In the past, the word “hustle” was often associated with illegal activity and corrupt behaviour (think: black markets). Yet it’s meaning managed to morph itself into something positive.
Today, the word hustle is perceived as something to strive for.
To hustle means making something out of nothing. It means moving at break-neck speed, creating your opportunities instead of waiting for the opportunities to come to you. It means getting your hands dirty, working hard with relentless determination, while being dogged, resourceful, resilient and quite honestly…. while having balls.
There Is No Master Plan
When you are hustling, there is no master plan because hustling is about getting shit done. Anyway, anyhow.
That’s why a hustler is resourceful and opportunity-driven. Someone who learns to do a lot with very little. Someone who creates their own destiny by improvising, taking ideas from one world to bring them to a different world. A hustler is therefore responsive, agile, lean, adaptive and a badass.
More importantly, a hustler spots and idea and runs wild with it. To them, there is no perfect team or resources or conditions. It’s just necessity and them, my friend - the perfect combination for innovation.
After all, many of the brilliant ideas and innovations we have today have come from challenges, scarcity and lack of perfect plans. And more often than we’d like to admit, they come from crisis.
It Takes a Crisis
Here’s what I’ve learned the very hard way - no one has your back. Here’s why I believe that.
In 2008 we entered an economic crisis.
In 2009, bitcoin entered the wold.
In 2016 I had visa issues, struggling to get my permanent residency (PR) in Canada because the Venezuelan government wouldn’t ship my passport in order to finalize my PR application (they ran out of passport paper among the thousand other excuses they gave me for over a year).
In 2018 I got laid off twice because the companies I worked for didn’t have the finances to sustain themselves.
In 2020, COVID-19 catapulted itself at the forefront of our lives, completely obliterating everything in its path.
In 2021, Elon Musk tweeted about bitcoin mining’s hazardous effect on climate change sending the crypto market (and my investments) to tremble because of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt).
Crisis after crisis after crisis.
Do you see what I saw in all those years? Everyone failing me. Governments not issuing me a passport, corporations not making the right financial decisions, politicians mismanaging our money causing us to enter an inflationary era (and forcing us to work harder and for longer hours just to be able to afford the same things), and billionaires toying with the financial markets.
That’s when an epiphany came to mind.
I needed to stop depending on corporations, governments and communities to have my back. I needed to stop reacting to life and instead take charge of my life.
I realized I had to figure out a way of creating and storing my own wealth (insert bitcoin), in a way that would be very difficult for any power-that-be to take it from me (aherm, bitcoin). That’s when I decided to write this newsletter because:
A) I needed to write in order to make sense of the world around me (which could become profitable but that’s just a possible side-effect).
B) I wanted something to fall into in case shit hit the fan… again.
And whether this newsletter works out or not is besides the point. For me, done is better than perfect. A hustler doesn’t wait for the perfect condition to present itself. Instead, a hustler takes destiny into their own hands, using whatever tools they have at their disposal, propelling themselves forward with a insane and insatiable will to succeed and a sickening determination to survive.
Last Words…
I am actively participating in the making of my own destiny by embodying the spirit of a hustler. Which means working after work, even on weekends, and investing in myself (whether it be taking courses or spending money), spotting opportunities and making them happen for myself.
After all, there comes a point in everybody’s life where we must bet on ourselves. To have an idea and run with it as if your life depends on it because it does.
Now I’ll leave you with one last thing, hustling is not for the faint of heart. It may take weeks, months or years for efforts to bear fruit so you’ll need stamina, endurance and an insane ability to ignore the noise around you. Those things are essential weapons in your arsenal. Only when you have those skills can you be a true misfit with a spirit of hustler.