Did you realise that 7% of 2010 has been and gone? January has gone before you blinked an eye.

On top of that Daniel Munslow has just said that I should take into account time lost over the World Cup and the traditional South African shut-down for December and its an even bigger chunk of time lost!

Suffice to say it has made me very aware of time and resources.

I was just looking back on some of the plans and budgets that I drew up at the start of the year and it struck me how quickly time moved before work was turned into equiries which were turned into money in the bank.

I know I’m not the only one who made grandiose plans in January – there are plenty of people who have mentioned on Twitter that they had big aspirations for the year and it just served as a reminder to me that time is such a critical part of a start-up businesses make-up.

Every day, minute, hour, month or week that passes where you are not selling your brand and monetising your offering is a day closer to the point where you close your doors.

There is a girl who recently asked for some advice around starting her small service business. She had a lot of time for things like marketing stuff and “brand building” but had no real urgency around getting the invoicing out for the little business she had got and offering attractive terms to get that cash in her bank.

I’ve had to try and emphasise to her that all the fun things count for absolutely zilch if there is not money in the bank.

Every single hour in every day for an SME counts – especially if you are trying to bootstrap the business.

I know it sounds pedantic but how often as a business owner do you corner your staff and ask them whether they’ve delivered on what they were supposed to? How often do you check up exactly what it is that they have done in the last hour?

In a big business people can hide behind a machine that is rolling over on its own momentum, but you don’t get the same luxury in a small business.