The Anti-Hustle Backlash: Did We Swing Too Far?

Welcome back to Proof It’s Possible! In this conversation, Jamie and Dayle discuss the complexities of hustle culture, emphasizing that a certain level of hard work is essential for success, especially in entrepreneurship. They explore the balance between hustle and ease, the cultural expectations surrounding work, and the importance of instilling a strong work ethic in youth. The discussion highlights that success often requires dedication, persistence, and a willingness to put in the effort, regardless of societal pressures for instant gratification. Tune in to discover: 

• Why anti-hustle culture is not helpful
• How hard work and hustle are necessary parts of entrepreneurship
• The myth of the "overnight success" story
• How to inspire hard work and perseverance in youth

What do you think about hustle culture? Share your thoughts with us — we’d love to hear! DM us on Instagram @dayle_sheehan_designs & @jamiedfrancis! See you next time!

This episode is sponsored by our Ultimate Girls Trip! Be sure to go to www.proofitspossible.com for more info.

For More Information:
• Proof It's Possible Website
• The Ultimate Girls Trip Instagram

Dayle:
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• Interior Design

Jamie:
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• Website

Transcript

Jamie (00:30)
Hi guys, welcome back. Today we are chatting about hustle culture. I feel like hustle culture has gotten a pretty bad rap lately. It's kind of like the, you know how anything in extreme, the tables turn and then all of a it's really bad. Like right now, toxic positivity is like everyone's, toxic positivity is so bad. I think that,

Dayle (00:40)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Jamie (00:56)
My stance is that anything in like the furthest extreme of course is bad, but I do think that we shouldn't shit on hustling in general, just because some people take it too far. Like I do think that there's value in hustling, especially if you're a business owner. I think that there's, there is a season where you do have to hustle a bit.

Dayle (01:14)
for sure. Well, this is

the problem. So the way that I kind of look at things like this and where we're in the like hustle cultures toxic hustle cultures bad. think of I walk I'm watching the pendulum swing the other direction where people are like, well, I shouldn't have to work this hard. It should be, you know, it should just come to me and like I should get a million views on my socials and I should this and you know, whatever and it's like

Jamie (01:31)
huh.

Dayle (01:42)
The problem with it is, is being an entrepreneur requires daily work. Like call it hustle, call it hard work, branded however it feels right for you, but it isn't something where you make one social media post in your product or service sales. It is literally day after day after day after day after year after year of hard work, continuous growth.

keeping your brain in the game, making them, doing the advertising, doing the background work, coming up with innovative ideas, sharing your life, like all the stuff that goes into it that, yeah, pivot when you need to pivot.

Jamie (02:20)
Pivoting when you need to pivot. Yeah, and

I just think that if you look at like the world's most successful business people, do you think they didn't hustle at least for a small moment in time? Like, do you think they just sat around and were like, universe, I'm ready for it. Hit me.

Dayle (02:30)
No, bid it.

Yeah, exactly. Like

they did the hard thing. That's the whole reason they have what they have. They've got where they've got and it's because...

Jamie (02:42)
Like if you look at like the Steve Jobs of the world, the Elon Musk's where

they've like created a new technology that didn't exist before them. Do you think that they sat around and just hoped that one day it would all come together? Or do you think that there was like a lot of hustling in a garage, in their basement, figuring out things, trying things, and error and things, you know?

Dayle (03:05)
Making mistakes. Yeah.

Jamie (03:09)
scrapping things, creating new things. Like there is a moment in time where every big successful entrepreneur had to hustle.

Dayle (03:18)
Yeah. And had an obsession almost where there was nothing that was going to stand in the way of their goal or their dream because they were that dialed in on what they wanted. And I find this with myself, like when I'm really excited about like a new business or a new thing, I'm like relentless about like getting it all set up, getting everything in place, building the graphics, making sure we have a logo, you know, like

doing all the background work that I'm like, okay, this is what's required. And my brain goes 100 miles an hour and it is dedicated to that particular new thing that's exciting to me. And then what's the really hard part and where the hustle needs to continue, maybe not as like extreme as in the development phase, but it needs to continue in that I can't tell somebody about Rich Girls Course Club courses once on social media.

Jamie (04:05)
that.

Yeah.

Dayle (04:14)
and then never mention it again and then be like, why didn't they sell? I'm just being a hot toxic hustler now if I have to make another post. That's not how that works. Like, of course, not everybody saw my first post. Not everybody knows what rich girls course club is. Not everybody understands that this is new service that we've had.

Jamie (04:33)
They might even be in a

season of life where it's not applicable in that moment, but six months later, it might be applicable. Like, I mean, I might not be shopping for new Nike running shoes when I walk past the Nike store, but then six months later, when my gym shoes need to be replaced or my tennis sneakers need to be replaced, I still see Nike everywhere. I see them in the mall. I see them on the teenagers. You know, like they they are.

Dayle (04:38)
Yep, exactly.

Jamie (05:02)
available. The whole reality is that just because it's a no in that moment doesn't mean that it's a no forever. And I think that we have this idea and I think everything is just a blend of other things. But we have this idea that there should be ease and flow in our business. There should be ease and flow in our personal life. And yes, in an ideal world, in an idealistic

Dayle (05:10)
Exactly.

