I have a full 12‑14 hour day free next week; how should I spend that time to grow my business?
Treat the extra hours like a gym session. You won’t get 12× the results by working 12 hours straight; you’ll see diminishing returns after a point. Focus on the high‑impact, money‑making activities—outreach, lead‑generation, and sales—that deliver roughly 80 % of your results. Fill your calendar with those tasks, execute them efficiently, and you’ll accomplish the vast majority of what you need to move the business forward.
What a great question. Regarding your Pacific Standard Time question, if you work 6 – 9 PM Eastern, that’s 3 – 6 PM Pacific, so you can book meetings then; it’s not a problem. Now, for your main question about working full‑time with only 3-4 hours a day: Yes, it’s feasible. In fact, everything needed to start this business can be done in 2-3 hours a day, so your 3-4 hour window is more than enough. Having limited time is actually an advantage because it forces you to focus on revenue‑generating activities and constantly ask whether each task moves the needle. To compete with people who have 8-12 hours, you must make each hour two to three times more effective by always checking if your work is generating revenue. Think of it like being dropped into a mid‑to‑high difficulty area in a game right away—you level up much faster than if you stayed in the beginner zone. Most of the core activities I discuss take only an hour or two a day, leaving you extra time to build the rest of your business.
Well, you ended up joining anyway—just kidding. For anyone else here, I'd recommend a couple of hours, maybe two to three hours per day. The first couple of days might be a bit heavier: day one could be three to four hours, day two two to three hours, then from day three onward it settles to about two hours a day, maybe a little more. Some people take longer at the start, but that's okay. The reason this works quickly is that lead generation and outreach strategies become fast with practice because I make you do a lot of them. Regardless of initial timing, you'll eventually gravitate to a two‑to‑three‑hour daily workload, which most people can fit in. A core part of the program is daily accountability and habit tracking—not just learning a specific lead gen tactic or setting up automations. It's like going to the gym but for money: you show up daily, track your habits, and build consistency. Regarding money, it's hard to give a fixed number because it scales with how much outreach you do. My suggestion is about ten Upwork applications a day and roughly two thousand cold emails in the first month. In practice, most people end up spending an extra $100‑$150 per month on things like Upwork fees or cold‑email tools, due to limiting beliefs that hold them back. The beauty of Maker School is that the capital outlay is low: you spread the cost over three months, and the time to see results is short compared to typical businesses that require a big upfront spike with uncertain payoff. You also get discounts via coupon aggregators and my affiliate links, so give it a try.
Yes, you should join. Though 7-9 hours a day for performance marketing freelancing is a lot — are you paid on commission, or a flat retainer to manage ads? Either way, before adding more on top, look at changing your fulfillment structure or deliverable, or identify your lowest-paying client on an hourly basis and replace them with someone who pays more. Those moves either free up time or raise your effective hourly rate, which is really the same lever.
Your plan focuses on output goals (revenue, clients) without accounting for the inputs needed to achieve them. To hit 1‑2 qualified meetings a day you’d need to send roughly 15‑20 Upwork proposals daily, spend time on meetings, kickoff calls, and fulfillment—adding up to far more than 4.5 hours a day. The gap between input and output can be weeks or years, so expecting $15K/month in 60 days is unrealistic without prior experience. Instead, concentrate on input goals (e.g., number of proposals, meetings, calls) and let the results follow; consistent inputs will ultimately exceed any output target you set.