Unhustle

Hi everyone and welcome to this week’s podcast.
I’m Sabrina Chevannes-Denman.
And this is No Bullsh*t Talks, and I am so happy to welcome today.
Milena Regos, did I like pronounce correctly?
Yeah, your girl that I
feel like I did a really good job there because your name is Bulgarian, right?
Yeah.
And so you are originally from Bulgaria.
We’re back to Bulgaria you
from from Sofia.
Sofia, the capital.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It’s like I was and I wasn’t questioning myself.
I don’t like that.
Is the capital right?
I’ve been to Bulgaria so many times.
I don’t know why.
Actually every time I meet Bulgarians and I can be principal girls.
Like yeah I’ve been to eight cities.
That’s amazing.
It’s weird
in the U.S. I have to constantly explain where Bulgaria is and I better get it.
I’ve been to like six different cities and I don’t know why it’s a Bulgaria so many times but it’s a beautiful country but yeah I can imagine in America it’s a little bit different.
I mean Europe is just a very short plane away.
But but yeah, I think Bulgaria is an amazing country and there’s beautiful cities.
I like it just has so much there like, we actually took a team trip just before COVID to Bansko.
So
when I was a kid that was used to ski race and would go to Bansko for ski camps and back then it wasn’t developed.
It was just this little town.
One hotel and a restaurant in town, it was pretty rustic and and I love it.
I have some of the best memories from there.
That’s so beautiful, is that?
So, that’s that.
Why you kind of chose like, you now live in Lake Tahoe?
And I feel like there is a correlation there with the whole ski and you kind of landed in a job at a ski resort everything.
So, I want to hear about that transition because you went from Bulgaria to Lake Tahoe.
That’s a big change.
So,
I actually went from Bulgaria to San Diego.
I know I am,

I wanted to do a master’s degree in International Marketing in San Diego and I landed in JFK.
I had like a 12 hour layover and we didn’t have phones back then.
So I was sitting at the gate staring at the wall and then suddenly I realized I was really hungry and so I went to look for something to grab and back then the exchange rate was so drastic that the three dollar slice of pizza that seems like a lot of money to me, so I said, oh forget it.
I’m just going to wait for my sandwich on the plane and then I walked by the magazine rack and I saw Ski Magazine with this beautiful lake with snow capped mountains around.
It was Ski it was Lake Tahoe in California and I was going to California and I didn’t realize there was all these mountains in California.
So I gave my $3 but bought Ski Magazine and I read this story about Lake Tahoe.
And it just got in the back of my mind.
Like one day I want to visit this place so I went to do my master’s degree, I ended up working in the computer lab.
I was an IT assistant to professor and so I was spending a lot of time in the computer lab and eventually I started looking for jobs and I found one online ad that said, if you love the mountains and you have a knack for marketing, this job is for you.
And I was like, they wrote this for me.
Because I had graduated from American University in Bulgaria, you know, very interested in marketing ended up working in an advertising agency in Bulgaria before I left and then as a kid I used to ski race.
So everything kind of combined and I said well I’m going to go check out this job in Lake Tahoe.
I combined that with teaching skiing at Northstar Ski Resort for a couple years.
So I was combining skiing with working in media, so I was actually an early adopter of online marketing back in, you know.
The 97, 98 is when I got involved with digital marketing.
So that’s how I ended up in Lake Tahoe like, many years ago.
I want to say 25 years ago.
Wow.
It’s like, it was like it called out to you.
Is that your calling, it was great.
That’s yeah, that’s incredible.
And you’re right that’s really early to start online media.
I mean, I don’t even remember what it was like, yeah, I don’t.
There was no Instagram, there was no Facebook, yeah.
Going to parties and explaining to people, I would spell Google to them and I’ll be waiting.
So changing you to check it out there like they’re on Yahoo and all of this.
I was gonna say.
Yeah, I’m definitely dating myself but you know now and it’s a beautiful beautiful place.
You know every day I’m still we know.
But it tells you sometimes you have that vision of what you want your life to look like and it didn’t happen overnight.
Right?
But I had that vision and I made it happen and sometimes that’s all we need really, is that vision to make a reality.
So what was your vision?
You know what else?
As early as you can remember, what vision did you have?
And what did you think you were doing for what you were made to do for your life?

