Now this post isnt about rap or rappers. It just goes to show that everyone recognizes that there are times in life where you make a decision to move and make moves or stay where you are and let the moment slip.

The challenge to this scenario, in grabbing this opportunity when it presents itself is that we dont usually see the opportunity until it has passed.

How many times have you been driving and look back just in time to see you have missed your freeway exit? Happens to me all the time (usually because I am on the phone or singing). I have my mind on other shit and I end up wasting time heading to the next exit to flip around to head back to the right exit. Once this happened to me driving from Los Angeles to San Francisco. I missed the 99/I-5 split. I had to double back. That minor mistake cost me an hour of lost time or 1/6th of the total trip time.

Instead of being on the freeway you are bumpin through life. You are sweating the husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, parents or whoever. You have your head up your bosses ass to get a raise or your own trying to figure out how you are going to spend your weekend. You have your eyes crossed while trying to ake a U-turn – whatever. You have so much going on that you forget where you are going. Sometimes you are so focused on where you are going that you miss the detour signs telling you that you are heading for a dead-end.

You have to be focused, but not too focused. You have to concentrate, but not so much that you block everything else out. You have to move quickly, but not so fast that you can’t make a turn if a dog runs out in front of you.

Your brain is powerful enough to take in a lot of information if you teach it to filter out the bullshit.

There are people around you who want you to fail. I have touched on this before. These are people who have their own mtives. Sometimes their motives are even hidden from them. They don’t knw they are sabbotaging you. They tell you things like:

• Hey, slow down and smell the roses.
• All work and no play…
• You are going to work yourself to death!

Are they right? Only you know for sure. You have made the decision to get on that road, put the keys in the ignition, and start the car and go. It is your foot on the accelerator. You determine how fast you want to go. The question is – how soon do you want to get there?

I like driving at night. People are out of my way. Roads are clear. I can go faster. But then I hear

• But that’s when the drunk drivers are out!
• But no one is on the road; you are more likely to get pulled over.
• What if you fall asleep, crash or have an accident? No one will see you!

But for me, those are minor riskes that I can prepare for. I can drive without speeding (too much). I can keep an eye on traffic – fewer people on the road allow me to be more maneuverable in avoiding accidents. I can take a nap before I drive away. I can have all my fluids and tires checked for safety. All those things that they say to stop me from going are relatively preventable. The gain is that I get to my detination 2 to 4 hours faster (depending on L.A. traffic).

The benefit outweighs the manageable risks.

So, I’m going to keep this one short. Here is my point. If you have something you want to do or somewhere you want to go then pull the trigger. Make sure you have extra gas in the tank. Make sure you check the tire pressure and fluids. Make sure you are rested and ready. Make sure yu have your course plotted and planned and an alternat route in case there is trouble along the way. When you have done all that – smash on the accelerator.

It is the only way you are going to get where you want to go before everyone else, with time to spare.

Keep Hustling

I talk to a lot of people about a lot of things. I just got back from an event where I spoke to a large group of people. It was a little intimidating; there were hundreds of people there. Most of them were highly educated professionals. They were the tops in their industry.

I got off stage and was greeted by their positive feedback, requests for personal consultations with their companies and general adoration of my grasp of the subject matter. I was feeling pretty good.

It took me almost two years to get that speaking gig. Since then (about two weeks ago) I have been offered two more bookings to speak – paid, all expenses covered for travel to cool locations. I have been offered a few paid consultation projects and even an offer to be a consulting partner on a new business venture.

I am not saying this to brag. Truly I am not. I am saying this because I have been organizing this hustle for two years. It started with establishing myself as an expert in this particular field. I read everything I could get my hands on. I started talking to others in this field. I worked my ass off to be taken seriously. I took on small projects, anything, that would allow me to gain credibility, no matter how small the projects were. Some of those projects got bigger as I finished the smaller ones. I used those small projects to meet more people.

I looked at each small project, connection, conversation and exercise as a small step up to the next level.
And now, I see it beginning to pay off.

Along the way, those in my employ questioned if I was making the right moves. My wife and I even talked about changing strategies. There were plenty of reasons to give up, but you see, I was moving. I was moving forward. I was moving up. I was building a platform from which I would launch my next business. Each small success was a brick, mortared into place.

