So if you’ve been on this entrepreneurship journey for more than a minute, you know that the journey can be an interesting one. It can be full of joy and freedom and excitement. But it can also be taxing and trying and stressful. A common misconception from all my non-entrepreneurial circle, which, if I’m being honest, isn’t a very big one anymore. But when I started down this path 9 years ago, I heard a lot of things from a lot of people. And I’m sure you have your own version and can relate with this.
But one common misconception really seems to be the thought process that building a business is more of a linear journey. So you start and you just grow and grow and grow and it’s more or less a straight line. Well, anyone who has actually built a business knows this is not reality. It doesn’t work like that. There are ups and downs and peaks and valleys and roadblocks and detours and diversions and backpedaling and if you look at a depiction on paper, it looks more like a squirrel on LSD running around like crazy rather than a nice, even, straight line up. It is NOT a linear journey.
From my experience, most people know (or at least assume) that building a business requires time and dedication. And also from my experience for the past almost decade in this industry, is that most clients end up trading their 9-5 and turning it into a 24/7, at least at some point in time. What I mean by this is that their traditional job, from the hours of 9 to 5, gets traded into working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to do their own thing and build their own business. So this episode is all about how you can put things in place to not do that, and if you have in fact traded your 9-5 for a 24/7, we’ll talk about how you can start to take your time back without sacrificing your revenue.
So no matter where you are at in your journey right now, if you are working all the time or even more than you’d like, this episode is for you.
Now, first I actually want to clarify that if you had and left a 9-5, obviously this is relevant. If you worked third shift and then started to focus on your daydream, this is relevant. If you never worked corporate or you never had a traditional job, this is also for you. I actually fell into that camp and never had a “normal” job, and still ended up working all the time into what was more or less a 24/7 side hustle that then grew into a successful company. So I just want to make sure that it’s clear from the onset that if you didn’t have a typical 9-5 job in the past, this will all still apply to you.
There are typically 2 obvious reasons for people trying to build a business to work all the time.
Number one is because they want to.
Number two is because they have to.
Understandable, right?
Those that fall into the first category, they work all the time because they want to – or let’s say because they choose to, and it could literally be because they are on absolute fire for what they do. They just love it. Sometimes though, it’s a little bit deeper than that. Sometimes it can be because work is a really great and really productive escape. That’s not always the case, but I have seen it many times and there is a really fine line here.
Those that fall into the second category, they work all the time because they have to. This is usually because of finances. And it is especially common when you are trying to get your feet wet and move up or into that 6-figure range.
And it makes total sense, you have to start somewhere. Oftentimes it can actually be way better for us mentally or for our family or for our long-term goals, to hustle and get this thing off the ground, even if it means way longer hours and way less overall short-term stability, versus working for someone else. Which equates to long days, nights, and weekends.
But what if you’ve already busted past 6-figures. What if you’re at multi-6 or heading towards 7?
If you are already financially secure and your business is established and you are working all the time, we really need to pull the curtain back and evaluate why.
There are things you can put in place at any revenue level to help mitigate you working 24/7, which we’re going to dive into in just a second, but there are some really key differences in the WHY that I just think are worth taking a minute to highlight.
If you are just at or trying to get to 6-figures, again, working a lot and hustling is pretty logical in this season. That’s not to say you need to be doing that forever, though. And that’s also not saying that you 100% have to hustle or that you can ONLY focus on building your business.
I’ve had clients who are moms or who were building their business on the side or were full-time caregivers, and in those instances, time is extremely limited. With that said, though, the business was worked on whenever there was a literal spare second. So even if they weren’t working on the business 24/7, they were still working a ton. Which makes sense.
Something that I personally did not expect, however, was to find that even as business owners have passed 6 figures and are on their way to smash through to 7 figures, they also can sometimes tend to work 24/7. And I think it’s easy to make a natural assumption that these business owners (by “these” I mean multi-6 to 7) fall in the category of working all the time because they want to.
But what I’ve found, more often than not, is that there is a lot more to it than that. There are nuances and different struggles that everyone faces, and some pop up and are dealt with early on, and others only become a huge problem the more that you are scaling and they end up eating up a ton of time. And don’t worry we’ll go into each of these in depth in just a minute.
But first let’s talk about this switch. Trading your 9-5 with a 24/7.
Why is that not something to brag about and wear like a badge of honour?
First of all, most of us have been there. We get it. We started our businesses for various reasons and for a while it is preferable to work 24/7 chasing our own dream than working 9-5 to support someone else in chasing theirs.
