191. The Internet Made Hustle a Dirty Word

This episode is for every high-achieving woman who feels exhausted trying to build a successful business, be present in her real life, and somehow make it all look effortless.

We’re unpacking hustle culture, high-functioning burnout, soft living, invisible labor, and the shame women carry around ambition so you can stop questioning whether your drive is the problem and start defining success on your own terms again.

TOPICS WE EXPLORE:

• Why hustle culture gets a bad name, and what we lose when we make drive something to apologize for
• The difference between high-functioning burnout and ambition
• What the women I work with are actually running behind the scenes vs. what their content says
• Redefining what rest looks like for high-achieving women
• The sick kid phone call that derailed a perfectly productive day and what the self-coaching loop looked like in real time
• Why shame about how you run your business is the thing that actually causes burnout
• Defining success on your own terms as a mom entrepreneur, without apologizing for the drive that got you here

THE POINT:

There is a difference between burnout and drive. One of the things that causes burnout is when we allow our ambition to become morally judged… by the internet, by other women, or by ourselves. Stop apologizing for your ambition. Hustle is not a dirty word.

MENTIONED:

• Business Therapy: Ash’s one-on-one coaching

MORE ABOUT ASH

I'm Ash McDonald — the Entrepreneur's Therapist. Trained therapist, seasoned entrepreneur, mom of 3, && the person you call when your business coach doesn't get your brain && your therapist doesn't get your business.

I built the thing I couldn't find anywhere else: whole-picture support that holds your strategy && your humanity in the same conversation at the same time. 

LINKS:

• Work with me 1:1 → Deep Cuts
• Fast-track your results → The Green Room
• Solve one thing right now → Studio Sessions
• Burnout-proof your life && business → Mixtape
• Get your free podcast playlists → The Soundcheck
• Weekly emails that tell you what your business coach won't && your therapist can't → Subscribe to The Beat
• Website: ashmcdonaldmentoring.com

