MBA2437 Hustle Culture & Why It’s Not So Bad

Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night, not working on my business, but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things, of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with Intuit QuickBooks. QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers, and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts. So doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster. Their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform.

Ready to save on new tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Product perks include Dell rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster. And with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals.

Hey. Oh. Welcome to the $100 powerful business lessons you can count on. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. And in today's episode, we're going to talk about hustle culture and why it's not so bad. In the last few years, hustle culture has really been a negative term. It's the concept of work at all costs. Work, work, work on your business. Don't rest. That's the only way to achieve success with no balance. Terms like toxic resilience have been used to say, hey, working through tough times is not always healthy. But is this all true? Does this actually apply to somebody who's trying to start a business or be an entrepreneur? That's what we're gonna discuss in today's episode. My own experience when it comes to starting a business, going from a nine to five, working for my paycheck and transitioning into a full time entrepreneur, what does it actually take? How much work does it take? Does it require me to really work, work to the bone and sacrifice, or can I do it in a steady fashion? Can I do it in a comfortable way? Is hustle culture really a bad thing? Well, in today's episode I'm going to break it down. I personally don't really think it's all bad. There are some elements we got to be careful of. But generally speaking, you're going to need to work incredibly hard to start a business harder than what people think is normal. That's why most people do not do it, because it seems a little bit crazy, it seems a little bit extreme. But extraordinary results require extraordinary actions. And that's just the truth of it. We're going to get into all the nitty gritty details and talk about how do you do this without burning out? How do you actually work hard and make your dreams a reality without just totally becoming toast? So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. I want to preface this episode by saying something that might sound obvious, but I still need to say it. I am not a medical professional. I am not a doctor. I'm not a mental health expert. I can only share my own experiences. I can only share what worked for me, what didn't work for me. And I can only make my own conclusions based on my own experiences. And I'll share them with you. That's what I offer today. Now remember, everybody's different. Everybody has a different background, upbringing, a different set of tools that they're working with. On a personal level, I recognize that. But I also recognize how hard it actually is to to replace your income in a 9 to 5 job and become a full time entrepreneur. How hard is it? Well, it took me about 13 years to transition from a full time job into entrepreneurship and side hustles for a very long time. It's not easy and it requires an incredible amount of effort. Here's the bottom line. You have to work at your job so you can get a paycheck, but you also have to work on your business. There's not enough hours in the day for you to work on your business full time as well as your job full time if you actually ate and slept and had a normal life. So that means you're going to be working part time on your business and part time efforts get you part time results. That's just the bottom line. You can't expect to put in two, three, four hours in your business a week and compete with people that are doing 40, 50, 60 hours a week. It just doesn't make sense. You can work as smart as you like. At some point you're going to have diminishing returns. At some point you're just not going to compete. You're going to have to work harder, you're going to have to put more time in, you're going to have to sacrifice you're going to have to make a trade off. You're going to have to make a decision. And this is what a lot of people don't understand. And I think this is where hustle culture gets a bad rep. People think that hustle culture is like work your brains out, do not rest, work for work sake. No, that's not what I believe you should do as a person who's an entrepreneur, somebody who's actually trying to grow their business or get to the point where the business can be self fulfilling, it can have a flywheel effect where they're getting business automatically. To get that kind of momentum, it takes a lot of effort in the beginning to push that boulder down the hill. So it has that momentum, but it's not going to happen by itself. It takes an initial push and that push could be six months, a year, two years. It depends on your business and your situation. But the point here is it requires some major effort. There's just no way around this, which means you will work harder than you ever worked before. I can tell you from experience that this is just the absolute truth. This is what I love about entrepreneurship, by the way. It actually tests the limits, okay? It actually realigns your expectations, what you can do and not do. I'm telling you right now because I've experienced this myself. When you're working at a job and you're working hard and you're putting hours. I was a educator at an institution. I was a department manager. I would go into work at 6:00 clock in the morning, okay? And I wouldn't leave until 7:00pm, sometimes 8:00pm, sometimes 12, 13 hour shifts. I was working a lot, okay? I was working hard. It doesn't even come close to how hard I worked in those first few years in my business as a full time entrepreneur. It's a joke if I look at it. I'm being completely honest here. I look back at those 12 hours I was working in the office and yes, I was working. But the amount of mental capacity and amount of work and no play and break and concentrated effort that is required to get your business off the ground is nowhere near of what we believe hard work means in a day job. I'm just going to tell you the facts here. Why? Because you're not ultimately responsible for everything in a day job. You have a job, a job in a business, in a company, in an institution, you are one part of the puzzle. You are not the whole puzzle in you gotta take care of everything. I remember my first few years in business. People Used to ask me, what is it like to be a full time entrepreneur. I used to tell them, hey, do you know how you go to work and you have an office. Yep. And you have a desk. Yeah. And you got a phone. Right. And they give you business cards. Yep. And then they tell you exactly what to do, what phone calls to make and what job you have to do and what your KPIs are and what the rules are and how to succeed in your business. And like. Yep. And then you do that and you fulfill your obligations to the company, they're happy with you, they give you a paycheck, they send the paycheck in your