Then you hear on the finance channels that now is the time to invest. Days like these are the days that made the Rockerfellers the Rockerfellers.

Thats  true – these are. But the Rockerfellers weren’t broke before the depression either. So, here is what I hav been up to.

The restaurant is open. I ran into a beef wih the local police because they didnt want me to open. That process cost me an extra $15,000 that we didn’t plan for. That pissed me off because the issue seemed “made up”. But I got over it. After 8 months of being open we are scratching at profitability. That means I am about 10% away from operating in the black which, in this industry is considered miraculous.

But there is work to be done. I have a lot of competitors and folks who have connections that do not want to see me be successful. But all of that makes me stronger. See, while they are focused on me – I am focused on their customers. Which strategy do you think will bear more fruit?

A few of my other businesses have been hit hard by the economy. Fortunately I believe in diversification. For me, that means I have multiple products and services that I offer my clients. One of those products replaced a more expensive service. So clients that have had their budgets cut and can’t afford our big expensive services, can still work with us and know that we are solving their problems. This means that I didn’t lose a client – instead I just solve their problems differenly. This has also earned me some attention in a few national publications in he industries that I serve. That brought me new clients.

We are about to launch that new business I told you all about. I know, launch a NEW business? Remember what I have said before. There is opportunity in every environment.

I can’t go into detail on what he project is right now but it is timely and here is an unfilled market. That is a good start. The part that is really interesting is that I am doing it with a partner. I am going to try it again.

Partnerships have never worked out well for me. I think I may have even recommended to you all to avoid them. I am hoping this will be one of those rare exceptions.

I was completely up front wih my partner (who has been a friend for a long time. He even hired me once for a job when I was 18 years old ) I told him that I have never had a partnership work out. Never. Neither has he (except for his wife). We are working out a partnership agreement. I am hoping that wisdom will temper this new relationship. I am betting on success. The idea is too good to not pursue and neither of us would pursue it alone.

I have a lot more to say and I will try to keep up with this momentum. Right now I am typing from the ba, on my laptop. I have been coming in more ad instead of sitting n my ass or watching TV – I am ging to try an talk with you folks.

Keep your head up and keep hustling.

I saw I had a comment where I was told that "Every man is out for himself" and I hustle "Pussy Style".

The point of the comments were that I need to be a gangster to really be on my hustle.

I disagree. I think the gangster level hustle is only the beginning. I used to run my game on the street. I even came up a little. I wasn’t pulling $3 million dollars as the poster claims but I was flipping about $100k a year when I was in my late teens. Sad thing was, like many gangsters, I was spending it as fast as I was making it. I had a solid crew, but the thing about being in that game is you are "Out for yourself" and in a volatile world like being caught up in the game, sometimes someone will flip on you to save their own ass. In my world (now) that could mean that the IRS come knocking or code enforcement shows up at one of my businesses or at worse, one of my businesses fail. When i was in the game, I had to worry about people fire-bombing my house (actually happened), being shot at or drivebys (actually happened), being stabbed (actually happened) or people going after my family (actually happened). Those are liabilities that I am not willing to accept anymore because I know that I don’t have to.

I can have all my chips AND not have to worry about someone else coming at me sideways.

The idea at that level of the game is that your hustle will always be strong and the game will never change. It reminds me of when crack hit the streets (and again when Meth came up). All those gangsters making their chips on heroin and weed and coke were watching their customer base dry up. On the inverse, there were a few big players in the crack game that were coming up. You had big names like Monster Kody and Tookie Williams, the originators of the street gangs that ran the drug industry in Los Angeles.

These guys started buying property (investing in real estate) to hide their dope and their cash. They put money on the streets, helping folks pay their rent and for sports leagues to build a community that would support and protect them (investment and community development). At any point, they could have probably run for city council and won in their districts. They were real kingpins. The problem with those cats and the likes of George Jung and others who came up pushing dope and violence is that they get trapped.

