161. Is Hustle Culture Bullshit or a Cheat Code for Success?

Go hard. Right now, you're 25. Get the coaches, get the experiences, bet the farm. Don't waste time on being in the top, not being in the top 5%. Cut everything that isn't in the top 5%. You are better than that. Enjoy yourself. Party hard. You're in your 20s. Grow your business. Try stuff. It won't be remembered when you're 50, 60 years old anyway. Build relationships. Focus on meaningful connections, not low value, meaningless travel. Explore, have fun. And I sit back reading that, I'm like, wow. Like that kind of puts things in perspective sometimes when you're so far caught in the weeds and all I can think about is like the stress of what's going on on this week and what's going to happen on Tuesday, next week. But it's like no one cares. Welcome back to another episode of the Ben and Bergs podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of Collective Shift, alongside Ms. Bergs, your favorite MBA and CEO of Collective Shift. Join us as we bring you world class crypto research and strategies to help you dominate this crypto bull market as well as behind the scenes view of us scaling a fully remote subscription research business here in Australia. If you like the podcast, we'd love for you to follow us if you're on Spotify or Apple podcasts or leave us a subscribe if you're on YouTube. It's how we grow the podcast each and every week with no affiliates, no commissions, no links, no bullshit. Completely independent analysis coming to you. And today we've got a great episode around hustle culture and is it the cheat code to success or is it utter crap? And this is completely off the cuff, completely riffing this burgs and I just jumped on that call this morning and somehow we started talking about this. We're like, stop talking, let's run it up. Hit the hit the record button. Because there's 700 of you legends now listening to this podcast and I think a lot of you probably resonate with Bergs or me or both of us in a sense. You're driving, you're trying to build something for yourself. Maybe you got a side hustle, you're building a business, you're grinding your crypto portfolio, whatever it might be. And I think all of us, maybe I can't speak for everyone, but I feel as though I definitely have fallen in this hustle culture, you know, personal growth at all costs, you know, life. And I still feel as though I have a decent part of me in that world. But I used to be 100% in that world and now I've fallen out of that. Looking back and seeing other people talk about it online, it's kind of. I don't know what the word is. Describe it. Burgs. But I'm like, man, I'm glad I'm not there anymore. You know what I mean? Like, that's just such a. Yeah, it's.

Pervasive and it's, it's shown to be like, you know, a way out. And I think we can speak for our listeners because I went on Spotify, clicked on Better Bergs, and next to it was like, people also listened to. And it was like pretty much all the books on my bookshelf, like all the business books, the self help stuff. Harvard Business Review. I think if you're listening to this podcast that you want to achieve more in your life and you want progress. And yeah, seeing it all over social media, just seeing like crazy, like the stuff Gary Vee does, or was his name Alex Hormozy?

That guy Mosey. Yeah.

Where he's just like, yeah, he's absolutely jacked. Sleeps two hours a day, does this crazy marketing stuff.

Yeah.

And everyone's like, this is what it takes to succeed.

Yeah.

And it's such an extreme version of success. Like just those two guys are extreme outliers. They're like the 0.01%. But that is what people see. They're good at their game, they're good at marketing. So you see it a lot. And it starts to change your brain and you start to think, this is what's required for me to actually succeed.

And Berks, you hit on a good point to be successful. What does that even mean? What is success to you? Burks.

You know, like, this is like the classic consulting question, what does success look like? Right. So I have to keep redefining my success goals because I've achieved them. What success looks like to me is having time, freedom. It's very simple as that. And optimizing for happiness. If someone is telling me where to be, what to do, how to do things, that's fucked. Right? You can have like a little bit of that. Because I still feel I need to work, I need to contribute, I need to be part of a team that gives me a high sense of worth. But if someone's like, you have to be at this meeting, you have to do this, you have to do that, and I'm hating my life all day long, that is not success for me. For me, it is looking after my family. Making sure my wife has time to study, being able to pick up my kid from school, having enough money that I don't have to worry about it, being able to take time off if I need to. It's more about the way that I live my life rather than a big goal of, I want $10 million. Because, first of all, a lot of people don't even set their goals for success. And if they do, it's an arbitrary run. Like, I'll be happy at $3 million. It's like, great, but what is that going to do for you? Like, what are you actually going to. How are you going to live your life? What is that 3 million. How is your psychology going to change? A big part is actually me just having time to think. Like, I like being able to go to the gym in the middle of the day. So I like working from home, and I like being able to sit in my backyard for half an hour, an hour, and just think about, what am I doing? How are things going? Just really assessing my life, you know, the same, like, you know, the. The. What is it? The unexamined life is not worth living. Like, that is something that really rings true to me. If I'm not journaling, looking at the things I'm doing, slowly getting better over time, not making it this crazy goal where I have to optimize and get 1% better every single day or I'm gonna die. It's just analyzing my life the way I think and getting to a better spot. If I'm able to do that, then I think that is success for me.

