Studies show Hustle Culture (or ‘grind culture’) leads to burnout, fatigue, and general unhappiness. In the 1990s, when the “work hard and play hard” ideas began to infiltrate into business culture, the good intentions of the “hard work ethic” began to be polluted with attitudes of entitlement and selfishness. CEOs began to justify lavish personal expenses because they had ‘earned it’. However, those dollars were earned at the expense of those relationships closest to them.
The ever present struggle among business owners is negotiating the investment of time and energy it takes to grow healthy relationships outside of the workplace with as much passion and commitment spent inside their business as they empower employees, serve customers, and chase growth goals. When the grind mentality is the rule of law, the carnage is often an empty chair at the dinner table, a missing seat in the crowd at your kids’ activities, and health challenges that compromise quality of life. Dollars earned never justify the losses.
Grind Equals Decline
A study done in 2021 by the World Health Organization found that working over 55 hours a week increased the risk of stroke by 35%. Studies also show that stress hormone levels increase, anxiety increases, and those who work more than 10 hours a day get less sleep, which has massively negative effects on health over time. Add to that list diabetes, fatigue, musculoskeletal disorders, and a rise in overall health complaints. According to the CDC, working over 60 hours a week is a liability in life, not a lucrative life-to-the-fullest hack or merit badge.
And yet the grind culture continues to grow with influencers on YouTube and social media platforms trumpeting it as a method to maximize your profits, live the life you’ve always wanted, and outperform your competition.
Family Fallout
A not so often discussed side effect from working long hours, being overly consumed mentally with job responsibilities and goals, and letting your work control your schedule is the loss of quality of family life. The clever saying that “kids spell love: t-i-m-e” is indeed proven true by both therapists and neuroscientists. It is also likely a primary love language of your spouse, according to Gary Chapman’s best selling book The 5 Love Languages. If you are married or have children, ultimately your ‘yes’ to your work is a ‘no’ to spending time with them and giving them your undivided attention. Family is often a silent victim in the lives of overworking employees and business owners, until too much damage has been done. No amount of monetary or physical rewards from overworking will ever justify a broken home.
Quiet Entrepreneurship Solution
While the evolution of the grind culture has morphed from early morning tactics to late-night work-harder-than-your-competition badges of honor, there is a group of entrepreneurs who strive for something different. A Quiet Entrepreneurship business owner authentically wants to be home for dinner, spend the weekends and evenings with friends and family, be present at their kids’ sporting events, and be an active part of their community – whether through service projects, members of a community of faith, or giving back as a family. This Quiet Entrepreneurship culture is possible for many business owners, and there are common benefits and elements to such working environments that help sustain it over time.
Quiet Entrepreneurship – an approach to building a profitable business without all the noise of hack, hustle, and startup culture.
Justin Rule
The key to starting a Quiet Entrepreneurship business is to decide ahead of time the boundaries of time, the revenue goals, and the end in mind for your business. Remember that every yes is a no to something else – and trust the process over time to reap the benefits of a balanced lifestyle that doesn’t rob from those you love to serve those you hardly know. When you look back, you may have clients who say they love you, but a family that doesn’t even know who you have become.
Nobody wants that. Nobody starts a business with that end in mind. So believe that the wise boundaries you place between clients and kids, customers and spouse, working and relaxing will be worth the potential short-term loss in percentage growth.
Hustle Wisely
Oftentimes, the term ‘hustle’ gets thrown into the mix with ‘grind culture.’ However, our definition of hustle is a concentrated sprint of intentional activity with a specific outcome. When you define hustle like this, you can see how there’s grace for an occasional moment where a project deadline must be met, and so expectations and schedules may need to be altered – assuming everyone impacted is on board (employees, spouse, kids).
As someone who is a recovering procrastinator, the need to sprint to get something done on time can show up more often than I would like. But the norm is not to hustle. It might help to give yourself a “hustle pass” one time each month. It may look like a late night to finish a design, or coming home late because the quote needed to be completed for a customer.
But don’t make ‘hustle’ become a weekly event or a culture you embrace. Make sure your hustle is an exception to the norm. It’s not a badge of honor; it’s a mark of desperation and unpreparedness. It could also just be an unwillingness to say no and trust that better options will present themselves.
Quiet Entrepreneurship Practices
Business owners who enjoy the Quiet Entrepreneurship lifestyle can expect to enjoy practices as part of their work day because they are not ‘always on’ and are comfortable turning things off, even when it makes people unhappy. They value their own wholeness and health and the relationships in front of them for the long haul.