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

It is the thing that's making us emotionally unstable and unable to handle the ebbs and flows of entrepreneurship. Because that's the truth of it all. This is why I'm so passionate about making sure that entrepreneurs, particularly women, understand what it takes to be an entrepreneur emotionally. Because no strategy, no marketing technique, no messaging shit, no perfected anything is going to help you when shit gets hard. And it does. The problem with hustle culture is that it never ends. There's never enough. There's always another milestone, another launch, another metric telling you that you should be doing more. The most resilient people I know are not the busiest people I know. They are calm, grounded, rested, connected, and deeply at peace with themselves. Doing less is doing more. Reconnect with a woman you were before Hustle Culture told you your worth was tied to your productivity. You do not have to earn rest. You do not have to prove your exhaustion before you deserve care. The soft life is about choosing peace over pressure, presence over performance, and joy over constant achievement. Women are rejecting hustle culture and redefining success through rest, boundaries, and intentional living. Soft living asks us to slow down, consume less, want less, and make room for ease. The goal of a softer life is more time and energy for what makes you happy instead of constantly striving for more. We start hustling to appear soft. Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. For fast-acting relief, try slowing down. Welcome back to the Shamelessly Ambitious Podcast. I'm curious how you feel right now after everything I just said. What thoughts are going through your head? What emotions are rippling through your body? I know that when I compiled these quotes, yes, ma'am, these are quotes from people in the business industry. We'll say that. A few people you probably know. Quotes that I pulled from posts, blogs, website copy, articles, podcast interviews, these are quotes. And I know that when I was compiling them, I did not feel good. I did not feel seen. I did not feel heard. I did not feel met with compassion. I felt a lot of shame. A lot of shame. Because what is what am I supposed to feel? The most resilient people I know are not the busiest people I know. So because I'm busy, I'm not resilient. Because you would never witness me in my day-to-day life and probably not truly say, oh, she's so calm and grounded and rested and connected. And no, I'm vibrant. I'm loud. I'm shameless. I'm unapologetic with the way that I live my life. Calm internally, sure. More than most, probably. But not from the outside. Probably not at all. I'm a whole vibe. And I'm betting you are too. Reconnect with the woman you were before Hustle Culture told you your worth was tied to productivity. Now, I have to be really frank with you. There is a good chance I have said things in and around this as well, because I have been just as fucking brainwashed as you. I have, I have to admit it. I have been brainwashed into thinking that the more I could accomplish in the less time, the more successful I was. I have been trained to believe from society and narratives just like this one that I need to put on a show as to what it looks like to be me. Because I can't possibly be seen in this way. And when I say this way, I mean as the woman who is recording a podcast episode while she's on a drive, or responding to a voxer message while walking around the park that her daughter is playing softball at, or opening up her computer at night while everybody's sitting around watching a movie, because that's gross. Is that what we think? For fast acting relief, try slowing down. Let me ask you something. Have you ever taken some time off of your business, your job, your work, and only felt more anxious? Only felt more overwhelmed. Yeah, me too. And I had to learn that this idea that, oh, I don't have to earn rest. Now, listen, there's a caveat here. I 110% believe in celebrating every achievement that I make, small, big, in between. I don't give a shit. I celebrate and I love that. That is actually a form of rest for me. The identification of what rest actually is and what really restores each of us is the most imperative thing that we can do for ourselves to truly understand that. Because there is this idea that rest is to sit still, to slow down, to do less. But what if doing those things actually makes you feel more frantic and more overwhelmed and less like yourself? Then you're gonna read shit like this and you're gonna think, what is the matter with me? The soft life is about choosing peace over pressure, presence over performance, and joy over constant achievement. What if I could be joyful and achieve things? I could hold peace and feel the pressure that has given me the success that hundreds of thousands of women probably wish they had. Yeah, you heard me. I'm fucking proud of what I created. I'm proud of the isms that I have that have made it possible. My perfectionism, my ADHD ism. Louder in the back, the things about me, my achievism. I'm just gonna make up words now, right? That's what's made me who I am. That's what's given me a life that afforded us to travel the world for three years. Something I never traveled as a kid, never, never went on a plane with my family. I've never to this day been on an airplane with my family. So yeah, I'm pretty fucking proud of what I've done. Are there times when I need to reconcile how much I'm working? Sure. Are there times when I have to redefine what success looks like for me so that there is alignment between the values that I carry and the drive that I have? Yes. But I believe wholeheartedly that the internet is making