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Five jobs in three kinds, an hours audit to find the one nobody is doing, and how what the owner wants decides which months count as good ones.
Paper packet. Every task here also exists on screen, where it is checked automatically; answers written on paper are not assessed by Nydus. When you are back at a device, enter your answers there.
You will sort the jobs one owner does into doing the work, running the business and owning it, audit a week's hours against them, and say what fails when each goes undone and what that gets blamed on instead. You will work out the paid hours a week leaves and how many promises it can keep, and read what an owner wants as a constraint on how the business is run.
You can tell creating value from capturing it, and you know that an owner's hours have a costing rate and an opportunity cost. This lesson is about the person doing all of it — who is really five people with different jobs and nothing telling them apart — and about what that person actually wants the business to give them, which decides what counts as a good month.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Role | A job the owner does, not a title: maker, seller, bookkeeper, scheduler, owner. |
| Doing the work | The hours a customer pays for: making and selling. |
| Running the business | The hours nobody pays for that keep the work possible: books, schedule, ordering. |
| Owning it | Carrying the risk, putting the money in, and deciding what the business is for. |
| Paid hours | The hours of the week spent doing the work. |
| Want | What the owner runs the business to get, which is not always the most money. |
| Hours audit | A count of last week's hours against each job, to find the one that got none. |
In a business of one, the same person is the maker, the seller, the bookkeeper, the scheduler and the owner: five jobs at once, in three kinds.
Doing the work — the hours a customer pays for: making, and selling. Most owners count only the first.
Running the business — the hours nobody pays for and the week collapses without: books, schedule, ordering.
Owning it — carrying the risk and deciding what the business is for.
And the part worth remembering: the job nobody is doing is the one that fails, and the owner notices last, because it shows up elsewhere dressed as something else — nobody selling looks like a quiet month.
The fix is not more hours. It is to name the five and ask which got none this week.
Another way: steps
A ten-minute audit, once a month:
Another way: table
What each absence gets blamed on.
| Job | Kind | What fails | Blamed on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maker | doing the work | nothing to sell | — |
| Seller | doing the work | work made, nobody comes | a quiet market |
| Bookkeeper | running it | nobody can say if the month worked | pointless paperwork |
| Scheduler | running it | work promised with no room | a difficult customer |
| Owner | owning it | the business drifts | being too busy |
Keep a rough log for one week. At the end of each day, write down how many hours went on each of the five jobs. Rough is fine: to the nearest half hour. Include the evenings and the phone calls in the line at the supermarket; they are hours too.
Add them up by job and by kind. Making plus selling is the paid work. Books plus schedule is running the business. The owner's decisions are owning it. The three totals add up to the whole week.
Find the jobs near zero. In most small businesses selling and owning are the ones that get squeezed, because making has a customer waiting and the books have a deadline, while selling and planning have neither.
Name what the neglect cost. A month with no selling is followed by a quiet month; a month with no schedule is followed by broken promises; a month with no owning is followed by a year that was decided by whoever asked first.
Schedule the neglected job at a fixed time, and protect it. A job with a slot gets done; a job with an intention does not.
Check the audit by adding the hours: the five jobs must add up to the hours actually worked. If they add up to much less, the log has missed work — usually the small pieces of running the business that happen between everything else — and those small pieces are exactly what the audit is for.
Two businesses can have identical numbers and only one be doing well.
| Wants | So it needs | Pulls against |
|---|---|---|
| a steady income | a floor, not a ceiling | growth |
| shorter days | hours as a limit | every order |
| something saleable | to work without them | doing the skilled work |
Two of those pull opposite ways, and an owner who has not chosen is disappointed by everything.
This is how to work the number out and read it, not a recommendation about what to charge. What any particular business should do depends on a market nobody here can see, and on rules that differ from place to place.
The audit also explains a pricing fact from earlier in the course. If an owner works 45 hours a week and only 34 of them are paid work, the price of each paid hour has to carry the other 11. That is why a costing rate is usually well above what the owner could earn as an employee: an employee's wage buys only paid hours, while an owner's costing rate has to fund the books, the schedule and the planning too.
It also shows where time can be won back without working longer. Every hour moved from running the business to doing the work — a simpler way of keeping records, a booking system that fills the schedule without phone calls, a regular supplier order instead of weekly shopping around — is an hour that a customer now pays for. Many owners find their first real rise in income comes not from a higher price but from spending two fewer hours a week on tasks nobody pays for, and spending those hours selling instead.
