From Frenzy to Focus: Joshua Richner Of Rich Life Adventures On How We Can Cancel Hustle Culture And Create A New Sustainable Work Paradigm
An Interview With Drew Gerber
Meditate. You’ll never understand the impact until you sit. Keep sitting until you want to sit.
“Hustle Culture” is an ethos often propounded by young self-proclaimed internet gurus that centers around the idea that working long hours and sacrificing self-care are required to succeed. This mentality may have gained popularity in the mid-2010s, but it has peaked, and now it has been sardonically renamed “Burnout Culture.” So why exactly is Hustle Culture the wrong path to take? What damage can it cause? What is a viable, sustainable alternative to hustle culture? How can we move from Frenzy To Focus? In this interview series, we are talking to business leaders, mental health leaders, marketing experts, business coaches, authors, and thought leaders who can share stories and insights about “How We Can Cancel Hustle Culture And Create A New Sustainable Work Paradigm.” As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Joshua Richner.
Joshua Richner is an established business leader with experience in marketing, public relations, consulting, and public speaking. He is a subject matter expert on the debt relief industry, with work and words shared by TIME Magazine, CNET and more. He is discarding the societies norms and is traveling full time with his family to stop debt scams and spread financial education.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to know how you got from “there to here.” Inspire us with your backstory!
I’m thrilled to join in, thank you. My backstory, really, is my survival. I had no option but hustle-culture. Poverty and family dysfunction chewed me up and the public school system and a misdiagnosis of “teenage addict” spit me out.
When teens enter the rehab cycle, they often get pulled into a cycle of being passed from one place to another.
On June 21st, 2006, the eve of my 18th birthday, was my first night in a halfway house in Delray Beach, Florida. I was sent by a rehab in Northeast Pennsylvania that is no longer in business due to the Kids for Cash scandal that influenced the rehab scene at the time. They sent me to a mecca of recovery, halfway houses, and hopeless young adults chasing recovery.
I had a few weeks of rent paid and a backpack of clothes. I had no job, degree, connections, or hope to pay the $ 150-a-week rent that was around the corner.
So, I had to hustle.
I approached a call center that had a reputation for hiring people in the halfway house I was at. I walked in and stood in front of a large desk at the center of the telemarketing sales floor of about 50 people. The bold, loud Jewish woman I faced loudly announced that she wasn’t going to hire another addict who’ll quit in 3 days and shooed me off, literally, with hand motions, shooing noises, and all. I came to learn this personality was a norm in South Florida.
I came back every few days to prove her wrong.
After about a week, I overcame the blatant discrimination and was hired to sell newspaper subscriptions to people in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. I worked every hour of overtime, made it my personal mission to lead the sales board every day, and put every ounce of energy possible toward my $8/hr hour job that had no regard for who I was as a human. In the ~18 months I worked for them, I became one of their top salespeople and a call center supervisor.
I never missed my rent.
Tell us about your typical day!
I’m WAY more of a morning person now than when I was in full-on hustle-mode. My day begins with an alarm at 6:15 AM- I’m working toward 6 AM, but I don’t pressure myself on it. I value an hour for tea, yoga (or at least stretching), and mindfulness or meditation.
After morning family time, I sit by 8:30 to plan out my day. I may check my finances or whatever other big project is on my mind, and then I dive into work by 9.
My days tend to have a handful of video meetings, some focused work, writing, delegation, and research. I’m allowing more freedom of creative thought now than when I was in the hustle mindset, so I don’t live or die by the calendar. I work from home, have children, and live a life of chaos as we prepare to sell our house and go full-time in our RV and launch RichLifeAdventures.com.
It’s tough to keep to a routine, and I don’t beat myself up when I fail, but I do my best.
What lessons would you share with yourself if you had the opportunity to meet your younger self?
I’d tell him he’s a good person through to his core and that he’s not just gonna be okay. He’s going to change and inspire the world.
No lessons. Just truth.
Ok, thank you for sharing your inspired life. Let’s start with a basic definition to make sure that all of us are on the same page. How do you define Hustle Culture?