I love that. I love that. I think for you, Bugs. Yeah, it's really. What I hear is it's more about time, freedom, doing the things you want to do, enjoying your life, you know, and not being tied to a desk or tied to doing things that you ultimately don't really want to do. And like you said, I mean, we're going to scale up the realities. You're probably gonna have to do shit that you don't want to do. But ultimately, you know, more often than not being able to do the things you choose to do is way better and way easier than doing that you hate. Right?

Yeah, exactly. And for me, it's more. It's also.

One thing I struggle with a lot is battling comfort because I am in a comfortable position. And, like, recently I got a personal trainer, so now I'm held accountable. I need to go to the gym. I need to do the difficult thing. But you can get caught in a trap where you're like, oh, I've achieved most of my goals. I'll just sit, sit back for a while. And that's okay if that's what you want to do. But that's not what I want to do because I've done that and it makes me, makes me soft. I hate your food. I get fat, I get sick. It's not what I want in my life. I want to be, you know, healthy. I want to have energy. I don't want to be tired all the time.

So we had a high performance coach come in and speak to our EO group on retreat a couple of weeks ago. And he works with Olympic athletes and high performance CEO coaches. And he said one of the most scary things for anyone.

In life is being too comfortable. Because once you become comfortable, there is an innate ability, innate thing in your brain where your brain, your brain ultimately wants you to be comfortable. That's where it wants. It doesn't like to experience pain, but with comfort, it breeds just stagnancy. And humans are.

Born to progress and learn and grow and achieve new things. And that's where you can sort of fall into that depression and, you know, sadness in when things really stagnate. And he was talking about this. There's two types of stress in your life. One is de stress, like when you're distressed. It's like, you know, your.

You know, you know, I'm trying to think of an example of distress.

Like, oh, yeah, you'd be like, you know, you're anxious, you can't function, you know. Yeah, you're not sleeping.

Yeah, that's what. And you're in the world, you know, you can't live in the world sort of thing. You just, like, you get, you're getting completely overwhelmed. The other one is eustress. And eustress is actually a healthy, you know, level of stress that's something like going to the gym or doing an ice bath or going for a run or doing things outside of your comfort zone. And what that does is it builds this layer of resilience. Yeah, resilience and cushion around you that you can actually tackle the day better. And you can tackle the de stress of the, of your, you know, your relationships or work or startups. And the more you stress you can build, the more you can actually go and achieve. And I think when I heard that, I'm like, wow. I think that's what's really helped me with, like, whether it be running a half marathon or doing the ice baths or going to the gym or just going hard as, as hard as you can outside of work as early in the day as possible. You then build up that resilience for the, for the rest of the day. You know, burgs, those guys we're mates with, guys are super comfortable. There's no use stress. They build their lives around not having any stress at all. And because that's the, that's the little bubble they like to live in and.

When that little bit of stress comes, it knocks them off, it's all over and they get, they get sick, they get a heart attack, have a stroke, they get gastric ulcers. This is like when companies are at the top of their game. That's where they're the most, they're most vulnerable because they're not hungry. I think about like back to maybe 2015 when we were commissioning a hospital, I was starting my mba.

Little one was born like how hungry I was and how I got after it and that was just insane. And I still have a hunger but I'm more selective in what I do and I'm more willing to say no to things because I know a lot of this, Ben is just knowing what I don't want and being okay with saying no to it and letting that opportunity slip by.

I love that, I love that Self reflection. I did an exercise the other day with a good mate of mine. We sat down, we do this sometimes, we catch up every now and again and we do these little two minute time block questions. So we set a timer and we set really deep questions. Well, deep question, relatively deep questions. One of the questions we answered was if I zoomed out 20,000ft from right now, what would my 85 year old self do? And then tell me right now in life, two minutes, start, go and you'll write down. These are things I write down. Go hard. Right now, you're 25. Get the coaches, get the experiences, bet the farm. Don't waste time on being in the top, not being in the top 5%. Cut everything that isn't in the top 5%. You are better than that. Enjoy yourself. Party hard. You're in your 20s, grow your business, Try stuff. It won't be remembered when you're 50, 60 years old anyway. Build relationships, focus on meaningful connections, not low value meaningless travel. Explore, have fun. And I, and I, and I sit back reading that, I'm like wow. Like that kind of, that kind of puts things in perspective. Sometimes when you're so far caught in the weeds and all I can think about is like the stress of what's going on this week and what's going to happen on Tuesday next week, but it's like, no one cares.