Well, I was always attracted to marketing, you know.
Because of creativity.
I always wanted to have that creativity in my life and possibly imagination unlike anything else.
And I was like okay well marketing it is and I started going down that path and I thought it was really a great career actually.
I thought it was more fun.
Technology I think changed a lot of that creative element in a very different way.
I think attention has decreased a lot and so our creativity needs to be even sharper because it’s about grabbing attention right?
Well before.
Before it was like, how am I going to create a print ad or a radio ad or TV ad?
You know a lot has changed with online media, obviously my vision coming to the U.S. was I wanted to have more freedom.
I wanted to build a lifestyle of my dreams, you know.
I wanted the American dream to me, a lot of that was associated with success, with material success.
And I went down this path of marketing career.
After the media company, I worked for another dream job of mine.
Which was acting director for a ski resort again finding marketing with skiing.
I did that for a decade, got paid to ski and and promote something that I am passionate about.
So how could you possibly go wrong with it?
It was a blast.
After 10 years, social media was picking up and I kind of got done working for corporations.
I was kind of done with the bureaucracy done with the amount of meetings done with the emails and kind of really the bullshit that comes with it since we’re on the no
bullshit.
So I decided to start my own marketing agency and I called it.
I wasn’t about marketing and so they’ll talk to, you know, take over the world.
This is Jimmy, is we do.
You know, it was my dream to build my own agency or I started consulting and then started adding people to my team and I ended up working.
I had an amazing network of people and social media was really new back then and so digital marketing was something that a lot of people wanted.
Actually had to fight with them to increase their budgets.
Like the pandemic, just did all the work that I tried to do for years but because everybody went online.
Hmm.
But I was consulting, I was doing marketing strategies consulting, content marketing strategies, all social media, and ended up working with some amazing brands and celebrities internationally.
I had the fortune enough to work with people like Madonna, Hard Candy Fitness, Steve Nash in Canada, UFC Gym, Ritz-Carlton, I mean, just some 1-800-Flowers, amazing brands built a team and all the sudden I realized that what I envisioned as being my dream started taking over my
life.
That I can imagine that already.
Like I feel like we’re gonna definitely come back to that because I would talk about that moment when you realize but I want to know what the first moment first that made you go into that because you know, at the moment, we’re going through a great resignation, right?
It’s what they’re saying in the U.S. and the UK, like, it seems to be globally and everyone’s just quitting their jobs.
I think the pandemic has made people sort of realize, there’s more to life than just your 9 to 5 work.
And people are looking for that better work-life balance and, you know, but a lot of people are also inspired by wanting to start their own company and they’re kind of like, to do their own thing.
But you know, you did that back like years ago.
Right.
And and, you know, you said that you were in your dream job.
You literally said this job called to you.
That you were getting paid to ski.
It’s like a passion.
Like and when it’s your passion it doesn’t even feel like work and you are in technically, a dream job, you know?
But yet you still up and left and did one of the hardest things there are to do and that’s start your own company.
And you did this years ago back when like I said, pre social media became huge and it’s so much harder to do it.
Then like, you know, how do you get your clients?
You know, it’s a totally different marketing strategy is not as easy as things are now.
And and so just that must have been a huge decision.
So I want to know like, what was going through your mind, was there a moment where you just kind of thought, right?
I’m done like and what, what kind of made you decide to start your own agency?

Sure.
So you said something really interesting that I find.
So I’m going to point it out because you said back then it was more difficult to start a business than it is now.
I don’t know, I don’t know if that’s true.
I don’t know.
I think I feel like it could get so busy online that it’s even harder to cut through that noise, but to your point of what called me to do it is I have this entrepreneurial spirit in me.
Once you have it, you have it.
I started my first business in Bulgaria.
The Black Sea at 17 renting windsurfs at the Black Sea.
So I can live for months out of the year at the Black Sea and have fun.
And once you have the entrepreneurial spirit in you, I don’t think starting a business is for everybody.
It’s definitely not for everybody.
There’s a lot to be said about having a nine to five job, and a regular paycheck because us entrepreneur kinds are a little crazy.
We jump in both feet, we have to be able to deal with the uncertainty, the financial insecurity, the ups and the downs and we become our worst bosses.
We do it.
Well, I did to pursue more freedom and I ended up not having the freedom I wanted.
Right?
So often times we start a job because we want more flexibility, more freedom and we end up becoming a slave to that job.
Now, currently in the gig economy, I was actually just looking up some stats because I’m working on my book.
The gig economy is really big in the UK.
It’s really big in the U.S. and globally.
It’s 104 billion.
It was 204 billion in 2018.
It’s going to be 455 billion by 23, which is next God, which is a compound annual growth rate of 17.4%.
The number of freelancers in the U.S. is going from 57 to 86 million by 2027.
In the UK, the gig economy has almost doubled and accounts for about 4.7 million people.
So a lot of people great resignation, half of people are changing jobs, but not all of them are starting their own businesses, right?
We’re currently reversing the 13 million, sorry, a 13-year slump in starting businesses in the U.S., so we’re reversing that.
So people are realizing I want to have more freedom want to have more flexibility.
I can do it from anywhere thanks to technology, right?
Which is something I couldn’t necessarily do back then.
Well, I could, because I did, but not too many people were that adapt to using technology right now.
It’s changing and the tools are becoming easier and easier to do.
So, from their perspective, you’re right.
It’s easier and easier to set up an online business, do it overnight and start selling something.
It’s harder because more and more people jumped online doing the same thing.
So it becomes more critical to how do you differentiate yourself and you and I were talking a little bit before we hit record about niching down.
And that’s the one thing I feel like I didn’t do well.
Even though I was niching down primarily in social media and primarily in travel, and health, and wellness and recreation industries.
I still feel like if I had niched down even more, I would have done better financially with less work, but instead, we fall for this hustle for four days, more is better.
We fall for this.
I can’t say no to a client.
So, I had a client in hotel industry, a client in floral industry and a client in the gym industry.
You know what I mean?
But if I had niched down in just one of them, I could have maybe become the category queen of that industry and completely dominate the market be known for just owning that corner and I think that’s the point.
I’m trying to make with people trying to start a business.
We sometimes think that we need to reach more people and be, you know, broader aspect when in reality, the riches is in the niches, you know, niching down as much as you can as much as you can, is key.
Because there’s just so much noise online.
So for people to follow you, and for people to want to work with you, they need to understand what you stand for.
And it’s just, it’s to me, it’s getting really tough.
To be called you lie.
You can’t distinguish yourself from other people, although, like, the niching thing.
I feel like you mentioned travel industry and imagine if your niche in that, and then the pandemic hit, you’d be screwed.
So
value oriented, when I set up my business because I wanted to, I wanted to go work with the ski resorts and go have a client meeting with the marketing director in ski while we’re talking work or, you know, go to Sydney and go work in the gym and have a meeting, you know, we
had.
Yeah,
that was, that was a great business.
What happened though?
Is I realized that all I did was work.
Mmm.
All I did every single minute of my
waking life when it’s your own business, it’s baby right?
And you get attached to it and it’s like they think like most business owners they suddenly realize time is money and like, if your every moment you’re not working, you’re actually like losing a potential and they see it as a negative thing.
They’re not thinking about all the positive stuff that comes with it, that you need to rest.
You to be set that I call, but I could be working, I could be adding this, and it’s very easy to slip into.
I completely get why you did that especially like, you said you’ve got that entrepreneurial spirit, you started a business at 17, like you’ve got that drive you obviously ambitious.
So you want to do the best you can and so it’s natural to kind of fall into that.
So I guess I like, you know what you’re about now is kind of the opposite to that kind of marketing agency life and all that sort of stuff.
And, you know, you are so chill and you’re like all about that.
You’re all about making a better life for everyone.
And, you know, you’ve branded up under hustle which is so cool that you’ve got this absolute opposite to hustle culture and say it’s like I just walked me through though because you are, you know, you’d followed your dream which we thought was your dream into this marketing agency.
You’ve done really well.
You’re working on these big brands.
You’ve got like, what seems like the ideal life and it’s all go, go, go.
At what moment did you think, right?
This is not a dream.
This is actually a nightmare like, how do I get out of here?
What happened?
So, you mentioned so many things.
I want them.

