A Letter to a Young Hustler

To succeed in sales you have to hustle—without being a hustler. Hustle means taking action. It means always moving forward. It doesn’t mean that you take advantage of people. If you don’t care about your customers, your clients, and your dream clients, then you are simply a hustler.

If you don’t care deeply about making sure that your customers, your clients, and your dream clients are made better by what you sell them, then you are never going to be a truly great salesperson—even if you succeed at making money. Beyond that, you will never be truly happy or truly satisfied.

When you say things like “I don’t care about helping people,” and “I just want people to buy my shit,” you reveal a self-orientation that will only repel people—even if you know all of the tactical methods to influence others.

Worse still, not caring about other people—including your clients—says something about who you are and who you will become. If you care nothing for other people and see them as only as a means to providing you with money, you are selfish and self-centered. Being selfish isn’t something you can separate from who you are outside of sales; it is who you are.

Caring nothing for others will cost you the happiness that only comes from great human relationships and from making a difference in someone else’s life.

There is nothing wrong with making money. But the fastest—and healthiest—path to making money comes from finding ways to create value for other people—not to influence it out of them without any concern for whether or not you have helped them. And, the more value you create, the more value you receive (and not just in the remuneration you receive).

There are many people who make a lot of money and who are miserable. There are also many people that make no money, and yet they are completely happy because they improve the lives of those they encounter. In the end, you will be measured by the impact of you have made on those with whom you have come in contact, and your life will not be measured by how much money you made. You won’t want your life to be measured by the money that you made by taking advantage of others; at your end, money won’t even be a thought.

Hustle. But hustle with a purpose that you can be proud of now—and later.