The Time Tracking Experiment: What Your Hourly Rate Really Is

In this episode, I’m joined by Jayci Trujillo, founder of Happy Girl Marketing, for a very practical experiment that sounds simple and gets uncomfortable fast… tracking time.

Jayci is in a growth season. More clients, a growing team, bigger decisions. And like a lot of service business owners, she realized she was making those decisions without really knowing where her time was going or what her actual hourly rate looked like once everything was counted.

So we designed an experiment. For at least two weeks, Jayci is tracking every part of her workday. Not just client work, but the context switching, the quick check-ins, the strategy time, the things that quietly eat up hours without showing a clear return.

We talk about why most business owners underestimate how much they’re working, how tracking time can surface what is no longer worth your energy, and why this kind of data makes scaling decisions clearer instead of heavier.

If you’ve ever felt busy without being sure what’s actually moving the needle, this episode gives you a grounded place to start noticing.

Topics covered:

• Why tracking time is essential during growth and scaling seasons
• What your real hourly rate reveals once everything is counted
• How context switching impacts focus and decision-making
• Choosing tools that make time tracking realistic, not rigid
• How to use time data to decide what to automate, outsource, or let go

You can find Jayci Trujillo at:

• Website: Happy Girl Marketing Co
•  Instagram: InstagramLogin • Instagram
  
  

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Transcript

Jacki Hayes

Welcome to season 10 of Here's What I Learned. I'm Jacki Hayes, a systems and ops strategist, romantasy reader, and D&D nerd who's endlessly curious about what makes a business actually work. This season is about experiments.

Big, small, accidental, and transformative. Because every business is built on trial and error, noticing, and iteration. If you're growing a business that changes with you and you're tired of one-size-fits-all advice, you'll feel right at home.

So let's get into it. Well, welcome back to Here's What I Learned. I once again have Jayci Trujillo on the podcast with me, I think now for the third time.

So Jayci and I are going to be running an experiment where I am going to be working on engagement and not in increasing my engagement numbers for algorithm's sake, but as far as engaging with people with intentional conversations. And now Jayci's back because she's going to run an experiment that I have suggested for her. So welcome Jayci.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here for the third time.

So Jayci is a client of mine and I'm a client of hers. So it's kind of an extra swap here. And so I'm her strategic ops partner.

That means I help her organize her brain and get things done in her business behind the scenes. And one of the suggestions I made to her for experiments was to track her time to figure out what her actual hourly rate happens to be. We all think about our hourly rate in the sense of like how much we're charging our clients, but in reality, we work in and on our businesses a lot more.

So Jayci, of all the options that I gave you for experiments, why did you decide to use this one?

Jayci Trujillo

Yeah, I definitely decided to do this one because I am in a season where I'm continuously scaling and you can only scale so much with so many hours in a day. And so there are decisions that have to be made. And overall, you just need to know where you're spending your time to know, okay, can I spend less time in this area?

Can I outsource this? Or is this really adding a significant amount of value? And so in order to make those decisions, I have to know where my time is being spent and I don't routinely track it.

I've gone through seasons of sometimes tracking specifically more for client projects, but I'm really eager to track every single piece of my day from when I start work to, I mean, is there ever really an ending point, but where I end work or maybe like shut it down for the evening.

Jacki Hayes

Yeah, I love this experiment. I've done it myself. And one, it helps you figure out exactly how much time you are spending in your business, because especially for those of us who own our own business, we actually love what we're doing.

So we're not necessarily wanting to run out of the offices if we work for corporate. So it's very easy to lose track of like, you actually spent 20 hours this week on things that you can't even tell me what it is at the end of the week. And then we also don't realize like when we do the math, what our hourly rate ends up being.

And if we do, we would probably be shocked. I know when I did the experiment, I've been running it lately and I was coming up at like $17 an hour. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, something's not working here.

And that's where you started to think, okay, what things am I spending a lot of time on that are not giving me the ROI so that I can increase that hourly rate? Because $17 is definitely not what I want to be paying myself.

Jayci Trujillo

No, absolutely. And like I said, that's kind of the key to help you scale or figure out, okay, maybe what's my next investment? Even if it's not a scaling piece, where can I get some more hours in my day to do what you want to do or grow your business, whatever you want to do, whether it's business related or not business related, knowing, okay, can I outsource this or automate it, but you don't know if you don't know where you're spending your time.

Jacki Hayes

Exactly. And there's lots of different ways to track time. You can use paper and pencil.

I use Harvest. There's Toggle. If you use ClickUp, you can even do that in ClickUp.

There's lots of different ways to track your time. How are you going to be tracking your time?

Jayci Trujillo

I originally was going to do Toggle and I'm considering doing ClickUp. So I've kind of gone back and forth. I'm starting the experiment on December 1st.

We're recording this on November 20th. It's been about 10 days, but I've gone back and forth between Toggle and ClickUp. And I'm curious if you have a recommendation on which might be best because of my specific kind of situation.

