The Six Figure Hamster Wheel: Why You’re Busy But Still Broke

How to stop confusing activity with achievement and finally get paid what you're worth.

1. We all do it: The "I Don't Know How She Does It" Moment

You know the feeling. It’s 10 pm, you’ve finally collapsed onto the sofa after a 12 hour day (and that was AFTER you got the kids up and dropped them off at school). You’ve answered what feels like hundreds of emails, dealt with three unhappy customers, packed the last of the orders, and somehow managed to feed the kids before you checked the orders for tomorrow. You’re totally wrecked. Again.

You open your bank app, and despite all the frantic activity all day every day, you don’t feel like you’re seeing the rewards. You might be turning over six figures, but you’re working like you’re still making minimum wage. And let’s face it, the hours you work? It IS minimum wage.

Then, you scroll Instagram. There’s a competitor - someone you know started around the same time as you - seemingly effortlessly launching a new, super cool product, looking relaxed, and on top of it all, talking about their "four day work week."

And you think, "WTF am I doing wrong?"

And you know what? That feeling of being trapped on a hamster wheel of activity without any real progress? It’s the single biggest barrier keeping successful small business owners from scaling and getting their life back.

Know why? You’re confusing busyness with business.

I want to pull back the curtain on this. I’m not going to give you fluffy, "work smarter, not harder" crap. I’m going to show you exactly why you’re stuck on the wheel and the first, practical step to getting off.

2. "Busy" Doesn't Equal "Productive" (or "Profitable")

The Addictive Nature of the To Do List

I love me a list. And even better? I love ticking things off that list.

I’ve even been known to add things to my list that I’ve already done, just so that I can have the satisfaction of ticking them off.

Ticking off a long list of small, easy tasks feels good, doesn't it? It gives you a little bit of accomplishment, a quick dopamine rush that makes you feel like you’re winning.

But you know what? It’s a trap.

That addiction to the task list keeps you focused on low value work because it feels productive. You’re so busy doing the easy stuff that you never get around to the hard, high value work that actually moves you closer to your big goals.

It’s like watering the pot plants while the house is on fire. You’re busy, you’re active, but you’re focused on the wrong bloody thing.

So let’s take a look at the real cost of this habit. Every hour you spend on a £15/hour task - like managing your inbox, scheduling social media, choosing the right image - is an hour you didn't spend on a £200/hour task.

What are the £200/hour tasks? They’re the ones only you can do: sales calls, high level strategy, creating a new service, or building key relationships. When you do the £15/hour work, you are actively choosing to lose £185/hour. Or whatever your CEO hourly rate is.

And I’m pretty sure you don’t need me to tell you - that’s not a winning business strategy.

3. The Three "Wheel Spinners": Which One Are You?

You’re a small business owner. So I know you’re not lazy or incompetent. But I’ll bet you’re stuck because you’ve fallen into one of these three traps.

It’s super common. And I’m not here to shame you. But we do need to acknowledge the problem so that we can fix it. [link to article on radical responsibility]

The Firefighter

You spend most of your day reacting. Urgent emails, delivery issues, staff questions, customer dramas. One after another.

You live on the adrenaline hit of fixing problems. It feels good. You get to be the hero who rides in and sorts it out.

But what happens when you’re not there to fix it? Everything slows down. Or worse, everything falls over.

You’re basically using a bucket to bail the ocean.

You’re so busy dealing with today’s problems. Every day, you’re crazy busy dealing with problems. (And weirdly, those problems seem to show up again and agin.) So what happens is that you never get to the important but not urgent work that would stop them happening in the first place.

Things like documenting processes, setting expectations, training your team, and creating simple systems that get to the core of problems and actually fix them instead of constantly patching them.

That means you’re running a business on shaky foundations. The second you step away, cracks start to show.

Being the hero every day feels productive, but it’s actually a survival trap. Because you’re always stepping in, your team never really learns how to fix things themselves.

Over time, everyone just waits for you to decide, approve, or rescue. That’s how you accidentally build learned helplessness into your team – and keep yourself stuck on the wheel.

The Micromanager

You’ve got a team (even if it’s just you and your virtual assistant), which is a start, but you still check everything. Somewhere deep down, you think: "it’s faster if I just do it myself" or "no one can do it as well as me". You haven't built the trust or, more importantly, the systems to truly let go. You’re paying someone to help you, but you’re still doing half their job. What you've done is doubled your workload and halved your profit.

And still you’re not getting any closer towards your goals.

The "I'll Get to It Later" Procrastinator

You know you need to work on the big picture stuff, like documenting your processes and building systems. But it feels overwhelming. It’s a huge, messy task with no immediate reward.

