170: The hidden cost of selling your time (and why more clients is not the answer!)

Many entrepreneurs believe the answer to business growth is finding more clients but what happens when every new client also brings more meetings, more emails, more deadlines and less freedom?

In this episode of Online Business Uncovered, I'm exploring the hidden cost of selling your time and why being busy isn't always the same as building a sustainable business.

I'll share my own journey from filling my diary with client work to creating digital products that generate income beyond the hours I work. I'll also explain why relying on just one income stream leaves your business vulnerable and how even a simple micro offer can be the first step towards creating more freedom, flexibility and security.

I also share a personal story about being unexpectedly ill this week and why it reinforced exactly why building scalable income streams matters so much.

If you've ever felt like you're constantly working but never getting ahead, this episode will encourage you to rethink what success really looks like and start designing a business that works for you, not because of you.

Resources mentioned:

🎟️ Register for the Online Business Growth Summit (6–8 October) and discover how to create more freedom through scalable offers, systems, marketing and automation.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with another entrepreneur who needs to hear this message.

Your expertise is too valuable to only ever sell by the hour!

Transcript

Karen [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to Online Business Uncovered. This is episode 170. And in today's episode, I'm going to be talking about the hidden cost of selling your time in your business and why more clients isn't the answer. So let's jump right in and let's get started. Hello and welcome to another episode of Online Business Uncovered. I'm your host, Karen, and I really do appreciate you hitting the play button to listen to today's episode. And before we dive into today's episode, I wanted to just share an update on the Online Business Growth Summit that's happening this October. So as I'm recording this, we are, are currently in July and we are working on all the bits to bring it together.

Karen [00:01:05]:
So we're working on the website. I am recording interviews with the experts and there's a lot of things that are going on behind the scenes. But I'm really excited because each session and every expert speaking is going to be amazing. And even speaking to them about their sessions, there's one thing that they're going to be really supporting on, and that is how to build a business that gives you more freedom. So every session is built around that. One question. This event is definitely the biggest event that I've ever done, and I've done a lot of different things over the years, but I'm really excited because I think this event is going to create amazing impact and, and hopefully by the end of the event, you'll walk away understanding exactly what you need to do in your business. So I'm, I'm getting really excited.

Karen [00:02:09]:
I'm planning for the website to be launched on 1 August, and things are coming together really nicely. There is a lot of moving parts with this project, but it, it's a really great project to, to be involved in and I can't wait for the event to. Yeah, I'm excited and I've had a lot of signups and it's going to be, it's going to be an amazing event. Now, this is what has actually inspired today's episode. Because before we can build any business that gives us more freedom, we first have to recognize the hidden cost of the business that we're already running. So today I wanted to talk about something that I don't think gets talked about enough, and that's the hidden cost of selling your time. Now, on the surface, somebody can look busy, have a full calendar and have a full roster of clients and they can look really successful. They have that.

Karen [00:03:22]:
They have clients that they're delivering work for they're having inquiries come in and they've got money coming into their business. But. But this can also be the point of which a lot of entrepreneurs then start to feel trapped because they've walked away from one job. And what has happened is they have started a business and now they are trapped in the delivery or of serving so many clients. So they literally have replaced one job with probably multiple. And that can feel very. So when people start a business, the goal is often very simple. Get clients, then get more clients, and then hopefully become fully booked that you've got income coming in and you don't have to worry about paying the bills or keeping the lights on in your business.

Karen [00:04:21]:
Now, I remember when I first started my business over 10 years ago, every inquiry felt really exciting because it meant somebody wanted to work with me. And like many business owners, I believe that success looked like having a packed calendar and a waiting list of clients. And don't get me wrong, it feels amazing to reach that point where you are fully booked, where you know that whatever happens, you have money coming in. It also validates your hard work and it proves people value what you do, and that alone can give you confidence. But the problem is, after a while, something starts to happen. Every new client also brings another meeting or another email or another deadline or another responsibility. And before you know it, your diary is completely full. You spend your days jumping from one client to next, answering messages in between meetings, squeezing in admin during the evenings and telling yourself that things will calm down next month.

