| TL;DR (Because You’re Busy, I Get it) Forget the highlight reels. Real business growth happens in the late nights, the awkward follow-ups, and the tasks you’d rather avoid. If you want results, show up for the ugly work: fix what’s broken, own your mistakes, and stop waiting for motivation to do the hard stuff. The shortcut? There isn’t one. The work you dread is the work that pays off. Roll up your sleeves and get uncomfortable. That’s the job. |
Where the Real Work Actually Happens
You know what you won’t see in anyone’s LinkedIn carousel? The meltdown at 11:47 PM, Slack pings going nuclear, hair in a bun, and a funnel that looks more like a colander.
That’s entrepreneurship. Not the highlight reels. It’s ugly, it’s relentless, and it’s never, ever as glamorous as the “after” photo.
Everyone loves to talk about “hustle” and “grit.” But when’s the last time someone bragged about cleaning up a broken workflow on a Friday night, or rewriting a deadbeat sales email for the sixth time before sunrise?
Here’s the dirty secret: The work that actually moves the needle is the stuff you’d pay to avoid. The boring, the tedious, the deeply unsexy.
And the only difference between people who win and people who wish is the winners show up every single time.
If you’re a founder, solopreneur, or even a seasoned C-suite gladiator, you already know: The real magic is in the maintenance.
So if you want the rewards, you don’t need a morning routine. You need to get comfortable rolling up your sleeves for the jobs no one else wants.
Let’s get real about what “ugly work” actually looks like and why that’s exactly where your next level lives.
Ugly Work Defined
“Ugly work” is the pile of tasks you’d gladly delegate to your worst enemy if you had the chance. But, ironically, these are the same tasks that build real momentum. The difference between people who talk about growth and those who actually create it.
So, what actually counts as ugly work?
It’s the stuff that makes you stall, come up with creative excuses, or suddenly decide your inbox needs alphabetizing. Here are a few classics:
- Reaching out cold to leads, knowing you’ll get ignored by half and rejected by the other half, but doing it anyway because pipeline doesn’t build itself.
- Wading through your CRM to figure out why your pipeline is drier than a popcorn fart, instead of just quoting “pipeline velocity” in the Monday meeting and hoping no one asks for the real numbers.
- Tackling client fires you didn’t set, but are now responsible for because your title has “founder,” “owner,” or “chief” in it.
- Following up again with that lead who’s ghosted you longer than an expired domain name.
- Wrestling with your automations for the third time this week, since apparently Zapier has beef with progress.
- Sitting down to create real content (not just a half-baked repost), knowing it takes more brainpower and vulnerability than you want to admit and realizing you’ll probably do it again tomorrow.
- Chasing down overdue invoices, listening to another creative excuse about why “net 30” really means “next quarter, maybe.”
Every breakthrough, every headline-worthy win, is built on a foundation of thankless, ugly work nobody wants to admit they’re doing. Skip these jobs, and you’re building your company on a foundation that crumbles the moment you step on it.
Growth doesn’t come from passing the buck to your “future self.” It comes from showing up today because the micromoments build momentum. And we both know that’s where the real leverage hides.
The Fancy-Fail Trap
Let’s talk about the biggest lie in business: if you just buy the right tool or post the right quote, you’ll skip the hard parts and scale overnight. Newsflash – no one ever automated their way out of ugly work.
Too many folks are chasing “shiny object syndrome.” They’re always on the hunt for the latest AI platform, some marketing “hack,” or whatever new SaaS is trending on Product Hunt. The hope? That the right gadget will finally let them sidestep the stuff they can’t stand.
If you’re spending more time setting up dashboards than actually fixing what’s broken, you’re in the fancy-fail trap. You might look busy, but you’re not moving the needle.
What does this look like in the wild?
- You install a new CRM, but still haven’t fixed your broken lead nurture sequence.
- You’re writing LinkedIn thought leadership posts about “demand gen,” but you haven’t actually emailed a prospect in weeks.
- You buy a premium AI content tool, then use it to churn out more generic noise… just faster.
- You obsess over vanity metrics like followers and traffic, while your sales pipeline collects dust.
It’s easy to fall for the fantasy that business can be made effortless, clean, and perfectly automated. But most growth problems aren’t software problems, they’re discipline problems.
Stop searching for silver bullets and fix the basics. Write the follow-up email. Review your actual sales numbers, not just the highlights. Have the uncomfortable client conversation. Post the real story, not the safe one.
