Spoken excerpt from a YouTube video by Matthew Kelly critiquing the "founder hustle" myth. The speaker reflects that founders (including himself) often glorify long hours and equate hardship with effort, then reframes success as creating leverage via people and money — allowing them to work less personally while achieving more important outcomes.
And, like, it's kind of obvious, but I think a lot of founders, and definitely me included, like, you glorify the trenches of, oh, I'm working 18 hours a day, and you're actually not working 18 hours a day. And, like, almost. I was definitely in that space of, like, oh, this is, like, if it's not hard, if I'm not hating it, I'm not doing enough. But then it's like, you create leverage. Leverage through people and, like, money, basically. So you could argue now I'm doing way more, like, through people, but I'm personally probably working a little less, but working on more important things, I guess.
