Title: Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter

Author: Curtis Jackson

Hi all,

I’m finally get back into the groove of delivering content more regularly, and what better way to celebrate by introducing this bad boy.

The older ones amongst us will remember Curtis for his role as 50 Cent the rapper, the business people amongst us today will know him as a businessman in the entertainment industry. The younger generation, well, to be honest, I don’t know how much they listen to rap music, so maybe they don’t know him as well. But all this doesn’t matter. The book gives you a peak into his life before being a famous entertaining rapper, then being a rapper and finally as a businessman. However, this is not written in the style of a memoir or auto-/biography as you would know it.

It combines the writing style of having a little bit of the biography in there and then also a bit of a personal development coach.

The way I read the book, imagine this, was as if I had an interview with him, as well as him giving his child a lesson for life. That’s the vibe I felt when I read the book as I got through the chapters and made my personal notes on the side.

He lists his lessons to cover the following:

• Becoming fearless
• Having the heart of a hustler
• Building a strong team around you
• Know your worth
• Continue to develop yourself, or die
• The power of external image portrayal
• If we cannot be friends, at least let’s be enemies
• Learn from your mistakes
• The entitlement mentality is a trap

The following are the messages I took from each of the individual chapters:

1…Introduction

People need to understand that you never truly reach the light at the end of the tunnel, but that in the future you will always be confronted with more and more struggles that we will need to overcome.

2…Becoming fearless

The biggest mistake you can make is to give in to your fears.

Facing your fears

You cannot stop taking risks for the fear of failure.

Just like in a boxing match, life will throw many punches at you. You can choose to give in to those punches (and stop chasing your dream), or you can do something so that you will eventually still reach your goals.

Whenever you are confronted by something that frightens you you have two actions: 1) Give in, or 2) Do something about that which you don’t like.

By standing your ground you will end up with a valuable characteristic – self-confidence. By having exposed yourself to something that frightens you and standing your ground (i.e. not letting it control your life) you will have regained the power it had over you.

Standing up for yourself

Take responsibility for your actions and your work. The work you deliver in this world will count for nothing if no one knows that it came from you. Thus, you will not get ahead at work if your boss doesn’t know that it was you that delivered the good work if you don’t stand up for yourself. Therefore, you may risk being passed over for promotion by another person who does showcase their work.

3…Having the heart of a hustler

Developing the characteristic to be able to accept that you shouldn’t strive for one goal only, but being able to adapt in your environment as is required from you. Thus, you’ll be able to flourish in any environment that you find yourself in.

Hard work

Hard work is a truly important ingredient for any success. Therefore, you need to deliver your absolute best to discover your true potential. In order to be able to deliver your absolute best, you need to be able to adopt a strong work ethic.

This form of success isn’t just hard work, but it is a lifestyle choice. Therefore it is important to understand that the successful life you wish to live will be a different lifestyle that you may be used to.

Staying relevant

We need to ensure that we do not become too comfortable with the skills we have acquired, and ignore the relevance in upskilling ourselves. We generally receive the training for skills that are currently required in the economy. However, with technological advance some skills become redundant, and new skills are required as a result of those tech changes.

The sooner we act and develop those skills the sooner we have an advantage over our peers that have not adopted the skill change.

Staying healthy

In order to be able to perform in peak condition you need to take care of you body and mind. Eating healthy, having regular exercise and taking time to relax from stressful situations allows you to recharge and once again approach work with a refreshed state.

Staying focused, and avoiding distractions

Another quality of a hustler is their unrelenting focus.

There are so many different ways in which we can become distracted that, in order to achieve our goals, we need to make every effort not to let those distractions from keeping us reach those goals.

One effective method is to make a daily & weekly planner so that you write it down what needs to happen, and then sticking to that plan. This way, you have it in front of you, and not a mere vague idea in your head.

Setting goals

If you don’t know where you want to go in your life, then you won’t get anywhere.

Therefore, to achieve that which you truly desire, you need to write it down, together with a plan on how it can be achieved, and then make a plan to work towards achieving it, which includes bite-chunks in your weekly planner.

4…Building a strong team around you

Nothing truly great can be achieved without the help of others. Therefore, build a team of good people around you that you can trust.

Good energy, bad energy

Whenever you have achieved something in your life you may have some people who feel that some of that success would not have been possible had it not been for them. You should not cling too much to such relationships where people do not add value to your life anymore than they take from your life.

Working with unique people

Not only will you need to build a team that you can trust, but your team needs to be motivated to give their absolute best, and when they are truly valued team members you need to understand what approach to follow to keep them delivering their best. Here, it becomes important to acknowledge that each person responds and reacts differently, and therefore your approach to lead them should complement their uniqueness. This is to facilitate that they remain to feel comfortable and happy to work for you.

5…Know your worth

Don’t chase money, but also consider the long term benefits the project has in store for you and around you.

Pay

You will always be confronted with an employer that wants to pay you as little as possible, and give you low/average raises since this is business and not personal. Here it is important to collect the reports of your past work results as assurance that the deliverables you gave reflect a different story.

The idea isn’t to let your ego get the better of you, but discussing your true worth to the firm.

In the end, if you believe your worth isn’t appreciated, don’t feel obliged to stay on. After all, you shouldn’t chase the money, but should also consider where the long-term benefits lie for you. The better you can portray and support that the amount you are suggesting as a pay (through you experience and work record) the better your chances may be that the amount might not be negotiated too much.

Patience

Do not think that you need to rush into something. Appreciate the fact that good things come from patience as well. When it doesn’t align with your goals, then consider if there are alternatives that are aligned with the achievement of your goal.

