Let’s talk about a big misconception that a lot of people have about success.

This might ruffle a few feathers. It might even ruffle a lot of feathers, but the big misconception goes something like this: if you’re not working your face off, if you’re not working 80 hours a week, you’re not going to be successful.

In other words, if you’re not hustling—if you’re not working non-stop—you aren’t going to be successful.

Don’t get me wrong, some hustle is good. But not when it comes at the expense of your relationships and your health.

Hustle is not a badge of honor. It can lead to physical and mental breakdowns. It can damage your relationships with the people you love the most.

And hustle is no guarantee that you’ll be successful. I know plenty of very successful people that work way less than you would think they do.

So, today I’m going to give you some practical steps you can take to hustle less, reduce stress, and be successful in your business.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to increase your profit by hustling less
• The key component to working less than 25 hours per week
• Why setting a 12-month revenue goal is important
• An eye-opening exercise to help you maximize your efficiency
• Why you need to assign a value to everything you do in your business
• Tasks you should stop doing and delegate right now
• What you should not be delegating
• Developing systems and procedures to help you reach your goals
• The first thing you should put in your monthly planner/calendar

Links & Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

• Toggl
• Perry Marshall: 80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More
• Canva
• James Schramko
• DM me on Instagram
• Visit my YouTube channel
• The Art of Online Business Podcast website
• Check out my Accelerator coaching program

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Other Episodes You’ll Enjoy:

Are You Running Your Business or Is the Business Running You with Caitlin Mitchell

How to Decide Whether You “Should” or Shouldn’t

Quick Tip: How I’ve Become WAY More Productive

[00:00:00]
Rick:
What’s up my friends. Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much, as always, for tuning back in to hang out with me today.

Let’s talk about something that not a lot of people—well, this ruffles feathers, and I love the fact that it does. Today, I want to talk about hustle, because, after all, you can’t be successful in your business

[00:01:09]
if you’re not working your face off, or working 16 hours a day, or working, 80-hour weeks. You will not be successful in your business if you’re not hustling. Well, I don’t normally swear here in the podcast and I want to bleep this out, but that’s a load of **

[00:01:27]
Number one, so many people equate success with hustle. Many people wear hustle, if you will, as a badge of honor, right? That you are only successful in your business if you are hustling and you’re working nonstop.

Well, I’m here to tell you right now, my friend, it is not a badge of honor. It is not.

[00:01:52]
It can lead to both mental and physical breakdowns. I’m raising my hand right now as an example of that. Early on in my business, I was hustling. Now, don’t get me wrong. Early on in your business, there is a time and place for hustle.

[00:02:16]
But we don’t want it to be the norm. It does not need to be the norm, because this whole notion of you have to work 16 hours a day, and hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle if you want to have a successful business is simply not true. I can share with you so many examples of people who are hustling nonstop in their business, and they don’t have any kind of business, essentially.

[00:02:43]
It’s a hobby. Then on the flip side, I can show you and share with you a ton of examples of people who are working 25 hours a week or less, who have a very successful business by their standards. I say their standards, because they might have multiple seven-figure businesses.

[00:03:06]
They might have a $50,000 business, or $100,000, whatever it might be. It’s whatever success means to them. My point here is that hustle culture is so toxic, because society looks at, “Oh, if you’re hustling, if you’re a hustler, you’re successful.” Or, “I strive to be more like you, because

[00:03:33]
you’re hustling.” I’ve never understood—I’ll get off my soap box here in just a second. I’m going to give you some steps, some actual steps, but I’ve never understood the whole concept. I see podcasts like “Rise and grind, rise and grind.” Well, that sounds terrible. Why do I want to grind my day?

[00:03:54]
Like I’m here to have fun and I’m here to, Be with my family and to be with my friends and to help truly help people make an impact in the world. And I don’t need to hustle to accomplish those things. Now that doesn’t mean I’m not working hard or that doesn’t, you know, I can be working hard, but with ease.

[00:04:21]
Okay. And so. There’s going to be a lot more about hustle here on the show because so many people are sick and tired of it. So many people are sick and tired of the narrative out there that in order to be successful, it has to be equated with hustle. And it’s just simply not true. And when you’re hustling your brain, Is in a go-go go-go state, it’s any heightened state, right?

[00:04:53]
It’s in a stressed out state, which is releasing more cortisol because it’s a stress hormone, right. Which is putting you in a fight or flight. Mode, right. You are not being chased by a tiger. My friends, right. And when we are in fight or flight, and by the way, I operate on a daily basis because of challenges with anxiety and so forth, I operate on it’s much better than it used to be, but I operate on a daily basis with like a, you know, a minor fight or flight each day.

