Hustling Vs Working Mindsets

Hey there,

Hope you had an awesome weekend.

This post is about something that my buddy Joe and I were talking about in Breckenridge a few weeks ago.

I was talking about one of my tenets of hustling which is that you should ALWAYS ask for stuff you have no right to ask for. By this obviously I mean things like free sodas at drive thrus, upgrades to first class on flights, free shots from bars etc... I mentioned this because there is absolutely no penalty for asking for any of these things and sometimes you get them for free. It's like gambling except you don't have to pay anything if you lose. I think about this entitlement mindset as the cornerstone of hustling.

Hustling to me is all about trying to get over, and get a better deal than you probably should get. In general people who are ALWAYS hustling and seeing what they can get are SUPER annoying, but if you don't have any hustle to you at all, you end up paying more ( Not just financially) for things than you should.

I know a ton of guys who are STRAIGHT hustlers, they have all sorts of shady deals and connections and sometimes they work out and we get an awesome experience and other times we are left in the cold. I don't trust anyone who has a 100% hustling mindset. At it's heart hustling is a high risk/high reward mindset. You must be willing to risk rejection and potential social embarrassment. And it doesn't always work.

On the other hand, you have guys that are workers. They know what they want, and they are willing to put in the sweat, effort and time to get it. They don't look for shortcuts, or try to get over, because they believe that if you are willing to work for something you will be able to get it. On the whole a worker mindset will take you very far in life. However it may also take you a lot longer to get where you are going, because workers tend to learn everything the hard way and they assume that with enough hard work they can accomplish anything. Even if the solution is to work smarter rather than harder.

Both of these mindsets have flaws.

Hustlers tend to always look for the easy way, and miss opportunities that are in front of them but require hard work. Workers, miss out on the real easy paths in life, because they assume that anything that is easy is not as valuable.

I would say I have tendencies of both, but tend to be more of a worker. I don't really like "hook-ups" or having to owe people for things, both of which are not problems real hustlers have. I also tend to want things to be as fair as possible, so I don't feel guilty for taking advantage of the other person. I do believe in hustling big corporations hard though. If I can get over on American Airlines or The Grocery Store without doing anything illegal, I am DOWN...

I guess the point of this post is to help you identify what situations need a hustling mindset ( Getting in to clubs, pulling, getting free drinks, or upgrades) and what situations need a worker mindset ( Working on sticking points, Phone Game, Dates, Learning Pickup).

Hope That Helps,

JS- The King Of Content