You want to know how to run a business but all the things you are told you need to do feel impossible with the time you have.
I will tell you that trying to run a business on 10 hrs per week is not a whole lot of time. But if you are intentional with the time you have, it can be done. I am currently running 2 businesses on about 15 hours a week. But you need to be VERY clear on the plan and where you are going every single day so you can get right to work and not waste a moment on indecision.
As a side note: If you want to one day transition to the business full-time you are going to have to give it more than that. OR be ok with it taking a lot longer before you are at a full-time income. Instead of a few years, it could take 3-5 years before the business grows to the level you want it to.
I don’t want to dash your hopes, but I also want to tell you the truth so you don’t have the wrong expectations. It can be done, but you have to set it in your heart and mind that you will never give up.
If you are trying to build a side hustle income from your than you can do pretty well running the business side of it on 10 hours a week. BUT you have to stay focused and take intentional action on your business plan and not get distracted by small income streams and only work on the ones that pay you well.
Are you ready to commit to that?
3 Key Things Every Business Needs
There are 3 areas that every business needs to have in order to sustain itself. Without them, you can’t expect to make money or grow your business.
This is a quick overview, and then I will dive in a bit more deeply into each.
Audience/Customer Attraction – Work continually to bring more eyes to your business. This is often the thing people want to ignore the most, but it is the lifeblood of your business. As much time as possible needs to be spent here.
Nurturing your customers/Sales– You have to earn your audience’s trust and give them a reason to buy from you. This is key for any business, no matter what you are selling.
You can do this through emailing them, showing up consistently on social media(this is key for my rabbitry business; I don’t have a regular newsletter-type email list for this business), or your core place for producing content. This is how they will start to trust you and then buy from you.
Maintenance – And every business has maintenance work. Whether it is packing up products or planning content. This is stuff that you have to do no matter what. Tedious? Maybe, but it is necessary. When you are running a business on a tight amount of time you need to be very intentional about your actions. And that takes strategy and thought.
Audience (Potential Customer) Attraction: 4-6 Hrs Per Week
This section gets the most time because there is no way your business will survive without marketing in some way. You need to constantly be bringing people in.
Whether that is social media, blogging, YouTube, collaborating with other business owners, or finding places to get featured, you have to be continually bringing more eyes to what you do.
If you have very little time, I would say starting with ONE social media platform would be your best option. It doesn’t cost anything to start, and the people are already there. You just have to get them to look in your direction by publishing good content on that platform. I would also start with the platform you know best. If you don’t spend any time on that platform as a consumer. You are going to have a hard time getting business results on it.
Pro Tip: The more you know about something, the faster it will be to create content around it. The only reason I use a script in my rabbitry business is to keep my thoughts organized. I could talk about raising rabbits all day long. So if you are starting a business in general, it should be about something you know well.
Here is where I would recommend spending your time in the content creation process.
- Planning and prep: 60% Of your time.
- Creation (recording or writing): 30% Of your time.
- Optimizing: 10% of your time.
Things That Can Speed Up The Content Creation Process.
Templates
AI
Planning
Nurture And Sales: 2 hrs Per Week
Whether you sell a physical product that can be shipped, something that has to be picked up, or you sell digital products and services, you have to give your audience a reason to want to buy from you.
Unless you are Wal-Mart or Amazon, people are not going to come to your website and buy from you, no questions asked. But think about this. We don’t buy from Walmart or Amazon because we like them.
We buy from them because they are the cheapest or they can get the product to us without leaving our home.
As business owners, we have to use a marketing strategy that causes us to stand out from the crowd. It makes the customer WANT what we have.
How To Build A Relationship
This means you are nurturing the people who already know you exist and hang around learning in the corners. You need to keep showing up giving them little tidbits that show them what you are all about.
These three categories are the topics that I find work best for people in the farm business industry.
- About you and behind the scenes.
- Tips and education.
- Your product and how it works or what it does.
Rotate through these topics each week to build the trust of your audience.
Maintenance – 2hrs Per Week
Maintenance is simply that. The stuff you have to do to keep the doors open. Whether that means setting up a system, answering emails, packing products, or planning a sale.
The more maintenance you have to do the less time you will have for the other areas.
An example for me would be in the rabbitry when new litters are in full swing and I will be setting them up for deposits I am going to be talking to a lot of people. The amount of DMs I get will 5X at least. So I have to be aware of that and do the work ahead of time in the other areas.
Get out a pen and paper and make a list of your business structure and the steps you take on a daily basis.
What needs to be done regularly? What do you have to do for someone to place a deposit.
Key Points of Running a Business That Will Help You Build Faster
Understand the market of what you plan to sell.
This is hard for some people to grasp but it is so important. You need to know the demand for the thing you sell. What causes people to want to buy that thing? Is it something they need to live or is it a luxury?
Does it depend on something else happening in the world to be sold? Do people need it more in certain locations than others?
Learn about the people who will buy your product? How much money do they have at their disposal? How do they THINK about life and the things they spend their money on.
Are they frivolous or do they count their pennies?
How you market your vegetables to a person who cares about homegrown veggies that are organic and environmentally friendly vs the person who wants quality products but is budget careful are going to be two different things.
Read this post to learn more about understanding your customer.