[00:05:24]
And I’m really working on that. a lot. But when we are working from that space of fight or flight from stress, we are not in our most creative mode. If you will, we’re not in the creative space. It becomes so much harder to make money in our business and be creative and truly show up for the people that we want to, help when we are in that state.

[00:05:51]
What I want you to get out of this episode here, I’m going to, I’m going to give you some actual concrete steps here, but hustle is not the answer. Right? And so if there’s a belief that you have that in order to be successful in your business, you have to be hustling. It is simply not true. one of the key pillar goals for when people join our accelerator coaching program.

[00:06:20]
Is less hustle. It’s more profit because people always talk about top line revenue when it’s like, oh, okay. That’s great. What’s actually going in the bank. What’s actually going in your pocket. Right. So it’s more profit, more impact, less hustle. So you’re increasing your profit, increasing your impact with less hustle by working fewer hours and hours.

[00:06:46]
For all of our accelerators is 25 hours a week or less. Now, if you’re somebody who like, I love working, like it energizes me, it lights me up and I want to do it all the time. You go, you like go for it. Right. But most people it’s just not sustainable. Right. And so what I want to share with you here, and what I want to offer you is some steps that you can take.

[00:07:14]
To set your business up around what’s most important to you. Right? So for me, my w what’s most important to me is my family is my wife and my daughter. my amazing daughter. when this is coming out, she’s going to, she’s about to turn three with just within a few days. So my three-year-old daughter, Maya, and my wife, Amy that’s, what’s most important to me in my life.

[00:07:36]
Right. And so if we are not showing. And able to be present and healthy for what’s most important in our life. Then we can’t be of service to others. Right. It’s the whole put your mask on first in airplanes. You know what I mean? Because we can’t help others. So, what I want to offer you here is some steps that you can be taking in your business to set your business up so that you’re accomplishing whatever revenue goals that you have in 25 hours a week or less, and the 25 hours a week.

[00:08:08]
If you want to spread it out over seven days, which I don’t super recommend, but whatever works. Right for me, I have a four day work week, Monday through Thursday, and I’m doing this right here. This example, everything we’re about to share with you is something that I do in my business. And then what we teach in accelerator.

[00:08:28]
I have several members in accelerator who share. They’re like, I’m like working 20 hours a week right now and I kind of want to work more. Like, I just want to add more. That is different. Like, okay, cool. If you want to do that, and that’s what lights you up and you’re accomplishing everything else that you want to go for it.

[00:08:49]
But the problem that I see is when people are working, you know, 12, 13 hours a day and they’re heading towards burnout, that is not sustainable. Okay. And so I want to challenge you. The next time somebody asks how you’ve been. Right. What’s the common answer that we always give them. They’re like, oh, you’re like, oh man, I’m so busy.

[00:09:13]
I’ve been so busy, you know? Well, I want to challenge you that the next time somebody asks how you’ve been. I want you to answer with something else, whatever it might be. But don’t answer, try not to answer with the busy answer, because again, we view busy as a badge of. And I want to try to reshape that thought for you.

[00:09:32]
Okay. And so the key here to working 25 hours a week or less is you’ve heard it a million times and talk about it too, is like, if you want to have a big impact in your business, you cannot do this alone. You need support in your business, which by the way, is one of the main things that we help you do inside of.

[00:09:53]
Accelerator the process I’m going to take you through is exactly the types of things that we do with our accelerator members to help hit that. We call it the less hustle goal, right? The 25 hours a week or less. And so if you’re interested in learning more about our accelerator coaching program, this is one-on-one coaching group coaching and a mastermind experience.

[00:10:19]
All within one program. This is for more advanced, more established online course creators and coaches, a minimum. You’re doing seven to eight K per month in revenue from your online business. But if we, if you’re doing multiple millions, are you doing seven figures? This is for you as well. We have members in there who were doing that, from, you know, the different range in there.

[00:10:43]
Just going to application fairly recently from somebody who’s doing extremely well on their business. And they were saying, just want to make sure this is the right place for me. Absolutely. Right. And so if you’re feeling overwhelmed in your business and you’re hustling all the time and you’re doing all the things.

[00:11:00]
And you want to take things to the next level, but you’re not really sure what next steps to take. And you’re feeling that overwhelmed and you want to create better systems and processes and better sales and marketing and better mindset around your business. Then accelerator is for you, my friend, it’s application only we’re taking applications.

[00:11:21]
So go to Rick mulready.com forward slash accelerator to learn more about it and to apply.

