Service and Experience with J. N. Halm: Customer-centricity and the ‘Hustle’ Culture: Why some entrepreneurs are working harder but earning less

By J. N. Halm

“The hustle never stops.”

“Sleep is for the weak.”

“Grind now, shine later.”

These mantras have become the battle cries of a generation of Ghanaian entrepreneurs who believe that success is directly proportional to the number of hours worked. Walk through any business district in this part of the world, and you will find business owners who arrive before dawn and leave long after dusk.

They are perpetually busy, constantly in motion, seemingly always working. Yet, a curious paradox has emerged: many of these hardworking entrepreneurs are working harder than ever before but earning less than they anticipated.

The concept of “hustle culture” has taken root in Ghana’s entrepreneurial ecosystem with an almost religious fervour. Social media is awash with images of young business owners working late into the night, juggling multiple ventures, and wearing their exhaustion as a badge of honour. The message is clear: if you are not hustling, you are not serious about success.

However, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that this obsession with relentless activity might be doing more harm than good. The uncomfortable truth that many Ghanaian entrepreneurs are discovering is that being busy is not the same as being productive, and working hard is not synonymous with working smart. In fact, the hustle culture mentality might be the very thing keeping many businesses from achieving their true potential.

The Activity Trap: When Motion Replaces Progress

At the heart of the hustle culture problem lies what business experts have termed the “Activity Trap”. This describes a situation where entrepreneurs become so consumed with doing things—any things—that they lose sight of whether those activities are actually moving their businesses forward. The Activity Trap is characterised by a focus on inputs rather than outputs, on effort rather than results, on looking productive rather than being effective.

In Ghana’s business environment, this trap manifests in various ways. There is the trader who spends twelve hours a day in her shop but never takes time to understand why certain products sell while others gather dust. There is the restaurant owner who works tirelessly in the kitchen but never steps back to observe whether his dishes truly satisfy customers’ tastes. There is the fashion designer who produces dozens of garments each week but never pauses to ask whether those designs align with what his target market actually wants to wear.

These entrepreneurs are undoubtedly working hard. Their commitment is unquestionable. But their businesses are not growing at the pace they expected, and their bank accounts are not reflecting the hours they are putting in. The reason is simple yet profound: they are confusing activity with progress.

A 2016 Business Pulse Survey by The Alternative Board found that “the average entrepreneur spends 68.1% of the time working ‘in’ their business—tackling day-to-day tasks, putting out fires—and only 31.9% of the time working ‘on’ their business—long-term goals, strategic planning.”

The Customer: The Missing Link in the Hustle

What separates meaningful work from mere busyness is a clear focus on the customer. This is the missing link in much of Ghana’s hustle culture. In the rush to be seen as hardworking, many entrepreneurs have forgotten the fundamental reason their businesses exist: to serve customers and solve their problems.

Every business activity should ultimately be evaluated against one critical question: “Does this bring value to my customer?” If the answer is no, then regardless of how much effort is invested in that activity, it is unlikely to translate into business growth or increased earnings.

Consider two competing bakeries in a bustling Ghanaian community. The first bakery owner arrives at 3:00 AM every morning and works until 8:00 PM, producing hundreds of loaves daily. The second bakery owner works from 5:00 AM to 4:00 PM but spends time each day talking to customers, asking about their preferences, experimenting with new flavours based on feedback, and adjusting production based on demand patterns. By year’s end, the second bakery, despite fewer working hours, would have grown its customer base and profitability significantly more than the first.

The difference is not in the hustle. It is in the focus. The first bakery owner is working hard. The second is working smart by keeping the customer at the centre of every decision.

The Four Pillars of Customer-Focused Entrepreneurship

To break free from the activity trap and transition from hustle to effective growth, Ghanaian entrepreneurs must build their businesses on four essential pillars.

The first pillar is Customer Understanding. This goes beyond knowing your customers’ names or their usual orders. It involves a deep comprehension of their needs, desires, pain points, and aspirations. Customer understanding cannot happen when an entrepreneur is too busy hustling to actually engage meaningfully with customers.

The second pillar is Strategic Focus. Not all activities contribute equally to business success. Some tasks are crucial for growth, while others merely create the illusion of productivity. Strategic focus means having the discipline to identify high-impact activities and prioritising them over busy work.

The third pillar is Value Creation. Every business decision should be evaluated through the lens of value creation for customers. This is not about working more hours but about ensuring that the hours worked are spent on activities that genuinely improve the customer’s experience. Importantly, value creation requires feedback loops—mechanisms for understanding whether customers actually perceive and appreciate the value being offered.

The fourth pillar is Measured Progress. What gets measured gets managed. Entrepreneurs must establish clear metrics that indicate real progress toward business goals. These metrics should be customer-centric: customer satisfaction scores, repeat purchase rates, customer referral numbers, and customer lifetime value.

Redefining Success: From Hours to Impact

The transition from hustle culture to customer-focused entrepreneurship requires a fundamental redefinition of what success looks like. Success is not the number of hours spent in the shop. It is not how early you wake up or how late you work.

True entrepreneurial success is measured by impact: the number of customers whose lives have been improved by your product or service, the strength of relationships built with those customers, the reputation earned in the marketplace, and the sustainable profits generated as a result of delivering genuine value.

This redefinition is particularly important in the Ghanaian context, where entrepreneurship is often romanticised through the lens of struggle and sacrifice. While building a business certainly requires dedication and hard work, it should not require martyrdom. The most successful businesses in the world are not run by entrepreneurs who work the most hours but by those who have learned to work strategically, always with the customer in clear view.

The Path Forward

For entrepreneurs ready to break free from the hustle culture trap, the path forward involves several deliberate steps. First, schedule regular times to step away from daily operations and reflect on whether current activities align with customer needs. Second, create systematic ways to gather customer feedback. Third, analyse business activities ruthlessly and eliminate or delegate those that do not directly contribute to customer value or business growth. Fourth, invest in learning about your customers’ world, their challenges, their preferences, and their decision-making processes.

The irony of hustle culture is that in trying to achieve more by doing more, many entrepreneurs actually achieve less. They become trapped in a cycle of frantic activity that exhausts them physically and mentally while producing diminishing returns. The solution is not to work less for the sake of working less, but to work differently—with intention, focus, and an unwavering commitment to understanding and serving customers better.

The hustle mentality, while well-intentioned, has led many Ghanaian entrepreneurs down a path of diminishing returns. The entrepreneurs who will thrive in Ghana’s competitive marketplace are not necessarily those who hustle the hardest but those who understand that sustainable business success comes from creating genuine value for customers.

When customer focus replaces blind hustle, when strategic thinking replaces mere activity, and when impact replaces hours as the measure of progress, Ghanaian entrepreneurs will find themselves not just working harder, but earning better. After all, in business as in life, it is not about how much you do, but about how much of what you do truly matters.

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