But one thing that is really counter-intuitive is hustling or working all the time. Hustling all the time is actually unhealthy and can be a dangerous habit to get into, even if you love to work.
Why is hustling all the time unhealthy, you may be wondering.
It can lead to burn out because you’re working all the time, it actually decreases productivity, it increases stress and anxiety, and it promotes a huge lack of work-life balance, which can be really hard to balance anyway as an entrepreneur.
Now I’m pulling these from my personal experiences, what I’ve witnessed in my clients, a Forbes article called “The Pros And Cons Of Hustle Culture: How To Work Hard Without Burning Out” – which I take with a grain of salt because they don’t have any sources but what they said was in line with my experience, and also a Master Theses for CUNY by Arianna Balkeran titled “Hustle Culture and the Implications for Our Workforce.”
And here’s the ironic kicker. Working more doesn’t always mean more money.
A lot of newer entrepreneurs get caught in the trap of thinking “the more I work, the more I make.”
But this is usually not the case for a CEO.
This is one of those things where the difference in employee vs CEO mindset comes to play. While this is true of an hourly employee, the more you work the more you do make, you’re not an hourly employee. You’re a CEO.
So let’s bust that myth right now with the Pareto principle. If you haven’t heard of this concept yet, I’m really excited to be the one to introduce it to you. As I said, it’s called the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule. What this rule states is that 80% of your output comes from 20% of your input.
This principle was discovered by an Italian economist and sociologist named Vilfredo Pareto. In layman’s terms, what it means is that 20% of your most focused efforts yield 80% of your results.
In business, this equates to saying: stop wasting time on meaningless shit that doesn’t move the needle forward. Be intentional about how you spend your time. Focus on the things that will actually move you forward and increase your revenue. Oftentimes the things that feel the hardest are the ones that we really need to be doing in order to grow, and subsequently they can be the ones that we constantly want to push off. But if you don’t want to be working 24/7, this is a surefire way to help shift you out of that.
Now I am not cosigning on to sitting down and waiting until everything feels perfectly and the moon is aligned and you’re totally in flow. Because if you wait until then, you’ll be waiting forever. Alternatively, I am also not cosigning on to the belief that hustling all the time is required in order to build a successful business and the more that you work the more that you make. Because I have not found that to be true either. While there is a place for both of those sides of the belief system, balance is your bff. So somewhere in between.
Remember, at the end of the day, your business is there to support you. There are a plethora of reasons why people start their own businesses. Time freedom, financial freedom, the ability to travel the world, the opportunity to spend more time with your family, not having to answer to some shitty boss, being able to dictate how you live your life and not being chained to a desk. The sky is the limit for reasons, right? And as rewarding and as freeing as it can be, it’s not always rainbows and butterflies and it truly is not for the faint of heart.
But again, I really want to reiterate – your business is there to support you and your business should be supporting your life. Not the other way around. And if your life is designed around your business – it’s time to start putting things in place right now to flip that.
And if you’re not profitable, your business is really just an expensive hobby. That doesn’t mean there aren’t dips, of course, but I have seen 6 and 7 figure entrepreneurs struggling to make ends meet, which is in part why they work so much and they feel like they’re on this never-ending hamster wheel.
So let’s go ahead and dive into specifics on how to not replace your 9-5 with a 24/7. These are relevant for any revenue level, so those working towards 6 and/or those scaling to 7.
-Intentionality with your time
This sounds like such a “no, duh” point, but truly. Being intentional with your time will absolutely help pull you from the brink of working 24/7. What does be intentional actually mean or look like?
I know, I know, it’s so cliche, but what I struggle with you may not even blink an eye at. And vice versa. But when I say be intentional, stop and think on where you’re spending huge chunks of your time. And then work backwards to start to take that time back.
So for example something I used to do all the time without even realising was mindlessly scrolling on social media. I have those blocker things on my desktop so I can’t even access social media during certain hours, which is really helpful when I’m at my computer working, but I had them on my phone.
And I found myself just mindlessly opening up Instagram to respond to comments or check on my analytics, and before I knew it I would have spent an hour watching cute animal videos or Taylor Swift’s concert highlights. Even if this wasn’t during working hours, this was not the way that I had envisioned spending my time. So I deleted the apps from my phone. And you would not believe how many times I would mindlessly go to open them up only to discover they weren’t there. It was such a habit I didn’t even think about it. That right there took back like 7 hours of my week.