Yeah, we get caught up in the minutiary of what's happening in the moment. How often do you read that?

This was the first time I reflected back since I did it a month ago. And I'm like, wow, you should print.

That out and put it on your bedroom wall so you see it every morning or where you brush your teeth, put on your mirror or something to remind you. This gets back to morning routines, right? So I've struggled to get to the gym in the morning. That's okay. I go like mid morning or after lunch at least. I've got a gym habit now, which is life changing for me. I'm not in as much pain as I was previously from my back and everything. But I think you're right. Like, doing small, difficult things outside of work. Like, I have a cold shower every morning and it sucks. Right. Sometimes I have a hot shower. Big deal. Like, I do what I feel like and. But, you know, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Like, we got this hustle culture where you have to do this all the time and always do it. If you miss it once, you're gonna die. And it's like, no, it's not about that. It's about doing a challenging thing, and there's no outcome to it. It's just that you did the challenging thing and you're building character by doing that. And I remember when I used to train in Krav Maga, everything else in life had the volume turned down because no one's trying to kill me. Like, those guys are, like, coming at you. You're fighting, and you have to defend them and defend against weapons, and everything else in your life just becomes easy because it's not that. And that was a key thing.

Yeah, that's a you stress, man. And I think that was the same for me in ice baths and running. I hate ice baths and I hate running. But, like, doing both of them, I feel as though, like, can, Can. Can make the rest of your day so much easier. And the reason I wrote that list about a month ago, I felt I felt I was getting comfortable. I felt I was just going through the motions. And for me, that's a really scary idea of just going through. Like, I think there's a. And this is one of the things I want to talk about. Like, I think hustle culture is like, that Alex, hormones. You got to sleep two hours a day. And, like, if you're if you're not like, like, if you take more than four minutes off, like you're a piece of, like that, that's, that's, that's pretty rubbish in my opinion because I've done that for a period of time and all it does is burns you out, makes you sad and you're just never good enough and you just don't have a life.

It's unrealistic.

It's unrealistic. But I think there's a midpoint because I think the other side of that is like, when you get too comfortable, you have too many excuses and you're using things in the world as an excuse to not have to do the hard things. And I think there's a middle point. And for me, what I'm trying to optimize for at the moment is like my competitive advantage as a founder is I'm in my 20s, I'm single, I don't have. We were talking about this before, but I'm not married, I don't have kids, I have time to go hard.

And I think that is something that I want to like, I use like, like this period of my life. Like, I think I was where I hear about it previous, I think it was a high performance coach who's talking about chapters in your life. There's different chapters in your life that you can, you can build and work towards different things in different chapters in your life. Like, you know, Bergs and I are in different chapters of our life. My chapter right now is ultimately focusing on my business, growing that, being healthy, being fit, exploring, trying to build meaningful connections with friends. And that's what I'm ultimately optimizing for in this chapter of my life. If I was at Berg's chapter of his life, I think that would be way, way, way, way harder to do what I'm trying to do in terms of growing, you know, a personal brand, growing a business, leading that, you know, you know, doing the hours that I'm doing. Like I'd be fucking divorced in 12 minutes, I reckon. Like.

Yeah, exactly. Right, man. And this is like in that book Die With Zero, where you can have everything you want in your life, but you have to put them in a specific order. Like you're not going to be kite surfing in your 70s. You know, you do that in your 20s and 30s when your knees still work or having a family again. You could probably do it in your 70s, but it's not a good idea because you're not going to be around. You probably want to do that earlier rather than later. So you get to decide what you want to do and when you want to do it. And in your 20s, it's a perfect time to put a lot of time into the things that you like and set yourself up for the rest of your life. Like, I did that as well. Like, I worked really hard, I saved a lot of money, I studied, and I put myself in a position where now I'm comfortable, I'm highly employable, and I've got the things that I need, and that was a worthy sacrifice. And then you get to decide, hey, do you want to keep doing that? Do you want to build? Do you want that crazy life? Do you want something in between? Do you want to relax for a year? It's. You get to choose what you want to do and when you want to do it. And I've just brought up this graph as well. My.

