One of the constant battles in my business is finding time for future business development. If you've been here a while, then you'll know I'm a time-tracking nerd and I'm obsessed with revenue generating tasks.
If it doesn't make money, I'm not doing it. Which is my excuse for not cleaning the bathroom.
Why part-time hours mean being ruthless with your time
If you work part-time hours like I do (approx 20 hours a week), you have to be super strict with where time goes.
There's client work, admin and marketing which is enough to fill a 60 hour week, nevermind one third of that.
So, when it comes to dedicating time to work that doesn't have a pretty immediate ROI, I'm usually reluctant to do it.
Which is a problem because my business won't grow if I don't put the time into those future revenue streams.
The financial sacrifices I've made to buy back time
Over the years I've made financial sacrifices to get the time back to build stuff.
In 2023 I reduced my 1-1 clients so that I could build and launch my email marketing membership (try it for 14 days here).
And at the end of 2025, I made the decision to stop running group programmes so that I could focus on scaling my digital product sales.
At both of those points, my income took a hit - which was uncomfortable. But unless I outsourced after-school childcare, or worked in the evenings, there was no other option.
Why I won't give up the school run
I started this business to be a school run mum and I don't want to give up time with Penny for work. And by the time I've had dinner of an evening, I'm too tired to be productive at my laptop.
Therefore, some income had to go to free up the time to build stuff.
I've had to learn paid ads and how to maximise average order value for low ticket products.
The morning I got up at 6am to work
Despite my best efforts, I was still coming up short on time last week. After feeling frustrated at losing sales due to not having my latest landing page live, I got up an hour early a few mornings to get it done.
A bonus was I saw a pretty sunrise! And my landing page got finished.
Nothing good in business comes for free
I guess the moral of the story is that nothing good in business comes for free.
There's always a trade off on time and money! For me it's money that I've not made in the short-term because I've had to sacrifice clients for time to build. And of course, I've invested money in experts to help me get the job done faster.
Just sharing this in case you've made the mistake of thinking I'm over here getting everything done with zero stress or effort.
Cheering you on!
Kelly