.png 300w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/image-27-768x384.png 768w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/image-27.png 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/world\/americas\/crime\/tom-brady-sam-bankman-fried-ftx-lawsuit-b2532771.html\" class=\"ek-link\">Taking advice from a snazzy suited finance guy is never a bad idea right<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a teen I worked at Albertsons for a year or two (and frankly sometimes I still feel like I work for them in a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9598"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9601,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9598\/revisions\/9601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}