that’s exactly what I’m trying to debunk.
There’s a lot of meat there that you mentioned.
So I’m going to start one by one.
That’ll get your question.
You said you know, your business is your baby.
So there are actually studies that show that psychologically as an entrepreneur gets an emotional connection with their business just like you will with your baby.
Believe that.
And that’s right.
And that’s why we justify everything or we sacrifice everything for that business.
We say to the parent or to our husband or, you know, partner, you know, honey, I’m sorry.
I can’t hang out with you tonight because there’s just like this thing.
I really want to do it, right?
Or you say I’m working all the time because I want to send my kids to college.
Anyway, we come up with all these excuses to why we work all the time.

And that this whole cultural programming that we have that hard work leads to success, you have to work hard in order to be successful and the UK is just as bad as the U.S.
We end up working all the time to be successful.
Now, when I started to do the research into this, I found that the opposite of that is actually proven to be right.
And what I mean by that is that tons of studies show that overwork doesn’t lead to more productivity.
There is a fine line between how many hours you work and how productive you are actually at some point of time.
I want to say it’s over 65 hours a week, your productivity takes a nosedive.
So we think we’re working.
We think we are busy.
We think we’re checking off emails, but in reality, we’re stuck in some busy work.
That’s not necessarily contributing to our business success.
Going back to 18th century, 19th century, Henry Ford.
The Ford car, he came up with this whole notion of oh instead of working 12-hour days which is what they were doing in the factory.
I can shift make the shifts eight hour days and get three shifts instead of two and give people more time to have more leisure time.
So they can buy more cars and go traveling so much.
So driven by that notion actually he saw back then that when he had people work fewer hours.
So that’s how the 9 to 5 came about.
People are more productive and then companies saw that people are more productive, working 9 to 5 instead of longer hours.
So we shifted, then we have the Protestant work ethic saying that work is noble now.
Work is completely noble.
I agree with it, but we can’t just have work being 100% of our lives.
All of the biggest inventions if you go back and look at history.
So going back to the Greeks glorifying our leisure time.
And if you look at a lot of the creatives and musicians and artists, they didn’t work more than 5 to 6 hours a day.
Now, all the latest developments from neuroscience point to the fact that because we’re using our brains for work, we’re no longer going to factories.
We don’t go put our gray suits and go to factories where you physically work.
We’re using our minds.
Our minds can only sustain us and be focused and on point for a short amount of time before you need to give it a break.
So bottom line is, and here’s the big, big paradox that comes from the flow theory.
And our flow is when you feel like you’re in the zone, like high performance athletes when they perform when they’re fully focused, that’s when they’re in the zone.
When people say they’re in the zone, they feel more creative, more productive, more fulfilled, which is ultimately what we want.
We want to spend more time in flow, whether you’re working or you’re not working.
And according to the flow theory, which is this book here.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
He’s a Hungarian American psychologist.
Here’s the paradox of work.
Even though people say that they’d rather not be working and rather have more time off, 64% of the time they actually experience flow during work because you know you have something challenging to do.
You have a deadline, you’re checking off the list, you know, you’re fairly focused.
If you’re creative where when we actually have time off, we have this passive time, right?
So, we’re sitting in front of TV scrolling on Instagram, these kind of activities don’t put us in flow.
If you think of the most successful people in the world, when they take time off, they do something challenging, they go climb a mountain or go for a bike ride or you know, go sail across the ocean, that’s because they can mentally detach from work, and they can experience more flow.
So only 20% of the time, when we’re in our leisure, we’re actually in flow and that’s the paradox of work and leisure.
Now, all the science that I’ve been studying and all the research points to the fact that when you do more than 49 hours of work a week, you’re going backwards in your creativity and productivity.
Creativity is the one thing that pushes our businesses forward and that’s how Unhustle was born.

