MBA2700 The Truth About Hustle: How Much Work It Really Takes To Be Successful

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I'm your host Omar Zenholm, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday to help you start, grow and scale your business real quick. If these episodes help you in any way, hit the Follow button on this podcast app. It helps us to keep bringing you practical business insights three times a week for free. Thanks. Today I want to share with you the realistic truth behind this topic of hustle and hard work. And I like to use a metaphor when it comes to this topic, and it's the metaphor of climbing a mountain. Because how much you work really depends on a lot of factors, depends on what you're working on. And these things change dramatically as you move up from the bottom of the mountain, the base camp, to the peak. Don't worry, all this is going to make a ton of sense in a moment. But I want to start at the bottom, the base of the mountain, the beginning of your journey as a business builder. At the bottom of the mountain, at the beginning of your journey in entrepreneurship, in building your business, it's all about movement. It's about just getting started, right? Right. Working as hard as you can on as many things as you can so your business can get some traction. At this stage, you're not making any money. You have no product clarity. You have no customers you're not sustainable, meaning your business is not funding itself, nor is it funding your life. So you really need to spend a lot of time on figuring out what will work. I'm a firm believer that in this stage you must work hard, you must work long hours. And when I was there, I was doing 10 to 12 hours a day, six times seven days a week. I mean, I say six to seven. I really had a half day a week because I was so frustrated with the fact that I still haven't really had a tangible business on my hands that was working. And let's be honest, I had nothing but time because I didn't have much to lose. I didn't build anything yet. So think of this stage as trial and error. On like hyper max speed. You want to test as many things as possible, you want to work on many things as possible so that you can get to a result as fast as possible. If you slow walk this initial stage, it's really going to be so time consuming. It's going to take you so long to get product market fit to understand your customers that most people just give up because they don't get any results anytime soon. You want to get out of the stage as fast as possible. And this is why I'm saying you must experiment and do as much work as possible. That means talking to your customers, that means pitching your ideas to other people, getting feedback, building, selling, refining all that. This is the one stage in your business where volume or effort really matters. This is where you really need to start kicking up dust and really just focusing on working on your business. Y Combinator, which is the most popular and well known incubator for startups, has a rule. They say spend time on two things. They're talking to their actual startups, the founders that are working, and in the incubator they say spend time on two things, your business and your health. And you have to drop everything else. That's the mindset that they have and that's what they expect because they want a return on their investment, but they also want to see them be as successful as fast as possible. So just laser focus on working on their business. And don't forget, I firmly believe in those stages. You should be spending some of those hours and meeting people, sharing what you do, spreading your reputation, spreading the word about your business, your concept, your products, the relationships you build here in this stage, they're going to pay off big time in the long run. The relationships I built when I was at this stage changed the whole trajectory of my whole Business, my whole career. Those relationships became friendships. They became lifelong meaningful people in my life. So you really need to invest in relationships now. You may not see the ROI right now. You feel like, oh, that's a waste of time, going to meetups and things like that. No, it's not a waste of time because people open up doors for you. They give you introductions, they give you ideas, they give you references, links to things you should check out to help your business, whatever it might be. And it's very hard to build something significant in a vacuum. The next stage is like mid mountain. Right now you've got footing. You're not at the peak, but you're climbing with some momentum. The business makes enough to cover itself, fund itself, and fund your lifestyle. And at this stage, it's not about doing everything you possibly can to see what works. You, you have some information now about what's working, right. It's about doing the right things at this point. Now, the reason why I like the metaphor of the mountain is as you go higher and higher, as you ascend the mountain, the stakes get higher and higher. Meaning the decisions you make and what you work on matter more because the drop is quite dramatic, right? So a misstep can cost you a lot. So in the beginning when you're at the base, there's nothing really to lose. You're not going to break your leg walking up a valley. You're going to not risk much by trying a lot of things. But once you get to the stage, you're now at the point where you have enough information to know what works, what doesn't. And now you know what to double down on and really invest your time and effort on. For example, if a particular marketing channel brings in sales, you want to pour fuel on that, put money, time, effort, manpower on that so that you can reap the benefits of that as long as possible. If your product is selling, improve it, support it, make it an incredible experience for your customers. Okay?

