TLDR: I bought into the 5am hustle culture stuff, grew my membership to 100+ members while sleeping on my daughter’s bedroom floor on four hours of broken sleep, and it burned me out and my business down with it. Now I run my business in 12 week sprints, work school hours only, and my mornings are mine again — not for hustling, just for tea and thinking time. I’ll probably never be a millionaire and I’m fine with that because it was never the goal.
Waking up at 5am is not the secret to success. 10x your goals, hustle harder, transform your life with a morning routine. It’s absolute BS. And I know because I bought into it.
Joining the Five O’Clock Club
I joined the Five O’Clock Club when my daughter was just two years old. It was the height of the pandemic. I was new to online business. I felt like a complete newbie in spite of having spent three years running an offline business. Everything felt new and different and shiny.
I was doing all the things I’d been told I should be doing — the challenge launches, the lead magnets, the Facebook communities, you know the drill. And I bought into the narrative: hustle harder, wake up earlier, just push a bit more. That’s the key to success. And it did kind of work. I grew my membership to over a hundred members. But what it cost me was not worth the input I was putting in to get there.
Sleeping on the floor and still getting up at 5am
I was working all the hours while I had a child who still didn’t sleep. I was sleeping every night on a mattress on her bedroom floor, functioning on maybe four hours of broken sleep. And I would still get up at 5am and start on the laptop because that’s what the gurus said successful people did. I’d start before everyone else was awake and do more than they would ever do. That’s the whole narrative — the people who dare to wake up at seven are lazy losers.
The burnout
But the truth is, this approach to running my business led to burnout. Then family health issues, on top of lack of sleep, on top of working all the hours, on top of doing all the things — I was exhausted, running on fumes, doing everything, and I fell apart. The more I pushed, the harder I worked, the further away I actually got from the business I wanted to be running.
What the whole point was supposed to be
The whole point of running my own business was for it to fit around my life, not the other way around. Not to have my life squeezed into the edges of whatever the business demanded of me. My kids weren’t getting the best of me because I was absolutely exhausted. And my business wasn’t getting the best of me either, because I was pushing so hard and doing so much, looking productive on the surface, but it wasn’t serving anyone as well as I could because I was running on empty.
And I actually hit burnout. There is so much to be said for focus. If you want to build a business that doesn’t suck the joy out of your life — the kind where you’re stuck on this relentless treadmill of doing, doing, doing, pushing, pushing, pushing harder, harder, harder to get results — something has to give. You have to make choices.
Closing the membership and starting over
After that burnout, it took me months to recover. I closed the membership. I went back to in-person work for a while before realizing I did not want to be back in education settings. After 14 years in schools, I was done. So I needed to find something that was going to work for the season of life I was in. I came back into the online business world, but I was very deliberate about how I wanted to build a new business and what I wanted it to look like. And because of that intentionality, I did the opposite of hustle. I got focused. I got intentional.
How I run my business now
Now I plan my business in 12 week sprints. I don’t have these big annualized goals that I lose momentum with by the time February comes around. I work within school hours, full stop. The laptop gets closed at 3pm and it doesn’t get opened again until 9:30 the next day. My week is now shaped around how I want it to run. It’s not reactive. I’m not responding to urgent pulls on my time. Mondays are for deep work — that’s for me to focus on working on my business, doing strategic work. Tuesdays and Thursdays are client days. Wednesdays is content creation day, hence why I’m talking to you now. Fridays are for admin. I’m not trying to do all of the things every single day all at once. I’m not this kind of squirrel trying to do everything and chase everything all at the same time.
My mornings are mine again
My mornings are now mine. I still wake up early — still wake up about six o’clock. But that is not to open my laptop. That is to have a cup of tea. It’s to have uninterrupted thinking time. It’s to doodle. It’s to just have space and time for me. I’m not getting ahead of everyone else. I’m giving the best time of the day to myself, like I’m a morning person.
I may never become a millionaire
And yes, I may never become a millionaire. Chasing seven figures is not really what I’m after. I want a lifestyle business, one that fits around my family, that gives me time and space to do the things I enjoy — a business that feels fun and deeply human. What joining the Five O’Clock Club taught me was that is not how I want to run my business. All credit to those people that want to operate in that way — stay awake for 23 hours and push harder, harder, harder. But that is not how I want to run my business. And I’m not following that advice anymore. I’m not following those rules.
Build Your 90-Day Blueprint
If you have been following their rules and you have a growing sense that their way just isn’t for you, it just isn’t your way, I would love to invite you to join me for Build Your 90-Day Blueprint workshop. Basically, it’s how we plan a 12-week sprint so that you hit those big business goals, but it fits around your life instead of constantly chasing and striving for the hustle. Because that hustle culture, for me, definitely as a mum of two, led to burnout. And burnout made me burn my business down. So it is not a price that I think is worth paying.
There are better ways for you to build a business that feels sustainable and fun and profitable to run that does not require you to sell your soul to the Five O’Clock Club mentality.
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