In the process, I have met two other influential individuals who want to hook their wagons (and resources) up to my train. They know I will do the work. They know that I will bring the money. They know that with their money and resources, they can keep me moving forward and upward. I have proven it. They have seen what I have been able to do so far on my own. They want to stand next to me with buckets as the money rains down.

So why am I telling you all of this?

Too often I hear about people who set goals and spend their time trying to jump up and catch them. I used to do it myself. Almost like I expected success to fall on top of me and knock me on my ass.

I would envision it like winning the lottery. No one plays the lottery without thinking that they are going to win. It is ridiculous to pay for the ticket without thinking you are going to win right?

Odds are you are not going to win, but you buy the ticket again next week.

But the same people will not put $10 into a savings account or spend 1 hour a day developing a business strategy or educating themselves. They will spend $3 or $4 on cigarettes but not $5 on a used book on something that would make them $500 in a year. The big goals are too huge and too high to reach by jumping.

What I am telling you is, you can do it. Obviously you are motivated. If you weren’t motivated you wouldn’t be reading this. So you have the most important part of making that goal, that dream, a reality – motivation.

Now you have only to define your goal and take that first step.

Even if that first step is to read a book, or a blog or a video on youtube, that will move you forward. That step will move you upward. The next step is to get off your ass and meet someone. It could be someone interested in the same thing that will help you start your crew or a new customer or client.

Just keep moving forward and keep hustling.

When I was a kid, everything was about being fair. Playing nice and sharing and following the rules were the orders of the day.

Recently I haven’t been posting much. It has caused us to drop from Alltop (which was my last post.) Mostly because I have been too busy to type anything up. Each of these posts take about two hours – in case you were wondering. Time spent here, isn’t time being spent on making money (I do this for free remember?)

As an update, the last 6 months have been spent on the planning on opening a restaurant and lounge. Growing up in and owning other businesses in the food industry gives me a pretty good head for this. We finally found a location I like and construction has begun. Unless the city or the neighbors get in the way, we should be up and bumping in a few months.

However, things aren’t as sunny at one of my other businesses. I have lost two employees. One employee left to work for another unrelated company for more money. Good for her. The other has left to work for one of my vendors. This pretty much means I will no longer be doing business with that vendor.

But that is not a problem, at least not for me. See, I have to hire new people. These new people are willing to work for half as much as I was paying these last two employees. That’s great right? Hell yes it is! That means I can get more done for half as much. The funny thing is, I let the interviewees tell me how much they wanted to make and they volunteered to work for that much.

What is causing a stir is that the other employees are freaking out. See, they make much more to do the same thing. They haven’t been developing their skills. They basically know the same stuff now that they knew 5 years ago. They haven’t been keeping up. Now these new fish come in with all these skills and volunteer to be paid less. Obviously I will be taking a look at the current employees with a calculating eye. Can you blame me? By sitting on their collective asses and building their nests, they have become LESS valuable as employees. Seniority doesn’t mean anything outside of the unions’ boys and girls. And experience is only as good as the final product. I don’t care if you are Jesus the master carpenter himself, if you can’t handle power tools then I can’t hire you to build my house.

So, this reminds me of a book I read recently called “Nickled and Dimed – On NOT Getting by in America.” This book was entertaining but not in the way the author intended. I am not one to slam another Hustler (and I giver her credit by applying the title). However, she made a point that I thought was typical for people of her mindset. She said that the people she worked with at each of the minimum wage jobs she “tested” all told her to do the same thing – the bare minimum. If you try too hard, the other employees will hate you and punish you because the bosses will use you as an example of how hard they COULD be working. In the same breath, she talks about how it is impossible to advance from those low level positions.

If you don’t pay the costs, you can’t be the boss fool!

Why am I going to promote you for skating by on the bare minimum? Why would I care about you if you don’t care about my business or me? When you don’t do your job, we make less money. That is the money that I use to feed my kids. So you sitting on your hands, taking long breaks, hiding out in the bathroom, riding a broom for 3 hours to avoid stocking shelves means that you are taking food out of my kids mouths.