hustle a dirty word. And I wanted to create this episode because I thought that we, you and I, need to unpack how ambition became something that women feel pressured to hide. Right? And apologize for. Instead, they're saying one thing, even though they can't achieve that themselves. And the problem with this is that then there's all the women who are thinking, oh my goodness, I want that. I want to work two days a week in my linen attire, making my sourdough bread and feeding my fucking chickens. And I want to make $500,000 a year. Honey, Jenna Kutcher can only display this sort of brand, if you're familiar, this aesthetically soft, farmy, live your best life, watch me go brand. She can only do that because she hustled her fucking ass off for like 10 to 15 years or more. Because she has a massive team now, because she did that. Because she probably has a great deal of support, whether paid or not. And that's not always the case for all of us. I know it's not for me. I am not currently, I have in the past, I am not currently paying for any child support, child care support. I don't have anyone picking my kids up from school when the day has to end for me at two o'clock in the afternoon. I don't have anyone driving them to and from sports. I have no family that helps me on a consistent basis at all. And yes, trust me, I have envy for that for sure. I have so many friends who's like, yeah, my parents pick up my kids five days a week from school. And so I can actually work a real work, a real live nine to five job. I don't have that. When I had little kids, I did pay for help. I remember the first time I paid for help, I paid for 12 hours a week, two six-hour days that a mommy's helper came. At this point, I had a newborn, a one and a half year old and a four-year-old. And basically, she came to help with the toddlers and a little bit of meal prep so that I had the newborn. So really, I wouldn't have called that a lot of help. And the bigger my business got, the more help that I have. I do pay for a house cleaner. Absolutely. Literally, I would live in a disgusting pile of shit if I did not have a house cleaner because your girl can only do so much. That's an investment that makes sense for our family. I have a very small but mighty team. There have been seasons where I had a bigger team, but I still wasn't at the state where I wasn't required in a lot of ways. In fact, the business model that I've built does require me in a lot of ways. And I'm doing that purposefully. I like one-to-one mentorship. It's my favorite way to serve. And it always has been, always will be. So, regardless of the kind of business that you're creating, regardless of the amount of time that you spend on said business, can we be really honest about what it takes to be an entrepreneur? Can we stop pretending that it's so useful? And I think, you know, what happened is we had this era of like girl boss. Oof, I hate that phrase, but we did the girl boss, let's go get it, right? And I think everybody was like shamelessly owning their drive and ambition, which was beautiful. But then people were burning out. That is for sure a problem that exists. That's why it's not necessarily about slowing down as much as it is about aligning your values with your actions. Okay. Not a conversation we're having today, but that's my opinion. And then something switched. And it was like soft girl era. It was like too much, too fast, slow down, do less, be present. Are you not with your kids? Are you on your phone around your kids? Like all this shame and this pressure to make success look effortless. It is only successful if it is zero effort to you. Ew. Because you know what the biggest problem is? Is that our shame around what it actually looks like to create the businesses that we're creating is the thing that's cannibalizing our creativity. It is the thing that's actually slowing down our momentum. It is the thing that's making us emotionally unstable and unable to handle the ebbs and flows of entrepreneurship, because that's the truth of it all. Right? This is why I'm so passionate about making sure that entrepreneurs, particularly women, understand what it takes to be an entrepreneur emotionally. Because no strategy, no marketing technique, no messaging shift, no perfected anything is going to help you when shit gets hard. And it does. Whether it's rejection or lower numbers or revenue dips or it's like life happening just yesterday. I was having one hell of a productive day, feeling myself. You know what I mean? Just really feeling myself. And then I went, I literally was like, I've got one hour before I have to leave to pick up the kids. I have two podcasts to record. I've got this in the bag. This was one of them. And then I get the dreaded phone call all of us moms never want to get, which is your son is sick and puking. Lovely. So I had to shut it all down and run. Does this mean that I was like, oh, I'm just so grateful for a business that doesn't require me to be here all the time? And I could, yeah, I'm of course, I'm glad that I could do that. I'm still not happy. I still have to figure out when I'm going to record these podcast episodes. And I totally told my podcast editor that she would get them by end of day to day. And so, yeah, when I'm driving, I am resourcing myself to not lose my shit over falling behind. But what we show to the world is look at me being an entrepreneur and my freedom, and I'm so grateful. And uh no. Actually, I'm kind of freaking out. And internally, I am well, the practice that I constantly teach you, if you listen to this podcast at all, right? I am doing my somatic wealth framework, the self-coaching loop, right? I am regulating what I can do in this moment to get out of my head and into my body.

