This past week I was offered a job as a Senior Executive within a firm I admire. They came to me offering lots of flexibility—I could arrange my time and spend my energy just as I liked as long as the job got done.

Tempting, right?

It was at first, but then I began thinking about “opportunity costs”.

What is an “opportunity cost”? Exactly what it sounds like: the cost of an opportunity.

In this case, the cost of taking advantage of this opportunity would be putting my own dreams on hold to make someone else’s dreams come true.

I realized pretty quickly this wasn’t something I was willing to do.

Let me give you another example from a client who, although she now runs one of the largest and most successful real estate companies in the world, started out scrambling– taking any and all jobs for fear that this opportunity would be her last. The trouble with this was that these smaller jobs were sucking away time and attention from pitching the big projects—the reputation-making deals.

Given that, she mandated the following as a founding principle of her company: “Small projects take just as much (and maybe more) time and effort as big ones, so think big.”

Now I know it can be hard to wait for the big jobs. It can also feel easier to hitch your wagon to someone else’s star.

But until you begin to consider that your time is as valuable as your money it will be difficult to make your dreams come true.