Speaker 1: Have you ever thought about breaking down your day into
Speaker 1: what are the most valuable tasks that you do and
Speaker 1: the least valuable ones. If you're like most people, you've
Speaker 1: probably break down your annual salary into an hourly rate.
Speaker 1: Or if you're a business owner or freelancer, perhaps you've
Speaker 1: divided annual revenue into the number of hours that you
Speaker 1: work to get a similar calculation. Perry Marshall, one of
Speaker 1: the most expensive business strategists in the world, has spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time thinking about this because for him,
Speaker 1: there is a completely different way of looking at this equation.
Speaker 1: My name is doctor Amantha Imber. I'm an organizational psychologist
Speaker 1: and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this
Speaker 1: is how I work a show about how to help
Speaker 1: you do your best work. On today's My Favorite Tip episode,
Speaker 1: we go back to an interview from the past and
Speaker 1: I pick out my face for a tip from that interview.
Speaker 1: In today's show, I speak with Perry about identifying ten dollar,
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars and ten thousand dollars per hour tasks,
Speaker 1: and we chat about how we can do less of
Speaker 1: the ten dollar per hour tasks and more of the
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars per hour tasks.
Speaker 2: If you talk to Helen, who works as a receptionist
Speaker 2: at a dentist office for fifteen dollars an hour, probably
Speaker 2: if you asked Helen, what parts of your job make
Speaker 2: more money and what parts make less money? Like, Helen,
Speaker 2: if we paid you for the tasks you perform instead
Speaker 2: of paying you by the hour, then how do you
Speaker 2: think we should grade those tasks? She would probably say, well, okay,
Speaker 2: I suppose these jobs are these little things are worth
Speaker 2: five dollars an hour, and probably these other things are
Speaker 2: worth fifty dollars an hour. What she doesn't realize is
Speaker 2: that's actually wrong. The truth is probably most of what
Speaker 2: she does is worth almost zero. Some of what she
Speaker 2: does is worth negative money, and a few things she
Speaker 2: does are literally one hundred dollars an hour, one thousand
Speaker 2: dollars an hour, even ten thousand dollars an hour. And
Speaker 2: you go, how does a fifteen dollars an hour secretary
Speaker 2: make ten thousand dollars an hour? Well, i'll tell you.
Speaker 2: So you got somebody they need five thousand dollars of
Speaker 2: crowns and dental work. And they looked at all the
Speaker 2: websites and clicked on all the Google ads and they
Speaker 2: think wood Dale Dentel looks pretty good, and so they
Speaker 2: call wood Dell Dental and Helen goes with dal Dental,
Speaker 2: can you hold please? And then she puts them on
Speaker 2: hold for two minutes and then she picks up two
Speaker 2: minutes later, she goes, Hi, can I help you? And
Speaker 2: they're gone. So they were We're going to spend five
Speaker 2: thousand dollars in two minutes to hold music scared them
Speaker 2: off and they're not coming back. It took two minutes
Speaker 2: to lose five thousand dollars. So how many dollars per
Speaker 2: hour is that?
Speaker 1: That's a lot.
Speaker 2: It's one hundred and fifty thousand dollars an hour that
Speaker 2: she lost. Okay, so a secretary lost ten thousand times
Speaker 2: her hourly wage in two minutes.
Speaker 1: And so how then do we get better at identifying
Speaker 1: what are those thousand or ten thousand dollars an hour
Speaker 1: tasks when we're thinking about our own work life.
Speaker 2: So first you have to be aware of it. So
Speaker 2: it literally is true that at least for a few
Speaker 2: minutes or seconds a day, certain things that you do
Speaker 2: are incredibly valuable. Like let's say that you're buying a
Speaker 2: car and you spend an extra five minutes getting the
Speaker 2: price done by one thousand dollars. Well, you just made
Speaker 2: twelve thousand dollars an hour for five minutes, right. And
Speaker 2: our days, in our schedules and our lives are full
Speaker 2: of these little high leverage things, and so first you
Speaker 2: just have to be aware of it. And so I
Speaker 2: have a chart on page twenty three of Detox Declutter, Dominate,
Speaker 2: and it's got a column of ten dollars an hour
Speaker 2: tasks like renting errands and cold calling people or talking
Speaker 2: to unqualified prospects or doing your expense reports. And then
Speaker 2: there's a column of one hundred dollars an hour tasks
Speaker 2: like talking to a qualified prospect or helping an actual
Speaker 2: customer solve a problem, or outsourcing a really simple task.
