Ep #353: MVP: Hustle vs. Hard Work

Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach® podcast where sales expert and Master Coach Stacey Boehman teaches you how to make your first $2K, $20K, and $200K using her proven formula.

Hey coaches. This episode, I’m going to dive into the difference of hustle versus hard work. Okay? But that is one of the byproducts, I think, of knowing the difference, is that you really get that you control the money faucet, which is super fun. If I want you to just explore the idea of believing that you can turn money on and off in your business, that it’s up to you, that you can actually stop selling and making money for extended periods of time, come back and start making money because you’ve said so. And who you would be, how you would behave, how you would show up to your business if that were true.

This is just an immediate exercise coming to my mind that will help you identify what that feels like in your body and the difference that will also help you create a subtle difference between hustle and hard work. Many of you might want to hustle to your goals to get out of the discomfort of not believing you can accomplish those goals yet. And some of you also just might be fearing the hard work it will take to accomplish your goals and dreading that and having lots of thoughts about the hard work leading to hustle. 

So really, what I wanted this podcast to do is help you just manage your mind around this and navigate a good, solid middle ground between hustle and hard work.

So the first, most important thing that differentiates the two is the intention behind them, the reason behind them. We hustle to make up for a lack of feeling, a feeling that comes along with believing in our goals, believing in things we will accomplish, believing that money is abundant, believing that it will always be there, believing that it’s for us, believing that we can make it whenever we want to make it. Like having that groundedness and the feeling of support that money is always available to us in the world, and there is not a moment where it’s going to dry up, right?

Or we hustle as a perceived lack of having results. I’m not where I want to be, I’m not where I should be, I should be making more money. $25k isn’t enough, $200k isn’t enough, $400k isn’t enough. Trust me, I’ve coached people at all of these levels. Two million dollars isn’t enough, coached people at that level, on all of these things, right?

Like the result I have, I have a perception of lack around that result. Or we hustle out of fear of not creating a future result, right? So I don’t believe I can create that result, or if I stop working, that result will go away. Anything that makes a future result feel unsteady or wavering or limited, especially limited if you don’t take enough action, right?

A lot of the feelings that drive hustle are coming from thoughts like, “I don’t have enough money,” “I’m not good enough,” “Other people are better,” “The money might dry up.” I’ll become irrelevant. I have to get the cash now while it’s here. Hustle is about working fast and not slowing down so that you can avoid feelings and thoughts that you’re having. And it’s also about speeding up to create belief through actions.

And the most important thing to know about hustle is it creates negative things in your life. It creates lots of mistakes, urgency. When you hustle, you will have lots of fires to put out, and there will be a sense of never having enough time. Working to the brink of capacity constantly as the norm, and ignoring everything that isn’t new sales, most often, right?

Like that’s typically how I see it show up, is you have amazing revenue and you’re selling like crazy, but you are a mess behind the scenes, your business is a mess behind the scenes, like your team is a mess behind the scenes, or your delivery for your clients is a mess behind the scenes. That can a lot of times come from a very hyper-focused on sales, and that’s where all of the time and energy goes, coming from a fear that you can’t ever stop selling.

Hustle will feel tight and fast in your body if you really check in with it. And most importantly, what it will not feel, or how you will not experience it, is it will not feel grounded, like your body is weighted or anchored to the ground in a very positive way.

Hustle also doesn’t leave time for thinking things through or making decisions for the long term, evaluating your failures and your successes, what’s working. It doesn’t allow for processing emotions. There’s never time for that. For getting coached thoroughly all the way through something because you’ve just got to get out the next thing you’re selling, or you’ve got to get out that next offer. It doesn’t allow for self-reflection, for fully resolving things in your mind, especially failures, missed expectations, conflicts. It doesn’t allow for time to create new, more wise plans before taking action again, so it doesn’t create wise action.

And hustle is often disguised as, especially to those hustling, as either fun or necessary and important. It’s one of those ends of the spectrum, right? I see it come up for both. Especially when you’re first making your like first $200k, it is necessary and important. And then when I see my people get up to the multiple six figures, multiple seven figures, their hustling tends to come off as, “I’m just doing this because I like to and it’s fun.” And I think that this is a really important distinction, the disguise, because hustling always has to be disguised to the hustler because of the hustle shame that we talked about last week.

