It’s time to think about time… and your bottom line.

by Arthur J. Hunt Sr.

Yep, I’m back on the old pet project, trying to organize my time into an amount that will result in productivity as well as leave me some freedom for getting new business gained by talking to my customers.

Few of us really look at how much time we spend talking and how much time we can spend working.

Let’s say you still charge $30.00 an hour for basic gunsmith work, even though a recent Brownells Shop Price Survey (brownells.com/userdocs/miscellaneous/shoppricesurvey.pdf) currently lists this fee at $40-$80 per hour, $50-$95 per hour when it involves machine work, and a minimum fee of $35-$70 per gun. You insist it’s affordable to waste 15 minutes on idle chit chat with each customer. In an eight hour day, 15 minutes spent with six people is 1.5 hours lost. You could have made $240 ($30.00 per hour x 8) but now you have a deduction of $45.00 so your income for the day is really $195.00. Even if you did make the $240.00, you still left 1.5 billable hours on the table.

“But I still have to talk to customers,” you point out. “If I don’t talk to people, how am I going to get business?” You are right of course. You do have to talk, so what do we do about it?

Read more in the August 2017 issue.

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