- Maintain clear boundaries by not being “always on”
- Feel comfortable turning work off, even if it disappoints others
- Prioritize personal health, wholeness, and long-term well-being
- Value and protect meaningful relationships outside of work
- Offer flexible schedules to accommodate personal life situations
- Encourage removing work-related apps like Slack or Signal from personal phones
- Create a workplace culture that respects balance instead of constant hustle
- Avoid expecting employees to stay constantly available to keep work moving
Aside from all the benefits that come outside of work, some characteristics of Quiet Entrepreneurship businesses are a culture that enjoys things like unplugged (no devices) lunch breaks, encourages meditation and walking breaks, offers flexible hours to come late or leave early based on life situations, and supports work-related apps (ex: Slack or Signal) being removed from employee phones.
After all, if a business owner wants to live a Quiet Entrepreneurship lifestyle, it would be unfair to expect employees to be ‘always on’ to somehow make sure they grind it out to get the work done.
Risks of A Quiet Entrepreneurship Approach
There is a risk to running a Quiet Entrepreneurship business. If your revenue expectations for your business growth are not aligned with your commitment to working 40 hours a week, then you may have chosen the wrong business to be in. Make no mistake, a Quiet Entrepreneurship business is typically a slow growth business model that is consistently, year over year, a stronger and healthier business. Like most things that grow too quickly, grind culture produces shallow roots and unstable business practices, whereas Quiet Entrepreneurship approaches value the results of wise practices over time, bearing the fruits of both healthy business owners, healthy business growth, and a healthier business culture.
One home services business example is that of roofing services. Roofing businesses are generally designed to be always on due to the need to deal with hail or insurance emergencies, and unless you have great auto-response systems set up or alternating shift support staff, you may be in the wrong business. However, you could choose to just do residential roofing and set a boundary of slower growth (because you’d be saying no to specific types of work that interfere with your Quiet Entrepreneurship business boundaries) and unapologetically stay in a specific lane of roofing services.
The other risk to a Quiet Entrepreneurship business is that you may feel misunderstood. Why leave money on the table by not going out for that late-day estimate? Why not take the weekend job with the high price tag? Why do you pay for a bookkeeper when you could do the books in the evenings yourself? Building a Quiet Entrepreneurship business is about being kind to yourself, honoring your season of life, and refusing to sacrifice relationships in the name of profits. Certainly, there are challenges and unpredictable moments, and maybe even seasons of hustle and bustle, but trust the process and be willing to honestly assess your industry and career to see if it matches the overall health and well-being goals you have for yourself and those you love.
Benefits Outweigh Costs
The benefits of running a Quiet Entrepreneurship business are that you can actually experience the lifestyle desired as a present husband and father, as well as a successful business owner. The ‘work smarter, not harder’ is not really true, but rather working smarter is harder! Choosing boundaries around your time and sticking to them is hard. Choosing to be at your child’s recital instead of on the job site or taking a late meeting to try to secure a new customer is indeed a hard choice if you’ve chosen to measure your success by client acquisition or a monthly revenue goal. Money is a broken currency when it comes to measuring success.
Maybe measure time awake with your children rather than time on the clock for a project as one of your key performance indicators (KPI). Choose an end time so you can be home for dinner, maybe even picking up the ingredients for your spouse from the grocery store, and give yourself a bonus of your own choosing (extra 15 minutes at the gym workout, an extra night out with your wife that month, purchasing a new historical function novel) if you are home 30 minutes before dinner 4 out of 5 nights of the week.
The benefits of your personal practices to maintain a healthy lifestyle – whether it’s walking or running trails over lunch, spending mornings in a good book, prayer, journaling, or meditation (all of which I strongly encourage you to practice to grow in emotional and spiritual maturity) before work rather than answering emails, getting a full night of sleep unaided by alcohol or medication because you’re not going to be full of stress and a laundry list of to-do items you missed – will actually allow you to run your business better.
No Regrets
I have talked with many business owners who regretfully reminisce on the early, simpler days of their business before they ballooned to $3M or $10M with all the associated responsibilities, tasks, and people to manage. The comments around ‘taking home the same amount of money as when it was a few guys, and I made $400,000’ and the ‘extra stress on the family’ are sad because you don’t get time back.
Every day you have the gift to wake up, you always spend time. The question is how will you invest it and how you will feel when looking back on where it went. Quiet Entrepreneurship Business is the best way to ensure you don’t regret the reflections on those decisions you made.