They never stop and look around and say, if I keep going this way, I will end up dead or in jail. I could lose it all in a minute. One bad decision and it is all gone. I could take all this money, drop out and flip it in legitimate enterprise. I could have all the money, fame, and luxury and never have to worry about a lick gone bad or a sucker with a gun at my door. I would never have to worry about a nosey cop or a dirty cop with a hand out. Life would be uncomplicated and easy.

Thats the limit of the gangster hustle. I might be on a "Pussy Hustle" now, but now when I see cops, they nod at me. They know me. If they jam me up, I can call my councilmember, who I am on first name terms with and have it handled. See the city doesn’t like to have upstanding business owners harassed by the local boys in blue. It affects their income. As a legitimate employer, I have power over the politicians. As someone who knows how to work with the media, I have power. As someone who knows how to motivate people and make things happen, I have power.

I think Ice T said it best when he said, "Real Gangsters wear trenchcoats, wear black suits, black ties and seek votes". Remember that and the old saying "Game recognizes game."

Politicians don’t care about Gangsters, but they are terrified of Hustlers in suits with the ability to speak to the press and make a point.

The Gangster hustle is short term at best. It is lucrative, you make money, you have a little fame (locally) and get to do some crazy stuff and have a good time (if you can deal with the hard life).

But it is a short term hustle with no retirement plan and serious liabilities. To the reader that sent me that email, get out man. Get out of the game and into your Hustle. Take all that knowledge you have learned on the street and flip the script. You might be making millions in the hood but you could be making hundreds of millions in "The World".

The last thing you said was, "Run with the big dogs".

I do, I chat with millionaires and billionaires that make decisions and run hustles that affect the world.

They don’t get much bigger than that and I never have to worry about taking one in the chest while playing cards with them.

So respect to you man. You came up the hard way, but you came up anyway. If I could impart a little wisdom your direction, it would be "You don’t have to stop being a gangster, just elevate your hustle. Take it out of the streets. Remember, real gangsters wear suits. "

Keep Hustling

Normally it is two guys squared up, ready to fight. Both are willing to go the next step, but neither wants to commit to the next step on their own. But no matter what the circumstances, neither wants to take the first punch. They each want the other to make the first move so that they can react. They are waiting to follow, neither want to lead.

That strategy has always bothered me. In the schoolyard, guys would talk tough. They would bump chests, push each other, talk about each other’s mommas – they would do everything but commit to the first punch. This is what I knew of school yard fights in the 3^rd grade. It took an older guy to teach me that it was the one who threw that first punch who usually came out on top. It was the guy who had the heart to act first.

R.T. was an O.G. in the literal sense. He was my best friend’s older brother. He was a gangster who worked his way to the top of the game (at the street level that is). He died around the age of 26 doing gangster shit. But before that, R.T. taught me how to fight. My dad taught me how to box, my mom taught me how to find sticks and rocks when your hands can’t do the job (see how men and women attack a problem differently?). R.T. taught me how to survive for real.

R.T. told me that if someone comes up and pushes you, you were to drop a hammer on them. There was no pushing back and getting into a tussle. I was told to hit them until I couldn’t move my arms any more – then you kick them. This is survival in the jungle. There is no such thing as a dirty or a fair fight. There was only surviving the fight. You keep moving until you can’t move anymore. That’s how you get what you want. That’s how you survive.

So, while messing around with a friend, I said “Come on man, there is nothing between us but air and opportunity” it stuck in my head. I thought about all the times I let air keep me from my goals. I let air keep me from opportunities.

I was at a high school graduation in San Diego, which was attended by Tony Robbins. You might remember Tony Robbins from his Personal Power self-improvement books and tapes and infomercials. Tony was about 12 feet away from me. I wanted to go over and shake his enormous hand (no offense Tony, if you happen to catch this, but come on man…), maybe get a picture of us together.

I don’t get squishy over celebrities (he is not the first and only one I have ever met) but this was pretty cool and I respect what he was able to do – he started out broke too. Plus he wasn’t celebrity by pretending to be someone else. He was a celebrity based on his Hustle – there is a difference.

