There always seems to be a bit of a paradox when it comes to how we view the “entrepreneurship” world. Nearly 10 years ago when I first started my photography business the word hustle was in the forefront of becoming successful. There was a joke that I would always hear about leaving the 9-5 job of 40 hours per week to turn around and work 90 hours a week…. The not so funny part was the amount of truth there was to that joke.

I remember sitting at my desk and praying to be so busy that I wan’t to make joke likes that, so I put my head down and worked my ass off. Now this all sounds great but what I wasn’t aware of until about three years ago was that I was created the chaos hustle. I was emailing here, editing here, trying to learn social media there, signing up for classes, booking styled shoots, going to events etc… because I was told that was what was needed to become massively successful. I may have found “success” I put that in quotes due to the fact that it was someone else’s version of success, as well as finding burnout. Which looked like massive amounts of depression and anxiety that consumed me.

Skip ahead to where we are now and we hear the terms rest and break to be so fluent that I feel that we have just went from one side of the scale to the next. Which is why this blog post is titled, “Controlled Hustle”. A term that came out of my mouth as I was being interviewed by a graduate student at the University of Nevada, Reno for her thesis on women in entrepreneurship. Let me explain what controlled hustle is because I feel that the word hustle was used so much back in the day that it has a sour taste to the tongue.

Controlled Hustle; in my very own definition is working hard to create the opportunity that one desires by intentionally working through tasks/projects until they reach completion. The big key point here is the intentionality behind what you are doing, which I like to link back to your alignment and passion switches that are the backbone of your business. I find that most business owners struggle with burnout or not reaching their successes is due to the lack of control aka discipline.

So my question to you is this? Do you feel like your business is running you or are you running your business? If your answer is my business is running me… I want you to set time aside today to schedule in the 5 most important things that have to get done to ensure success in your business.