So when clients are doing this, my experience of my clients doing this is they’re always trying to make it sound innocent. And I don’t think that’s quite the right word, but it’s something around it’s innocent or it’s fun. Or it will show up as like they pretend to be confused at their results, or they like downplay how much effort and action they’re actually taking, what they’re doing, and how much of it they’re doing.

So let me give you an example of this. I had a client once who kept making lots of money, which is great in theory. But the way she talked about it was like it was just happening to her without her working at all. Like it just kept showing up. And I was confused at why she wouldn’t be owning this money, like owning it. And one of the examples she gave me is she told me that she marketed an offer to her current clients. And magically, like crazy, all of these new people wanted it too. And so she just made all this money, and she just doesn’t even know what to do with all this business. And it was all just like so crazy how money was just piling up in her lap.

And that was a very interesting way of talking about money. And so I asked her a simple question. But did you market it to new people, too? Right? Like, it didn’t just happen that new people bought an offer that was made for her current clients, right? That doesn’t just happen. How did the new people know about it? Right? So her answer was yes. And for me, the important piece of that was she was hiding work from herself, and she was disowning work that she had done, which I also thought was strange. But it turns out it was part of her hustle from the thought that I’ve got to keep the money flowing because it might dry up. And my relevance, my hotness right now might dry up.

So if you make a lot of money hustling, you might find yourself trying to cover up the effort it took so no one finds out. And this is so important because I think hard work is the opposite. Hard work makes you feel so insanely proud that you want to tell everyone about your hard work and your accomplishment. You want them to know the effort involved. From a place of you’re just so proud of what you created and what went into creating it. Right?

You all might be able to think back to times where I’ve told you all how hard I worked on something and how proud I was of that and the byproducts, all the success that’s come from it, like The Consultation Code, right? Or I’m creating the launching and the webinars course in 200k. Like I remember the hard work of all of that and how many hours I poured into that on top of my normal coaching work and my normal sales and marketing work. But it’s paid out just over and over and over and over.

In this industry, I feel like hustle can get spoken about, talked about, as if you can’t hustle your way to results, like that’s an impossible thing to do. And I want to offer that what I have found with myself and my students is that sometimes you can’t hustle your way to a result, like you just can’t do enough work to get there. But I’ve actually found that most often you can.

You’re just secretly miserable in the process, and you have lots of negative things attached to that result. And it doesn’t make you feel proud, so you typically don’t boast about it, right? And you don’t own it. You don’t take ownership of it, right?

And I’m always concerned about anything that doesn’t allow you to take ownership of your money. That’s how you believe you can turn the money faucet on and off, as you own the work you do, the work you didn’t do, right? You own it all. Hustle takes away your ownership, right? Because you have to disguise it to yourself to feel okay about it. To me, hard work, the byproduct of hard work is pride.

Now, I said on this past episode on hustle shame that you can choose to feel proud even about money that’s made while hustling, but I think that it’s something you have to do consciously and intentionally, is you have to go back and be like, okay, I hustled and I made all this money, and that’s okay. I’m not going to do that again, but I am still proud of the money I made. Versus money made from hard work without hustle, I think, because of the thoughts that fueled the work, the pride is automatically there. So you don’t have to work so hard for it.

So this is another way that you can think about the difference, is when you think of doing something that is hard work and obtaining the result, you can visualize feeling proud, and you know it will change you in the best way from here on out. It will create a lasting positive result, even if it’s going to be a lot of hard work. You’re like, okay, I can see that this will be an investment of my time for the greatest good in the long term of my business.

When you think about having to hustle to obtain a result, and you think of the end result, you will often think of how it will negatively affect you, and you don’t look forward to that. Like your brain, it really is a tune and onto you. Hard work also, again, feels grounded or anchored to the ground in your body, right? That’s the emotion you will feel. You might have to experiment with this, sitting in a chair, for example, with your feet on the ground and feeling what it feels like to be anchored, to be grounded.

And those feelings, you might feel grit, bravery, courage, determination, perseverance. And they may not feel good, but they feel very different in your body. They feel very rooted when you feel those feelings. Like they might feel uncomfortable, but they feel rooted versus insufficiency and inadequacy and fear and lack do not feel rooted in your body.