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If your business is starting to grow and you're starting to recruit and you're starting to do things over and over in the same processes, document these processes, your standard operating procedures and start building some equity, start building some value to the business itself. This is also when you begin recruiting and start scaling your business. You need other people, other minds, other people's time to carry you up that mountain, to carry your gear, to direct you, other experts in this types of altitude, this game of business. If you want to be successful, you need to learn to find fantastic people to work with so that they can do the best work possible for your business. Remember when I say for your business, you're building an entity here. This is not just you working and making money. That's a job. A business is, you're building an asset and you are building the tools and the resources around that asset so that it can grow. And, and part of that is hiring people. Hiring people to do an incredible job in a certain area in your business, whether it's marketing a sales or customer service or product or whatever it might be so that you can become even better beyond yourself. You only have a limited amount of skills, effort, time, energy. You need to multiply that kind of force with other people joining your team. Now the reality is your hours are still quite heavy in this moment, but they're higher impact. What you work on actually makes a bigger impact. Every decision now matters, like I mentioned and for the first time in this journey, you actually need time to recover because what you'll find is most of your energy spent up here, cognitive energy, making decisions all day, all night. So you're going to need some time to recover from that fatigue. And I say at least one day off or a weekend will help you recharge. So keep that in mind and you want to do this before you need it so you don't burn out. I found that a lot of founders burn out in this point because they don't adjust right. They keep working like they're still in stage one. They keep burning the midnight oil, but they're not in that stage anymore. They have to do different things in each stage. In stage two, you have to shift from do everything to do what moves the needle, do the things that actually will impact the business. Because now you have information and know what is working. Because something's working now, you're making money. So let's not just do everything like we were doing before. All right, Stage three, we're approaching the summit and this is where you're making, you know, about a million dollars in revenue a year. And a hustle takes a whole new meaning. Okay? This idea of hard work has a different definition. At this level, more hours don't equal more results. In fact, grinding just to grind can be detrimental. Now don't get me wrong, there's going to be seasons, there's going to be moments in your business, there's going to be launches, there's going to be certain times where, yes, you're going to have to put in long hours, you're going to have to work and you're going to have to see something kind of hit the finish line. But the vast majority of your time should not be grinding until you can't breathe, until you can't keep your eyes open. Why? Because your decisions here are more valuable than your hours. It's all about leverage. Remember now we're at the top of the mountain. If we have a misstep, you know, think about all these big companies like Samsung and the phone blows up in people's pocket. A misstep like that can damage the business tremendously, almost to the point of non recovery. So the higher you get up the mountain, the more critical your moves and decisions are. So you want to make sure that you are not totally burnt out, not in tip top shape, too tired to make the right decisions. All that stuff matters. Now the reason why more hours doesn't work here is because again we talked about energy levels. We talked about making sure that you're sharp. And in order for you to do the things you need to do, you need to be sharp. You need to be sharp to be able to hire top tier experts to build strong leadership and relationships in your world with your customers, with your vendors, with other entrepreneurs and partners, right? You're protecting and multiplying your profits and you need to know how to invest these profits properly. This is all cognitive energy that's required. Okay? So your brain can't work as hard and as long as your body. That's just a fact. If you had to. You can do 10, 12 hours of physical labor. People have done it throughout history, okay? But you just can't do mental labor for that long and be effective. There'll be a point of diminishing returns where you're actually making mistakes and you're hurting your business. As I'm saying these words, in all transparency, this is a reminder to myself before anybody else. I had to learn this the hard way. And I have to continue to relearn this and remind myself of this every day because it's easy to fall into bad habits or to old habits. I shouldn't call them bad habits, but they're old habits because they served us in the past at different stages of the business. The honest truth is that this stage is challenging because your job is to make the business more valuable. You have to see your business as an asset. How do I improve the value of my business? How do I make it more valuable to the marketplace, to a potential buyer, to my employees, to my customers? How do I increase the value of my business? This is a different skill set. This is not you grinding