Jamie (05:29)
fantasy, everything would just be perfectly balanced and we would all be living in harmony. Our businesses would be perfectly in alignment with our personal life, with our family life, with our relationships and our success and our money and all of that. But I believe that when you are in a growth season or a business season that requires a little more of your energy, a little more of your hustle, you have to give it.

Dayle (05:33)
course.

Jamie (05:51)
because we can't just sit around and be like, universe, I'm ready to receive. Do I believe that saying universe, I'm ready to receive is absolutely part of it because everything needs to be, you know, all fires need or all cylinders need to be firing like your mental health, your trust in the universe or your God or whatever, plus your hustle all need to come together to create what you're creating. But do I think that saying, you know, just leaning on one is enough? No. So just leaning on hustling.

but not believing in yourself isn't gonna be enough. Just leaning on the universe to provide you with what you need, but not actually doing any of the work isn't gonna get you there. I do think that there has to be some form of hustle. And I think in our society right now, we've demonized hustling so bad that we've almost come to a point where like, what do they call that? Like bed rotting? Where you like...

Dayle (06:22)
Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, like the teenager

thing, yeah.

Jamie (06:45)
the

teenager thing, but I feel like people do that in their business too, where you feel like, okay, well, I've put in enough effort. I should just be able to lounge around and wait for it to just, you know, the rocket ship to just take off. And that's not realistic either. And then, you know, you can't be mad when your business failed if you didn't give it a bit of hustle. I don't know. That's just my take on things.

Dayle (06:49)
Is it?

people to flow in and yeah, totally.

Absolutely.

Well, and I also think that I know, and I don't know if it's like a cultural thing or a societal thing or what, but I do think that there's like this idea that everything should come really easy and quick for us. And I don't know if it's like the fact that our phones deliver us information at lightning speed, anything we want to think about, learn about, it's literally at our fingertips. So everything is super easy in the world. And I mean,

I was talking with somebody recently about how, imagine your, imagine the time when you're like, there was no running water in the house and you had to use an outhouse in the backyard and you you lived on a farm. Exactly. And you had to boil water for your bath and all those kinds of things. Like people didn't expect anything to come easy then. That wasn't their normal. And so right now our normal is such ease of everything. I mean, we turn on the tap and the perfect,

Jamie (07:46)
You need to boil water for your bath.

Dayle (08:04)
cold, medium or hot temperature will come out. If we flush a toilet, it flushes and very rarely does anything come. Modern use, exactly, And it's awesome. Exactly. And it's awesome. Like all of these easier things. But like what that tells me, what that says to me is like, we have more time in our day, actually, to

Jamie (08:07)
Yeah.

I mean, you can tell the toilet how much water flow you would like. So that's, you know, we've come to like the extreme of it for sure.

Dayle (08:32)
do the things for our businesses and chase the goals and do, you know, we aren't boiling the water for our bath. So why not use that time and not, not like you said, the concept of bed rot, which like for people that don't know what bed rotting is, it's like a teenager concept that were people concept where you get on a device and you lay in your bed for like 12 hours or like, you know, or late. Yeah. You, you read a book, you eat, you

Jamie (08:53)
Yeah. And you eat all your snacks in your bed and you literally don't leave your bed. Yeah.

Dayle (09:00)
just lays around.

Jamie (09:00)
And it's like, it's almost like a glamorized version. I don't know how glamorous it is, like a socially acceptable way of saying like, I'm a lazy slob. You know?

Dayle (09:04)
Remember?

Yeah, exactly. like,

judge, insert the judge mental tone here because it's there because I don't think anybody that's a successful person is laying around in bed all day or on the couch all day or, like, I love TV. I love, love a good trashy, you know, love is blind or housewives episode. but there are a few, like one episode a week and I break it into three because like, I can't finish it. You know what I mean? Like,

Jamie (09:26)
Good work.

Dayle (09:37)
because I don't have, if I.

Jamie (09:39)
And we're not talking

like, we're not talking like, you you guys watched a movie on a Saturday night, so you were bed rotting and you brought your snacks right to the TV room. We're not talking about that. We're talking like continuous, like eight hour shifts, eight to 12 hour shifts where you've wasted an entire day lounging around in your bed. You would be nothing.

Dayle (09:44)
No.

Hmm.

Yeah, exactly. And then, and then

wonder, well, demonize people that are hustling or the whole hustle culture. And then wonder why you don't have the business side gig thing that you want and why it's not taking off. Because that's the thing is that all good things do come with some work. They do come with some effort. What we put in is what we get out in this life. Like whether that's lots of love,

Jamie (10:13)
Mm-hmm.

Everything

comes with a cost, everything. And then it doesn't necessarily have to be a financial cost. Sometimes it's a time commitment, sometimes it's an energy commitment, sometimes it is a financial commitment, but nothing in this life is free.