Wow.
Okay.
That’s a lot to digest.
And and you’re talking to someone who has been branded a workaholic like I’m obviously doing this pod quite late in the UK like I am someone who loves a hustle.
I’ve always been a hustler.
I mean, this is what’s got me to where I am today.
So, I have so much to say about this and, you know, as far as
it goes.
That’s the one thing you just mentioned.
A workaholic, it’s an addiction.
Oh, it’s totally an addiction with mine and I think the difference is I’m aware of it.
So at least like I have that insight, that I know I do too much and I know that I need to change it, so at least I’m that step closer to realizing it.
I like, I can stand up and be hi, my name is Sabrina and I’m a workaholic.
Well, you know, I can do that, but that’s step one, you know, and and I’ve changed a lot over the last few years in terms of and you said about, you know, relationships and I think that’s it.
I think being a workaholic or whatever you want to call it, the hustle culture destroys relationships, like whether it’s friendships, whether it’s romantic relationships.
But I think that, you know, if you find something that you want to spend time with and you respect their time, you will be able to detach.
And I’ve learned to be much better and more recently with my time because I know I want to spend quality time with people and I respect that I shouldn’t be half on my computer working or checking my emails or on my phone.
When I can’t reply to emails when I’m supposed to be spending quality time with someone.
So I’ve learned a little bit but I guess for me there’s a few things there like first of all I’m so glad to hear because you said oh actually the myth is hard work makes you successful and you’re like it’s the opposite sounds like what so laziness makes you successful.
I was like oh thank God.
And saying that way about it was more like too much hard work is not a good thing and so I get well,

but let’s talk about this a little bit.
Now laziness won’t make you successful, but first we need to define what success is.
define what laziness is but he’s
completely unable to stand still and do nothing.
It’s just primarily because if you look at it from a psychological perspective, primarily because we can’t deal with all the thoughts in our mind, that is why we do mindfulness meditation.
Things like that.
but I think that’s true for intelligent people.
I think, you know, intelligent people can’t be left bored or doing nothing because they are alone with their thoughts, but I feel like the people who are less intelligent, they don’t have that many thoughts going on and they’re perfectly happy to sit around doing nothing and and I do find that some people just like yeah I’m happy to just you know watch Netflix all day and do nothing.
I’m absolutely happy with that as my life and my issue comes with that.
So this unhustle culture, which is I guess you wanted to pick up a culture but you know, not obviously what you’re doing, but just in general now I think there’s a lot more awareness of the negative impacts of overworking and the hustle culture.
So it’s great that it’s being made aware of but what I don’t like is that some people use this as an excuse to be lazy.
So there are so many advocates who are just like we want work-life balance and therefore they’re going to the employers and be like I only want to work 4 hours a day or, you know, two days a week.
And I still want to be paid for 5 days a week.
I mean yeah, sure, you can work two days a week if you’re just as productive on those two days as you are for the five but you’re not doing.
If you’re doing 40 percent less work, let’s just be real.
That’s just ridiculous.
And you know and I think that I found for example the pandemic I think the fact that people all went on furlough and what was so ridiculous that we had this furlough scheme where people are being paid to do nothing and granted.
It was our governments who were trying to do their best to help out small businesses, the economy and everything.
But I feel like it backfired and now people who got asked to go back to work they’re like so I have to now work for the money that I’m getting paid for.
I look, it’s like, I think that now, all the things that were supposed to be positive, there are so many people using this as an excuse to be lazy, to be more demanding, to feel more entitled that they are owed.
So all these different things and that’s what I don’t like about that attitude.
I feel like, yes, you are completely right that you know, overworking has got to be a bad thing.
And I even notice it.
I like to feel like, you know, every business owner feels like they’ve got the superpower to work till whatever o’clock in the morning, but I was so productive.
I did until 2 a.m., I did all this stuff, but then you actually think about it.
You’re like, oh my God, my quality of work is poor.
And actually, I was working way slower.
If I’d actually gone to bed, had eight hours sleep and woke up in the morning, I would have actually done that way quicker but you don’t realize that stuff in retrospect.
And so I get that and I think there’s total awareness of that.
Really important.
But what I don’t like is that it’s now, I feel like there’s a borderline to encouraging people to be lazy and to be like, I want a four-day work week, not because they actually want to work productively, utilize their time and have an extra day off to reset and be good on Monday or whatever, but to just not do any work and to do 20% less work.
And then there’s the whole 4-Hour Workweek book that people buy thinking they’re actually going to solve their problems and only have to work four hours a week and become a millionaire.
That’s that’s that’s what I don’t like and I want to know like, you know, doing what you do, how many of those people do you see and do not think that could be a problem that, you know, obviously there are always two extremes, the hustle culture and then the lazy slob culture like you want something in between.
But but how much of a risk is it to push people and then people just like no, no, I don’t want to work at all.
Like do you not see that as a risk?
That could happen.

