Why Hustle Culture Doesn’t Work Anymore

Andréa Jones [00:00:00]:
This episode is a little bit of a love letter to Gary Vee because we need to talk. The hustle gurus in the room, please sound off. Because of this episode, I'm not talking about 18 hour work days or work weeks or whatever. I'm talking about a more fun, more peaceful way to market your business without the burnout. So let's get into that and more in today's episode of the podcast. But first, a word from our sponsor. Riverside is the all in one podcast recording and editing tool that I use for this right here show. I use it to edit not only the audio in the video, it is like Chef's Kiss magical, making the entire process so, so easy.

Andréa Jones [00:00:41]:
Plus, I love their magic AI clips. Their little AI robot in the background pulls out the most impactful moments of the episodes without me having to comb through and do it myself. Resizes them for social media. So those vertical videos you see on TikTok and Reels, those all come from Magic AI inside of Riverside. It's literally one click. It spits out 10 clips. I picked the best one and away I go. Saves me so much time.

Andréa Jones [00:01:08]:
If you want to get on the Riverside train, check it out today, the links in the show notes and make sure to use my code, DREA D R E A at checkout to get 15% off your membership. Hello, fam. I want to talk about hustle culture a little bit and Burnout because I think this is something I've been seeing a lot this year, specifically content creator burnout. And it feels like all of a sudden everyone is doing the side eye to like post every day mantras. And I love that journey for us. So I want to talk about that. I just also want to say I'm a Gary Vee fan. Like not against Gary Vee.

Andréa Jones [00:01:47]:
I think a lot of what he teaches is actually very helpful advice, especially for new budding business owners, entrepreneurs new to marketing. I think that the core of his message is great. I've actually met him in person. I have a very terrible blur picture of the time that he came to Niagara on the lake and he spoke and I met him there with my friend Afton. And it was great. It was fun. It was a fun event. It was really cool to meet him and I couldn't even do his advice.

Andréa Jones [00:02:17]:
When I was, you know, child free and had, you know, 40, 50, 60 hours a week to work on my business, I still couldn't follow his, his advice. And so if you're like that where you're. He. He's constantly posting Every day, responding to every comment, creating content out the wazoo. If you try that and you go, woo, this is not for me. And I still want to have fun. That's what I want to talk about today. And I feel like overworking is glorified.

Andréa Jones [00:02:43]:
Um, and so I want to talk about the hustle hype first and then get into why this is happening and what you can do about it. So first, let's talk about the hustle hype. Gary Vee has this in intense content output, and he's championing posting multiple times daily to multiple feeds. His whole strategy is about speed over depth, and it's really, honestly a great approach for visibility. Think 10 TikToks a day, right? That's something that he literally has suggested. And a lot of people follow this strategy. I know a couple people who are like, yeah, I post a TikTok, you know, five, six, seven times a day. And it works for me.

Andréa Jones [00:03:24]:
And I am not here to deny that amount of content can work. The strategy behind it is that there's two things that are happening. One, you're literally spending so much time creating content on the apps that you will be rewarded for it, even if your content isn't that great. Okay? If you produce that high volume of content, it sends a signal to the algorithms. The algorithms are programmed to look for content creators who produce high volume of content and reward them in some way to keep them producing that content because the apps make money the longer people stay on the apps. Now, I will say the algorithm is also looking for quality, which we'll talk about in a second, but it does reward quantity. The second thing that this strategy does is it helps you learn. As a content creator, I am of the very firm belief that you don't learn how to produce content until you actually produce content.

Andréa Jones [00:04:21]:
Right? Like, you can't just study it and then create your first video flawlessly. It is a practice. And those first couple of posts, you are going to feel terrible. I always reference my first video I posted in 2007. Y' all is terrible. It's terrible. And not a video that I proudly share with everyone, with the people, however, because I've been creating videos since 2007, sitting down to even record this podcast episode is very familiar process to me because I've been doing it for a very long time. At this point, almost two decades.

Andréa Jones [00:04:59]:
Okay. And so it takes practice to create the amount of content. So if you take the Gary Vee approach of a really highly high level of content output, you're going to learn really quickly. What content works? The algorithm is going to reward you for that. Okay, now I also got to talk about the Alex Harmozi in the room. I don't even know how to say his name. Hormozi. I keep seeing it written.