Jacki Hayes

Yeah. So, I mean, a lot of your client work is in ClickUp, so it's easy to track that, but you as the strategist and not necessarily the person creating all the content like your account managers do, you're not in ClickUp nearly as much as they would be as far as tracking time. So while ClickUp would be nice because it's all in one place, a lot of the work you're going to be doing isn't going to reside in ClickUp.

And so I think Toggle would probably be the easiest thing for you to do. And I don't know about Toggle. I haven't used it very much, but Harvest does this nice thing for me of the next morning being like, hey, did you forget your timer?

It does. It will be. I'm like, yeah, I spent 18 hours on that thing.

So, I mean, in reality, a lot of times we can't be exact on it because we forgot to track something and I'll just go in and be like, it was about eight minutes or it was about 15 minutes. I'll go back and add things or I'll forget to switch between tasks. But in general, I'm looking at the overall amount of time that I'm spending on my business.

Knowing the different categories is helpful because then I can figure out where I'm actually spending a lot of time that I am not getting the ROI on. But yeah, the Toggle, I think would be a lot more forgiving and a lot easier for you to use because you're not in ClickUp all the time.

Jayci Trujillo

Yes. No, I agree. And I think Toggle is going to be a good move.

And I actually, and I just thought of this, I think I'm really excited to not only see the overall picture, but something that's fun about Toggle, and I'm sure a lot of the other ones as well, you can see when you switch in between all of these different tasks. And so I think mine is, and they color code them. So I think mine is going to be all over the board and it's going to give us a really good picture of, okay, where can you maybe have some work blocks that are dedicated?

I don't necessarily time block, especially as somebody who's running a team, who has over 12 clients, there's always a piece that like someone always needs me. And so I have not found time blocks extremely effective, but I do think maybe having a theme to each day might be helpful. So we'll see though, what kind of shakes out.

Jacki Hayes

Yeah, it is incredibly helpful for understanding the context switching that you're doing. And some people are much better at context switching than others. IMA depends on the task.

Like if I'm just answering quick questions, it's not a big deal to go back and forth from clients to checking my email back and forth. But if I need to go deep into like, right now I'm working on a Dubsado setup for somebody, I can't context switch that much and still be effective at what I'm doing.

Jayci Trujillo

No, I agree. And I'm interested to see, and maybe throughout the experiment, I give it a try a couple of days and track, okay, how much was done in this day versus this day where I was switching more frequently. I think it's going to give us a lot of really good data.

Jacki Hayes

Yeah, I'll be really excited to see what it looks like and then support you in whatever decisions come up with that data.

Jayci Trujillo

So it's going to be, yeah, we're going to have a really good meeting after to take a look at everything.

Jacki Hayes

Well, especially because one of the things that I helped you with when I first came on board was how you were using your day because you felt like you were being pulled in multiple directions and couldn't focus. And I know you've made a lot of progress in that. So this will be even more progress, hopefully.

Jayci Trujillo

I agree. And I continue to learn. I was thinking about that as I was prepping for this and just, okay, like we kind of did it a few months ago, but what is it going to unlock to go through again?

Because as I'm growing, I'm finding all of these new things. And so I think it's going to be really eye-opening.

Jacki Hayes

Yeah. So you said you're going to start on December 1st. How long are you going to run the experiment for?

Jayci Trujillo

I would like to run this experiment at least 14 days. I wanted to go the full 30, but I think Christmas, I'm planning on taking over a week off for Christmas. And so I would at least like to get to the 14th or the 21st.

Jacki Hayes

Okay. That should provide you with some pretty good data there.

Jayci Trujillo

Okay, good. I'm excited. And then if it feels good, I'd love to continue it and maybe add that into my routine.

Jacki Hayes

Yeah. I find it's a good thing for folks to do, like do it once and then maybe do it every six months. Or if you have big changes in your business and like you have an influx of clients or you've grown your team, how might that have affected how you're spending your time?

Absolutely.

Jayci Trujillo

Oh, I'm really excited about this. Maybe I'll start early.

Jacki Hayes

Data's data.

Jayci Trujillo

It's on the board of the merrier. No, I agree.

Jacki Hayes

All right. So Chasey, we're just going to go ahead and wrap it up. Tell everybody where they can find you.

Jayci Trujillo

Yes. I'm on Instagram at Happy Girl Marketing Co. And I'm also hanging out on threads at the same Happy Girl Marketing Co.

So I'm excited to connect with anybody and everybody that comes in.

Jacki Hayes

Excellent. Thank you so much for being here today. Thanks so much.

Thanks again for spending time with me on Here's What I Learned. If this episode gave you something useful to try, rethink or explore, the best way to support the show is to follow and lead a review. That helps more curious business owners find their way here.

And if you want more real talk about the experiments that shape our businesses, plus practical doable system ideas, join my email list. I send one to two emails each week with stories, insights and strategies that help you build a business that supports your life, not the other way around. You'll also get updates on workshops, new offerings and the things I'm learning as I experiment alongside you.

Until next time, keep experimenting, keep paying attention to what those experiments tell you and keep building a business that fits you.