How to Save Time and Money

Are you an Entrepreneur Spending Too Much Time on Money Sucking Tasks?

I had this very discussion with an industry colleague last week and this is something I often bring up in my coaching conversations.

Are you spending an inordinate amount of time, money and energy on tasks that are not income producing? If the answer is yes, you probably feel like you are run off your feet, that you have no time in the day to get everything done.

Let’s walk through a three step process to help you focus on getting organized so that your attention is focused on making money and not on energy and time sucking tasks.

First Step: What is Your Time Worth?

This is a quick exercise to get an understanding of what an hour or 30 minutes or 15 minutes of your time is really worth. This is a critical first step to getting your ‘time spend’ under control.

Step 1: How much do you make per year?

Step 2: How many hours did you spend making that money in that year? Include EVERY Hour, time spent when kids are in bed. Time spent commuting. Time spent away from the office not just in the office. Determine this amount for Weekly and Yearly.

Step 3: Subtract your estimated tax amount from your gross amount

Step 4: Divide the amount of hours into the amount of (net) money you made. Ex $100,000 divided by 40 hours per week = $2500/week

Step 5: Take the weekly average and divide by 5 (days per week). Then take that number and divide by 8 (hours per day) = Your Hourly Wage

What did you come up with?

Was it more or less than what you expected? This number should provide you with perspective now with everything that you are doing hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly.

Step 2: Tracking Your Time

This is easily the toughest part of this exercise, tracking every part of your day is consuming but it is necessary.

If you are accountable to your calendar, then this should be relatively easy, if you’re not, then it is going to be difficult.

During the call I had last week, we went through a very quick and easy way to track. My colleague is a Realtor and so I asked him to write down everything that he did to put a property on the MLS.

From there I asked him to figure out what he could and should be doing (things like client communication) and things some one else should be taking care of.

I asked him to separate the client facing tasks from the in front of the laptop type of tasks.

Once he has those sorted out, it becomes a simple exercise to assign what can be done by someone else to that person and to take on what he feels he needs to do.

Track everything you do in a day, hour to hour by putting it into your calendar and then staying true to the schedule. If you veer off, that’s ok, just make sure to make a note of it in a notebook or pad of paper.

You should be looking to track this time for a minimum of 1-3 months so that you have a solid understanding of what your day to day looks like. Each day as an entrepreneur is going to be different, there is going to be some overlap and some repetitive tasks.

We are looking for that kind of consistency so that we can determine what is a good use of time, money and energy throughout your day.

Side Bar: Success in Implementation

Success with this exercise is determined by how much you are willing to let go, trust is the number one issue amongst entrepreneurs when going through this kind of process to free their time.

You need to trust that the person you have hired to help you with your administrative type duties is up for the job, that they will be able to perform the task as good if not better than you.

If you don’t trust, you can’t assign or delegate. If you can’t delegate, you will be stuck in a never ending loop of frustration and exhaustion.

Step 3: Delegate

If you’ve tracked all of that data over the last 30-90 days you likely know now what needs to be delegated and what doesn’t.

The items that should be delegated are things in your day that can be taken on by someone else in your office, on your team or someone that you can hire to help.

The things that you should be doing are the income producing activities.

Make a list of the average of everything you did day in and day out, week in and week out.

Then identify the money making activities that you should be focused on. Identify the activities that someone else could be focused on and begin to delegate those responsibilities.

If you are unsure about who needs to do what, then bring in an industry colleague to help you go through the list. Hire a coach or a consultant to help you determine what you should be doing to move the company forward.

Here’s what I know, if you continue to wear all the hats required to run your business, you will be burnt out in no time and your business and income will suffer.

It’s time to get a handle on those money sucking tasks and work to identify where your super power truly is inside your organization.