How do you Spend Your Time

In today’s business life and especially as a small business owner it seems that we all have a lot of hats to wear. How can we reduce time spent on tasks so we have more billable hours each month.

Written Oct 18, 2008, read 1713 times since then.

In today's business life and especially as a small business owner it seems that we all have a lot of hats to wear. Some fit better than others, but it seems that they all must be worn at some point in time. As for myself, being an independent consultant, I have done my fair share of reading on the subject in an attempt to answer questions about marketing to how to prices good and services as well as strategies for reducing time spent on the tasks that do not make us money.

This is the real crux of this article and later survey. From what I have been reading and I think that it is fairly accurate, most consultants come back to the 1000 hour rule. That in a given year working 40 hours a week one would have 2000 hours in a year devoted to work. For consultants this breaks down into the following. 1000 hours (roughly ½ the time) working on billable items. The other 1000 hours are spent supporting the business (taxes, accounting, marketing, publicity, managing day to day operations, etc.) The end product of the 1000 hour rule is that it helps to establish what to charge. For example, if you wish to make $75,000 a year then you divide that figure by the 1000 possible billable hours to arrive at the fact that you need to charge $75.00 an hour.

This however does not take into account whether the market will bear that price or not. Say you are a massage therapist and others are charging $50.00 an hour, then you most likely will not be able to charge the $75 an hour that you wish. On the flip side if you are an electrician and your competition is charging $100 an hour, you might want to consider charging close to their rates.

What I am really curious about, and that of which I have crafted my own survey is to find out how people would rate themselves on several factors.

1.) Where do they spend their time?

2.) Do they think that this above 1000 hour rule applies to them?
a. If not, why not

3. How or what are they basing their rates for product or services on currently?
a. How effective do they think that this strategy is working for their business.

So I would ask that people would go to my survey page and fill out my survey. I will leave the survey open till Nov 20th, 2008, whereas I will then compile the numbers/answers and write another article with the results from the survey.

Filling out the survey automatically enters you into a drawing. The winner will be randomly selected and will receive a 7” Digital Photo Frame. Winner will be notified by email on Monday November 24th, 2008. The link below for the survey will take you to the survey, as well as more information about the Digital Photo Frame.

I am looking forward to your responses to the survey and compiling the data. I would like to examine ways that we can all reduce time spent on non-billable tasks. I think that we all would like to find ways to increase our billable hours, and increase profits.

Here is the link to the survey. If the link is not working, please copy and paste into your browser.

http://netvirtualsupport.com/biznik/biznik.htm

I look forward to everyone's responses and I appreciate your time filling out the survey!

Learn more about the author, Timothy Knuth.

Posted by Thomas Willa, Renton, Washington | Oct 22, 2008

Timothy This is a gret article for a start up. I've read a few books on starting a photography business but they all made it complicated. I thank you for sharing and taking the time to give an understandable explanation. I think your survey would work great for a weekly tracker. Best regards
Posted by Mike Saunders, MBA, Denver, Colorado | Oct 25, 2008

Great points! Something I tell my marketing coaching clients is to watch for things you do frequently that you can do once and systematize it. For example if you tend to answer the same types of questions to new customers.....create a FAQ document or email series and provide that to all new clients ...they love it because you are thinking ahead of them....you love it because it'll save you time!
Posted by Timothy Knuth, Bothell, Washington | Oct 25, 2008

That is great advice! I am always on the prowl for things that can be automated or as you put it... systematize.

I even have a good example. One of my clients puts together home shows, and I gained them as a client to build their first ever web site. The selling point was that I could decrease their time on the phone. They were constantly being called to give directions to the home show, and of course all the people wanted to know prices, hours, etc.

So I explained to them how we can put all this information on the web site and people can find it for themselves. The web site worked great (of course we had our little bugs to iron out) but bottom line the phone calls decreased, the number of people attending the shows increased and life has been great ever since.

By placing the information that most people will want to know in an easy to find location one can increase productivity and lower costs. This happened with my client.

It took a couple of years to get their clientele comforatable with going to the web site, and this is a great case for monitoring web statistics (for by my watching the web site trends I was able to give valuable feedback to my client on the success of this media). In the end it has paid off huge. The investment of a new web site, monthly hosting fees, etc all paid for themselves and much more in a very short amount of time.

What items can you automate or provide on your web site to make life easier?
Posted by Timothy Knuth, Bothell, Washington | Nov 17, 2008

Only a few more days to complete the survey and be entered to win a 7" Digital Photo Frame.

I need your data from the survey, so please fill out the survey

Thanks