Andréa Jones [00:05:22]:
Anyways, he recently had a launch campaign that everyone was drooling over and basically he breaks down how he produces the high volume of content. But he uses a content repurposing strategy that Gary V. He kind of does, but he really just creates a lot more content with this. So Alex Hermosi's approach to this is that he's creating one big piece of content and then repurposing that into little snippets. Alex Hermosi's kind of view of marketing is still very similar to Gary Vee's in that he produces a ton of high quality content in his latest launch. This happened last month In August of 2025, he launched his $100 million Money Models book. To launch it, he hosted a YouTube marathon, a live stream that had over a hundred thousand views. The live stream alone brought in $81 million of revenue in 24 hours.

Andréa Jones [00:06:29]:
And people are praising his marketing. But I hate to break it to you, the reason this works is because Alex Harmozzi. Who? Karmazi. I really should have looked this up before. He has built an incredible personal brand that has been sharing content for years. In fact, I remember when I was running my agency, my clients would come to me and ask me for videos designed and styled like his because of the way that he was approaching content. And creating the micro videos was so unique that people were like, hey, I want to do this too. But I think that there is some confusion in the room when it comes to why this is successful.

Andréa Jones [00:07:11]:
People keep pointing to him as evidence that producing a lot of content is what makes him successful, when that is only part of the story. He has other businesses that he's able to leverage to have capital to put into the the amount of marketing that's needed to have a large launch. This large. He hasn't released the numbers of how much money he put into his marketing, even if he just released it for this launch. You cannot refute the fact that he has spent years and years building a personal brand, an educational brand that gives him the authority to be able to do this if you were to do the exact same thing in the exact same way, in the exact same order, even if you spent the exact same amount he spent on his marketing for this launch. Most of us don't have the community backing that he has in order to do a launch like this. And honestly for me it was giving a little bit of mlm. Like I made this much money.

Andréa Jones [00:08:13]:
I can teach you how to do it too. Anyways, I have to acknowledge that these strategies are in the room because sure you could flood the Internet with all the content, but the cost of that is to use the content creator and you as the human surprise. You're going to get burned out when you try to produce that amount of content without the teams that are behind these two gentlemen. So let's talk about the burnout backlash and why this 24. 7 hustle all the time mentality is not sustainable. A few stats for you. Over 52% of creators experience creator burnout and nearly two in five have thought about quitting entirely. This is current data from 2025 and it should be a wake up call that the hustle stuff is cracking the Hustle all the time mentality working from the beach mentality.

Andréa Jones [00:09:03]:
It's breaking down. And I'll put the links to all the resources in the show notes as well. There was a quote from a YouTuber, Mel Melanie Murphy. She said specifically there's no off button to this job. You can't just pause the Internet because you get sick. And this is the challenge with trying to play the Hustle game is that if you do decide you're going to go on TikTok and create six TikToks a day, if you take a break, the algorithm is going to stop rewarding you and it's actually going to be harder to jump start that level of activity again. Okay, the algorithm rewards constant activity, which is why I always recommend to go consistently, but at your own frequency. Okay, the algorithm rewards consistency constant activity, meaning taking breaks does harm your algorithmic activity, unless those breaks are also consistent.

Andréa Jones [00:10:03]:
For example, I tend to post videos Monday through Friday. Sometimes I'll post on Saturday or Sunday, but mostly Monday through Friday. And even then it's usually two to three times a week. Because I consistently post that, I don't have to deal with the algorithmic backlash of that my other account. So I started it, or I restarted our account for the Mindful Marketing Lab, thinking I'm going to just jumpstart this account, revitalize it, revive it. It's been ghosted. And part of the reason for that is because I haven't posted to that account in over year and a half. And so it can be very challenging as a business owner to stop posting and then start again.

Andréa Jones [00:10:41]:
Right? So what I recommend is instead of aiming for six TikToks a day. Find a frequency that you can consistently do. The algorithm will still reward you for that consistency. There's also something creatively that happens when you're creating that much content. It becomes your whole job. And anyone in the creative space can talk to you about the fatigue or brain fog that comes when creativity is your job. There's something that happens when creativity is your job and you have to meet a certain deadline or output. If you force yourself to turn out that output without understanding your own boundaries, you end up having creative blocks and you.

Andréa Jones [00:11:21]:
And it's really challenging to get through those creative blocks. I'm learning this now as I as I'm exploring writing romance novels. It's a very energetic shift when it comes to writing for me versus creating content. I've been creating content, like I said, for over 20 years. So my. I know myself, I know my creative limits. If I try to post six TikToks in a day, I know I'll burn out writing. I haven't learned that yet.