Sooner or later many owners hand one of the five jobs to someone else: a bookkeeper for a few hours a month, a helper on busy days, a booking service that fills the schedule. The three kinds help decide which job to hand over first.
Running jobs are usually the easiest to hand over. Bookkeeping and scheduling follow rules that can be written down, and someone who does them all day is often quicker and more accurate than an owner doing them at night. The hours freed can go to paid work or to selling. Compare the cost of the help with the owner's costing rate on the hours it frees: if a bookkeeper costs 150 a month and frees 8 hours worth 35 each, the handover pays for itself almost twice over — but only if those 8 hours are actually spent on paid work or selling.
Doing jobs can be shared once they are written down. A helper can clean, fit a screen or serve at the hatch if there is a clear way the job is done. Writing that down is itself an owning job, and it is the step owners most often skip.
Owning cannot be handed over in a business of one. Advice can be bought, but the decision about what the business is for, and the risk it carries, stays with the person whose money and name are on it. That is why protecting a little time for it each month matters more as the business grows, not less: the more the other jobs are shared, the more the owner's remaining job is deciding.
A wedding photographer shoots about 28 weddings a year. On the wedding day she works 10 hours; editing each wedding takes another 20. Those 30 hours a wedding are the paid work, and couples see them. What they do not see is the rest: about 4 hours of inquiries, meetings and quotes for every wedding booked (and more for the ones that do not book), 3 hours a week on the books, invoices and insurance, and a few hours a month deciding which fairs to attend, which packages to offer and whether to take on a second shooter.
Over a year that is roughly 28 × 30 = 840 hours of paid work and about 28 × 4 + 52 × 3 + 40 = 308 hours of selling, running and owning, of which selling is paid indirectly and the rest is carried by the price. If she wants 45,000 a year from the business after its costs, each of the 840 paid hours must carry about 54 dollars — not the 39 she would get by spreading it over all 1,148 hours. Her packages were priced on the second figure.
She wants shorter summers more than a larger income, so instead of taking more weddings she raises her packages by a fifth and caps the year at 24. The audit told her where the hours went; the want told her which way to move.
Writers on small business often describe owners who become the best technician in their own firm and the only one who can do anything, so that the business cannot run, grow or be sold without them. The remedy they recommend is the one in this lesson: name the jobs, give the running and owning jobs protected time, and write down how the work is done so that someone else could do it.
Only the making counts as work. Selling is paid work too, and pricing the making hours alone under-costs every unit.
Running the business is overhead to be minimized. Cutting the books and the schedule to zero saves two hours a week and loses the ability to answer any question at all.
Owning it can wait until things calm down. They do not. A business with nobody owning it accumulates whatever shouted loudest — a strategy chosen by others.
More hours will fix it. If the failing job gets no hours, more hours of the others widens the gap.
The goal is obviously to grow. Growth consumes cash and hours before returning either, which for an owner wanting shorter days is a mismatch.
Write last week's hours: 30 making, 1 selling, 2 on the books, 1 on the schedule, 0 on planning.
$30 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 0 = 34$
The week's total across all five jobs.
Find the paid hours.
$30 + 1 = 31$
Making and selling are doing the work.
Find the hours running and owning the business.
$2 + 1 + 0 = 3$
Nobody pays for these hours.
Find the jobs near zero.
$\text{selling } 1, \ \text{planning } 0$
These are the jobs to look at.
Schedule one of them.
$\text{selling: Wednesday 4 to 6}$
A job with a time gets done.
Find the hours available for cleans on a 10-hour day with 1 hour of admin.
$10 - 1 = 9$
The running jobs take their hours first.
Find how many cleans fit at 2.25 hours each including travel.
$9 \div 2.25 = 4$
The day holds four cleans.
Compare with the six cleans promised on the phone.
$6 - 4 = 2$
Two promises the day cannot keep.
She works until nine and finishes five. Count the broken promises.
$6 - 5 = 1$
One customer is moved to Thursday and is annoyed.
Name what it will be blamed on.
$\text{a difficult customer}$
The scheduler's job undone, showing up elsewhere.
Give the failing job its time.
$\text{20 minutes on Sunday with the schedule}$
Running the business, not cleaning, is the fix.
Write the numbers both repair benches share.
