The hustle delusion: When hard work isn’t enough

But pause for a breath and ask yourself, is all this hustle actually building anything? Or are we simply surviving another day?

In Episode Five of Founders’ Battlefield, three honest voices shared what many founders feel but rarely name. Hustle, when disconnected from structure, eventually breaks you.

George Ikua spoke of chasing reinvention until he mistook falling for flying. Each failed venture felt like a child abandoned, until he stopped and leaned into clarity and collaboration.

Read: When to hibernate and when to blossom

Suzie Wokabi described the emotional toll of building Kenya’s first local cosmetics brand, only to burn out and hand it over like a child placed for adoption. Her second venture stalled, not from lack of vision, but from exhaustion disguised as momentum.

Kaboro Kariuki brought a strategic lens. “If you’re still firefighting,” he said, “you probably never built the fire exit.” His 3S Audit — structure, signal, self — urges founders to ask what they are really building, and from which mindset. Their stories reminded us that motion is not momentum, struggle is not strategy, and chaos is not clarity.

Hustle may begin as a strategy, but for many, it becomes a trap. Jim Collins and Jerry Porras described the difference between time tellers and clock builders.

Time tellers shine while present, but everything falls apart when they leave. Clock builders create systems that work without them. In our context, many are forced into time-teller mode. We are the product, the pitch, the people and the plan.

Why is it so hard to stop? Because hustle is not just personal, it is structural. Every time you hire someone, you absorb their burdens. Their rent. Their school fees. Their future. You try to pass that weight forward through a product or service. If it works, the chain holds. If it doesn’t, the burden lands back on you.

In markets like ours, where liquidity is scarce and exits are rare, those who survive are not always the most visionary. Often, they are the ones who move the weight forward fastest.

Meanwhile, others have mastered the game. Kenya’s political class has become the most powerful business class. They do not just influence policy. They own the contracts, control the pipelines, and shape the flow of money. Capital no longer follows innovation. It follows access. Founders know this. Many say nothing, not out of fear, but out of calculation. Visibility brings pressure. Growth attracts scrutiny. Even silence has a cost. The compromise of values. The quiet shift from purpose to survival.

And where are the business lobby groups? Many are clapping politely or stuck in neutral. Real advocacy would require naming the very forces they rely on. Entrepreneurs are left exposed. Pending bills choke progress. Risk appetite fades. Creativity dries up. The message is clear. Stay quiet. Just survive.

So how do we shift a generation raised on the gospel of grind? How do we unlearn the belief that exhaustion is a sign of excellence, and replace it with a culture that rewards structure, clarity, and sustainability?

It begins with an honest truth. Kenya will not become the next Singapore through hustle alone. No level of effort can compensate for broken infrastructure.

No amount of brilliance can override the absence of rule of law and sound governance. No founder, no matter how visionary, can carry an entire enterprise on their back forever.

If we want more clock builders, we must change what we celebrate. We must shift attention away from personality and toward process. We must fund patience. Reward systems. Teach that scale is not about staying visible, but about stepping back while things keep running.

This kind of rewiring takes time. Maybe a generation. But it starts with intention and the courage to say that the grind is not enough. If you asked me when Kenya might turn the corner, I would not name a year. I would name a mindset. A collective realisation that what got us here — grit, improvisation, and relentless motion — is not what will take us forward.

Read: When scaling feels like selling your soul

We cannot hustle our way into a knowledge economy. We cannot pitch our way through broken systems. We cannot ignore the selective application of rule of law and good governance and still expect to scale. We cannot keep faking product–market fit and expect to build enduring institutions.

At the same time, we cannot afford to lie still. Because without movement, collapse is certain. Hustle still pays school fees. It still feeds families. It still shields people from despair. So, we move. Not out of pride, but because we must.

But maybe, just maybe, the deeper work is to build while we move. To lead without burning out. To design systems that do not fall apart when we pause. To stop centering the founder and start centering the foundation. Because those who hustle may survive. But those who build will shape what survives them. And that is where the new future begins.

The writer is a serial entrepreneur, founder of Seven Seas Technologies and Ponea Health.