The Hustler's Handbook

A Guide to Success in Your New Career

Jason Poole

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781683501688
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

Getting from Point A – where you are now – to Point B – where you want to be – is not always easy. It's not always easy to even know what Point B is, what real success in your life would look like! It's also not rocket science, and you don't have to be a scholar to make it in this world. What you do have to be is a Hustler. You have to have the ability to put others first, set aside your ego, work through tough times, be thoughtful, be honest, and give people the benefit of the doubt as you would give yourself. This is not complicated stuff, but this is the stuff that creates winners. More than just a motivational message, The Hustler's Handbook guides you through concrete steps and actionable changes you can make to set yourself on the path to success – through what it really means to HUSTLE: • Helping others get what they want • Under-promise and over-deliver • Sacrifice • Take chances • Listen more, talk less • Expect the best out of people These practices can't just happen every now and then. This has to be a consistent action that becomes part of you. Stop waiting for the "right moment." Learn to set real goals, to get rid of the bad thinking that holds you back, to break out of the cycle of mediocrity, to defeat laziness. The time to start is now. Life is no dress rehearsal, so let's go to work!

Chapter One

H:	HELP OTHERS GET WHAT THEY WANT

You can have everything in life that you want if you will just help other people get what they want.

—Zig Ziglar, Motivational speaker

After a class during my very last semester at college, I was talking to my marketing professor, Dr. Billie Allen. She’d asked what I was going to do after graduation, so I was explaining my plan to work for one of the larger casinos in the area, or maybe in banking. She started fishing around in her purse for her phone as soon as I said the word “casino,” and once she found her phone, she proceeded to make a call.

I just stood there, confused, while she had a ten-second conversation and then hung up. Then she dialed a second number, had another ten-second conversation, and hung up again. Finally, she looked at me.

“Meet me in downtown Gulfport tomorrow morning at eight,” she said. “We’re going to meet with George Schlogal, and then we’re going to meet with the HR folks at the Beau Rivage Casino.” I stared at her. George Schlogal was the president and CEO of Hancock Bank, one of the largest banks in the Southeast, and he just so happened to be a personal friend of hers.

It amazes me that something as simple as a quick phone call can completely alter somebody’s life. Even though neither company offered me a job, the two meetings changed my course of life for the better. I’ve had so many conversations with my mentors that appear to be insignificant, but have really shaped who I am today. Dr. Allen was the first business-savvy person to really see potential in me. Every remark she made, no matter how small, helped build me up into the man I am today. In high school, I was a jock, I was “stupid,” and I was never really looked at as one of the good kids. Yet for some reason, this brilliant woman thought that I had something special. She started helping me find opportunities that I never would have found without her—and the more I took those opportunities and surrounded myself with educated people who had what I wanted, the more I learned about myself.

Dr. Allen’s help pushed me toward success, and I began to see how simple it was to just extend a hand out to someone. Without realizing it, I developed a philosophy about helping people that has benefitted both them and me to this day.

Nothing of significance in the history of the entire world has ever been accomplished alone. Nothing of significance in the history of the entire world has ever been accomplished alone. The relationships that you earn today—and I say “earn” because you have to earn people’s trust, which is the foundation of any good relationship—will either open or close doors for you. I’ve been fortunate enough to live by my own philosophy of helping people that when I come across the right ones, they help me too. On the other hand, I know that I’ve pissed off a few people in my life, and it’s held me back in certain situations.

Zig Ziglar is the person who put my philosophy into words: “You can have everything in life that you want if you will just help other people get what they want.” Zig believed in abundance. He lived his life as a baker, not a taker. If he ran out of pieces of pie, he baked another one. When you live by the Law of Abundance, you help other people get their pieces of pie, too.

By contrast, when you live by a mindset of scarcity, you’re doing your best to hold other people back in the hopes of preserving a piece of the pie for yourself. Even if they love you, people will tell you that you can’t or shouldn’t do something because they’re incapable of it. I don’t think that most people do this consciously, but it happens. Even if they love you, people will tell you that you can’t or shouldn’t do something because they’re incapable of it.

Once I put my focus on putting other people first, I started to feel a kind of relief that I’ve never felt before. This philosophy let me do what I felt was right without worrying about someone outshining me. I learned to pass the credit and take the blame. In turn, this earned me relationships with people that were willing to go to war with me.

Helping the Boss

Early in my career, when I was a young sales rep with Express Employment Professionals, I was full of energy and eager to do what I was told. I didn’t focus on thinking—I focused on doing. I knew that I had zero experience selling, and I’d have to make up for it with hard work.