My sister-in-law is a friend of his son’s. They went to high school together and we were all there at their high school graduation. I stood there and invented a dozen reasons to NOT go over to him just to say hi. My wife and her family tried to motivate me to go over. I said no…

“This is a personal occasion, I don’t want to bother him”
“He is with his family”
“It would be rude”
“I don’t want to interrupt”

The truth is that for some reason, walking the 12 feet to say “hi” scared me. It didn’t feel like it at the time – at the time it felt like it would be inappropriate. But now I realize that it was fear.

Admitting that you are afraid is a hard fact to swallow. I’m no punk. I have stood eyeball to eyeball with people that wanted to kill me, even shot at me. I have been surrounded, outnumbered and outgunned and survived. I have been in high-speed pursuits with the police and got away. I have looked at my family through the wrong side of wired glass. I have played with high explosives and lived. I have been through some scary stuff and have been able to keep my cool. Introducing myself to a stranger is nothing compared to that stuff. But for some reason, I seemed to care about what might happen if I went over and put out a hand to this guy.

What is the most I could have gained?

A huge contact
A friend
A mentor

What is the worst that could have happened?

He could have said “Nice to meet you.” and walked away. I mean he wasn’t going to punch me in the throat for saying hi.

Afterward I told myself that this would not happen again.

So why do we do it? Why do we let the air between us and opportunity hold us back? Fear of failure? Maybe. Fear of the unknown? Are we afraid that someone who you want to meet will look at you and dismiss you as irrelevant? All of this is bullshit.

I gave this dude power over me. From 12 feet away he was controlling my actions. He didn’t even know he had pimped me. More accurately, I pimped myself.

Nothing, short of a gun to your head, should ever prevent you from advancing your hustle. Never hesitate to go up and say something to anyone. If you are at the store and you see a guy rockin a Rolex and a tight suit. Say hi. Introduce yourself. Ask what he (or she) does. Ask for a card. Write on the back of the card a quick summary of what you talked about and where you met.

Get used to doing this. I have made many contacts from chance encounters. I have boxes of business cards that I have picked up from people. If anything you will have a cool mailing list of people that you could either sell to or hit up to finance your next project. No matter what, you will build a database of people who are already on their hustle. And that is a good list to have.

Never let yourself pimp yourself. Never let air prevent you from making a move. Never let air get between you and opportunity.

Keep Hustling

Most people don’t know what $20 a week can get them. Hell I was told what it would do for me when I was 16 and I didn’t listen. If I had, I would have an account right now with over $100,000 cash in it grown from $20 a week.

To, for some folks, $20 is a drop in the bucket. It is lunch money. For others it means the difference between hamburger helper for the family and just plain helper.

$20 can be found almost under every rock in your neighborhood, if you know what kind of rocks to look for.

I get emails all the time (so if you sent one and I haven’t responded, hang in there, I am working on it). Most of the time it is stuff like “How do I get my hustle going?” or “Where can I get money to finance my hustle?”

The hardest part to locking down a strong hustle is money and patience. If you have ever done any kind of crime, you know that you spend a lot of time waiting. You are either waiting in the bushes for traffic to clear so you can break a window or you are waiting for the store to clear out a little before you run in there. Maybe you are waiting for a foggy night to do your dirt or you are waiting for a homeboy to call you up with the ok on the spot where he works.

Most of the time it is a gut check. You ask yourself, does it FEEL right. Being kids of the 70’s and 80’s my friends and I used to call this our “Spidey Senses”. Some of my other friends called it being ghetto psychic. It is how you know someone is a cop, even though you don’t really know. It is the gut feeling to know that now is the time to act.

But the waiting to act is hard. That is the hardest part to get over. You can have millions in the bank but unless you check the gut, keep it in your pocket. This is why I think that those who grew up in the game have an advantage over those who didn’t. You can smell danger. The other advantage is that you know when to take the risk of running up and smashing that window.

