Why You Have NO Free Time (And How UK Ecommerce Fixes It) Episode 165

👉 Ready to start your own online store? Start here → https://dropshipunlocked.com/start?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=ep165-why-you-have-no-free-time-and-how-uk-ecommerce-fixes-it 

🗣 In this episode, ecommerce founders Lewis Smith and James Eardley dig into one of the biggest pain points for UK professionals and parents: feeling like you have zero free time.

They unpack why so many mid-career professionals feel permanently stretched — commuting, meetings, targets, kids, life admin — and explain how the right UK ecommerce model can actually give you time back rather than piling more onto your plate. 

🎥 Prefer to watch instead? Watch on YouTube → https://youtu.be/5a6aTYzGVtg

🧭 Topics Discussed
★ The Myth: “Starting a Business Will Make Me Even Busier”
 • Why most people assume that building an online business must add chaos.
• The uncomfortable truth: the wrong business model absolutely will.
★ Choosing the Right Vehicle: The Home-Turf Advantage Model
• How this model is designed to remove stress: lower refund rates, calmer operations, fewer fires to fight.
★ Habits of the Parents Who Actually Win
 • Why consistency beats heroic, once-a-week “big work sessions”.
★ Real Member Wins & What’s Possible
 • A member landing a £49,000 B2B order early on — a life-changing jump-start.

🛠 Links & Resources Mentioned
Lewis’s Book → htabook.com
Shopify £1-for-3-months Offer → https://dropshipunlocked.com/shopify
Free Trial of a Professional Phone Line → https://dropshipunlocked.com/circle

💡 Key Takeaways
★ You’re Time-Poor Because You’re on Everyone Else’s Schedule
 As long as your income is tied directly to hours worked for someone else, you’ll always feel like your days are spoken for.
★ The Model You Choose Either Drains Your Time or Gives It Back
 Low-ticket, overseas-shipping setups often create a second stressful job. A high-ticket, domestic-supplier model with next-day delivery and systems can free up your days as it grows.
★ Affiliate Is Not Enough If You Want a Real Store
 If a “supplier” only offers you an affiliate link, it’s not the right fit for this model. You need trade pricing, your own margins, and control over the customer relationship.

📲 Follow Us

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LinkedIn → https://uk.linkedin.com/company/dropship-unlocked
YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/c/dropshipunlockedlewissmith
Website → https://www.dropshipunlocked.com

🚀 Free Training

🌏 Want to create location, time, and financial freedom?
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Transcript

