EP201: ​​Working Harder Makes You Poorer

PPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY

Did you hear…

Hustle culture is OUT! 👏🎉

At least, it is for people who realize that working smarter gets you further than working harder…

Much, much further. 

Here’s the thing about hustle culture…

Hard work is both not enough and wayyyy too much when it comes to growing wealth. 

Putting all your time and energy into work doesn’t get you to your goals, but it WILL leave you drained

Here’s to working smarter, getting wealthier, and leaving hustle culture behind for good. 🥂

⚠️ Newsflash: Working harder makes you poorer. ⚠️

Sadly, our society has been ingrained with the painful myth that the road to riches is paved with non-stop grind. 

We’ve bought into the belief that our dreams are only reachable through the gauntlet of endless workdays, escalating our output, and sacrificing our well-being at the altar of productivity. 

Yet, what if this belief is not just a lie, but a cruel one at that? Emerging evidence suggests a troubling trend: the more we surrender to this grueling work ethic, the more we’re shackled by diminishing financial returns, a reality that betrays our deepest efforts and exacerbates the sting of this enduring deception.

Source:  The Kitti Sisters TV

Hustle Culture

We’re certain by now you’ve heard hustle culture referenced in the media, or maybe you even have a friend who loves to brag about their hustle and grind. 

👉 In today’s episode, we’re diving deep into the evidence that shows working harder makes you poorer.

We’ll spill the beans on the real keys to building wealth that surprisingly doesn’t involve breaking your back. 

Plus, we’ve got some practical tactics for all you business leaders and entrepreneurs to sprinkle into your day-to-day business grind.

But first, we want to show you what happens when you don’t make the change from hustle culture and how badly this can impact every single area of your life. Let us show you what happens when you don’t make a change from this hustle culture.

1️⃣ First off, your mental health takes a hit. 

The constant pressure, with deadlines always looming over you is enough to make anyone feel a bit frazzled. And don’t even get us started on the physical toll. Yet, you’re pushing through, chugging that extra cup of coffee just to survive the daily marathon.

2️⃣ Next up, let’s talk about family bonds. Remember that quality time you used to spend with loved ones? Well, you can forget about your kid’s soccer game or throwing the ball in the front yard because the grind has become the new player in the family game. 

Juggling work commitments often means missing out on family movie nights or even nightly dinners together.

And don’t even mention self-care – what’s that? 😖😖

The grind culture often leaves us neglecting the very person at the center of it all – ourselves.

When was the last time you took a breather, maybe indulged in a hobby, or just had a lazy ☀️ Sunday without a to-do list chasing you?

So, in this grind-centric world 🌎, it’s crucial to pause, reflect, and maybe even redefine success.

After all, balance is the real MVP, keeping your mental health in check, your family bonds strong, and your self-care game on point.

⏰ Time to ditch the grind for a bit and savor the good stuff, don’t you think?

Let the Evidence Speak for Itself

Have you ever seen the show 📺 Chopped?

It’s super intense and high-pressure, and many talented chefs have been known to crumble in the face of pressure.

One example that comes to mind that we’ve seen time and time again is the ice cream machine and the downfall of many brave contestants by using it. 

You see, it’s all fun and games, but if you get distracted for too long, the machine will have been left churning for too long, resulting in grainy and overmixed ice cream that’s totally unusable. 

In life, just like on the show, sometimes more effort actually leads to less success.

Which is pretty sad when you think about it. 🤔🤔

The issue here isn’t that the chefs didn’t have a lack of drive or talent or skill, it’s that they didn’t find the sweet spot between input and output. 

For us, we see this in the culture of overwork, where too much of a good thing leads to a breaking point. 

So you might be wondering – what specific emerging evidence suggests that hard work doesn’t equate to wealth?

Well, according to the Economic Policy Institute, from 1973 to 2014 in the good ol’ USA, productivity shot up 72.2%, but guess what happened to the typical worker’s hourly pay?

It only crawled up a measly 9.2%. 

It seems like putting in those extra hours and giving it your all doesn’t always mean more money in your pocket. It’s like you’re on the hustle treadmill, running faster, but your wallet isn’t keeping up.

Let’s switch to something a bit mind-boggling – the connection between how much we work and the cash flow of a country. 

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), there is a funky trend emerging. The hours clocked in seem to have a seesaw dance with the per capita GDP in their member countries.

Countries like Norway 🇳🇴 and Germany 🇩🇪, where people might be working fewer hours on average, are hitting a higher per capita GDP compared to the longer-hour champs like Greece 🇬🇷 and Mexico 🇲🇽. 

It’s a real-life economic riddle – shorter hours, more money in the national piggy bank.

Who would’ve thought?

You guys, it’s so bad that The World Health Organization has officially recognized workplace burnout as an occupational phenomenon. 

Chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed can lead to burnout, which can reduce productivity and lead to health issues that might put further financial burdens on you.

➡️ Have you ever heard of the law of diminishing returns?

Imagine you’re baking a cake, and you keep adding more sugar. At first, it’s sweet heaven, but at some point, more sugar just turns it into a sugary disaster.

Now, apply that to your work hours.

There’s this sweet spot where putting in extra hours equals extra productivity.

But according to the law of diminishing returns, after a certain point, that extra time you’re throwing into your work mix might start playing hard to get. 