Hard work feels strong and capable. Hard work is about being focused. It’s setting a plan and getting it done. It may require the same hours as hustle, but the intention and the execution feel very different.

All right, I’m going to say that again. Hard work may require the same hours as hustle, but the intention and the execution feel very different. It’s, “I have everything I need, I am sufficient, and I want to do more. I want to increase my capacity.”

Those are thoughts that allow you to feel in control. They’re thoughts that literally create the reality of you being in control, which allows you to work hard and not be out of control with the hard work. My experience of hard work is also an awareness around the time and energy it will require, and honesty about that, especially with your coach, right?

This is something that I can just say from my own experience, when I would want to go to meetings with my coach and talk about what I had coming up in my business, the things that were hustle-y I often wanted to downplay or not get coaching at all about.

Also, typically, I would have awareness ahead of time that it was going to be a no, all right? Hustle tends to show itself, reveal itself if you’re looking for the indicators and the markers for it, right? If you’re waiting for approval, it’s likely because, possibly because it’s a hustle-y idea, right? It requires a lot of work, and you don’t have enough time to do it well.

On the other hand, hard work, because it’s not coming from that urgent and important place, right? That place in your mind where you say, “I lack without this or I can’t obtain this result without doing all this extensive work,” hard work gets a thorough investigation of the desire to do it, the commitment to do it, and then there’s a firm decision to follow through. Hustle involves less decision-making. The way that it’s posed to your brain or your brain poses it to you is that everything is urgent and important. Every action is a must do, and there are no decisions about whether, do you have the desire to do it, the commitment to do it, and then are you going to follow through because this just all has to be done right now or you won’t create the results?

So that’s something else to think about, is that hustle comes from “I can’t obtain this result without…” Hard work is “I can obtain this result, and I want to…” right? Whatever comes at the end of that. So, for example, I believe and have always sold out my 200k Masterminds without doing anything but a really great prelaunch with my podcast and my emails, and then an awareness of when the dates are for opening, and then a very short open and close with really great sales emails. I’ve never done trainings and things like that. Coming from that place of 200k always sells out, and I love to sell and market 200k.

And from thinking about the future, I wanted to do a training in November, and I did the Creating Demand workshop. And I knew it was going to take, I had the desire, I had intense commitment to do it. There was a firm decision to do it, and then I followed through in an insane way. My students then looked at that and were like, “Oh, I must do trainings or I must do webinars in order to sell my group programs.” And I had to remind them, no, no, no, I sold out 200k for eight rounds without doing this, right? This wasn’t about I can’t obtain this result without this.

So you always want to question just the thought, “I can’t obtain this result without x amount of work.” Doesn’t mean you don’t do the work, that you don’t want to do the work. It doesn’t mean you don’t put a ton of hard work into your selling and into your launches. It just isn’t fueled from the thought “I can only get this result if I do this work.” It’s just a subtle difference. It’s literally like sneaking work in versus planning work out, and the sneaking will always come from I have to do more to create the result I want.

I also think we’re afraid of hard work because we’re afraid of the energy it takes. And I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. This has been a recent breakthrough for me, is it takes the same amount of energy to not have what we want that we desire. It takes as much energy to think about the work involved. It takes as much energy to hold ourselves back from doing the work than just getting it done.

Hard work is temporary. Hustle is permanent until you change your thinking. Hard work has to be sustained with grounded thoughts, the belief of what will be accomplished, and what goal will be achieved. Hustle isn’t sustainable because those beliefs were never there in the first place.

And this I want everyone to hear. This is such an important statement that I really need you to hear in your bones. Hard work can never create physical harm to your body because it isn’t work that is coming from lack. So you would never do an amount of hard work that would put your body in harm’s way in order to accomplish something. When you put your actual body in harm’s way to do something, it is coming from being fueled by a hustle-y thought, always. And hustle is one of the hardest things to pull ourselves back from, right? Which is why we stop differentiating the line between work and rest, and becomes harder to pull ourselves back because of the thoughts fueling them.

Can you work 18 hours a day if you desire to accomplish something, and you’re committed and you feel grounded in the net positive that it will create for you? The answer is yes. But then you will take time to rest. You will give yourself rest from pride, from holy shit, I did that, and now I’m going to go rest. Hustle comes from lack, so it’s just never enough.

