How to move to a 4-day work week as a solopreneur or small business owner

Are you a solopreneur or small business owner that would love to move from a 5-day work week to a 4-day work week? The 4-day work week is a hot topic in the UK at the moment (September 2022). In 2022 a number of companies across the UK decided to do a 6-month trial of a 4-day workweek. For many working 4 rather than 5 days is the dream, and whilst it seems to be going well for the majority of businesses in the trial it can be hard to see how to make a 4-day work week possibly when you are a solopreneur or small business owner. But never fear I’m here to help you. If you want to move to a 4-day work week then it is absolutely possible. Keep on reading to find out how to move to a 4-day work week as a solopreneur or small business owner.

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HOW TO MOVE TO A 4-DAY WORK WEEK AS A SOLOPRENEUR OR SMALL BUSINESS OWNER

Review how you are currently spending your work week

Before moving to a 4-day work week spend a few weeks where you track your whole week. For this to be successful the key is to not just look at your diary to see how you planned to spend your time but actually time yourself. I love using Toggl to track how I am spending time. You can use it on your phone or your laptop and it will allow you to easily track how long you are spending your time. Ideally, you want to try this for 2 or even 3 weeks so you can properly understand how you are spending your time.

If you are like most business owners reviewing how you spend your time will be a surprise. Even if you are someone that’s quite organised the likelihood is there will be some instances where how you spend your time differs from what your calendar said. You might notice that:

You got sucked into scrolling on social media
Creating content takes longer than you expected
You are frequently checking your inbox and spending more time in than your diary shows
Writing proposals and chasing up takes longer than you accounted for
There are tasks that you do which don’t even make it into your weekly plan

Now don’t judge yourself for how you are currently using your time. That isn’t the point of this exercise. The point is to get a true picture of how your time is used across a week. At the end of each week, you’ll need to collate the data so you can see how your time is spent across your main work categories.

For example, you might realise that in your 35-hour work week you are currently spending your time as follows:

35-HOUR WORK WEEK

10 hours on client calls
10 hours preparing for client calls and writing up client notes
7 hours on marketing
5 hours on sales
3 hours on admin

Once you understand how you are spending your time currently you can move on to the next steps – working out how to reduce your workload.

Consider how to reduce your workload

If you want to move to a 4-day work week and currently you are working 5 full days then you are either going to have to work extra long days on the 4 days or you are going to have to reduce your workload.

I’m going to assume that your drive to move to a 4-day work week wasn’t to work longer days but actually to achieve a better work/life balance so now the focus has to be on reducing your workload.

Here are a few questions for you to ask yourself:

Is there anything you are currently doing that isn’t essential?
Is there anything you are doing manually that could be automated or by a piece of tech/software?
Is there anything that you could outsource?

By asking yourself these questions the aim is to see how you could reduce your current workload. At this stage, you don’t have to commit to anything. For example, there could be some tasks that could be automated and they could be outsourced. So you aren’t deciding right now, what you will do, but is about identifying your options.

One thing to note is that very often having a shorter work week will make you more productive. So whilst moving from a 5-day week to a 4-day week may mean that you are working 20% less. It could be by reducing your workload by 10%, you could still fit the other 90% into your 4-day week. This might seem a bit illogical, but it is due to Parkinson’s Law. According to Parkinson’s Law tasks will fill to the time you allow it. So if you currently are setting yourself 5 hours for social media then it will take you that long. However, if you set yourself 3.5 hours moving forward you might find it takes you 4 hours and then eventually you can get it down to 3.5 hours.

Understand the impact of moving to a 4-day work week

Moving from a 5-day work week (or even a 6/7 day work week) to a 4-day work week is going to have an impact on your business. If you are moving from working 7 hours per day Monday to Friday to 7 hours per day Monday to Thursday you are going to lose 7 working hours or 20% of your working week. For most business owners that will have an impact. The likelihood is that right now you aren’t wasting 20% of your working week.

Having thought about the way you could reduce your workload you should now be in a place to really understand the implications moving to a 4-day work week will have on your business.

It might be that you are able to keep the same amount of clients, but you have to make changes with your marketing/sales/admin etc. Or you might realise that keeping on the same amount of clients in the future is not realistic. If the number of clients you can work with changes then you’ll need to review your pricing and calculate what your new maximum possible revenue is, based on your new version of fully booked and make sure you are happy with that.

It might feel scary to reduce the amount of money you can earn, but there are a number of reasons why that might be right for you.

Your fully booked income potential at the moment may be considerably higher than your revenue goals so even by reducing your potential you can still hit your revenue goals
You might decide that the work/life balance of a 4-day work week is better than the extra money you can make from working the extra day
Reducing the number of clients you can take on will change the balance between supply and demand in your business (in a good way). This might be able to become fully booked quicker and start booking clients in for weeks or even months in advance. Read more about ‘How to be booked out in advance’. This will put you in a stronger position to raise your prices.

NEED HELP UNDERSTANDING THE FINANCIAL IMPLICATION OF MOVING TO A 4-DAY WEEK?

If the thoughts of working out whether your financial goals are achievable and what your pricing should be now is overwhelming then I’m here to help.

