Stranger Things Pajamas and Million Dollar Businesses
Why the hustle porn merchants are full of shit
Today I built an entire offer from scratch.
Market research
Curriculum design
Positioning strategy
The whole damn thing.
Interviewed a developer candidate.
Multiple team calls.
Recorded course modules.
Wrote 10+ pages in my journal mapping out business strategy and life plans.
Made dashboard updates.
Then at 6pm, I turned off the computer.
My fiancée walked in and we cracked open the Stranger Things branded snack boxes we'd bought earlier.
Put on matching Stranger Things pajamas.
Spent the next four hours binge-watching the new episodes.
I also had two hour-long calls with friends that day.
Now, some productivity guru with a Bitcoin laser eyes profile picture is about to tell you that this makes me weak.
Unfocused.
Not serious about success.
That real entrepreneurs sacrifice everything.
Cut off their loved ones.
White-knuckle their way to billionaire status before they're allowed to enjoy a single fucking moment of their lives.
Let me tell you why that's complete bullshit.
The Lie That Keeps You Miserable
There's this narrative that's infected the internet like a virus.
You've seen it.
Hell, you've probably believed it at some point.
The story goes like this:
Success requires total sacrifice.
If you're not grinding 18 hours a day
If you see your family on holidays
If you have hobbies or interests outside of your business
You're not serious.
You're playing entrepreneur.
Real builders lock themselves in dark rooms, survive on coffee and Coke Zero, and emerge years later with empires.
It sounds hardcore.
It sounds committed.
It sounds like the price you have to pay.
And it's a fairy tale told by people who either haven't built anything real, or who are so damaged by their own journey that they've convinced themselves suffering was the point.
Look, there are absolutely times when you need to go hard.
When you're launching something new.
When there's a critical deadline.
When an opportunity appears that won't wait.
During those periods, yeah, other stuff takes a backseat.
You skip the gym.
You eat like shit.
You tell your friends you'll see them next month.
But the difference between a sprint and a marathon matters.
And building something that lasts.
Something real.
Is a marathon.
Actually, it's more like one of those ultramarathons where you run for days.
You cannot redline the entire time.
You'll blow up.
You'll burn out.
You'll wake up one day with money in the bank and realize you don't remember how to be a human being.
What The Actual Successful People Do
You know who owns a private island?
Richard Branson.
You know what he does there?
Fucking kitesurfs.
All the time.
The guy built Virgin into a massive conglomerate, and he's constantly posting pictures of himself doing extreme water sports and hanging out with friends.
In 1987, he crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a hot air balloon.
Not because it helped Virgin Atlantic's bottom line.
Because he thought it would be fun.
Mark Zuckerberg took up MMA as a hobby.
He competes in jiu-jitsu tournaments.
The man runs Meta, one of the largest companies on the planet.
And even HE still finds time to get choked out by other hobbyists at local gyms.
Elon Musk, for all his chaos and controversy, was at one point ranked in the top 20 worldwide in Diablo IV.
A video game.
The guy running Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter was grinding video game levels.
Larry Ellison, Oracle founder worth over $56 billion, spends massive amounts of time on boats.
Not as transportation.
As a hobby.
Sergey Brin does trapeze and skydiving.
These people didn't wait until they "made it" to have lives.
They built their empires while maintaining interests, relationships, and identities outside of their companies.
And honestly?
That probably helped them build better companies.
Because they stayed sane.
They stayed creative.
They stayed human.
When you have nothing in your life except work, you make worse decisions.
You lose perspective.
You can't see the forest because you've been staring at the same three trees for six months straight.
The Math Equation
Here's a thought experiment.
Let's say you follow the hustle porn gospel.
You cut out everything.
No friends
No hobbies
No relationships
No fun
Just work.
For ten years, you grind.
And it works.
Congratulations, you're now worth $10 million.
Now what?
You don't have friends anymore.
You ghosted them all years ago because you were "too busy."
You never developed any interests outside of work.
You don't know what you enjoy because you never gave yourself permission to find out.
You have money and nothing to spend it on.
Nobody to share it with.
So you... keep working.
Because it's all you know.
It's all you are.
That's not success.
That's a prison you built yourself.
Compare that to someone who builds something while:
Maintaining relationships
Exploring interests
Taking breaks
Maybe it takes them twelve years instead of ten to hit that same milestone.
Maybe fifteen.
So fucking what?
They get there with their mental health intact.
With people they care about still in their lives.
With hobbies they genuinely enjoy.
With the ability to actually appreciate and use the wealth they've built.
The extra years are irrelevant when you consider you're building a life, not just a bank account.