So after one 18-hour day, you need to do another and another and another. And that’s just an example. I’m not suggesting you all work 18-hour days. I just am giving you an example. I think we think in society if I work an 18-hour day, it will cause me bodily harm, and it won’t. There are doctors who work 24-hour shifts, and it doesn’t create them bodily harm.

I also gave this example recently on one of my calls, where someone was getting coached on that they were waking up at 4 AM and stopping work at 8 PM. And I gave them two examples of how they had the thought, like, “I’m causing harm to my body.” And I gave them two examples that I think might help you all.

The first example I gave them is I said, I asked how many mothers were on the call, and I told the person I was coaching, I guarantee if you ask them, mothers feel like they get up and might actually get up at 4 AM and not stop being on for work or for babies until 8 PM until their babies go to bed. That’s literally what they do every day of their lives. Get up at 4 and stop at 8, or get up at 5 and stop at 9, or whatever it is, right? And they sustain that for years and years and years and years.

The other example I gave is of the COVID frontline workers. Right? Like they were working so hard, some of them sleeping in hospitals, doing things they’d never, ever done before. My sister is a COVID nurse. She was working three hospitals at the same time, hospitals that she doesn’t normally work at. They just were understaffed or overoccupied and needed the help. And so instead of working two to three days a week, she was working a lot of days a week at a lot of different hospitals. And she’s okay. What do you imagine the frontline workers were thinking?

In my, I don’t know for sure, but in my opinion, they were just getting the work done. They were thinking about other people. They weren’t thinking that I don’t have the capacity to do this, or I can’t do this, or it’s too much. And it wasn’t coming from not-enoughness, it was coming from, I have so much to give, I can give more. Right? Like I can show up at other hospitals that I don’t have to show up to and that I don’t normally work at and that I don’t know the people and I don’t know the processes and I don’t know how anything, but I’m just going to show up and be there. Here I am, here to help. Like, let’s get my hands dirty. Let’s go. Let’s save some lives, right?

So one of the things to think about in those two situations is there’s a lot of hours clocked and no one is dying from the hard work, from the hours worked. So we just have to stop telling ourselves that story, and stop telling ourselves that sentence. Now, I will say, people who get long-term chronic illnesses from not sleeping enough, overworking, I do believe there’s probably that out in the world, but I think that comes from like the long-term sustained overworking is hustle, right? It’s not coming from hard work. It’s coming from hustle. The thought fueling it, the feelings fueling it matters.

Bringing it back to business, I’ve had weeks where my COO and I are working until 9 PM to get something done, right? We’re working during the day, we’re working our normal work hours, working hard. We might have dinner and then we’re coming back to the work when we created our company manual, when we might be in a launch. But we don’t live like that. We measure what we will contribute in time and energy, and then we decide if we want to do it as it’s all optional, versus we have to do it or we will die and we can never stop.

Another thing I want to touch on is many of you have had times in the past where you have, the way you would describe it is either overworked or hustled, not been able to stop yourself, or been in a situation at work where you were able to stop yourself, and then you burnt out or had a really negative experience. And so you were afraid to go through that experience again, and you shy away from hard work from here on out. And if you’ve been in this situation, here’s what I want to offer: my thoughts that have really served me.

I love my hustle. It’s protective. It’s primal. It just wants to help me so bad. I also know my hustle. I’m aware of it. So when I pick up on it, a few simple shifts in thinking will get me back on track, will fuel me with better energy to complete tasks quickly and efficiently, and leave me energized after that work versus depleted. I will always notice my hustle way before I burn out. What? But if I don’t, I will recover.

I’m always in charge of the breaks, time off, and rest I give myself. And I’m also okay with not having breaks, time off, and rest. I actually schedule those first. I schedule my time off, my breaks, my rest. And I get to look at my business and my goals and my week and decide the ratio of that time, every week, fresh and anew. Someone who hustles less than me is not better than me. They just have different thoughts than me, right? Don’t ever use me against you. Stacey doesn’t hustle, and I hustle. Stacey just has different thoughts than me. What might those be?