[00:11:27]
What I want to share with you now is basically eight steps. and there are a lot of them are very quick, but eight steps that in order to set your business up, where you as the CEO are working 25 hours a week or less. And again, however you, I mean, you could work literally if you want to, you can work two days a week and break.

[00:11:53]
Right. Good. I don’t recommend that, but Hey, whatever’s up, whatever, you know, I have a buddy of mine who has a very successful business and he works three days a week, whatever works for you. Right. and so the first thing that I want you to do is set your revenue goal. And this is great, especially as we head into 2022 here at the end of 2021.

[00:12:15]
Set your revenue goal for the next 12 months, whatever that number is. Okay. Set your revenue goal. Then once you have that revenue goal, what is your plan to hit that revenue? Right. So I always talk about simplifying your offers. You’ve got your flagship offer and you are just crushing that flagship.

[00:12:39]
Before you go on adding in, you know, other other offers. Now, if you’re in the teaching space, if you’re a teacher, a teacher, author, teacher, entrepreneur, that’s going to be different, right? You’re going to have a whole bunch of resources that you’re selling on TPT. You might have a membership, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:12:55]
That’s a little bit different, right. But come up with a revenue goal. And then what is your plan to hit that revenue goal? And that really comes down to where is your revenue going to be coming from? How are you going to be generating that revenue? In order to hit that goal over the next 12 months. Okay.

[00:13:12]
And that’s that those are things too, that we help you do inside of accelerator as well. The third thing is once you have your revenue goal, once you have your plan that you’re going to, implement to hit that revenue goal is you want to work backwards. Right. So, okay. 12 months out. Here’s my goal.

[00:13:31]
Here’s where all the things that I need to do. In order to not, I don’t mean you personally, like your business needs to do in order to hit that goal. You work backwards from 12 months out. Okay. So what are the types of things that need to happen from a revenue perspective? by quarter by month by week and you just work backwards.

[00:13:57]
So 12 months out. Okay. What needs to happen? In that, fourth quarter, third quarter, and so forth back to where you are right now, then break it down by month. And then by week now you have a plan. You have a strategic plan to hit that revenue goal. Right? Keep in mind. We haven’t even done anything with the time yet.

[00:14:20]
We’re just setting out our plan. We’ve set our revenue. We have a plan, you know, what are our revenue generating things that we’re going to be doing to hit that revenue goal. And then we’re working backwards. We’re basically planning out when things need to happen over the next 12 months. And the easiest thing that I find is to work backwards from 12 months out.

[00:14:42]
The next thing you want to do is the time audit the. Amazing exercise and also a total pain in the butt, of doing a time audit. It’s a pain in the butt because you got to keep track of what you’re doing. However, it is gold. My friends, it is gold. It’s the first thing that when somebody joins accelerator, we have them do, and it is super eyeopening.

[00:15:09]
It is a, I got to get this phrase in there. it’s a joke game changer. It’s a game changer for you, my friend. You’ve got to audit what you were doing on a daily basis. So what I like to do is take a three to five business day, time period. And from the time you start working until the time you stop working that day, I want you to document, just write down everything that you’re doing throughout the day and how long each thing that you’re doing it for.

[00:15:39]
And I want you to include your time-wasters for example. You’re on you go on Instagram or you go on Tik TOK and you’re like, holy cow, it’s 35 minutes has gone by and I’ve gone down on the tech talk rabbit hole. Right. We all do it. Or you go on to your, you know, your favorite websites or whatever.

[00:15:58]
Like I am a huge hockey fan. So I go to a TSN, which is Canada’s ESPN, basically shout out to my Canadian friends. I’m not in Kent, I’m in San Diego, but I’m a huge Washington capitals fan. And so. Track that like, oh, I spent 15 minutes on whatever site. Okay. I’m not saying don’t do these things, but we want to create awareness around what you’re doing and where you are spending your time.

[00:16:26]
Okay. So time audits, three to five days. I don’t care how you track it. Notebook like old school pen and paper, iPad, right on your iPad. Google sheets, whatever you might want to do, you want to download toggle or whatever to track your time, go for it. I don’t care what you do, but it’s really important to look at.

[00:16:48]
Okay. What are the things I’m doing that I am, that you are doing as the CEO, what you’re doing and how long are you doing them for? Okay. After that, once you’ve done your audit, then I want you to go and assign a value to each of the things that you’re doing. Okay. And I’ll just go over this super quick, $10 an hour, a hundred dollars an hour, a thousand dollars an hour, $10,000 an hour.

