Short answerTo calculate what your time is worth, divide the profit your business generates by the hours you work — but then compute the more useful number: your marginal rate, which is what an hour spent on your highest-value activity (closing a sale, delivering billable work, improving the operation) actually produces. The average and marginal rates can differ substantially — and it's the marginal rate that should price every decision about what to stop doing yourself.
About the numbers: Unless a named source is linked, ranges and dollar examples are planning illustrations—not industry benchmarks, client results, or promises. Measure your own volume, time, pricing, and adoption before making a decision.

What to do next

Run the basic version first, because most owners never have. Take last year's profit before your own compensation, divide by your true annual hours (be honest — count the Sunday invoicing), and face the number. An owner taking $120,000 out of a business on 55-hour weeks is earning about $44 an hour — often less than some of the people they hire. That number isn't an insult; it's a diagnosis. It means a large share of your hours are being spent on work worth far less than your best hours, and the average is the blend of both.

Which is why the marginal rate is the number that changes behavior. Ask: what does an hour produce when I spend it on the thing only I can do? If you close sales, calculate it from your close rate and average job value per hour of selling. If you're the senior practitioner, it's your billable rate. That marginal figure is the true cost of every hour you spend on $15-an-hour work, because those are the hours the admin displaced. The kitchen-table invoicing session doesn't cost you $44 an hour; it costs whatever the same hour would have earned pointed at its best use — or, on some nights, it costs the recovery that would have made tomorrow's best hours possible, which is a real economic input even though no spreadsheet has a row for it.

Now the number becomes a decision tool, with a practical guideline: scrutinize recurring work that costs far less to remove than your marginal rate. If your marginal rate is $200, any recurring task that software ($50 a month) or delegation ($25 an hour) can absorb is being done, right now, by the most expensive employee the business will ever have. This rule is also the honest frame for evaluating any fix, tool, or audit: a $1,000 audit that recovers 10 hours a month isn't competing with $0 — it's competing with the marginal value of 120 owner-hours a year, and it's why FrictionList states its guarantee in hours rather than vibes. Ten reclaimable hours a month found or the fee refunded is a bet about your marginal rate — and the entire point of calculating that rate is that you can now check the math yourself.

Quick answers

What's the formula for an owner's hourly worth?

Profit before owner compensation ÷ true annual hours worked gives the average rate; revenue produced per hour of your highest-value activity gives the marginal rate that should drive decisions.

What's a typical hourly value for a small business owner?

There is no universal benchmark. Calculate both from your own profit, hours, close rate, job value, and billable work.

How should I use the number day to day?

Apply the one-third rule: any recurring task removable for less than a third of your marginal rate — by software or delegation — shouldn't be done by you.