The opposite of hustle culture

You know zoodles?

Zucchini noodles? Used to love making them. Last week I had an unfortunate fight with my spiralizer. The spiralizer won.

As the urgent care doc was putting my fingertip back together, she said, "It's going to be difficult, but you need to make a plan to keep this clean and dry for a week or you'll be fighting to get better for much longer."

Have you made a plan?

Most of us haven't. Most of us are grinding away, hoping our business won't cut us to pieces as we reach for some (undefined) metric of success. I had to make a plan to get my finger back to 100% without risking infection. In my business, 2025 is the year to make a plan and I'm inviting you to join me.

The opposite of hustle isn't rest; its strategy.

Hear me out. I know we're only 2 months into the year but these two months have been hands down better than the first 2 months of last year. Income up, hustle mentality down. But why?

You and I are in a culture that idolizes the hustle and gives a lil' side eye to strategy. Without strategy, the daily grind of running our business can tear us apart. The spiralizer always wins.

The solution? It isn't to rest more. It's to make a plan (which may even include rest but the mechanism for less hustle is scheduling the time to make the plan). To take off our operator hat, put on our owner hat, and design a business that works for us and not the other way around.

Here are 3 places I'm noticing hustle and 3 ways to push back and win.

1. Schedule a CEO Day. If you are an owner/operator, then you know how easy it is to live full-time with that operator hat on your head. The demands of running a business are relentless unless we put on our owner hat and make a different plan. Put a CEO Day on your calendar. That's what we do with important / not urgent tasks! (Read more about the Eisenhower Matrix here.) If you need to make an investment in order to keep your appointment with yourself, you can join me on March 27th for a structured event - book your seat at Q1 CEO Day here.
2. Write down your owner's intent. Are you hustling for the sake of the game and not because it is in accordance with why you started the business in the first place? (I most certainly was in year 2 of my business.) Author Casey Graham in his No B.S. Small Business Book defines an owner's intent as a clear, personal declaration of what you want from your business. It's more than financial goals; it's deeper than that. Why do YOU run the business YOU have? This isn't something you'd put on a billboard. This is internal language, only shared with a few. Why do you do what you do? (I'm planning to share mine at the March CEO Day.)
3. Outsource and simplify the tasks that drain your time and/or energy. Fifty percent of small businesses fail within the first 5 years. I'm entering year 4 and I'm only picking up speed. I attribute this to actively identifying my areas of genius and planning ways to optimize my time in those areas while simplifying & outsourcing the tasks that drain me most. I ran a poll in my Instagram Stories a while back asking business owners what drained them the most in their business. Would you be surprised if I said marketing / social media? We all want to create more than we consume. But often we find ourselves scrolling for more inspiration. I believe booking a brand photography session is the solution because every time you open your email marketing platform, Meta business, or Canva, you have a folder of images at your fingertips and ready to go. Y'all, I wouldn't still be doing this if I didn't truly believe it makes our businesses better.