Suddenly, more hours don’t mean more productivity; they might just mean more eye strain and fewer good ideas.

The Compensation Ladder

So if hard work isn’t the key to becoming rich, what actually is?

More on that soon, but first, have you ever wondered, when you stroll into a hotel and start living that temporary high life, who’s really breaking a sweat behind the scenes? 

Chances are, it’s the unsung heroes – the maids and the maintenance crew.

These guys are the backbone of the 🏨 hotel hustle, putting in some serious elbow grease. 

But despite their hard work, they often get the short end of the paycheck stick. Their earnings are tied straight to the clock – the more hours they grind, the more they see in their wallets. And that, friends, shines a spotlight on a classic workforce issue. 

Let’s break down the compensation game into four quick tiers ⏬

Base Level

Unfortunately, this group gets paid based on their physical effort, but since there’s a surplus of willing workers, they end up with the smallest paycheck.

Mid-Level Management

The second tier is all about managing tasks, earning a bit more but still putting in a ton of time for not a huge payout.

Business Owners

Now we’re talking. These are the risk-takers who once might’ve been in the first two tiers but leveled up. Their earnings are linked to other people’s skills and time, making bank, especially if their business hits the jackpot.

Force Multiplier

We’ve told this story many times, but think of it like planting an apple seed.

Once it’s successful, it doesn’t just give you one apple – it’s a whole tree 🌳 with a ton of apples. Investors play a similar game, leveraging one successful move into a cascade of wins.

The awesome part is that at this stage, investors get to disconnect effort from financial success.

They throw their money into the game, and it starts working overtime, growing and thriving out there in the real world. 

Take our real estate hustle as an example.

We snagged a 100-unit gem in Fort Worth, Texas. 🤠🤠

Investors threw in anywhere from 50 grand to 300 grand, depending on their ability to invest.

The “work” was basically a wire transfer. 💰

After that, they went on a property vacation.

Our team handled everything – property manager switcheroos, fire claims, and even a wild winter storm that froze pipes and doors. 

Most of these investors probably never even set foot on the property.

But guess what?

Their money, working quietly in the background, did all the talking.

In just over 20 months, it waltzed back into their bank accounts with a 75% annual return. 😍😍

Now, that’s a sweet deal!

How Debt Can Help You

Do you know who Do Won Chang is?

We bet you’ve heard of his company – Forever 21. 👗💄

Here’s the awesome thing about Won Chang; before he made it big, he worked as a janitor, at a gas station, and a coffee shop.

When he opened his first 900-square-foot retail store in LA, he and his wife only had 11 grand in savings, all of which they put into the business.

Today, Forever 21 is a well over 700 store empire worth billions. 

We didn’t tell you this story to encourage you to go out and open your own ritual storefront, but it’s important to remember that not everyone starts out at the top. Maybe at the beginning, you were the receptionist or accounts payable and you were the one doing the work. 

But as time went on you started to brand out and expand your skills and you learned how to leverage the key tools of:  Team – Tool – Time – Debt – Taxes.

So how can you maximize your time and use technology to improve efficiency?

Maybe it’s a project management software like Monday.com or Asana or a communication tool like Slack.

No matter what platform you use, when you have tasks to complete, can you delegate the work to someone else, so it’s their time invested rather than yours?

According to Michael Gerber, you shouldn’t be spending your time on what he refers to as “technician work.” Instead, your focus should be on operating as a visionary. 😌😌

Not only that but utilizing debt for business expansion, when done strategically, can significantly propel your business. 

In the heyday of the 🍺 beer industry, Coors and Budweiser engaged in a battle for supremacy.

Coors, valuing tradition and caution, opted for a debt-free approach to grow their company, ensuring a solid but gradual expansion.

Prioritizing quality and financial conservatism, they reinvested earnings instead of borrowing for growth.

On the flip side, Budweiser embraced a bolder strategy, using debt as a catalyst for rapid expansion.

They constructed breweries, launched extensive marketing campaigns, and swiftly became a national icon, establishing their brand far and wide.

As time progressed, Budweiser’s strategy propelled them ahead, turning them into a household name across America and beyond. 

In contrast, Coors maintained a more modest footprint.

The story of Coors and Budweiser became a tale of two philosophies—one of steady progress and the other of swift ascent through leveraged expansion.

So while there will never be a one-size-fits-all all strategy for wealth and success, it’s important to understand that working harder doesn’t mean you will be wealthier. 

Now that you learned why working harder does not correlate with financial success, tune into this episode because you’ll need to understand the 7 investing secrets we wish we knew earlier to grow 10X faster.

Thanks for tuning all the way to the end. 

Until next time, dream big, and keep making those dreams a reality! ☁️

In the last five years, the US had a slight drop in occupancy. But certain smaller apartment markets, such as Boise City, Gainesville, and Deltona, did way worse because of lots of buildings and lower demand since the pandemic. Places like Crestview and Augusta also saw fewer people in their apartments. Among the big cities, only Jacksonville and Phoenix had occupancy drops similar to these smaller places.

FYI:  For us, the Kitti Sisters, those cities listed aren’t where we’re focusing our attention.

➡️ Pension Giant’s $1B Real Estate Bet: Brookfield, Blackstone

🏡 Global Dreams Crushed: Interest Rate Impact

👷 Construction Surges: 43 States + D.C.

💰 JPMorgan’s $29M Orlando Housing Game-Changer