Episode #16 - Is Hustle Culture Real?
As a business owner, you are both the operator and the vehicle — and understanding the difference is everything. Dale breaks down what it actually means to be responsible for every function of your business in the early stages, why outsourcing too early fails, and how to build real systems that free your time.
Hello and welcome to the Sequoia Project podcast. Episode 16. And today we're going to be chatting a little bit about what everyone has probably heard about plenty of times if they've been in business for any period of time, and that is this level of hustle culture.
Dale: Hustle culture is basically the same description — it's just, I would, the way that I would describe it is a bunch of people saying that working your ass off is the way to get Lamborghinis. And in a roundabout way, they're right. But what they're not talking about in hustle culture is that there are so many variables outside of hard work that actually move the needle.
Coby: Hustle culture, God, I think it's like something that's so common now. It's pretty much like, it's always like working yourself into the ground at some point, but it's idolizing that working your ass off lifestyle, like with that wake up, that grind until you go to bed. There's so many things that you see that's like my five to nine after my nine to five and they're always hustling. And then also anyone who does that sort of stuff they're always showing their Lamborghinis and they're living it up in Dubai and they're in penthouses.
Dale: Here's what I think: if you just do the few steps that we've outlined in the previous podcast, like you can go from, have an idea to I can make money within a week. Like you can just literally go, take what we've talked about, put it into practice and see if you can make some money doing it. That proves the point that you don't even have to be good at business to be in business because everyone who starts a business has never been in business before.
Dale: Here's what I want to say on this. Hustle culture has merit, but it doesn't have merit when it's just work. Hustle culture without strategy is useless. With the right variables in place, hustle culture works. You have to work hard to learn a ton of shit in a short time frame.
Coby: Everyone's going to be wired different. Someone might be doing their best work in the morning. Someone might be doing their best work at night. Someone might do their best work after lunchtime. Everyone needs to acknowledge that that's how their brains work and everything's not just going to work on this wake up at 6am grind. Just stop trying to just do what you see online.