Selling Yourself On The Value Of Your Time

There’s one inherent advantage to being a full time, salaried employee that the self-employed rarely talk about: Even when you’re unproductive, you’re still earning money.

If you’re a full time employee, you probably just laughed to yourself. If you’re a freelancer or a self-employed entrepreneur, that knot in your stomach is the realization that you’re the one paying the price for less-than-productive days. When “actual results” directly drive your paycheck, you’re the one to lose when you’re unproductive, distracted, or working at less than the peak performance that keeps your rates high (and growing, right?).

And yet we all waste time. And we all pay for it.Until now. Here’s a freakishly simple way to sell yourself on the value of your time so you can focus on the things that are going to boost your bottom line: 

First, Get Clear On The Value Of Your Time

Your time is worth exactly this much:

Cash Money / Hours Worked = Your Rockin’ $DPH (Dollars Per Hour)

Now, in the last 30 days, how much did you earn? Stop reading, and think about this seriously. Don’t read any further until you do. How much cash crossed your hands (or how many orders came in) in the last month? Stop and think about it.

Now that you have that number firmly in mind, it’s time to get brutally honest. How many hours did you spend in the last 30 days doing business tasks or business-ish tasks?

Translation:
Business tasks = stuff that actually drove your business forward
Business-ish tasks = pointless stuff you did when you were supposed to be doing stuff to drive your business forward.

That’s right … those business-ish activities robbed you of the revenue generating goodness that you know and love. But you still gotta include them in the equation. And they bring that $DPH down, down, down.

Now for the math: Take the money you made in the last 30 days and divide it by the sum of both the slamming business hours and the profit-diluting “business-ish” hours.

And that’s what you’re worth this month, my friend. And that puts you in one of three spots:

Spot #1 – Your $DPH Is Oh-So-High

This may sound like rock music to your accountant’s ears, but it’s cause for alarm. If your time is worth $75 and hour and you realized that this week you spent 60 minutes scanning meaningless websites, you’ve got to come to grips with the fact that you just shelled out $75 for the privilege. Yay, you. You paid the same thing to watch those Daily Show clips on YouTube as well. Not a good place to be.

Your High $DPH Solution: Every time you feel the urge to get distracted, diverted, or derailed, tell yourself: “No way I’m trading $(your $DPH) for this!”

Spot #2 – Your $DPH is Flat And Average

If your $DPH has been hanging steady (and lower than you want) for a while now, it’s time to face the fact that it’s not going to get any bigger by itself. You’ve become complacent, yes, but there’s a way out of it – remind yourself that distraction = treading water, and get good and mad. Then do something about it. You can trigger that righteous anger like so:

Your Flat $DPH Solution: Every time you feel the urge to get distracted, diverted, or derailed, tell yourself: “This kind of garbage is exactly why my $DPH is flatlining. I’m going to focus on rustling up some new business instead.”

Spot #3 – Your $DPH is Keeping You Up At Night

Perhaps your business is new and tiny, or you’re just doing so much “business-ish” stuff that you’ve watered down your profits to an embarrassing low. You’re actually in the best place of all three of these spots. Why? Because you have the easiest path to rocking your $DPH straight up the charts.

Every hour you turn procrastination into action, you boost your $DPH. Every chunk of time you pour into building your skills sends your rates up. The best part about being in the pit is that there’s nowhere to go but up – and the trip can be as fast as you want it.

Your Low $DPH Solution: Every time you feel the urge to get distracted, diverted, or derailed, tell yourself: “I can instantly increase my $DPH by jumping back into the saddle or learning a rate-boosting skill. Huzzah.”

Did You Just Drive Your $DPH Up, Or Down??

Now you’ve got to make a choice – are you going to take what you just read seriously, and make the last 3 minutes time that will result in you driving your business forward faster, or are you going to make the time you spend on this blog a business-ish experience that drains that $DPH faster than me with a case of Guinness?