Taking action

Oftentimes we have our goals in mind, but yet we don’t take the necessary action right away. Instead, we wait for the right moment to start. The right moment won’t ever hit you, therefore it is important to start out and not wait too long. Further, sometimes it may happen that what we wish to do will require the action from another party (for example, he sings and records a song, which will then first need to be trademarked and burned on a CD for sale ; however, to get out into the public’s attention one may need to take an alternative route, one which doesn’t require too many gatekeepers before the song becomes public).

Time

Knowing your worth you will realize that time is the most precious commodity. Plan your time accordingly so that your time is spent in the most productive way, which is to bring you closer to realizing your goals.

Realize that chasing money, you are giving your time for someone else. To achieve your goals you need to determine if the work you are doing will bring you closer to your aims in life, or whether someone else is benefitting more from your labour.

Being entrepreneurial

To achieve success doesn’t always require a college degree. Many people have become successful without attending college. The objective is to understand in which situation you find yourself in (i.e. are able to study, or won’t be able to study) and then determining what path will get you to achieve your goal.

We must stress less importance that achievement of one’s goals is only through the holding of a college degree, but that other alternatives are available to do so as well.

6…Continue to develop yourself, or die

Being able and willing to adapt whenever you find yourself in a situation that you are unfamiliar with, and where your current skills and knowledge won’t help you.

Continued Professional Development

In most fields, those people perceived to be successful are mostly the ones that aren’t satisfied with the status quo. They are trying to attain the next competitive advantage over their competitors, and thus are not willing to be comfortable with where they are.

• Once one has attained the status of “successful” one can be blindsided to have made it to the top
• Alternatively, one can acknowledge that this is just a phase, and that in order to remain relevant they will need to adopt the newest ways of doing things so that the new entrants to the market do not make them disappear

Cultural development

Not only is it important to continue to develop your skills, but it is also important to acknowledge the cultural changes that go along with it, and adapt to them.

Collector of knowledge

Always make an effort to learn as much as possible from where you are and with who you are currently working with. Knowledge gives you better perspective when you wish to make better informed decisions in subsequent periods.

Therefore, engage with other people that are smarter than you so that you can learn from their past experiences as well.

7…The power of external image portrayal

The way you act and present yourself in public sends a message to those around you. You have it in your hands how you wish to present yourself.

Don’t pretend, but be yourself (your best self)

Do not be afraid to show your true self to those around you. If they can see you for who you are then they won’t always wonder what is your agenda (when you act as a different person) with them, and whether your association is for pure friendship or for self-benefit.

Learning from others

When your current way of doing things isn’t making it possible for you to achieve your goals, then learn from others that have managed to achieve it so that you can make the necessary changes to your life to become the better version of yourself.

8…If we cannot be friends, at least let’s be enemies

Being in competition with someone may also be healthy because it can bring out the best from each other.

Competing with others

The story that best explains rivalry bringing out the best of each other is between Ferrari and Lamborghini. When Lamborghini had a Ferrari but wasn’t allowed to see what reparations the workshop would do to the car (secure the know-how), even though he had a fairly good idea what was causing the problem, he added a branch to his already-established tractor business, to build sport cars. Their rivalry made them bring out the best of each other.

Further, when we have identified someone that we believe to be a fair rival, we shouldn’t take solace when we managed to achieve success above them. The main reason is that the world has so many different people it has to offer that may prove to be even better. Therefore, never accept and become comfortable with victory over one rival, for there are many that are better rivals as well.

Competing with yourself

As much as a rivalry with another person can bring out the best in us, competition with our personal-selves is just as important. Mainly because we are all uniquely skilled we aren’t able to compare ourselves with someone else (who has a different set of skills). Therefore, the other form of competition that we need is with the person we were the day before.

9…Learn from your mistakes

Don’t avoid trying new things so that you don’t make mistakes. You need to challenge yourself, and when you make a mistake, learn from it.

It is not as much as the mistakes that we face, but how we respond/react to them that will count. The main objective is to keep your goal firmly in mind and do everything necessary to attain that goal. When one of your actions for that goal doesn’t work, replace that action with another one that won’t result in the same mistakes and keep going.

10…The entitlement mentality is a trap

No one in this world owes you anything. When you accept this and acknowledge that it lies within your hands to achieve your goals, doors (i.e. opportunities) will open themselves to you.

• When you acknowledge that it lies in your hands, then your concentration shifts away from “entitlement thinking” and frees you up to think about how you can get the best out of yourself in order to achieve your goals
• We concentrate our energy and efforts on productive matters and not on unproductive thinking

If that isn’t enough, he has some great quotes from multiple different great individuals to start off the chapter, and also shares some insight into some historical wisdoms that he has read/learnt from other people and grasped the value of that wisdom how it applies today and how it applied in his life and career.

Full disclosure, I was very surprised to see how much of an entrepreneur he became after the start in life he had and then trajected a career in the music industry as a rapper. Mainly because I see other artists having financial advisors to make many decisions whilst they can continue singing and entertaining. I believe you will also get a new appreciation of Curtis.

The closing message that you can take away from the intro chapter is that it is good and all to read and understand the principles that you read/see/hear/learn from someone, but in order to truly sync them into your life you need to read/see/hear/learn them from multiple case studies.

Summary:

Overall, I found the book quite insightful as it teaches the reader some vital business and life lessons that many other entrepreneurs recall, with the bonus that he applies and explains those lessons as he experienced them first hand. The book receives a rating of 4.65/5

Hope this is on your reading list as well.

Until next time!