This 7:24am ritual reveals who you really are

How your barista is sabotaging your growth, why being too good at your job might be a problem, and the real reason people don't buy what you're selling

Leanne Hughes

Jul 31, 2025

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Flying home from Melbourne today, I was reflecting on these three ideas and thought I’d share them with you.

#1 The coffee identity crisis

It's 7:24AM and I'm standing at my usual cafe, about to do something that feels harder than it should.

I've been trying to wean myself off my morning mocha addiction. It's basically liquid chocolate, and I'm not proud of it.

So I decided to switch to long blacks with a dash of milk (there's probably a fancy name for this, but I'm not that sophisticated).

Simple change, right?

Wrong.

The problem is my regular baristas.

We had this beautiful pattern where they'd see me coming and start making my mocha before I even ordered.

Now I have to interrupt their muscle memory with my new request, and honestly? The social pressure is intense.

As I show up to the register, they say, “Mocha?”

It takes everything in my wheelhouse to resist saying yes.

If I can't even change my coffee order without feeling this much resistance, what does that say about bigger changes?

Jim Rohn said you're the product of the five people you spend the most time with.

But I'd add this: even people you barely know will try to reinforce who they think you are.

James Clear shares that environment beats willpower every time. It's not just about discipline; it's about the people, places, and patterns that either support your new identity or drag you back to your old one.

I actually considered breaking up with my cafes and finding new ones where they'd only know me as "the lady with the two cute dogs that orders long blacks."

That's how powerful environmental reinforcement is.

Question: Who are the people around you expecting you to be?

#2 The "Rate Buster" problem

I'm on a hike listening to "10x Is Easier Than 2x," when I had to pause the audiobook and frantically scribble down a phrase I'd never heard before.

Rate Buster.

Sounds like a bad 80s action movie featuring Bill Murray, right? But it's actually a workplace concept that originated in unionised labour settings, and honestly, I wish I'd known about it years ago.

A rate buster is someone who works faster, harder, or smarter than the agreed pace of the team.

Now, you'd think organisations would love this, right? High performer! Star employee!

BUT rate busters were often told to slow down by their peers because they were "making everyone else look bad."

There have been times where I’ve felt this push-back and it's confusing as hell. You think you're being helpful, but you're actually disrupting the status quo. You're setting a new benchmark that everyone else now has to meet.

The pushback isn't really about your work, it's about fear. Fear that the bar just got raised. Fear that there'll be more work. Fear that their current effort is no longer safe enough to keep them employed.

This is especially relevant now with AI.

If you're the person adopting new technology, creating better processes, getting things done faster, congratulations, you're threatening people who don't want to evolve.

But here's what I've learned: Use your skills to help others and be generous with your approach. Share your shortcuts. Work in public. Make it collaborative.

Just like my coffee order, the resistance isn't about what you're doing, it's about who people expect you to be.

Question: Are you dimming your light to make others more comfortable? And what's that really costing you?

#3. Why people don’t buy what you’re selling

This brings me to the third thing that's been bouncing around my brain: why people really don't buy what you're selling.

Most people don't buy what you're offering…

Not because they don't want what you offer, but because they don't believe in their own ROI.

And I don't mean Return on Investment.

I mean Return on I (as in, you).

It's not about whether that $5,000 program is worth it.

It's whether they believe they can turn it into a $50,000 result. If they believed that, it would be a no-brainer.

You can't convince someone they're worth betting on. That's their call.

When you buy a gym membership, you don't automatically become fit. You're buying responsibility. You're saying, "I trust myself to extract value from this."

Every time you purchase growth like coaching, courses, conferences, you're essentially backing yourself.

You're saying, "I'm going to create value from this investment."

I've had people join my programs who showed up to every call, implemented everything, and got incredible results.

I've also had people who expected the transformation to be delivered Amazon Prime-style, just because they paid.

The real objection is about self-trust. It's people thinking, "I don't know if I can actually do this."

Question: When you invest in yourself, are you committed to getting a Return on I? Or are you expecting results to be delivered to you?

I decided to switch up the format this week based on one of my favourite Substacks, Andrew Hollo’s Weekly 5 Minute Strategic Mindset.

Let me know if you enjoyed it by clicking the Heart below.

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