Claire*, a business owner I spoke with recently, decided to track her time for a week. She wanted to understand exactly where her time was going. She didn’t plan on adjusting any invoices. She wanted to understand why it felt like she wasn’t earning what she should be, given how busy she was.
By Friday afternoon, she had her answer. She'd given away 22 hours of her working week. It looked like this: a free consult for a friend of a friend. A follow-up call that ran long because she couldn’t bring herself to cut it short. Three hours on a proposal for a client who’d given her no indication they were serious. A call from a long-standing client who regularly got in touch outside of sessions for quick questions that were never quick. A catch-up with a former client she’d stayed in touch with out of loyalty, but by now, the relationship was no longer mutually beneficial.
In the moment, none of these had felt like a big deal. But when she added it all up, it was more than half of her working week, spent generating no revenue.
What does unpaid time look like?
For service-based business owners such as consultants, therapists, coaches, advisers, and creatives, the work and the relationship are often the same thing. This is what makes your business good, but it’s also what makes it incredibly easy to give time away without noticing.
Once you start looking, you can see unpaid time popping up everywhere:
Calls and meetings that run over without acknowledgement
Scope that expands informally because your client is lovely and the request seems small
Proposals and discovery work for prospects who aren’t yet committed.
Discounts offered preemptively
Admin and follow-up that sits outside the engagement but you do it anyway
Former clients and contacts who call for a catch-up that is, in practice, free advice.
Individually, each of these feels like the right thing to do. The problem is that they often aren’t one-off. Each one can be repeated multiple times a week by multiple clients and contacts.
The cost of your unpaid time
Twenty-two hours is significant. At an hourly rate of $150-$500, that’s $3,300-$ 11,000 in a single week you could be earning if your capacity wasn’t taken up with free work.
Most business owners who do this exercise are surprised by the number. While they know they’re generous with their time, seeing it as a whole figure can be enlightening.
Aside from impacting your profitability, hours given away are hours that can’t be billed. This makes capacity equally significant. A service-based business has a finite number of hours to sell, and unpaid time competes directly with paid time for access to them. And then there’s the personal cost. You may have given away half your week, but you still have to deliver everything else, usually after hours, or at the expense of something else.
Making generosity a conscious choice
I believe generosity has a place in good business. Whether that looks like pro bono work, investment in relationships, or giving new clients the benefit of the doubt. These are legitimate choices, and some pay back in ways you can’t capture on your bottom line.
The difference is that you can choose to be generous, or be generous by default.
If you decide to offer one free consultation per month, you are making a deliberate choice. If you give away time reactively, such as whenever it feels awkward to say no, you aren’t making a choice; you’re just losing hours.
Ask yourself - if you tracked your time this week, what would you find? And if the number surprised you, what would you want to do about it?
Some options to consider
A clear scope of engagement that defines what’s included and what isn’t. People won’t be offended; it signals professionalism.
A simple policy for what happens when a call runs long, or a client asks something outside the agreement. Come up with some phrases and practice them ahead of time.
A structure around pro bono or discounted work. Include a page on your website so it is clearly communicated. This also brings your generosity into the light.
A regular check on whether the hours you’re working are actually reflected in what you’re taking home. If not, it could be time to make some changes.
The business has to provide for you too
Service-based business owners often build their work around a desire to care for the people they help. That’s a strength. But it can become a problem when you consistently put clients first at the expense of yourself.
If you’re working long hours, delivering good work, and still finding there’s not enough left over for your income, superannuation, and time, that’s an issue. Sometimes it can be resolved by changing your pricing. Sometimes it’s about reducing costs. Sometimes it’s simply that you're giving away too much of what you provide.
How we help
Understanding where your time goes is part of how we help business owners build something that works for their clients and for them. If you’d like to look at where your hours are going and what that means for your profitability and your personal financial position, we’d love to have that conversation. Book a no-obligation discovery call.
Disclaimer: This is general information only and is not advice of any sort. No warranty or representation is provided by Accounting Heart Pty Ltd as to the accuracy, currency or completeness of the information contained in this blog. Readers of this blog should not act or refrain from acting in reliance upon any information contained herein and must always obtain appropriate taxation and/or other advice as may be appropriate having regard to their particular circumstances.
*Names and details have been changed