I will not have you stealing from my family.

When I was riding a chair working for someone else, a co-worker asked me to show them how to do some special things that I knew how to do that he didn’t. Even though he had 10 years of experience over me. I happily brought in some books I had and showed him a few things. Days, weeks and months went by and he never said another thing about it. I finally asked him how his education was coming along. He told me “Aw man, I haven’t had time to learn that stuff. With the kids and the wife and everything… just no time.” Having two business, a kid and a job myself, I was less than sympathetic. “That’s ok, you will have plenty of time when you are sitting on the unemployment line.”

Was that cold? Yeah, it was. The look on his face was priceless. Did it motivate him? Nope, he still has my books and now he works for me. See, I bought the company. You know why? Because I work my ass off. I keep learning. I keep moving. I keep hustling.

If you are not giving 100% all the time, excelling and educating yourself then when the next guy swings by willing to work for half as much and able to do twice as much. Don’t cry and say the world is unfair. You did it to yourself. Life ain’t fair – get used to it!

Only the Hustlers survive.

How do you find a hustle?

What is the right hustle for me?

How do I know the right hustle when I find it?

First, let me define what a hustle is for all of our non-American visitors. A hustle is a culmination of a goal and a vehicle to create personal wealth. A hustle isn’t simply a job, or having something to sell. It is having all the parts to make your business successful. It is the distribution, the marketing, the legal, the suppliers etc etc. A hustle, by all definitions, is a complete business opporunity with a plan for success.

Make sense? Cool, now let’s rock it out.

I have titled this post specifically to illustrate the underlying challenge of coming up with your own hustle. The first and most important thing you need to do is stop being lazy. “But Hustler, I’m not lazy, I work HARD. I work so hard that when I get home, all I can do is fall on the couch and drink my beer, spark one and mellow out before I eat and go to bed. I just don’t have the energy.

Wow. You sure sound tired. I wish you well then. I hope that works out for you. You can relax and have that beer, smoke that weed and eat your dinner. But you will never be a Hustler. It wont happen. Hustlers don’t lie to themselves like that. You know why it’s a lie? Because if I showed up at your house with a whip and started beating on you, I bet you would move your ass right? The old slave masters knew it would work. The slave masters knew that the slaves worked hard, but they only worked as much as it took not to get beaten by the whip. It is amazing what you can do when you are hurting. I can’t tell you how many times I have been talking to hard working people and hear them tell me (when times were tough and rent was due) “Wow, I really need to hustle up some dough to make my rent.” Why start now? If you possess that drive and determination and ability all the time, why wait until you are facing eviction to kick it into gear? The explanation is easy, last month you didn’t have to worry about eviction. You didn’t see the guy with the whip in his hand. You didn’t have to REALLY work. You just had to work hard enough to get by.

Now that’s not to say that everyone who can’t make their rent cant do so because they are lazy. I know some had working people (I say they work like slaves) that because of poor planning or bad circumstances, cant make rent. It happens. But those people are the exception – the rest of you are the rule. At the beginning of getting my game together I was working four jobs – enough said.

Now that I have your attention and you know that crap about being too tired or working too hard doesn’t hold water here, lets start looking for some opportunities.

There is an old saying that goes “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door” Hopefully I am not the first person to tell you this is a lie. If it were true then engineers would be the richest people in the world. They aren’t. Engineers are important, but most of them have no idea how to bring a product to market. But I am off the subject.

Look, you don’t have to create something new and exciting to be rich. You can take an existing product and slap a new label on it. POW – you are now a business. People do this all over the world and all over the internet. How many car manufacturers run one line to make several different vehicles? All of them. They have a base configuration them make aesthetic changes to cater to a specific customer. How many kinds of water are there? There are three kinds of water: clean, dirty and salt water. How many kinds of bottled water are there? What makes them different? It is called positioning. It is when you tell someone that what you have is THE water. That it has been taken to the next level. It is made from artesian springs that has been melted and purified and stirred with golden spoons by naked virgins in white togas. Whatever it is that makes your stuff the best stuff – that’s called positioning.