Andréa Jones [00:11:45]:
And I went through a period of time after writing my first book where I had creative burnout. I thought I could just keep writing every day. But there it comes in peaks and valleys for me. And I'm learning that if I want to publish consistently, I have to lean into those peaks and values valleys and really understand what a consistent public publishing schedule looks like for me. Not just what everyone says I quote unquote should do in order to produce a book that I'm proud of. Right. We're also seeing this happen just culturally, like a cultural shift and the hustle mentality. I blame Gen Z, Origin Z.

Andréa Jones [00:12:18]:
If you're Canadian like I am Gen Z and younger millennials are kind of pushing back on this like hustle culture grind, culture mentality. And we see it in the workplace. Gen Xers, boomers, they're complaining about the lack of work ethic from the younger generation. But I don't think it's work ethic. I think it's showing work ethic that they're actually upset with. And I'll use religion as an example here because I think it can really paint the picture of something. If you are a person who has a belief system, a lot of times in order to signal that you have the belief system, you have to show that you have the belief system system. Even though in many religions you don't need to go to church, you don't need to like pray out loud, you don't need to do all of these activities to Prove that you're in the religion.

Andréa Jones [00:13:07]:
If you have the belief, you'd have it, and if you don't, you don't. And yet, as humans, we don't believe that someone else has the same belief as us unless they start signaling out that they do. And to me, that becomes performative. And it's one of the biggest issues that I have with organized religion. But we won't get into that in this podcast. What I'm saying is I feel like hustle mentality is only the performance of hustle and not the actual hustling itself. I'm on my soapbox. Listen, we don't have to perform hustle.

Andréa Jones [00:13:38]:
What I'm talking about is we see people working hard. I have to stop myself from doing this. When someone asks me how I'm doing, my automatic responses, I'm busy, I'm busy, but good. I say that to almost everyone. If you've talked to me recently, you probably heard me say that I'm busy but I'm good. To me, that's almost like signaling to other people that I'm hustling. If I said I'm chilling, I'm relaxed, I'm enjoying my life. This is also another signal to other people.

Andréa Jones [00:14:03]:
We start judging people when they don't seem like they're working hard enough. Even though we don't see what their day to day life is like. Even though we don't see them working hard. Sometimes we have to signal and perform hard work so other people can see it. Those of you who have traditional nine to five jobs know this. When your boss is going to walk by, what do we do? We start typing. We start typing and clicking random stuff to show that we're working when we're not. We're performing work, we're not actually doing work.

Andréa Jones [00:14:29]:
And so I think this is where social media becomes dangerous because it's a platform for you to perform your hustle and for you to get the immediate dopamine, dopamine feedback that you're doing it. Oh, look, you did something in your business today. You posted on social media. And I'm not dogging social media. I know, I love it. I love social media. But what I love about it is mostly the stuff you can't see. The DMS behind the scenes, okay, that's not performative because no one else can see it.

Andréa Jones [00:14:56]:
I can see in the person I'm dming can see it. Y' all don't see it. And so I don't have to perform on social media and show you what my hard work looks like and show you how awesome everything is. Because for me, I know the role that social media plays in my business and it is a supporting role. It is not the star of the show. Okay. I think this whole conversation is actually really interesting. And the next generation, like I said, is having a lot of these conversations and there's this anti hustle.

Andréa Jones [00:15:27]:
Can I say the word? Zeitgeist. There's this anti hustle conversation happening that is I talk about like finding the balance between hustle and the soft life. It's that soft life piece that is like a countermeasure to all of the burnout that people are feeling. But I want to warn you that I'm not talking about not working in this episode. I'm talking about finding the balance between working and posting on all your marketing all the time and not posting anything at all. What I'm not saying give up on social media or don't do marketing. I'm saying you need to find the consistent frequency that works for you. Don't say swing too far the other way and go, I saw this one post that was like bare minimum Monday and I immediately went, oh, like bare minimum.

Andréa Jones [00:16:12]:
Like, I'm not putting the bare minimum into my work. I do a lot of work. I do great work. But I also have a life and I have two very young kids and I spend a lot of time on that as well. So let's talk about the alternatives to this and I want to also invite you at this time to download my new freebie. It's called the Do Less Market Better Toolkit. It is the first hint that you'll get at the evolution of my own brand and world and company as I head into the next phase of what does marketing look like here, now and today. This kit will help speed along that process.

Andréa Jones [00:16:48]:
You can find it@onlinejoy.com free and get it today. All right, so let's talk about some mindful alternatives to doing less and marketing better. The first one is quality over quantity. And this is where long form content is really going to come into play. I am a huge fan of a signature content piece. Y' all know this. I love a signature content piece. When I'm working with my clients one on one or whether you're in one of my programs.

