Linus Rylander

The Opportunity To Hustle

As entrepreneurs, we often say that it’s advantageous being a small business in this economy. Because of speed, agility and maneuverability.

Big organizations, like Fortune 500 companies, big corporations, and forth, all have massive structures in place that hold back rapid action.

A big company gets a new idea, it might take them months to go from getting the idea to making it reality.

The Hustler’s Opportunity

You, however, don’t need to deal with a small army of lawyers, managers, accountants, beaurocrats and paper-pushers.

You can, right now, decide to just fucking do it. Right now. Only thing in your way is resistance, which you’ve conquered before and can conquer again. Much less hassle than a legion of people who know what they’re talking about and think they have a better idea.

You have the opportunity to hustle.

A lot of people who are making even more money than you don’t have that opportunity.

The Willingness To Hustle

Even though the vast majority of the people on this planet have that opportunity, most people don’t actually hustle.

Why not?

I think the answer is a combination of two things. Resistance and lack of clarity.

Resistance, as in your lizard brain’s safety mechanism that does everything it can to keep you from doing the only thing that matters: Moving forward. That part of you was very useful about 40,000 years ago. Not so much in the age of the interwebs. You may think of Resistance as your inner dumbass.

Lack of clarity, as in not knowing what the hell you need to do next.

Resistance is diminished if you know exactly what to do, because then you have one less excuse for not doing the thing. You can no longer say “I’m not taking action because I don’t know what to do.”

So first, find out what you need to do.

Brain Dump

Get a piece of paper, and dump out the contents of your brain. Get it all out. Lost count of how many times I’ve given this advice now. I do this at least once a week, usually on Sundays (the “Sunday Status Report”).

You probably know the general direction you need to be going in. Through this process you can refine your thinking and figure out the specific next step you need to take to get moving.

The first step is to clear out your circuits. Dump everything you’ve been thinking about, worrying about, stressing about, and so on.

You can’t get new ideas if your head is already full of garbage.

Action Plan

Map out your action plan in reverse. Start with an end result and state it in form of process. Process, as opposed to definitive destinations.

A destination goal would be “I have 50,000 dollars in the bank” whereas a process goal would be “Every day, I go to work in my business which makes me at least $50,000 per month.”

Ideally you want to map out an entire “day in the life of future you” — rather than just a sentence. This gives you a much clearer picture of where you want to be.

Once you know where you’re going, it’s a simple matter of mapping out your course back to where you are now.

Remember those mazes you used to solve as a kid? Like a maze on paper and you need to draw a line from the start to the exit? I always cheated on those and found the exit first, then drew the line back to the start. Well, this is the same thing.

So when you have your end result, simply ask “what do I need to have in order to have this?”

“Ok, well in order to have a business that makes me $50k a month, I need to make 100 sales of a product I can sell for $500… and an audience that desperately needs it and happily buys my product…”

“Now, what do I need to have in order to have that?”

“Well, in order to have that, I need…”

And so on and so forth.

You just keep going with that until you’re back to where you are now.

This will take a while, since this process breaks everything up into the tiniest details.

Bullets

Down the line you might end up with something like “In order to have a high converting sales page, I need to have a powerful, attention-grabbing headline…”

“In order to write a powerful headline, I need to know my audience’s exact fears, frustrations, ambitions, hopes and dreams and the things that keep them awake at night…”

Yeah, this gets very specific.

But very specific is very good. Because it gives you an exact, step by step action plan.

I suggest writing this down in Bullet format.

Like this:

I want X
- To have that, I need X
  - To get X, I need A
    - To get A, I need 1
    - And 2
    - And 3
  - And B
  - And Z
- And Y
- And Z

Layer them as deep as you need to. And keep going until you have an exact action plan that takes you from wherever you are now to where you need to be.

Then all you need to do is hustle.

And don’t be afraid to change or modify your plan along the way. But for now, just get started.

The reason you need to get started is because you can. You have the opportunity to hustle in this very moment. So murder your inner dumbass and get to work. Don’t waste the oppotunity.

– Linus

P.S. Posting this in December, 2012. About two weeks left until the new year. Most people wait, this time of year. “Next year will be my year!”

Suggestion: Increase your odds. Get started now, today, and you’ll get a two-week head start on all those clowns who wait for an arbitrary date to do something.

Also, if you read this at a later date and say “Well, now it’s much later and I didn’t get a head start, therefore I’m a failure and can’t get started now, either!” – Then you are a verified idiot. Of course you can get started now, no matter when or what or how or who or whatever else you think is holding you back.

P.P.S. Also, this is worth watching at least once a year.

The Teacher

All a teacher really can do is offer the student the occasional signpost.

The goal is to get from point A to point B. A teacher would be someone who has made the trip, and is willing to show the way to others who want to make the same journey.

The journey has to be made by the student. (some people, especially in the “internet marketing” space, seem to think that someone or something else will make the journey for them – it’s not possible there, nor anywhere else)

When the student moves forward (of his own accord) and is about to veer off the correct path, a teacher might say “Hey, dude, it’s this way.”

That’s it.

Your job as a teacher is to communicate your travel directions. When the words leave your mouth, they are no longer your responsibility. What becomes of them is for the student to decide… just like a sign on the road can’t force you to go where it wants.

But first things first:

You gotta know where you’re going.

How change happens

“It just happened. Just like that. You know, one day I just had enough. No more! I haven’t smoked a cigarette since then. That was three years ago.”

Yeah, well, except it didn’t happen just like that.

Here’s how I think change really happens… and it’s the same pattern that occurs all across the universe when anything new happens:

Step 1: A seed is sown.

An idea is had. A heretic thought. Some inkling, some hint that maybe everything isn’t as you thought it were.

It looks harmless at first. It’s just an acorn of an idea. An acorn that will grow into a majestic oak that tears through concrete foundations.

But we’re not there yet.

Step 2: The seed is watered.

You thought it was harmless at first. But you find this thought reoccurring in your head a few too many times each day.

You just keep finding yourself thinking about this… thing. Whatever it may be.

It starts gnawing at you. You’re struggling to accept the idea. You don’t want to accept it because that would change everything.

But then…

Step 3: The tipping point.

This is where people go “You know, one day, I just decided to change. Just like that!”

The idea has spent weeks, months or years taking root. At some specific moment, after having had enough nourishment, the seed will rear its ugly head above the surface.

This is where this heretic thought transforms from idea to action.

You can’t stand it anymore. You have to do something about it. So you start eating better, or you start training for that marathon, or you flush down that pack of smokes, or you start writing your novel, or you start working on your internet business.

…

I don’t know if this resonates with anyone else, but this is the pattern I’ve noticed over and over again in my own life.

Some things to notice:

After the seed is sown, the rest is inevitable. Something will happen, whether you like it or not. No discipline required.

People who have reached a tipping point and had a change happen in their life, think of themselves as disciplined people… when in fact, they don’t really have a choice.

I don’t see it as much as “making change happen in your life” as “having change happen to you.”

It’s not like all the motivational people say… that you just have to giddy up and TAKE ACTION! – and force change to happen in your life. That never works.

It’s more like… you’re just casually walking down the road, and BAM! That heretic thought smacks you upside the head. Somewhat akin to getting hit by a bus.

After that, you’re done.