So, you retreat to the comfort of the small, easy tasks you know you can complete. You’re avoiding the work that would free you because you’re too busy doing the work that keeps you trapped.

If you see yourself in one (or all three) of these? Good. Acknowledging it is the first step. Now, let’s talk about your escape route.

4. The Only Way Off the Wheel: The "CEO Swap"

You can’t just "stop" doing the work. The work still needs to get done. The only way off the wheel is to have a system and a person to run that system and take your place.

If you just have one takeaway from this whole article, it's this: you need to shift your focus from doing the work to designing the systems that do the work.

I call this the CEO Swap. For every low value task you’re currently doing, you need to make a swap.

Swap 1: The System Swap

Instead of manually sending the same welcome email to every new client, you create a simple, automated onboarding process. You do the work once - you document the process, you set up the automation - and it runs without you. You swap your repetitive effort for a reliable system.

Eventually, you'll build bigger systems made up of multiple processes. But the key is - once you've got the systems, other people run them for you.

Swap 2: The Delegation Swap

Instead of managing your own inbox, you hire a Virtual Assistant (VA) and give them clear, documented rules (a process!) to manage it for you. You swap your time for someone else’s time.

This is the part where people run the systems for you. But crucially - you have to be able to delegate the systems. 

I’m not here to tell you to just add "create systems" or "hire a VA" to the other 100s of things on your to do list. This is a fundamental shift in where you spend your time: from doing the work to designing the systems that do the work.

The problem I hear most:
“I don’t have time to do this”

I get it. And you’re right - at first, you won’t. This is the part no one talks about. When you start building systems, things get harder before they get easier. You'll actually have less time when you first start. It’s call the J curve. You have to invest time up front - documenting, delegating, finding efficiencies - and it feels like you’ve just added more work to your already overloaded week.

But what I can tell you: that dip is temporary.

For each process you document, you earn that time back every single week. Tasks take less time. Problems stop repeating. Your team stops needing you for every little decision. That’s where the curve turns upward. If you never go through that short dip you stay stuck exactly where you are now — forever frantically firefighting, never getting ahead.

So let’s break this down into a simple first step on your path to time freedom from your business.

5. Your First Step to Freedom (A Truly Actionable Task)

Next week, let’s find 5 hours you can reclaim.

I've got a super simple exercise for you. 

The "Stop Doing" Exercise

• Open a notebook or the notes app on your phone. For the next two days, make a note of every single task you do. Keep it simple. No overthinking required here. From answering DMs to processing refunds to scheduling your own calls - write it all down.
• Review the list. At the end of the two days, go through the list and circle every task that you know someone else could do at least 80% as well as you if they had instructions. Anything that makes you feel drained, or bored? Circle those, too.

That list of circled items? That’s your ticket off the hamster wheel. That’s your "what to give your VA" list. Your "what to systemise first" list.

It's proof that you are the bottleneck in your own business. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but if you’re still doing those tasks at this stage of your business, you’re the problem.

It's not imaginary; you’ve got the data now and you can see it right there in your own handwriting.

6. Final Note

You’re on a hamster wheel because you’re confusing busyness with progress. The way off is to swap your low value tasks with by creating processes and delegating those tasks.

One final thing.

You’re the business owner. You’re the only one who can decide to step off the wheel. The bad news? No one is going to do it for you.
The good news? You don't have to build your escape hatch from scratch.

Ready to Build Your Escape Hatch?

If you looked at that list of circled tasks and thought, “I really shouldn’t be doing these tasks”, it’s time to get serious.

The SIMPLE Business Systems course is a self paced, no-mucking-around DIY course that teaches you the repeatable framework to systemise just one of those draining processes, so it can finally run without you.

And of course, once you’ve done one, you know how to do the next one! And the next. And the next.

It’s the practical, proven method to stop being the bottleneck.

And it’s like your ladder to freedom - one process at a time. And it’s only £149. How much is it worth to get your time back? Exactly. It’s a no brainer.

Check it out here.

If the thought of documenting processes freaks you out?
Or maybe you don’t have someone to hand over to yet?

Your next step is get some help.

Start small. Get yourself a clear list of what to hand over. Then you’ll know who you need to hire, and how much time per week you need to hire them for.

Download my free 340+ Tasks You Can Hand Over to Your VA to get the ideas flowing and see just how much time you can reclaim.

Download the Free Checklist.

And if you've really got no idea what you should do next, but you know you need to do something to get off the wheel - book a call. We'll do a free 30 minute business audit, and you'll walk away clear on what your next step needs to be.