There is a job in your business nobody was hired to do

The phone rings at ten past five and nobody picks it up. A customer texts about moving Thursday to Friday, and it takes six messages to land on a time. A quote goes out Tuesday and nobody follows up, so it sits. A form needs signing and somebody has to ask for it 3 times.

Nobody was hired for any of that. In most small businesses the owner does it, at night, after the actual work is finished. It is the second shift, and it is unpaid.

When it gets heavy enough, the obvious move is to hire. Someone in the office, part time to start. That is a real answer and sometimes it is the right one. It is also the most expensive answer to a problem that is mostly repetition, and it comes with everything hiring comes with: finding the person, training them, covering them when they are out, and doing the work yourself anyway on the days it piles up.

Here is what I would ask before posting the job. Take last week. How many of those hours were judgment, and how many were the same six things happening again in a slightly different order? The confirmation. The reminder. The follow-up. The chase. The filing.

The judgment half is why people are worth what they cost. Walking a job with a customer, reading a room, deciding what to do about the one who is upset. That is not going anywhere.

The other half is different. It is repetition that happens to be sitting on a person, usually the owner, usually after hours. Most of the software a business already pays for can carry a good deal of it and never gets set up to. Buying the tools was never the hard part.

You do not have to fix that today. But price it once. Hours a week, times what an hour of yours is worth, times fifty. That number is what leaving it alone costs, and most owners have never written it down.