The B2B Roundtable
Avsnitt

How to Stop Hustling and Set Better Work-Life Boundaries with Carlos Hidalgo

The B2B Roundtable
Dela

About this episode

Has our devotion to work and hustle become the UnAmerican Dream?

Some of the hardest-working people I know are in sales, marketing, consulting, and entrepreneurship. We often hear stories about how hustle, grit, and sacrifice led to success.

But there is another side to that story.

The constant pursuit of professional success can leave damaged relationships, poor health, anxiety, loneliness, and personal wreckage behind it.

I know because I lived some of that story myself.

Shortly after building and selling a successful company, my 17-year marriage ended. My pursuit of business success had left my health and relationships in serious need of attention.

I had to redefine the kind of life I wanted to live. I had to make different choices. I had to set better boundaries.

That is why this conversation with my friend Carlos Hidalgo matters so much to me.

Carlos is author of The UnAmerican Dream. In this episode, we talk about entrepreneurship, sales and marketing burnout, family, work devotion, hustle culture, and why Carlos believes work-life boundaries are more useful than work-life balance.

This conversation is for sellers, marketers, entrepreneurs, consultants, and leaders who feel pressure to always be on.

The question is not whether work matters.

The question is whether work has taken a place it was never meant to hold.

About Carlos Hidalgo

Carlos Hidalgo has worked in B2B marketing, sales, demand generation, and customer experience for more than 25 years. In 2005, he co-founded ANNUITAS, a demand generation agency. He later stepped away from the company and started a new business focused on customer experience, VisumCX.

Carlos is the author of Driving Demand and The UnAmerican Dream, a more personal book about redefining success, restoring relationships, and establishing healthier boundaries around work.

Connect with Carlos:

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Carlos Hidalgo
01:08 Why Carlos wrote The UnAmerican Dream
02:56 Why he walked away from the company he co-founded
05:00 What gets in the way of life, liberty, and happiness
07:59 Why Carlos rejects work-life balance
11:01 How to set work-life boundaries
16:47 Why hustle culture is destructive
22:15 Designing your job around the life you want

A few things worth taking away

  • Walking away from an unhealthy version of success usually is not a single moment. For Carlos, it was a 10-month process.
  • Work-life balance may be the wrong goal. Balance is fragile. Boundaries are more durable because they protect what you value.
  • Boundaries should not be built alone. Carlos built his with his wife and invited trusted people to help him see what he could not see.
  • If you say you value family, health, faith, friendship, rest, or fitness, your calendar should show it.
  • Hustle culture turns constant availability into identity. That damages people and relationships.
  • Sales and marketing leaders are often overwhelmed because the system rewards being always on.
  • Leaders create pressure even when they do not intend to. A late-night email from a boss can silently tell the team they are expected to respond.
  • People need permission to turn off if you want them to bring their best work.
  • You can design your career, job, or business around the kind of life you want. But first you have to define that life.

A few lines that stuck with me

“We have made work our God.” — Carlos Hidalgo

“I don’t believe in work-life balance.” — Carlos Hidalgo

“For me, the idea of boundaries is they are more permanent.” — Carlos Hidalgo

“Define what you value, and then say, ‘What are the things that I’m letting get in the way of those things?’” — Carlos Hidalgo

“There is a story on the other side of every hustle story.” — Carlos Hidalgo

“Life is short. I want to make sure I’m here for it.” — Elle Woulfe, quoted by Carlos Hidalgo

Resources mentioned

You may also like

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Full transcript

Brian Carroll:
Hey Carlos. Really glad to have you here on the show. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about your background?

Carlos Hidalgo:
Yeah. Hey Brian. Always a pleasure to talk to you. I have been in B2B marketing and sales for over 20 years. I think right now it’s about 25 years, which is hard to believe.

I’ve been both client-side, and then in 2005, I co-founded an agency. That agency is still running. I left that agency at the end of 2016, beginning of 2017, to start another business. So you could say I’m a bit of an entrepreneur. I love creating things.

