MBA2588 Q&A Wednesday: How Many Hours Should I Be Working On My Side Hustle?

0:00How much time do you really need to dedicate to your side hustle to make it work? Is an hour here or there enough? Do you need to sacrifice every spare moment in your day and week? Today, we tackle this question from Perry asking, how many hours should I be working on my side hustle? We're going to get into finding the perfect balance so that you can build momentum, stay consistent, and make real progress without burning out.

0:27Welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host, Omar Zinhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business. Today's Q &A Wednesday, and we answer a question from Perry who asks, how many hours should I be working on my side hustle? I love this question because it's one of the biggest challenges when you're getting started. I know this because I faced this challenge myself because I was a teacher for 10 years and I was side hustling at the same time trying to make it work. I was trying to figure out what's the right balance between time and effort to make meaningful progress.

1:01I don't want to be spinning my wheels and wasting my years. My answer? Well, it's quite simple. I'm going to break it down and not only explain how many hours, but how to use these hours, how to stay consistent, and where you should be doing this work. Let's begin with what I believe is the minimum number of hours you should be dedicating to your side hustle. It's really not worth your time because you're not going to get a lot of traction if you don't do these number of hours at least. And that magic number is 10 hours a week. Why 10 hours? Well, I'm going to explain in detail because I've experimented with all kinds of number of hours when I was side hustling.

1:38I tried six hours. I tried five hours. I tried nine hours. And 10 hours is kind of the cusp. Like when you hit 10 hours, you have enough momentum. Now, if you could do more than that, awesome. But 10 hours is asking a lot. But I'm going to show you how you can make it work for you and your schedule. But before I break down the math and the hours and all the details, I want to just give a time out. Why are you doing this? You're starting this side hustle because you want to eventually make this your full-time thing, right? You want to change your life. You want to build something for yourself, be your own boss, have that financial freedom.

2:13This is worth fighting for. This is worth sacrificing for, okay? So it's going to be a little challenging at the start getting into this routine, but you're going to love the journey because it's going to be exciting. You're going to grow. You're going to learn. You're going to see results. You're going to start making some money and start seeing some traction. The point I'm making here is that it might sound like a lot of hours, but it should be easy enough because you're loving what you're doing and you're working towards a goal that you're hungry for. If you have that, this should be easy. Let's start with why 10 hours a week, in my opinion, is the minimum.

2:51First reason why I talked about earlier is that momentum matters, okay? Building a business takes traction, and 10 hours a week gives you enough time to make consistent progress. Anything less, it's hard to build that momentum. You know, I've tried less hours. I've tried to work smarter, not harder. And I feel like 10 hours a week is the minimum input you need to make to actually get one foot in front of the other and see some results in a reasonable amount of time. Just so we're clear here, this is just the minimum, right? And this is just where you're starting. Because if we're going to be totally honest, in order for you to compete with what's out there in the market, you're competing with people who are putting in 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 hours a week, right?

3:34So you putting in 10 hours should be just the start. And it is enough a good start for you to actually validate your idea, get some sales, work on your business, start growing so you make enough money to start getting closer to what you're making at your job. Number two, focus over quantity. It's not just any 10 hours. We want those 10 hours to be really laser focused. 10 deep work focused hours is better than 20 distracted ones. Ones that you are constantly answering your phone or going to notifications or, you know, hopping on research, which is basically wasting and procrastinating time on Google.

4:15Laser focused 10 hours a week is going to get you really far in my experience. You don't need endless time. You need intentional time. Now that we've established that we're going to dedicate a minimum of 10 hours a week on our side hustle, we're going to talk about how to structure those 10 hours because we want to be as productive as possible and we want to get the most out of those 10 hours. When I was a teacher, I would go to work after work on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I would go to work in my business. I would spend two hours each working in the evening. These were focused, productive blocks of time where I worked on specific tasks that I outlined at the end of last week.

4:55So at the end of the week, I would outline, these are the things I need to cover. These are the things I need to build. These are the things I need to do in order for me to get one step closer to where I need to go in my business. And if you want to know what that one step is, very simple, making money. Okay. Make enough sales, make enough revenue so that you are landing on your feet when you leave your job. So I really focus on that. What can I do to build my products and my services, my sales systems, my marketing systems, so that I can make those sales, so I can make that revenue. So I said 10 hours.