So now that we know that you have to have patience to know when to act, you have got to find the dough. Money has a funny way of multiplying. Think about it. When I was a kid, I sold candy on the schoolyard. I had a little store in my backpack. Actually I carried a duffel bag that was half candy and half books with zippers on both sides. I stole about $2.00 worth of nickel gum and Jolly Ranchers from the 7-11 near my house. I would go back and pay for them as I have the money now but they closed like 12 years ago.

Anyway, I flipped that $2.00 in candy into $4.00 that afternoon. I went and bought $4.00 in candy and sold it for $8.00 the next day. I did this until I was making between $10 and $20 a day net. That’s a pocket full of cash for a 3rd grader in 1983. I took those profits and rolled them into extending my line and setting up distribution (selling candy is like selling crack or weed or anything else). I was the Nino Brown of the elementary school.

But all I needed was that seed money. So here are some ideas for setting up your empire, starting with your first $20. By the way, I have done each of these things myself so i know they work.

Tow Yards – Many Tow Truck companies have impound contracts with the cops. When people don’t pick up their cars, the tow yard doesn’t want to sell them like they are a car lot (they usually don’t have a license to sell cars). So they sell them for scrap to the local junkyards. Offer to sell those cars for them for a split of the profits. They only get $50 to $200 for the salvage on those cars. You might get the car with a salvage title, but my first three cars had salvage titles and that didn’t bother me. Plus a lot of those salvage yards just sell those cars anyway. You are acting as a broker and can list the car on craigslist or ebay if you want. If you have $50 to $200, just ask to buy the car from the lot yourself and don’t split the upsell value.

Recycling – I am not saying go get a bicycle and a bunch of bags and hit the garbage cans. Not that there is anything wrong with that, those people are Hustlers in their own way. I am saying to go by the local bars and restaurants and talk to someone. Maybe it is the owner or the manager or the security guard that is guarding the dumpster. Offer them 50% of the recycled value of the cans and bottles. You swing by once a day, week or month – whatever works. You will make a few extra dollars for sure and you could even turn this into a little business. I used to do this when I was a kid. I didn’t have a car so I would just go to the restaurants around the grocery store and get them to give me their bottles. I would turn them in at the store for cash. It was an easy $10 for an hour of work in 1982 when minimum wage was a little over $3/hr in California.

Mobile Car Wash – If you live somewhere where people like to drive, then going to their homes and telling them that for $5 to $10 you (and your kids or spouse or friends) will wash their cars. If it works out you can set it up so you can stop by once a week to once a month. Use quality soap and nice cloths and bring your own hoses and nozzles so you don’t have to borrow anything from the owner. Make sure you have nothing sharp on you (watches, belts, keys). You can even take a camera with you and take a picture of each car (to document existing damages) and have a check list with a drawing of a car (like the rental places use). In the winter time, shovel snow. Get to really know them and get them on an oil change schedule too.

Be a Mobile Store – People buy water. You can buy it bulk, cheap. Go places where people are exercising (the park, the gym, the community center, little league ball games) with a backpack lined with water resistant cloth (think solar reflectors from PepBoys or thermal blankets). Freeze some of the bottles and put them on the bottom. Make a T-Shirt at Zazzle.com or CafePress.com that say “Water $1.00” or “Snack Pimp” or something like that. If you are in a wheel chair and like to beg for money as your hustle – don’t go panhandle – put some hooks on your wheelchair and be a mobile store. I am far more likely to buy something from you than give you my hard earned money for nothing! And likely people are more likely to give you money if you at least make the effort to sell something.

