Stop Doing the £10p/h Work!

Quick exercise.

Put a number on your time.

Not your billable rate. Your actual value to the business.

If someone else had to do what you do - set direction, make decisions, manage key relationships - what would you have to pay them?

£500 a day?
£1,000?
£3,000?

Whatever number you landed on, it’s probably not small.

Now look at your week.

Does it reflect that number?

The Maths Most Founders Avoid

Every agency owner says the same thing at some point:

“I don’t have time to work on the business.”

No time for strategy.
No time for planning.
No time for thinking.

Then you look at how their time is actually spent.

• Admin.

• Reporting.

• Chasing invoices.

• Reconciling receipts.

• Writing up notes.

• Preparing internal documents.

In many cases, 50–70% of their week is spent on tasks that are worth - being generous - £10–£15 an hour.

And yet, these same founders are responsible for the decisions that determine the trajectory of the business.

The economics don’t make sense.

A Simple Example

We went through this ourselves.

Our sales process used to take over four hours per prospect.

• Responding to enquiries

• Booking calls

• Research

• Preparation

• Notes

• Proposals

Most of it was repeatable. Process-driven.

The part that actually required senior input?

The conversation.
And shaping the proposal.

Roughly 45 minutes.

So we changed it.

We documented the process and handed it over.

Now the total time is similar - but the founder involvement is minimal.

And the quality improved.

Because when someone owns a process end-to-end, they follow it properly. They don’t rush it. They don’t skip steps. They don’t cut corners because they’re juggling ten other priorities.

Why It Doesn’t Change

Most founders already know they should delegate more.

But it rarely happens.

It feels quicker to just do it yourself.
The process isn’t written down.
The work feels too embedded in your head to hand over.
Or it simply feels unnecessary to pay someone else for something you can do.

So it continues.

Week after week.

The Real Cost

This isn’t just inefficiency.

It’s a strategic trade-off.

Every hour spent on low-value work is an hour not spent on:

• Growth

• Strategy

• Leadership

• Relationships

And over time, that compounds.

The business slows. Decisions get delayed. Opportunities are missed.

Not because they weren’t there.

But because you didn’t have the capacity to act on them.

The Shift

There are thousands of experienced operators who can handle this work for a fraction of your time’s value.

They’re not the constraint.

The constraint is your willingness to let go.

The Reality

The question isn’t whether you can afford to hire support.

It’s whether you can afford not to.

Because right now, you’re making a choice.

To spend your time on work that doesn’t move the business forward.

To stay busy, rather than effective.

To operate as a £10 an hour function…

When your real value is significantly higher.

And until that changes, neither will your business.

Want to chat about it? Email me on Janusz@gyda.co