I get emails, phone calls and questions all the time from people trying to find their own “Hustle”.

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.