Happy Monday everyone! We’re continuing our series showcasing real-life users of OfficeTime and how it fits into their success and workflow. This week we are thrilled to feature Karin Hollerback, Ph.D.
Karin Hollerbach founded and serves as CEO of Taku Group. The Taku Group provides expertise, experience, and resources to help clients prosper in key markets, primarily working in sectors where science, technology, and creative ideas converge. They support both for-profit and non-profit organizations and are located in the San Francisco Bay Area, and their team operates in all corners of the world.
Karin herself has worked in science and tech related fields for over 20 years and holds a mind boggling list of advanced degrees and achievements. Here are just a few highlights of her recent interview with OfficeTime and how we get to support Karin’s success and make an impact at the Taku Group.
Tell us about company, Karin, and about the services you provide.
My company, Taku Group, helps clients open up new markets. That can mean several things – international expansion or simply launching new product lines, reaching into new areas and lines of business. We provide strategic advice – what should be their overarching objectives and how do they get there? But we also go well beyond that – helping them actually make it happen. We roll up our sleeves and work alongside our clients to do the work and get the results, not just tell them what to do.
Mostly, we work with companies and organizations that have roots in science and technology. For example, we work with a lot of companies in health and medical sectors, clean technologies and environmental sectors, and software. We are happy to support some great non-profits as well, which operate in healthcare, environmental wellness, and science related education, by providing services pro bono or at less-than-market rates.
I’m lucky because I really love my work – and actually sometimes do too much of it. But I really love doing other things also, so as the business owner I get to set boundaries – and I do, because life’s too short to only work! Outside of work, I love playing with and training Siberian huskies and am a foster mom to huskies in a rescue group. Besides that, the activities that I do the most are flying (for fun only) and just about anything outdoors and anything that qualifies as “an adventure.” Last year, I had tons of fun doing a Kilimanjaro trek. Thankfully, I also like to travel, because I do that for work too – but I always try to mix in some fun exploration.
How important is time management in the day-to-day running of your business AND your life?
Time management is HUGELY important both in the day to day running of my business(es) and my life. The services we provide are often highly specialized and may require a great deal of skill, experience, education, etc. The upshot is that we’re not inexpensive. I am totally committed, therefore, to ensuring that when we bill clients we know exactly how we spend our time on their projects and that we do so efficiently. If we can’t justify the time spent as creating value for a client, we can’t bill for it.
So we need a tool that is so easy to use it blends into the background, yet reminds us when we forget to click the off button or something. Our team of consultants and I need to be very clear about how we spend our time – but we can’t afford to spend time worrying about tracking how we spend our time.
For projects that we don’t bill hourly, in the long run it’s just as important to us that we know where our times goes. It’s all too easy to fritter away precious time when you don’t have the pressure of knowing you need accuracy in billing a client hourly – but then we’re the ones losing that time. As a business owner, I can’t afford that. Time management has a very real impact on our ability to make a profit. I need to know at the end of each project whether our time estimates for how long it would take us to complete the work were realistic – so that we can keep refining our process of estimating.
When I work on other tasks in developing the company, I need to on the one hand know that I really am investing X amount of time each week on certain things (maybe things I don’t like but can’t really delegate and just need to do!) and on the other hand know that I’m not getting stuck in time-sucks.
I am part-owner in some other businesses, so I basically have several jobs. That keeps me extremely busy. Oh, yes, and I like to have a life, too, and be healthy! So I couldn’t function without being highly efficient in the work-related things I do. Time management is critical, so that when I’m “off” I’m really off and don’t have to worry about other things I should be doing.
Talk to me specifically about OfficeTime. What’s been your biggest takeaway of using it?
At different times of the day I have different tasks that I need to track that vary from a few minutes in length to multiple hours. With that broad range, down to a resolution of a few minutes, there’s no way I could keep track of all that time without some kind of easy to use tool. OfficeTime is simply the best tool that I’ve found – and I love that it works on Macs and PCs, as our team uses both. It’s incredibly intuitive and easy to use, yet it’s not simplistic – meaning, it has all the functionality I need. I don’t use 100% of the functionality, but I’m happy to say I’ve never found myself needing something it didn’t do, nor scratching my head wondering why in the world certain features were there (as I sometimes do with other companies’ “bloatware”). It’s really just a fantastic combination of highly functional and really user-friendly. And Stephen Dodd, the CEO, has always been really easy to get a hold of when I’ve had questions – a real person supporting his software, how wonderful! My biggest takeaway? A real productivity tool for real businesses that have real needs, backed by a real person.
So what new and awesome thing have you been able to create in your business, since you’ve freed up so much time with the OfficeTime time tracking tool?
I have always been oriented toward efficiency – because I’d rather get more results in less time, so that I can then go out and do other fun things with the rest of my time. So before I started using OfficeTime I thought I was doing an excellent job of using my time wisely – giving myself a pat on the back and all that. Well, I was doing a pretty good job, but …. boy, was I surprised that I still had a lot of things I could squeeze out of my schedule!! A real eye-opener. Over time, I’ve gotten better and better – and find that periodic reexaminations not just of individual projects but of an entire week’s time, for example, keeps reminding me to keep using my time well.
What has that done for me? It enables me to operate several businesses, for one! More importantly – without sacrificing my health or other activities I love. Sound too good to be true? No, it’s really hard work – but OfficeTime in a very practical way helps keep my feet to the fire in using time wisely, so that I can then say aaaaahhhh…. when I’m not working, without feeling stressed.
~ Karin Hollerbach
A huge thanks to Karin from the blogging team here at OfficeTime. We love it when someone shares the REAL LIFE impact that a simple tool like the OfficeTime time tracker can create. We’re also super grateful for her acknowledgement of our developer and CEO, Stephen Dodd. Stephen’s not only a brilliant guy, but as Karin pointed out in her interview, he always makes time for his client (and his team). 🙂