Working 9 p.m. to 10 p.m: how I built Turtle Strength while raising kids and holding a full-time job

Why you’re never too busy to start

For over 15 years, I had been working in corporate marketing teams, building brands, launching campaigns and driving commercial results. But over time, I started to feel something shift. I had a growing itch I couldn’t ignore. I didn’t want to keep building things for other people. I wanted to have a crack at something of my own.

Then one day, driving back from a camping trip, it hit me. What am I waiting for?

I’ve always loved lifting. Powerlifting, CrossFit, Strongman. It’s been part of my life since I was a teenager. That day in the car, I decided to stop waiting and finally build something for lifters like me.

That was the seed for Turtle Strength. An Australian strength gear brand designed for people who train hard and show up, not for the hype—for the love of lifting. I started with purpose-built weightlifting belts and some core lifting products.

I decided to commit just one hour a night, from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. That was all I had. It was the worst hour of the day in many ways. I was tired and mentally cooked—but the house was finally quiet. So I showed up every night. That small window became sacred. And it was enough to make real progress.

This might not be a story of building the next billion-dollar brand, but if you’ve got something you’re putting off, I hope what I’ve learned gives you the motivation you need to get started, even if it’s for just one hour a day like me.

The power of consistent one-hour hustles

After dinner, bath time, stories and getting the kids into bed, I’d open the laptop. This was my time and it never got easier. Some nights I’d feel tapped out. But I had to switch gears. Designing products, chasing suppliers, testing samples ands building the Shopify site. There was always something to do.

This is the part no one tells you about. It’s not glamorous. It’s slow and it’s lonely. You’re building while everyone else is unwinding or asleep. You make more mistakes when you're tired. Sometimes you push too far and pay for it the next day.

What kept me consistent was having a simple system. I bought a black notebook and mapped out what I wanted to achieve each month. I’d break that into weekly chunks and before each work session, I’d write down exactly what needed to get done. I also set my desktop background to black. Put the phone away. No open tabs on my computer. Just focus.

I treated that one hour like it mattered, because it did. It was time I could have spent with my wife or recharging, so it had to count. That mindset kept me sharp. You can’t afford to waste time when you’re already stretched thin.

Why sharing your goals helps you commit

The moment I started telling people I was working on a business, everything changed. It made it real and it helped me stay accountable.

At first, I kept things close to my chest. I didn’t want to overpromise and fail. But I quickly realized that saying it out loud gave me momentum. It created small external deadlines. Since I work in marketing, people expected me to get it right. That pressure sometimes felt uncomfortable, but it was also unexpectedly helpful. Every time someone showed interest or checked in on my progress, it reminded me that people actually cared. That small bit of external accountability turned into fuel. I started to use the pressure instead of avoiding it.

Even casual conversations helped. When someone at a BBQ asked how it was going, I felt a small jolt of pressure to have something new to say. That was motivating.

What I didn’t expect was how many people around me were secretly working on their own projects. One of my closest mates had been building a business too. Neither of us had said a word. Once we did, we agreed to check in every two weeks. Talking about the process, the wins and the mistakes helped more than I ever expected. We kept each other moving closer to our goals.

Beyond that, we complemented each other’s skill sets. He was sharp in product development and service design. His mindset was simple: stop trying to perfect it, get it out there and let customers tell you what’s working—and what’s not. That approach cut through my overthinking and helped me move faster.

Having someone outside the day-to-day gave me perspective. When you’re living and breathing it, you get stuck in the weeds. You fixate on a bad product sample or excessive costs and lose sight of the bigger picture. Those check-ins helped reset my thinking and reminded me why I started in the first place.

Doing it yourself teaches you what really matters

I didn’t have a big budget. I didn’t have a team or an agency on retainer. When it came to creating product photos, I used whatever camera equipment I could get my hands on and I automated what I could. I took the first product photos with my mate in my shed. Paid friends with beer and wine.

Coming from a corporate background, I’d spent years with access to budgets and specialists. Now it was just me figuring it out, and that was actually a gift.

Doing everything myself forced me to learn. Sure, it slowed me down, but it also helped me understand what really mattered. I couldn’t throw money at problems.

I had to solve them the scrappy way. And honestly, I think that made the brand better.

You know it’s working when strangers start buying

I didn’t go out and order a thousand weightlifting belts on day one. I tested the idea first. I ran digital ads to a basic site, tracked the clicks and studied the cost per visitor. I watched how people moved through the website.

That helped me answer one big question: would anyone actually buy the products?

Once I felt like there was a signal, I took the plunge and placed my first round of products with the manufacturer.

When the big boxes arrived at the house, it hit me— this was real. My wife and I unpacked everything and stacked the gear onto shelves, sorted products into storage boxes and labelled everything for shipping.

I couldn’t help but worry, what am I going to do if I don’t sell this?

I needed to level-up the product pages, so I organized a video shoot in the back of my mate’s workshop and shot the content we’d use for launch. Then I built the website, set up all the product pages and edited the first series of videos for the campaign.

Finally, I launched a sale—30 percent off everything. The idea wasn’t to make money, but to validate the idea. I even walked into local gyms with samples in my gym bag.

The first two days—nothing. Not a single sale.

I started to doubt everything. Those two days felt like failure. Like all that work wasn’t worth it. But now I know that silence is normal. When you have no audience and no brand, digital ads take time. The algorithm needs data. That was a big lesson. Early testing isn’t about quick wins, it’s about finding signals.

My advice if you find yourself in this spot? Don’t quit before things start to move.

Day three rolled around. Five orders in one day. After that, things started to move. We did over 35 orders in that first month. The moment strangers started buying, not just friends, I knew I had something worth building. It made all the hard work worth it. It was a relief.Here’s the test: if five total strangers bought your product, would that be enough to prove it’s worth pushing?

Build slow, build strong

My focus now is doing exactly what got me here. Showing up each night and doing the work, one hour at a time. I’m not trying to blow up overnight. It might not make me rich, but I’m building something that lasts. That means a brand I believe in, products I’d use myself and a way of working I can sustain without sacrificing family life.

Instead, I’m focused on building toward big moves, the strategic stuff that actually shifts things over time. Things like building a sustainable, always-on paid media campaign, expanding the product range with essential gear and securing long-term partnerships That’s how I define success now. Not by this week’s sales, but by hitting the milestones that get me closer to the bigger goal.

If you dedicated one hour a day for a year, what could you build?