Working sixty hours a week: the two things owners actually want from them

Same sixty-hour week, two very different owners

When I ask an owner what they’d want if the business took less of ‘them’, I get one of two answers, and they come from people whose weeks look identical.

The first owner says something like this. “I want to make the money I’m making and have a little bit more of a relaxed life.” They’re broadly fine with what the business earns. They’d not still be doing it if they weren’t. What they want is the same result with fewer of their evenings & weekends in it: time with the kids, time with their partner, a holiday where the laptop stays at home, a round of golf on a Friday.

The second owner says the opposite. “I’m really happy with the amount I’m working, but I just want to make more money. Something’s not quite right. I’m doing the same sixty hour weeks year in year out and nothing’s changing.” They’re not after their evenings & weekends back. They’re after a return on them.

Both of the mare working about the same hours. Both of them are running businesses that work. And they’d give you very different answers if you asked what success looks like in a year, which is why so much of the advice aimed at business owners misses one of them. Tell the second owner to work less and you’ve lost them. Tell the first owner to grow and you’ve lost them too.

The question that works for both of you

In my experience there’s one question that opens the conversation up whichever owner you are, and it’s this: have you ever worked out what one of the hours you work is worth to your business in profit?

Not revenue. Profit. Not what you charge out, if you charge out at all. What’s left at the end of the year, divided by the hours you actually put in to get it.

A lot of owners have never done the sums, and the ones who have usually did it once, years ago. Research by NerdWallet UK in 2025, surveying 500 UK business owners, found that strategy and planning gets the least time of any activity measured, at 6.8 hours a week, less than is spent on administration. The time that generally drives what the hours are eventually worth is the time the owner gives least of.

The sum matters to both owners for the same reason. If you want the same money for fewer hours, you need to know which hours are producing the money and which are just producing activity, because the second set are the ones that should go. If you want more money from the same hours, you need the same answer from the other direction: which hours produce the most, so you can do more of those and less of the rest. One number. Two uses.

What the number shows

What happens when an owner works it out is this. The headline figure, profit divided by hours, is worth knowing, but it isn’t the most useful part. The useful part comes when you split the hours up.

Some of your hours are worth a great deal. The ones where you’re doing the thing the business is actually known for, or making the decision that only you can make, or looking at the numbers and changing something because of them. Other hours are worth very little to the business in profit terms, even though they feel essential at the time. Chasing something. Checking something that was already right. Doing a piece of admin at nine at night because the day didn’t leave room for it.

The sixty hours aren’t sixty hours of the same thing. Some of them earn, and a lot more of them keep the place running. Once you can see that split, both owners have their answer in front of them. The first can see which of the running-the-place hours could stop being theirs. The second can see which of the earning hours they should be doing more of, and what’s sitting in the way.

This is not a hard-work problem

I want to say this plainly, because the owners I’m describing have usually been told, or have told themselves, that the answer is to push harder. It isn’t. You’ve been pushing for years. If effort was the fix it would have worked by now.

What’s going on is structural. The hours that produce profit are capped, because you’re still in the middle of the work the business does. The hours that don’t produce profit go up every time the business takes on more. So you can work more and earn the same, which is exactly what the second owner is describing, and you can’t work less without something slipping, which is exactly what the first owner is afraid of. Neither of you is doing anything wrong. The week has been arranged so that your time goes to the wrong things first, and that can be rearranged.

One thing to do this week

Work out the number. Properly, with last year’s accounts rather than a guess.

Take the profit the business made last year. Take an honest count of the hours you put in, including the evening and weekend ones, which is where owners tend to under-count. Divide one by the other. Write it down.

Then do one more thing. Pick a normal day this week and, at the end of it, put each thing you did into one of two columns: would the business have made less profit if I hadn’t done this, or would it just have been done later or by someone else? Don’t agonize over it. Make a gut call on each one.

The second column is where both owners start. If you want the time, that column is what gets handed over, cut or batched. If you want the money, that column is what’s stopping you doing more of the first one. Same list, different reason to clear it.

If this is you

Follow me on any of my social sites or on LinkedIn. A lot of what I write is about this: how owner-led businesses get more from the hours the owner already works, whether that means fewer of them or a better return on them.

And if you’d like to see where your own week is going, there’s a short check on the website that shows where your day’s actually going and what opportunity you might have to do something about it. It takes two minutes. If you’d then like to work out the number together and see what it means for your business, book a Clarity Call. It’s free, it takes twenty to thirty minutes, and it’s a diagnosis rather than a pitch.

Take the check: pauljarman.coach/working-evenings-and-weekends

Book a Clarity Call: pauljarman.coach/book-a-call-evenings-and-weekends