Is there a book living rent-free in your brain? There’s one living in mine, so I’m doing something about it. On March 17, Lee Densmer, author of "Content, Simplified", will lead a session about writing a business book from scratch. We’ll unpack positioning, publishing mechanics, revenue pathways, and your toughest questions live. Join us here!​

Hey Reader,

I’m sure you’ve heard this before: “You pay with time or money, whichever you value less”. The gurus love to tell you how time is the most precious resource.

Factually, they’re not wrong. Morally — well, that’s a longer discussion.

My qualm with this saying is that it uses a truism to nudge you into spending. Yes, bro, I know that time is finite, while money can be infinite. But have you ever had to NOT spend anything on your business?

Because I have.

When I launched my first business (a marketing agency), I paid 60-something bucks for a domain name and hosting. A client offered to design me a website in exchange for me writing their copy.

I did everything else myself: client work, client reports, client hunting, client relations, agency copy and content, promos, social media, administrative tasks, and probably a bunch of other crap that my mind chose to block out of self-protection.

I was a mean (tired) machine.

And yes, I did know that my time was more finite than potential money. I just had no choice.

My peak frugality season happened when I was posting manually on social media for a client with many accounts. I finally decided to buy a subscription for a social media management tool when I had to manually log in and out of 8 Facebook accounts 🤯.

Oh, and when I was certain the revenue surpassed my expenses — very important!

When I started this consulting business, on the other hand, things looked very different. I had a comfortable cushion and another business that was already generating plenty of revenue. So:

• I hired a designer to build my website from day 1 instead of settling for whatever a free website looks like.
• I paid for Kit’s (aff) top pricing tier, and I chose Kit not because it was the cheapest (it wasn't) but because it was the best for what I needed.
• I pay for Senja (aff) to collect testimonials because it saves time and improves the user experience.
• I pay for consulting, communities, and more.

This time, I can choose between time and money. And yeah, I choose to save my time whenever possible.

It’s because I’m in a different stage of my business.

I’ll tell you all about how this dichotomy shows up in your day-to-day operations in a second. But first, a quick message from today’s partner, a newsletter I wish I had access to back when I was manually switching among 8 Facebook accounts — it would have made a world of difference in how I approached my business.

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I just graduated from this course, and you know what blew my mind? I've NEVER seen an email course that has such amazing graphics (the envy is real!). Also, I initially thought I wasn't in the target audience, but whaddya know, going through the basics helps even when you feel you're more advanced.

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Listen, money matters. It can speed up growth in any business — if used properly, of course.

So does time. In the State of Solopreneurship report, the overwhelming majority of respondents said that time or creative bandwidth was their biggest bottleneck.

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But the time-money dichotomy can hide something else, too.

Over the past few years — through strategy sessions, Growth Intensives, and a lot of post-mortems on stalled revenue — I’ve noticed a pattern:

• Early-stage founders struggle with financial constraints.
• Mid-stage founders struggle with attention constraints.
• Advanced solo founders struggle with complexity constraints.

And your stage isn’t always correlated with the time spent in business. Some businesses pick up steam over years, while others go sky-high in months.

When you misdiagnose your stage, you apply the wrong solution. You either hustle harder when you need focus, or you systemize when you need demand, or you hire when what you actually need is simplification.

Let’s map this properly.

Stage 1: The financial constraints (early stage)

Revenue: inconsistent or below target.
Emotional baseline: urgency mixed with ambition.
Default belief: “If I just had more money, everything would stabilize.”

In the early stages, money genuinely is the bottleneck. (For most people. In some cases, you have a cushion you can use or money from your previous job/business.)

You do not yet have predictable inflows. You cannot afford strategic experiments. You say yes to projects that are adjacent to your positioning because the cash matters.

​Behavioral research consistently shows that financial scarcity narrows cognitive bandwidth. Limited financial resources reduce working memory and long-term planning capacity. When cash is tight, short-term decisions dominate because you can’t afford to think long-term on an empty stomach.

You need relief now.

This is not a character flaw. It is cognitive load — something that makes you make short-sighted decisions.

Roughly 50% of small businesses fail within the first five years, and one of the most cited reasons is insufficient capital and cash flow mismanagement. That early fragility shapes behavior, so you optimize for immediate revenue instead of durable positioning.

At this stage, time is rarely the true constraint. You often have more discretionary time than you think; what you lack is demand density and pricing power.

Strategic priority in stage 1:

• Validate one core offer.
• Increase close rates before increasing traffic.
• Raise prices gradually to test elasticity.
• Focus on cash flow visibility, not diversification.

Diversification is seductive here because it feels like insurance. In reality, spreading attention across multiple offers reduces signal strength and slows revenue stabilization.

Don’t get me wrong, you do need more than one offer as a solopreneur (in most cases, at least).

The respondents in ​State of Solopreneurship​ often combine 3 or 4 offers or formats.

But do resist the urge to have more than three in the early stage.

Stage 2: The attention constraint (mid-stage)

Revenue: stable, growing, yet plateauing if not pushed by launches or discounts.
Emotional baseline: busy, competent, slightly stretched.
Default belief: “I need better systems. I don’t have enough time.”

At this stage, money starts flowing. You can project a few months ahead. You have clients, maybe recurring revenue, and typically a medium-sized audience (over 10,000 engaged followers/subscribers).

And suddenly you feel stretched thin.

This is where many solopreneurs say time is the problem. There are too many channels. Too many ideas. Too many experiments.

You are creating content, serving clients, maintaining relationships, considering new offers.

