Is it important that
you do it?

Take what the firm earns, subtract what it costs to run, divide by your hours. Most advisors doing this for the first time are unsettled, then go back to work on things worth a fraction of it.

An arithmetic most owners avoid

Take what the firm earns, subtract what it costs to run, and divide by the hours you work. That is what an hour of your time is worth to the business.

Most advisors who do this for the first time are unsettled by it, and then go back to work on things worth a fraction of that number.

The distinction that matters

Some work only you can do: the client conversation, the judgment call, the recommendation, the relationship, the decision about where the firm goes. Nobody can be hired to do these, and they are where the firm's value is created.

Everything else is work that has to happen and does not have to happen to you.

Where the hours actually go

Advisors consistently underestimate the operational half of their week, because it arrives in fragments — ten minutes here, a broken reconciliation there, a form that came back rejected. None of it feels like a task. All of it is.

Two weeks of honest logging in fifteen-minute blocks tells you more about your firm than any benchmarking study.

What the comparison usually shows

The task you kept because outsourcing it seemed expensive is costing more in your hours than the quote you declined. This is the most common finding, and the reason it stays hidden is that your own time never appears on an invoice.

The second finding is subtler: the operational work is not merely costing hours, it is costing the hours you would otherwise spend on the only activities that grow the firm.

The uncomfortable version

A firm where the owner does the operations has a capacity ceiling set by that owner's endurance. It is not a business yet; it is a job with overheads. The transition from one to the other is made by deciding what leaves your desk.

Where to start

Pick the single task you most resent and cost it honestly — your hours at your number, plus the error risk, plus what does not happen because you are doing it.

What to hand off first →