No, I see it.
But I think that’s a societal thing, right?
That needs to be handled more on the societal level.
I don’t agree with people who want to stay home, not work and just take money from the government and do nothing at all like you’re saying, I’m not promoting laziness by any means with Unhustle.
I think that could be handled more on a government level.
And I probably would have little control over how that is done.
Now, there are countries in Europe that do offer some kind of, you know, basic level income for people.
And as you know what I think is interesting is that we’re now going to have a shortage of jobs because a lot of the population, some of the population, you know, the baby boomers are retiring and they’re not being replaced.
And so we’re actually going to have fewer people for jobs, which is also going to add an interesting element of what do we do.
I mean, at the moment it’s the opposite though it’s like well there’s so many people out there and there’s high unemployment rate and people resigning everywhere.
It doesn’t seem like there’s a shortage of jobs.
It seems like everyone is trying to get jobs.
So it’s a strange thing at the moment.
I think, I think I feel like at the moment, everyone’s complaining.
So there are candidates complaining that they can’t find jobs and they say, no, no companies are offering, it’s impossible to get work.
And then there’s all these companies that can’t find good candidates.
Like where do they exist?
And speaking to the industries that are, you know, knowledge workers, mine workers.
I could take marketing, that kind of stuff in the U.S. there’s a war for talent.
You can’t find good people.
So maybe it’s different in the UK.
but it’s definitely the same.
A lot of jobs available.
And now the question is, who do you want to work for?
And people are, I just saw a report on LinkedIn saying people are choosing number one factor for people when they’re choosing a company like yeah.
Compensation and flexibility is up there too.
So the Gen Z and the Millennials they don’t want to go back to an office full time.
They may want some kind of a hybrid environment but they don’t want to work in an office full time but at the same time they want social interactions.
So
so what does well-being look like then?
So when that’s the most requested thing in terms of for a job.
But surely that’s something like I said, what defines success?
Which we didn’t get to do, but like, you know, what is well-being then because surely, that’s also different for everyone too.

well, well-being in this case is defined as holistic well-being, so that includes your financial well-being, psychological well-being, you know, physical well-being, mental well-being, emotional well-being.
So they’re looking for companies that are offering the right culture.
With the right meaningful jobs with the right leadership.
and again culture is also subjective right again.
What one type of office culture doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s right for everyone again.
Like people may not like it people may love it like you know, some people really want to be in an office full time because again I think it all depends on different circumstances.
Like I guess if you’re a parent, you know you want to be around your kids, you want the flexibility, you want to be a good parent and you know, being able to be there for them but say if you’re a young 20-something and you’re living in a flat share and you know, you’ve got a tiny room, you don’t want to work from home.
Like most people.
Again I don’t know if it’s the same in the U.S. but in the UK like say London is so expensive, right?
It’s insanely expensive.
I guess people in New York probably feel the same.
Their apartments are smaller than ours.
I think so.
You know, you imagine if you’re in a share house, share whatever.
And you may or may not have a living room but if you do everyone’s clambering over it and wanting to do Zoom calls at the same time and it’s just not a healthy place to work.
A lot of those people would welcome being in an office space where they can get free tea and coffee.
They’ve got people to bounce ideas off.
Maybe if it’s a nice office, they could play ping-pong.
They can you know that’s a kind of nice company like I think that’s kind of good well-being.
They might have flexibility to use that space but they may have the flexibility to work at home but then that won’t work for other people who prefer to maybe be at home with the kids every day and be able to do the school run in between meetings.
So again, is that not subjective?
What well-being is for someone?
No, that’s objective.
And that’s where it’s becoming harder and harder for organizations to figure out how to provide the environment to make people happy, right?
Because at the end of the day, we know that employee well-being contributes to productivity.
And so they’re trying to figure out, okay?
Maybe it.
And that’s how the hybrid environment is coming about, right?
Some people want to go to the office.
So it’s a question of how often you want to go to the office and how often you want to work from your yoga pants and your room.

so that that was an opportunity really to define how we work, where this work gets done, how often we work.
Does everybody need to be on a 9 to 5 program or maybe you’re a late person.
Maybe you want to get your work done between, you know, six in the evening and midnight.
Do you have a job that allows for that?
Do you still need to communicate with emails or can we have more asynchronous communication?
Do we need to have meetings?
So a lot of these things are getting defined and that’s all part of culture.
And that’s what people are looking for.
What company do I want to work for and what are the policies?

