The Time Tracking Experiment: What Your Hourly Rate Really Is

Send us Fan Mail 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 What next? Follow Here's What I Learned on your favorite podcast player Leave a review so the podcast is seen by more people like you Share this episode with a friend This podcast is powered by curiosity—and by listeners like you. Support future episodes at ko-fi.com/jackihayes Follow me on Instagram at @jackihayes_obm   Proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective, a community of indie creators amplifying each other’s work through collaboration and care.   Credits: Intro and Outro Music: Atomic by Alex-Productions |https://onsound.eu/ Music promoted byhttps://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons / Attribution 3.0 Unported License (CC BY 3.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US