Hustle paradigm, hot finds, and ‘Shmoney’

If I had a nickel for every time I thought “This entrepreneurial stuff is exactly what I thought it would be!” … I’d have zero nickels.

I knew it would be hard work. That’s the extent of what I knew.

I thought it would be pretty easy to manage my time and work for myself— not so much.

I didn’t become an entrepreneur so that I could work endless hours into the night, create continuous streams of content to always stay top of mind, ignore my child so I can finish just one more thing, or crash on the couch with a glass of wine— only to wake up and do it all again the next day.

It’s unsustainable. It’s unhealthy. It’s nothing anyone wants to do.

I’m guessing you didn’t become an entrepreneur to do any of that either.

It’s supposed to be about setting your own hours, spending more time with your children, taking breaks to go to the beach, or watching your favorite shows whenever you want. It’s about posting stuff on Instagram that’s actually true and enjoyable— not staging your life to make it seem like everything is perfect, or pretending that you didn’t just spend 45 minutes crafting that scene and another 35 minutes creating the perfect caption.

But for some reason, this is becoming the status quo. Like we’re just supposed to accept this hustle paradigm and filter culture, and pretend like we know how to manage our time and get all the things done — Every. Single. Day.

That’s no way to do life — or business.

I used to have a one-question survey for customers when they signed up for a free offer on my site, “What’s the biggest thing that brought you here today?”

I got the same answers 90% of the time:

Less stress.

An automated business.

More time.

They all want the same thing. Automated systems and more time.

Easy enough right? But they couldn’t figure out why those things are so hard.

On the surface, it seems so simple. But if it is, why is there such a huge industry for managing time? You have the same number of hours in each day, and all you have to do is tell yourself what you’re going to do with them.

But contrary to that, what I hear all the time is that there aren’t enough hours in the day — and we don’t even know how to manage the hours that we do have.

Why is it so hard to write a list and actually get it done by the end of the day? Why is it so hard to create an action plan and complete the steps until your project is done?

What’s the problem?