0:00

If you are working a full time job and you feel like you're always busy because of your job, the way to change that so that your time is then your own again is. Which is why if you've ever tried to start a business and felt instantly overwhelmed, it's probably because. Because that's how you can stop trading your time for money and instead use that leverage to give you back your time freedom. So doing that is the key that will give you fewer fires, not more chaos. Time freedom doesn't come from just working harder. It comes from understanding that. Welcome to the Dropship Unlocked podcast. I'm Lewis Smith, the founder of Dropship Unlocked, and with me is our client success coach, James Eardley. Now, when we're not recording podcast episodes or running our own e commerce businesses, you'll find us helping aspiring entrepreneurs launch their own high ticket dropshipping stores. So if you're ready to build your own six or even seven figure online business, then head over to dropship unlocked.com forward/start. Now sit back, relax, and let's unlock your potential with the Dropship Unlocked podcast. Most people think and say out loud to us that they don't have the time to start an online business. But we're of the opinion that the real reason that they feel time poor has nothing to do with their schedule. So today Lewis and I, we're going to unpack why UK professionals in general feel stretched incredibly thin today and how the right e commerce model can give them back hours of their life as well as a additional income, eventually replacing a full time job. So Louis, so many of our listeners are mid career, they're earning well, but they're feeling like they're always rushing around, whether that's between work, commutes, kids and everything else in between. And they don't feel like they have even a spare hour per day. So my first question to you there, Lewis, is why do you think so many professionals feel like they don't have any free time? I think it comes down to being constantly on someone else's terms. You're, you're being told where you need to be and when you need to be there. I'm talking from experience here. You know, I was very much in that situation for nearly a decade of my life, working in a corporate world, being told I had to be in a meeting in this part of the country on one morning and then the next morning it was at like an event, I had to be at like a corporate entertaining event or something. Then the next morning I'd have to Be somewhere else. So I was always in reactive mode. I was draining my kind of mental load and decision making approach by just having to go on someone else's terms and be where they needed me to be, rather than being able to kind of step back and think like, what am I actually wanting from my day here? Like what would a perfect day for me look like? And I couldn't really engineer that when I was so reactive and trying to meet deadlines and hit targets and be where they needed me to be. And so it comes down to the concept that I think many people never really escape, which is the concept of trading your time for money. And it's just the traditional system, it's the go and what work a job and clock in at the beginning of the day, clock out at the end of the day and that is the time you get paid for. Those are the hours that you're getting paid for. And after that, you know, you kind of tune everything out to do with work and you go and live for the weekend and then the cycle just continues to repeat. But if you can, if you can kind of step back from that cycle. And I'm sure most people listening to this are going to be aware of the concept of building leverage through an online income stream. But if you can disassociate the connection between the amount of effort that you put into something and the amount of freedom that you get out of something in terms of like the, the output, the financial output as well, the two are not necessarily equal. So it's not a case of if you want more freedom or if you want more financial freedom or time freedom, then I just need to put more hours into a job. Actually that's going to cause the opposite problem. That's going to make things even more busy for you because your free time is going to get squeezed further. So if we're agreed that, that just working more hours is not the answer to the freedom that many of us are looking for, then it's about choosing the right vehicle, the right mechanism. Like what is the thing that will allow us to not trade our time for money. That's what we're calling the vehicle here. And there's many ways you could do that. There's, you know, you could open up a franchise, then you could hire a team, you could put a manager in place and then eventually step back from it and just be the owner. And you've created a income generating vehicle that is independent of your, your time. It's front loaded. The same with like property investing or even like creating a side hustle. Like, people will sell a few things online. And the trouble with it is that most of these models actually add stress, at least initially, instead of reducing it. So I think if you're listening to this at the moment, maybe you're in the car on the way to work or on the tube or on the train and you're thinking, like, that's me. That's the situation, the cycle that I feel like I'm stuck in. I'm answering to someone else. I hate it whenever I have to. You know, I'm told that I have to stay late at work, so I therefore don't see my children and don't get to do, you know, bedtime with them. Like, if you're thinking, actually, I want out of this, but I just need to know the right vehicle to do it with. Cheque out, an episode that we did earlier on in this podcast, episode 141, and it's titled why Most People Fail at Drop Shipping and How to Avoid It. That's definitely one to cheque out that we did earlier on, because it breaks down exactly why certain business models will drain your time instead of giving it back. And why we believe the trademarked model that we use and teach, the Home Turf Advantage model, is really the solution to many of those. Those problems. Yeah, great. Shout out. That episode gives us a chance to go deep into the specific model that we use. But just to go back to your previous point about why people feel so poor with time today, I think, as well as the actual schedule being as busy as it is and having all these different commitments with busy workload and family, and trying to keep up a social life alongside exercise and everything else that pulls at the attention and time, Is that the effect that has on your mental load? The. The mental fatigue? There's a finite amount of things we can put our attention into every day. And so