Is Your Side Hustle Leaking Money?

The other night, I was trying to get my four-year-old, Haris, to put his LEGO bricks back in the box. He’d built an epic spaceship, but the floor was a minefield of colourful plastic. He looked at me with those big, serious eyes and said, "But Abah, I need to fly it to the moon." He was focused on the mission, not the cleanup. The cleanup was just... noise.

It struck me how many of us, as solopreneurs and small business owners in Singapore, are exactly the same. We have a mission—to build our brand, serve our clients, create something amazing. But we get bogged down by the "cleanup": the endless admin, the manual invoicing, the social media scheduling, the spreadsheet updates. It's the noise that distracts us from flying our spaceship to the moon.

We tell ourselves that being busy is a sign of progress. But what if that busyness is actually a leak? Not just a leak of time, but of cold, hard cash. Every hour you spend on a S$15 admin task is an hour you're *not* spending on a S$150 client task. That's a leak. That's real money dissolving into thin air.

How Much Is Your "Busywork" Really Costing You?

Let's make this real. Use the calculator below. Be honest about how many hours you spend each week on that one repetitive task you dread—the one that feels like cleaning up LEGOs. Then, put in what your time is really worth. The results might surprise you.

Three Automations to Plug the Leaks, This Weekend

Seeing that number hurts, right? The good news is, you can start plugging those leaks today. Here are three simple automation "recipes" you can set up using common, often free, tools.

• Recipe 1: The Automated Lead Catcher. If you get leads from Instagram DMs or a Linktree, stop manually copying them to a spreadsheet. Use a tool like Make.com or Zapier to create a workflow: When a new lead comes in, automatically add their details to a row in a Google Sheet and send yourself a Telegram notification. Time saved: 1-2 hours/week.
• Recipe 2: The "Invoice & Follow-Up" Robot. Stop creating invoices by hand in Word or Excel. Use a free tool like Invoice-generator.com to create professional invoices. Then, set up automated email reminders in your Gmail for 7, 14, and 30 days past the due date. This not only saves time but also improves your cash flow.
• Recipe 3: The "Content Idea" Machine. Stop staring at a blank screen wondering what to post. Set up a free Google Alert for keywords related to your industry in Singapore. Then, create a workflow that saves any new articles it finds to a Pocket account or a dedicated spreadsheet. You'll wake up to a list of fresh, relevant content ideas every single day.

These small steps aren't about becoming a tech wizard. They're about making a choice. A choice to stop cleaning up the LEGOs and start focusing on flying your spaceship to the moon. Because your time, and your mission, are far too valuable to be lost in the noise.