What is the leadership?
How do they show up?
You know, if a leader says, oh yeah, we believe in work-life balance which I don’t believe in that phrase anyway because it’s putting work first.
I believe in live-work-play design but if a leader tells you I believe in work-life balance.
But then at the same time, they’re sending emails at 10:00 at night, working on weekends, not taking a vacation, you know, it creates more of a role model for people to work all the time too.
Right.
Okay, so tell me this.
You mentioned sitting at home in your yoga pants on your couch working.
You know a lot of people did.
I think yoga pants sales went up massively during lockdown.
Everyone’s got a pair and but you know, whilst that sounds great and you know, people are busy fighting for the flexibility to be able to do this.
But on another level.
Isn’t that super unhealthy that people are not getting out of the sweats, people aren’t even bothering showering now, because they’re just getting into this work from home routine and and you know, who knows what’s going on from the waist down?
Because no one can see on the Zoom call, right?
So people are just yoga pants.
People fighting for this, but at the same time, are they not?
They might be fighting for something that’s actually unhealthy for them in the long term.
So where is that balance as well?
And who’s there to advise them about that?
Because I don’t think sitting at home in yoga pants working on the sofa every day is good for anything.
It’s not good for your posture, it’s not good for your hygiene nothing.
So
that everybody needs to define that for themselves, right?
And I’m in an office, you know, I have a designated office space.
I mean, looking at the neuroscience behind working from home.
I mean, we got ourselves into a bit of a pickle there for a long time because our brains, you know, we associate our homes with a place for resting and relaxing and entertaining, and sleeping and all of a sudden turned into our workplace and work-life boundaries became really blurry.
So if you’re working from the kitchen table and then you’re eating dinner on the same kitchen table, your brain can’t separate these two activities.
And so, there’s a lot of things you can do.
I definitely don’t recommend working from the couch, for example, because, you know, your brain thinks the couch is for resting and relaxing at the end of the day.
So you definitely need a designated place to work during the day.
And it takes motivation and autonomy to be able to get your work done and not get distracted.
I know because I’ve been doing it for so many years, but if you look at the neuroscience behind this, there are a lot of little things you can do to adjust to working from home.
So you don’t get that brain fatigue that we’re all dealing with right now because we’ve been working from home right?
Because we don’t have that separation.
That being said, people are more productive working from home.
People actually end up working longer hours.
So now companies are going to see that as a plus and say, why do we need to pay for these offices where we can actually have people work from home, right?
It’s done.
And so some people are like why can’t I go work at the beach and go surfing while I’m doing my work?
So everybody’s going to have their different needs and to your point, then you have people crammed in apartments that are like, I need to get out of here, right?
So you have companies like WeWork that are, you know, leasing office space for companies and for employees now too.
So they can get out of the office.
And there’s also a lot to be said about this idea of idea sex and now you’re in the marketing industry and idea sex is the idea that you come up with great ideas sometimes in casual conversations.
It’s not all about having a meeting.
It’s, you know, the casual conversations sometimes.
It’s the little somebody says something that can spark an idea and we lost that right working from home.
So, I know, when I had my agency, this was way before the pandemic, most of my people did not want to come to the office.
They’re young, they’re Gen Z.
They are millennials.
Every once in a while they want to come to the office and hang out and have like a whole day of, you know, getting together and hanging out and brainstorming ideas, and all that stuff but for the most part they didn’t want to come and work from the office and that made me realize.
Also, some of them don’t want to work during the day.
They want to work at night and I had to be more flexible.
I had to let my guard down as a business owner and say, how can I make sure that I measure their productivity based on outcomes and not based on activity?
Because being in a Slack channel or Zoom call or in the meeting doesn’t mean they’re actually fully present.
So we’ve been challenged as businesses, as entrepreneurs to redefine how we look at productivity and again it doesn’t come down to where this work gets done.
But I think why work gets done and what kind of work gets done.
And we have an opportunity right now to change a lot of things.
That’s probably what you are doing to change things, Leslie.
That’s the whole point about Unhustle.com, right?
And that’s what you’re trying to do, you’re trying to change things for the better obviously.
And so walk me through what you do for people on a day-to-day basis and how you help them?

Sure.
So, I work with leaders and with teams on the individual level.
How do you create sustainable live-work-play design?
How do I create a 360-degree life with meaningful and focused work that pays for my lifestyle, right, funds my lifestyle?
And how do I incorporate the right amount of well-being and play into my life?
So it’s complete and fulfilling.
On the organization side, I work with companies to try to change this hustle culture into human culture with human-centered leadership and practices that increase productivity, fulfillment, well-being, employee engagement.
So I do it with workshops, have play labs, flow labs.
And then I also have a we’re building a Baja immersive experience where, you know, if it’s a freelancer, a couple that want to disconnect from their environment and have a little bit of like a wellness getaway or work from a different place or, you know, learning to meditate.
They can come down to Baja and do that with us, which is how we changed our life.
We have a community that a lot of people from 15 countries are in.
So that’s a way for them to get together.
A lot of that shifting of perspective is like you and I talked earlier, it’s about debunking myths.
And a lot of people are just dealing with fear.
Fear of sacrificing their financial security if they don’t work as much.
Which again, it’s scientifically proven that by taking care of your well-being, making time for hobbies and for time outside of work, you actually become a more creative, more productive and high-performing individual.
So, but it’s a habit, right?
When you do this workaholic habit.
So what I’m doing is inspiring people to really take stock of their life, take stock of their work and build this new way to live, work and play that is scientifically proven to be more effective.

