Work through four questions: What is your time worth? Which recurring work can improve? What would losing a key person cost? And what extra business could your team take on?
What is your time worth?
As the visionary of the business, are you working in the business or on it? What could each hour freed from coordination and recurring problems contribute to growing your vision?
3 hours × 48 weeks × $400 per hour. This values redirected time; it is not cash saved or guaranteed revenue.
Which recurring work could take less effort?
Picture one system or type of work that repeats each month: proposals, reporting, approvals or client follow-up. If you could accelerate, automate or simplify one to three workflows, how much team capacity could you get back?
For each workflow: times per month × team hours freed each time × hourly cost × 12 months. Add the workflows together. Count each hour once, and exclude any founder hours already counted in section 1.
What would it cost to replace one of your key people?
When a key person leaves, customer and supplier relationships, critical knowledge and years of training can leave with them. There are two parts to estimate: the direct cost of hiring and training a replacement, and the capacity gap while that person gets up to speed.
Think of one key role. Enter direct costs beyond the salary-based estimate on the right.
How long from the departure until a qualified replacement can carry the role?
Default: 100% of the role's capacity is missing for the selected period. Reduce this if colleagues cover part of the role or the replacement becomes productive sooner.
Recovery estimate = annual salary ÷ 12 × gap months × capacity missing. This is a planning proxy for disrupted capacity, not an extra salary bill, a revenue-loss forecast or a probability of someone leaving. It excludes customer losses and other indirect effects.
Look for people who carry extra work, feel disengaged or no longer see a way to make an impact. These prompts do not assign a dollar value or predict a departure.
Start with a conversation about workload and engagement.
See how one person can hide a workload imbalanceWhat could you take on if your team had more capacity?
If founder focus improves and one to three workflows take less effort, how many additional clients, contracts or deals could you and your team realistically handle each year?
Perhaps one of the ideas on your list could finally move. Include it only if its revenue is separate from the clients or contracts above.
This is your growth scenario. The calculator does not assume that freed time automatically creates sales or guarantee demand, margins or delivery capacity.
Unclear decision rights, repeated founder approvals or competing priorities can consume leadership time. Discuss who owns decisions, what each leader is responsible for and which priority comes first. This is a separate conversation prompt; no arbitrary dollar amount is added to your results. If a recurring approval process wastes measurable hours, model it as a workflow above.
These are three different measures. They are shown separately because annual time value, one-time departure exposure and potential revenue are not the same thing.
The focused diagnostic and working engagement, completed after the required pre-work.
Only founder and workflow time value enter this comparison. It is a capacity-value multiple, not a cash-return forecast.
Illustrative estimates based on your inputs. They do not guarantee savings, staff retention, sales or return on the engagement.
A clear view of the capacity, people risk and growth opportunity identified using your assumptions.
3 hours per week × 48 working weeks × $400 per high-value founder hour.
4 weeks away from the business are already reflected.480 team hours across 1 recurring workflow.
Workflow 1: 20× monthly, 2 hours each$15,000 direct hiring and training costs + $50,000 salary-based recovery estimate.
6-month gap at 100% average role capacity missing.1 additional client or contract × $50,000 annual revenue.
Top-line scenario before costs; it is not added to capacity value.