Every question that can only be answered by you is a queue. This counts the queue: how many a day, how long each one takes you and the person waiting, and what stops when you are not there. Nobody has this number, and every owner recognises it instantly.
A business can survive with its operating knowledge in one head at four people. At fifteen it cannot: every day queues behind one person, nobody else can cover, and growth stops at what that person can hold. This puts a number on the queue — your hours, their waiting, and what stalls when you are away — and then a second number underneath: the weeks of your year it comes to.
Three costs, added. The first is your own time: questions a day times working days, times the minutes each one takes you including the context switch back to whatever you were doing, valued at what an hour of yours is worth to the business — which is not what you pay yourself, but what the business earns when you are selling, leading or building rather than answering. The second is theirs: the same questions times the minutes the asker stands waiting, at their wage. The third is what happens when you are not there: the days you are away, times a normal day's revenue, times the share of that day's work that stalls until you are back.
The tool also converts your hours into weeks of your working year, because that is the unit owners actually feel. Four hundred hours sounds abstract. Ten weeks a year answering questions that had a look-up-able answer does not.
Almost all of them are facts, not decisions. What does this customer pay. What is really in stock as opposed to what the list says. Who gets the good material when there is not enough. What went wrong last time. What order things go out in. In the wholesale nursery every one of those routed through the owner because the order system was a folder on a shared drive, and everything the folders did not hold sat with him. Nobody else could run a day without asking.
Getting it out of his head was mostly not a technical job. It was sitting in the seat, watching which questions actually got asked, and writing the answers somewhere the rest of the team could reach them — then making the system the place those answers live, so they stay current without anybody maintaining a document. Once the facts are in a pipeline with a stage, an owner and the data that stage needs, the owner is consulted for decisions rather than facts, which is the job.
Twenty-five questions a day at four minutes each across 250 days: 6,250 questions and 417 hours, or 10.4 working weeks, worth £25,000 at £60 an hour. The askers wait two minutes each: 208 hours and £3,125 at £15. Fifteen days away with 40% of a £4,000 day stalling: £24,000. About £52,000 a year, which is the cost of being the answer — before the growth that never happened because of it.
Count the questions for a real week rather than guessing, then sort them into facts and decisions. The facts go into a system — a stage per step, an owner per stage, the data that stage needs attached — and the decisions stay with you. That is exactly what the operations audit maps in two days inside the working week, and it is the first move in every engagement written up in the case studies. The other calculators put numbers on the rest, and the short version of the method is on the byHoratio homepage.
One where a normal day cannot happen without the owner — because the prices, the stock truth, the customer history, the priorities and the order of work live in their head rather than in a system anyone can read. It works at four people. At fifteen every day queues behind one person, nobody can cover, and growth stops at what that person can hold.
Keep a tally for one real week — a mark on a pad every time someone comes to you for something they could not look up. Include phone calls and messages. Most owners guess ten a day and count thirty. Then note whether each was a fact (what does this cost) or a decision (should we take this job); the facts are the ones a system removes.
Not your drawings. Use what the business earns when you are doing the thing only you can do — closing a sale, coaching a hire, negotiating a supplier — divided by the hours you actually get to do it. For most owner-operators that is between £50 and £150 an hour, and it is why 417 hours of answering questions is a five-figure cost rather than a nuisance.
Sometimes, but a manager inherits the queue rather than removing it unless the facts are written down somewhere first. The nursery in case study 004 got the knowledge out of the owner's head and into a pipeline per role before it grew, and the next ten hires went onto the nursery and the lorries rather than into the office. The system came first; the people came second.
Yes, and usually more than owners expect. A buyer is purchasing future profit they can rely on, and if the customer relationships, the pricing and the daily decisions all depend on one person who is leaving, they discount for it or walk away. The business valuation calculator on this site puts an illustrative figure on that discount; it is not a valuation and you should take proper advice before acting on it.
Facts belong in a system. Decisions belong with you. The audit finds which is which, inside your working week. Twenty minutes, no deck, no pitch.
HORATIO@BYHORATIO.COM
The nursery that moved its operating knowledge into a pipeline per role — and grew without the office growing.
What the same dependency does to the price a buyer would pay.
The hire, the charge-out rate, the margin leak, and more.