Work for $1,000 an Hour

I work as a consultant, and here’s something I’ve consistently heard from my remodeling clients over the last several months: I’m busy! There’s so much to do to keep up!

Perhaps you can relate. If so, you need to make sure that you’re focused on $100-per-hour and $1,000-per-hour work while making sure to delegate the $10-per-hour work. Here’s what I mean by that: Track the way you spend your time this week and next. Either print out a sheet of paper with the day divided into 30-minute intervals, or, better yet, download an app that allows users to track their activities. There’s a large selection of free apps designed for this purpose.     

Record what you are doing, and next to each action indicate whether it’s “worth” $10, $100, or $1,000. Here’s how you determine that. 

Examples of $10 work: Depositing money in the bank, taking out the trash, printing invoices, any data entry, picking up supplies or permits, etc. 

Examples of $100 work: Creating an estimate for a potential client, reviewing a job cost report, setting up the schedule for an upcoming kitchen remodel, leading a pre-construction conference and handing off the project from sales to production, ordering custom cabinets for a client, communicating a change order to a client, etc. 

Examples of $1,000 work: Any in-person meeting with a new prospect, presenting a design or proposal to a homeowner, planning business strategy and reviewing financials, networking for your business, etc. 

As the remodeling business owner, you need to figure out a way to delegate the $10-per-hour work. Your time is too valuable to be spending it on tasks that can easily be accomplished by someone else with less skill, training, and investment in the business. 

As for the $100-per-hour work, hopefully you have someone on your team who can take on many of these duties. This work requires experience and a high level of competence to correctly complete it, but as the leader of the business, you want your time to be focused on ... $1,000-per-hour work! These are the activities that no one in your business can do as well as you can; the tasks that are entirely dependent on your personal vision and expertise, such as selling a new prospect on your company. It’s the time invested in working on your business versus in your business. 

So, give your schedule a hard look and start focusing on how to delegate more $10-per-hour (and $100-per-hour) work to others. It’s key to keeping your business moving forward and ensuring that your family, friends, and golf clubs and fishing poles still remember your name.

Kyle Hunt is owner of Remodel Your Marketing, a Michigan-based consulting firm that works exclusively with remodelers to implement marketing and sales systems.