The Performance Paradox
Here's something the grind-yourself-to-dust crowd doesn't understand.
Rest improves performance.
You're not a machine that runs at consistent output regardless of input.
You're a biological organism with limits.
When you ignore those limits, you don't transcend them.
You degrade.
Your decision-making gets worse when you're exhausted.
Your creativity tanks.
Your ability to see opportunities and threats diminishes.
You start making stupid mistakes because your brain is running on fumes.
I did more high-quality work yesterday than most people do in a week.
But I could do that because I've structured my life to be sustainable.
I sleep well.
I work out.
I maintain friendships that energize me.
I do things I enjoy.
All of which keeps me from resenting my work.
When 6pm hit and I shut off my computer, I wasn't abandoning my business.
I was investing in my ability to come back the next day sharp, focused, and creative.
Those hours watching Stranger Things with my fiancée weren't wasted.
They were recharging time that made all the productive hours possible.
The people screaming about their 18-hour workdays?
Most of that time is garbage.
They're confusing presence with productivity.
Sitting at a desk isn't the same as doing valuable work.
If you're exhausted and burned out, you're probably spending six of those eighteen hours scrolling Twitter, staring at your screen, and fooling yourself into thinking you're grinding.
See my previous article about what Rize revealed about even my own work focus level.
The Thanksgiving Test
Every year, like clockwork, you see them.
The social media posts from founders who are "too busy" to go home for Thanksgiving.
Too focused on the mission.
Too committed to success.
They're at the office, grinding while everyone else is wasting time with family.
Hormozi had a famous tweet about doing this.
Most of them are lying.
Not about being at the office.
About why they're there.
They've convinced themselves that suffering equals virtue.
That sacrifice is the point, not the means.
They think posting about how they're missing family makes them look dedicated.
When really it just makes them look like they have no idea how to manage their time or priorities.
The truly successful people?
They go home for Thanksgiving.
Because they've built systems and businesses that don't collapse if they take three days off.
Because they understand that relationships are what make success meaningful.
Because they're secure enough not to perform productivity theater on social media.
What Balance Actually Looks Like
Balance doesn't mean spending exactly 50% of your time on work and 50% on everything else.
That's not how it works.
Some weeks you go hard.
You're in launch mode, or something broke, or there's a time-sensitive opportunity.
During those weeks, everything else gets minimized.
That's fine.
That's part of building something.
But that can't be every week.
If every week is a crisis, you don't have a business.
You have chaos.
Balance means having the flexibility to sprint when needed and recover when you can.
It means protecting time for things that aren't directly productive but keep you sane and human.
It means understanding that your life is not a dress rehearsal for some future version where you finally give yourself permission to enjoy things.
Today was a great day.
I got a massive amount of meaningful work done.
I also laughed with friends.
I relaxed on the couch with my fiancée eating themed snacks and watching a show we both love.
Both things happened.
Neither one diminished the other.
That's what balance looks like in reality.
Not some perfect 50/50 split.
Not carefully scheduled blocks where you allocate exactly the right amount of time to each life category.
Just the recognition that work is important and so is everything else.
And that long-term, you can't have one without the other.
Your Permission Slip
If you've been beating yourself up for wanting a life outside of your business.
STOP.
If you've been feeling guilty for spending time with loved ones or pursuing hobbies.
CUT THAT SHIT OUT.
If you've internalized the message that real entrepreneurs:
Don't rest
Don't enjoy things
Don't have balance
YOU HAVE BEEN LIED TO.
The people at the very top.
The billionaires, the empire builders, the ones who've actually done it.
They have lives.
They have interests.
They take breaks.
They maintain relationships.
You're allowed to do the same.
You can work your ass off on things you care about and still have time for people and activities you love.
You can be ambitious and still wear ridiculous themed pajamas with your partner.
You can build something meaningful and still answer when your friends call.
The grind-until-you-die narrative is sold by people who need you to believe success is unattainable so they can sell you some bullshit.
Or by people who are genuinely miserable and need to believe their suffering meant something.
You don't have to buy into it.
Build your business.
Chase your goals.
Work hard when it matters.
And when 6pm rolls around on a random weeknight.
If you want to put on stupid pajamas and watch TV with someone you love.
Do that without guilt.
The work will be there tomorrow.
And you'll do it better if you're not a burned-out husk of a person pretending that exhaustion is the same as dedication.
Balance isn't weakness.
It's strategy.
It's the difference between building something that lasts and flaming out spectacularly.
You could work until you drop and lose everything.
But hey.
Some dude on Twitter might call you a Top G.
Does it sound worth it?