Like you said, it is.
It is definitely, I think we’re hardwired to think that and it’s kind of unwinding our brains to believe all these myths and, you know, prove that you could actually work less and achieve more, which is the dream.
That is a dream and it does put it like there is some sort of proof to this because if you think about like you talked about, you know, lasers.
So people, what they do, if you do look at the most successful people, they work less and they’re able to achieve more, because they’ve got it sorted.
Obviously learning to delegate is a big, big thing to do.
You need people around you to trust.
It’s not just going to happen like that.
I don’t believe that at all.
I do believe that it does take time, but it’s so important to believe in it.
And, you know, I think for me, my difficulty was learning to let go, learning to delegate, not having the trust in other people to be able to do the job and think, okay, I might as well do it myself because I’ll just get it done better.
But then that way you’re literally going to do everything and then you’ve got no time for yourself and I think that that’s really important.
I think that also a lot of people focus on business goals but they never focus as much on personal goals.
And so I think when you are connected with the whole emotional attachment to your business.
So a lot of people always ask me about goals and I set goals every year.
But whenever people ask me they only talk about business goals and they’re all money-related.
And I just find that really interesting.
So this year like I’ve had every job to start the year was asking me about what my business goals are, and all our business goals this year are around sustainability and like you know, culture and everything like that.
And it’s about, you know, finding the right clients who respect us and respect what we do.
And you know, don’t pressure us so therefore the teams are less stressed and may enjoy the projects and it’s around sustainability and you know, having a bigger impact on the environment and all that kind of stuff.
And I was like, yeah.
But financial goals like yeah.
And that’s not my focus this year and everyone thinks that’s kind of weird because obviously, they’re like, how can you run a business if you don’t want to make money?
And I’m like, don’t get me wrong.
I want to make money and I’ve obviously got figures that I’m aiming for and that’s done but it’s not one of the goals that we’re setting this year and I think that people forget to do that in their personal life as well.
Like, even if it’s I set the kind of weekly little goals even in my personal life and it could be just a, you know, finish early every night this week or something.
I say early, you know, whatever final early is.
But you know, have my evening to myself and to have an evening where I just have a bath and, you know, switch off and relax and I think they’re so important.
I think that more people need to do that.
And so I love, I love hearing about what you’re doing and what sort of people do you get there mainly?
Is it business owners who are coming to you, or freelancers as well?
Like, what sort of people have you been helping?
So it’s primarily people in marketing and tech and students, finance also.
Either
the stressful ones.
Yeah, yeah.
To your point about money, though.
I just wanted to say, I think money is really important to your overall well-being.
That being said the studies show that after a certain point of having money, money doesn’t necessarily bring more richness to the quality of life, but what it does is experiences.
And so it’s really interesting to me to your point like when you’re setting goals, financial goals I think is great to have, but at the same time, more than the experiences that you want to have throughout the year, right?
And you kind of touched on that where you were like I want to have a hot bath once a week.
And your fulfillment actually, your joy, is going to be higher than making you know another five thousand dollars.

I’d say yeah I 100%.
And I think you’re right though it depends on where you are.
I think that I definitely had those financial goals a couple of years ago, but my biggest goal for the last God knows how many years was that I wanted to buy my own flat in London and that was a big because obviously that’s a financial goal but that’s also my whole life revolves around that because obviously there’s a lot of stability with that.
The way it makes you feel setting up your own home.
Designing it like there’s a lot of things that go with owning your own apartment, and the moment I did that, I became less interested in money.
It was a totally different shift for me.
I mean, that’s not to say I do not care, but obviously, I need to earn money.
There’s a baseline.
But I mean, my shift became totally different from obviously, like you said, you need to earn money and I still need to pay the mortgage, the bills and maintain the lifestyle that I built up.
But above that, my focus now is on experiences and then quality of life and spending more time with family and friends, and loved ones, and all that kind of stuff.
And, you know, that’s the focus.
There still is obviously money in life but it’s really weird how much my shift has gone from being almost entirely financial in that sense to being now about quality of life.
And I think that since it has done, I’m so much happier because I feel like money stresses almost everyone, right?
That is stressful.
It is at the same time, you know, after a certain point.
You know, there’s time millionaires now.
People who are choosing to be time millionaires instead of millionaires.
I mean I don’t know.
A little bit more time and space and freedom in your life, right?
So yeah.
Oh just imagine even.
I love it.
I think that for me, I get the term.
How many days?
I quite like it anyway but I do.
Yeah, for me at the moment time is more valuable than money, which to some extent obviously and I said, I need to pay my mortgage and stuff like that, but I still, I still.
hustling leads to more money.
Yeah, well exactly, because when you.
Exactly, you’re more productive, you come up with better ideas, you differentiate yourself, so.
that’s my goal, laughs.
That’s what I mean, that’s my goal, is that quality and like I said it’s less financial.
But doing all those positive things, I think will lead on to, like it does, it should do.
Like you said, everything improves that way.
And I think being less directly focused on money is a lot less stressful and I think, but it could lead to obviously bigger financial gains.
And I think that’s why I’d love to kind of get your take on this.
Because, as I said, I’m definitely kind of had that massive hustle culture.
I’m more conscious of it now, and don’t get me wrong.
I like to think I’ve improved a lot but I’m still nowhere near what I should be and it’s.
a practice.
I still have.
yeah.
Well good, that makes me feel a lot more normal.
You know as someone who sometimes fails at your own advice and that’s okay.
Well that’s good to know that I’m not.
But what advice would you give to like someone who’s a really ambitious, career-driven entrepreneur, maybe financially driven, you know who always wants the best?
I think that’s why I feel like people who do believe that hard work pays off because I think that hard work does pay off but like you always say, work smarter not harder and all that kind of stuff.
And you know, what advice would you give to people who are that kind of career-driven individual and ambitious type to be able to unhustle a bit more and not have the fear that they are going to, you know, drop back and achieve less?
Like, what advice would you give to them?