Now I work with B2B companies in the whole area of customer experience under the new brand VisumCX, and then just wrote my second book. First book was on demand generation, so if you ever have insomnia, go for it. You can read that. But this book was The UnAmerican Dream, which is more my story and a whole lot more personal than the first one.

Brian Carroll:
I wanted to ask you about that. Can you tell the story about why you wrote this book, The UnAmerican Dream, and why now?

Carlos Hidalgo:
Yeah, great question. When I left ANNUITAS, which was the first company that I had co-founded and started, I put a post on LinkedIn about why I was leaving.

It was more to get back to what I should have been doing in the first place, which was cultivating those meaningful relationships, especially with my children and marriage.

I was struck by the number of calls and emails I got from fellow entrepreneurs and fellow business leaders who were saying, “So, how did you do this? What steps did you take because I am at my wit’s end? I’m never seeing my family,” or “My marriage is falling apart,” or insert whatever they were going through.

I was really surprised. Wow, this is not just me going through this.

So that’s the why. But the why now is the idea of that book came to me over those two years. It was over two years ago. But I needed to work on me first.

I had to get some things straight in me. In the introduction, I believe I say I first had the idea in 2016. When I told somebody the title, they said, “It sounds like an angry book.”

I believe if I had written it then, it would have been an angry book because I had a lot of things that I had to work through and deconstruct some things that I had held to be true which weren’t true.

So I needed to wait. Waiting, I believe, made it a much more authentic book, a much more vulnerable book, but not an angry book in any way.

Walking away from the UnAmerican Dream

Brian Carroll:
As I was listening to you, and I’m going to ask the same question you got asked by many people on LinkedIn. How did you walk away from this UnAmerican Dream, and what do you mean by that?

Carlos Hidalgo:
Yeah. Wow. How I did it? From the outside, it probably seemed like, oh, he woke up one day and was like, “I’m done.”

It was a 10-month process for me. I really wrestled with the decision. And you know, Brian, you’ve started businesses. You’re an entrepreneur yourself. When you start something from scratch and you put everything you have into it, the term I hear often is, “This is my baby.”

I wanted to make sure that, first and foremost, I had come to a place where I’m like, “I’ve got to do everything I can to get back those relationships that I had neglected for so long.”

So I tried to do that within the context of the first business. That took me 10 months. I kept wrestling with what should I do and how should I do it?

It was a conversation with a colleague in the lobby of the Westin who encouraged me. He said, “You know what you need to do. You just need the courage to do it.”

I called Suzanne, my wife, at that point a few hours later and said, “I’m leaving.”

When it came down to it, I really just pulled the ripcord because I didn’t have a big buyout waiting. I didn’t have this big hoard of cash in the savings account where I could run for months and months.

It was a risk. It was scary. It was like, “Okay, so what am I going to do now?” But everything panned out, and everything worked out. I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was the best professional decision I ever made.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

Brian Carroll:
Well, Carlos, for our listeners, it will come through. You and I are good friends. I was just thinking about you as an entrepreneur and as I know you. Entrepreneurship is in your blood. It’s part of your history, part of your family history.

As I was reading the book, you wrote about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What’s getting in the way of that?

Carlos Hidalgo:
Wow, so much is getting in the way of that. I think first and foremost is we as Americans are on this treadmill and this pace, and we have made work our God.

We work more than any other group, any other nationality in the world. So just think about that.

I just read a stat last week where 32% of Millennials will not take more than a four-night vacation because of work. Seventy percent of the population says, “I don’t have work-life balance.”

I was in Nashville this last weekend, and the people we stayed with, he’s like, “I didn’t take all my vacation. I can’t.”

I think part of what’s getting in the way of our happiness is we’re slaves to our jobs, we’re slaves to our career, we’re slaves to our businesses, and that’s a choice that we have made. I know people will debate me on that all day long, but it is a choice that we have made.

