What is your real hourly rate?

When was the last time you actually found out what your hourly rate was? Not the posted one, but the one you actually work for. Think they are the same, think again. The formula to figure this out is simple, but is it really the truth? Here’s what they say, revenue less COGS (Cost of Goods Sold: i.e. commission, time, direct marketing, etc.) gives you what you earn. How does this apply to your hourly rate?

Let me give you an example, you are a plumber, your hourly rate is $85 dollars, you get a call to go to Belle River from Windsor, approximate driving time there, 20 minutes. You spend 35 minutes at the customer’s house and fix the problem. Time to get to next appointment, 20 minutes. Now COGS would have you look at gas consumption, time, direct costs related to getting this customer, and so on, however let’s just keep it simple. 20 minutes to get there, 35 minutes at the clients house, equals 55 minutes, you get paid $85 dollars for 60 minutes, so your hourly rate was $92 dollars! Every minute is worth around $1.42 to you, so the five minutes gained was worth around $7 dollars. Not bad, but what happened on the next call?

Now let’s say you own a business and you pay them like a car dealership does, that is you’ve establish a time for each task, so as an example a lube, oil and filter change would be .3 or ½ an hour.  The mechanic however gets paid an hourly rate; say $30 dollars an hour. Now let’s say that your posted rate is $87 dollars. So, we know how much the mechanic makes an hour, we know your posted rate, and we know the time paid for each task, so let’s add one more task and time for it and build a day. For this example, we will add; tire rotation and balance and pay .6 or 1 hour for the job. Here we go….

John the mechanic did the following today

• 15 lube, oil and filter change (.3 times 15 = 7.5 hours)
• 5 tire rotation and balance (.6 times 5 = 5 hours)
• Total hours: 12.5 times $30 dollars per hour = $375

So John worked 8 hours but got paid for 12.5 hours or $375 dollars, pretty good day. Now, what happened to your dealership? Well your posted rate is $85 dollars per hour, and you charged for the 12.5 hours, however, a lube, oil and filter is $29.99, and a tire rotation is $49.99 and your mechanic did as per above; 15 oil change ($29.99 times 15 =  $449.85) and 5 tire rotations ($49.99 times 5 = $249.95) so a total dollar of; $699.80. Now, we take the mechanics pay away, so less $375 and we are left with $324.80 over 8 hours equals; $40.6 and that’s really a gross figure since we should really take out your parts cost for the above.

So the question is what is your real hourly rate?

How's your social media?

All we hear about today is social media, are you on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In? BBM me, or Skype me, can you text me? How did we survive before all of this? As a business owner what are you presently doing to attract new business, and how can all of this help you?

Benefit or not?
Question is, how can you benefit from Social Media, are you a local company or a national company. Are you online or not. No matter what the answer is, your business will gain from using some or all of the above. I have a UPS box, and every time I get a delivery, I get a text (SMS) from the owner. Yes, it probably took a little time to add me to her phone and create the generic message, however, I appreciate it. Let's say you operate a store that sells products, you could use Twitter to advise customers that a new product has arrived, or you could Tweet an update on a product. BBM, SMS and Twitter are great for short notices, updates, or confirmations. They all save you the time of creating and sending email's. All you have to do is ensure that your customers either follow you, or you have their number to text them.

Skype is a must if you are in business! It's free, use your computer to talk or message anyone in the world. More and more professionals are including their Skype address on their email signature block so that you can communicate with them in that matter. I have a team in the Ukraine, a CTO in Brazil, business associates in Montreal, and countless people in the US that I message with throughout the day on Skype. If you can type, get Skype, it works on your computer, PDA, Ipad, Iphone and most of everything else. Linked In is great if you are in the service industry, however, be careful who you accept as a connection. Some people are just there to see how many connections they can gather, and,. at the end of the day if you don't know these people or communicate with them, well it's just a waste of time. Linked In is great for jobs as well, you can connect with the HR people from most companies, get referred by someone you are connected with that knows them and you can really re-create yourself on a daily basis.

And that leaves us with Facebook (or Google+, or others). I have yet to learn to use the power of Facebook. I understand it on a personal note, however when it comes to business, I am not quite sure. Here are somethings that I can tell you; don't mix your personal stuff with business. HR people will look for you everywhere, seeing you inebriated, partying or whatever else on your Facebook page...not smart. Although they have to be invited to see your page, I am not so sure that you want to post everything until you get a good grasp of how it works. Here something that Facebook is excellent at, exponential growth! If you get someone to like your page, it goes to them, if someone on their page likes it, it goes to them and so on. So, if you have some interesting stuff to post, and you get others to like it...WOW! Imagine, you have 20 friends, and they like it, you just went from a single post to 20. Now let's say that these 20 also get 20 to like it, you just went from 1 to 20 and then 400, imagine if you had something interesting to say.

So, in the future when someone says are you on, or connected, or followed, make sure you are and get them to like, or link, or connect, or whatever, just make sure you take advantage of these FREE advertising and marketing tools.

The tech home

The other day I watched Microsoft demonstrate the home of the future, that is, 2015. Incredibly, the "host" (computer/software spirit) pretty well knew what you where doing, when and how. To me this was a little scary, the term, Big Brother is Watching all of a sudden took on a whole different meaning!

As we venture into the future of technology, what price are we paying? A few weeks ago, I gave my father in law one of my laptops since the one I had given him previously died. I noticed that he had used some black tape (electrical tape) to cover the built in video cam, so I asked why, he replied; "I read that they can see me from the video". Can you imagine? Is that possible? Well I didn't think so, however, after seeing the home of the future courtesy of Microsoft...I am not that sure anymore!

Technology is a great thing, think about all the things that we are able to do today that we weren't able to 10 years ago and it is mind boggling. However, we need to remain masters of the future and not become a slave to it. Movies like I Robot with Will Smith are starting to become far to realistic, and scary. The possibility of a chip that can learn, process and deduct logically based on its accumulated knowledge is but a few steps away. The day that we will a lesser intelligent form that our computer, is the day that we need to pull the plug! In the meantime, enjoy your tablet.

Grandpa, what was it like?

A couple of days ago someone asked me about buying a new computer. How big should it be, how much will it cost, and so on? I replied that it depended on the use of it. Will you use it to play games, surf the Internet, do complicated calculation, all of this has to be consider, not unlike buying a car, really! He told me that the one he had contracted a virus and that nothing worked anymore and it was old anyways. I pointed him in the direction of our local computer whiz shop and told him that I used my old computers on our LCD’s so that we can surf the net, watch movies, or play music from our main computer through the system. He asked if that worked on old television, now I knew what he meant when he said his computer was old!

Considering that the Apple computer (below) came out in 1995, and that the IPad is about 3 years old…how old can a computer really be? What did we do prior to 1995? How did we communicate? How did we find our way around on a trip? Thinking about it makes me realize how fast we are travelling, and how fast products are evolving, and where will it be in 5 years?

 Given the above, how does a small business compete? How do they get more clients? What does the future bring for them? Last week I saw a lady at the bank paying all of her monthly bills with the teller one by one! Can you imagine? I can’t even imagine the last time I wrote a check!

Here’s a few things that my Grandson will never see or know about, black and white TV’s, with NO remote control. A night without a PlayStation or other similar game, rabbit ears on the TV, or SOS pads for those antennas that never worked. A day without telephones, or cell phones, a facsimile machine, carbon paper, ink blotters, and Walkman’s, just to name a few. The sad part is, that all of these are not that old…to me!