Page 176 - The UnCaptive Agent

CHIEF COOK AND BOTTLE WASHER 149

Building a business is tough. And to be successful
you must embrace the grind. But as Christina Koch dis-
covered, the rewards can be out of this world!

What is Your Time Worth?

In managing your time, it is critically important to under-
stand how much it is worth. When you understand the
value of your time and when you understand the costs of
the things that must be done in your business, you will
make much better decisions about where and how you
spend your time. For example, I was meeting with one
of the agency owners in our organization not long ago
when he got a call to send a security verification card to
a client. This owner had two full-time CSRs, and yet he
stopped to take care of this service request from a client.
During our meeting, I asked him how much money
he paid his client service people per hour. And after
a moment’s thought, he replied, “Fifteen dollars an
hour.” My next questions were, “How large is your
personal book of business? And what is your producer
commission rate?” After he told me the answers to my
questions, we calculated that he was making a hundred
dollars an hour as a producer.
My next question to him was simple: “Since you can
make a hundred dollars an hour as a producer, why do you
spend any of your time at all on a fifteen-dollars-an-hour
task?” We then turned our conversation to the manage-
ment of his producers. We determined that what he
made on his time managing his producers was about
thirty dollars an hour. So, I asked the same question:
“When you only make thirty an hour managing pro-
ducers, why do you spend any of your time managing
producers when you could make a hundred an hour as
a producer?”