Andréa Jones [00:17:13]:
Where we start is your signature content piece. When you can't identify this, this is usually a red flag or yellow flag to me that you're doing too much in your marketing. You're doing the most. You're trying to put everything on the same playing field when your marketing really should be higher or so. For example, for me, my podcast, my weekly podcast is my signature content piece. My second signature content piece is my email. Okay. Podcasts and email newsletter are pretty much neck and neck for me.

Andréa Jones [00:17:40]:
With the podcast coming ahead just a little bit more. I don't miss the main attraction. This is my starring starring role energy. We do not run the show without the star. Okay? For me, my podcast, when people come into one of my programs or they hire me, they quote back the podcast to me. They mention it in newsletters, they say in our onboarding form. I've been listening to the podcast for years and I finally joined right to me, this is where it all lives. And this is kind of the Alex Hero strategy of it all.

Andréa Jones [00:18:12]:
Create one solid long form piece of content and then repurpose it. Yes. This is kind of what we're doing on a smaller scale, like on a solo entrepreneur scale or a small team scale. I'm not talking about massive scale. He has teams of people working on this, y'. All. So for us, your one signature content piece, decide what it is and this will really help you in creating a mindful marketing playground that fits in with how you do business. Okay? The second thing is re embrace your rest cycles, okay? You don't need to be at peak performance at all times.

Andréa Jones [00:18:46]:
And in fact, when I look at someone like Gary Vee, I always wonder, like, where are his kids? Like, he has kids, he has an ex wife. I know he's remarried again now, but like, I've been studying the way that he does marketing for over a decade now. And when I see the amount of content he produces, I get tired looking at it. I don't know if he still does this, but at one point he had someone filming in his entire day and turning that into content. I would watch it avidly because honestly, it is fascinating. I'm nosy. I want all of it. I want to know all.

Andréa Jones [00:19:17]:
The information, however, could not be me. Like, I'm exhausted just looking at it and I think we need to really recognize what our own rest cycles look like. What is the off season? What is the on season? What is a slow season? What is a peak season? So I don't know if this is TMI for y', all, but for me, when I'm on my time of the month, producing content is very hard for me. Especially those first couple of days, I just am in full out rage mode and I hate everyone and everything. And if I have to produce content at that Time, it's probably going to be negative. So if you see any negative content that I produce, that's probably what was happening. I know this about myself, so for me, I just plan not to produce content during that time. It works for me.

Andréa Jones [00:20:00]:
Okay. I usually also try not to have meetings or anything because, like, you know, I don't want to get all ragey on my clients. That's an off season for me. Another off season for me are my weekends. I have an optional work weekend. I usually don't work on the weekends. Sometimes I do, especially since both my kids still take a nap in the middle of the day. I've got about two, three hours in there where I technically could work.

Andréa Jones [00:20:24]:
And they both are really good sleepers. So at the end of the night, I have some time as well. So sometimes I give myself the option to work. The key here is optional. I find if I tell myself not to work, I want to work. And I find if I tell myself I have to work, I don't want to work. I don't know what it is. Something in my brain just feels rebellious about it.

Andréa Jones [00:20:45]:
So I just go work optional. And then I see how I feel. Especially if I'm really excited about launching a new thing, I'm going to, like, dive into that and be excited. But if I'm feeling drained or if I'm feeling like I need rest and a break, then I will allow myself to take that rest and take that break. And you can decide what this looks like for you. And guess what? It can change at any moment. Okay? I want you to be able to be really in tune with your body so that you understand what this means for you. I have a client, for instance, who does these calls with her clients quarterly, and she puts them all on the same week so that she knows leading up to this week, she's going to have calls with all of her clients, and then she's done for the quarter and then she can move on.

Andréa Jones [00:21:28]:
This works really well for her. A lot of times, though, we don't know what our own consistency could look like until we try it. You don't know until you try it. So go ahead and try it and figure out what it is for you. I'll say, too. Rest isn't laziness. To me, rest is a productivity tool. Okay? It's not laziness.

Andréa Jones [00:21:45]:
It's a productivity tool. And you'll find this in my Do Less Market Better toolkit. I have a tool in there that will really help you start to track when you're Resting and how that relates to your productivity coming up in the coming weeks, or even being reflective and looking back at your peaks and valleys and understanding, oh, I did too much this week. That's why the following week I didn't. I wasn't as productive because I didn't build in rest into my season of rest, okay? When you rest, too, as a content creator, you refill your creativity well. And I was talking about producing all this content and not really understanding where that comes from. Sometimes you need the rest to be more creative. This is why sometimes when you're in the shower, you get the best ideas.