Make Something – You know how to do something. What are your friends calling you up to help them with? You help people all the time even if it is moving furniture. Do you have a truck, rent yourself on Craigslist for people who need the help. Do you know how to make necklaces? Are you willing to learn something? Open up the PennySaver or phone book to the handyman section. What are other people doing? Learn it and do that too! I have a concrete back patio that my wife wants to stain. It is stamped so there are a lot of brick-like patterns. She wants me to get out there and stain each “brick” individually in alternating colors. Yeah, it will look good and it is easy to do – but I don’t want to do it. I would pay someone $500 to come do it for me over the weekend. I would pay for the stain, brushes and kneepads. And in California as long as it is under $500 you don’t need a contractor’s license. There are a lot of guys like me with more money than time. You have more time than money. Go get their money.

So there are 5 solid ideas. Not everyone can do all of them but anyone can do at least one of them. Take that little money you get and throw it into a CD or savings account or Roth IRA or mutual funds or something. Sit on it and let it grow until you find the next hustle.

If I had done this when I was 16, and increased my savings to my earnings, as I got older – I would have over a million dollars cash in that savings account. Life is funny like that. When you get older you see all the missed opportunities. But while you are looking back at them, don’t forget to look around at the here and now. You don’t want to be 10 years older looking back to now thinking about all the opportunities that you are missing right now.

That bar/restaurant I am opening started from $20. I fixed some computers and stuff when I was 16 years old. I taught myself how.  I read books at the library and hung out with other people in that kind of stuff and learned what I could. I charged $20/hr to fix any computer problem that I could fix. I used that money to buy a 1966 mustang for $1,200. I sold that Mustang for $2,500 to help put together the down payment to buy my first house. I sold that house for $200,000 more than I paid for it. I took about $100,000 of that and paid off all my debt and used the rest to buy a crappy little bar in the ghetto. The other $100,000 I used as a down payment on the next house.

I set that bar up, cleaned it up and squeezed every dime out of it until it was the most successful 1100 square feet in that neighborhood. I took the money from that and leased a very high traffic and visible spot in the good side of town. Just by moving into the new building the value of that business has doubled. Remember what they say about real estate? Well it is the same for businesses too – “Location, Location, Location”. The day I open the doors the business will be worth about $500,000.

It all started from a $20 hustle.

Keep Hustling

One thing that is pretty much available to anyone in the United States is Internet access. Coffee shops, libraries, Internet cafes, schools are all potential sources of computers with cheap or free internet access.

Now, you might not be able to charge folks to use these free computers (but if you can, I might have a job for you because that would mean you are on top of your sales hustle). Anyway, so you now have this incredible resource. Every day, people like you are making a few dollars to a few thousand dollars using the Internet. I have. I was making a few hundred dollars a month on eBay about 8 years ago spending about 4 hours a month posting items and mailing them out. I didn’t do anything special. I could probably start it up again if I wanted too, but it was boring. I make better money now doing things that are more fun for me – and isn’t that the real hustle?

Now this doesn’t mean that I don’t still spend time online. I spend time for fun and I spend time for work. I visit a lot of different sites but most recently I have noticed a trend. Some call it social media, some call it social networking and some call it online “friending”. Whatever you call it, it is this century’s way of pooling your resources to get your hustle off the ground.

I am putting out a list here of sites that I visit and use on the daily basis. Some of these I may only use a few times a week because they don’t require my constant attention. Others I use when I have questions or feel the need to reach out a little. Some help me maintain my “real world” contacts and other help me meet new people who help me grow my personal empire.

These are sites that you can use to build your hustle, your crew, or plan your organization.

Money

You may know from a previous post that there are a lot of places online to find some seed capital. Here are just a few.

• Prosper
• Zopa
• Lending Club
• Kiva (for our international readers)
• Loanio
• Virgin Money

Personal Networking

Networking is important. It is really how you build your crew. When I used to run around in the streets, people knew me. I had a reputation. People knew that they could come to me to find some hard to find items or to find a deal. When I grew up, got straight and wanted to expand my hustle, I realized that I needed to create a NEW network. That guy who can get you car stereos on the cheap isn’t going to help much when you want to land that million-dollar contract. This is what you need to do – make new contacts. Each of these sites can help.