A Pricing Power Hour is a super quick and easy way for your to get an expert to review your numbers so you can be confident about what your financial goals are, how you should be pricing your services (or products) and understanding what you need to sell in order to achieve your goals.

My clients are always so shocked at how powerful these sessions are, but I truly love numbers so I’ll be able to quickly assess your current situation, make recommendations for future changes and ensure you leave understanding what you need to do next.

To book a Pricing Power Hour, and see my raving reviews if you need some reassurance, click here.

Moving to a 4-day work week

At this point, you’ve done all the necessary thinking and now it is time to take action. Depending on your style you might decide to go for a gradual change. Maybe go from 6 days to 5 days and then 4 days. Or you might just want to make the change next week. Either way can work. So choose what feels best for you. Either way, I strongly recommend having a clear date for when your business will have moved to a 4-day work week and having a checklist of all the things you need to do in order for the move to go smoothly. This may include hiring someone for the tasks you need to outsource, setting up any automations you decided would save you time and notifying any other people (clients, contractors, suppliers etc) who need to know.

Sticking to a 4-day work week

Moving, in theory, to a 4-day work week isn’t that difficult, but the reality of sticking to a 4-day work week is where most solopreneurs and small business owners go wrong. You need to set strong boundaries and stick to those boundaries. Find out more about how to set boundaries here.

If you are an online service provider that is fully in control of your schedule then this is fairly easy to do. For example, you might be a coach or consultant that has clients that will book specific times or days to work with you. In that case, you can work out what day you are not going to work and block it out! This way there is no way someone can accidentally book into your diary and when someone says “Would X work” you’ll go into your diary and see that it doesn’t work.

For online service providers that work with clients on retainers or rolling subscriptions (VA, accountants, social media managers etc) this can be a bit more difficult. If you are a social media manager, VA etc then you might feel that this isn’t an option for you. In these types of businesses, I’ve seen business owners use one of the three following approaches:

They are upfront with their clients from the start. The business runs a 4-day work week and if that doesn’t work for them. If they are changing to a 4-day work week they’ll notify them in advance with sufficient time for them to make a decision about whether they want to continue or not.
They work a 4-day work week but will have a protocol for out-of-office emergencies. This is no different to a business that has a 5-day week – but you know social doesn’t stop at the weekend
Get additional support that will cover the days when you are not working, but ensures your clients have access to support whenever they need it.

*Bonus tip* – If you are worried about not sticking to your new 4-day work week then book personal things to do on the day that involve other people so you are less inclined to end up working. Arrange to see a friend for lunch, go away for a long weekend or book yourself into an exercise class. Having something else in the diary will add a little bit of friction if you decide you do want to work.

Flexible approach to a 4-day work week

This might seem contradictory to what I’ve just said about sticking to a 4-day work week, but at the end of the day you are the boss and you don’t have to stick to a 4-day work week every week. As the boss, you can do whatever you want.

For example, in my business, I follow a 4-day work week in the summer, but follow a 5-day work week in winter. However, because I’ve set my business up to operate fully on a 4-day week it means in the winter the fifth day is primary for Strategy Days.

Being able to successfully run your business on a 4-day work week means that if you do decide to work an extra day one week you can use that for working on your business rather than in your business. Here are 9 ways to work on your business, rather than in it. Given that no one else expects you to be working it will be a distraction-free day. You can use that day to plan your next launch, create a course, batch a whole load of content or even have a strategy day with me.

BOOK A STRATEGY DAY WITH ME

Strategy Days are a great way to spend a day in CEO mode and work on your business so it can be more successful in the future. I offer 3 different versions: launch planning, evergreen content planning and annual planning.

Regardless of the Strategy Day option you choose, you’ll leave with a clear plan and confidence about what needs to happen next in your business.

For more information click here.

And if you want to discuss your specific needs and find out about how I can help you book a free introduction call.

Another time where you might decide that working a 4-day work week doesn’t work is if you are doing a big launch. You might decide to move to a 5-day or let’s be realistic a 6 or 7-day work week. That is absolutely fine. Don’t feel guilty about it. The fact is that having a few long working weeks that will result in a considerable number of sales is fine.

That’s it! You now know how to move to a 4-day work week as a solopreneur or small business owner.

Moving to a 4-day work week as a solopreneur or small owner, even one that is delivering a service, is totally possible. If right now you are working a 5, 6 or even 7-day work week and want a better work-life balance then this process will help you to get there.

In the comments, let me know what your biggest takeaways has been?

WANT TO GROW A THRIVING ONLINE, SERVICE-BASED, BUSINESS THAT GIVES YOU THE MONEY AND TIME TO LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE?

Most business owners who want to move to a 4-day work week are looking for a better work/life balance. It is absolutely possible to work less and not have a negative impact on the amount of income you earn. However, you’ll need to be strategic about how you market and run your business, which is what I help business owners do.

If you are an online service providerthat wants to grow your business strategically but without selling their soul or running yourself into the ground then check out my services.

To find out more about my 1:1 business and marketing mentoring programme click here

And to discuss your precise needs book a free, no-obligation, introduction call to discuss your business here.