In a world where hustle is a dirty word and our Instagram feeds are full of sentimental quotes promoting more rest and relaxation and less work – it can be hard to know just how to run a business.

If you work long hours, you feel like you’ve broken some spiritual code and pissed off the universe but if you only work an hour a day and spend the rest of the time resting you might piss off the mortgage company cause the money to keep up with your bills just isn’t coming in while you nap.

We are living in a confusing time. As entrepreneurs, we have grown up in a culture of hustle and burnout and have been taught that is required to be successful. But we also know that it’s not sustainable and long for the concept of being able to rest and work less hours and have the same, if not more, success. 

So what is one to do? 

Is there such a thing as balance?

Can you actually meditate and nap your way to six or seven figures.

Hold onto your crystals, cause we are going to unpack this.

I have been an entrepreneur for over 11 years and if there is one thing that I have learned it’s that owning and operating a business requires MASSIVE amounts of work. Anyone who says differently is just lying.

Now, that doesn’t mean you have to work 80 hour weeks or sacrifice copious amounts of sleep every single day – but it does mean that you will lose some sleep, you will have to make some sacrifices and sometimes the hours aren’t as ideal as you’d like them to be.

It just means that you have to be realistic about the work required before starting a business, because if you think you can work 1 hour days and bring in 500k – it’s just not going to happen, at least not at the beginning.

I have a bone to pick with the current narrative right now.

The messaging is setting entrepreneurs up for failure and honestly it makes me agitated because I am really protective and passionate about entrepreneurs success, mental health and overall wellbeing and I get sick of feeling like they’re being misled and lied too.

I see so many entrepreneurs (women especially) who start businesses and follow the “rest and manifest” trend and end up completely broke, in debt and giving up on their dreams because they had absolutely zero success. This leads to more stress, a complete sense of failure and the death of so many amazing ideas and brands that we as a society could have benefited from.

We have to stop telling business owners that they can just sit around and think they’re way to success.

That’s just part of the story and without the second part – we are setting people up to fail. 

As with many things in life we forget the word AND. That word has become so important in almost every hot button issue we approach in life because it’s rarely just one thing. 

Business success if rest, intuition, manifestation AND creation, outsourcing, building, growing. It’s taking a power nap AND staying up a little later to get that launch organized and finished. It’s taking your kids to the movies AND working a couple of hours on Sunday to set yourself and your team up for a successful week. It’s sacrificing a night out with friends for the first year of business AND knowing that in 2 years you’ll have the financial freedom to go out twice as much as you did before. 

It’s human nature to give into our impulses to put things off, rest today, procrastinate and avoid the things we don’t want to do. It requires dedication, self awareness and tenacity to stick it out when things in business get rough. When stresses come, results are slow and we don’t actually feel like continuing.

News flash: you’re rarely going to feel like doing anything that requires much work. Again, that’s just human nature – not some character flaw only you possess. We are ALL like that. Who wouldn’t rather watch Netflix than put together spreadsheets. It’s our impulse to put things off.

But that’s to our own detriment.

Understanding the season in which you are in – is the true path to success.

Everything in life is seasonal and cyclical and if you can understand where you are at in your business and understand what is required at that time, your life will get so much easier.

When you see someone online who is able to drive their $100,000 car to brunch every day, eat the finest organic food while looking at the ocean and then comes home to do one hour of work before heading off to pilates – understand that that is the season THEY are in right now and perhaps you aren’t in that season. 

Of course that season is POSSIBLE for you. That’s what you’re working towards, obviously but there is a difference between comparing yourself to their season and knowing what season you are currently in.

When people that are 5 years into business are promoting more rest and relaxation, understand that their message is wise but it’s also not necessarily applicable to where you are at right now and knowing and understanding where you are at will make all the difference.

I don’t think you have to hustle to be successful but you do have to understand that it does require work to grow a business. It requires doing things we don’t want to do and it requires a dedication and prioritization of our businesses that might not always feel good. 

Stop giving up because you’re falling for a reality that just isn’t your reality – yet. Focus on you, focus on what you’re doing, focus on the steps you need to take RIGHT NOW so that later on down the road you too can have the freedoms to focus more on your personal life while the money rolls in.

But if you don’t do what it takes to get there, at the beginning, you’ll never actually get there. 

Success doesn’t fall from the sky. Success requires work and sacrifice AND a partnership with the Universe. But you have to do BOTH.

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