How I Used A Task Audit To Make More Net Profit

Today, I'm going to show you how I used a task audit to reclaim 20 hours back every single week of my time and used it to make more money. In my e-commerce business, we've done 4.2 million in revenue since 2022. Here's a photo of some actual inventory going out. So, it's not just numbers on a screen. And this is my team based in the Philippines that helps me run all the day-to-day operations of my e-commerce business.

We're going to go through how I did the task audit, what I uncovered, and how I use that to make more money. So, in the beginning of the business, there were a lot of things that I was doing that were not scalable, like shipping out inventory myself. And I think I had to do those things in order to learn the the proper ways. But I got to the point where I knew my time was not being well spent.

And my growth was capped by the amount of hours I had in a day. So if I wanted to grow the business, scale the revenue, I had to reallocate my resources, my capital, my education and knowledge, but most importantly, my time. And so in order to truly quantify that and see where my time is actually being allocated, in 2022, December of 2022, I started tracking literally every hour I spent, not just in the business, but in my personal life, too.

In December, I I literally tracked 400 hours of that month using this free software called Toggle Track. I'm not affiliated. I just really like the the the software. And so this was this this orange chunk here is is the Amazon business. So that was repricing, purchasing, accounting, coding, prep, and seeing how much time I was actually allocating to those activities. And then also my personal life. If I really wanted to see where my time was going, I had to see outside of that that work block, where was I spending my time?

How much time was I spending going to the gym, eating food, grocery shopping, the chill time, and the in between time between tasks. And what I ended up uncovering was a lot of tasks that were wasting my time. Now, I could continue to keep doing all these tasks myself. But if it became a simple equation of if I invest X amount, I can make 5x back. Why wouldn't I take it? And that's how I wanted to build a business was not just uh it's something that's bigger than me, not just a job.

So, I worked backwards and categorized each task of those in my day. Four buckets. First one was to cut out of the the personal life stuff. Then there was the automate. At the time, all we had was Zapier. There wasn't like I think it was like CHAGBT3 had came out and so it's not like it is now but automated some delegated some the big one and then keep there were still a lot of tasks in my day that were my high leverage opportunities that I still wanted to maintain control of and have on my plate.

So, for the delegate, I found out about I mean, I didn't find out, but I I started hiring and obviously in the US, you can pay 60 $70,000 a year salaries for a full-time hire. But once I discovered the great benefit of hiring overseas from countries like the Philippines, it accelerated that ROI equation. I could hire someone for like $1,000 a month and get the job done just as well as someone locally.

And with this time audit, I built my job descriptions around those low-V value tasks, the things that I could train to someone else that weren't a good use of my time anymore. And that's what I hired for. And then I would bring someone on, work backwards, teach them the things that I was doing, and then move on to the next thing and the next thing. And my job in the business became only the higher leverage things.

Like at the time it was like repricing and sourcing inventory. and then eventually moved into just full leadership, giving my team the uh resources they need to do the job to the to the best of their ability. Now, I didn't just get these things off my plate and then go travel or go like chill. I now had this extra time to reallocate towards, like I said, those higher leverage opportunities. But to be honest, I got to the point in the e-commerce business where I didn't really have a lot to do on the day-to-day and I didn't think that it was the best opportunity vehicle for my time anymore.

And so I looked at what I did best and I realized I'm pretty good at building teams. So what I did was launched my own recruitment firm to help other businesses do the same thing that I did. The e-commerce business runs itself. I still am heavily involved in the leadership aspect, but now I spend all my time in my higher leverage opportunity, which is helping business owners do the same thing because that's where I've developed my zone of expertise.

And that all came from a time audit. I don't currently track my time. There's been plenty of times since then where I have. I find it comes in waves, but like I I find that to be a very good north star of like, okay, where's my time actually going? So, I hope this is valuable to you wherever you are in your business. If you're in e-commerce, another one and how hiring can help you make more money.