A Mom Entrepreneurs Realistic Guide to Building a Real Business on 20-Hours a Week or Less

In this episode, Laura breaks down one of the biggest myths in entrepreneurship: that more hours equals more success.

If you’ve ever felt like you don’t have enough time to build your business — especially as a mom — this conversation will completely reframe how you think about your schedule, your offers, and your growth. Laura walks through how to design a business that actually fits into a 20-hour work week, without sacrificing profitability or momentum. 

In this episode you will hear:

00:07 — The myth of needing more time to be successful 

 01:11 — Why “more hours = more results” isn’t true 

 02:43 — What actually happens when you work more (and why it backfires) 

 04:38 — The real issue: your business isn’t designed for your life 

 06:17 — The reframe that changes everything (designing around your reality) 

 08:30 — Pillar 1: Revenue concentration (fewer offers, more impact) 

 11:34 — Why low-ticket/high-volume models don’t work in limited time 

 12:33 — Pillar 2: Protecting and structuring your time 

 14:45 — Pillar 3: Using constraints to make better decisions 

 16:39 — The constraint audit: getting honest about your time 

 18:32 — Breaking down your hours + what actually generates revenue 

 20:15 — Practical steps to start redesigning your business this week 

 21:45 — Final mindset shift: your time is enough (with the right model) 

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Transcript

Laura Sinclair (00:07)
Welcome back to another episode of this mother means business today. I to talk about something that is a big one. It's time constraints. The majority of mom entrepreneurs don't have 40, 50, 60 hours a week to build their businesses. And certainly when I think about the early days of my online business and the early days of being a mom, I had like 10, 15, 20 hours a week at most. so today on the show, I want to blow up the idea that you need to have

50, 60 hours a week to actually build a business. Because I think sometimes we believe that actually if we just had more hours, we would be more successful. That if we just had more time, we could make it all happen. And I think we've all absorbed this, right? Like big results require big hours. And if you can't give big hours, then maybe your goals need to be smaller. And so I'm going to blow that up today. ⁓ Do I believe that you can work for two hours a week and have a huge business? No, that's not.

the point. What I have come to after years of building a business as a mom and after watching literally hundreds of women do the same is that a 20 hour work week is possible. It doesn't have to be a starter plan that you graduate out of when your kids are older unless you want to. I think it really just becomes a design challenge. And I think the women that can figure it out can figure out how to actually build their business in 20 hours a week. These are the women that are going to be building more profitable, more sustainable businesses and honestly just having more fun.

than the ones who are built by working 60 hour weeks. Now, I think it's important to note that the reality is sometimes you're in seasons of business where you have to work a lot. And certainly I've talked about that ⁓ in the lead up in the past around this month of means business live. But I do think that a time constraint forces clarity. And I think clarity is one of the most important things that entrepreneurs never give themselves time to find. And so

In the next 25 minutes-ish, 20-ish minutes, I'm not sure how long this episode is going to go. I'm going to walk you through exactly what it looks like to build a business model that works inside of a constrained schedule. Okay, we're going to talk about why the hours equals results equation is a broken one. And I'm going to help you build a different framework and hopefully give you some really practical moves that you can make this week to work towards fitting your business into the schedule that works for you. And I know that everyone's schedule

looks a little different, but for ease and simplicity, we're going to go with 20 hours, but you can adjust this for where you're at. Okay, so let's get into it. Somewhere along the way, we very much inherited this model of success that was built by and for a very specific kind of person. And I talk about this a lot and I've talked about this a lot in my social content. I've talked about it on the show, but usually it's for someone that has uninterrupted hours.

someone that maybe has like one job, one focus, one set of demands. Maybe you can take a call at 3 PM on a Tuesday or spend a Saturday deep diving into a launch. Or you can say yes to a networking event on a Wednesday evening without having to figure out childcare first.

We very much know that person was not a mom. And yet we took this playbook. We took this playbook and we tried to fit into our lives and then we wondered why we couldn't keep up. The entrepreneurship world is very, very obsessed with output. Hustle, right? I saw a clip, I don't even know how long ago it was, but I think it was Alex Hormozzi, who was someone who I genuinely respect as someone that came up through the gym world, but this is the person with no children. And I think the advice was something like, sleep until you wake up.

And then go into an eight-hour tunnel of heads-down work. Like it was just totally insane, right? We're obsessed online with this, this sort of almost a mythology of an 80-hour work week as a badge of commitment. But when you can only give 20 or 12 or 10, we start to internalize this idea that we're not doing enough, that we're not trying hard enough. And we know that that's a lie. And it's costing you success in your business. Because what actually happens when you work more

is often it's not results. Most people believe that if they work more hours, they're going to get more results, but that's not the truth. Do know how many clients that I talk to that are working too much, that are doing things that actually aren't moving the needle, that are spending hours sitting at their desk, moving literally nothing forward? I just don't think that it's required. I think more hours generally equals more fatigue, more distraction, more half-finished thinking.

more decisions made from a place of depletion rather than actual clarity. I have done the 50-hour work week, I've done the 15-hour work week. And I can tell you with complete honesty that some of my best work, my clearest strategy, my most profitable ideas, those happened in the 15-hour weeks because I didn't have time to fill the hours with busy and I am the queen of creating busy work. Like I say this because I have lived it and this is very much me.