Quitting weekend work

Carlos Hidalgo:
I literally, before this, saw a LinkedIn post that said, “If you’re reading this on the weekend, it’s clear that you’re a top performer.”

So the message there is if you’re not connected to your profession on the weekend, you’re not a top performer, which is a total fallacy because I don’t work weekends anymore.

I used to all the time. I don’t any longer, which means I’m not on LinkedIn, I’m not promoting anything, I’m not doing anything for my clients, and everybody knows that. That’s a boundary I chose.

Social media, loneliness, and disconnection

Carlos Hidalgo:
The other thing I think is really getting in the way of our happiness is social media and these stinking things. We are so attached to, and I will use the word addiction, to our devices and to social media.

We’ll put something on Facebook, and then 20 minutes later we’re going and seeing how many likes. We retweet. “How many followers do I have?”

We have created what I call social loneliness, where we are so socially connected, but we are so utterly lonely because people don’t really know us.

We haven’t built a relationship. As human beings, we’re wired for relationship. When we put those things ahead of what we’re wired for, our happiness or our ability to choose happiness severely wanes.

Why boundaries matter more than balance

Brian Carroll:
There’s so much there, Carlos, as I’m listening to you. Something I remember from a conversation you and I had a while ago, when I was trying to start my company again, you talked about setting boundaries instead of trying to get work-life balance. Why is that?

Carlos Hidalgo:
I don’t believe in work-life balance because I tried it. At parts of my career, I tried it. Other parts, I was like, “I’m completely unbalanced and I’m good with that,” which when I think about it makes me want to shake my head.

The stats will show you 70% saying, “I can’t achieve work-life balance.” So when I see that, I see the reality is it doesn’t exist.

The picture I get is my daughter, who was a gymnast for 14 years, up on that balance beam. Nothing made me more nervous. I had kids in theater and kids in sports, and they could perform and I’d get a little nervous, but man, when she was there, you think about that. It’s hard to balance, especially across a trajectory of time.

So what I did is I rejected the idea of balance. Maybe it’s semantics, but for me, the idea of boundaries is they are more permanent. If I draw a boundary or install a boundary, it takes work to move.

So I’ve adopted boundaries. And when I say “I have,” we have, because I’ve done it in community, first and foremost, with my wife.

Brian, you and I have talked about my boundaries, and I’ve invited you into that community of people who have permission to be like, “Hey, I’m kind of seeing this stuff,” or “What’s going on here and how are you doing with that?”

Because God forbid if I’m the only one who’s going to determine if I’m balanced.

Defining what you value and want to protect

Carlos Hidalgo:
What we did is we defined what we want to protect. What do we want to value?

For me, time with my family, time with my wife is priority number one. My health, both physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, is really important.

So I go to the gym regularly. I meditate. I take time to just stop and think and shut off my phone and close my computer.

Some days, it’s just staring out the window. If you were to look at me you’d be like, “Is this guy really working or what?” But I’m thinking.

Those are the types of things that I protect.

The counter to that is I’m so much more productive in my work because there is a boundary around the time that I’m working.

I am absolutely focused on what I’m doing for a living. So my clients get the best of me as well as my relationships.

How to set work-life boundaries

Brian Carroll:
For those out there who are seeing this, it’s not easy to do. At least, for me it isn’t. Do you have any tips and advice on what you found we can do to get better at setting boundaries or non-negotiables in our life?

Carlos Hidalgo:
Yeah, you’re right. It’s not easy to do. I’m the first to say I don’t have this all figured out. I’m on the journey with everybody else. I may be a few steps ahead, but I also know people who are so much farther ahead than I am.

Three weeks ago, I picked up my phone and wanted to check my email at 8:00 at night, and Suzanne was like, “So, what are we doing because this is two nights in a row?” And it was completely appropriate, totally gentle. But that’s what I wanted.

Back to the question. I think, first and foremost, you have to do it in community with your closest relationships. If that’s a spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, close friend, close coworker, even your boss, say, “I want to give the best of myself in all aspects of my life, professionally, personally, whatever else.”

