By Marlene Oulton
How many times as a busy entrepreneur have you said these words – “I don’t have time to do this!” or “I was going to get around to doing that but I ran out of time!” Time is a valuable commodity for everyone and small business owners are no exception. There are only so many available hours in the day in which to conduct your business and if you’re working ‘24/7’, you’re heading for a burnout and fast!
There are certain tasks that all of business owners simply shudder at the thought of doing. For some it might be the financial aspect of their business i.e. accounting and bookkeeping, or it could be answering emails or preparing letters of proposal to potential clients. We all have tasks that take up our valuable time and when we’re first starting out, we tend to do it all. But is it really worth our time to do everything and risk doing some of these things badly (or not doing them at all?) Sometimes we need to take a step back and reconnect with our goals for our businesses and focus on whether it is worth our time to be doing “everything”, or is it time to be considering outsourcing some of these daily tasks.
Let’s take answering emails and producing letters of proposal. First of all, consider how much actual time you spend checking and answering emails and sitting in front of a blank page in Microsoft Word trying to come up with the right words to win over that customer. Here’s an example of how much your time is worth and how much of your worth (or potential sales), you may be losing by doing it yourself.
Let’s say that you charge $60.00/hr. for your services/time and it takes you on average 5 hours a week to answer those emails and write letters.
5 hours x $60.00/hr. = $300.00 of your valuable time and potential revenue
Now, if you were to outsource that same amount of time to a trained professional, here is what it might cost you (depending on the complexity and task) -
5 hours x $ 25.00/hr. = $125.00
$300.00 - $ 125.00 = $175.00 savings to your business plus add any additional money you may have made by signing contracts with your customers while a trained virtual assistant/consultant took care of your administrative tasks.
Although you are spending money to outsource areas of your business, you are in fact gaining additional revenue in the process, as well as having some of the burden of running your business more efficiently taken off your shoulders. Also, you save your hard earned capital by not having to pay the required employers share of state/provincial income taxes; pension contributions; benefits or vacation pay, nor do you have to pay for the in-house employees lost time due to illness (or hanging around the water cooler discussing how their week-end went!).
One of the added bonuses of hiring a competent consultant is that you don’t have to provide them with their own office space in your place of business as well as the requisite computer, desk, chair, filing cabinet, printers etc. that they need to get the job done. It’s a ‘win-win’ combination. You get those tedious tasks done by a qualified consultant and they only charge you for the actual hours they’ve worked to complete the task.
For a fun way to find out how much your time is really worth, I recommend that you go to http://www.businessknowhow.net/bkh/timeprice.htm and fill in their quick survey to calculate the actual worth of your time.
And while you’re taking that survey, I’ll be spending my time here in my office, answering your emails and creating winning letters of proposal to your prospective clients.
Makes sense to me.
About the Author
Marlene Oulton, president of Write Choice Virtual Assistants, derives great satisfaction from assisting authors, writers, coaches and SOHO entrepreneurs produce clean, crisp and concisely written articles, newsletters, website copy or other literary works. She produces a quarterly Newsletter entitled “News and Views – From My Desk to Yours” which contains practical and often humorous articles on issues facing the small business owner. To receive her newsletter, please go to www.writechoiceva.com
