Feeling Burned Out in Business? How to Ditch Hustle Culture and Build God's Way

Speaker A: Have you ever felt like you are building a successful business but slowly losing your peace of mind in the process? Well, what if the way that we've all been taught to work and to build isn't actually God's way at all? Yes, we are going to be talking about hustle culture, because here is the thing. Hustle culture will reward your effort, but it will quietly rob you of your peace. Welcome to the Faith Led Founders Podcast, the show for Christian entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to grow a successful business without the overwhelm. Um, I'm Lauren, a marketing strategist and business coach with over a decade of experience helping businesses simplify their marketing and build systems that create real growth. So if you're ready, grab your coffee and let's dive in. Hello, everyone. I am so excited to talk about hustle culture because it is a huge issue. You know, I think so many of us need to rewire the way we approach work and the way we approach building a business, because I think, you know, we can look at culture as a whole and the workplace as a whole. Whether you are an employee, you are in a leadership position in corporate, or you are a small business owner, all of us are burnt out. So many of us are overwhelmed and just overstimulated. And it's because we've bought into this narrative of hustle. And hustle culture tells us we need to be on all the time. And I want to counter that because that is not biblical. For those of us who are faith led and want to own a business or build a business that honors God, we really need to take a look at what lane we're operating out out of, because hustle culture is going to destroy us and it is going to get us out of alignment with God. Now, as I was preparing for this podcast, I am one of those people, I love to look up definitions of words, of phrases. And so I looked up what the definition of hustle culture is, and here is the exact definition. Hustle culture is a societal and workplace mentality that promotes working extremely long hours in pursuit of professional success, often at the expense of personal health and well being. It emphasizes constant productivity as a badge of honor, fostering the idea that one must sacrifice leisure and self care to achieve maximum potential. Now, how does that sound? To me, that sounds like something I do not want to be a part of. But guess what? I found myself a slave to hustle huh Culture for quite a long time. And I can say that I have broken free from it. But it was something I had to get really honest and transparent with myself and take a look in the mirror and go, okay, I am struggling with that constant need for productivity and why is that? And so we're going to kind of talk about why hustle culture is so bad, why it doesn't align with the Bible, and what we can start to do to shift out of hustle culture into what I'm calling kingdom culture. So back maybe five years ago, when I was newly into my leadership position, I was at the peak of my career. Um, um, really just driving business growth. We had just hit a huge goal and we had boosted revenue about 700,000 within a year. And it was just such an exciting time. But during that season of my life, I was working long hours. I was probably working about 40, 45 hours in my company. Um, and I was not supposed to. I was supposed to be a 30 hour a week type of company. So I was working overtime within my small. Within that small business. And I was constantly in communication with the owner. We were texting on weekends, brainstorming ideas on weekends and evenings. And there was one moment that I was supposed to be having very intentional, like a very intentional movie night with my husband. We're sitting on the couch, we just had a nice dinner together, turned on a movie, and I grabbed my cell phone and there was an email notification that came through along with a text message notification from the business owner. And I did what I should not have done, and I opened that email, read through the content, text the owner back, and we had this back and forth conversation. And now, mind you, it was about 8:39 at night and I'm sitting next to my husband, supposed to be present and watching a movie. To which my husband then paused the movie and asked, what are you doing? Like, who are you texting this late at night? Because was just a little off for me to be doing on a Saturday night. And I responded, I am texting my boss. And that's when it dawned on me. Like I was living in Hustle. I was constantly needing to be productive to the point that it was interfering with my marriage and interfering with my weekend. And it was just taking away from me. I wasn't able to turn my mind off. And that, my friends, is a huge problem. We do not want to be operating in that way. I know when we are business owners, our business is so important to us. But the one thing that hustle culture doesn't allow is room for God to move. You know, when we are operating out of a lane of hustle culture and constant productivity, we're not, uh, allowing ourselves to actually trust God. We're not allowing ourselves to just create space for God to move in our business and to provide ideas and opportunities and growth. We are taking the will at that point and we are saying, I need to do this, I need to build the business. I need to constantly be productive to get things going. Because I don't trust entering into rest. I don't trust you, Lord, to help grow my business. And if that is the mindset that we're bringing into our business, my friend, you do not have a faith led business. You have a you led business. And I know that hurts to hear, but this is a true reality that we have to really humble ourselves and be transparent about in order to have growth because we need to shift out of that. And the thing is, is if we've been operating in that for a long time, it's not all hope is not lost. Like you can get your peace back and you can shift into kingdom culture, but you're gonna have to know how. So if you're a faith filled entrepreneur listening today, I want to invite you into the better way. Proverbs 23:4 says, don't wear yourself out trying to get rich. Be wise enough to know when to quit. And I think the thing is, and the reason why I love this Proverbs is we oftentimes don't go into starting our business chasing wealth. We go into it because we have this huge vision that God has placed on our hearts. But over time we start to shift our focus off of him. We're off of serving people onto the finances of the business. And it sort of just happens where we begin to hustle because we're chasing the money, we're chasing the