Hustle Culture is the rise and grind mentality that’s been layered upon our society as long as most of us have been alive. I’ve always heard phrases like “work hard, play hard” and “sleep when you’re dead,” and this is the core of Hustle Culture: work hard to achieve success, no matter the cost.
Now let’s discuss an alternative to Hustle Culture. To begin, can you share with our readers a bit about why you are an authority on the problems that come with Hustle Culture?
I embraced hustle-culture for 15 years and achieved success in every sense of the word. But then I broke. The traumas of my past and the stress of a never-stop mindset left me broken and battered, trembling on the floor of my dining room due to stress and tension.
Since then, I’ve discovered how to shed stress, cast away hustle, and find focus. And my life has soared. It is more gratifying; my output is higher quality; and my work and life prospects have aligned in ways unimaginable.
This process I went through was very visible and lasted several months. I have videos and shared some on TikTok, getting thousands of views. Now, it’s not just because of hustle-culture, but nothing is black and white like that.
Most importantly, I learned how to get out of it. I discovered how to stop hustling and start focusing. The difference between hustle and focus has been surreal.
The specific term “Hustle Culture” may have been popularized in the 2010s, but the concept behind it and the behaviors that come with it can be traced back hundreds or perhaps even thousands of years. From your vantage point, experience, or research, what were the main drivers of Hustle Culture?
I believe that Western Capitalism demands unreasonable expectations of human output.
Capitalism isn’t necessarily bad, but the over-emphasis on human output and productivity has perverted our home life and driven us to live lives of unsustainable stress.
I work in the marketing industry, and so I’m very cognizant of this question. What role do you see that marketing and advertising has played in creating the frenzy caused by Hustle Culture that many of us feel?
As a fellow marketing professional, I imagine that I see many of the same things as you. Advertising and marketing have been used to create an all-too-familiar narrative of constant striving.
As soon as radios entered the home, along came audio commercials. A friendly voice in your home telling you what to buy(and even what to think!).
Then, television turned the friendly voice into a friendly person, which is much more effective in building trust.
Fast forward to today and we have devices all but attached to us that show people just like us doing and buying and being all the things we then believe we should be doing and buying and being.
And how do we get it all? By working hard and hustling.
When our brains see advertisements liked and shared by our friends and neighbors on social media, we truly believe that we are missing out or, even worse, are inadequate because we don’t have these things.
That doesn’t consider the impact of industry-specific marketing like that of even energy drinks or even pharmaceuticals, which actively target young people with the promise of greater productivity and success that comes from using their product to hustle harder.
Can you help articulate the downsides of Hustle Culture? Why is this an unsustainable work paradigm?
Here’s a real life example of where hustle-culture landed me. 34 years old, earning a solid 6-figures from my multiple hustles and grinds. It brought me to the ground and debilitated me. I spent 4 months trying to understand what was wrong with me and why I couldn’t eat. I lost 55 pounds unintentionally. I thought I was dying.
It turns out it was stress, trauma and tension. Thank goodness “that’s all it was, ” but a brain and stomach cancer scare at 34 will change you.
https://www.tiktok.com/@activehealing/video/7145154294101069098?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7083291935536711211
We have finite energy, in a very literal sense. Our brain only has so much capacity, our body only has so much energy, and our emotions only have so much resilience.
We push ourselves too hard and ignore signs that we need to rest or take a break, and instead reach for another cup of coffee. We miss out on time with our families because we need a second job to cover the education we think they’ll want in the future. We shortchange our own health and well-being because we believe that hustling is the only thing that will keep us economically safe, which is often the only real risk many of us face in our worlds. When we recognize that we don’t need to be economically safe if we change our risk or our risk tolerance.
Most of us struggle to recognize the deep toll that this unsustainable work paradigm is taking on our health, relationships and the overall well-being of our entire society.
This overemphasis on hustle and the pursuit of economic gain has been modeled across several generations now. We model to our children and our grandchildren that the pursuit of economic gain rather is more valuable than the pursuit of Self. When an entire society fails to model something to their children, it stops being created innately. Self-discovery, developing a core belief system; creating and embracing one’s own identiy. These are all being lost in the pursuit of economic gain. As a result, the physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional drawbacks of stress and hustle culture become our core belief system and identity.
