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

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.