[00:17:17]
And I originally got this concept from, Perry Marshall’s book, 80 20 sales and marketing, which we’re going to talk about 80 20 in just a second. And it’s basically the exercise of assigning. So if you go into Canva for example, and create a graphic. That is a $10 an hour task. Meaning you could hire that out for $10 an hour, essentially.

[00:17:42]
Or if you are editing a video right now, granted video editing seeming costing more than that. The point though is you shouldn’t be spending your time on those $10 an hour tasks, then hundred dollars an hour task. It might be like writing an email, that sort of thing, the idea, and then a thousand dollars might be.

[00:18:02]
You are delivering a webinar, right? $10,000. Now our task is for me, for example, is to create this podcast for you or create a video on my YouTube channel, for example, by the way, Rick mulready.com forward slash YouTube is my brand new YouTube channel. And I also, you can watch me recording, All of my podcasts episodes.

[00:18:28]
Now over on the art of online business, full episodes channel, and also I have a highlights channel from the podcast, as well, I’ll link everything up in the show notes for the episode for you, here today, where was I? $10,000 an hour tasks. Right? Those are the highest one.

[00:18:45]
You’re setting the vision for your business. You’re creating your hiring, that sort of thing. The idea is to be spending as much time as possible in that a thousand dollars an hour or $10,000 an hour task. Is it, you know, you’re not going to start out that way. Right. And you’re always going to be diving back into, you know, dipping your toe back into $10 an hour stuff, you know, sometimes customer service, for example.

[00:19:12]
But the point is is that you gotta know where the time is going and assigning a value to it because then once you know those things, then it’s about delegating. To somebody on your team or hiring somebody to do certain things, deleting things altogether, right? Like, oh, I don’t need to be doing that at all.

[00:19:30]
Or figuring out, you know, what this needs to be done, but not right now, this can be done in the future. Okay. And so time audit is critical because then you can look at, oh, I need to get these things off of my plate so that I can be spending my time. On the 20% in my business, that gives me 80% of my results.

[00:19:58]
My buddy James Schramko says he calls it like the 64 4. So you can take the 80, he, it gets all super meta, but you can take, you can do the 80, 20 of the 80 20 of the 80, 20. I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole, but it’s really important here. Is, you need to be eliminating the 80% of activities that you as the CEO are focusing on so that you can focus on the 20% of activities that produce the most results.

[00:20:30]
Now, when I say eliminating 80%, yeah. Maybe some of that. Legitimately, you know, eliminating it. But what I’m talking about here is getting other people to do those things for you, right? So obviously if you produce a podcast, you should not be editing it yourself or you produce, you know, if you’ve got a YouTube channel going, you should not be editing your videos.

[00:20:51]
Right. at least long-term, it’s a good skill to understand and acquire and know what you’re doing, but long-term, that’s not something where you should be spending your. your time is spent in front of the camera in front of the microphone. you know, coming up with ideas, offers, coaching it’s cetera, where determining what are the 20% activities that are producing the most results, the highest revenue in the business.

[00:21:19]
Because again, we’ve got 25 hours a week, so we got to cut the fluff. Right? We’ve got to, we’ve got to set boundaries in our business. Which leads me to the next thing, what processes and systems need to be created in your business that will help you achieve this less hustle goal. What systems and processes need to be created or refined.

[00:21:43]
Maybe you have them in your business already that will help you achieve this less hostile. Again, another thing that we focus on a lot inside of accelerator is helping you flesh out your systems and processes. We also have a lot of them that you can just like, okay, here you go. Take it and make it your own for your business.

[00:21:59]
So

[00:22:00]
One of those things obviously is going to be building out your team, because again, remember you want to have a big impact in your business. You can not do this. So build out your team. If you need more people, you need to hire more people. Right? And so that, for example, would be a $10,000 an hour task.

[00:22:19]
What I mean by that is this is part of the vision of your business. You can have somebody else do the hiring for you, right? If you’ve got an integrator or a biz, you know, no BM or whatever, they can do the hiring for. And that is present to you, the final candidates. And then you do the, you can do final interviews and hire, or maybe you don’t even hire at all.

[00:22:40]
And they do it all for you. And you’re like, oh, we have a new person on the team, which I know that happens quite a bit. So build out a team, or if you have a team, do you need initial people? Can your existing team operate more efficiently? Right. So number one is looking at your. As a, you know, this is part of the systems and processes that you’re going to need in order to be working 25 hours a week or less.

