Hustlers vs Entrepreneurs. The two are pretty much the same thing,
right? Wrong! While I would say that it is pretty safe to assume that
most entrepreneurs are natural hustlers, I would also say that most
hustlers will never become entrepreneurs. You see, hustlers are
missing a few things that entrepreneurs seem to have discovered.
First of all, hustlers lack any real long term vision. A car salesman
is a hustler, the car dealership owner is an entrepreneur. A person
who flips real estate is a hustler, the person who owns apartments and
collects cashflow is an entrepreneur. Capital Gains versus
Appreciation and cashflow. The guy who sells you stocks is a hustler,
the guy whose stock he’s selling because he just had an IPO is an
entrepreneur. A consultant and the guy who owns the consulting
company. Highest tax bracket versus lowest tax bracket (or even no tax
bracket), you get the idea. A hustler must continue hustling or his
income will suffer. An entrepreneur can pick and choose when to
hustle and when to strategize for the future. Both are after the same
thing, financial freedom and wealth, but unfortunately only one will
actually accomplish that. 1099 vs Schedule K-1, all you entrepreneurs
already know what that means.
Hustling should be a means to an end, not the end itself. Like I said
before, most entrepreneurs were (and actually still are) hustlers,
they just evolved and converted their hustle into a system that can
attract other hustlers to work in for them. Making the next sale is
what is important to a hustler, building a company and leading his
team is what the entrepreneur is focused on. The entrepreneur builds
the system that the hustler works in. Being a hustler is not bad, but
for a hustler to not evolve into an entrepreneur is a sad shame.
Sometimes entrepreneurs fall back into the hustler mentality. Maybe
the company had a rough quarter and long term aspirations must be
sacrificed in order to make payroll and pay the bills. Sometimes the
entrepreneur may feel that shortcuts need to be made in order to meet
short term goals. I am an entrepreneur that occasionally falls back
into “hustler mode”. If this happens to you too, don’t worry about it
too much, just recognize it for what it is, deal with your immediate
issues, and then become an entrepreneur again by focusing on long term
vision. Build a better system for that particular issue so that you
don’t fall back into this short-sighted thinking (at least for that
particular issue) again. When an entrepreneur is building a startup,
he must hustle, but he knows that he must hustle on building his
system so he can hire other hustlers to work in the system. This is
why the first year of running a business is critical, you will either
develop the system and evolve to becoming an entrepreneur, or you will
forever be a hustler. Mom and Pop store versus Corporation.
At the root of the hustler-entrepreneur dilemma is that one focuses on
himself while the other focuses on others. Being an entrepreneur
requires massive humility. To him, brand equity matters more than a
quick buck or commission. This is where customer service comes into
play. Take, for example, Zappos and a hustler-owned online (or
offline) shoe merchant. Both may carry the same shoes, however, only
one has the brand equity required to get away with charging more than
the other. Brand equity, word of mouth, creating a culture of
happiness, these are all long term, entrepreneurial assets that Zappos
carries over their hustler competitors. When Zappos screws up an
order, they are known to send flowers, gift certificates, or even hand
deliver their shoes themselves! When a hustler screws up an order he
moves on to the next customer, leaving the previous one with a bad
experience. You see, the hustler put the almighty dollar ahead of his
customer. Having humility, building a system that creates brand equity
, these are strange concepts for a hustler who has bills to pay TODAY.
Short term satisfaction is chosen over long term brand building.
The difference between the two examples is “me” versus “my customers”.
Zappos probably loses money on that customer that they just tried to
keep happy, but they don’t care because they know it will pay off in
the future. Certainly a hustler can make a good (even great) living,
but an entrepreneur can achieve financial independence and separate
his time from his money-making ability. A hustler remains prisoner to
his own system, and once he stops hustling, he stops earning. An
entrepreneur, once he has built his own system, is able to walk away
from it, come back many months later, and find it doing better than
before he left. It is not difficult to see who will reach financial
freedom under this model.
