105 | The Time Tax: How Founders Waste 24 Hours a Week (AI Business Audit Part 2)

Are you secretly paying a 24-hour-a-week tax that’s draining your profits and sanity?

In part two of the AI Business Audit series, Dawn dives into the hidden time costs that sabotage your leadership and stall your revenue growth. Spoiler alert: your packed calendar may be killing your business momentum. 

Learn how to audit your time, uncover team bottlenecks, and start shifting from “doing it all” to “delegating like a CEO.” This episode is a kick in the A$$ wrapped in a velvet boot.

Ready to stop paying the time tax and start leading like the CEO you were meant to be? Book your CEO Clarity Call now. You’ll get eyes on the blind spots that are draining your profits and keeping you stuck.

Key Takeaways

• You’re not as productive as you think — Most founders waste 24 hours a week on low-value work that should’ve been delegated or deleted.
• The “Time Truth” Framework — Learn how to identify what’s revenue-generating, what’s noise, and where your hours are leaking.
• Team Bottlenecks Are Your Bottlenecks — If your team is waiting on you, you’re not leading—you’re clogging the pipeline.
• AI is your audit assistant — Use AI to analyze your calendar and uncover where your time is actually going (and what it’s costing you).
• Visibility isn’t about hustle—it’s about clarity — You’re the lever for growth, and it’s time to stop grinding and start leading.

Resources & Links

• CEO Clarity Call Booking Link

Related Episodes:

• 103 Your Bank Account Is Lying to You: The AI Business Audit Series (Part 1)
• Ep 107 The Client Costing You Six Figures: AI Business Audit Series Finale (Part 3) (coming soon)

Want to increase revenue and impact? Listen to “She's That Founder” for insights on business strategy and female leadership to scale your business. Each episode offers advice on effective communication, team building, and management. Learn to master routines and systems to boost productivity and prevent burnout. Our delegation tips and business consulting will advance your executive leadership skills and presence.

Transcript

She's That Founder
105 | The Time Tax: How Founders Waste 24 Hours a Week (AI Business Audit Part 2)

Hey Lovey, welcome back to our three part series, the AI Business Audit. Last week we talked about revenue, reality, where your money actually comes from versus where you think it comes from. And if you did your homework, you probably discovered something uncomfortable.

Maybe you found out that your signature offer isn't as profitable as you thought. Maybe you realize you're spending 30 hours a week on something that generates 10% of your revenue. Or maybe you're sitting there thinking, well, this is depressing. Good because today gets worse.

Before it gets better. Today we're talking about the time tax, where your hours are actually going. What's making you money, and what's just expensive noise because being busy doesn't equal profitable. And if you don't know where your time is leaking, you're paying a tax that you're not even aware exists.

Let's go. Hey, hey, hey. Welcome to She's That Founder Thursday edition. These are the quick rants kick in the pants, velvet boot moments that represent me standing in the future, pulling you towards the even stronger, braver, better, more powerful version of yourself with AI as your copilot.

Brutal truth time, my friend. Research from Rescue Time found that the average knowledge worker is productive for only two hours of 53 minutes a day. Say what? You're working 50, 60 hours a week, but only about 15 of those hours are actually moving revenue. The rest meetings, email, slack, admin work, shallow work.

When I audit this with clients, here's what we generally find. Eight hours a week on content creation that doesn't convert. Could be thought leadership articles that you're writing. Could be reconnecting with people on social who knows you know better than me, where you're spending time on content creation, but it's probably not converting in the way that it should be for the amount of time that you're giving it.

Six hours a week in meetings that could have been emails. I mean, people make coffee mugs that say it, and T-shirts even. So we're all suffering that way. And then 10 hours a week on admin work that should have been delegated potentially years ago. So that's 24 hours, that's three full workdays on stuff that isn't moving the needle.

And this is the part that breaks my heart. Most of us know this. Most founders know this. You know, you're spending too much time on the wrong things. You know, you should delegate more. You know, you should say no more, but you don't because you may not have a framework for figuring out what to cut. So you just keep doing everything, and then you wonder why you're exhausted, overwhelmed, and not profitable in the way that you think you should be.

 I mean, you're like Sisyphus, but instead of rolling a boulder uphill, you're answering Slack messages, same energy, same futility, same outcome. This is the time tax, and you are paying it with your life, and I would love for that to stop. Okay, so we're in an AI business audit.