Difference between eustress and distress. So imagine just like an x, y axis. On the vertical axis, you got performance, you got weak to strong, and then you got arousal or levels of stress. On the horizontal axis, low to high. And there's just a bell curve on there. So on the left side, it's basically low performance, low levels of stress. You just calm, you're bored, you're seeing improvement. On the right side, you've got high levels of stress and relatively low levels of performance. You've got fatigue, exhaustion, ill health, burnout, breakdown. But in that middle chunk, right, you got you stress. So your performance is strong, and your level of stress is kind of medium, and you're energized. Your focus and work really feels effortless and coming. Bringing that back to what you just said.

This hustle culture is, they boil it down to, you can outwork your competitors, and that is just not true. It's not work. And it comes back to that pie chart of what I thought would make me productive. It's just hard work. But what actually does, it's like a small chunk of hard work, Time off, sleep, eating healthy, and exercise. It's finding that balance. Because the people that are incredibly out of balance, yes, they can succeed in one aspect of their life, but all the other aspects of their lives are falling apart.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I've recognized it in my life. And whether it's, you know, last week, last month, currently, whatever it might be like, if I feel as though I'm starting to not feel that great, it's usually something in that pie chart is. Is falling down or I'm not giving enough attention, whether that's Relationships, personal time, you know, health, work, like I don't know what those, I think Tony Robbins has those six or eight things that every, every human needs. But I definitely think that that balance or that time given to different things is required to maintain a healthy, optimistic viewpoint on things.

Can we just call out now and say hustle culture is bullshit?

Yeah.

So people that even if you're working full time jobs, you need a side hustle, you need another job, or if you're working in a job, you need to be the top person, you need to be performing a thousand percent every single day. And then even elite athletes, they need to perform at 100 every day, but they don't, they can't. They're human. Like, they need rest days, they need slower days, they get sick. You know, it's, it's like it just does not exist. And I think that people are putting this kind of view out on social media, but they're not putting out the other side where they're overwhelmed, they haven't slept, they're tired, they're sick, they're crying, they're having anxiety attack, they're yelling at people, their relationships falling apart, they haven't seen their children for like four weeks or they're constantly traveling, they don't even know what they're saying. A talk that they did was really, really shit and they haven't posted it. That's like, you know, the counterfactual of what's actually happening in those people's lives.

And in a business. Burgers. You and I spoke speak about this a lot. It's like the capacity of, let's say, me as example. It's like, like from 0 to 10, right? You can work at 10 as much as you, you want, right? Six, seven days a week, Hustle culture, grind, grind, grind. Or as you scale and grow, you can utilize other amazing people in your team to then leverage your 10 to 20, 30, 40, 50 times output by working closer and harder strategically with key people in your team to help them achieve the goals you want to do. So you can work as much as you fucking want. And this is that smarter, not harder thing. Like you can work really, really hard. But ultimately if you're working on the wrong things or you're not scaling your time or leveraging your, your time through scale operation, systems, growth, whatever that might be, then you're ultimately only going to be able to get a 10 where you can scale through other people and systems to get that 20, 30, 50x return.

Yeah, and this is like what Rockefeller said he Goes, instead of me working 100%, I'd rather have a hundred people working 1% for me. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, so it's absolutely right. And you have to figure out what you're optimizing for in your life and what you're willing to sacrifice. And we've got this thing you've written down here. What's the point? Like, what's the point in all this? What is the end outcome? And there's this. There's this one. Like, I used to listen to this when I was a kid. Listen to Nas, like, one of the rappers. And one of his verses from Nas is like, what's it all worth? Can't take it with you under this earth Rich men died and tried but none of it worked they just rob your grave I'd rather be alive and paid before my number's called History's made Some fall but I rise thug or die Making choices that determine my future under the sky and then the Verts just goes nuclear from there. Yeah, but this is it. It's like you attract massive wealth. Great. What are you going to do with it? You probably can't spend it all. And he's talking about robbing your grave. He's talking about the Egyptians where they were buried with all their shit and people just break in and steal it. But you get to determine your choices about how you spend your life while you are still alive and in good health. And should it be sacrificing your life for something that may not even be important when you do your look back when you're 85.

This is. This ring is so true to me. Like, this is something that I fundamentally disagree with. You know, Alex Hormozy did a video around Christmas talking about, like, if you don't, like, or you're busy or something, just tell your family, like, you're not going home for Christmas.