If you’re serious about scaling, get out of the fancy-fail trap and start tackling the stuff that actually matters… and it’s likely the stuff that you’re avoiding like the plague because ‘tomorrow’ is always there.
Putting Your Name on the Line
It’s one thing to talk about the ugly work. It’s another to stare it down, day after day, and do it anyway. So, what does showing up actually look like in the trenches of running a business?
It looks like realizing at 11 PM that your campaign is still underperforming and choosing to dig in – troubleshooting, rewriting, and testing – even though you’d rather call it a night. It’s logging into your CRM to face a pile of dead leads, instead of blaming the market or telling yourself everyone’s pipeline is slow this month.
Showing up means owning your mistakes when it would be easier to quietly shift the blame, and then using that accountability to actually fix the problem. It’s revisiting the same broken process for the fourth time, knowing that nobody will ever thank you for it, but you’ll thank yourself when the results compound.
Let’s make this even more practical:
- You actually audit your numbers instead of assuming “things will work themselves out.” You spot where the funnel’s leaking and patch it, no matter how tedious it is.
- You document your playbooks so future you (and your team) can actually repeat what works instead of reinventing the wheel every quarter.
- You put in the hours for manual outreach, one message at a time, because relationships don’t start with a mass email blast.
- You handle the tough refund calls and client issues yourself, instead of delegating the dirty work down the chain.
- You sit down and rewrite your offer, even if it means scrapping something you once thought was “perfect,” because the market just doesn’t care about your ego.
- You commit to publishing original content (blog posts, emails, social, etc.) day in and day out, even when nobody’s clapping for you (yet).
None of this is glamorous. None of it’s fun. But this is where the advantage is built by doing the boring, the uncomfortable, and the invisible work that others skip.
When you show up void of feeling like it or not, you make the wins inevitable. You’re not waiting on luck or inspiration. You’re building your own results, one boring task at a time.
The ROI of Ugly Work
Let’s get something straight: the ugly work isn’t just character-building. It’s ROI-generating.
Think about the tasks you avoid. Those are usually the exact things holding back your revenue, your reputation, and your pipeline. The hidden tax on your business isn’t some mythical market force. It’s the ugly work you keep punting to “tomorrow.”
Here’s what people overlook:
- The clients you retain are often the ones you personally went above and beyond for, not just the ones who loved your initial pitch.
- Revenue jumps not because you finally nailed the perfect ad campaign, but because you stopped letting details slip through the cracks and tightened up your execution.
- Your best testimonials rarely come from the easy wins; they come from the clients who saw you go the extra mile when things got complicated.
- Reputation is built in the follow-through when you clean up mistakes, stay accountable, and make it clear you’re not above any job.
Here’s a real-world example: A client once called at 6 PM with a “fire drill” that wasn’t our fault but landed on our plate. I could have punted it. Instead, I owned it, solved it, followed up, and, three weeks later, that client sent two new introductions. Not because I was flashy, but because I showed up for the ugly work.
Consistency compounds, but only if you actually do the hard parts. The late nights, the ongoing tasks, the behind-the-scenes effort and that’s what builds equity.
Skip the ugly work, and you’re choosing stagnation. Show up for it, and you’re investing in results that stack up over time, and often in ways you can’t predict.
If you’re still waiting for some magical shortcut, look closer: The shortcut is in the doing.
Stop Waiting for Motivation
Motivation is nice, but it’s as reliable as a coffee shop WiFi connection. Waiting to “feel inspired” before you dig into the ugly work? That’s how you end up weeks behind, with nothing to show except a graveyard of good intentions.
If you’re running a business, you don’t get to choose only the tasks that make you feel fired up. The difference between hobbyists and real operators is simple: one group waits for a spark, the other just gets to work.
The results don’t go to the most talented, the best-networked, or even the most creative. They go to the ones who keep showing up, especially on the days when everything feels tedious and heavy and absolutely not what you’d put on a founder highlight reel.
Talent is overrated. Discipline cashes the checks.
And discipline looks like logging in after everyone else has clocked out, following up when you’d rather quit, rewriting the offer one more time, and solving the problem nobody else is willing to touch.
Stop waiting for the mood to strike. Do the work even when it’s ugly, awkward, and invisible. That’s what separates the ones who talk from the ones who close.