every time we say yes to something, or even if you don't have the ability to say yes, every time we're told to do something because we're contractually obliged, when we've got a nine to five job, we've got someone to answer to, that's taking away energy from that finite resource that we have, which is attention, every single day. And so I think when people get back from work and they feel like now would be the time to start something up, they're feeling like they've got nothing left to give. And I think people then assume, well, if I want to start an online business, and that's just going to put more on my plate rather than take things away. So why do you think people have that then Louis? That, that leads to my next question. Why do you think most people assume that if you start an online business that's just going to make you more busy? Well, I think it probably, there is an element of truth to it at the beginning and so it's not a complete fallacy that to create an income stream, to create a business that does that, yeah, it probably will take you a bit more time initially. But the argument on the flip side of that is that you're going to be spending that time and pouring it into something for somebody else anyway. So if you can divert it into something that is yours that you're building, then that creates an income stream for you. And you know it's going to be difficult either way at the beginning. You just got to choose which, which avenue you go down. So for example, if you look to sell like cheap low ticket products, we refer to them as like think 10 pound water bottles or you know, 20 pound gadgets that phone cases, things like that. You have got to sell hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of those for tiny profit on every single order to be able to kind of replace your full time income or start to make a level of income that you'd be excited about. Now just imagine how many like order emails you'll have to answer, how many refund requests you have to deal with, how many things will be happening and your phone will just be buzzing constantly like under the desk while you're at work and you're just watching that and the stress levels rising because you're thinking I'm not going to be able to deal with any this until 5pm and like I'm getting negative reviews online because customers are not receiving their orders and stuff's going wrong versus the approach that, that we talk about the home turf advantage, which is where you'd sell a product that might might be a thousand pounds or two thousand pounds and you sell one of those products a day at a 30% profit margin on an online website, an online store and you might make £600 in profit. So now you've got one email that comes through on your phone during the day at work and that's now probably paid you more than you were going to earn in that job for the day. So you've just earned £600 from your phone and you've only got one email to forward to a supplier and be like, hey guys, can you send this out? And that's it. Like it's, it's really kind of, this is what I mean about choosing your vehicle. You gotta, you gotta think the two could end at the end of the month in the same amount of total net profit. But what's the journey going to be like to get there? The destination might be the same, but the, the journey can make or break you along the way. So especially if you're dealing with like overseas suppliers or unreliable suppliers who offer really long, slow shipping times, you're going to get constant complaints, refunds, chargebacks, people that are unhappy, customers of yours that are unhappy. And it's going to create another job for you. It's going to create more problems and you're not really building yourself any leverage by doing that. So if you're at the stage right now where you're working a job and you're thinking, I've got some savings set aside, I've got some money to put into this, but I've just want to pick the right vehicle, think very carefully about where you invest that in terms of which vehicle you choose to use to get you to the end result. I'm not saying that other business models and low ticket e commerce is not possible. It is. But is it the kind of stress and hassle and admin and liability that you want to take on or do you just want to be smart about how you allocate that capital and use that to multiply it into more to eventually, you know, three or four months down the line, if you're making that 6, 700 pounds profit from one order a day, how many months is it going to take before you comfortable and say, well actually what am I doing working the job and spending all my time here? And then the other aspect of this that I think not a lot of people really consider is that you're not getting any leverage with it. You're just doing everything manually. You're having to, you know, fulfil all those hundreds of orders as if you're the person working in fulfilment and customer support and logistics and like you're just doing all the jobs. So you've not really created leverage. All you've done is created more jobs for yourself to do, which makes you busier, not creates more freedom. So it's very important. Pick the right vehicle, pick the right system that will eventually give you that leverage to be able to step back from the business, watch it operate, be a business owner and work on the business from the outside, not so much in it all day, having to fight the fires as you put it 100%. Yeah. So I agree with you. It is definitely a lift in order to get this off the ground. But how much of a lift it is down the road is up to you in which model you choose. So that I wanted to build a lifestyle business and that's what my E Commerce stores are for me today because I knew I'd be a big lift up front to get the store off the ground. And then once it's up and running now it just takes maintenance rather than it taking hours of my day so I can spend my time more or less how I like as long as I'm overseeing and making sure that the business continues to run and scale with my virtual assistants or AI taking on the the bulk load of work that needs to be done day to day to manage our customers. I think it's an important, important point because when people start a business they need to use that enough activation energy to get it off the ground. And there's a lot of energy that people have when they feel stuck in that position that you described earlier, Louis, where they're going back and forth to work all the time. They've got all that mental load of being pulled in lots of different directions. It all builds up lots of energy to get started and build something for yourself. And it's important that you put that energy into the right