Speaker 2: And then there's thousand dollars an hour work like planning
Speaker 2: and prioritizing your day, or negotiating with a qualified prospect
Speaker 2: or building out your sales funnel. And then there's ten
Speaker 2: thousand dollars stuff like what I was talking about with Helen.
Speaker 2: As an owner of a dental practice, you realize maybe
Speaker 2: you do some mystery shopping and you're like oh my word,
Speaker 2: a third of these people are getting put on hold
Speaker 2: for a minute or more or five minutes or whatever,
Speaker 2: which is disastrous. Well, whatever you and your staff do,
Speaker 2: whatever time it takes to figure out how to never
Speaker 2: put anybody on hold like that again, how to always
Speaker 2: make sure the call gets routed to the right place.
Speaker 2: Whatever time you spend solving that problem is easily thousand
Speaker 2: dollars an hour work because it controls a major lever
Speaker 2: in your business. Because if twenty percent of your time
Speaker 2: produces eighty percent of the productivity, and twenty percent of
Speaker 2: the twenty percent makes eighty percent of the eighty percent,
Speaker 2: and so on, that means one percent of your time
Speaker 2: generates fifty percent of your income. And this is true
Speaker 2: for almost everybody. It's just masked by the way we
Speaker 2: put people in salary hourly wages. It makes the accounting easy,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't tell you anything about what you're actually
Speaker 2: getting from the work.
Speaker 1: And so, once we've identified these ten dollars an hour tasks,
Speaker 1: and I would say the average listener probably doesn't have
Speaker 1: an assistant that they could delegate to, for example, what
Speaker 1: do we do with those ten dollar tasks? How do
Speaker 1: we do less of them.
Speaker 2: Well, so I want you to reconsider whether or not
Speaker 2: you should have an assistant. First of all, a lot
Speaker 2: of us have children, and you know, even maybe simple
Speaker 2: things like cooking dinner or doing the wash or shoveling
Speaker 2: or you know, mowing the lawn. Okay, there's things like that.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about assistance for a while. So if you
Speaker 2: want to go on the really cheap end, for probably
Speaker 2: seven or ten dollars an hour, you can hire a
Speaker 2: virtual assistant from the Philippines. They'll do all kinds of
Speaker 2: stuff for you.
Speaker 1: How would listeners go about doing that? So I've had
Speaker 1: an awesome virtual assistant, Elaine, who we've had an inventium
Speaker 1: for many years. But for those that have no idea
Speaker 1: how they would even start with hiring a virtual assistant,
Speaker 1: what would they do?
Speaker 2: The Deep Talks book has an online bonus. It's free.
Speaker 2: It comes with the book where we actually spend about
Speaker 2: forty five minutes ro an hour with a guy who
Speaker 2: runs a company that just hires virtual assistance, and he
Speaker 2: walks through the process and he talks about how you
Speaker 2: match an assistant to an entrepreneur. It really is a
Speaker 2: very important thing. Now you could go on a site
Speaker 2: like upwork dot com and you could try people out
Speaker 2: literally for two hours at a time. Now, what I
Speaker 2: want you to consider is, let's say you have a
Speaker 2: virtual assistant for ten dollars an hour, and you're only
Speaker 2: going to hire them for four hours a week. That's
Speaker 2: forty dollars a week, and it's going to give you
Speaker 2: four hours of time. In the four hours of time
Speaker 2: that you gained, can you find a way to make
Speaker 2: one hundred dollars an hour for a half an hour
Speaker 2: or one thousand dollars an hour for five minutes. You
Speaker 2: don't have to pay for the assistant for a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks, and so this really is feasible, it's not unrealistic.
Speaker 2: I think anybody whose time is worth more than thirty
Speaker 2: dollars an hour should get themselves an assistant. It will
Speaker 2: completely change your life.
Speaker 1: That is it for today's show. If you found this
Speaker 1: episode useful, why not share it with someone else that
Speaker 1: you think could also benefit and thank you in advance
Speaker 1: if you plan to do that. How I Work is
Speaker 1: produced by Inventium with production support from Dead Set Studios,
Speaker 1: and thank you to Martin Nimba who did the audio
Speaker 1: mix and makes everything that you listen to sound much
Speaker 1: better than it would have otherwise. See you next time.