It's just like, what the.

Like, it was a whole video on, like, why you shouldn't.

I saw that.

Yeah. It was like, bro, like, for me, what's the point? Like, if I'm working so much that I can't see my family over Christmas, or I can't meet my friends, or I can't go the footy, or, you know, I'm going to London on Saturday and I'm going to go to a soccer game, like, if I can't do that, then what's the fucking point of all of this? Like, If I'm working 60, 70 hours a week for 11 months of the year, what's the point if I can't do the things I want to do? Like, what's the actual point? And if you're giving up time with your family or your friends or like, you know that that time's limited. Like my. One of my. As you know, bo's, like, my goal is to try and buy my mom out of home pretty soon. Like, that would just make things so much. That would give me so much fulfillment and joy and happiness to be able to do that. And they're like, that's the reason I'm doing what I'm doing to help my friends and family and people in our team and people that we work with. Like, that's the point. But these hustle culture type folks that just grind and grind and grind and just like, give up and give up all areas of their life. It's just like, what for?

That's really sad to me. Like, not seeing your family at Christmas. Like, what could be more important than that? Like building, getting extra few clients, or working a bit more in your business. Why. Why are you doing this? Why are you sacrificing? What is the end goal here? Yeah, and I think that's. And again, like, those people are being probably on message. Like, even Arnold Schwarzenegger and Pumping Iron, he said, oh, my father was sick and he died, but I didn't go back to see him because I had a competition. And everyone's like, oh, what a hard bastard. But then years on, he's like, no, that was just. That was just for the show. Like, of course I'm going back if my dad's dying, like, I'm gonna see him. Right.

It's just. Is it just for engagement farming?

Yeah, that's exactly right. I think that they have to have. Whether they do it or not doesn't matter too much. It's the message that they're putting out there and what people think they need to do and they're being influenced by these people. But really, like, we're not put on this earth.

To make money, to build businesses, to keep building them. We're put on this earth to, you know, enjoy life and determine what you want out of life and how you want to live your life. And if building a business is a vehicle to do that, great. But you don't always have to progress and sacrifice and put more time into it. You can choose a different path where you can create your lifestyle through your business or the work that you do.

And I think that's. That's something you and I worked really hard on. Thinking about is like, how can we build a business that allows us to achieve the lifestyle that we want to live? Yeah. For me, in my, my future state, I imagine me being able to travel and creating content and working with our platinum members and doing research and doing interviews and speaking on stage. And that's what I want to do. That sounds amazing. But on the flip side, you can see how a lot of businesses unfortunately get into a position where they're super tight in their business. They can't take a day off. It's completely on them. Like, if they have a day off, it's all goes to shit. Like, this is it.

And that's not success. That is having a noose around your neck. And here in the ocean you're drowning. Like, you've got to anchor around your neck. Like, that doesn't sound like success to me. That doesn't sound like freedom or independence. That sounds like sacrifice, sadness, sorrow, misery. Like that sounds terrible. Like, why are they actually doing that? It just doesn't make sense to me.

Not me now. So I think the answer's question, Bergs, is hustle culture or cheat code to be successful? I think it's. But I think you do need a lot of hustle to become successful. But again, your successful definition is different for different people. Like, what does that even mean success to you? Might be working 9 to 5 so you can go and like, you know, build your side hustle or, you know, play footy on the weekend. Like, amazing. If that's, if that's it. Like, your definition of success is different for different people. So I think it's hard to put everyone in the same bucket.

Yeah. And I also think, like, you need to think about the things that you're doing and is it fun? Does it give you energy? Are you working towards something? Does it give you hope, progress? Or is it like being in prison every single day? I'm not being able to see my family at Christmas would feel like prison. And if you ask me, Bergs, how much money would I have to give you to spend a year in prison? There's no amount. It could be a quadrillion dollars and I would not do it. Like, I would not spend any time in prison and lose that life. So you really need to reflect on what you're doing. And have you been sold a lie?

Good thoughts, man. Good thoughts, folks. We hope you enjoyed that one. A little bit of a different, different style today was a little bit off the cuff. Hope you enjoyed it. Just very raw thoughts that Bergs and I wanted to throw out the world. So if you like this episode, we'd love for you to share it with a friend. If you have a hustle culture bro or gal that should hear this, feel free to flick it their way. Or mosey if you're out there and come on the pod, mate. Happy to discuss this in further detail.

No, thanks guys for listening and we'll see you on the next episode.

Thanks. Jamie's.