5:24Right now, we're only at four hours, right? Two hours on Tuesdays, two hours on Thursdays. That's what I did. Now, on Saturday, my first day off on the weekend, I spent six hours working on my business. That was two, three-hour sessions. This gave me a deeper amount of time, a deeper focused session to allow me to get really further in my projects and get ahead. But I did like three hours and had like a two hour lunch break and walk, maybe a bit of exercise and then another three hours. So that was my 10 hours. Now, here's some key tips you want to kind of keep in mind. Keep your work sessions between 90 minutes and three hours.

6:02No less than 90 minutes, no more than three hours, because it's very hard for you to be super focused for more than three hours. You're going to have to go to the toilet, right? You're going to have to have a break and you get a drink of water, something, right? And 90 minutes is enough for you to have a long enough time to get something done with some concentration. And less than that, it's not too much time. It's not too much deep work time. That's the sweet spot for productivity without losing focus. Between 90 minutes and three hours. So you might be saying, Omar, you spent two nights in the week working on your business and then a full day on Saturday on your weekend on your business.

6:39That left just one day a week to rest? The answer is yes. That's the answer. That's what I did. And I did that for a good solid six years. And I was happy. I know that that sounds strange, like you're going to have a one-day weekend now. But I was working towards my future. I was excited to work on these things, building my businesses, making some money, getting some traction. I saw the light. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I saw the progress and it got me excited and it was play for me. I really enjoyed it because I was building something for myself. In a lot of ways, it was an escape from my job and that's how I had fun.

7:14And then my one day off, I relaxed and recharged, caught up in household duties, any kind of family obligations, things like that. But the point here is that there is sacrifice here, like I mentioned. This is not going to be no change in your lifestyle. When you're building a business, especially on the side with your job, there is going to be some sacrifice in your recreational time. There's nowhere around it. You just got to just enjoy it and just say, this is my new recreation. Now, how much time, how you use that time, that's one topic, okay? But just as important is where you go to work on your side hustle.

7:50The environment plays a huge role on how productive you're going to be in those hours. First thing I wanna mention is that do not work on your business at your job, on company property, or even using company property like the laptop that they give you. Because if you do that, whether you're working at the site or the office or using their equipment, this can be considered their property. Whatever you're building is theirs. And that's just how the law works, is that whatever work you do using company resources is the property of the company. So be very careful, do not do this and go somewhere else like I did.

8:26I went to a distraction-free zone like a coworking space. So I paid for a hot desk, which was around$300 a month at the time and allowed me to go to a desk that's quiet, that had great internet, that had good lighting, that had coffee, that had a good facility where I had a kitchen and a bathroom, all that kind of stuff, right? So go somewhere quiet, distraction-free, like a coworking space or the public library where you can get to work on your business. Use your own computer, your own laptop and go to work. Personally, I avoided working from home because there's just too many distractions there.

9:02Even if there's nobody there to distract you, like family members, there's just too many temptations. There's food there, there's TV, there's PlayStation. conversation there's other things that are going to pull you away and it's good to change your environment when you're working on something new it's good for you to say okay this is the place I get this stuff done now if you have a separate home office that's separate from the rest of the house or you know a separate room or garage maybe you can do this without any distractions that's up to you but personally I like to leave my environment in the beginning because you still don't have that kind of discipline to work on your business, maybe because you're just getting started.

9:44I'm just speaking for myself. When I got started, I didn't have the discipline. I had to learn that over the time and years and working that out on my own. But right now, when you're getting the ball rolling, you want zero ways for you to be distracted. You want to increase the likelihood of success as much as possible. So for me, again, I went to a coworker space in the evenings on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And on Saturday, I would go there and work on my business. I had everything I needed to stay on task. The fourth component that is the most important component out of all of this, you can take everything I said today and implement it, but if you don't do this, you will not do well.

10:23I can almost guarantee it. And that is consistency. The most important part of this whole endeavor of side hustling is consistently working on your business. Why is this essential? because working 10 hours consistently every week is actually better than you working 20 hours one week and none the next. It's not equal because consistency is like building upon foundation, right? When you work on something and then you work on it again the next day, the next day, and the next day, if you ever consistently went to the gym or worked out or did some sort of exercise program, you know exactly what I'm talking about, right?

