A (0:00)

If I asked you what you did the last eight hours, mostly, you would say everything. That answer is exactly why you're stuck. Until you see where your time is actually going, you're never going to be able to scale. I've helped hundreds of business owners, especially in the trades and home services, buy back their time and scale past the chaos. And the first thing that we do with every single one of them is run an impact audit. Because nine times out of 10, the reason they're not growing isn't strategy, it's where the owner's hours are disappearing. I'm going to walk you through a simple one week process to measure exactly where your time goes. And when you finish this, you're going to know one, what tasks are draining your energy, two, what tasks are below your pay grade, and three, what your next hire should actually do. Step number one, you need to track everything.

A (0:50)

For one week. Every 30 minutes, write down exactly what you did. So between 8:00 clock and 8:30, you're going to be able to say, I read a book. Now don't overthink it, don't optimize it, just record it. Okay, so between 8 and 8:30 you read a book. 8:30 to 9 you took a customer call. 9:30 to 10, recorded a job, et cetera, et cetera. You're creating a log of your actual week, not your ideal week. Now in this instance, a lot of us like to lie to ourselves and tell us like, hey, you know, this is what I like to do. Or you don't want to necessarily admit to what you actually did. No, no, no, no. I need you to record exactly what you did. So step number two, I'm going to assign energy. So I'm going to come over here to customer call and I'm going to assign energy. For energy, it's either high or low. High meaning that you loved it, you enjoy it, gave you life, you do more of it if you could. Low meaning that you absolutely dreaded it, it drained you, you would pay someone so that you would never have to do it again. So with energy you want to say high or low. Then step number three, we want to assign a value to it. Anything that costs 25% or less of your hourly rate is considered a low value. Anything that would be 25% or more, which is, would be considered high. And then last but not least, we're going to assign the quadrant. Now that you have two ratings for every task, high energy, low energy, high value or low value, it's time to drop them into one of the four quadrants. Now, if you haven't seen my video on that, go ahead and watch that right now. Quadrant number one is low energy, low value. Quadrant number two is high energy, low value. Three is low energy, high value in quadrant number four. That's the gold maker. High energy and high value. Again, if you already watched the last video, you know these four quadrants run your entire business. If you didn't, you need to go rewatch it right now. Watching it will make this audit hit 10 times harder once you understand the framework behind it. Hey, guys, it's Chris. If you're finding value in what you're hearing, go ahead and like and subscribe. That way, people just like you can find this content for free here on YouTube. Now let's dive back in the show. And then last but not least, step number five. You need to find your leaks. When. When you finish the week total how many hours that you spent in each of these four quadrants. That's your first real diagnostic. Most business owners are spending 20 plus hours in quadrant number one doing the work that they hate and also isn't worth their time doing. That's 20 hours of being busy, not productive. Literally the stuff that keeps you busy but broke. But here's the good news. Quadrant number one becomes your next hire's job description. You're not hiring randomly. You're hiring surgically to clear the exact tasks that are keeping and holding you back. Here in quadrant one, a couple months back, I was working with an electrical contractor who thought he needed to hire a marketing director. He loved working on marketing, but he felt completely overwhelmed by it. After he ran this exact audit, he found that he was spending 25 hours a week answering emails, chasing down receipts, fixing schedules, and doing busy paperwork. He was only spending about 10 hours hours a week doing the thing that he absolutely loved, which was the marketing. He didn't need a marketing director. He needed an executive assistant. Once he identified that, he got 25 hours a week back and the energy to give to the thing that he loved the most. You don't have a time problem. You have a clarity problem. Stop saying I need help and start saying I spend 14 hours a week working in quadrant one and that's exactly what my next hire is going to own. That's how you buy back your time and scale without adding additional chaos. So here's your Assignment 1. You need to start the audit today.