1566: Read This If You Are Hustling Hard But Not Seeing Results With Your Business by Steve Chou of My Wife Quit Her Job

[00:00:00] This is Optimal Work Daily. Read This If You Are Hustling Hard But Not Seeing Results With Your Business by Steve Chou of MyWifeQuitHerJob.com. There's a saying that entrepreneurs are willing to work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40. And if you're spending 80 hours per week on your business, then power to you. But what if you're putting in the time but not seeing the results? Here's an email that I received from a reader the other day.

[00:00:27] Quote, Hey Steve, every day I wake up, eat breakfast, work the entire day on my online business, eat dinner, work some more, and then go to bed. I've been doing this for almost a year but I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere. Shouldn't things have taken off already? End quote. Hey, I get it. Rule number one of business is that you must put in the work to see results. But hauling for a year doesn't guarantee success.

[00:00:53] In fact, all of the you need to hustle advice circling around the web is probably skewing your expectations. For example, if you listen to Gary Vaynerchuk, you might think that you need to burn the candle at both ends. Quote, When you're truly in that hustle, you are maximizing every last bit of energy you have in order to produce. End quote. If you listen to George Bernard Shaw, you might think that you need to put in 10x the effort.

[00:01:19] Quote, When I was young, I observed that 9 out of 10 things I did were failures, so I did 10 times more work. End quote. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big-time fan of both George and Gary, but I don't believe that hustling is always the right answer. I also don't believe that telling people to hustle is very useful advice. By all means, you should work hard, put in the hours, and do the research. But that's just stating the obvious. After all, you can't get anywhere without taking action. Why you shouldn't hustle

[00:01:49] To me, hustling creates the stigma of long hours and an intense work ethic. When I think of hustling, I think of someone who works 16-hour days and is completely consumed in his or her work. But here's a little secret. I don't operate this way at all. In fact, I don't consider myself a hustler in the true sense of the term. Sure, there are times when I forget to eat because I'm absorbed in my work, but that doesn't happen all that often.

[00:02:15] Instead, most of the time, I just try to accomplish one thing per day and then call it quits. Most of the time, I don't try to maximize every last bit of my energy or do 10x the work. In fact, I am just a lazy Chinese guy at heart. Does that mean that I'm not an effective entrepreneur? Does that mean that I have no drive to succeed? Here's the real problem with preaching the hustle mentality. By telling everyone they need to hustle to succeed, that implies that working intensely always leads to success. But that's simply not true.

[00:02:45] There are so many external factors in play that can affect your business. And sometimes things just take time to develop. My Approach to Business The problem with hustling towards the finish line is that there is no finish line, so you should avoid setting a specific timetable for your success. Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't set goals or be ambitious, nor am I saying that you shouldn't shoot for the stars.

[00:03:09] But stop telling yourself that you need to succeed within a certain time frame, because you never know when things will start to take off. The truth is that I rarely hustle. Instead, I pick a slow and steady pace and tell myself that I'm going to maintain it forever. In fact, I treat all of my businesses like a change in my lifestyle. For example, when I committed to blogging, I told myself that I was going to write an article at least once a week, forever. When I started my online store, I made a similar mental commitment.

[00:03:38] I didn't have an endgame in mind. Instead, I allocated some extra time in my routine to fit things in. Today, running my businesses are a part of my regular schedule. I don't think about hustling. I just try to make forward progress on a consistent basis. I've been at this for almost 10 years now, and I've seen so many entrepreneurs come and go. But I'm always a constant. The Problem With People Today The biggest problem with entrepreneurship today is that information is too accessible.

[00:04:07] The biggest problem with entrepreneurship is that we are aware of other people's successes, which makes us feel inadequate. There are so many people who started blogging after me who are doing better than I am. And there are so many more successful e-commerce entrepreneurs as well. But here's the thing. Our problem as entrepreneurs isn't that we don't work hard enough. Our problem is that we need to keep our feelings of inadequacy in check. We need to not get depressed when our reality doesn't meet the lofty standards of the internet.

[00:04:37] After I published my latest set of income reports, a reader asked me why I only publish my reports twice a year, instead of on a monthly basis. Well, the real reason is because it doesn't happen that fast. Sure, I could put out a monthly report, but I'd have nothing to talk about except for the numbers. The grind is boring. Everyone tends to glamorize entrepreneurship, but the truth of the matter is that I'm sitting around waiting a lot.

[00:05:02] For example, I just set up a new set of Pinterest ads the other day, and what am I doing now? Well, I'm waiting a few weeks for the results to come in. Whenever I write a blog post, I have to wait at least three to six months for it to rank in search. Nothing happens right away. And to be perfectly honest, the biggest problem I see is that most young entrepreneurs have a problem with patience. Steve, how soon can I make money if I follow your strategy? Steve, can you send me all of your free lessons right away instead of once per day?

[00:05:31] Steve, will you publish my unique contents on your blog, even though you have no idea who the heck I am? Sometimes I wonder what this world is coming to. Can no one wait for anything anymore? Here's the reality. Things take time to progress at their own pace, so don't set expectations based on someone else's success. Wait the frickin' six days for my free mini-course emails to arrive, okay? Relationships take time to develop. Try to get to know someone before asking for a favor.

[00:06:00] My advice. Nine times out of ten, no matter how hard you work or how hard you hustle, things will just happen on their own. And you can't force it or will things to happen just because you want it so bad. Sometimes it's just not your turn yet. Once you realize that the business world is so much bigger than your work ethic, you can adjust your perspective and chill the heck out. Don't get down on yourself because you haven't reached some imaginary point with your business. Just sit back and enjoy the journey.

[00:06:29] Find a pace that you can maintain indefinitely and don't obsess over why you aren't doing as well as someone you read about on the internet. Trust me, you'll just get disappointed every time if you do. Instead, just put your head down, keep on trucking, and one day, your time will come. And when it finally does, take the time to enjoy it. You just listened to the post titled, Read This If You Are Hustling Hard But Not Seeing Results With Your Business,

[00:06:59] by Steve Chu of MyWifeQuitHerJob.com And thank you to Steve. You know, when his wife became pregnant and she planned to stay home with the baby, they knew that they were going to need to find some more income, so they started a little online store called Bumblebee Linens. Well, in just a year, they were able to replace his wife's salary of $100K per year, and they started My Wife Quit Her Job to document it all, including income reports. And now, as you heard, he was able to leave his job too,

[00:07:27] so it's not just his wife who quit her job anymore. All right, that's going to do it for today. I hope you have a happy Monday and your week's off to a good start. Thanks again for being here, and I'll see you again tomorrow, where your optimal life awaits.