Why this number matters
Most owners never put a price on their own hour, so every task feels free when they do it themselves. It isn't. An hour spent on data entry is an hour not spent on sales, on your best clients, or on fixing the thing that is actually holding the business back.
Use the pay you want, not the pay you take
If you set your hourly value from what you pay yourself today, a business that underpays you will keep telling you that your time is cheap. Start from the income you want the business to support. That is the standard every task has to meet.
Count the real hours
Evenings answering email and Sunday afternoons doing invoices count. The more hours you work, the lower your real hourly value, which is exactly why the busiest owners are often the most underpaid per hour.
What to hand off first
Look for tasks that repeat every week, follow the same steps each time, and cost far less to hand off than your hour is worth. Bookkeeping entry, scheduling, inbox sorting, posting to social and routine follow up are common first moves. Write the steps down once, and the task becomes something you can pass to an assistant, a contractor or increasingly an AI tool.
What to keep
Keep work that needs your judgment or your relationships: pricing decisions, key clients, hiring and the direction of the business. The goal of delegating is not to do less. It is to spend more of your week on the work only you can do.