I know that people throw around the word “hustle” so much it’s candy, but honestly, that word irks me. In fact, it irks me so much that I turned down an interview with a company that used the word on their home page.
Why?
Because I don’t want to be KNOWN as the hustle and grind girl.
Yes, that USED TO BE my life. I USED to work 80-120 hours a week (yes, a week) and I did that for over 4 years. I didn’t get very much sleep. I always felt exhausted. I always felt like I was spinning in circles. YES, I was executing and getting somewhere. YES, I was making a boat load of money, but for me, I ended up really evaluating what I wanted in life.
Do I really want all the hustle and grind?
I don’t want all the hustle and grind
Do I really want to make tens of thousands of dollars every single month, that the IRS will take a good 30% of anyway, if I have to lose sleep and be frantic all the time? I mean, let’s just talk adrenal fatigue for a moment, shall we?! I was sick. I felt icky all the time. I just pushed through it on my pursuit of my dreams.
But, here’s the thing. After a certain point, if you continue burning the candle at both ends, you’ll end up dead. Our physical bodies are made to rest. So, what WOULD all that money mean…if I was dead?
I couldn’t enjoy it. I couldn’t have the life I wanted. I couldn’t spend time with my kids (my whole reason for doing this in the first place). No, I’d be dead. I’d miss their lives completely and cause them enormous pain.
We need to set our priorities straight.
The world says we are not important unless we LOOK busy, so we try to be busy. But you don’t need to hustle for your worth!
We take on WAY too much. We overextend ourselves on everything because to be “bored” makes us seem like a loser.
Well, you know what, I’m a loser.
There…I said it. I’m a loser! I’ll scream it if I have to, Sarah Titus is a loser! If I have to “hustle and grind” to be popular or cool or to be NOT seen as a loser, forget it.
It’s not the life I want and I’m asking you the same question. IS THAT…REALLY what you want?
You don’t have to be present on social media every second of every day in order to get traffic and clients. Most of my traffic is not even FROM social media and I’m sorry, but I kinda rock it over here!
You don’t have to run in circles, keeping up with the Jones’s of the blogging world.
You don’t have to do everything everyone else is doing.
There’s a certain point where you say, “STOP! I want OFF this roller coaster. I want to make MY OWN way. According to my OWN RULES and not according to the rules of the world or my friends or any other blogger or person out there. To just be myself and love my imperfections anyway.”
Now, my life is very serene. I’m still kicking butt and taking names. Seriously. But I do all my work, one project at a time. I set up a ton of systems. I batch everything. Someone randomly emails me and says, “Hey, I didn’t get the printables download. Can you resend them to me?”
Absolutely. Of course. I’d love to. BUT…I’ll do that once a week with all the other similar requests. I have a folder in my email specifically for those requests. My assistants ever so nicely, put them in the folder. I check the folder once a week.
It is massively important to me to not be spinning my wheels.
I’ve learned that so many emails I receive are people / companies freaking out and have fires to put out. And while I love the people I serve to pieces, THEIR fires are not MY fires. But, I always let them be in the past.
I’d answer that email about the newsletter right away. I’d end up spending my WHOLE DAY, JUST answering emails. Now that things are batched, I’m still THERE for my audience, still loving on them like I should, but everything is more calm now. More serene.
I went from living a crazy life, hustle and grind, to working one project at a time. And I can tell you, that most ALL big-wig entrepreneurs have the exact same system!
Owners of Facebook and Twitter do this too. They batch everything by day. I don’t know their exact schedule, but a good example would be Marketing Monday’s. So, every Monday, the only thing you work on is Marketing. That’s it. And you work on it on Monday because you want time for others to respond during the week. You wouldn’t want to work on Marketing on, say a Friday.
For me, Saturdays are my day of learning. I ONLY work on learning stuff on Saturdays. Improving my knowledge and growing my skills. That way, I know that it IS scheduled and I’m always getting to those tasks that I need to. Nothing is left off the plate. I’m getting to all my tasks, but in an appointed time.
If a fire comes up, I quickly add it to the appropriate day of the week or time of day. So, I’m not dealing with a bunch of interruptions. Everything is scheduled and planned. Because the most important thing on my agenda (for me, right now) is to get a course completed. And I know it’ll never get done if I don’t work on it and block all distractions.
You have to fight hard to block distractions, all the time. But eventually, you get really good at it, the more you do it.
All those emails that are spam, I never even see, because I have a couple assistants who just delete it (and block their email addresses from being able to email again). See how we are taking that extra step. I’m not JUST deleting. I’m blocking. Because many of them, email back 1-2 more times. “Did you get my last email?” they say. And it’s annoying and spam. Block it the first time!