Karen [00:05:28]:
You're just going through a really busy period, except the following month looks exactly, exactly the same. And before you know it, you are feeling exhausted because you're trying to keep it all going. Now, the biggest cost isn't just the number of hours that you're working, it's what those hours begin to take away. You stop taking the breaks that you normally would because you worry that you're going to fall behind. You're checking your emails whilst you're on holiday and you feel guilty when you're ill because you know your work is piling up. And if you're a solopreneur, everything is on your shoulders and relying on you being at your desk. And you also start saying things like, I will take a holiday after this project, or I'll slow down next month, or things will be easier once I finish this launch. But the truth is, there's always going to be another project.

Karen [00:06:27]:
There's always going to be another client, another opportunity, another invoice to say. And because your income Depends on your time, then slowing down can feel really impossible because if you slow down, it will naturally affect the income that you're going to bring into your business. It's exhausting. And what then happens? It then leads to burnout. Now, this is probably the biggest shift that I want you to think about today. If your business is only making money when you're actively working, then your business is completely dependent on you. You are then the bottleneck. Every question comes to you, every decision comes to you.

Karen [00:07:09]:
Every sale requires your presence. Now, if you stop because maybe you are feeling poorly or you decide to take a holiday, then your income will stop as well. And that's an enormous amount of pressure to carry and why so many entrepreneurs believe that this is the way they were. They, they need to work in their business, but this is also the way that this will ultimately lead them to burnout. If you stop, everything stops. That's an enormous amount of pressure to carry. And yet so many business owners believe this is simply the way the business works. And it isn'.

Karen [00:08:03]:
There is another way. Now, one of the biggest reasons I started my business was because I wanted flexibility. I wanted to be able to collect my daughter from school, and I wanted to build something around my family. So rather than feeling like I had to give everything to my job, I could create a balance where I could do what it is I love to do, but then be there to watch my children grow up as well. And in the early days, it worked brilliantly. But naturally, as my business grew and as I said yes to more clients and I took on more projects and more opportunities, I slowly felt like that freedom that I started my business for started to be a distant memory because everything in my business relied on me showing up day after day. Now, it wasn't until I started creating digital products and online courses that I realized that if I could create a business that had scalable products that I could sell and repeat when I wasn't there, it would give me back my freedom and it would also build sustainability in my business. So for me, I think that shift in thinking was my turning point.

Karen [00:09:38]:
I loved the business I was creating. I loved working with my clients. I loved the work that I was doing. But I just. What I didn't love is feeling like I had to sacrifice when actually the reason I started my business in the first place was to be there so that I can enjoy every single moment of my my children growing up. I could go to the sports day events, I could go to the end of year shows, I could go to the show and tell sort of sessions that the school ran. And I think the moment I started to question whether I had the time to go, it kind of made me realize that the whole point of me having my business in the first place was to have that freedom to be able to go. And if I was questioning it because I was so busy then I created myself another problem.

Karen [00:10:32]:
Now I think passive income is often misunderstood. What I wanted in my business was options. I didn't necessarily want to stop working with clients, but I wanted to make sure that I wasn't solely relying on client work. So I wanted to create something once that could continue helping people without requiring me there to be there every single minute. And I wanted my expertise to become an asset instead of something I could only sell by the hour. And that that one shift just completely changed the way I viewed my business. So instead of asking how could I find more clients, I started thinking, well, how can I help more people without working more hours? And that was the one question that opened up a brand new world for me. So instead of only delivering one to one services, I could package my knowledge instead of repeating the same advice over and over again.

Karen [00:11:30]:
I could teach it once. And instead of being limited by the amount of hours in my week, I could create offers that worked alongside my client work. And that's what I want for you. Now I want to be really clear. This isn't about abandoning your services and it's not about replacing everything you currently do. It's about adding another layer to your business. It's creating things like micro offers, things that solve one specific problem that you can sell on repeat. Perhaps it's a downloadable template or a workshop, or an online course, or a membership, or even a toolkit.

Karen [00:12:11]:
Every one of these becomes something that you can create once and continue to generate income from over and over again. Not only does it give you that ability to create that additional income, but it also gives your audience more ways to work with you. Because not everybody can afford your premium offer. Not everybody can afford three grand packages and coaching sort of services and things like that. So, so you want to kind of be able to offer an entry level product that starts to build that know like and trust. And this could be a guide or a workshop or, or a low cost membership. It doesn't matter what it is. What matters is that you're no longer relying on just one income stream.