When I have 15 hours to work in a week, I do the actual things that matter. I don't play around with cloud design. I don't play around with building cloud skills. I mean, you can send this thing because this is what I'm doing or spend a ton of time in Canva or make another freebie or like do things that like ultimately aren't needle movers for me. I believe that the issue that we have is in our hours. It's the

reality that our business just hasn't been designed for the hours you have. And most businesses are built on the assumption of a lot of available time, right? You add services, you add complexity, you say yes to things that seem like opportunities, but are actually just more demands. And suddenly you have a business that requires 40 hours a week. And I think the reality is for me, like when I think back to when I had 15 hours a week, my business was the most simple that it's ever been.

And now I have time and I talked about this before. I have added complexity. say yes to things a lot, but I'm not working 15 hours a week right now, but there was absolutely a season in my life where I was working 15, 20 hours a week in my online business and making a hundred grand a year. That's not the season that I'm in right now, but it's important for me to share with you like this is possible. I do think that this is purely a design problem. And when you have design problems, have, there are design solutions. So

That is absolutely the good news. before we dive into the tactics, I want to offer you really one big reframe that I believe changes everything. I want you to stop asking, how can I do more in the time that I have? Instead, I want you to think about what does this business need to look like so it works inside the life I actually want? Okay, these are two completely different questions.

And it does lead you to make completely different decisions because the first question assumes your current model is correct. Okay? That how do I do more in the time that I have? Okay? It assumes that that model, that the way that your business is set up right now is correct and that your time is actually the problem. The second question assumes that your time is fixed, which it is. You cannot create more time when you are in a season of busyness and motherhood. Okay?

in that situation, your model is the variable which it becomes. Okay, so instead of how can I do more in the time I have? It's what does this business need to look like? So it works inside the life that I actually want or the life that I actually have. Okay, however you want to think about that. So I have created for you three different pillars of things that we can think about in the constraints of a 20 hour work week. Okay. And the first one is revenue concentration. Okay, so the first thing we want to look at is where your revenue is actually coming from.

and how much energy it actually requires to generate it. So a really constrained schedule business cannot afford a revenue model that's spread thin. Eight clients at $200 a month, that is not going to work for you. A course that requires you to constantly launch or a retainer structure that has you in 10 different inboxes, 10 different Slack channels, what you're looking for is concentrated revenue.

So a smaller number of high value relationships that generate the income you need without multiplying your workload. Okay, that is an example. When we are looking at revenue concentration, it usually means fewer offers, higher prices, and deeper engagements, right? A group program that maybe runs once or twice a year, a retainer that actually values your expertise, a model where one offer can generate what three used to, okay? When we are in a tight timeline, we have to look at this. I have talked to so many women that say to me, hey, I've got 10 hours a week to work on my business.

and I'm selling a one-on-one offer that is $250 an hour and I want to make 10K months. But we look at that, that's just not possible. when you are, that math does not math. There is no version of the math that results in that because if you have 10 hours a week to work on your business, you also, that's not 10 hours a week of you talking to clients. Okay. That is maybe five hours a week of you talking to clients and the rest of that time having to work on your marketing and

doing your books and doing all the other stuff that comes behind it and having a business. So finding opportunities for revenue concentration is a big one. Now I also have, it's important that I share this with you because I don't believe that there's one model for anything. I also have a client that works 20 hours a week and has a high volume, low ticket business. However, she did not work 20 hours a week to get there. Hey, really, really important to know. Is it possible to have revenue concentration around low volume? Yeah, of course.

but you need to have a really, really big audience in order to make that happen. And that usually is something that is not done in 20 hours of effort a week. And a lot of the women and lot of the people, and they're not just women, a lot of the people that are selling this online are people that maybe they're currently in a season where they can step back right now, but they did not build their business in 20 hours a week selling high volume, low ticket offers. That's just not the reality. They may have earned their opportunity to step back.