So cognitively, you’re stuck in permanent multi-tasking, which can harm your productivity more than you think. Research on task switching shows that shifting between tasks can reduce productivity by up to 40%. You think you’re multi-tasking but in fact, your brain remains partially engaged with the previous task.

In stage 2, attention becomes fragmented.

You are capable of earning more, yet your focus disperses across:

• New product ideas.
• Additional platforms.
• Partnerships.
• Micro-optimizations.

Revenue plateaus here often have nothing to do with demand and everything to do with diluted strategic focus. The constraint shifts from capital to cognitive bandwidth.

Strategic priority in stage 2:

• Eliminate at least one revenue stream.
• Reduce platforms.
• Design repeat-revenue loops.
• Protect deep work time.

This is usually where I recommend the Growth Intensive. Not because you need more tactics, but because you need a compression process.

In The Growth Intensive, we audit offers, map revenue concentration, and identify the 20% of activities driving 80% of revenue.

This is why this program rarely ends with my clients adding channels or offers. (Unless they are severely undiversified.) It ends instead with structural clarity: how can you scale a proven business without sacrificing your sanity and your time?

Stage 3: The complexity constraints (advanced stage)

Revenue: healthy, sometimes high six figures/low 7-figures.
Emotional baseline: capable but mentally crowded.
Default belief: “Everything works, but it feels heavier.”

Once revenue stabilizes and attention is managed, a subtler constraint appears: complexity.

You now have:

• Multiple offers.
• Several revenue channels.
• Systems layered on systems.
• A growing audience.
• Historical decisions that shaped current operations.

Complexity accumulates gradually and each new initiative feels rational in isolation. When put into context, though, every new thing ads huge new layers of complexity.

The trouble is that complexity grows faster than revenue.

At this stage, neither time nor money is the core issue. Decision architecture is.

You face trade-offs constantly:

• Expand or refine?
• Hire or automate?
• Add a tier or remove one?
• Launch or double down?

Complexity creates friction in decision-making. Revenue may grow, yet margins shrink due to hidden operational costs and cognitive strain.

Strategic priority in stage 3:

• Simplify the offer stack.
• Align all products under one clear strategic spine.
• Audit tools and recurring costs.
• Rebuild around long-term leverage.

This is often when solopreneurs need strategic pruning instead of scaling. Their work needs to become subtractive.

I’ve seen this firsthand in at least one strategy session. A client came to me because they were unable to reach 7 figures, even though they were thiiiis 🤏 close.

Their business was expectedly complex, and my advice to cut one revenue stream took them by surprise, until I told them that this would mean that they:

• No longer needed two contractors
• Could focus their promotional efforts on products with better margins
• Could tap into a completely new, underserved market.

The diagnostic

Instead of asking, “Do I lack time or money?”, ask:

1. If someone injected 50% more revenue into my business tomorrow, would my main stress disappear or simply shift?
2. If someone removed half my tasks tomorrow, would revenue collapse or remain stable?
3. Does my growth feel blocked by insufficient demand, scattered focus, or accumulated complexity?
4. Am I optimizing for survival, efficiency, or leverage?

Your answers will likely cluster.

• If survival dominates your thinking, you are in stage 1.
• If efficiency dominates your thinking, you are in stage 2.
• If leverage dominates your thinking, you are in stage 3.

I created this quick exercise because each stage requires a different strategic posture.

Applying stage 3 simplification tactics to a stage 1 business can starve demand. Applying stage 1 hustle to a stage 2 business burns attention. Applying stage 2 optimization to a stage 3 structure leaves complexity intact.

The constraints evolve as you do. And yes, every business always has constraints.

The deeper question is not whether you have enough time or money. It is whether your current strategy matches the structural reality of your stage.

What stage are you in, and what would you say is your biggest constraint?

Reply and let me know — I read all the emails

A quick word on leverage and future-proofing

Candidly, it broke my heart to add leverage so late in the “game”. My default is embedding leverage at every stage. The more you prepare for the future stage(s), the easier they will feel.

However, I remember a time when I could not do that (that’s why I told you the story in the beginning). Survival was the only thing on my mind because I did NOT want to go back to a traditional job, and I needed to make my business work.

If you’re in this stage, I get it. You’re not behind, don’t listen to the people who say everyone makes at least 6 figures in their sleep.

If you’re in a stage where survival is not your priority, I urge you to think years in advance, not months. You can afford to do it, and future you will thank you for it.

If you want help identifying your stage and restructuring accordingly, that is exactly what my Growth Intensive is designed for. It is a structured recalibration of revenue architecture, attention allocation, and strategic focus so you build with clarity instead of reacting to surface symptoms.

Because the constraint you think you have is rarely the one that is actually limiting you. And once you see that clearly, your next move becomes obvious.

The Council Bulletin

There are SO many things happening in The Council. By things, I mean amazing transformations and business glow-ups.

We’re in the middle of The Newsletter Growth Bootcamp and people are acing their homework. I’ve spilled the beans on one of them here and explained how it happened.

BTW, if you want similar transformations, this is what we do in The Council with or without an ongoing bootcamp. Join us or reply to this email if you’re unsure whether this works for you.

My podcasts, interviews, and more

1. I recently went on the Side Hustle Show podcast with Nick Loper to geek out on the data in State of Solopreneurship. I loved that Nick challenged me to explain how the data can be applied to solo businesses. Tune in here.
2. My friend Stacy Eleczko and I have two truths and a lie to tell you. We go live on March 12th for a free, laid-back event, where we’ll talk about the (marketing) hills we’re willing to die on. Well, at least a couple of them. Join us!

That's it from me today! See you next week in your inbox. Here to make you think, Adriana

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