$\text{profit} = 2000 \text{ a month}; \ 40 \text{ hours a week}$
Identical figures.
Write the first owner's want.
$\text{a steady income and Sundays off}$
The want decides what a good month is.
Judge the first owner's month against it.
$2000 \text{ with weekends clear} \Rightarrow \text{good}$
The numbers meet the want.
Write the second owner's want.
$\text{a business somebody could buy}$
A different want.
Judge the second owner's month against it.
$2000 \text{ only while he is at the bench} \Rightarrow \text{not yet}$
A business that stops when the owner stops is worth little to a buyer.
Find what the second owner does next.
$\text{train a helper; profit falls to about } 1500$
He lowers the profit on purpose, because the want decides which figure to aim at.
Compare the two decisions.
$\text{same numbers, opposite moves}$
Neither owner is wrong; each is running for a different want.
The kiln has run every week and four hundred mugs sit on the shelf. Find the job that got hours.
$\text{maker: every hour}$
Making had a customer waiting, or seemed to.
Takings are down a third. Find the job that got none.
$\text{seller: 0 hours}$
Nobody selling looks like a quiet market.
Give it a fixed time in the schedule.
Five things in a week that works. Put them in the order they have to happen in.
Number the steps in order (write the number in the box):
Complete the worked solution: last week an owner spent $20$ hours making, $3$ selling, $1$ on the books, $1$ on the schedule and $2$ deciding what the business should do next. Audit the week.
Add all the hours.
$20 + 3 + 1 + 1 + 2 =$ t
The week's total, across all five jobs.
Add the hours a customer paid for.
$20 + 3 =$ p
Making and selling are doing the work.
Add the hours running and owning the business.
$1 + 1 + 2 =$ u
Nobody pays for these, and the week depends on them.
Find the jobs that got the fewest hours.
$\min(3, 1, 1, 2)$
The job near zero is the one to look at, not the one that went wrong.
Schedule the neglected job at a named time.
$\text{Thursday, seven o'clock}$
A job with a time gets done; a job with a wish does not.
The owner of Bright Home Cleaning works $52$ hours a week. Each week takes $2$ hours of bookkeeping and invoicing, $2$ hours of scheduling, $3$ hours of deciding what the business needs next, and $6$ hours of ordering supplies and servicing the van. How many hours a week are left for cleans a customer pays for?
Answer:
An owner says what they want from the business is a business somebody else could buy in five years. What follows about how the business should be run?
A bicycle-repair round is run in the evenings alongside a day job. Each repair leaves $38$ dollars once parts are paid for, and takes $3$ hours. The owner wants the round to pay them at least $456$ dollars a month, and their employment contract allows outside work only while it stays under $54$ hours a month. For how many repairs a month does the round do both?
This task has no paper form; do it on a device.
A cleaner's week has $50$ working hours, of which $8$ go on books, schedule and ordering. Each clean takes $3$ hours including travel. She has said yes on the phone to $15$ cleans this week. How many of those promises will the week not be able to keep?
Answer:
A food-truck owner spends $27$ hours a week serving at the hatch and $8$ hours on prep, shopping and cleaning the truck, all of which the price of a meal has to cover. She also spends $3$ hours on the books and permits and $3$ hours planning where to park next month. How many of her hours a week does no customer pay for directly?
| Amount | |
|---|---|
| Hours a meal's price covers, a week | |
| Hours no customer pays for directly, a week |
Lesson test: one question per skill, one attempt each, no hints. Your answers are checked when you submit.
One person, five jobs, all of them on the same Tuesday. Say which kind of job each one is.
| Which kind of job is this? | |
|---|---|
| Producing the thing, or performing the service the customer is paying for | |
| Finding the customer, explaining the offer and asking for the sale | |
| Recording what came in and what went out, and keeping the two accounts apart | |
| Deciding what happens when, and how much work can be promised | |
| Carrying the risk, putting the money in, and deciding what the business is for |
You can name the five jobs one owner is doing, sort them into the three kinds, audit a week's hours, and say which failure gets blamed on a quiet market or a difficult customer. Tell someone why two businesses with identical numbers can be one success and one disappointment. Next: who the customer is, and what they are actually buying.
15. Your turn: a quiet month at Maya's Ceramics, step 3
$\text{selling: one hour a week}$
The fix is time for the failing job, not more mugs.