Being in business or in entrepreneurship is one thing, but being a hustler is a totally different one. While being an entrepreneur or in business may teach you a bit about hustling, becoming a hustler is a full time job. Have you ever wondered what makes a hustler so unique and how you can actually tell if you qualify in calling yourself a true hustler?
Increased Awareness: Hustlers weren’t born that way, they acquired a taste for hustling through all the experiences they had to date. Those experiences mainly come from being able to remain aware of their environment and the behaviors within them. Being a hustler means being constantly on the lookout for yourself and for opportunities. Increased awareness is usually one of the most important skills a hustler can have as the constant need to absorb new information only makes you better at the game of leveraging it later on.
Understand Leverage: Connecting the dots is the key to understanding patterns quickly. This is something true hustlers do best. They realize the situations that surround them quickly and understand their position in the situation. If you are in a room with a hustler and random people are all around you, a true hustler will have not only observed who is around them, what they are doing, and if any opportunities exist to include themselves positively in that picture. They often pay extra attention to other people’s behaviors and what they signify. This is why hustlers are good at picking up people, simply because they identify easily with the person they want to approach, what they most likely get told when approached and what they would rather be told to seal the deal. The leverage occurs based on understanding the situation and information. Identifying other people’s problem enables the hustler to position himself as the master solution provider and position that solution as the only and greatest option ever needed. Leverage is what great hustlers understand and not so great ones don’t.
Make Everyone a Connection: While people hold judgment quickly on what they like or dislike in new people they meet or interact with, hustlers do no such thing. Instead they see each and every person as a very much-needed connection, even if they have no use for it at that time. Often asking in-depth questions not to know the person but to understand their capacity and reach and what it will cost to help them or refer them to others. Expert hustlers understand the law of value really well and typically are quick at immediately increasing value for those they interact with, only to hold more leverage later when they need. Nonetheless, all hustlers know people or know how to get introduced to the right people.
Identify Immediate Opportunities: While people often hold long conversations in order to create mutually beneficial long term relationships, hustlers live for the moment and therefore love transactional opportunities that create WIN/win, even though both parties win, the hustler wins the most by doing less. While long term relationships may occur with hustlers, it is typically not due to the same mindset or shared interest but rather by the continuous multi-transaction type behavior. They will do what they need to protect their income sources and more. Immediate opportunities are more frequent for hustlers as their ability to assert the situation, connect the dots and somehow insert themselves makes them a prime candidate for closing deals quickly, even if the deals are not theirs to close.
Clearly Able to Play Both Sides: While most see this as being dishonest, it isn’t. A great hustler knows that the presentation of something is key and the personalities at play are all different and require different approaches. Think of hustlers as online copywriters and affiliates who know how to position an offer so that it looks as good to the buyer as it does to the seller. This often makes them great negotiators and sales people. They do have a conscious but look at the deal from a neutral lens in order to be able to close it rather than bring happiness to all parties.
The word hustler has a negative connotation because those that simply rip off people sometimes consider themselves hustler for taking advantage of others less aware individuals around them. That is far from the definition of a hustler but instead the core of what makes a clown. So are you a clown or hustler?
