What the Heck Are You Doing?

One thing that always comes up with my coaching clients is the subject of how they’re spending their time. And how their people are spending their time. Often, they don’t really know.

That’s okay, I guess, if they don’t care if they’re making any money or not.

So do you really know how time is being spent in your business? If you’re not billing for hours, and fewer of us are doing that these days, I’ll bet you don’t, and I’ll bet you have all sorts of excuses why it’s too hard to track it, too.

“I do so many different things, it would be impossible to write it all down.”
“I don’t want my people spending their day tracking their time, I want to pay them to work.”
“That’s so ‘corporate.’ I didn’t start my own business to be a time Nazi.”

I hear you, I hear you. But I invite you to try a little test, and see if you don’t agree with me that:

productivity = profitability

and when you own a service business, your time is your greatest productivity tool.

Try this test
For 3 days, or a week if you can do it, keep track of everything you do. It doesn’t have to be pretty or organized, you can just carry a little spiral pad around, and every time you change functions, write down the time and what you’re doing. It might look like this:

8:30 am coffee
8:45 am organize day
9:00 am phone calls to clients
10:15 am run to post office
10:45 am write new website copy
12:15 pm lunch
etc.

When you think you’ve gathered enough info (at least 3 to 5 normal work days), go back and look it over. Highlight the time you’re spending on income-producing activities — things you can either bill for or sell.

Then go through it again and highlight the time you’re spending on bringing in income-producing work — marketing your company or prospecting for new clients — this time in another color.

You can pretty much assume the rest of the time is non-income producing time.

How do you stack up?
Take the total amount of time you’ve tracked and figure your scores for:

% of time spent on income-producing activities
% of time spent on generating income-producing activities
% of time spent on non income-producing activities
These 3 should total 100% of your time

Most entrepreneurs are appalled by the amount of time they spend doing non-income producing activities. Really, someone else should be doing that stuff.

As the owner, your time should be split between doing income-producing activities and generating income-producing activities, depending on the size and type of your business. When you’re done with your own test, give it to your team members — you need to know what the heck they’re doing, too.

I’m not going to give you percentages to aim for, I don’t know you or your business (but we can do a no-cost Laser Coaching session, if you like). I’m just saying you need to take a look at what you’re spending your time on. And if you want more income, you need to spend more of your time on activities that will produce it, and less of your time on activities that won’t.