model. Otherwise you could waste that important energy into a low quality business model, lose it and then not have the energy to go back and start again. So that ties into something that we've talked about a lot behind the scenes in our own conversations about how this model of UK E Commerce, if done the right way, actually gives more time back to people. So how would you explain how this model gives time back to people? Sure. Well if you just think you're selling products online, it takes you the same amount of time to sell and do the uploading and writing the title and description of a 10 pound product as it does you to do the same for a thousand pound product. The difference is you're going to make significantly more profit with the thousand pound or two thousand pound item. So it means that you'll need fewer orders and you'll have fewer admin things to deal with because you only need a handful of orders per day to make a really good income. But you had to make that decision at the beginning. Do I spend my time uploading thousands of these, like cheap, low price, usually quite low quality products? Because I think the perception is that people think if they do that they're more likely to get sales and you might get sales, but if your target profit from the month that you're aiming for is set and you're clear on what your goal is and what you're trying to do and to create that freedom, then there's a more suitable vehicle to get you there by using higher value items. Because you just jump further ahead with each sale that you make. Using UK suppliers as well. If you're in the uk or if, even if you're not in the uk, if you're setting your company up in the UK and you're selling to UK consumers, of which there are tens of millions of people who shop online in the UK every day, then you can offer much faster delivery, you can offer usually next day delivery, you're going to have much lower refund rates. And when you do need to inevitably refund someone, you just have them send the item back to the supplier and then the supplier refunds you. So you're, yes, you're kind of the middle man, you're the broker, you're kind of in the middle. But it's very, very easy to do that and to communicate. And it's, it's essentially just the business model that companies like Wayfair or if you think back to like the Argos catalogue, they used to dropship a lot of the items. It was just referred to as direct dispatch back then, rather than the term dropshipping. But I think, yeah, if you're trying to create freedom and time, you've got to think about like using those structured pockets of work that you get around your busy schedule, so around kids, bedtime or the school run or your job and really put that time in. But we've seen it so many times with dropship unlocked members where maybe their parents and they build their store in blocks of 60 to 90 minute windows each day rather than just sitting at the desk and grinding it out for like 10 hours straight. They just don't have the luxury of being able to do that. But what I often say to them, if they come to us and say, well, is that a problem that they don't have that much free time? I say, actually no, it's, it's usually an advantage because psychologically it forces your mind to really focus and think, what have I got to do in this hour and a half window? And it, it, you know the answers deep down, you know, and it's not fiddling with the menu items on your website or trying to choose which colour your add to cart button should be, it's calling three suppliers, getting them on board, it's getting those products uploaded, it's optimising your ad campaigns. And so it's why when it comes down to it, the real problem is not time with this, it's not your time availability, it's, it's leverage, it's, it's the vehicle you choose and what that gives you back. Because when you choose the right model, time opens up, you'll actually find yourself less busy than ever because you can step away from your job and you'll have all this time back and you realise actually it's not that busy. And sometimes you think, well, I've got a lot of time here and you can go and travel the world or go on holidays or spend time with your family and friends or create several businesses if you want to use your time even more effectively and lucratively. But if you choose the wrong model at this point and you're thinking, you know, you're at that like fork in the road junction where you think, which way do I go? You choose the wrong model, time starts to disappear because it's going to get eaten up by all of those micro tasks and those low profit orders that you need to deal with. So at this stage, if you are at that junction, pick the, the routes that you're going to take very, very carefully and consciously because, and heed our warning. I guess, because we've both been down that other road. We have. I made mistakes of going into the wrong business model initially trying to sell really low ticket products because that's kind of how I valued my business acumen. At that point I thought I have to sell cheap products, but I was so wrong. I think you need more business acumen, more operational skills if you're going to be selling lots of high ticket products compared to the business models that we now run, which is high ticket products, less orders and therefore more leverage on the actions that you do put into the business. And just to give a few more examples of how, it's not about time, it's about leverage. Things that I've done years ago are still paying me today. So for example, signing certain suppliers that I had a phone call with about three or four years ago, potentially when they said yes to me, that we could sell their products online. Their products have been live ever since. So still making sales for those suppliers today, that's work done back then, that still pays me today. More leverage was from the Google Ads campaign that I set up again a few years ago. Have had a good Google campaign live for years and it still pays and still brings in conversions and obviously you're optimising it over time. But in terms of the campaign creation, it's a super high leverage activity. And I don't think we have the same leverage activities with a job where we're not the founder or director or very high level position in that company. And so we kind of lose sight of how much leverage you can get from the jobs and the work that you put in. When you have your own business, it's all for your own benefit. So we can think like an entrepreneur and really put our time to work with leverage. So Louis, for someone who's thinking, right, this sounds fantastic. I know I'm busy, but I'm ready to start using my time more effectively. But