Andréa Jones [00:22:35]:
It's because you're finally not looking at a screen. You don't have any other. Anything else you're doing other than washing your body, which really could be on autopilot at that point, because we've all done it a million times. And so then because you're resting and you're allowing your brain to have that space, you come up with the best ideas. Imagine what that would look like if you built that in other ways in your business. So I want to introduce this concept of energy budgeting, okay? Energy budgeting and allocating. And this is how we do it in all of my programs. And I will say this, math is not my thing.

Andréa Jones [00:23:11]:
So again, I built a tool to help with this. But I want you to think of this like any. Like a monetary budget. When you allow yourself to rest, that is giving yourself room to build interest in creativity. So when you're budgeting for rest, you're giving yourself time and space for creativity, okay? And you have to kind of acknowledge that you need both in your business and with your marketing. So, for example, instead of forcing yourself to post every day, let's take a break, okay? And take that energy and put it into one really solid podcast, right? This is what I do. I'm not putting all my energy and creating little pieces of content every day. I put my energy into one solid podcast.

Andréa Jones [00:23:58]:
For me, that's exciting because I can use my podcast as, like, my main star of the show for my. My thoughts, my frameworks, my ideologies. Then from there, that gets turned into social media posts. So the energy that I'm putting in is paying off dividends because then I can repurpose it into so many other ways, and it's exciting for me to do that. So I'm not chasing all of the trends. I'm not trying to be on all of the platforms equally. I'm not trying to also write a blog post and also create a YouTube video and also have a sub stack and also, you know what I mean, like the podcast is it. Even my newsletter.

Andréa Jones [00:24:37]:
I use stories from my week from my real life as inspiration for the newsletter. And guess what? I talk about the podcast there too. So for me and the playground that I've built in my marketing, my podcast is it for you. It may look differently, but you have to decide what that looks like. Okay, then from there I choose what I'm doing to attract new people. So instead of again, instead of putting all my time and energy into creating those six or whatever tips toks a day, I'm creating my weekly podcast. I do some additional supporting content from there. And then I use fun ways to attract new people.

Andréa Jones [00:25:12]:
I love speaking in summits. I love being a part of bundles. But even when I do that, I pick topics that I'm very familiar with that I already have slides created for and that sort of thing. Okay, so let's tie this all together and this is the marketing playground framework. And if you want to see this deeper it is in the Do Less Market Better kit, you can go to onlinedrea.com free and grab it there. But explicitly, there are three key things from this episode that I want you to take away that builds your marketing playground. The first one is having a signature content piece that showcases your unique perspective, your, your POV and your business that not only builds your authority, but also conserves your energy so that you're not stretched thin and trying to do the most. The second is you need an attraction strategy so that your signature content gets seen.

Andréa Jones [00:26:03]:
We. We don't want to avoid the shout void mentality and pick sustainable strategies that attract new people into our community. Maybe it's SEO, maybe it's guesting on other podcasts. Maybe it's engaging in one particular community. Maybe it's live streaming into new platforms. Whatever the case may be, it has to feel enjoyable and aligned with you without draining you. And you're reaching new people and you still have energy at the end of the day to do everything else in your business. So signature content, attraction strategy, and then energy budgeting.

Andréa Jones [00:26:36]:
This is the foundation of the playground is what keeps it running without burning out. And this is how you can literally plan your marketing like it's a money budget. We have an allowance for creating the podcast, we have an allowance for social media. We have saved up allowance for whatever else we need in our business. And we have time to rest. Okay, I'll leave you with this thought. Burnout is not a badge of honor. Burnout's not a badge of honor.

Andréa Jones [00:27:06]:
We don't have to hustle, hustle until we drop. We can have a sustainable marketing strategy that works with us and for us and for our lives. And so I want you to send me a dm, let me know what takeaway you have from this episode. And y' all know I love a good voice message on Instagram specifically, but I'm also on LinkedIn and TikTok now has voice messages as well. Send me a DM, tell me what takeaway you have from this episode, and we can chat about it. And then make sure you grab the kit as well. I want your marketing to feel playful and fun and not like a big punishment. All right, I will see you all next week.

Andréa Jones [00:27:40]:
Until then, I'm going to take a nap. That's all for today. Bye.