Recently, my cousin visited me in my city, and I was sharing one recent breakthrough in my business. I used an online tool to save a couple of hours per day on a marketing activity (I will focus on the activity some other day since it is too early to celebrate).
The activity alone has multiple outcomes.
- Conversation with more people
- Better Insights of my industry
- More people reaching out
- Increase in downloads
- Guests for podcast
- Product ideas
- Me Smiling
Identifying cost vs investment is one of the most common mistakes a Solo Consultant makes while running a business.
There is a significant cost every consultant doesn’t even take into account for
It is their own hourly cost. It’s called opportunity cost. Let’s say a consultant with 10 years of experience. They would easily make 1 lakh INR monthly if they worked for some company. That’s the cost for them even before they start a business. So when you account for your business projection, start with minus 1 Lakh first.
If we have to calculate the hourly cost of running your business, it would be 100000 / 20 (days) / 8 (hours) = 625 INR per hour.
Now, let’s do some more math if the tool is saving on a conservative level 1 hour per day. It adds up to 20 hours monthly. The total will be 12,500 INR per month. You can use your per-hour rate to do the same calculation.
It means we are saving 5.4 times on the investment made in the tool.
Any investment with 5X returns is always a golden deal.
Also, you can always choose to stop using the tool in case you don’t find enough return on investment, but for that, set up a target to measure it from the start before buying the tool. Human nature is embedded with greed. If you start doing it as an afterthought, a 100X return will also not make you smile.
This article should make you sit with all your activities and find a cheap tool to replace your hard, manual, laborious work with a machine.
Share it if you like it.
Vikram Shetty 