I believe unsustainable is an understatement. We’re embracing harm to our deepest selves.
Let’s now discuss Focus, the opposite of Frenzy. Can you please share one area of your personal or business life where you simplified things and then felt less frenzied and more fulfilled? Can you please explain?
Absolutely. My family and I have begun to deconstruct our thinking by removing ourselves from systems. I’m convinced that you cannot fully understand the impact of a system until you remove yourself from it, even if only for a brief time.
We learned the impact of the education system when we were forced to keep our young kids home from school. For us, schooling at home was less stressful on us and our kids than public school. Choosing to homeschool made us feel less frenzied.
This led to a domino-effect where we found ourselves embracing simplifying our lives.
In the past year, I’ve met a calling that demands to be acted upon. We’ve decided to chase our dream, sell our home, and road school our children. We’ll receive incredible financial freedom, less emphasis on “stuff” and more emphasis on experiences.
It’s refreshing to know that our needs don’t have to be met by external systems of success. We can be the only measure of our own successes, find joy and meaning in simple things, and enjoy living life at our own pace.
When we aren’t stressed by the many pressures of life, we can tap into our creative selves and find flow. Things truly fall into place in amazing ways when you step out in faith and take a leap of trust.
Mindfulness, focus and intentional alignment are now my way of life.
I’m less frenzied as I shed societal pressures to reach certain career or life goals, or acquire certain things.
I’m getting in touch with my true Self, and this is where I have found the most peace and joy. And it radiates to my wife, children, and others I meet. The fulfillment this has brought is invaluable.
What life experiences have you adopted in your business or personal life that have left you more satisfied? Can you please explain?
The top of the list is connecting with people on a deeper level. I’ve found tremendous value in connecting with people about things beyond business. I used to ask what people do for work when I was beginning to get to know them. As a result, I’ve come to recognize the limited understanding brought about when built upon a foundational understand of them through their work.
As a result, I’ve shifted to asking more meaningful questions. I ask questions that value the other person as a human. Rooting our interaction in authentic connection puts people at ease and allows us to connect from a place of friendship and understanding. These conversations start with who we are as human beings, not what career title or position we hold.
This way of communicating doesn’t change based on my venue or purpose, either. If I’m on a work call, sure, we’ll get to the work stuff, but I care about the other person’s lived experience in that moment first. But I’m going to aim to connect with Abe at work just as deeply as I connected with Najeen, the kind homeless woman I had the pleasure to meet while outside of a conference in Atlanta.
This has opened my heart and mind. I’ve grown in business because I hear the true pain points and struggles of the people I’m working with and my customers alike. It has made the connection between us much more meaningful and my solutions for them come from a place of want to help, not just making a sale.
And because of that, I’m forming meaningful relationships that will spread and last far beyond this current interaction.
Okay, fantastic. Here is the main part of our interview. In your opinion, how can we break the addiction to being busy or trying to find the next big thing? How can people truly focus on tasks that make THE difference to their business and lives giving them satisfaction or life purpose alignment? Based on your experience and your area of expertise, can you please share “Five Ways To Move From Frenzy to Focused”?
1 . Allow and embrace original thoughts. Your thoughts matter, too. This will likely require a disconnect from electronics, phones, radio, tv, and all other media. We’re blasted with messages that conflict with our deep selves. Take your attention and energy back. The more you disconnect, and the longer, the better. Truly break the addiction by going 3–5 days without electronics.
2 . Get in nature. We live in a highly stimulating world. Stimulation is a predictable part of life, but we have so much of it that we cannot focus. Time in nature reduces hormones like cortisol and adrenaline that create stress. Go slow and focus on the moment. Shed the stimulation of our chaotic world by slowing down and embracing the soothing stimulation of nature.
3 . Talk it out. You have things on your mind. Anyone who has ever had a stressful life situation slow down their work day understands that it keeps you from focusing. We see it clearly with big events like loss and illness, but the small ones weigh on us, too. When you take the time to talk with a trusted person offline about what’s affecting you emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, you won’t be as distracted by them when you want to be focused on something else.
4 . Meditate. You’ll never understand the impact until you sit. Keep sitting until you want to sit.