Speaker 2
But it did build a knack, right? Which is what you said. It’s a bit of a skill that you can acquire all the time too, to do this right. But I guess my advice to people would be figuring out a life where you’re aligned with your values and creating your own version of success, as opposed to falling for what success is based on someone else’s definition, your parents’ definition, what school taught you, what society says success means.
Because I see this repetitively. People think they’re career-driven and financially driven, and they think that once they have a certain level of material success, they will be happy. And it’s the other way around.
You start first with who you are, what makes you happy, what’s the life and the experience you want to have, and then what’s the work that will fulfill you instead of, over time, end up draining you.
So being aligned with your values is how to be more in alignment in life in general and how to create this sustainable live-work-play design, as opposed to doing something so that 20 years from now you will realize you’re partnered and not fulfilled.
Speaker 1
So, what is success to you?
Speaker 2
Success for me is doing what I love, living in a place I love, surrounded by the people I love, and contributing to society in some meaningful way and doing it effortlessly.
Speaker 1
Wow. I like that.
And by definition, that means you are very successful because you’ve got all that, right?
Speaker 2
You know, we talked earlier about goals, right? Well, the thing with goals is the goal always moves. We always set a bigger goal. We’re always chasing something that we don’t have, and that puts us in that hustle mindset, right? Because we’re constantly chasing something we don’t have.
Where I realized that I already have everything I need. So amazing. How about, you know, I have a roof over my head. I have clothes. I have food in the refrigerator. I live in a beautiful place and friends. I’m doing something I’m passionate about. I have fun ones in my life. I already have everything I need.
So creating from that place of abundance and enjoying the process, I think, is what we miss. We miss enjoying the process. We feel like we constantly have to get somewhere where we are not, not realizing that most of us, we have enough where we are.
Speaker 1
Yeah, that’s beautiful.
And I think that’s something that I always want to reflect on. I’m kind of thinking about gratitude and what I’m grateful for. And I think when something bad happens, I start to think in the grand scheme of things, I literally have, like I said, everything you possibly could need. So how can I be ungrateful right now?
Speaker 2
But to your point, I just want to tell you something that just happened recently, and I’m just being as human as possible right now because I saw an article somewhere. I think it was for Authority Magazine, and they were looking for people to interview. It was about highly successful, powerful women.
At first, I was like, “Oh, I should apply.” And then I was like, “Wait, wait, wait. Am I a highly successful, powerful woman?”
Speaker 1
And now the impostor syndrome. 100%.
Speaker 2
We assign that to money, right?
Yeah, 100%, by the way.
And then I said, “No, I’m totally successful doing what I’m doing. So why am I assigning that to a certain figure, right?”
So isn’t that funny how it comes up?
Speaker 1
That society really infiltrated your mind, even though that’s not even what you believe. But for a second, it made you believe it just because that is the portrayal of success in the world — wealth and power. That’s what it is.
And it’s so funny because we need to define it. You didn’t say that, and I said, “I think you are 100% successful.” But yet, for a second, you even doubted yourself, and that shows you again.
And we’re not even attached to process and drugs. We could talk about that for another hour, but I like that it’s so real, even in confident people, and it sucks.
Speaker 2
And then I had to sit with myself a little bit and go cross-country skiing with my dog. And I was like, “Yeah, I think it’s a life.”
Yeah, I applied for the interview and got published.
Speaker 1
Well, congratulations.
Speaker 2
Success is such a… you know, we think we have to generate an amount of money to be successful, but I don’t think working all the time is cool.
I think what’s cool is making money while you have time to do what you love.
Speaker 1
100%. That is the dream.
And I think that you’ve just phrased that perfectly. And I think that’s what people need to focus on. If you can make money but also have time to do what you love and achieve all this.
Because you hear so many people just saying, “I’ve only had time to do this. I’d love to do this.”
So make that time.
Speaker 2
Yeah. We don’t have time. We have 4,200 weeks in our life, and that really puts it into perspective, right?
And this is what I rebelled against, right? I didn’t want to wait for one day to do this and one day to do that because they may never come. My parents both died young from different health problems. It was really in my face, right?
So I said, okay, work is never going to end unless we decide when the work ends.
Speaker 1
Wow.
I mean, I see it, and I think it’s definitely making me feel very guilty for working at this time of night as well.
Speaker 2
But again, to your point, if you’re a night owl, then this time works for you.
Speaker 1
Well, I am going to immediately stop on this pod and then go have a bath and relax. I will be switching over to the bath. I definitely won’t be working all night.
But I just want to thank you so much for coming on today, and I want to ask you, where can listeners find you on social and find out more about you if they want to explore how to have that success, however they may define it, and how to learn?

Speaker 2
Sure.
So I have a free ebook that I’ve put together to just share stories of people and companies that have gone down that road and done it successfully. And actually, you touched on the four-day work movement. One of the companies that helped lead this movement is in my ebook.
The rest are just entrepreneurs and freelancers in there, so people can download that ebook for free if they want to see how other people are doing it. It also includes the insights I’m working there.
So that’s at [Done Hustle] donehustle.com/ebook.
And then everything else they can learn about me — my podcast, my upcoming book, they can subscribe to be on the advanced reader team, my social media, the community, the programs that I do — everything is available at Done Hustle
Speaker 1
Perfect. And I’ll be sure to put all the information in the show notes so everyone can find it as well.
But I just want to say thank you so much for coming on today and making us all a bit more aware that we should work less, but still achieve more. So thank you.
Speaker 2
Thank you so much for having me.
Go have fun with the bath.
Speaker 1
I will do. Absolutely.
And thanks everyone for tuning in, and I will see you all next week on No Bullsh*t Talks.