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The Bottleneck Cost Calculator

How much is trying to do it all yourself, costing you and your business?

The Bottleneck Cost Calculator | Free Up Your Time

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The Bottleneck Cost Calculator

Most tradies have never added up what it actually costs to be the person every quote, job and decision runs through. Fill in your own numbers below. It takes about two minutes.

1. Interruptions on the tools

Time on the tools spent stopping to answer something only you can answer. This is the one bucket that genuinely displaces billable work, so it's valued at your own rate.

Your standard hourly rate (or day rate divided by 8) for billable work.

$ /hr

Calls, texts and drop-ins that pull you off the tools mid-job.

hrs/wk

2. Tasks worth handing to someone else

General admin and bookkeeping are real jobs, just not ones that need to cost you your trade rate. Each one below shows what it's costing you to do it yourself, next to what you're missing out on by not putting that hour on the tools instead.

Scheduling, filing, chasing suppliers, the everyday running-around stuff.

hrs/wk
$ /hr

General admin & paperwork

$0 what it's costing you to do it yourself
$0 missed out on by not being on the tools

Getting invoices out, reconciling accounts, chasing payments.

hrs/wk
$ /hr

Bookkeeping & invoicing

$0 what it's costing you to do it yourself
$0 missed out on by not being on the tools

Both tasks, combined

$0 total cost of doing it yourself
$0 total missed out on

3. The high-value work you don't have time for

Quoting and business development aren't low-value hours, done properly they're worth thousands, not a flat rate. So instead of guessing a dollar figure per hour, this counts what it actually costs when there's no time to do it well.

Because they weren't followed up in time, or you didn't get a call back at all.

/mo

Rough average across the jobs you'd normally take on.

$

This is where quoting pays for itself. An hour spent properly quoting or chasing new work can be worth thousands. When that hour gets squeezed out, this is the number that shows it, not an hourly rate.

Being the bottleneck is costing you about

$0

a year, in your time and in the work you never got

$0 Interruptions
$0 Admin & bookkeeping
$0 Lost job revenue
0 hrs
of interruptions & low-value work every year
0.0 weeks
of your year, gone to it

Being busy was never the real problem. Not being in control was. This is Chapter 2 of Free Up Your Time. The rest of the book shows you exactly how to fix it, layer by layer, without working faster or hiring more people.

Get Free Up Your Time →

Stop being the person the whole business runs through.

Estimate only, based on a 48-week working year. For a rough sense of what the bottleneck is costing you, not tax or financial advice.

Paul Rogers' results are not typical and are not a guarantee of your success. Paul is an experienced business owner, coach and consultant, and your results will vary depending on education, effort, application, experience, and background. Tradie Coach does not personally invest in or take responsibility for every business it works with. Due to the sensitivity of financial information, we do not know or track the typical results of our clients or readers. We cannot guarantee that you will make money or that you will be successful if you apply our strategies specifically or generally. Consequently, your results may significantly vary from ours. Nothing in our books, programs, or on this website constitutes investment, financial, tax, legal, or other professional advice, it is general information only, and you should obtain your own independent advice before acting on it. Specific transactions and experiences are mentioned for informational purposes only.

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