they're thinking, what's the first step? How do I actually begin today? What would you say to them? Well, I think you have to start small, especially if you're time restricted or time limited here and you don't have huge blocks of time to be able to use. Remember that's an advantage because it forces you to focus. But in that time, what you're using it for is critical. That will make or break your success with this. So start small, but you must have a very, very proven model or roadmap or path to follow with this if you can. If you can ensure that the model you're following is highly leveraged from day one and it's set out that way so that you don't build this kind of creation and then later look back at it and be like, ah, yeah, it didn't quite turn out how I'd hoped. But instead you're like learning from a process where they've done that already and then I've zoomed out, seen the end result and can just guide you through to that end result. You're not then guessing what you're going to create. It's not a gamble as to Whether you create 10 more jobs for yourself that eat up all your time and make no profit. But versus just a really leveraged, simple, semi automated business, you know, where you're, you're, you as the founder are not that involved day to day. So for anyone that is listening to this and you're thinking, yeah, I'm ready to reclaim my time and I want to build something that fits around my family time. Like that for me is the priority and I want a business to be able to fund that and help them and help other people. Head over to dropship unlocked.com forward/start at that link. We show you the exact roadmap that our members follow to get their businesses up and running to create that time and financial freedom that they're looking for in the simplest, highest leveraged way possible. Are you enjoying the podcast? We'd love to hear from you. Leave a comment or a review and we might feature it in an upcoming episode. And for detailed show notes and resources, visit dropshipunlock.com podcast. If you found value in any episode of this podcast, please could you take just 10 seconds to leave us a quick five star review on your favourite podcast app? It helps us more than you can imagine. And who knows, you might just hear your comments read out on the show. Thanks for being a part of our community. Your support helps us keep delivering new episodes to you every week. Now, it's that part of the episode where we're going to answer a question that's come in from a listener. So remember, if any questions have come up in your mind while listening or watching today's episode, then simply comment beneath the YouTube video version of this episode and it may be featured on an upcoming episode. So Robert has asked a question that we're going to answer today. So Robert's question is, I have an issue with setting up my limited company. Could you help direct me on what to do? Yeah, it's a great question, Robert. So setting up a limited company, as it's called in the UK is actually, it's really straightforward and, and you can just go to Companies House, you can do it directly, but actually there's an even faster, easier and cheaper way, significantly cheaper way of doing it that we've set up for you, our Dropship Unlocked listeners. We've partnered with Tide to be able to do this. So if you head over to dropship unlocked.com forward slash company. So dropship unlocked.com forward slash Company. We've partnered with Tide bank so you can register your company and open your business bank account all in the same process. And it's only £14.99 at the moment, so that might change in time. But currently that's the deal that they have and we've also negotiated that you can get £50 cash back when you open your business account. I think you have to fund it first and put like £100 in, but they'll then give you £50 basically for saying thank you for opening your business with us. So that gets you your business opened for 1499. Effectively they are paying you to open a company because you're then getting the £50 back. So it basically covers all of your setup costs. Streamlines everything. It's really simple. You'll then have your limited company number, your business bank account, you'll have a proper registered business address so you don't have customers like turning up at your front door at home. And it's just all sorted in one place in about 10 minutes. So if you want that link, we'll put that in the description so you can click that, access it directly and you could be a director of a limited company within the next 10 minutes. Awesome. Yeah, great question. And we recommend that to get the best quality suppliers is to have a company. Also, when I did that, it made me take the business so much more seriously when I saw myself as a director rather than just a hobbyist, you know. So onto a recent review that we're going to highlight as well. We'd like to do this on the podcast to give you a shout out. If you've been enjoying the podcast, then do let us know. You might get a shout out in an upcoming episode. So that is what Fernando Meza has done. He's left a lovely comment under a YouTube video so we wanted to give it a shout out and he said lots of value here. You guys really explain things clearly. Thank you. Thank you so much for your review. We really, really appreciate it. It means a huge amount to us. So, so thanks for leaving that. Now, before we wrap up today, I'd just like to ask a quick favour of you listening or watching us today. If you've enjoyed this episode and you found any value in anything we talk about here, could you take a moment to leave us a quick review? Your feedback on our podcast helps us reach more listeners and improve our content and it should take you a few seconds to do so if you tap that button. Leave us a quick five star review. We really appreciate it and we'll try and read out your review on our next episode. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Dropship Unlocked podcast. We hope you are leaving with new insights and inspiration to fuel your entrepreneurial journey. To kickstart your E commerce business, head over to dropshipunlocked.com start. It's the perfect place to start and get access to resources that will help you build your business from the ground up. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button for more episodes packed with strategies, tips and success storeys. Plus, if you enjoyed this episode today, a five star review would mean the world to us and you might even get a shout out on the next episode. Thank you for choosing to spend your time with us today. We can't wait to bring you more insights on the next episode of the Dropship Unlocked podcast.