Increasing your hourly "worth"

I've spoken before about increasing your hourly "worth" and without ignoring my profit (whats left after I cover my expenses), I focus on this.

In business if you want to earn more you can do one of two things -

• Increase revenue (total income the business makes)
• or reduce your costs

(better yet, a combination of both)

I run a tight ship so for me its about increasing my income, but more specifically, increasing my income per hour, and for me that introduces a third element.

• Reduce the hours you work, personally.

And that, right there, is my aim.

• Increase total revenue
• keep costs tight
• and work less hours.

I look at myself being able to generate $240 / hour, right now. And I want to get this up to $300 an hour. (After that I want to have a profit to me of $300 an hour, after my costs, then $500 / hour... - hey if you're going to have a goal it may as well be huge, right?!)

And I aim to do this in 24 hours a week. Its an industry that can carry this. I work odd hours - after-hours a lot, so I deserve to have some down time during the week.

The things that make me money are the clever stuff, the intricate stuff, the challenging stuff and oh-man I love this kind of stuff!! I love meeting people and finding out their problems and working them through the jigsaw puzzle of lender policies and getting them approved ! Yes!!!! I love the maths!! I love the people! I love what I do!

I love the marketing too - the cute and quirky posts on social media that get people ringing.
I love the networking, again this is $300 an hour stuff. Its great! I meet the best people.

I literally made a list of the stuff I don't want to do.
Like sitting on hold to the bank for 45 minutes at a time - snore - but I can outsource that for $25 an hour....
Like doing my books - blergh, outsourced for $55 an hour
Doing social media tagging and SEO (Search engine optimisation) outsourced. Haven't found a source for this yet so it's not getting done, but it will and it will be a good cost.

All the crap I don't enjoy I can pay someone else to do for much less than I generate per hour, and then I can CHOOSE to work the hour saved, or take it as leisure.

Does this change the way you think??

To challenge this, I asked my friend what was she worth per hour, "Worth? I charge $60 an hour? Is that what you mean", incidentally, no it isn't.

"Do you have staff?" yes she does
"Do those staff work at the same time as you, with other clients, generating a profit for you" yes she does
"Did you draw those clients from your marketing and business owning activities?" ahhh dawning realisation.

As a business owner your worth is not limited by what you charge per hour, but by what you can generate. Make decisions based around this number & tactically increase your profit to catch up!