Ask an owner if admin is slowing them down and they will say yes. Ask them how much it costs and they go quiet.
That silence is the problem. You cannot fix a number you have never worked out.
The blended rate trap
Here is the maths most people never do.
Your time is worth something. If the business could not run without you, your hour is easily worth 90 to 120 dollars, often more. That is not ego. That is what your best hour produces.
Now look at what you actually spend those hours on. Chasing an invoice. Copying details into a spreadsheet. Booking a meeting over six emails. Formatting a report.
That is 30 dollar an hour work. And you are doing it with 100 dollar an hour time.
Every hour you spend down there is not just an hour lost. It is the gap between the two rates, gone.
A real example
Let me make it concrete. Take three normal time sinks.
- Invoice creation and chasing.
- Meeting prep and scheduling.
- Weekly reporting and admin catch-up.
Say each one eats two and a half hours a week. That is not a stretch. For most owners it is generous to the low side.
Three tasks. Two and a half hours each. That is seven and a half hours a week.
Value that at a careful 65 dollars an hour, well below what your real time is worth.
Seven and a half hours times 65 dollars is about 490 dollars a week. Call it 2,100 dollars a month. Some months more.
And that is only three tasks. Most owners have ten.
Why the number always shocks
When we run this with an owner, the figure is always higher than they guessed. Always.
Because the cost was never one big bill. It was hidden in a hundred small moments. Ten minutes here. Half an hour there. It never showed up on a statement, so it never felt real.
Once you see it as one number, you cannot unsee it. That is usually the moment the decision makes itself.
Find your number
We built a free audit that does this maths with you. No pitch. You answer a few questions about your week and we show you what your admin is actually costing.
Most people are surprised. Some are annoyed. All of them are glad they finally know.
The number is real whether you look at it or not. You may as well look.