How a marketing agency owner uses Timeular to maintain the right work life balance

Ben is the founder and owner of marketing agency Braveo which helps businesses grow with clear marketing messages, stunning videos and a beautiful website. He also plays in a band, is the music director and pastor for an online campus and a father.

The challenge: staying on top of the workload

Ben has a busy schedule and as he wears lots of hats, it’s important that he stays on top of his time. He needed to find something that made sure that the right tasks were getting his attention for the right amount of time.

The solution: a better balanced workload and power to create more jobs

Ben started using Timeular – the time tracking app for marketing agencies -as he liked how easy it was to use and how it wouldn’t take up any of his time creating entries. Ben starts his day by writing a to do list into a journal and then goes through and ticks them off. He uses the mornings for deep work, including his creative work and the tasks that are more mentally challenging. He believes it’s important to “get that work done when your brain is fresh.”

Afternoons are reserved for administrative tasks that don’t require as much mental input and for spending time with his five year old son.

He identified the major tasks that he does on a daily basis and uses them as his activities. He tracks production workflows, meetings, coaching, administration and finance, email and phone calls, and IT Support.

Do you want to know how to track your time? Take a look at our free guide about time tracking.

“I haven’t really had any challenges with Timeular. It’s easy to get it up and running quickly, improvements are constantly being made to the software, and the few times I’ve needed to contact support they’ve been responsive and helpful.”

Since his activities are fairly generic, he uses tags and notes to help be more specific. Ben then assigns them to clients and marks them as #billable or #notbillable and uses the notes field to save more detail about what he was doing at that time.

“With the information I get from Timeular, I can see which clients are using more of my time and make sure that I’m billing my clients appropriately.”

Ben uses the data he gets from Timeular insights to determine which aspects of his business require the most of his time. After that, he brings in additional resource to take on some of the load. He remarks: “I guess Timeular is a job creation tool as well, who knew?”

Ben’s tip: create generic activities and then be more specific about them in the notes

Ben suggests making your activities generic: “that way it doesn’t matter which client you’re working for or what project you’re working on. Choosing the appropriate task is so easy – you don’t have to think about it. And of course, you can then use the notes to be more specific about them.”

The outcome: ability to see time as a financial budget

Thanks to Timeular, Ben is able to better manage his workload and knows when he needs extra resource to be able to produce his best work.

Timeular has helped him be more efficient: “When I identify an imbalance I can address it and make changes to my schedule to make sure everything keeps moving forward and nothing gets left behind.”

“Understand that time is your most precious resource in life. You can get more food, you can make more money, but you can never make more time. Use it wisely and spend it intentionally.”

TIP: Do you know what time budgets are and what benefits they have? Read our blog to find out more.