unknown 15:15

Right?

SPEAKER_00 15:15

I'm reflecting compassion. Of course, you're stressed out. You had a commitment. You're not gonna meet that commitment now. You were in the zone. It was the perfect time to record this episode. All the things, like just meeting myself with what's true. This sucks. This is not ideal. Am I worried about my son? Yes. Do I care that he's sick? Yes. Do I feel bad for him? Yes. None of this negates that. So don't even come at me. And then I'm asking what's true. And that's how I resource myself. What's actually true? Once I've given myself compassion, once I've regulated, because you cannot resource yourself without those two things first. You just cannot. Please listen to me. But I can at this point go, what is actually true? I could wake up an hour early tomorrow and record these episodes. I could have my husband take over tonight and record at least one of them downstairs. In fact, I was actually looking on Amazon. Did you know that you can buy soundproof booths like you'd see at a co-working space? I was like, you know what? That's a vibe. A soundproof phone booth type of thing that I could put in my house. That way I can record a podcast episode whenever. Because I don't do it fancy. You know me, I'm not fancy, but you can't have background noise, okay? You just can't. Or even a client call, especially over the summer, although it's $5,000. So I was like, probably not. But that idea is epic because yeah, if my kids are running around, I want them to have fun. I don't want to tell them to shut up. I hate that. I want them to have a blast and be kids, but I'm still gonna have to do client calls through the summer. I don't get to just turn off my business because summer's here. I don't get the freedom to just turn off my business because I'm an entrepreneur. And truth be told, I don't want to. I like my business. I like what I do. I'm passionate about it. Right? But I'm saying all this because I have been this too. I'm absolutely owning my own shit here. I have also betrayed myself. I have also rejected my truth for the truth I thought would get the least amount of backlash. And let's be honest, for the truth that I thought would sell, if I'm telling people like, hey, this is fucking crazy. And I don't think everybody has it in them to do this, I don't know what I'm gonna sell. Although that is the way that I coach, you know? And granted, this is this has changed a long time ago, a long time ago it changed, but I had to learn the hard way first. And I will be honest with you, I absolutely behind the scenes tell my clients the truth that's sometimes uncomfortable. Do I fear that I'm gonna get bad feedback? Yeah, of course. I'm human and I've got ADHD. So rejection is like a real big problem for me. And the truth is, it is hard. And I'm so fucking tired of nobody understanding that and starting businesses and treating them like hobbies because Jenna Kutcher does it. That bitch is making millions of dollars, and all I ever see her do is feed her chickens. Honey, that's not the whole picture. There is a difference between burnout and drive. There is. And I actually think that one of the things that causes burnout is when we allow our ambition to be become morally judged, whether by ourselves or outside of ourselves. And I think what it comes down to is redefining what success looks like for us. Success doesn't look like me sitting outside drinking a cup of coffee all day. That will never be me or feeding chickens or wearing a linen jumpsuit. It's just not gonna be me. I would always go find something else to do. That's who I am. So rather than reject that side of me, right? Rather than pretend and say things like, oh, I wish I could just shut my business down and be present with my kids all summer. No, I don't. I would die a slow death. I do not. Do I wish I had more help? Absolutely. Sure, I do. Right now, monetarily, it does not make sense. And my kids are too old for babysitters. They'd be bored as hell, right? Yeah, I do. I wish I had a couple days a week where I could know my kids were having a blast and having fun and I could get some work done. But that's not my reality. And that's okay too. So I have figured out a rhythm for summer where I will work and I will do what I love and I will enjoy it, and I will also do adventures with my kids. And the truth is, it will be exhausting. It will be fucking exhausting. I will be exhausted. I will take my kids for hikes and adventures and swimming all day long. And then I will come home and I will work a couple hours when I'm exhausted. That is my truth. But being honest with myself, really reconciling that honesty, will make that truth feel good. Does that make sense? Rather than feeling shame about how I'm doing things, which will feed burnout, I will reject burnout by embracing my drive. This is who I am. I, this is a choice that I am making. And the truth is, if I didn't want to make this choice, I would make a different one. But I am making this choice. And another thing that I think is important to talk about here is that the old hustle culture narrative was to have everything. And by having everything, it was more materialistic. And I think it caused a lot of problems for people. It was more about the kind of house that you had and the cars that you drove or, you know, whatever. And I've talked about this before. This the deep, deep wish that I had that phones didn't exist, primarily for the fact that we wouldn't have the ability to compare ourselves to everybody, including Kylie Jenner. You know what I mean? We just can't, or to want, or to envy, right? There's a very big difference between, like, oh, I desire something and I want to manifest that, then, oh my God, everybody has so much money. Oh my God, everybody has such nice houses. Oh my God, everybody, whatever the case may be, right? That's not healthy. We didn't used to have that. Without phones, which basically give us a window into everybody's lives, we didn't know. We could only compare ourselves to those that were directly around us, which traditionally were a little bit more like us than not. Obviously, there's pros and cons to that. But it became more of a materialistic thing. I'm hustling for that. And now I think it all comes down to, you know, in our business and our ideal form of success and presence and motherhood and all those things. I think that we can have what we want in those areas if we're willing to define them and to recognize that we're not gonna have it all at once, but in layers and in moments. There's gonna be days throughout the summer where, and this is actually something I've planned, where it's actively a no work day. I'm just with the kids. And then there's days where full permission granted that the kids are gonna make themselves entertained, and sometimes that will involve screens, and I am okay with that. You don't have to be your fucking choice, your rules, your life. I am not my kids are not allowed to be on YouTube, so they hate me for that. And they do play some video games, but there's a lot of boundaries around that, and that's fine. But I used to feel shame for that, and that cost me more than being honest with myself. That I that if my kids are mostly active and mostly doing a whole lot of stuff and we're mostly X, Y, and Z, that I'm actually okay letting them veg out for a little while so I can do the stuff that actually feeds my soul as well. We're allowed to make those choices. This is not just for the moms, but especially the moms. We can have our ideal business, our ideal success, our ideal presence, our ideal motherhood. We just have to be willing to define exactly what that looks like with honesty. And for the love of God, stop apologizing for your ambition. Hustle is not a dirty word. It's a pretty epic word if you're willing to embrace it.