Photo GlobeTrotter2000
So this week we were walking down the strip on South Beach in Miami and you can't go more than 100 feet without someone in your face trying to sell you something.
It's awesome.
There's the middle aged woman selling necklaces on a table on the sidewalk.
Or the guy with hasn't shaved since Milli Vanilli were outed as lip syncing frauds, screaming religious doctrine for the whole world to hear.
Or the guy smoking a fat Cuban and selling little animals made out of pieces of palm tree.
Or the girls walking around selling cigarettes out of boxes strapped over their shoulders (they look like pin-up girls from the 50's).
Or the guy trying to sell roses to anyone with 20 bucks.
Or the guy in the neon-skin-tight-one-piece-body-suit running down the sidewalk with his friend chasing him on a unicycle flapping his arms and letting out screams like a sea gull...yes, it's true, and it was funny and sad all at once.
So you've got an idea of the place now, right?
Well, aside from all that fun what impressed me most were the guys and gals in front of the sidewalk restaurants "working" each person that walked by.
You couldn't escape them. They were in your face pitching their menu, their daily specials and their 2-for-1 drink specials.
There was no way you were going to walk by their restaurant and not get pitched to sit down and order something.
If you ignored them they just moved on to their next target. No love lost.
They were working and working hard. They were "hustling".
And it was working. The restaurants that had these guys and gals out front "selling" were much busier than those which didn't.
Some of the newer and nicer places were empty but the older ones who were actively seeking out business were busy.
Classic mistake, the newer restaurants probably figure that their good looking tables and chairs and umbrellas are enough to make them a success. Wrong. You gotta get out there and sell. Even good word of mouth starts with someone "selling" you, however subtly, to create a buzz.
Anyway, one of these "hustlers" roped us into her restaurant and before we could blink we were ordering rounds of mohitos. One guy with us, a 6 foot 4 inch, 230 pound ex-college linebacker, even ordered a real "girlie" drink...I'd love to share more on that but I'm sworn to secrecy (I do have a price).
Without knowing how much these places charge I happily volunteered to pay for the round of drinks. A very short while later there was a $188 drink bill in my lap. Pretty smart move by me eh? Apparently the mohitos in this place go for $30 each. Do you think there's any margin in that? Maybe just a little.
The point is that if that girl standing out front had not been hustling and "sold" us on the thought of stopping for a drink we would have walked right by. In fact the first guy in our group ignored her and kept going...he's the smart one.
She didn't let that stop her and moved right on to me, gave her pitch and then...bam, a few minutes later we were spending $188.
So what's my point in all this?
Too many people I talk to don't understand that the most successful businesses are out there "working it". The most successful people I know are always "hustling", they are working, selling, marketing, creating, doing, problem solving.
Somehow most of my peers have a sense of entitlement. They don't believe they have to get into the marketplace and make things happen. They believe they should make buckets of money by doing almost nothing. Not sure how these beliefs started but they seem to be everywhere.
And if they do get up the guts to get into sales or start a business or buy an investment property they really don't work at it. They don't "hustle". Instead, they complain.
The first problem pops up and they run for the hills...the leads are bad, the economy is rough, the investment property isn't in the "right area". Where's the commitment in that?
I've personally made the biggest break throughs in business and in my financial success when faced with what I believed was a HUGE problem but kept going anyway. When you plow forward things just fall into place somehow. It's almost as if that problem in your way is a test. And if you commit to solving it you take a big leap forward quickly. If you run from it you never grow personally or in business.
I picked up a copy of one of J. Paul Getty's books after reading Rob's summary of the Similarity of Wealthy People. In there Getty states that there was not a single day that went by in over 40 years that he was not interrupted with a problem of some sort.
Not a single day.
At one point he almost lost everything because the U.S. wouldn't buy oil from his overseas locations. Headlines predicted the end of the Getty empire because of it.
He goes on to describe how he worked extra hard at these times to come up with creative ways to fix the issue. A few years later he was refining oil in Italy and avoided disaster.
See, when a problem popped up he worked "extra" hard to solve it and then moved on to the next one. That's how business and wealth building works.
You can have the best marketing, the best sales process, the best admin assistant, the best leads, but it's your ability to keep working that will make you a success.
Those guys and gals out hustling in South Beach just keep going. They were out there from the time we arrived until the time we left...they didn't stop.
Remember the "pickle post"? Even though I was fed up with trying to rent out one of my first properties we didn't actually stop. We changed directions and kept going.
At that time I didn't realize it but this applies to everything.
For example, you can't just buy an investment property and stop there, you need to get it rented, you need to manage it, you need to make a profit.
Amateurs take things 90% of the way. Real pros hustle and finish the job.
Which one are you?
Tom Karadza
Income For Life Toronto
www.TheRealEstateRenegades.com
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