10:58By going every day for six weeks is going to be different than you going, twice a day for three days and then you quit, right? You need to really consider the fact that even if it's just 10 hours, you do the minimum. If you do it every single week and you do it properly, you're going to see traction. It's so important to stay consistent. And the way to do this, and this is going to be a bit of tough love, but it's what I need to tell you. The way to make this happen and stay consistent is that you consider these work hours to be sacred. You got to treat them like unmissable appointments, like they're debts you have to pay.

11:37You have to go to work at your business, just like you have to go to your job. You have to treat it like that. And this is where the rubber meets the road. You're going to be challenged. You're going to get a friend that says, hey, let's go out for drinks on Thursday night. And if you have scheduled time to go work on your business Thursday nights, the answer should be unequivocally, I can't make it because I'm working on my business. I'm working on my side hustle. oh, this is the time I dedicate it. What about tomorrow night? What about, you know, whatever day you're free? The point here is that once you start not taking this seriously, once you start kind of giving in and say, well, I'll do that tomorrow, you're now deprioritizing your business.

12:17It's not important to you. It's a slippery slope and you might as well just hang them up, okay? You need to make sure you attend these hours like your life depends on it because the future is dependent on you doing this work. I'm telling you, my first couple of years of doing this, I was unpopular with my friends, right? They thought I was annoying. They thought that I was being silly. They thought I was being extremist. But I couldn't fathom making any progress if every time I was invited to something, there's something better to do. I just canceled all my work plans, my business plans to work on my business just because I felt like it.

12:58Success happens when you do the work regardless of how you feel or what else is being thrown at you. Okay? And it's not done in bursts, right? It's built with consistency and focus steps. And before you know it, years go by and you look back and you're like, wow, I've made so much progress. How did this happen? Consistency. That's what happened. All right. Let me wrap this up into an action plan for you. Here are the steps you need to take to work on your side hustle the right way. Number one, set a schedule. Minimum 10 hours. When are you going to do those 10 hours? When are those time blocks on your calendar?

13:31Put them in your calendar, right? Make them non-negotiable. Number two, prioritize the tasks you have to do. Focus on the work that moves the needle, right? Like creating, selling, marketing your product and make sure you do this when you're in those sessions. Number three, protect your time. Let your family and friends know that these hours are non-negotiable. They're sacred and they're important to you. And by the way, for your family, it's important to them too. It's going to affect their future if you're successful. Number four, track your progress. Keep a journal, even just for a few minutes, writing in a journal, track to see how much you're getting done each week, right?

14:08Write your wins. I like to do this at the end of the week. What are my wins this week? What are the things I got accomplished? So I can look back week after week, how much I'm getting done. And this reinforces the commitment. It also makes me feel like I'm not wasting my time. I'm actually making progress. Number five, choose a place to get to work, right? Where are you going to go? Coworker space, library, whatever it might be. Where is that going to be? And number six, commit. Commit to this plan. See it work for you. Get some results. And trust me, you don't actually have to be consistent that long.

14:42If you're consistent, I would say for about six to eight weeks, you're going to start seeing some progress. You're going to start seeing things come to life. And that alone will motivate you to stay more consistent and to continue to do it effortlessly. So Perry, who asked today's question on Q &A Wednesday, the key to growing your side hustle is committing, in my opinion, to at least 10 focused hours a week, minimum. You want to build that momentum to get that progress. You want to structure your work in 90 minute to three hour blocks. No less, no more. Distraction-free zones. Make sure you're working in a distraction-free zone outside of work.

15:19Number four, stay consistent. Your schedule is important. Make sure you treat these sessions like they're non-negotiable. You cannot miss them. Thanks so much for tuning into the$100 MBA show. If you have a question you want to ask and you want us to cover it here on the show, don't forget to submit it over at 100mba.net slash Q. We'll make sure to answer it right here on Q &A Wednesday. And if you love this podcast and you want more guidance, more help along the way, we have a very useful newsletter that you can sign up for. It's absolutely free. just go to 100mba.net and you can sign up. Anywhere you leave your name and email address signs you up for the newsletter.

15:58Now, this newsletter is a little bit different. It's all about action. It's about progress. So every week I give you three things. Something to think about. Something to think about to change your mindset. I give you something to do, an activity, even a thought experiment. Something for you to make some progress in your business. And number three, I give you something to learn. Something that can up your game, improve who you are so you can deliver better results. You're going to get it every week. It's my weekly coaching for you right in your inbox. I'm Omar Zainom, and I'll see you in the next episode.