Ep 317: How many hours a day should you work on your business?

How Much Time Should You Really Spend Working on Your Business?

New business owners often assume the fastest way to grow is to squeeze more hours out of every day. The rush feels real—you’ve got a hundred ideas, endless urgency, and it seems like the only way forward is to sacrifice sleep, relationships, and sanity.

But here’s the truth: working more hours doesn’t automatically mean making more money. In fact, it usually does the opposite. When you push past your natural capacity, your energy drops, your judgment gets cloudy, and you end up spinning your wheels on things that don’t actually move your business forward.

A better approach starts with building a life-first plan—and a business that rewards focus, not hustle.

Start with the Five F’s

Faith, family, friends, fitness, and fun.
Those go first on your calendar, not last.

Block them in before anything business-related. Be specific—sleep, workouts, family time, social time, actual downtime. When you do that, you’ll see what’s really left for work each week.

And guess what? It’ll probably be less than you imagined—and that’s okay. Focus thrives on constraints. When your time is tight, you make sharper decisions and stop wasting energy on tasks that don’t make a difference.

The Four Lanes of Work That Matter

Once you’ve set your life priorities, organize your business time into four simple lanes:

1. Essentials
These are the must-dos that keep things running: client calls, processing orders, shipping, invoices, replying to key messages. They may not be glamorous, but they protect trust and cash flow.

2. Profit Levers
These are the small tweaks that make a big difference—raising prices, adding a relevant upsell, tightening your offer, or sending a simple re-engagement email to your list. These often take minutes, not hours, but the ROI is huge.

3. Proactive Marketing
This is how you find new people—creating content, reaching out, attending events, building partnerships, showing up where your audience is. The key is to focus on a few channels you can do well and track leading indicators like conversations started or calls booked—not just sales.

4. Learning
Stay sharp, but don’t get stuck in “forever student” mode. Give yourself a small, scheduled block—maybe an hour a week—to learn something that solves a real problem or directly helps you move forward. If it doesn’t translate into action, it’s not work—it’s entertainment.

Design Your Schedule Around What Actually Works

Estimate time for each lane:

• Essentials first

• Profit levers weekly

• Realistic marketing blocks

• A short learning slot

You might find that your business can grow in 8–12 hours a week—not 40.

If your essentials take up most of your time, delegate or simplify. If you’re early-stage with fewer essentials, spend more time in proactive marketing until you have consistent leads.

Each week, review:

• What actually produced results?

• What felt heavy or draining?

• What could I cut, automate, or outsource?

Your hours will shift as life does, but your priorities shouldn’t.

The Sweet Spot

The law of diminishing returns applies here. More hours eventually lead to worse results. You lose clarity, make rushed decisions, and start resenting the work that once lit you up.

The sweet spot is where your business grows and your life still feels like yours. You don’t need marathon days—you need clarity, focus, and consistency.

Put your Five F’s on the calendar, stick to your four lanes, and keep your schedule light enough to sustain momentum. When you measure results instead of hours, you’ll grow faster—and with a whole lot more peace along the way.