Can you afford the time to count?

A friend of mind just called from an airport in the Northwest. He had to fly out there to help count products for an inventory audit. Yes, a Nation Sales Manger who gets paid six figures was counting $.39 widgets for three days. Think about this, round trip air, hotel, rental car, travel time, five days out of the field, to count widgets. If my accounting is correct, the cost for the trip including his time, food, lodging, and transportation should be around $5,000. He said he did about 20 hours of work for the $5,000 or $250 an hour for his efforts. My point here is, do we value our time as small business owners?  If we are billing our clients at $60 to $150 an hour for our services, what are we charging our businesses when we do necessary but non-revenue generating activities, such as picking up office supplies, data entry, making bank deposits, cleaning the office, waiting on the service guy to fix the dish washer for three hours and getting our car fixed. 

I have calculated that I have about 12 to 15 hours of these kinds of duties to take care of. Honestly at the end of the week, after running two businesses, I am exhausted and do not have any extra time. I have found a solution. I have hired a personal assistant who I can delegate these kinds of tasks to. This frees me up to be more productive tasks such as write more blogs like this and to do other necessary income generating activities. Think about the math, do I want to pay me $125 an hour to get office supplies or pay someone else $15 to $18 and hour to do it. When I looked at it this way, it was a no brainer and it reduced my stress and increased my productivity. Do the math, does it make sense for you in your business and personal life to delegate some of your activities. The last I saw they were not adding any extra minutes, hours or days to my work schedule. This make good business sense and helps me have time to work on my business not just in my business. 

Check the following books for more info on these kind of time saving ideas:
Time Traps
4 hour work week