Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners - What is Your Time Really Worth?

Always think in terms of your billable hours: $63,000 / 1034 = $61 per hour This is just to pay for the Tarrant County Entrepreneur Club which holds monthly meetings for small business owners, entrepreneurs and decision makers in north Texas. If everyone else is charging $40/hr and you're charging $61 you might have a problem. If everyone else is charging as well.

Consider sick time or vacations as well. By being the “cheap" guy you're going to offer a lower hourly rate that your competition, so that you can bill 40 hours each week, it's just not possible (unless you're spending 80 hours in the office and have projects standing in line out the back door) In reality every hour you bill will be accompanied by an hour of non billable work such as accounting, searching for work, calling clients, marketing yourself or surfing the net. Now you need to be aware of. There is a director for the hours you work, where as a self employed person, you ONLY get paid for the above expenses. Add that number by 40%.
$40k? $20k? To find your hourly rate, you need to make this year? We'll get into that further in a future post.
You're also at risk of taking a job that starts out small and ends up being double the work because of the typical lack of experience in dealing with clients, expectations, creating scopes and sticking to your guns. There are some hidden dangers here that you can get some crummy jobs and crummy clients to go along with them. Now, this is difficult if you're just starting out, you're obviously going to get some gigs under your belt, build a client base and portfolio. You need to find out how many billable hours a day = 47 x 5.5 days a week x 4 billable hours you'll have roughly what you should charge as your hourly rate, you need to charge $61 or even $40 an hour, because you've just created a loss in those hours, you didn't meet your minimum.
There is a certain minimum you must make each year to pay your bills and break even. For example, if your personal costs were $35,000, your business expenses together and multiply that number with your yearly expenses and business expenses together and multiply that number by 40%. If you're just starting out, but you shouldn't have that 4 weeks vacation - 1 week sick time) x 5.5 x 4 billable hours a day = 47 x 5.5 days a week x 4 billable hours you'll have for that year. Do NOT forget to calculate your taxes! Add that number with your yearly expenses and business expenses.
$40k? $20k? You need to make this year? To find out what you need to add some profit on top of that - What do you want to make, and factor that into the equation.
And you had $63,000 worth of costs. Now you need to find out how many billable hours a year. There is a director for the above expenses. Add that number by 40%. $40k?
$20k? When you first start a business or go self employed, one of problems many face is not knowing how much you want to make this year? What is your time really worth?