Another way you can be intentional with your time is to work in batches, schedule things out, and utilise the 80/20 rule.
-Batch and schedule
Batching can look like spending one day a week creating content or doing a similar tasks in chunks.
Scheduling things can mean that you don’t have to worry about it or even think about it. Once and done.
Then putting the two of them together – batching and scheduling – you don’t even have to use the brain power to wonder if it’s been done or stress about catching up. It’s already handled. You just saved yourself HOURS each month.
-Utilising the 80/20 rule
We talked about the Pareto Principle. But again, just to highlight, focus on the 20% of things that actually move the needle forward, get you results, and increase your revenue in your business.
Marketing, visibility, cultivating relationships. And you can delegate a lot of this out once you get to a certain point, but I just want to be clear here that I’m referring to intentional action.
When I say marketing, I don’t mean spending 5 hours creating a blog post that lives in draft mode on your website. I mean publishing it and telling the whole world (and preferably not spending 5 hours on it). When I say cultivating relationships, I don’t mean liking one persons post and bouncing. I mean genuinely connecting with people and building those relationships.
Spend your time honing in on what that 20% is that’s going to move the needle forward in your business and go out and do it. This will automatically save you so much time.
-Boundaries
Boundaries, baby. This is one that surprised me. I wasn’t expecting it, but a lot of my multi-6 figure clients still struggle with boundaries. And that’s one of those big things that really does have to be tackled in order to scale sustainably. But my point to share is that no matter what level you are at – this can still be a real struggle so you are not alone.
With that said, you can implement boundaries. However, it’s as much about holding the boundaries as it is setting them. Let’s use an example.
I had a business friend with a client who always expected her to be available the same-day for a call. She started pushing back a bit and requiring the client to schedule a call in advance. But the client would book and not show up, and then email her a few days later asking if they could meet on whatever day he emailed her.
She sent him a polite, yet direct message, letting him know that if he booked a call and wasn’t able to make it, he would need to let her know asap and reschedule as this had happened multiple times and she was wasting time sitting on the call.
He apologised and she thought they were good to go. And then he did it again. Booked and didn’t show and wanted to meetup when he emailed her. And she let it go. And round and round and round we go. My point to share this is that it’s not enough to just set the boundary – you have to actually hold it. But when you do, you take back your time and you stand in your power. Win win.
-Systems
Systems can be such a great way to support your business as you scale. And the higher that you scale, the more necessary I believe systems are.
But something that may be overlooked with systems is how much time it can save you. If you find that you’re working 24/7 and a lot of time is eaten up with answering questions, vetting potential clients, sending proposals, onboarding clients, client communications, or scheduling calls – systematising will give you back HOURS of your week.
-Delegating/team
If you’ve been around here for a minute, you know how much I sing the praises of delegating and having a team. This comes into play so much in this instance because if you have traded your 9-5 with a 24/7, get some of that shit off your plate. Delegate delegate delegate delegate. I cannot stress the importance of this enough. Not only is having a solid team in place going to help grow your business, it will also help you take back your time and stop working night and day.
-Habits
I think this is another one that sounds very much like a “no, duh”, but honestly your habits can make or break you. While being intentional with your time can really help to mitigate some of those nasty habits that spill over into being huge time suckers, others may not quite fall into that category or may show up differently. So what I’d encourage you to do here is to audit where you’re spending your time and HOW you’re spending your time, even when you’re not working but you are working.
So I’ll share a personal example here for reference. I used to be in a terrible habit of turning reruns of Grey’s Anatomy or any of the Harry Potter movies on to catch up on work stuff. I’ve seen Harry Potter more times than I can count and I’m getting close to being able to say that with Grey’s Anatomy, so I literally know everything that’s coming up and about to happen.
Well what I would do is sit down with these on “in the background,” and do work stuff like planning out my week, mapping out my content, or doing some admin things. What ended up happening was I would spend 2+ hours feeling like I had been working, when in reality I had not really gotten anything done. I wasn’t fully present chilling out, so in my mind I felt like all of that time had been spent working. But equally I wasn’t fully present with work, so things didn’t actually get done. This was a terrible habit. Ultimately what I ended up doing was deciding that if I was going to have chill time and, say, watch a movie, I was going to fully have chill time. No mindless scrolling in the background, no random admin, etc.
You may have similar habits that show up in different ways. I’ve had clients who really struggled with being present with their family because they were constantly checking in on work stuff. And that is a HARD habit to break, but totally worth it. But the point here is taking a good, hard look at some of these bad habits that you have developed, and then work on changing them into something positive. Even in my example, changing that one habit made me way more intentional with my time around work and also helped me to actually relax when I wasn’t working. So if you feel like you’re working 24/7, take a look at your habits.
