As you settle into your solo consulting business, your time is broken down into three buckets:

• Client delivery (or WIB, working in the business)
• Biz dev, marketing & admin (or WOB, working on the business)
• Time dividend

The time dividend represents the time left over in your day/week/month after you’ve met your revenue goals.

This is a unique feature of self-employment, as an FTE corporate job doesn’t “give you back” your time based on productivity. (As if you needed another reason to bid adieu to corporate life…)

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As mentioned yesterday, your ongoing challenge as a solo consultant is to pursue the most efficient deployment of your expertise, and the byproduct of that is a maximized time dividend.

So what does this look like in practice, and what should you do with that dividend?

Let’s use an example:

In a 40-hour week, let’s say operations consultant Danielle is meeting her revenue goals and has settled into a pattern of:

• 20 hours: Client delivery
• 10 hours: WOB
• 10 hours: Time dividend

The question now becomes, what could Danielle do with that 10 hour dividend?

There are typically four options:

1. ETO
2. Client capacity
3. Business development
4. Accelerants

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1. ETO

Yes, ETO! Not paid time off (PTO), but earned time off.

You likely moved into self-employment at least partially for the flexible schedule, so this is your opportunity to reclaim that time for yourself and your family.

2. Client capacity

Take on additional clients to bring in immediate incremental revenue

3. Business development

Increase your time spent on building and nurturing your pipeline for the short- and mid-term horizon

4. Accelerants

Strategic activities to turbocharge your business for the short-, mid- and long-term, such as:

• Developing unique IP
• Creating thought leadership content
• Upskilling yourself
• Automating processes

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So, how should Danielle allocate her time among these four options?

The answer will depend on her urgency for additional revenue.

We’ll pull this together in one visual framework next time.

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Spoiler: as you might suspect, there’s a compound payoff for long-term investments…

💡

-Wes