out and working hard and on every sales call. This means being strategic, thinking about how to improve the margins, how to build systems, and how to ensure that the business can thrive without you having to pull every lever and be involved. Again, reminder to myself before anybody else. This is something that I constantly have to stop myself from jumping in, trying to solve problems and do things, and ask myself, how can I build a system so my business can do this without me? And the honest truth is, sometimes you don't have a clear answer when you ask that question. Sometimes you have to spend some time figuring out what's the best course of action, that you can pull that off in the next coming months and not immediately. This is also the time you should be investing in yourself. Yes, the best founders at this stage, they invest in their team, in growing the team and growing the business and growing the profits and making sure leadership is on point, all that kind of stuff. But that doesn't happen until you improve yourself and you invest in yourself, improve your leadership skills, your health, your vision of the company. And that requires you to have space and time and. And less pressure. We often put a lot of pressure on ourselves with the amount of hours we put into our work. So in this stage, this is why I advise you should start be thinking about taking a few days off a week, like two to three days off a week. Now, I know as entrepreneurs, we're never really fully off. We're thinking about Our business constantly. But step away from the screens in the computer. If you can have a few days off doing something else and let the subconscious mind solve the problems to think about these things that you're thinking about. You want to spend some time investing in your own skills in those time in that time off, right. And not just in your business, because the rest that you're going to have in those days, the recovery isn't an indulgence here, it's necessary so that you can have clarity, so you can have a clear mind, so you can have high level decision making, so that you're a well oil machine that's ready for battle, ready for the next challenge in your business. You need to be in tip top shape. So where did we land? What's the truth about hard work and hustle? Well, it all depends on where you are on the mountain of your journey in business, right? Are you at the base? And it's all about just working as hard as you can, experimenting, getting as much work done, kicking up dust, relentless activity. Is it midway where it's all about focus and effort and smart choices and having a good balance? Is it at the summit? When it's about the vision, it's about the leverage that you can add to your business, is about being valuable as a business and valuable to your business as the leader. I'm telling you from experience, I've been in the space for over 20 years, this whole business improvement, professional development space. Don't get fooled by people who tell you there's only one way to hustle, that you have to work hard no matter what you are doing. Hustle evolves as your business evolves. And remember, you're not hustling for the sake of hustling or working for the sake of work. We entrepreneurs often do what's called wearing busy as a badge, badge of honor. And I'm guilty of it as well. But I'm trying to always remind myself through these lessons to make sure that we're all mindful of the fact that, hey, we shouldn't just be working just so we could feel valuable, we should be working in a valuable way. That's a tangible activity, activity that actually is contributing to the value of our business. Right? We can actually objectively show what, where the work we're doing is adding value to the business. How is it impacting others, how is it impacting our customers? All that stuff. That's the real truth. And no matter where you are in your business, whatever stage you are, you know, right now, enjoy that stage. Live that stage because things will change and you'll have to move on to the next stage. And you're going to miss some parts of that stage, right? A lot of times I miss that beginning stage where you can make mistakes and you can experiment and try things and put yourself out there and okay, it didn't work. Oh, that did hit. That's great. You know, you're a lot more free and less worried about making a mistake. So enjoy that every stage of the way, because every stage has its positives, has its, you know, upsides, has its joy. So embrace it. Now, before I go, I want to leave you with this business is, in my opinion, the best personal development program out there because it forces you to become something new every day, to get a little bit better, a little bit more nuanced. You have to evolve in order for your business to evolve, to grow, to get beyond each stage. And this makes you be very self aware, not only of your weaknesses, but also your strengths and how you can use those strengths to improve your business and the people around you. But it also is a way for you to constantly be challenged and question what you believe is true about yourself, about success, about a lot of things. So this is one of the best journeys you ever could be on. It's a gift in itself. Like, even if you're, you know, you don't make it big and you're not a billionaire or whatever, the journey itself is a reward. So enjoy the journey. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to. To this podcast, hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now. Whether it's Apple or Spotify or ever you listen to podcasts by hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.