Vita's Tip in 10: Do you know where your time goes?

Hello, hello, friend! Welcome to a new episode of Vita’s Tip In Ten. Today I’m going to share with you a tip on why time tracking in your business is vital and necessary, but not in the way it is normally utilized.  

Most people associate time tracking with billable hours. So the reason you track your time is so you can use this to prepare your invoices and bill your clients. It’s not super common for us as window treatment professionals, since most of our projects are product based. Within the home industry as a whole it’s quite common and is how many designers and architects charge their clients and bill for their services. 

The reason I want to encourage you to use time tracking in your business is not to bill for your services.  

The reason you, as the business owner, need to utilize time tracking is to identify where your time is being spent, and what activities are taking up what percentage of your work week. And as your business grows, and you find yourself working more and more hours, it will become even more important to know where and how that time is being spent…and identify areas that you can save those increasingly precious pockets of time. 

So what are those activities that take up your time that you should be tracking? 

Well, that will depend on your type of business and the role you fulfill in it.  

If you are a solopreneur, and you are doing all the things, wearing all the hats, and fulfilling every role in your business, you will track all the hours for all the activities. 

If you are a CEO with a team, like me, and you have a window treatment specialist, an administrative assistant, a fabricator, and an installer, the hours and activities you track will be somewhat different and separate from those tasks performed by your team. 

But for the sake of today’s topic, I’m going to step back in time and share some experiences and examples from when I was a solopreneur about 5-6 years ago.  

So in those days, I had about 13 categories for my activities that I tracked, which were: 

Client appointments, creating estimates, purchase orders, production/work orders, driving, client communication, workroom communication, installations, marketing, bookkeeping, admin, SOP’s, and email management.   

And when I tracked my time, and where the hours were spent, one of the most time-consuming activities was, believe it or not, driving. And if you are a shop- at-home window treatment pro, then you know exactly what I mean when I say my car was where I spent a big portion of my time.  

Another activity that was taking up a ton of my hours every week, which is probably something my full-service workroom listeners can identify with, is installations. In those days, I went to every install. And when I took the time to really track and analyze where my time each week was spent, I realized that the installations were a big category. 

So, why does this matter? Once you have this information, and you’ve tracked where all your time goes each week, what do you do with it? 

There are 2 reasons this information is important, and vital to your business and happiness. Especially if you are someone who constantly says or thinks, “I have no time!” or “Where does the time go!” and if you find yourself working a lot of nights and weekends, and are starting to feel resentment about the long hours. 

So the first reason is visibility. When you take the time to track the hours, and categorize what activities you spend your time on each week, it shines the spotlight on the tasks that take up the majority of your time.  

And I am telling you friend, the results, especially if you’ve never taken the time to track task hours before, may shock you. Those tasks that you always think are “quick and easy”, or just take a “minute” of your time? I am telling you, from experience, that nothing takes “just a minute”. And every minute spent on something is a minute taken away from something else. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that anything in your business truly only occupies a few minutes of your time…it simply isn’t true! 

And then the second reason this information is important, is that once you have identified those tasks taking up your time, and how much time you spend on them, you can choose to take action. You can look at how your time is spent with a critical eye and ask yourself, 

Am I happy with this? 

Should I be spending this much time on these activities? 

Am I being paid enough to compensate me fairly for the amount of time it takes me? 

And, the most important question, “Is my time being spent on activities that generate money for my business, activities that will help me reach my goals?” 

Going back to my own time tracking 5 or 6 years ago, when I realized how much of my time was being spent on installations, I had a decision to make. Because I was absolutely tapped out on hours – and we all know there just literally are not enough hours in the day – I knew something had to give and I needed to find ways to save time. And since installations were a huge percentage of my work hours, I realized that I had two choices.  

I would either have to stop going to every single install, or I was going to have to start saying no to some projects. 

And because I had made the decision to scale my business, saying no to projects and opportunities was not something I was willing to consider. So as hard as it was, I knew I needed to stop going to every single install and leave things in the capable hands of the installer. And it was really hard at first! I’m sure that you know exactly how I was feeling. But I took it in baby steps, and started with the really simple installs, or the commercial jobs where the client wasn’t there, and the installations for designers that I had a really strong relationship with. 

And I know, and I totally understand, that for some of you listening, this idea of not being there at your installs is a very scary thing, and a really hard thing to let go. But I am telling you, if you find yourself short on time, this is best way to add hours back into your week. 

Another example of a way to save hours, is to outsource your bookkeeping. This comes up every semester in my LuAnn University class, Systems Driven Operations. Which, by the way, starts in May and registration just opened this week! Visit www.luannuniversity.com to learn more. 

Anyway, without fail, in every class, when we talk about outsourcing your bookkeeping for better efficiency and operations, about 50% of my students insist that “it doesn’t take much time, I need to do it myself”. And every class, I say “Nope!” It’s not a good use of your time, and it absolutely does not need to be done by you. This is one of the first and easiest things to outsource to save yourself time. 

The biggest takeaway today, is that I want you to be able to identify those tasks that truly do need to be done by you.  Those are the tasks that are financially beneficial for your business AND the tasks that you enjoy. The goal is always that those two factors intersect: the tasks you enjoy are the ones that generate revenue for your business. 

I also want you to realize that time tracking is not a forever, every day for the rest of your life activity – so don’t feel overwhelmed by the idea! All it really takes is a week, perhaps two to accommodate any anomalies in your week, which can be done using spreadsheets – my preferred method of course – or an app, such as Harvest. The goal is that it gives you the information you need to make decisions – decisions that will, hopefully, lead to time savings and benefit you in your business and personal life. 

Thank you so much for listening today! I really hope you enjoyed today’s tip, and that you’re looking forward to trying it out for yourself. I’d love to hear what activities you found most time consuming, and which ones really surprised you.  

As always, I would LOVE to hear your feedback!  Email info@luannnigara.com and tell us, how are you feeling? What tips have you tried? Have they helped you overcome a particular challenge? Do you have question or problem you need help with?  And in the meantime I’ll be looking forward to bringing you a new episode of Vita’s Tip in Ten next Thursday. See you next time!