What's your return on time?

For the last 20 years, I've gone to a lot of conferences and peer groups. I've learned a lot in those rooms. Over time, though, I noticed they tend to have one thing in common. They assume the standard everyone is looking at, or striving to meet, is growth. Growth in top-line revenue, number of transactions, sales volume, and the number of people and employees on the team. That's what's platformed.

There's never much of a conversation around net profit or the overall health of the business. There's even less about what our marriages look like, how much time we're spending with our kids, or anything else we'd ultimately say, at the end of our lives, was most important.

The weight on a founder's shoulders

This is especially true for entrepreneurs and founders who own and are building their own businesses. With the weight of the world on our shoulders, we don't want to get behind, let a competitor eclipse us, or have people leave. Going backwards feels like failure.

So we put tracking, goals, and scorecards together. We review our KPIs and make sure we're hitting them annually, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily.

I'm all for that. And if we could be more transparent about profitability at these conferences, I'd be all for that too, because I think it paints a much better picture of the health of a business.

The one number I'd track

For me, though, if I had to pick the one measurable most directly tied to the health of both our business AND our life, it would be the return on our time as founders and owners.

Let me explain. What I mean by return on time is your dollar per hour.

When a founder starts documenting their dollar per hour for the current year, and then sets a goal to increase it the next year, it forces them to look at the whole business at once.

If we just grow for growth's sake, we could feasibly increase revenue, add employees, and add 10 or 20 hours to our work week, while profitability stays the same. When that happens, our dollar per hour goes down. That means less time with our family, less time in the relationships we care about, and, if it's important to you, less time in relationship with God.

What doubling it would take

Now flip it around. Say you document your return on time, and it turns out to be (insert any number) $250 per hour. You set a goal to double it, to $500 an hour, the following year.

To get there, you're forced to work smarter. You're forced to put a lens on:

1.) Profitability

2.) Process

3.) Systems

4.) Efficiencies

You might not get platformed at the next conference for growing your top-line revenue by 50%. At home, though, if your hourly doubles, you have the option to get paid the same amount of money as the previous year and work far fewer hours. That's time you can spend in the relationships that mean the most to you. Or, if your relationships are already getting the time they need, you can keep working the same hours and simply run a more effective business that earns a lot more.

Move it to the top of the scorecard

If you track a lot of things in your business but don't track your dollar per hour, I'm just challenging you to consider moving that measurable to the top of your scorecard. Put a magnifying glass on it, and watch how your business decisions start to change for the benefit of your company, customers, employees, and relationships.

I learned a lot of this the hard way, and I've shared some of that journey in my story. If you're a founder who's growing but feeling the cost of it at home, I'd love to talk it through with you. You can book an Unstuck Call anytime.

Thank you!

-Dave Hooke.