Do that in community and then sit down and really write down what you value.

I was talking to somebody the other day who was talking to me about how much they value their physical fitness. Then literally, almost in the same breath, it was like, “Well, I don’t have time to go to the gym.”

Okay, so you don’t really value your physical fitness. You may say you do, but your actions say you don’t.

So really define what you value, and then say, “What are the things that I’m letting get in the way of those things that I say I value?”

When you do that in community, you’re going to get a much different perspective than if you do it in isolation. The people we surround ourselves with can point out our blind spots, which is of huge value to us and should be embraced.

Asking for help and hearing the truth

Brian Carroll:
That’s really good. I can identify with the blind spots and the need to have a feedback loop. There are things every person has that we can’t see in how we’re living our life or how we’re showing up. We won’t know unless we ask people, “What do you see that I’m missing?”

How would someone start the conversation about this?

Carlos Hidalgo:
I think it starts with being really honest, first and foremost, about here’s where I’m at.

I’m not here to judge people who are going to work 14 hours a day. If that’s what you and your community have decided is good and works for everybody, who am I to say you’re wrong?

I think just asking the question, “How are we doing?” Asking the question, “Hey, here’s what I want to be doing. I value family time, I value fitness, I value fun. What do you see that I’m doing that’s getting in the way of that?”

If you’re going to ask that question, be prepared for the answers.

Part of the work I had to do was to sit down and hear some things that were pretty unpleasant. I didn’t want to hear about things I had done, choices I had made, decisions I had made.

That is not a fun thing to go through, but it makes us better. It makes us more aware.

Communicating your boundaries

Carlos Hidalgo:
I am so much more aware now, even more so than I was even just a year ago, of when I’m in my personal boundary after working hours. Not checking my phone, not trying to stay engaged, not returning that text.

I’ve gone to the extent of making my partners, my clients, and my professional connections aware of that. So oftentimes if I do get a text at 7:00 at night or 9:00 at night, what I’m starting to see is, “Hey, I know you’re not going to get this till the morning.”

I’m like, “Yeah, you’re right.” Even if I see it, I’m not going to respond to it.

Why hustle culture is destructive

Brian Carroll:
I was thinking about the LinkedIn post you brought up about, “Hey, if you’re looking at this on a Saturday…” There’s this whole notion of work devotion or hustle porn. Why is that such a thing today? Why is it destructive?

Carlos Hidalgo:
I think the reason it’s a thing today is you’ve got so many loud voices out there promoting it.

You’ve got Kevin O’Leary who literally says, “25 hours a day.” In the interview that I quote in the book, it is, “It’s 24/7. Get used to it. Get over it.”

You’ve got Jack Ma with his ridiculous 9-9-6, 9:00 to 9:00, six days a week. You’ve got Grant Cardone with his unhealthy approach to 95 hours a week, and the list goes on.

Daymond John’s “rise and grind.” We’re not real entrepreneurs unless we do this.

I think those voices are so loud. And when I couple that with “I’m the scarce resource to my organization,” which means I’m working long hours, I’m always available, we make that part of our identity. It is a perfect storm.

The reason it is destructive is we only have a certain amount of time each and every day. Twenty-four hours a day. 86,400 seconds.

If I’m devoting the majority of that time to my work, something has to suffer.

Either I suffer, which means I can’t give the best of myself to my relationships, or my relationships take a hit.

Fundamentally, as human beings, we are wired for relationship. When we start to move against what we’re wired for, we start to see anxiety, anger, sleeplessness, and loneliness.

I was doing research on that this morning. It is off the charts. Over half of Americans are saying they have feelings of loneliness even though we’re so connected.

Just like all porn, hustle porn is destructive. It’s toxic. I agree with Alexis Ohanian. I applaud him for taking a stand against it.

Honestly, I would be delighted to have the individuals that I just named shut up because they are doing a disservice to entrepreneurs and business leaders and families everywhere.