Don’t believe me? Check out Fred Water. What is it? It’s WATER. But they took it and put it into a flask shaped bottle and named it FRED. Special? No. Unique? YES!

The easiest thing that you can do to lock down your hustle is to look around you. What are you into. I know a young guy who has been a musician forever. He spent his whole life to this point trying to “Make It”. He plays 6 or 7 instruments. He even came really close to making it a few times with the different bands that he was with. But, while trying to make it, and to make his music better (and so he didn’t have to pay someone else to do it), he taught himself sound engineering. Then he took a few classes. Now, after all that time he realized ht he could make as much money with more freedom as a sound engineer. He can produce, mix, make sound effects, lay down tracks for films, compose and all of the above. His new company is sound wrecking crew. He will be setting up his web site soon, and when he does, I will link to it so that you can check him out. Is he doing something wild and new? No. He found something that was fun to him and found a way to make a living doing it. Thats the hustle.

It is a frame of mind. Once you open your eyes and your mind, you will see more opportunities than you will know what to do with. You can take a Hustler and put them in any situation and they will succeed. I could walk into your life for a week and figure out at least 10 ways for you to make extra money based on your knowledge – guaranteed. But it takes work. It takes HARD work. Making money is simple, but it isn’t easy. You have to wake up every morning and look in the mirror an see that guy behind you with a whip. You have to stay on your game. You have to hustle.

Check back soon. I will be posting some ideas on how to add $20 a day to your bank account. In case you don’t want to do the math, that’s $7,300 extra a year.

Stay Strong and Keep Hustling.

This is what I got done:

• Made my car payment (15 minutes driving)
• Deposited some checks (15 minutes driving)
• Got my hair cut (45 minutes driving and cut total)
• Checked my email and worked on a cold calling script (1 hour)

That’s it. I spent the rest of the day goofing off on a WORK day. What the hell was I thinking?
I wasted a whole day. I didn’t even intentionally start out intending to do this. If I had, I would
have gone and worked on my golf swing, or spent time with my family. Maybe I would have
snuck out and saw movie.

No, I sat at my desk and read blogs and screwed off a day. What a damn waste!

I come from a family of procrastinators. There is no shame in it. Thats where I learned it.
My family worked hard, they weren’t lazy. They just put things off. They waited around for
something to motivate them.

What pisses me off is that it is such a hard habit to break. Even when I am doing it I get mad
at myself and yet I still fall into the same habits.

So what do you do? How do you defeat procrastination? The answer is so simple that you won’t
believe it will work. Make a list.

That’s it. Make a list of what you need to get done – just for that day. Here is my list for tomorrow:

1. Deposit checks (15 minutes)
2. Got to the office (30 minutes)
3. Check Email (15 minutes)
4. Check web business analytics (15 minutes)
5. Run Cold Call session with team (1 hour)
6. Fill out sales tracking sheet (30 minutes)
7. Write 2 posts (1 hour)
8. Lunch (1 hour)
9. Run Marketing Meeting #1 (1 hour)
10. Write proposal (1 hour)
11. Work on client marketing analysis (1 hour)
12. Run Marketing Meeting #2 (30 minutes)
13. Go home (30 minutes)
14. Check emails (30 minutes)
15. Modify task list (15 minutes)
16. Time with family (2 hours)
17. Edit client site (1 hour)
18. Check web business analytics (15 minutes)
19. Write 2 blog posts (1 hour 30 minutes)
20. Web Sites SEO (30 Minutes)
21. Shut down and make new list for the next day (1 hour)

That is not a typical day for me – tasks change daily. But the hours are about the same. Up at
6am and in bed by midnight (unless something happens). By the way, this list look less than
15 minutes to write.

See, I am not lazy. I am usually working on something all day – but there are days where tasks
look to big or too irritating to start on. This is where the list comes in to play. If you know what
needs to be done and you know that you have to do it today – you can motivate yourself.

Lists are easy to make. Start out small (maybe 3 items). Then, as you get used to it, add a few
things. This seems easy – but if you can do it regularly, you will be ahead of 90% of the people
out there who spend their free time watching TV, playing video games, looking at porn, chatting
online or one of the hundred other things people do that sobatage their success.