Here's what you need to audit, and this is the time, truth, and the team bottlenecks. This is how we figure out what you're paying in time tax. I'm giving you both today because they're connected. The time truth asks where your hours are going, and the team bottlenecks asks, why are you the reason that things are slow. 

So here's what to look at for time, truth, these are the numbers that you're gonna find. This is what you're gonna audit. What are the top five to seven tasks that fill your calendar each week? Write 'em down. Number two, which of those tasks directly generate revenue or move clients forward?

And be honest. Not it's important for the business. I wanna know, does it generate revenue, yes or no? Number three, which tasks could be delegated, automated, or eliminated entirely. And before you say none of them, I don't believe you. There is always something. Number four. What's your highest ROI activity versus your lowest?

 If you could only do one thing this week that would move the business forward the most, or that would move the numbers forward the most, what would that be? Okay, so that was your time, truth, numbers. Now let's talk about team bottlenecks, and this is where you're slowing things down.

So I know this might be a little uncomfortable, but I want you to be super profitable and I think you want that too. So let's get into it. Time bottlenecks, number one. What decisions require you specifically, not because they should, but because you haven't documented the process or trained your team.

 Number two, what tasks are you doing because you haven't delegated them yet, even though you know that you should. Number three, where is your team waiting on you to approve something, review something, or give the green light? This is the one that gets me every time you guys, and even like here we are creating podcasts.

The way that we're doing our system, I'm realizing that the last step of it, I need to be able to delegate back to my team. Because I'm holding up the process. All right. Number four? What would move faster if you just created a one page decision framework?

 There you go. So we talked about time, truth, and we talked about team bottlenecks,  and you're gathering all of that information. The reason we're doing this is because you are the lever for growth in your business.

Either your vision and your strategy or your actual time, putting this episode together, I was looking at a Harvard Business Review study that found that companies who conduct quarterly business audits see 31% higher profit margins than those who don't.

 So what if this little series that we've done here on she's that founder, is access to 31% higher profit margins for you? And just as a little add on to that. Research nugget. It's not because people were working more hours, it was because they were working on the right things.

 So when I ran this audit on myself, I discovered that my team was waiting for me to approve. Social media posts. Final podcast episodes, web pages, landing pages, resources, course modules. I mean so many things because I hadn't yet given them brand voice guidelines or approval criteria.

 So they'd create something, send it to me, wait for me to review it  which took three days or even three weeks, and then we would finally post it. I was the bottleneck. I was stopping our visibility, our client flow, and it was a hundred percent my fault. So I created approval frameworks.

Most of it took me 30 minutes or less, and it gave the empowerment back to my team so that they could be more productive. So here's where AI can help you with this, especially the time, truth part. You can export your calendar. Upload it to AI and ask. Analyze my calendar for the last month, categorize my time into revenue generating administrative, strategic planning, time management, and low value tasks.

Show me where I'm spending the most time. Now, obviously you'll have to give it a little information if your tasks aren't laid out like that on your calendar. But I challenge you to change your calendar titles and put RG next to revenue generating or even just an R, like start calling out what actually is making you money.

In my Google Calendar, everything that makes me money is green. Just makes it easy. So AI will give you that breakdown instantly, but it can't tell you. Whether those six hours of team meetings are productive or performative, whether you're in them because you need to be or because you haven't trained your team well.

 Whether the solution is better agendas, fewer meetings, or different team members, that is strategy and that's the work that we can do together. But at a minimum, you need to see those time blocks and understand where your time is going because you can't fix what you can't see. Okay, this is your Thursday homework.

You know, this is a quick hit. So here we go. Before next Thursday's episode, look at your calendar from last week, just last week, and count how many hours you spent on revenue generating activities, things your team should be doing, meetings that could have been emails, tasks you've been meaning to delegate for months.

And then ask yourself if I eliminated half of those non-revenue activities, what would happen? Would my business fall apart or would it start moving forward? So next week is the final episode in this series, client Profitability. Which clients are making you money and which ones are secretly costing you six figures.

And I'm gonna tell you why you probably can't run this audit alone, and that's okay. Here's what I want you to sit with in the meantime. What if the reason you feel stuck isn't because you're not working hard enough, but because you're working hard on things that don't matter? What if you've been paying that time tax for years and you didn't even know it?

 If you're tired of guessing and you want someone to help you see your blind spots, go and book a CEO Clarity call with me. You can find the link in the show notes. And next Thursday we're gonna talk about why clients are costing you money and why most founders are shocked when they find out the truth.

I'll see you then. And until then, I'm Dawn Andrews and you're listening to, she's That Founder.