But people that sell that I think are just genuinely dishonest because that's not the truth. Okay. So when we think about a 20 hour week business, finding revenue concentration is really, really pivotal for you. Okay. Second one is architecture around protected time. Okay. And I think this is really non-negotiable if you're going to be building something sustainable because your work time is not available. It's allocated and you have to protect it.

available time just gets filled, right? It gets interrupted, it gets given away, it becomes a place where everyone else's urgency grows, okay? Someone else's urgency is not your emergency. Alligated time has a job, it has to have a boundary around it. And so that means being radically specific about when you work, what you do in each of those blocks of work, and then what does not happen during those hours. I suck at context switching. And when I am in seasons of

be diligent about my time, I have to know exactly what I'm gonna sit down and do in those windows, okay? So I cannot contact Switch. I cannot do any quick favors. I cannot pick up my phone and respond to that Instagram DM, right? I cannot react to the thing that just landed in my inbox. If you have 20 hours a week, you need to know exactly what those work hours will do before they show up, before you get to them. Super, super specific. This is something that I work with a lot of my private clients on.

They will send me notes at the beginning of the week and I will check in, what are we doing today? What is our focus? Check in with me after you're done. Because this is the kind of protected time architecture that we actually need to have in place when we are on a limited schedule. Third thing is I like to call it decision-making by constraint. This one is the hardest and it is that your constraints have to become your decision filter.

So every opportunity that comes across your desk, you need to be asking yourself, does this fit my model? Does it require time I don't have? Does it add complexity that I just can't afford in this season? And if the answer to any of those questions is yes, it doesn't matter how exciting it sounds, the answer has to be no. And this is not about thinking small, this is not about you settling, this is about protecting the capacity that makes your current commitments excellent.

And that is how you build a reputation that creates more of the right opportunities, not just opportunities. Okay. Your constraints really don't have to be the enemy of your success. And I know that it can feel that way sometimes, but they really need to be the blueprint for a business model that actually works for the life you're living right now. If I said yes to every opportunity, I would probably burn out and be exhausted. Okay. And it's really important that

Yes, especially in the early stages of your business, we don't want to turn things down. But when you have really limited capacity, you saying yes to something just because you didn't want to turn it down probably is going to come back and bite you. And so you really do have to be extraordinarily diligent about how you are making decisions and the filter through which you're putting them through as it relates to your capacity because you need to be doing

the needle moving things and not just doing things for the sake of doing things. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about a constraint audit and how do we actually look at that in your own business? Because before you can design a business that actually works, you need to get brutally honest about what you're working with right now. Okay. And sometimes, sometimes depending on what season of motherhood we're in, what season of life we're in, there might be some things that we're hoping that will change and

It's great to have hopes and dreams. We know that they'll come true. And certainly I talk a lot about seasons of motherhood, but we have to be really brutally honest with ourselves about what's true for us right now. And so it's really important to start with these questions. First one is how many hours can you realistically work each week? Okay. Be real with yourself, not in a perfect week, but on an average week, knowing that sick kids are going to happen and events come up and some days just don't go as planned. So what is the real number? Okay. Second question is what are your hard stops?

So these are the times that are genuinely unavailable to you. It could be your morning routine or unavailable for work, sorry, just to specify. Morning routine, school drop-offs, pickups, dinner by time, right? Your non-negotiables, you're gonna build around them and not through them. Okay, so we need to be really clear about what your hard stops are. And then the third one is what's your revenue floor? What do you actually need to bring in each month for this to be worth doing? Okay, not your dream number, the actual floor. I think it's really important for you to be aware of how much money do I have to make in my business?

to contribute meaningfully to my family and to pay my bills and do the things that I need to do. Once you have those three numbers, okay, how many hours you wanna work, your hard stops and your revenue floor, you can start doing some of this real math. And I love to say the math is the path, even though let's be honest, I'm trash at math, but here's how I like to think about this. If you have 20 hours a week, and I mentioned this earlier, not all of these hours are gonna be revenue generating. It's just not possible. Some of them are gonna go to admin, some of them are gonna go to marketing.

to delivery, just to the general and visible work of running a business. A reasonable split, I believe, is roughly a third to CEO level thinking and strategy, a third to client delivery, and a third to visibility and growth. So that would give you about six to seven hours a week of actual client facing revenue generating work. So then the question becomes, what does a business look like that generates your revenue floor from six to seven hours a week of client work? And for most of you,

That means your hourly equivalent needs to be significantly higher than what you're currently charging. It means your offers need to be more concentrated. And it probably means that you're under pricing yourself in a way that directly undermines your ability to sustain the model. Okay, so a reflection question that I would give you and listen, you may need to come back to this if you're certainly if you're listening in your car, you're out for a walk, you may need to come back to this section and just get out your pen and paper and write this down because I know I'm talking about a lot but

The thing that I want you to reflect on is what would have to be true about your pricing and your offers for your current hours to generate the income you need. Because most women find the answer is I need to charge significantly more and that answer is correct. Okay. Unfortunately, charging more money for the most part is a fix. Now it's not the fix to everything and I think it's lazy to just be like, well, that'll fix all your problems. Just charge more money because you do need to have the infrastructure behind that.

