Building a Business Without the Hustle Hangover
On replacing urgency with intention and why slow doesn’t mean small
There’s a hush in my garden as I write these words. It’s the kind of quiet that happens when the sun finally decides to stick around and let its rays out from behind the cocoon of fluffy white clouds.
Today, that quiet is wrapped around me like a blanket. The birds are bickering (blue tits, specifically, waging war over the peanuts again), and I’m writing this from my makeshift outdoor office, my laptop perched precariously on my legs, as the smell of sweet, dried grass drifts on the breeze. Somewhere they’re bailing hay. It’s the kind of day that feels like a soft exhale, gentle, slow and easy.
This energy is the perfect backdrop for something I want share with you today. I want to write about how to build a business without the hustle hangover, because I’ve tried it the other way. You probably have too. The rushing, the forcing, the spreadsheets and targets and to-do lists that grow magically overnight like mushrooms.
It’s the go,go,go energy, which once you’re on this hamster wheel, it’s very hard to get off of (without consequences).
For a long time, I thought that was just the way business was. That if I wanted to be successful, I had to be busy. I had the graft, all the time. I had to show up everywhere, say yes to everything, and act like I had it all figured out, even when I was falling apart behind the scenes. The classic graceful swan scenario. Graceful on the top of the water, but beneath, legs paddling like a demon.
But these days?
I’m building a different way.
Slower, softer and much more transparent. It’s basically building in a way that’s an extension of me, as a person.
Let me explain with a little story.
When the Numbers Don’t Show Up (But the Magic Does)
Back in June, Carla and I had our second Cahoots event planned.
If you don’t know Cahoots, it’s our anti-networking club for creative business owners. The kind of people who want real conversation, not just surface-level, small talk chats. It’s built on the idea that connection should feel like hanging out with friends, not handing out business cards.
We had 15 people booked in for our event.
We’d prepped, planned, picked the snacks (and yes — there was cake) and then we hit a curveball when life did it’s thing.
4 days before the event, we started receiving message after message from people who had said they would come but they had to cancel. Unplanned school sports days had appeared in the diary. Sickness bugs were doing the rounds. Double-booked diaries.
You name it, life through it.
24 hours before the event, we were down to 6 people, and even then, we couldn’t guarantee they would come.
And honestly? My first instinct was to cancel, or the very least postpone for another day.
The old version of me, the one addicted to busy and obsessed with how it would look publicly facing, would’ve seen low numbers as a failure. A sign that the event wasn’t worth running. That we should scrap it and try again when things looked shinier, dare I say perfect.
But something in me shifted.
The newer version of me, the one choosing intention over urgency, slow over stiff, and transparent over polished, remembered why we built Cahoots in the first place.
We decided to embody our values, and so we sent an email to the remaining people booked in for the event. We told the truth, plain and simple. There was no spin or pretending that everything was fine when it wasn’t.
We said that things have changed. It’s going to be more of a drop-in session than a structured event, but we’ll be there, with the kettle on and cake with your name on it.
2 more people dropped out after receiving that email.
There was a possibility of 4 attendees, and we overnight, we held our breath.
Slow Doesn’t Mean Small
Tuesday dawned, and I got to the venue and set up a table with 4 chairs. It looked small and sad, in a vast venue designed for large groups. Gone was our idea of a structured event, but I still approached it like I would for any event. I put out the snacks, lined up the goody bags and filled the kettle ready.
10am ticked onto the clock, and one by one, four people arrived, and each took a seat at the table.
There was no structure, no plans, we were just four business owners sitting together with coffee, biscuits, and a shared willingness to be real.
We talked about burnout and business wobbles, about Instagram fatigue and the weird shame of wanting more, even when things already look “successful.”
We laughed. We got quiet. We went deep as we all admitted stuff, we hadn’t said out loud before about ourselves, our business and what we were all creating.
And somewhere in that honest, unpolished space, something truly special happened.
Not loud-special or viral-special. But true-special.
This Is What Building Without Burnout Looks Like
That day was a reminder, a lived lesson, in how real impact isn’t always loud.
It doesn’t always look like full rooms, or sold-out launches, or inboxes full of praise.
Sometimes, it looks like a small room with a big heart. It’s was about connecting with four fellow founders, and hearing the feedback from the people in that room saying, “I really needed this today.”
It was about quality over quantity. The classic lesson that large numbers may look good, but it’s the people behind each number that counts. (For example, it’s better to have 100 dedicated fans and followers on social media than champion and advocate for what you do, rather than 100K followers who do not engage in any shape or form)
And that’s what I’m pursuing these days, the journey that is full of real conversations and true connections, rather than hustling for leads to add to a spreadsheet and chasing those vanity metrics.
I want to create a business that’s slow enough to feel good, but strong enough to last.
Everyone in Cahoots!
So how do you build a business without the hustle hangover?
The key is slowing down. Slowing down to think about what you really want to create, and how, but also slow enough so you can notice the journey you’re on and experience it fully.
When you stop rushing, you start noticing. When you stop pushing, you start feeling.
And when you stop pretending that everything is fine, and putting on that perfection mask, that’s when the magic shows up.
You become real, authentic, you, rather than a cookie cutter mould of every other hustler out there. I’m not building for performance anymore. I’m building for presence.
So if you’re tired of the hustle, if you’re craving more intention, more honesty, more meaning in your work, consider this your permission slip, to slow down, tell the truth and show up even when it’s messy.
Because showing up, just as you are, is the magic.
Onwards and Upwards
- Becky :)