One of my best thoughts is if I ever create negative results or byproducts from hustling, I will just fix them. I know how to course correct. The difference in hustle and hard work and the results I create is how I feel and what I’m thinking when I do the work. I never have to stop the work. I always have to change my thinking and what’s driving the work. And of course, it’s not sustainable. I will not make myself sustain it ever.

Now, here are my thoughts about hard work. I love to work hard. I love the energy and vitality it creates. I love the person I become in it and after it. I love the creations I get out into the world because of it. I love going to bed and knowing I used myself up fully. Hard work allows me to enjoy time off even more. And not because I’ve earned it, but because of my knowing I showed up and gave it my all. I have no lingering thoughts of things being left on the table, unfinished, and unaccomplished. Hard work is what allows me to be more fully present.

Hard work is an investment. It pays off in less work in the future. I double down now and reap the rewards later. I do something once well, so I don’t have to do it again for a while, if ever. Like, it was hard work to do Master Coach training, 100k training, and Million Dollar training at the same time. Hardest work of my business life. Never have to do any of it again. I get the positive byproducts forever.

Now, something I also want to talk about is people often think when I say hard work that I mean work more. And that’s not always what I’m saying. Sometimes it is what I’m saying, but that’s not always what I’m saying. Okay?

We all know the difference between not using your time extraordinarily wisely and ending your day with tasks left and unfinished and thinking about all of that the rest of the night or the rest of your weekend, right? We know that experience. We also know the feeling of working so hard, so intensely, that we are exhausted at the end of the day, but we are done. And on to the time we have given ourselves to rest fully. And we do. We let ourselves rest and play and think of other things and come back to our hard work refreshed.

Hustle never lets you stop thinking of work. Hard work leaves you feeling entitled to it in the best way. And I love to just tell myself, “Hard work is always my choice, and I love my reasons.”

Now, a way that students often mistaken hard work for hustle, this is like a small, tiny nuance, is when hard work requires you to increase your capacity to work. That will feel like stretching yourself, and it will feel like a workload that you can’t keep up with. It might even leave you feeling especially exhausted at the end of the day. To help understand the difference, you have to go back to, “Where is this coming from?” Is it driven by excitement, belief, groundedness, or not-enoughness?

I teach my students to believe there is a line of clients waiting for them at the door. When they don’t believe the line, you will hustle to try and create a line that isn’t there. When you believe the line is conditional to you opening the doors now or else, you will hustle. When you believe in the line and that people will wait for it unconditionally, it won’t make you stop working. It will compel you with excitement to work hard to get the work done to be ready for them. I want you to consider that. That is how I feel 80% of the time that I work. The line is there, people are waiting for it, and I am compelled with excitement to work hard to get the work done to be ready for them.

Now, I do have a story that I wanted to tell that’s not business necessarily related, that is about growing my capacity. I recently, I’ve grown my capacity many times, and how I know that is because at every level of income, I’ve been able to get more and more done, accomplish more, and that more that gets accomplished is more valuable to my students, creates more value in the world, my clients get better results. I’ve seen that over and over and over. And I’ve gone from working 18-hour days to 8-hour days, 5 days a week to 6-hour days, 3 days a week, while all of the other things have increased, right? The value has increased. What I get done has increased. The value of what I get done has increased.

So I’ve done that over the years many times in my business, but I’ve been recently challenged by my capacity with becoming a new mom. And so I’ve had massive breakthroughs every corner that I turn, every new phase of momhood about my capacity now to get things done, and also be fully present as a mom, and also have time for myself. Like, I feel like most days, I’m rocking that and doing really well, really proud of myself, and getting everything I need.

But I have a story about my most recent breakthrough that actually changed me and my understanding about our capacity to do more. When I was nursing a few months ago, I got a virus that lasted four entire weeks. I have never been so sick, even with the flu and COVID, and it wasn’t either of those. I got tested many times. My entire body felt absolutely lifeless. It’s literally the only way I can describe it. I felt sucked from every ounce of energy and wellness possible. And I was nursing every three hours.

My supply dipped so low we had to start supplementing so my baby could eat. And I would be up in the middle of the night, right? Like every 2.5 hours into my sleep, getting up again to nurse and crying. Like my body slumped over, desperately wanting to sleep for 12 hours straight, desperately wanting physical rest. And I remember one morning, I was up again when I didn’t want to be, just feeling deathly is the only way I can describe it. I just broke down crying to my nanny, and I told her, “I have nothing left in me. I’m breaking. I’m at my breaking point. I just can’t go on. Like I’m broken.”

