There are plenty of ways that an employees can calculate what their time is worth based on mathematical formulas. But as a business owner, the formula becomes a little more complicated. Once you have determined the value of your time, you can make choices about the things you are doing in your business, and if certain tasks are worth doing yourself or having someone else do them.
Using the Realized Income Methods to calculate the value of your time, you need two numbers:
1. The amount of time you spend to earn money.
2. The amount of money you earn during that time.
Once you have calculated the value of your time, you can then be better informed on making decisions like:
- Should you take the non-stop flight and save two or three hours, or do you take the flight with a stopover (wasting an hour between flights) and save $100 on the cost of the ticket?
- Should you pay someone $20 or $30 to line up for you at the electronics store customer service desk, or should you spend several hours on the telephone dealing with customer service?
- Should you spend two hours working with a customer that will pay you $1,000 immediately (if you get the work), or spend a day working on a new business concept that could potentially generate $10,000 or more over the next year?
To learn more about the value of your time, be sure to visit James Clear’s website https://jamesclear.com/value-of-time.
The writing of our blog on this topic was inspired by some calculations done by one of our serviced office tenants who calculated that he saved his business several thousands per year by them not having to manage his office and take on the responsibilities that come with operating a functional office environment. He looked at all the large and small (but time-consuming) chores that came with operating an office space.
Let’s start with the large chores when setting up an office:
- Hours spent looking at and choosing office furniture
- Hours spent with contractors setting up the placement of walls and utilities
- Hours spent researching telephone systems and dealing with sales representatives
- Hours choosing office equipment such as network printers, photocopiers and fax machines
Those might sound like small tasks, but when you add up the time you spent planning your office, you should know how much time you have taken away from keeping your business going. By using an office business centre that is already set up and ready to move in, those tasks are no longer your problem.
So what about the day-to-day operations of your office? There are tasks that are not worth your time and better left to the operational experts of a serviced office facilitator.
- Do you really need to spend your time being bothered with having to call the photocopier company about maintenance of the machine, or having to monitor it to see if you are low on toner?
- Do you really need to spend your time dealing with an Internet service provider when you have a problem with your connection?
- Do you really need to spend your time in hiring and managing a live receptionist to answer your business phone calls and greet your company visitors?
- Do you really need to spend your time worrying if there is enough toilet paper in the restrooms, or if there is a fresh pot of coffee ready for you, your staff or your visitors?
There are plenty of other administrative tasks that are not worthy of your time – time that you can spend selling more to new customers or servicing existing clients. This is why most office business centres like Telsec offer secretarial and administrative tasks on an a-la-carte basis. This also means not having to hire administrative staff and calculate or justify their value to your business.
This week’s blogs will be about time management, including “Time Management Tips for Inbound Phone Calls” and “Time Management Tips for Outgoing Calls.“