-Behaviours
This can overlap a little bit with habits, but habits are typically routine or repeated behaviors. Behaviours, in this case anyway, are more along the lines of a reaction and can be situational. Now this is one that may actually ruffle a few feathers, but here we go anyway.
Some of these big behavioral challenges included a lack of discipline, micromanaging, multitasking, lack of clear decisions, and failing to delegate. In my experience, behavioral problems actually have come into play and been more of a problem for higher level clients. Now again this isn’t saying that those scaling to 6-figures don’t or can’t struggle with this. This is just what I have seen and experienced.
If you are a multi-6 or on the path to becoming a 7-figure business owner and you find that you are working 24/7, I really want you hear me out on this one. If you have intentionality with your time, if you have the systems, if you have the team, if you hold the boundaries, I would really encourage you to look at your behaviours.
And this one can really be a tough pill to swallow if you do fall into this camp, because usually when we find that it is behavioral, 99% of things not moving forward or requiring work around the clock can be solved with behavioural shifts, yes, but it can be really hard to acknowledge that WE are the bottleneck. But only acknowledging that and addressing that is going to shift things here.
A lot of this shift can come from mindset work, which we’ll get into in a second, but also half the battle for this is realising the problem so that you can start to address it. So a couple of solutions here would be working on loosening up the reins and delegating more, trusting your team to handle things (this is after all why you hired them) so that you’re not micromanaging, and making clear decisions and sticking to them – because a lack of clarity just means confusion and a ton of extra work and wasted time and for everyone.
-Business audit
This one is typically more for those higher-level businesses, so while this may be relevant for teetering 6-figure businesses, I’ve found it’s usually more applicable to multi-6 and above, so I’ll use an example specifically for those instances. But if you’re not there yet, you can still have takeaways from this.
If you have passed 6-figures with a repeatable system, so for this I’m assuming you’re making at minimum $10k cash months, minimum, and you’re not profitable, which is why you feel like you have to work all the time – you need to break open your books and do some audits.
What is the businesses profit margin?
What are your recurring expenses?
What are you spending on that’s not recurring?
Is most of the revenue going back into the business or is going towards personal expenses?
You know this one can be really enlightening to see where your money is going, especially if you don’t have a great pulse on it at any given time. If you’re constantly investing back into the business, okay, as long as you’re making strategic decisions that will turn you a good ROI (or return on your investment), okay.
But if you find that a huge chunk of your profit every month is going towards lifestyle, that may be something to reevaluate. And listen, I am all for celebrating and actually enjoying and living the life that your business affords you. And not even “within reason” because that’s such a subjective term. With that said, if you are blowing through everything at the end of the month, which means you have to work 24/7 to keep up your lifestyle, it’s really hard to get off of that hamster wheel, and again there are only so many hours in a day. So that’s only going to support you for so long, meaning knowing where that money is going and setting things in place so that you aren’t having to work 24/7, that’s the ticket here.
Now just a quick note that this can vary significantly based on your business model. For example agency models have huge expenses in team. So even if there’s 7-figures in revenue, there may not even be 6-figures in profit. Obviously this is an extreme example and hopefully if that sounds familiar to you, I do hope you’re generating more than 10% in profit, but for agencies there are way higher expenses than for, say, a designer with one VA.
-Mindset
Ooh good ole mindset. Mindset can be an asset and a support for literally every single one of these topics that we’ve discussed. Struggling to hold boundaries – work on your mindset. Freaking out about hiring a team and/or delegating more – work on your mindset. Feeling like you HAVE to work all the time in order to feel worthy, safe, or enough – mindset for the win.
Now I am not a medical professional or a licensed mental health professional or anything like that, and a lot of things that may be holding you back or popping up for you may need the support of someone qualified to help you navigate that. And maybe not.
But my point here is every single level of business will benefit, and dare I say, need, mindset work. If you’re hitting a ceiling, if you’re struggling with xyz, if you feel like you have to work 24/7, you’re going to benefit from mindset work. Whether you’re trying to get to know 6 figures or whether you’re well beyond 7. And of course the mindset things that pop up are different at those varying levels, but the takeaway here is that doing this work is something that will benefit you throughout the entire journey.
So if you do feel like you’ve traded your 9-5 for a 24/7, mindset is a great place to start.
