Hey honeys and hustlers,

There's something mesmerizing about watching a bee at work. A single honeybee will visit up to 5,000 flowers in a single day. Over her lifetime, she'll produce just one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey. It's an almost comically small individual contribution—until you zoom out and see the hive. Tens of thousands of bees, each doing their seemingly insignificant part, create something remarkable: a functioning society complete with food storage, climate control, waste management, and even democracy (yes, bees vote on new hive locations). They're not taking shortcuts. They're not looking for hacks. They're just showing up, day after day, doing the work.

While we're busy automating every aspect of our lives, these tiny creatures continue to build thriving communities through what can only be described as relentless, purposeful labor. And perhaps that's exactly what we need to remember: that the sweetest rewards often come from the hardest work. We have less than 2 months left in 2025. This is your reminder that the work isn’t finished.

Whether it's a business, a creative project, or a community, the boring, repetitive work matters. The unglamorous tasks that don't make for an aesthetic Instagram reel are often the foundation of everything that does. When a forager bee discovers a valuable food source, she doesn't just keep it to herself or send a quick Slack message. She performs what scientists call the "waggle dance"—a figure-eight pattern that communicates both the direction and distance of the flowers she's found. The more valuable the source, the longer and more enthusiastic the dance.

This is community building at its finest. The bee doesn't hoard information or compete with her sisters. She shares what she's learned, invests energy in teaching others, and trusts that everyone working together will benefit the whole hive more than any individual success ever could. Sustainable success is a team sport. The influencers and entrepreneurs who last aren't the ones trying to gatekeep their knowledge—they're the ones generous enough to share the dance.

Bees haven't evolved to be more efficient. They haven't figured out how to make honey faster or with less effort. For millions of years, they've been doing essentially the same thing, in essentially the same way. And it works.

It feels like we’re in a time where we (at large) prize speed and scale above almost everything else. We're told to work smarter, not harder. To automate. To delegate. To find the leverage. And yes, there's wisdom in that. But there's also danger in forgetting that some things can't be—and shouldn't be—optimized away.

The manual work of building relationships, one conversation at a time. The slow process of developing expertise through repeated practice. The unglamorous labor of showing up consistently, even when no one's watching. These are the flowers we need to visit, over and over, if we want to create something that lasts. One bee's one-twelfth of a teaspoon doesn't seem like much. But multiply that by thousands of bees, across thousands of days, and you get something remarkable. You get honey. You get a thriving hive. You get pollination that sustains entire ecosystems.

So the next time you're tempted to skip the boring work, to look for a shortcut with AI, to wonder if your small contribution really matters—think of the bees. They’re proof that hard work, done together, creates something sweeter than any individual could achieve alone. If you get discouraged, don’t quit – it just may be a signal that you should find your tribe or ask for help.

(Yes, while bees annoy me, they are part of the inspiration for Honey & Hustle.)