Busy leaders who spend all their time on revenue-retaining activity rather than revenue-generating activity are in trouble!
Let me preface this blog post with this:
This blog is mostly helpful to busy leaders who can directly impact their income based on their own activity. Meaning that if these leaders did less administrative work, they could do more revenue-generating (billable) work.
Now, let’s rewind…
Last November I tweeted about a threshold of income, where it becomes essential for busy leaders to get administrative help. Here’s the tweet and a reply:
I answered Brian with this oversimplification:
“Simple. More time growing means less time maintaining. If you pay someone else to help you maintain, you can focus more on growth and the flywheel gains momentum.”
But I’m not sure that was helpful enough, so let me break it down like this:
- $60K/yr, at 40 hours a week, is nearly $29/hr.
- But that’s not all revenue-generating activity
- Most of it is probably revenue-retaining activity.
Here’s a 2-step process to increase that hourly rate!
1. Work 1 less hour each day with the same output!
Wait… that was just one step!
So let’s revise that. Above you’ll find the 1-step process for increasing your hourly rate.
Working 1 less hour a day with the same output, puts that $60K/year rate around $33/hr.
“Micah, that’s ridiculous!”
Is it?
In my experience, work often expands to the time allotted.
Think about it, when you go on vacation, things get done before you leave that you would normally do in the time you take off. Maybe not perfectly, but you do the essentials.
What if you just did the essentials + focused MORE time on REV-GEN activity?!
Still think that’s ridiculous? 
Let’s shift our mindset from:
I get paid for all work-related activities.
To:
I’m not paid for client acquisition (REV-GEN / investment-time)…
I’m paid for client deliverables (REV-RET / paid-time)
I don’t know your numbers, but let’s say you spend 80% of your time delivering and 20% of your time acquiring.
That’s 80% paid-time and 20% investment-time.
At $60K a year, your shift in mindset has now increased your hourly rate from nearly $29/hr to around $36/hr and given you an extra 8 hours a week to invest in future revenue by way of client acquisition.
In reality, has anything changed?
Yes. Your mindset.
You’re beginning to shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. Which is a mindset that will allow you to borrow your own time to invest into future growth.
But there’s a byproduct as well…
You’ve started to segment your activity into categories that you can document with processes and give away ownership of those processes to others on your team.
Need help adding a fractional Executive Assistant to your team? Start here.
I hope this mindset shift gives you greater revenue and renewed focus today!
-Micah Foster, Co-Owner
P.S. The reason I picked $60K/yr is because that’s what I was stuck at for almost a decade before getting my own assistant and now I have two that support me directly. I could not do what I do without their consistent support