numbers. And before we know it, we look back and we have been neglecting our faith, we've been neglecting our family. We're filled with anxiety, we're having trouble sleeping. These are all the signs that we need to slow down, that we are operating at a pace that was never intended for us. Now I want you to hear me. What I'm not saying is that we just coast. I don't want you to hear to be complacent in your business. I don't want you to just sit like a bump on the log and think like, oh, God's just going to provide me all the finances and stuff. While yes, he will provide the opportunities and he does have provision for your business, he also needs you to work hard. He needs you to put your hand to the plow. But the pace might look very different to the world. It might look very different if you compare yourself to, you know, business owners in the secular marketplace. And that's okay. We don't have to be moving at the speed they are. We don't have to do things exactly in the way that they are. Sometimes when we actually work with God and we partner with him in our businesses, things look a little different. And I can tell you guys, it is so worth it to just trust him. So how do we shift from this hustle culture? How do we do it? I'm going to give you today four ways to shift your mindset and your business away from hustle culture into the kingdom culture. This is going to be very important. I want you guys to take notes, pause. Like, this is very important for you guys to just lock in and to start having freedom in your business and enjoying your business again. Because here's the thing is hustle culture, not only does it rob you of your peace, it robs you of the fun of building your business. And I experienced that for myself, not only, you know, five years ago in a leadership position, just having hustle in. In my workload and hustle in climbing, climbing the business, um, you know, shifting from an employee to a leader. Starting out in building my own business, I quickly fell into hustle culture, and I had to catch myself. I had to catch myself and get real honest with God. And since I've made that adjustment and since I've slowed down, brought him into the business, man, there is so much freedom and so much joy on the other side. So here is what we are going to do. Here are your four steps to shift your business and shift your mindset. The first one, and this is going to be one of the most important ones, is you need to enter into rest as a strategy. God tells us to slow down and to just enter into his rest. And when we can do that, when we can actually take time off, when we can enjoy our evenings being fully present with our families, with our husbands, with our kids, when we can attend the soccer game on a Saturday morning and, um, just sit and sip our coffee and enjoy from that rest is actually where God provides. Now, I don't have a Bible verse reference, but I do have a Bible story reference is, you know, in the. But in the Bible, Elijah, uh, you know, he's running from Jezebel, and he is just laying down, and he's laying down up in the mountains, and he falls asleep, and there's these ravens that come every day and provide food for Him. And when I read that story and I think, man, Elijah's just laying there, he's just resting, he is recouping his energy and God's just providing supernaturally food to sustain him every single day. And in that same way, God will provide for us and for our business supernaturally. But we have to get into rest. When we get into rest, we can be so surprised and shocked with the ideas that just start flooding our minds. Well, we'll meet people at the soccer field that happen to be maybe in our industry of business or own a business that we need to partner with. I can't tell you how many times I have just kind of been doing my thing, relaxing, not thinking about my business, just being. And I meet somebody who is, you know, an owner of a Mom's Network group locally or owns a, um, I don't know, a printing company. And it's the exact resource or the exact type of connection that I have needed. And it just came from a place of rest, of just being present with my family and trusting that God will show up. And so you need to enter into rest as a strategy because when you do and we get still and silent and we just enjoy our everyday and our mundane routines, God shows up in ways that we could never fabricate. Now step two is I want you to acknowledge him in all your ways. Proverbs 3, 6 says, in all your ways, acknowledge him and he will direct your paths. Now I know it can be so easy to just wake up, get to work, get to your business and just start doing the things. But here's the thing, when we do that, we get our eyes off of God or we just kind of leave him as an afterthought in our businesses. And so when we can actually build systems and structure around spending intentional quiet time with him for ourselves, for our souls to be fed and for our, for our, you know, inner man to be lifted up and edified. And then we build systems to bring him into our decisions and our work process, our business development process. He will show up and guide you. The thing is, is God wants to partner you with you in all of it. And if we're not bringing him into our business decisions, into our financial decisions, we're leading and running our life. And he, he's not the CEO of our business. And so I think there are many of you on here who you truly and genuinely want God to be the CEO of your business. You want to have a faith led business that doesn't fill like a heavy lift. But we just are lacking the structure and the systems to do that. And a part of that looks like maybe when you get into your office, if you own a brick and mortar, you have ten, uh, minutes. You get there with plenty of time to have 10 minutes where you sit and you just pray to God and you journal everything that you feel that he places on your heart. Like, really bring him into those decisions and, you know, making. Make decisions with him. It's really important that we, uh. I mean, there's a time and a place for everything, right? There are times where you have to make a quick decision on the spot in your business. But there are many times, more often than not, that we can say, let me sleep on that, and we go home, we sit in prayer, we really meditate on it with God, and we bring him into that business decision. If it's hiring an individual, if it's, you know, the uncomfortable situation of having to let somebody go, if it's shifting around your budget and your finances to have a marketing budget or increase your marketing budget, he will guide you in all of that, and he will provide the right connections. He'll provide, um, ideas. And