Why I Hustle (Part 1): Making Money as an Entrepreneur

Why I hustle (part one)

Hustling is just hard work personified by people that start on the bottom and come out on top. Horatio Alger wrote about the hustle… If you have not read any Alger, I can give you the cliff-notes: Young kid from the lower class (usually an orphan) is given an opportunity… jumps on it… creates his own destiny… end of story.

It’s a nice message. The idea that no matter what your individual circumstances are, you still have an opportunity to shape your own future.

This is only half-true. Outside of the advanced and developed countries, this is probably just a far-away dream hiding in a fantasy. If you are born in one of the many poor or war-torn nations, you will have limited, if any, opportunities to improve your situation. It’s sad, but it’s a fact.

I was born in the United States… and I don’t take it for-granted (honestly, after writing that last sentence I realized that I do sometimes. I try not to… but if I am being completely discrete, I know deep down that I do take this for-granted… beyond that I realize that I need to work on my editing skills to minimize my use of run on sentences, excessive ellipsis, and using parenthesis that far exceed the prior sentence I am attempting to qualify…). On top of that I was born into a middle-class family, so I should not have any complaints whatsoever. I do, though. Most privileged people do.

Anyway, this gives me the ability to hustle. Despite what you read about in the papers, we still enjoy an immense amount of economic and governmental stability. People crying about the Government screwing us can move. Seriously, move to a different country if you hate it so much. Seriously… Seriously...

Government is not to blame for your problems. You are the reason for your own problems. Wash that pill down with a glass of clean drinking water (which many countries still are not able to provide for their citizens).

Today, unfortuantely, hustling is synonymous with dealing drugs and rapping. I am not that kind of hustler. I hustle like Pete Rose, without the bad hair or the gambling problem (although I would not bet on that). I hustle because I think complacency is a sin worthy of a top-ten spot. I hustle by creating opportunity from opportunity. It’s a delicate magic trick, but anybody with a brain and some self-discipline can pull it off. It takes 3 simple steps.

1. Work Hard

2. Work Smart

3. Work Harder

You have to create your own hustle. There is no template for success (Hence my somewhat ironic 3 simple steps). Put effort into everything you do, plan a little, and continue working and you should be able to make something out of it all.

My First Hustle:

I don’t have the best memory but I would have to guess my first true hustle was when I used to pick up sticks out of my neighbor’s back yard before he would mow his lawn. He would give me a handful out of his candy jar for every 20 sticks I collected. After doing this for a while I realized that my effort probably was not worth the small amount of candy my little hands could pull out of the candy jar. So, I asked him to pay me in the pretty white stones which lined his house and landscaping. I then took these stones and sold them door to door to my neighbors who would pay between 10 and 25 cents per rock. Once I realized that people would pay me for these stones I also started to look around for other cool looking stones/rocks. I got my best friend to help and we would go out looking for rocks during the day, and sell them door to door when it was closer to dinner time and we knew people would be home. We made what we thought was a pretty good amount of money off of our rock business and after blowing a fair amount of it on candy, baseball cards, and whatever else we wanted at that time, we somehow were able to save enough to buy a rock polisher. This was my first investment ever. I don’t remember how much it cost, but I do vividly remember being more excited than ever to find rocks. We would bring them back to the rock-polishing machine and a few days later a crummy little rock would be smooth and glossy. Now, this was where the big money was… We could charge anywhere from 25 cents to a dollar for each of these artificially smoothed stones. However, after a little while we exhausted the demand in our neighborhood and nobody wanted to buy our rocks anymore (even though they were smooth and beautiful!!!). So, we started taking them to school and talking to our classmates about our business and were able to sell them our rocks for them to resell in their neighborhoods. I had unknowingly started my first franchise…

I hustle because nothings free. Some things are cheap. Some things are easy.

As a hustler, I disregard cheap and easy. Work hard. Get paid. Stop whining.