Though I never prospered in school, I prospered in people, and in reading them and taking care of them. I didn’t have to be smart to know that I absolutely needed to do what the guy who was paying me told me to, and to do it well. That was the thought I put into it: you tell me what to do, I do it, you pay me for it.

There were a lot of people around me that also had no experience in selling, and it seemed like they were busy really thinking through what they were told to do, rather than just getting it done. That mindset isn’t going to help you in the long run, though. When starting your new career, the best thing to do is focus on actually doing work. Don’t talk about the work or think about the work; stick to the doing.

When I started running my own franchise, between the resentful folks and the less seasoned staff members, I spent more time explaining why someone should do their job than teaching them how to do it. It seemed like it was a hassle for someone to do something that wasn’t word-for-word inside their job description. It was a paradigm that I wasn’t used to. When I was a kid, my dad told me what to do, and I did it. He was my dad, and I was the kid, and I was supposed to do what he told me to, and he took care of me. That attitude carried over into my work. I did what the boss told me to because he was the boss, and he paid me. I didn’t realize that other people hadn’t been brought up this way. Eventually, I changed all job descriptions in my company to “Do what you are asked to do, and then do more.”

The point is that this is the first—and relatively easy—step in helping other people get what they want: help your boss. There’s a certain selfless generosity that comes with helping people, but this particular step is strategic. The very first person you should help is the person that pays you, and the easiest way to do that is make them look good.

In my case, it started with me doing what I was told. I didn’t waste my boss’s time with a lot of questions, especially in the beginning. When my boss told me that he needed me to be at one office that was five hours away and another that was two hours away every single week, I said yes. I did not follow up his request with questions like: Am I going to get reimbursed for gas? How far away is it? What’s the state of the office? Can I get a raise since this isn’t really in my job description? Instead, I asked what the address was and told him I’d call him at eight a.m. when I got to the first office.

As I learned more about the company, my boss stopped having to ask me to do things. I just saw where the needs were and took care of them. It was all about helping him accomplish his goals and making him look good to his own boss. Looking now from my current position as a business owner, I can tell which of my staff members have the team’s best interests in mind, and which staff members are concerned only about themselves. When you focus on helping people for the right reasons, it becomes a healthy, community-driven cycle. I return the favor to those who help me out by keeping them high on my list of priorities. They’re the people I spend time with so that I can understand what they want and help them get it. When it works right, it becomes a healthy, community-driven cycle. It doesn’t matter if their Point B is different from yours (and it probably should be); helping others toward their Point B will help you toward your own.

The Next Level

Helping the person that pays you is an obvious choice, but what about the people who work beside you? How do you determine who to help and who to avoid?

The trick is to really pay attention to people. There are a lot of jackasses out there, and the biggest jackasses are sometimes the hardest to spot. They do such a good job of being fake that you have no idea what’s underneath. They act like they’re doing everything they can to help you, when really they have selfish ulterior motives; everything they do is a calculated game to wear you down and put the spotlight on themselves.

Andrew Carnegie once said, “As I get older, I stop listening to what people say and just look at what they do.” This is great advice, and true leaders will use it. They’ll support their own behavior, and they’ll observe who doesn’t. Hold people accountable to their actions, and help them do it. As I get older, I stop listening to what people say and just look at what they do.
—Andrew Carnegie When people are not loyal to the absent—meaning they jump at the chance to speak poorly about others—let them know that you’re not interested in talking about people who can’t defend themselves. When people speak poorly about the company, speak positively about it. When people complain about not being trained, ask them what training they’ve given themselves. When people criticize the boss, emphasize your boss’s positive traits. Do all this, and then find the people who are genuine. Find the people that work their asses off and that are positive about the boss and the company and the team. Find the people that can impact your career, and help them get what they want. Hang around those that want the same things that you want, or that already have what you want.

My initial life goal as an adult was to become a millionaire. About three years ago, I thought that if I could help five other people become millionaires, then I could make myself one as well. To that end, I’ve kept an eye out for those in my company who are really driven, those who want to be helped, and I help them climb the ladder like I did. All five of them started at the bottom like I did, and are now well on their way to becoming millionaires. Helping them get what they want has helped me get what I want. Those five know that if they keep performing at the highest level, it will help me in what I’m doing for my franchises, and so I’ll keep helping them move toward success. Help breeds success, and again, it’s just a big cycle.

What five people could you help? (Check yourself and make sure they’re not actually Jackasses. If they are, take ‘em off the list!) What woul...