As a small business owner, I am always thinking about ways to save time and money (and ideally both). Too often, though, we think of “saving time” in our business in the abstract. Sure, it sounds nice, but it doesn’t pay the bills.
We put “time-saving” tools on the back burner and keep working away with less-efficient systems. To help make saving time feel more real, I wanted to share an example from my own life.
Doing the Math: Saving 5 Minutes a Day
In my personal life, I did a thing that saved me 5 minutes a day last year. Seems small, right? But I wanted to understand how much “actual” time I was saving and how this translated into days/time off/etc.
Basically, if I save 5 minutes a day for a year, I have saved 1,825 minutes a year. This equates to 30.4 hours. That’s roughly 3 days and 6 hours (if you are looking at an 8-hour work day). That’s just for one year. But I can save this same time each year for the rest of my life! If I live just 5 more years, I will have save 152 hours! That’s over 6 days… almost a full week of my life that I can do something else with!
So, then I got to thinking “wow,” what if I could save myself 5 minutes a day in my BUSINESS. How would this look different and how could I monetize it?
This was the resulting math I did.
5 minutes a day (assumptions: 50 wks/year @ 5/day work week = 250 days/year)
If you only save 5 minutes a day times the 50 work week year and 5 days per work week, you have saved 1,250 minutes per year = 20.8 hours a year. (50 weeks x 5 days a week x 5 minutes a day = 1,250)
Those are the hours. But what about money?
Turning Hours Into Dollars
You can plug and play with your own hourly rate. (While we only recommend hourly billing in a few instances, you should have an established rate so you can more easily prepare your project-billing proposals. If you need to learn more, check our replay about Transitioning from Hourly to Project-Based Billing.) Here is some math around a variety of hourly rates, so you can see how much money your saved time is worth.
$50/hr | 20.8 hours saved a year x $50/hr = $1040 saved
$100/hr | 20.8 hours saved a year x $100/hr = $2080 saved
$125/hr | 20.8 hours saved a year x $125/hr = $2600 saved
$150/hr | 20.8 hours saved a year x $150/hr = $3120 saved
$200/hr | 20.8 hours saved a year x $200/hr = $4160 saved
$250/hr | 20.8 hours saved a year x $250/hr = $5200 saved
Now comes the real fun.
Imagine if you were able to implement tools, systems, processes, etc. that would save you time during the year. Let’s just say you were able to implement ONE tool per quarter. Want to see the time saving from that alone?
If you save 5 minutes a day we already determined that in a year you would have saved 20.8 hours.
If you save 10 minutes a day, you would have 2,500 minutes a year which is 41.6 hours.
15 minutes a day is 3,750 minutes a year which is 62.5 hours.
20 minutes a day is 5,000 minutes a year which is 83.3 hours a year!
With all that free time, you can serve more clients, spend more time with your family, or even just spend an extra 20 minutes a day out in your garden. Sounds lovely, right?
So what’s stopping you? Let’s start saving some time!
Finding Ways to Save Time in Your Business
What tools and systems do you need in your business that will save you time, give you more hours to enjoy your life as a business owner, or serve more clients and make more money? There are many options with what we do with our time and money as small business owners…. it’s not always about money, and it’s not always about time. You have to make those choices for yourself. Having tools and systems in place to give you those options is the best!
I hope this helps you as you think about next steps in starting or growing a consulting company. If you’re looking to start saving time while still growing your business, Funding for Good offers webinars, conferences, an online community, and one-on-one coaching and mentorship. Check out our full offerings for purpose-driven nonprofit consultants and send us a message if you’d like to learn more!
