Increasing your effective hourly rate

Today, I want to expand upon the whole effective hourly rate thing I talked about yesterday. How exactly can you increase it?

Yesterday, I talked about EHR – effective hourly rate. This isn’t my invention. It is something James Schramko talks about in his book, Work Less, Make More. (Not an affiliate link, BTW).

Earlier in the week, I talked about building a business to fit the lifestyle you want to create. I like a simple business that allows me to be where I want. Which more often than not is out in my RV. 🙂 The EHR is a GREAT metric for how well you’re succeeding on this.

I mean, if you have a higher EHR, you can pretty much do what you want with your life. You’re working less and making more. If you have a lower EHR, then you end up spending a lot of time making money and that becomes your life.

So, EHR = lifestyle design metric. I like it. 🙂

But, how can you increase it?

Well, at the core, it comes down to 2 things:

1. Work less.
2. Make more money.

I know. Rocket science. 😉

So, one immediate thing you can do to increase your EHR is to simply cut your work schedule. It may seem impossible, but I bet you if you really look at what you do most days, you’ll find a lot of filler. You’ll find stuff that keep you busy, but if you REALLY look at it, isn’t really bringing back much.

I can think of a particular social network which probably leads to much of this for most people. 😉

Such activities bring down your EHR. So, you can eliminate it or reduce it. If you feel you can’t shut it out, then just set a cap on it.

Parkinson’s Law says that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. So, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, often you will get MORE done by reducing your work schedule. Personally, I’ve found I do some of my best production before I’m about to leave on a trip. Because I HAVE to! There’s a deadline. It’s coming. I do what needs to be done and I don’t spin my wheels.

So, that’s increasing EHR from the time side of this equation. What about making more money?

Well, the answer to more money is to make more offers. With higher prices. To more people.

Or, if you’re in a client business, perhaps working with less people but with higher prices is your ticket.

And, if you’re blogging right now and aren’t selling anything, you know what you need to do. You need to make an offer that converts.

What will make you more money is concentrating on your offer. Not your next blog post. Not your social media followers. Your offer.

Inside The Lab, I’ve got a whole course on that. It is aptly named Offers That Convert. One of the most important topics there is, yet I find too many people instead focusing on other things.

I just had a new Lab member take issue with me about how I seemed to crap on blogging in the first 2 stages of The Roadmap. I said blogging doesn’t make money. She didn’t like that. Of course, I think she misunderstood my point and I clarified that for her. But, that point is…

If you want to make more money, focus on your offer. Not your blog.

So, we circle back to the EHR again. Wanna increase it? Then, cut your work time and make more money by focusing squarely on that issue. EHR goes up. Lifestyle design will be on track. 🙂

– David