And she said to me, “But what if you aren’t? What if instead you were finding a new capacity you had no idea you had?” And she was right. Just questioning, what if I’m just finding a new capacity? What if there really is more inside me? Even when I’m at the very brink and I believe there is not one ounce left in me, what if there is?

Not only did I have the capacity to keep breastfeeding, but I also had the capacity to bring my supply back. And I did. And I didn’t die. And with that belief, once I had that instilled in me, I also decided to let Neil give him bottles in the night temporarily so I could sleep through some of the night. And I did, without a single regret. And when I was well, I continued on. Increasing my capacity helped me do something I literally didn’t think was possible. And it also helped me allow myself to rest. Hustle would not have allowed me to rest.

Hustle also doesn’t make you prioritize. It wants you to do everything always now. And you won’t have time left over to stop. And remember, it won’t also let you think about the future of your business, make long-term decisions, evaluate what’s working and what’s not, and change direction. It will also not allow you the space for such awareness. I will get a lot accomplished.

We are doing a lot of funnel creation and content creation and back-end business reorganization all at the same time. And I’m blocking off weeks at a time to record 2 Million Dollar Group content, to record new content for 200k, to create new sales funnels. And when I’m not doing those things, my schedule is packed with coaching calls. I’m coaching in 2k, 200k, my new 25k group inside 2k for 2k, and my 2 Million Dollar Group. And I’m coaching for my coach at The Life Coach School. And I’m coaching on stage.

And we just hired a new VP, a new vice president, for three months to come in and get us ready for thirty million dollars. Like, it’s like a hard, intense, fast three months. And I’m meeting with him every week, making myself available for him to be successful for what he does. And we’re hiring and we’re training.

Like, there has literally never been a year where I will do more hard work. I’m so proud already. That’s also how you know the difference between hustle and hard work. You can think of your laundry list of hard work, and you will feel proud before you’ve even gotten started, versus often hustle will make you feel embarrassed, ashamed, or you’ll have to disguise it before you even get started.

But I just keep thinking about my thirty-million-dollar self and just how hard she works. She gets way more done than me. Like when I imagine her, I’ve done this exercise with my coach, I imagine her in her new office. I imagine her every time, she’s sitting there just working away. Like I see it, not in a negative way, not in a chained to her desk way, but in a way where she just gets to work with way less drama. She gets it done. She thinks about work actually way less than me. She’s done the hard work to create the systems and processes and a team that allows her to stop thinking about the things she thinks about now. She’s coaching all the time, and she loves it. Client call after client call, she is sharpening her skills. She gets in and she fixes her funnels when they need attention. She mentors people on her team to be better and to grow more. And she does it all in three days a week.

Now, it’s important to note that to create her, I’m going to work more than three days a week this year. I’m going to work some weekends to fit events in. I’m going to work five days straight to get things filmed. I’m going to work some holidays when my team is off so that I can work quietly and efficiently and get that extra day. I’ve had lots of holidays off. I don’t need them all off, right? I can do that, and I’m not afraid to do it. The last two years, I gave myself over 20 weeks off. I love that I know how to make twelve million dollars, giving myself that much time off. Literally, best skillset to develop ever. And I’m not afraid to go back to working more than that because I know when this work is done, I will be at thirty million dollars and three days a week again. And I’ll have another baby. I’ll do it even better than the last maternity leave I did and the last way I did it.

That’s what’s so exciting about hard work. It really allows you to get the work done, to be the person that you’re becoming that you want to become, and have enough energy to do it. Hustle will suck all of that out of you, and you will stay mostly the same, but with more money. I want you to transform who you’re going to be on the other side. I want each new version of you to be more capable, have more capacity, more productive, more valuable in less and less time. That’s what hard work does for you, my friends. All right, have an amazing week, y’all.

Hey, if you’re ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2K for 2K program; where you’re going to make your first $2,000 the hardest part using my simple five-step formula for getting consults and closing new clients. Just head over to StaceyBoehman.com/2Kfor2K. We’ll see you inside.