I'll give you a quick story. I went to a luxury steakhouse or what I thought I was a nice hotel was at the Marriott Hotel, JW Marriott, which is like their luxury and of a Marriott Hotel. And there was a steakhouse at the hotel, my husband and I ordered the $125 Porterhouse steak, and it came in 10 minutes. And I was like, this is not supposed to be here in 10 minutes. This this level of service does not match what I just paid for.

If I'm going go to a steakhouse and order $125 steak, I would like to know that this steak was made fresh. And now I know because it came out in 10 minutes and it was not cooked properly. was like we asked for medium rare. was like well done in some areas, rare in others. It was terrible. I still ate it, but it was terrible. And I would never go back, right? Because the experience didn't match. so I think it's really important to remember that like just saying, just charge more.

is a lazy, lazy coaching, frankly, but we do need to make sure that the back end of what we're doing for our business aligns with that. So I say this for you to understand how to create a 20-hour work week that's viable, but please know there are quite a few other layers and wrinkles that need to align for that price increase. Although blanket statement, I believe that most women are significantly undercharging for the work that they do. Okay?

So it's always, I always got to caveat that because I'm never going to give you lazy advice. Okay. So if you are starting from scratch or you're rebuilding, let's talk about what I would prioritize. So let's start with one offer. Okay. Let's make it high value enough that selling two or three of them fills your revenue floor. Okay. And we want to make it deliverable in the hours that you actually have. And then we're going to make it something that you can get really, really good at because you're doing one thing instead of 12. Okay. Then protect.

the heck out of it. You're gonna build your schedule around delivery first, you're block those hours and treat them like the most important meetings you have, okay? Then everything else that we talked about, the content, the marketing, the growth work, that all fits around that foundation, okay? So, I'm hoping that you're still with me. I'm gonna give you some practical moves that you can take this week that will feel really tangible for you. So the first one is to do that constraint audit that we talked about. So write down your real numbers.

The hours you have available, your hard stops, your revenue floor, don't round it up. Don't be optimistic. I know like usually I'm like, let's be delusional. Let's be a little delusional. Let's dream big. I need you to be optimistic in this moment. Okay? I'm sorry. I need you to be literal in this moment. Be accurate. Okay? This is the foundation everything else is built upon. The second step is I need you to look at your current offer stack. Okay? If you are building a 20 hour a week business and you have a ton of offers, your business is too complicated.

Okay, so we need to look at what's actually generating revenue for you. Look at what costs you the most energy relative to the return, right? So if you have offers that you're spending hours and hours and hours and hours on, but you're not making very much money, we need to look at that honestly, okay? And we need to ask ourselves what would happen if we just stopped doing the low return thing and put that energy into the high return one, okay? Move number three is I need you to price check yourself. So do the math, okay? If you can only do six hours of client delivery per week,

What is your current pricing generated in a month? We need to know that. Is that your revenue floor? Is it close? If it's not, that's information, right? It doesn't mean you failed. It just means that we need to make a change. And then the fourth one is I need you to protect one block this week. So find two to three hours on your calendar and block them. Okay, label them with the actual work you're going to do. Not just like work time, not catch up. I need you to be really specific about this deliverable. Protect that block. Don't over schedule it. Don't let something slide in there.

I don't want it to become the first thing you sacrifice when something else comes up. So start there, one protected block, because we need to get in that habit if we are on tight timelines. So I want to leave you with this. You are not too busy to build a great business. You are working inside a season of life that requires something different. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I think there's actually a real competitive advantage to it, because the women that I've watched build the most resilient, sustainable businesses are really the ones that had the most hours.

Some of my most successful clients are moms that are building their businesses as a side hustle. Okay. But they're also the ones that got honest about what they had, right? They know what their time was. And so they've built a model that fit that time. And then we protect it with everything that we have. Okay. The 20 hour work week is not a consolation prize. It is very much a window, a space that you can work towards, and you are absolutely more than capable of building something extraordinary inside of it.

Even if you had 10 hours a week, you can do it. You can use these same frameworks to build within 10 hours a week. So a question I want you to sit with, okay? What is one thing in your business model that exists because you copied someone else's? Okay. Maybe you copied someone else's playbook and that doesn't actually fit the hours you have. And I would love to know what comes up for you. Hey, send me a DM about that because I would love to hear more. Okay. And if today's conversation gave you that like, ⁓ I need to redesign this feeling.

I want you to know that this is the exact kind of work that we do inside of the Ambition Mastermind. This is not about working harder inside a broken model. It is about building something that actually works for you, your hours, your season, and your life. Links in the show notes to learn more about Ambition. Certainly you can send me a DM or you can go to thismothermeansbusiness.com forward slash Ambition. But more than anything, I hope you walk away from this episode believing that what you have is enough to build something around because it is. So thank you for being here. I'll talk to you soon.