What it Looks Like to Deconstruct Hustle Culture in the Work Place

Look around, who hasn't spent their youth hustling to survive?

Every one of us has a story of feeling stuck in hustle culture.

Hustle culture is that noisy jerk of a boss who makes every email, every small and large client request, and every financial decision seem like the most urgent thing in the world.

Even the heads of companies, the ones who should be free from the hustle, bow down to the hustle, because that is how we were raised.

Go to school and hustle.

Hustle to be good in your activities.

Space? Sleep? Nutrition? Mental wellbeing? These were luxuries.

UNTIL NOW

At Ralia, we aim to be the antidote to hustle culture.

We believe that a successful company co-regulates stress, connects humans, and moves with life. This does not mean we don't have pain.

Life is not always so pretty. We embrace the challenges too. We just do it in a way that takes away the hustle.

There is a magical flow to every week at Ralia that helps us live in a less stressful way when we are challenged.

But first, who is Ralia?

We love to speak of Ralia as if she is a bad-ass, fully embodied woman. This woman is inspirational and helps us with the daily task of developing and operating hospitality concepts that prioritize people and the planet.

Tangibly, Ralia operates a boutique hotel with a private event space and cafe in Montréal, and a travel experience on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica.

Real estate and hospitality are two of the most demanding industries. Long hours are assumed. Availability for our guests is expected to be instant and 24 hours a day.

So, what is our big secret to getting rave reviews and staving off the hustle?

It's our weekly flow, our mindset and the questions we ask ourselves each week.

What season are you in this week?

We keep our flow structured with weekly check-ins, sharing where we are at personally and professionally.

One powerful question sets the tone for the week:

What season are you in this week? Not the weather outside, but the season inside.

Are you in spring, with energy rising and ideas slowly moving into action, ready for what is coming?

Or summer, when you are at full capacity and can handle so much more?

Perhaps you are in fall and need to move slower, given space to be a little reactive.

For those in winter, we proceed with kindness and curiosity, because some winter seasons are business as usual and some are when we do our best resting.

The seasons are a framework borrowed from the menstrual cycle, and yes, we say that word out loud in our meetings, because we know that alone is a powerful act of reclamation for those who menstruate. The seasons make cycles accessible to all, so that every person at the table, regardless of gender, can use the same language to tell the truth about where their energy actually is. What workload they can carry this week. What they need from the people around them.

This is not a productivity program, but it makes us aware, and awareness impacts productivity in a big way. This is how we run Ralia.

Self-awareness is celebrated over hustle.

Unlearning, in real time

Most of us on this team spent years contorting ourselves to fit inside systems that were not designed for us, because that was the only game in town.

Unlearning how to operate day to day is slow, ongoing, sometimes uncomfortable work that happens in real time, in real meetings, with real people who are all carrying their own version of the same hustle culture conditioning.

From the founder of Ralia to the weekend temporary worker on the team, we all need to find the balance of getting our work done in a timely manner and in a healthy way, while still giving time to de-condition and enjoy this new working system we desired into existence.

When a woman on our team hesitates to say she needs to leave early to care for her child, that is not a personal failing. That is decades of being told that need makes her less professional. But that same woman can still do an amazing job at Ralia, and we see this happening time and again.

When someone struggles to take up space in a meeting, that is not weakness. That is a pattern that was installed long before she walked through our door. So we give people a lot of opportunity to have a voice, to sit at the table with the leadership team, and to be a leader.

The leaders are not immune to old systems, and we catch ourselves caught up in the hustle.

Here is where self-awareness enters.

What we are committed to is noticing it together, naming it without shame, and choosing differently when we can. Not perfectly, not all at once. But consistently, and with a lot of grace for how genuinely hard this is to move through.

And so we are de-constructing hustle culture to build something new.

Ralia is a place where the question we ask each other is not "can you handle it" but "what do you need to succeed?"

What we name our culture at Ralia

And it is not defined by what it is not.

Regenerative.

Ralia is a proof of concept. We are showing, every day, that you can run a profitable hospitality operation and a genuinely human-centered team at the same time. That a cleaning team that feels seen produces better work. That a manager who can honestly say "I'm in a winter week" creates more trust than one who performs constant availability until they burn out.

We are just getting started. And we are documenting everything as we go, because we believe this model belongs to every industry that is ready for it.

Want to build with us?

If reading this made something settle in your chest, here are two doors that are open.

Come work with us. We are always meeting humans who belong inside this kind of culture before a role is even posted. If you feel called to help us build hospitality differently, send us a note and tell us what season you are in.

Bring us into your room. We are available to host conferences, leadership offsites, and workshops on how we are building Ralia from the inside out. If your team is ready to deconstruct hustle culture and build something more regenerative, we would love to share what we are learning, the wins, the wobbles, and the practical structures that hold it all together.

Reach out at hello@Ralia.ca to start the conversation.