Dayle (10:27)
somebody. Yes, everything.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I agree. And I do feel nervous about how normalized it is to think that you're just gonna go to school for something or just going to start the thing and it's gonna skyrocket. that's just not, like as two entrepreneurs, it was so funny to me because both of us have businesses, but when I was,

When I won top 40 under 40, people almost talked to me like I was an overnight success. And I was like, this overnight took 18 years of overnights, lots of years of overnighting to get here. But I guess if you want to look at me as an overnight success, I became well known, much more well known leading up to in my design business and in the things that I was doing and the opportunities that I was getting.

Jamie (11:14)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dayle (11:30)
But even those opportunities I was getting, I sought them out. I went and found them. Because I realized, okay, I've been running this business for a very long time. It's doing great. It's successful. I like it all as well. What's my next step? And it took me like changing some marketing ideas and doing some different things and reaching out to the morning shows and doing design segments with them. But it was like ran by me.

Jamie (11:35)
Mm-hmm.

Dayle (11:58)
The opportunities didn't knock on my door. I went and thought like, how could I get in front of more people? What does that look like for me? You know, so even the growth of my already successful business requires steps and pivoting and thinking differently and making changes and chasing something.

Jamie (12:03)
Totally.

In my business, when the recessions come, people are always like, I want to get into safety. Like that seems like a pretty cushy gig. And they're always really surprised to find out that like they can't just, you know, pop into it and all of sudden get all of these clients. And so, you know, it's always a like a really stark reminder. mean, really, real estate is very much the same where people are like, seems pretty great. I'm just going to pop in here.

Dayle (12:31)
right?

Real estate, yeah, I thought of that too.

Jamie (12:42)
into this industry that I know nothing about and I'm going to become a really successful realtor because I've watched other people do it. Guess what? The most successful realtors, they have advertising they've had to pay for. They have an assistant who is working nine to five. They have they're putting themselves out there. They've got active social media accounts. They're putting ads on the radio. They're, you know.

Dayle (12:42)
Yes.

And this is the stuff

we see once they've got, they've made a little money to spend this kind of money. Like this isn't the years we didn't see that they didn't have.

Jamie (13:10)
Absolutely.

They're not sitting at home or sitting in their office being like, universe, I'm ready for a house to go on the market and to find me. there was a little turn, you know, like everything requires energy. And I think that maybe this is just like my I've officially turned into an old lady, but I'm like, I am a little bit worried about like our youth in that we have made everything so simple for them. So easy for them that

Dayle (13:15)
So.

Yeah, bring me. Yeah. And some buyers as well as, yeah, I would like some buyers for that million plus.

total.

Jamie (13:42)
I think that's part of why we have such a a staff shortage in the world is that nobody's really wanting to work for their money. Nobody really wants to work. It's just...

Dayle (13:47)
Hmm.

Not for that low, not for that small amount

of money, you know, like they'd like to see, cause they heard about a guy on YouTube who, you know, made these posts, they went viral. Yeah.

Jamie (14:00)
who plays video games and

gets paid for his millions and millions of views. And it's like, yeah, I mean, that might work out for the odd person, but everybody else just to like pay for their gas and insurance when they're 16 to 18 had to work at the gas station or the grocery store or the Starbucks or whatever that looks like.

Dayle (14:03)
Mm-hmm.

On the topic of like kids and the future, I do think it's the importance of like putting your kids in sports, putting your kids in piano lessons, putting your kids in something that they will have to work hard at to excel at that they are interested in. Because that's the other thing is that we need to have a general level of interest. Like if someone came along and was like, hey, listen to this business and I wasn't interested in it, I wouldn't hustle for it. I would not be interested in that.

Jamie (14:31)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dayle (14:46)
And, but if I came up with the idea and I am pumped about it and I think there's a market for it and I'm, you know, did all my research and did all my stuff and I'm ready, there's nothing stopping me. So you got to find like the thing that does that, but don't use that as the example, as the excuse either, because this is the thing. It's not going to feel good the whole time. It just won't.

Jamie (15:00)
But listen, listen.

Well, and

when you're 14, looking for your very first job, guess what? It's not that fun to go to work when all your friends are going to a party. It's not that fun to miss out on going to the movies. It's not that fun to like, be like, oh shoot, I better get my homework done right after school, because I have to go to my job at five. It's not gonna be fun. That's the reality. And you're not doing your passion project when you're 16 years old. You're just doing a job.

Dayle (15:16)
Exactly.

Mm-hmm. No, it's not.

Jamie (15:34)
And the reality is, that there's gonna be a lot of times in your life, not just for your career, but all sorts of kinds of times in your life where you don't wanna do the thing. You don't wanna get up and exercise. You don't wanna go to work. You don't wanna, you know, go to Christmas dinner with your in-laws, whatever that looks like for you. There's gonna be times when you don't want to, but you have to, you know?

Dayle (15:34)
Exactly.

Totally.

Exactly.

I agree. Yeah. So anyways, we'd love to hear your thoughts on, do you look at hustling as a good thing or as a bad thing? And what is the right balance if that's even a thing? Is there such a thing as balance in this life?

Jamie (16:13)
Until next time

guys, see you later.