I hope Carl Sandburg won’t mind too much if I adapt his words: “Time is the coin of your genealogy. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”

One thing I have learned as a Case Manager at ProGenealogists® is the value of 60 genealogy seconds. I remember remarking to a friend the first week I started managing FedEx Kinko’s “You’ve heard of a New York Minute? … Well, that’s about 5 Kinko’s minutes.” When I worked at Kinko’s, I would frequently have up to 6 printers, 2 binding machines, and 14 people working on a single project in the same 60 seconds. We always strove to be at the top of our game so that we could efficiently, effectively, create a high quality product done right, done on time using our tools wisely.

At ProGenealogists®, it’s not so different, except we measure time in tenths of an hour – 6 minutes. What we do with those 6 minutes is our genealogy coin. It was a difficult concept for me to grasp, at first, because I started genealogy as a hobby over 15 years ago, and who counts minutes on the golf course? But as a professional genealogist, I have seen the value of measuring time.

Like at Kinko’s, a professional genealogist must be at the top of their game and ready to use time wisely. In the copy shop, anyone is welcome to go to the self serve area and play with the settings on the machine, experiment with paper types, and wonder how in the heck this thing works. But when they come to the counter, they trust that the person taking their order knows all that already, and they don’t need to waste time figuring out where the toner goes. They trust the professional to handle their job in the least amount of time and as effectively as possible.

A genealogy professional uses specialized tools and experience to get the job done efficiently. We are charged and entrusted by our clients to use our genealogical coin wisely. It’s an honor I’m pleased to have.