The Hourly Biller – It’s Just a Matter of Time

When I was getting out of my last rehab I was very concerned because I was 28 years old and I had never truly been responsible for myself. I knew I had to make things happen because I was well into my adult life, but had no savings and I wasn’t really sure where I would start. I was also new to California and I really didn’t know anyone. The one thing I did have going for me was that I knew how to use excel and I knew how to set up budgets. What I hadn’t done was actually stick to one myself. So I took a temp job out here in California and I found myself filling out time sheets every week. This was in 1999 and not EVERYTHING was on the web yet like it is now. So I was filling out these carbon copy forms and it was taking forever. I got the idea that I could replicate their form in excel and then at least use that to make it faster to fill out the temp agencies form. One of the things I realized was that by filling out the spreadsheet each day I was much more aware of the hours I was working and based on that how much money I was making. I was really working as a consultant billing by the hour. Then I realized that I could plan my week ahead of time by filling out the excel sheet I had made in advance to see how much I was going to make that week. Then since I was billing by the hour, earning more money was simply a matter of billing more hours. It sounds obvious but the point is that I quickly realized that I needed a good time tracking tool to help me focus on what I needed to do in order to earn what I wanted. My income went up.

When I went out on my own as a “real” consultant I was obviously billing by the hour and I new I was going to need a time tracking tool – especially because I wanted to be sure that before I did go out completely on my own I was going to have no trouble getting in the billable hours I needed in order to earn enough to pay my bills and enough extra to not have to worry about how much money I was making. It was so important to me to enjoy what I was doing and I was clear that if I had to worry about how much I was billing by the hour, I was not going to enjoy my work. So I was clear that I had to set up a system to not just track my hourly billing, but plan it. I knew I had to set my goal based on at the very least what I had to earn at a minimum to pay my bills. As long as I knew I could reach that goal in my sleep I know I was ok. Reality is I knew that if I could reach that goal in my sleep I was going to do a lot better than that because I knew the drive I had inside me. I had the passion – the fever to take on the world and show you all what I had inside of me. I was already about 3 years clean by this time so I had the confidence that comes with knowing I had finally succeeded at something and when you have spent your whole life feeling like you never would succeed at anything, this is a very big deal. Now I felt like I could accomplish anything I wanted to. My potential was unlimited and I was right. I have more than proven that now to myself, first and foremost but also to a lot of other people in my life. Over time my goal setting and tracking systems got more and more sophisticated. I wouldn’t even dare show you what I use now – it has all of my business and personal integrated into 2 cash flow schedules and gets down into the lower level detail of looking at all of the hours I bill plus the hour my bookkeepers bill, what I pay them, what I bill them out at. The numbers are projected out until the end of 2011 now and the projected part of course is based on the goals I’ve set. Separately I have a bookkeeping model based on my vision – what I want to build. 5 Teams of 5 bookkeepers each and each bookkeeper with 5 clients and an accounting manager to oversee each group. It’s a lot of work, but I know I am up to the task.

So why am I telling you all of this? Because it is based on this experience that I created The Hourly Biller. A tool I created in Microsoft Excel which has gone through several evolutions. This tool is for people who bill by the hour and it lets you set a goal by entering the total gross you want to bill for the year and your average hourly billing rate. Then you can track your hours for up to 18 tasks each day and the information populates on a summary which is in a calendar format. The calendar shows you the total hours and dollar earnings for each day as follows:

This week’s screen cast goes over the benefits of using this tool to set your goals, track your hourly billing, and increase your income simply because you used a tool like this to force you to pay attention to it. I can honestly say that this kind of detailed tracking is what has taken me from billing $25/hour in 2003 to billing up to $150/hour for my time these days – and I bill a lot of hours! You can do this too. This tool can help. Please enjoy the screen cast on The Hourly Biller:

You can purchase this tool in my Knowledge Store