Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter

by Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson

She was killed when I was eight years old, and I was forced to move in with my grandparents, who were already raising nine children of their own. By the time I was twelve, I was selling drugs on the same streets that had claimed my mother.

pushing. I got into hip-hop, made a little noise, and then got shot nine times over a neighborhood beef.

So what did I do? I rethought my approach and shed people and excess baggage like a snake sheds skin. I hustled harder and smarter. And, in dedicating myself to building a relationship with my youngest son, Sire, I would like to think I also became a better person.

The goal is not just to be successful. It’s about learning how to sustain that success, too.

I didn’t start going by “50 Cent” till I was older, but ever since I was a kid, I’ve always felt like there were two sides to me. Two identities I had to be comfortable with. The side that allowed me to exist in my grandmother’s home, where cussing wasn’t tolerated and Sundays were for church, and the side that allowed me to survive on the streets. I needed both of those sides to get by.

Be fearless. Most people run from what they’re afraid of. I run toward it. That doesn’t mean I think I’m bulletproof (I’ve learned the hard way that I’m not) or that I’m unaware of danger. I experience fear as much as the next man. But one of the greatest mistakes people can make is becoming comfortable with their fears. Whatever is worrying me, I meet it head-on and engage it until the situation is resolved. My refusal to become comfortable with fear gives me an advantage in almost every situation.

Cultivate the heart of a hustler. Hustlin’ might be associated with selling drugs, but it’s actually a character trait that’s shared by winners in every profession. Steve Jobs was as much of a hustler at Apple as I was when I was on the streets. The key to building up that trait in your own personality is accepting that you’re never hustling toward a certain goal. Hustlin’ is a motor that’s got to be running inside of you each and every day. And its fuel is passion. If you can keep that motor running, it will take you everywhere you want to go in life.

Build a strong crew. You’re only going to be as strong as the weakest person in your crew. That’s why you have to be extremely conscious of who you have around you. Betrayal is never as far away as you’d like to believe. That’s why it’s imperative to find a balance between establishing trust and discipline in the people you work with and giving them the freedom to be themselves. If you can establish that equilibrium, you will be in the position to get the very best out of your team.

Know your value. One of the cornerstones of my sustained success is that I don’t rush into deals. Even though I’ve become synonymous with “getting paid,” I never chase money. I evaluate every new venture based on its long-term potential, not on what the first check I get is going to look like. The reason I do that is I have supreme confidence in my own value and ability. I’m secure that as long as I’m betting on myself, I’m always going to win.

Evolve or die. If I’d been unwilling—or unable—to evolve as an individual, I’d be dead or in jail right now. One of the keys to my success is that at every stage of my life, I’ve been willing to assess any new situation I find myself in, and make the necessary adjustments. While I’ll always draw from the lessons I learned on the streets, I’ve never been limited to them. Instead, I’m always looking to absorb new information from as many sources as possible. I don’t care where you come from or what you look like—if you’ve created success, I want to learn from you.

Shape perception. Everything you share with the world—your words, your energy, what you wear—tells a story. You must make sure your narrative always presents you as the person you want to be seen as, even if your reality tells a slightly different story. One of the secrets to getting what you want in life is creating the perception that you don’t need a thing. That can be a difficult energy to project—especially when you’re struggling—but committing to that perception will make you more attractive professionally, personally, and even romantically.

Don’t be afraid to compete. Some people try to portray me as a troll, or a bully, but that’s not accurate. My first instinct is always to build positive and mutually beneficial relationships with people. But if someone isn’t interested in being friends with me, I’m more than comfortable being enemies with them.

Learn from your Ls. As many victories as I’ve racked up over the years, I’ve experienced many more losses. That doesn’t make me the exception among successful people—it makes me the rule. I don’t know an affluent rapper, mogul, executive, or entrepreneur whose losses don’t far outweigh their wins. What separates those people from the pack is that instead of complaining about or hiding from their losses, they actively seek to learn from them.

Avoid the entitlement trap. Nothing was ever given to me in life. I’ve had to fight for everything I’ve earned. That’s why the concept of entitlement has never seeped into my mentality. But almost everywhere I look—from the streets to the boardrooms—I still see a lot of entitled people. You’re never going to find lasting success until you take full responsibility for what happens in your life. No one owes you anything. Just as you don’t owe anyone else. Once you accept that fundamental truth and accept that you control your journey, so many doors that seemed closed are going to open up in front of you.

Even if you’re not from the streets (and given how diverse my audience has become, there’s a good chance you’re not), you’ve still made an important step just by picking this book up. These days a lot of folks have replaced reading with clicking. They’ll skim the surface of a topic—maybe watch a short video, maybe read a Wikipedia page—and feel like they’ve put in work. Sorry, but a few clicks or scrolls just aren’t enough. I’ve found that you need to learn about multiple examples and read about multiple scenarios before certain principles start to sink in.

My hope is that you’ll leave this book with at least one fundamental principle lodged in your brain, too. Maybe it will be about fearlessness. Maybe it will be about controlling perspective. Or the importance of evolving.

When you get to the top of the game, when you have all the money, then your perspective shifts, and you start to look at what really matters. How you help people.

Comfort, I’ve learned, is a dream killer. It saps our ambition. Blinds our vision. Promotes complacency.

First off, I learned that I could survive them. Yes, getting hit in the face wasn’t pleasant. It would leave you disoriented. It would hurt. It might leave your eyes watering. But those blows didn’t kill me.