If you want to have your life back, if you want to really STOP feeling like you’re spinning on some roller coaster all the time, you’ve gotta start thinking differently.
You need to set up a system and schedule. Everybody’s system will look completely different than someone else’s, and that’s okay. But, if you don’t MAKE time for the most important things and let the little things go, you’ll always be spinning your wheels, putting out other people’s fires and you’ll never get to your OWN dreams.
Yes, help others. Yes, be available for them. But you can’t BE available for your audience in the first place, if you’re too busy spinning, now can you?!
Take a step back and assess some areas that you can systematize. Do you get a lot of the same questions by email? If so, why not create a vacation auto-responder with the answers to those questions. It’s so simple to do.
I have one of those set up on my email, so I don’t have to answer as many emails back and they get INSTANT answers. It’s an incredibly simple step that saves me LOTS of time!
Here’s my exact auto-responder:
“Thank you for contacting Sarah Titus.
Your request has been received and will be reviewed by support staff during the business hours of 8 am – 5 pm MST, Monday through Friday.
For immediate help of commonly asked questions, see below…
—
TECHNICAL ISSUES DOWNLOADING
There are two most common culprits:
1) Your browser
Sometimes the issues can be tied to the extensions installed in a browser. It may also be that your current browser is not update and you’re using an older version. Try downloading in a different browser (not a cell phone). Try Chrome, Internet Explorer, or Firefox.
2) You can’t find the file location
Sometimes, it will download, but discretely, to somewhere hard to find. Try looking in Downloads under My Computer or search the title of the file on your computer for where it could be hiding.
• If that doesn’t work, you’ll want to search Google for help with your specific browser. Usually typing in the error code you are seeing is very helpful when searching.
• If you’ve purchased something from my shop (not a freebie) and are having trouble downloading something, please contact my shop help here: https://help.shopify.com/questions
MY FREE ITEM WAS NOT FREE
If you received a discount code to get an item that is normally sold in the store for free and it charged your account, and you forgot to enter in the discount code, we are unable to make adjustments for this type of error. If you entered in the discount code properly and there was a glitch in the store platform, please contact the store platform (Shopify) directly here: https://help.shopify.com/questions and they will take care of that to your satisfaction.
CAN I SHARE YOUR ESSENTIAL OIL RECIPES ON MY BLOG OR SOCIAL MEDIA PAGES?
At this time, we are unable to give permission to share the essential oil recipes. Due to heavy monitorization from the FDA, we recommend anything you share concerning essential oils online be approved specifically with your essential oil company provider.
DO YOU OFFER PRIVATE COACHING?
I have a huge love of helping others and private coaching is coming soon! Available now, is my Blog Optimization Critique. In the Blog Optimization Critique, I scour over every nook and cranny of your website for about an hour. I click through just about everything, combing the site and all your social media platforms, finding ways for you to improve both traffic and monetization using my laser sharp eyes. Then I send over a report and you get 2 follow-up emails to ask any questions you want concerning anything contained in the report, within 7 days of my sending it. To find out more information or order your critique, click here: https://www.sarahtitus.com/blog-optimization-critique/
DO YOU ACCEPT GUEST POSTS?
At this time, I only accept guest posts from other mom blogs in my niche. When emailing your pitch, please include your URL link or your email will be automatically discarded, due to spam.
CAN YOU ADD MY LINK TO YOUR RESOURCES PAGE OR ANY OTHER PAGE OR POST ON YOUR SITE?
Not at this time. The only links that ever go on my site are for products/companies that I have personally used/tried for AT LEAST 6 months.”
*Now, I’m not sharing this with you so you can rip off my words. Please don’t do that. It won’t help you anyway, as the questions will be completely different than the ones I get, but I AM saying to set up things to help you systematize your business more.
Doing this, over time, it helps cut down the number of emails coming in too. Because they have those instant answers. They know the answers are the same for everyone. I’m not being inconsistent with my RULES.
“Do you offer private coaching?” for example. I get a lot of those emails. And before, I was all over the place. One person I’d say this to. Another I’d say something else to. Depending on the amount of work I currently had on the table and you know what…it’s not right. It’s not fair to one person I do this and to another I do this other thing. I needed to streamline and keep things consistent and now I can.
This has freed up my time immensely and I hope you’ll really look at the patterns in your own business and see where you can systematize and what you can do to alleviate that feeling of always spinning your wheels. Because my friends, there IS a better way. YOU absolutely CAN get ALL your work done and NOT feel like you’re Taz from Bugs Bunny!
Here’s a song that I really love that explains it more…