[00:23:05]
The next thing for systems and processes is I would really encourage, you know, how many you’re driving down the road of a highway and you kind of like veer off the shoulder, off to the shoulder a little bit. And you’ve got those bumps, like the ridges in the road. And it’s like, so you want to basically create those in your business.

[00:23:24]
That help keep you as the CEO on track and your team on track. So you want to create the shoulder bumps in your business to keep you on track as an example, what might come up for you that can, can veer you off track, like shiny object. Ooh, look at that. I want to do that. Everybody’s talking about it over here.

[00:23:48]
So you want assist? For dealing with the shiny objects that come up. Right. So create the system around that. Is this make sense maybe? Yes. Does it make sense now? No. Okay. We’re going to put it in our backlog over here and come back to it in whatever, whatever time. The other thing, just another example that you want to create the shoulder bumps system around is, you know, things that are going to sabotage your focus during the.

[00:24:19]
Email slack, you know, your team messaging, you, your, boxing, you getting Voxer, boxers boxes.

[00:24:27]
We use Voxer. I don’t know what the term is. Boxing boxes. you know, you reviewing work, for example, you want to create a system around when you will be focused on those types of things so that you’re not getting.

[00:24:41]
Alerts all day long, either on your, you know, on your computer or on your phone. Okay. That is a system. Create a system around that. Again, you’re, you’re creating the, the shoulder. You’re putting the shoulder bumps in your business to keep you on track. Okay. And then finally, and this is probably most important.

[00:25:01]
Most important is you’re going to need a, a system for your brain, for yourself, for your mind. As an example, you’re going to need to wrap your head around the fact that time does not create money or is not equal to like the, the amount of money that you make is not equal to how long you are working.

[00:25:26]
Again, this goes back to what we talked about at the very beginning, when I was on my soap box a little bit, right? The length of time that you were. Does not equate to how much money that you’re going to generate, right. Just because you’re working 40 hours a week, does it make, does it mean you’re going to make more money than somebody who’s working 15 hours a week, for example, that is not true.

[00:25:50]
So when you understand that time, the length of time that you’re working does not equal how much money you’re going to make or time does not create that much. Value and energy is what creates that, money it’s not time. Right? So that is a mindset that is very important to wrap your head around another mindset.

[00:26:12]
Just as an example, here is endless possibility, right? Believing that any, that you can do anything that anything is possible. I know it sounds like a greeting card right now, but. That’s really true. Right? Anything is possible because if you came into this episode and I, you know, during my little soap box at the very beginning, you’re like, come on Rick 25 hours a week or less, there was zero chance.

[00:26:38]
Well, again, I’m an example of this. I have plenty of students that were examples of this. I know plenty of other people where this is the case. So yeah, it is. But you need to believe yourself that it’s possible. Okay. And then the last thing, number eight here in our less hustle steps, then you start scheduling out your time.

[00:27:03]
Okay. Then we get to the calendar and you’re scheduling out your time. The first thing that goes on your calendar is your self-care time. Exercise your family time. You know, the things that are most important to you go on the calendar. First, if you have a day off or whatever time that you stop working, start working, whatever it might be.

[00:27:26]
Those things go on the calendar first before any of your business stuff goes on. Then, then that’s where you’re filling in the calendar with those 20% activities. That you as the CEO need to be focusing on that create 80% of the results. Again, your team is involved in that, as well.

[00:27:52]
Your team is helping contribute to that 20% that is producing 80% of the results. So, once you’ve gone through those steps, that’s when then you go on the calendar and the first thing that goes on there is your personal care. Exercise, you know, whatever, walk time, yoga, meditation, family time, et cetera, that goes on first.

[00:28:15]
And then you start filling everything else in. This quick tip has turned out to be a little longer than a little quick, 30 minutes in, but this is really important. I really wanted to do this episode for you because this is so important. This is something that I see time and time again.

[00:28:34]
I’ve been through it myself. I’ve talked about it here on the podcast several times where it ruined me emotionally, physically, my relationships, et cetera, because I believed that I had to hustle. And I really, frankly, equated the amount of time that I worked with the amount of revenue that I could make.

[00:28:59]
It took me awhile to get there, but it’s just simply not true.

Okay. I’d love to get your thoughts. Where do you fall in the hustle culture? Do you believe in it? Do you love it? Zero judgment. I’m just curious. Shoot me a DM over on Instagram @RickMulready. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[00:29:20]
Again, if you’re interested in accelerator, interested in learning more and applying, it’s application only. Just go to RickMulready.com/Accelerator.

Alright, my friends, thank you so much for tuning in today. Have an amazing rest of your day, and I’ll talk to you soon.