That’s why I had Suzanne write a chapter, because there is a story on the other side of every hustle story. I lived that hustle lifestyle for far too long. It’s not sustainable. It did damage to us as a family and to me personally.

Sellers and marketers are overwhelmed

Brian Carroll:
I really appreciate you sharing that there is another side to this. As entrepreneurs, and you and I have worked in the sales and marketing world for a long time, is this happening in sales and marketing? If so, what can we do to change it?

Carlos Hidalgo:
Oh, it is. I work with marketers on a day-to-day basis. I’m seeing more and more. When you say, “So, how’s it going?” they’re like, “Oh my word. I’m slammed. I’m overwhelmed. I have so much to do. There’s not enough hours in the day.”

I get emails from clients at 10:00 at night. I got a text from a client not long ago that said, “I feel completely overwhelmed, and I’m so down. I don’t know what to do.”

At the last conference I was at, I asked a bunch of marketers, “How many of you feel there’s not enough time to accomplish what you want to do in a meaningful way?” Virtually every hand out of 200-plus went up.

I am definitely seeing this on the marketing and sales front.

Giving people permission to turn off

Carlos Hidalgo:
I think what we can do about it is, first of all, business leaders, if you’re listening, start to create a culture that gives your people permission to turn off.

When you are sending them emails at 10:00 at night, even if you’ve said, “Hey, we have a culture where we have our working hours,” you’re putting them in a position of, “Can I tell the boss to wait?”

That is a disadvantage you’re giving to your people.

If you really want the best of them, you will allow them time to step away and turn off and not feel they have to shorten their vacations or be connected on vacation or connected at 9:00 at night.

That’s number one as a business leader.

Designing your work around your life

Carlos Hidalgo:
Number two, there’s a corporate profile in the book of a lady named Claire Potter who is in a sales role. Claire works for a multibillion-dollar organization.

What she did was, “Hey, I just had my first child. I travel. My husband travels. That is not sustainable. I’m going to create a new job role in my organization, and at the same time, I’m going to create a plan B. I’m going to start to talk to recruiters and understand what jobs are available that would now suit my lifestyle.”

Then she went to her organization and said, “If you want me to stay, this is my new job.”

Her organization said, “That’s awesome. We value you. We want you in the organization.”

She took the initiative to say, this is what I’m going to do.

Another profile in the book is Elle Woulfe, who is the CMO at PathFactory. One of my favorite lines in the book, she closes with, “Life is short. I want to make sure I’m here for it.”

Elle had an opportunity to get a very high-profile job with a great company. She decided for her family and for her own sake that she was going to take a role which is still a great role with PathFactory, but it didn’t pay as much. But it enabled her to live the life she wanted.

Define what kind of life you want, and then go design your career, your job, your business around that and what that looks like.

Closing

Brian Carroll:
As I’m listening to you, Carlos, I’m just thinking you’ve talked about what’s happening today in all spheres of life. I think you’ve written something really important. I hope our listeners found value in it.

What’s the best way to connect with you and to find out more about your book?

Carlos Hidalgo:
You can follow me on Twitter at @cahidalgo. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn, Carlos Hidalgo. Then theunamericandream.com, where we’ll list all the information about the book release, videos, articles, and this podcast as well.

Brian Carroll:
Fantastic. For our listeners, we’ll be including those links in our show notes. Carlos, thanks again for joining us and sharing your perspective. It’s so needed.

Carlos Hidalgo:
Thanks, Brian. It’s an honor to connect with you, and I want to thank you and your readers to know how much involvement you had with this project because you saw some very early drafts. You provided great feedback, and actually, you’re the one who said, “Why don’t you have a couple of questions at the end of each chapter to include and involve the reader?” I took that suggestion, and that’s been well received as well.

So thank you for your friendship, your support, and your involvement with this project.

Brian Carroll:
Thanks, Carlos, and again, thanks for your work and all that you’ve done.

Carlos Hidalgo:
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

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