so when we can acknowledge him in our businesses, we shift from hustle culture to kingdom culture, because we're not trying to figure it all out ourselves. We're actually bringing him into those decisions, and we're actually showing God, like, hey, this is for you. I want you to lead me and I will follow you, Lord, as you go, as you move. Now, the third thing I want you to do is to do all things with integrity. Proverbs 10, 9 says, People with integrity walk safely, but those who follow crooked paths will be exposed. Now, you're probably wondering, why am I bringing up integrity with hustle culture? And here is the thing. When we begin to focus on numbers and the finances of the business only, and those kind of are the leading thought of our business decisions. We tend to make bad decisions. We make decisions that are more centered around us and maybe more centered around the finances rather than the things that we should be looking at. So when we're as Christian business owners, we need to have integrity in our business. Like, that should be like a core value of our business. Like, we do things around here with integrity. And we need to look at our business and make decisions through a lens of 3. There are three things that need to win in our business. The people we serve, the employees we have, and the business. The business is ultimately going to be the business as a whole. And you. So you're in there. You're lumped in with the business. But when you make changes to your business, whether it's to add a service, to remove a service, to cut back hours, to, I don't know, invest in. In new products or new technology to grow your business, those things are great. But we don't want to be just focused around making quick cash. We want our decisions to be anchored in integrity. Because at the end of the day, and I know many business owners or small business owners may not see themselves as a leader, but you are in a leadership position of your small business, no matter the size of your business. And so as a leader, do your decisions have this foundation of integrity? Are you considering the people in your business, the customers in your business, or are we just focused on cash? You know, you need to have a lot of integrity around your behaviors, around your decisions when it comes to your business. And when we are hustling and when we're trying to move quick and make fast cash and make quick decisions, I can't tell you how many times I've seen employees get hurt from, you know, a leader who was making quick decisions or cutting corners to try to get a project done quick. And, you know, it just resulted in strained relationships. And our businesses are built to serve people. And so this is something that is super important to me. Like the people of your business, the people who work in the business, and the people the business was built for, they matter so much. And so when we have integrity, we actually slow down our business growth. And we're okay with that because we take good care of our people. And so when we do that, we naturally shift away from hustle culture and into the kingdom culture because God cares about people right now. The fourth and the last thing that kind of shifts you out of hustle culture is going to be honoring the season that you are in. The book of Ecclesiastes, um, is one of my favorite books, and it's something that I reference all the time is there is a season, and in time for everything. You know, Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, for everything, there is a season. A time for every activity under the sun. Now, as business owners, this looks like honoring the season that you are in. What season are you truly in? If you're, you know, a startup, your. Your season's going to be a little harder. It's. It's going to be busier. You're going to have to shift things around in your personal life just a little bit for a short period as your business is growing, as you're laying down a solid Godly foundation and sustainable foundation for your business. There is going to be a season, you know, for, for myself I'll share. When I first became a mom, I was a leader and I was overseeing a team of maybe eight or nine individuals at that time. And when I came back from maternity leave, I thought I could hit the ground running the way I did before, working all of the hours that I had prior to kids. And it hit me like a ton of bricks to realize like, oh man, I am in a very different season of my life. Like I need to do things a little slower, I need to cut back my hours a little bit and I need to be super intentional with uh, the time that I do have to work on the business. Because the truth of the matter was I still had goals that I needed to hit. I still had to report out and grow the business, you know, working for this office. But my season was looking different because now I had less hours, a little bit less energy because, you know, if you are a mom to a three month old baby, you know, they wake up multiple times throughout the night and your body is just healing and you're just exhausted and so things looked a little different. But if we can slow down and honor whatever that season looks like that we're in, in our business and in our lives as a whole. You know, hustle culture tells you just keep being productive, ignore your health, neglect your family, go, go, go. But kingdom culture is going to say slow down, get more intentional, delegate where possible. When we can do that, the growth is going to be phenomenal and the peace you're going to maintain your, your peace that God wants you to have when you can do those things. So today's episode, I just really want to encourage those business owners who are listening. Like if you're overwhelmed, if you have no peace, if you're feeling anxious all the time, it's time to slow down. It's time to look in the mirror and, and evaluate how you're showing up in business and life and get honest. If you are living in hustle culture because God doesn't want you there and I don't want you there, you are a faith led founder and you have this business because God gave it to you and he wants you to have so much impact in your community and the people around you, you just need to slow down, get a little more intentional to seek him and know that he will work out the rest. So I hope that if anything, this encourages you, it gives you practical tips you can apply into your business today so you can shift into Kingdom culture and. And having more joy, more peace, and more intentional time with your family, because our families are so important. And so I hope that it was helpful for you guys. I love you guys. I look forward to seeing you guys in next week's episode. Bye.