CANMORE, ALBERTA – The young underdog had gone from 0-2 to
4-2 against the “King of Clay”! I had to stop everything and actually watch the match instead of following the score line.
Before I knew it, 30 minutes had gone by in a flash.
Say what?
2 things going here for you – one which will definitely
make you money.
Number one, I am a big tennis fan. And right now, the second Grand Slam of the season is playing in Paris – the French Open. And the “King of Clay” is Rafael Nadal, who owns a 104-2 win-loss record at this tournament and 13 Titles,
to go with his other 7 Grand Slams.
No one comes close to this record. And none likely will.
The young gun was an Italian, Jannik Sinner, who at 19, was in only his second French Open and already ranked in the top 20 in world.
So, to see the young gun actually testing and besting the great one on clay – well, the world stops…..and it probably cost me $250 plus ….
And here is your lesson of the week.
The number of Time “Vampires” lurking to suck the productive juice out of you today is legion. Used to be just email, phone and employees/colleagues. Now, you’ve got social media on steroids: blogs,
podcasts, twitter, Facebook, SnapChat, TikTok et al; all working to distract you with the latest and greatest tragedy and alert.
From the Chinese or Russians are spying on you; to win the lottery if you get the Vaccine to oops, this Vaccine has the worst adverse effects than all the vaccines from the past 15
years!
True or not True?
Who cares?
You’ve got a business to run, a family to feed and clothe, employees to pay for and clients, customers or patients expecting you to be there for them.
So, you’ve got to protect your time even more than ever before.
This was the point I tried to hammer home with members of our Street Smarts MBA coaching
group last week. One of the key concepts is called, what is your “hourly rate”?
This is basically the rate which you need to earn to achieve your Base Earnings Target.
Here it is in a nut-shell.
Say you want to achieve $120,000 for the year. If you worked 2000 hours a year (this is optimistic but makes the calculation easier) then your average rate is $60/hour. Annual amount divided by total
hours.
BUT – this is woefully low.
Why? Because, you are not, and will never be, fully productive – for all of those hours. In fact, top CEOs report that they are lucky if they get 45 minutes a day of truly productive time. They are constantly being
pulled into meeting after meeting, briefing after briefing – with no real progress made at any of them.
You, well, if you are a solopreneur or owner of a business with less than 10 employees – you probably are more productive than that.
But not that productive.
Most of your time will be spent on low-paying admin work; leaving voicemails, writing and reading emails, returning phone calls, writing up proposals. And wasting time like my example with the
tennis.
Being generous, let’s say you are productive one third of the time.
That means, your real hourly rate is 3 x $60 (from our example) or $180/hour.
Pin that number above your monitor, make it visible everywhere. In fact, why not narrow it down to the ¼ hour ($45) or the minute => $3 dollars.
So, every time someone asks you, “…Gotta minute…?” think to yourself, is it worth a deluxe cup of java and will it really only be a minute?
Probably not – so, say “No”, and give them a link to schedule a call.
Every task you do, ask yourself, would you pay your hourly rate for someone else to do that work?
If not, find someone else who can do it cheaper, as soon as possible. Free yourself up for your most productive work.
To your health and success!
- Hugh
The Profit Accelerator
HughTafel.com
P.S. This whole hourly rate thing goes even deeper – into what activity you need to do get the number of clients, customers or patients you want, including the value you need to place on each and every prospect.
Join me and my co-host, Sonia Dumas tomorrow, at 11:00 MT on our live show where we’ll delve into this exact topic.
=> https://thesalesexpertschannel.com/dumas-tafel-show/