• Tribe find people in your area working their own hustles.
• Myspace the easiest to get going because you already know someone on MySpace. Yeah, you really do.
• Facebook This site used to be invite only. It is basically a MySpace knock off for the college set. Now, it is the “friendly” equivalent to LinkedIn.
• LinkedIn I have clients, colleagues and friends who contact me through LinkedIn. It is strictly business oriented. And when I get a new business card, this is the first place I go to see if we are going to hook up.
• MeetUp this site helps you find and meet people in person. My only warning here is that the entrepreneur groups have a lot of MLM salespeople. MLM is not my kind of hustle, if you can hump it out, more power to you.

Business Communities

Business Communities can be networking resources, but I find them more of a collaborative tool. This is where like minded people get together and expose each other to industry related news, advice and tips. I probably use these sites as much as the networking sites.

• Bank of America Small Business Online Community is a pretty cool site where you can get some advice.
• Microsoft Startup Center
• American Express Open Forum is a place where small business owners get together to share tips and ideas.
• Advisor Garage is a site where business pros ca offer help to those coming up. It is still in Beta phase now but looks promising.
• Entrepreneur.com Another resource site for you know who
• Small Business Wiki is a dumb name for a site like the others above. Dumb name, but a good resource.

Web Resources

• Google Analytics if your business has a website, then you need this. On one of my businesses, I track visitors, get their network location and call them up. I tell them “Thanks for visiting my website, I am calling to see if you had any questions not answered by my site.” This site is also cool if you do any marketing. You can watch your visitors spike when a new ad or marketing campaign launches and know what works.
• Google Alerts I get emails every day of my name popping up online or one of my businesses or competitors showing up in the news. This is how I do it. It gives you an excellent competitive advantage.

Money Services

Everyone needs some help figuring out their money. It is easier when all your money fits in your pockets, but when you start pulling in a little extra, things get complicated. It is better to learn good habits now.

• Mint.com is a free money management site. It has a lot of cool features including letting you know when your credit card payments and bills are due via email (mine go to my cell phone). It is like a free version of quicken but a lot easier to use.
• Geezeo.com another money management site. This one has a forum called “Money Confessions” where people anonymously post how they are spending their money.
• Wesabe Another online money management site worth mentioning.
• CreditKarma is a site that lets you monitor your credit score any time you want. This site is FREE and legit.
• PayPal – Love it or hate it, Paypal is the leading way to exchange money between individuals online. Owned by eBay.
• Google Checkout – Google’s service for buying items in online stores without giving your credit card details to the merchant. No person-to-person exchanges.
• MoneyBookers – a popular alternative to PayPal, especially in countries where PayPal still doesn’t let users receive funds.
• Billster allows you to track your bills as well as helps you figure out how to split shared bills with your friends, partners or roommates.
• Annual Credit Report The government offers this site so you can get a free copy of your credit reports. It’s free, once a year.

Information and Resources

There is a lot of information out there. Here is a good start to get you rolling. This is one list that I will keep updating so check back.

• SlideShare is a site where business pros upload their PowerPoint presentations. Now you can see how the big rollers are getting the job done. This helps for that first time you have to give a presentation to a room full of suits.
• DocStoc.com There are a lot of free and downloadable documents including Non-Disclosure Agreements and Independent Contractor Agreements. It doesn’t beat a lawyer – but it is cheaper.
• SBA Small Business Planner more business help from the government
• SCORE is a site to find a mentor to give you a hand up.
• IdeaBlob is a place where people throw out ideas for new businesses or products. You never know where that next idea will come from.
• EntreWiki same thing as IdeaBlob.

So obviously this isn’t every site out there. It isn’t even a complete list of the best sites out there. It is just a list of good sites that I visit. If you are reading this post, and you run a valuable site like these, post a comment. If it looks good, I will allow it through so others can check it out. If you have a site that you don’t run but you know is cool, post it and I will set it up for others too. Also, check back because I will be updating this post as better sites show up.

Keep Hustling