Karen [00:13:02]:
You're building an ecosystem in your business that works for you. Now this week I've had to take some time off work because I had A I got bitten in my garden. I had a mosquito bite that turned infectious and I had to go to the out of hours hospital on Tuesday night. So I called, my foot started to swell up and it started to become really painful and I had to call 111 here in the UK and they got me an appointment immediately and I had to go and get some antibiotics in order to kind of get rid of it. I didn't realize how serious it was, but it was on the verge of because it was climbing my leg and you know, that inflammation was kind of getting worse. So I've had to take a couple of days off because I've just not felt very well at all. Yesterday I had no energy and I was really depleted and really unwell. So I've had to sort of move a lot of things around.

Karen [00:14:13]:
But today I've opened up my email and I've got strike payments. I've got strike payments that have come in because people have bought stuff. So even when I'm off work because I'm not feeling very well, I have money coming in. And that's the point. It's not client income. It is income that is coming to me through my membership or my digital products or things that I have built once and now I'm selling on repeat. So I wanted to just share that experience because I've only been off work a couple of days. But who's to say that something wouldn't happen where I could? I'd have to be off work for a month.

Karen [00:14:56]:
And having that income come in means that I don't have to worry about my bills being paid because my bills are being covered because of the income that I'm generating on repeat. And so, so this is why this is so important and this is why I talk about the things that I talk about because I feel like it's not talked about enough. But it's so essential and I speak to so many business owners where they have nothing in their business outside of them selling their time. So what they're doing is they're building their businesses on quicksand. If they were to go down because a member of the family got ill or they got ill or something happened and they had to take time out their business, they would really strug struggle. They would. In fact, I carried out whenever I deliver my workshops and or I deliver, I when I do my public speaking I'll always ask a question. If your income, if you stop working tomorrow with your would your income stop too? And most people would say yes.

Karen [00:16:01]:
And I think that's concerning. Because if you've not got anything coming into your business when you're not at your desk, you're leaving yourself in a really vulnerable place. So this is why this is so important. And you can start with a micro offer, something really small, something really simple, something really easy that starts to kind of work for you when you are not at work. So I'd like to leave you with one question. I'd really like you to really think about this. If your income wasn't tied entirely to your calend, what would your business then look like? What would you create and what would you stop doing? And also what would you spend more time doing? Because often the business you really want is hiding behind the one that you're currently maintaining. And creating income beyond selling your time might just be the bridge that ultimately gets you there.

Karen [00:17:07]:
Now, freedom in business doesn't happen by accident. It's something that we have to intentionally design. Every system you improve, every process you simplify, every digital product you create, every offer that allows you to help more people without adding more hours is another step towards building a business to give you choice. And for me, that is what success really looks like. It isn't about the money or the bottom line. It is about the freedom and what you can do with that freedom. So really think about what can you do in your business that's going to give you your time back? Because you are sitting on a pot of gold. Your knowledge, your skills, your expertise, everything you've accumulated over the years is so valuable and that's what you need to be leveraging.

Karen [00:18:06]:
Thank you for joining me for this episode today. I hope it's given you some clarity and sparked some new ideas for your business. Now, if you found this helpful, I would love you to share with a friend or a fellow entrepreneur who's also building their online business because this episode could be exactly what they need to hear today. 

And if this episode has you thinking that you are ready to take the first step to turning your expertise into repeatable income, then head on over to my website and sign up for the Online Business Business Growth Summit that is happening this October. Head on over to www.sellyourbrillianceonline.com this event is taking place on the 6th to the 8th of October. I have got over 18 expert speakers speaking about how to create more freedom in your business. Whether that's through giving you clarity, creating scalable offers, your sales, your marketing, your visibility, it's all centered around that one. How can you generate more freedom in your business by creating scalable offers.

Karen [00:19:20]:
So go sign up. You can also sign up to the VIP all access replay pass ticket, which at the Moment is only £27. It's going to go up to £197 nearer the summit. So definitely go and grab that now because there's going to be lots of additional bonuses in there as well. And come along because it's going to be a game changer. And if you want to create a business that works for you, this is where you need to be. I will be back with another episode next week, but until then, have a wonderful week.