bank. Yep, I got that. Yeah. And then they also carve out your schedule and your time off and they take care of your medical and all that kind of stuff. Yep. And I say, okay. Entrepreneurship is similar to that where you're doing a job, you're working on that, except you have to build everything else around it. You have to find the desk, you have to find the office, you have to find the business cards, you have to figure it out, you have to make the payroll happen. You got to make sure that the KPIs align with your goals as a business owner. You have to set those KPIs, you have to do the work, and that's just one job in the company. You have to do all the jobs in the beginning. So this is a good illustration of how much work is needed when you're starting a business. So I actually don't love this hate on hustle. You have to hustle. You have to work hard, really hard in the beginning of a business because you have to get the thing going once you have it going and you're starting to make money and you're starting to make some progress and you're making some hires and you can offload some work, and now you're seeing a return on investment on those hires. And now you can reinvest in your business. And then soon enough, you can start, you know, having a little bit more ease in your day. And then you get back to the point where you just have one job, which is to manage your team. But in the beginning, that's not reality. And anybody who tells you that you don't have to work hard and you don't have to exert yourself in order to start a business and be successful is lying to you. Okay. They're just setting you up for failure. It'd be easy just for me to tell you, oh, this is easy. And business is easy. And starting is easy, and you don't have to work hard. Everything will be great. And I can, you know, paint this beautiful picture, but that's just not the truth. I'm not doing you a service by telling you what's not the reality. I want to set you up for success so you know what to expect, so you can go in full force. Now, the beauty of owning your own business and starting your own thing is that you're doing something that you love. You're contributing to your future. You're making a legacy for yourself. This is actually energizing. It's energy giving. It's kind of like a blessing because your first few years in business are the hardest, but they're also the most exciting. You're so motivated to get out of bed and get working on your business. It's new, it's fresh, it's fun. So, yes, you're working hard, and yes, it's tiring, and yes, you're doing more hours than you've ever done, but it's also rewarding. And in a lot of ways, it sometimes doesn't feel like work. It feels like you're building something. You're creating something. Now, am I saying that burnout doesn't exist and it's not a thing? No, of course not. Burnout is a thing, okay? You have to be aware of your mental health and your stamina. Just like a marathon in a race, you have to pace yourself, but you have to put in the work. You can't stop running. You got to keep running in the marathon. You're going to have to find ways to recharge, relax, even if it's just a few hours so you can go back at it. And the whole point of today's lesson is you have to get yourself in business shape. What does this mean? That means everybody's resilience, everybody's ability to endure hard work is not the same. Some people have very weak resilience muscles, and some people have very strong ones. And it doesn't happen by accident. It happens because they're used to it. Just like somebody who's used to, you know, running, you know, two, three, four miles a day. If they go for a jog, they're not going to be phased. It's not going to feel like anything. It's going to be easy for them. If somebody who's never done any physical exercise starts going for a jog, they're going to be huffing and puffing and feeling like they're going to have a heart attack. They're going to feel physically burnt out. So you're going to have to start ramping yourself up. So even if you're in a job right now, you're going to have to start putting in more time, more effort into your business, ramping yourself up. So one of the things I would recommend and have recommended on the show several times is try to get yourself up to the point where you're doing 20 hours of business work, working on your business while you're in a job. This is a ramp up. So maybe it's five hours and then six and then 10 and then 15 and then 20. What I used to do is I used to do 10 hours on the weekend. Like one day I would just do my business and then two hours every evening. During the weekday I'd have one day off. And that worked for me. I was on a mission. I was trying to build something incredible. I was trying to build something amazing. I wanted to become an entrepreneur. I knew what I was doing. When I say that, I mean I knew what I was going for, I knew what I was shooting for. And that was just my North Star. And I was trying to make it happen. So I was willing to put in that time. I ramped up to that. In the beginning, I was doing maybe like three hours on the weekend and an hour at night. But after about a month or two, I ramped up to that 20 hour mark. And then, you guessed it, I moved it even past that. I was doing like 30 hours a week. At that point I'm like, okay, I need to make a decision. I have to have a trade off here. I'm going to have to quit my job so that I can put in more time into the business. And that's when I transitioned to full time entrepreneurship. Now this is after I had some traction and I was able to earn and make some money with my business. Being an entrepreneur, being a business owner is like being an elite athlete. You have to be elite at working smart, hard, efficiently, and having that strong resilience to keep on going through tough times, through difficult moments in life. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I had to work through being ill, being sick, not feeling well. I wish I could just take a sick day, but I couldn't because my business relied on me. And it was the early days, I just had to just work. Do I regret that? I don't? Because I know that was required. And yes, of course, the business wouldn't have collapsed if I took a day off when I was sick. But it would definitely slow down my progress. And I was trying to get to my finish line being an independent entrepreneur as fast as possible. And that's my experience. That's what I wanted. So what I want to communicate today is, is that if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, if you want to make a full time living on your independent business, it's going to take more work than you can imagine. I'm not saying this to scare you. I'm saying this to excite you. Because that's the reality. That is what you're going to have to do. You're going to pour in as much as you can. Listen, if it wasn't hard, everybody would do it, right? If it wasn't hard, it wouldn't be valuable. And let's talk about what I mean by valuable. Hey, Fidelity. How can I remember to invest every month? With the Fidelity app, you can choose a schedule and set up recurring investments in stocks and ETFs. Oh, that sounds easier than I thought. You got this? Yeah, I do. Now where did I put my keys? You will find them where you left them. Investing involves risk, including risk of loss.

Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC Member nyse, sipc.

Gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet.

Yeah, but we'll be with family.

You're in a good mood. What's your deal?

What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got one line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top.

Tuxed data detour to Metro. Get that more for your money feeling only at Metro by T Mobile. Just bring your number. $30 first month and $25 after with autopay not available. If with Metro or T Mobile in the past 180 days. Entrepreneurs understand how the world works. They understand how the market works. You get paid based on how valuable you are. If you're more valuable to the marketplace, you get paid more. If you're less valuable to the marketplace, you get paid less. That's just how it is. It has nothing to do with who you are personally. It has something to do with your value in the marketplace. So in the beginning, you are new to this business thing. You are not very valuable. You are very weak when it comes to your skills as a business person, as an entrepreneur, as a negotiator, as a salesperson, as a team leader, all that stuff, Right? So as you start ramping up and working hard and learning these things and trying new things and getting the experience you need you become more and more valuable and therefore you can make more and more money. As you make more money, you can reinvest in your business and do a little bit less work, a little bit less work as you make more money, a bit little on and on and on. But in the beginning you don't have a lot of value. And you have to earn your stripes by learning and growing and becoming valuable to the marketplace. Whether that is creating a more valuable product, a more valuable service, a better written book, a better delivered course. Whatever it is. If I look back at the stuff I created 20 years ago, it's cringe worthy. I can't believe that was me who created it. It's horrible. But I had to start somewhere. And that means there's progress. And that doesn't happen by just doing the same level of effort as what you're doing right now. The level effort you're making right now is getting you a certain result, a certain level of result. If you're happy with that result, just continue to do what you're doing. If you want more, you're going to need to work harder. You're going to need to work more smarter, grow, learn, read, improve. That's just how it is. I wish it was easier than that. All right, we have great tools now. We have AI, we have all these great tools on the Internet that make things easier. We. But you have to put the work in, you have to put it all together. You have to make something valuable for your customers and offer it. And that takes effort, that takes hustle. Now to wrap up. I will admit it was very hard, very, very hard. My first few years as an entrepreneur. You're making a lot of effort, you're spinning your wheels and you're not making a lot of progress. It's like two steps forward, one step back, sometimes even two steps back. Okay. And it's easy to get demotivated, it's easy to get burnt out and feel tired and feel emotionally drained. But that's why it's so important to have a vision. That's why it's so important for you to remind yourself why you're doing this. What is this going to get you? What's the end goal look like? Keep that in the front of your brain, the front of your face, even with a vision board or whatever it might be a screensaver so you don't forget. You need to do that. You're the only person that's going to cheer yourself on. No one's going to just randomly give you some motivated speech and push you to keep going and you know, and give you a round of applause. No, you have to push yourself. Be mindful that you know, of course we don't have unlimited willpower. You might need some breaks along the way. But the honest truth is, is that becoming a business owner, it's a journey of sacrifice. It's a journey of hard work. It's a journey of growth. And growth is tiring. Growth is difficult. Growth is uncomfortable. But you can do it. Many, many, many, many, many people I know have done it. And if you want it bad enough, it can happen. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love it, you hear hit subscribe, hit follow on your favorite podcast, Apple Podcast. Spotify. Hit follow right now so you get our next episode automatically. Please go ahead and do that. It's the best way you could support the show. Guys, before I go, I want to leave you with this. I hope I was not too tough on you today. Too much tough love maybe. I don't know. But the point I try to make here on the hundred rmb. My goal is to be honest with you, is to tell you like it is and my own experience because I think a lot of people like to put a lot of window dressing on things and label things and don't really know what they're saying. I don't doubt that there are people that get burnt out and get tired and that's okay. By the way, if you get burnt out and you need a break, take a break, but get back up and keep going. This is why Rocky is my favorite movie. Because the guy gets knocked down over and over and over and over and keeps getting up. And that's why in the story he's a champion. Eventually, like Rocky says himself, it's not about how hard you can hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of. Gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet.

Yeah, but we'll be with family.

You're in a good mood. What's your deal?

What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got one line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top.

Off text and data detour to Metro. Get that more for your money feeling only at Metro by T Mobile. Just bring your number. $30 first month at 25 after with autopay not available. If with Metro or T Mobile in the past 180 days.