5 . Nourish. Go out of your way to find healthful foods that nourish you. That requires understanding what your body needs compared to what it wants. While this might be the most difficult on the list because of personal lived experiences, societal pressures, general discomfort, the challenge on this one is to fast. There is no more effective way to learn how to focus than by discovering how much energy the body focuses on digestion. Fasting teaches you how to transfer that energy, or focus, toward deep thinking, physical healing, spiritual growth, and more.
How would you describe a work paradigm that is a viable alternative to Hustle Culture? What would it look like, and what would you call it?
When people gather their minds, they create amazing things! Nobody can deny that when we work together, humans create beautiful, life-changing solutions to the problems we face.
One thing we like to create is systems, and systems build upon themselves. Once they are put into motion, they engrain themselves into our daily lives and strengthen over time. That’s a sign of a good system.
Enter: capitalism.
Humans across the globe gather every day in rooms at jobs to discuss businesses. The purpose of a business is to make money. Sure, they have mission statements, but at the core, a for-profit corporation is out to make money.
I believe we can create a societal system, or a work paradigm, that carries just as much momentum as capitalism but is less reliant on financial and economic gain, which has proven unsustainable.
Instead of setting out to create money, we focus on doing good.
We don’t need to limit ourselves to selling useless trinkets or services that perpetuate a capitalistic culture in order to survive and thrive. We’ve solved our basic problems as humans. Our needs have been met by the work we’ve done over thousands of years.
Instead, we can create fulfillment, nurture self-expression, and truly offer something that has a meaningful impact on the world.
I would call this new paradigm ‘Collaborative Mindfulness.’
This particular paradigm would be based around mindfulness and cooperation. It would involve working together in a collective that doesn’t focus on an individual’s gain or their personal benefit above everyone else’s but instead mindfully considers the greater good.
Collaborative Mindfulness recognizes that the physical, mental, and spiritual health of our society is just as tangible, valuable, and worth pursuing as money and economic gain.
The power of Cooperative Mindfulness is in its simplicity: we focus on the collective experience and shift our enthusiasm away from hustle culture to one that emphasizes balance, well-being, creativity and meaningful work. That translates directly into increased productivity because workers are happier and healthier, more engaged with their work and connected to their colleagues.
This is a viable alternative to Hustle Culture because it gives us the opportunity to create something greater than ourselves — something that positively impacts everyone involved. We can use the power of mindful collaboration to build better systems, achieve goals faster and more efficiently than ever before, and create a world that works for everyone. That’s the power of Collective Mindfulness.
Do you have any favorite books, podcasts, or resources that have inspired you about working differently?
Two books I’ve read in the past year that totally altered my thinking and living are Atomic Habits by James Clear, and The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can inspire.
Thank you. We need unity. Desperately!
To achieve unity, we must listen to each other. We must model to our children how to listen to someone with a differing opinion. Here’s the challenge, which will become the movement: When you hear someone who has an opinion that makes you cringe to your core, approach them. Engage them. Ask them to tell you more. But that’s all. Don’t give any feedback. Hear their ideas, worries, fears, theories, or whatever it may be that they have to say. Simply absorb it and smile. I am telling you that your opinion is absolutely valid. It is! You may hear them with discernment without speaking your own thoughts or feelings. If we can begin to flex that muscle, even in small ways at home with the people we’re most comfortable with, we’ll strengthen our ability to communicate with others. When we create unity within our home, it spreads to our neighbors, our community, and beyond.
What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?
You can connect with me on LinkedIn and join our Rich Life Adventures on the platform of your choice.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.
Thank you so much! It was a pleasure talking with you and about this important topic.
About The Interviewer: For 30 years, Drew Gerber has been inspiring those who want to change the world. Drew is the CEO of Wasabi Publicity, Inc., a full-service PR agency lauded by PR Week and Good Morning America. Wasabi Publicity, Inc. is a global marketing company that supports industry leaders, change agents, unconventional thinkers, companies and organizations that strive to make a difference. Whether it’s branding, traditional PR or social media marketing, every campaign is instilled with passion, creativity and brilliance to powerfully tell their clients’ story and amplify their intentions in the world. Schedule a free consultation at WasabiPublicity.com/Choosing-Publicity.