Second, and I’m forever indebted to Allah Understanding for teaching me this, I learned that if I didn’t like getting hit, then I needed to do something about it.

We can spend our entire lives—and many people do—trying to ignore something we’re actually carrying around with us every day. But you can’t hide from something you never put down.

So how do you harness the same sort of confidence I have? To keep cool where most people would be sweating through their shirts? It’s not rocket science. The only way to access that kind of confidence is by putting in the work. That’s it.

Have you truly dedicated yourself to learning everything that you can about your field? Do you give 100 percent every time you walk in the office, sit down in the classroom, or step onstage for an audition? If the answer is yes, what do you really have to be afraid of? You’ve already done everything you can do. Now you just need to make sure the world recognizes it.

That can be a challenge, especially if you’re not someone who’s been raised from an early age to think that you belong in those meetings. If you’re not a white guy or didn’t get into the “right” prep school, you might have to go a little harder to get the credit you deserve. It shouldn’t be that way, but it’s what it is. For now. You’re going to have to project the confidence that you belong, that you’ve got the answers, even if the people you’re talking to aren’t giving yo...

I expected him to blow them away, but when those executives started asking questions and spitballing ideas, he just sat on his hands. Didn’t make a peep. You would have thought he was just a buddy of mine along for the ride, instead of what he was, which was the one true expert in the room. At first I couldn’t understand what he was doing (or not doing). Then it dawned on me: He’s afraid. He’s scared to raise his hand because he doesn’t want to give the wrong answer. He’d put in the work, but in the presence of those executives’ self-assurance, he lost faith in himself. And that meant the executives never noticed him. Never made a mental note that he was a guy to keep an eye on. Never offered him the platform he was looking for—and deserved. Instead, he stayed stuck in place. It was a pretty good place, one that a lot of other folks would have liked to reach, but not where he aspired to. He was stuck at a level that wasn’t equal to his skill.

Don’t make the same mistake. If you’ve put in the work, and know your shit, raise your damn hand! Every single time. There’s nothing worse than being someone who’s spent hours—even when you’re off the clock at home—studying your company’s reports, but when your boss asks for that information, you always let someone else provide it first. That person probably hasn’t put in nearly the work that you have, but they’re also not afraid to be wrong. So when your boss looks at that person, she sees someone who is active. Who is participating. Who seems passionate. When she looks at you, she doesn’t know what to think. Maybe she doesn’t think anything at all.

On the other side of this coin is the person who’s too quick to raise their hand. They’re doing it because they’re fearful that someone else is going to get props before they do. So even if they don’t know the answer, they’re going to say something anyway.

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle. —ANONYMOUS

It sounds cliché to say that hard work is the most critical ingredient for success, but it’s a fundamental truth that has to be repeated over and over again. If you’re not hustling your absolute hardest, you’re never going to reach your full potential in life.

strong work ethic is the one trait all successful people share. I’ve never met anyone at the top of their industry who wasn’t fully committed to their job, who was willing to give anything less than their best.

Unlike most of my peers, I largely abstain from alcohol. I will have a rare drink from time to time, but that’s it. I have never missed a session at the gym, a meeting, or an early morning flight because I had too much to drink the night before.

That doesn’t stop me from going out and partying. I’m still in the clubs. I just don’t need booze to enjoy myself. If I’m at an event promoting Branson Cognac or Le Chemin du Roi Champagne or one of my other alcohol brands, I have a routine I always follow: First I’ll pour drinks from a bottle of champagne for everyone who is in VIP with me. When the bottle is empty, I’ll give it to one of my guys and have him quietly refill it with ginger ale. For the rest of the night I’ll have that bottle in my hand. I’ll take swigs every now and then just to keep the vibe right, but I’m not drinking anything but Canada Dry.

That’s never an issue for me. I always have my head on straight, and my judgment is never impaired. I can see issues coming from a mile away and be long gone before a situation gets serious.

Outside of the competitive advantage you can gain from not drinking, I’m also hyperaware of the damage alcohol abuse can cause. I’ve seen it firsthand. When I moved into my grandmother’s house after my mother died, a few of my aunts and uncles were full-blown alcoholics.

I had one uncle in particular who was a cool guy most of the time, but put a few drinks in him and all of a sudden he became Marvin Hagler. Every comment, no matter how innocent, was taken as an insult, and he’d want to put hands up. Even with a nine-year-old. My reaction was to stay out of his way as much as possible, but even from that distance it was still very clear to see that all booze did was bring out his weakness and render his character unstable. And it wasn’t just him; across the board, it seemed that the people in my immediate family were prone to alcoholism.

Another advantage I have over my competition, especially within hip-hop, is that I also don’t mess with drugs.

To be clear, I don’t judge people who do like to drink or smoke. In fact, I’m happy to sell you a bottle of Le Chemin du Roi to help you celebrate the next time you’re out partying. All that I’d ask is that you are honest in your appraisal of the role drugs and alcohol play in your life. Some people are able to truly be “social” drinkers or smokers. They enjoy participating in social settings, but they can also just as easily go without. They could have a bottle of booze in their kitchen, or a bag of weed in their dresser, and never feel the urge to consume it.

In order to truly be in the position to hustle your hardest day in and day out, it’s not enough to only avoid (or at least cut way down on) booze and weed. You also, especially as you grow older, need to proactively try to preserve your body. The best way you can do that is through eating right and working out.

My go-to routine is lifting light weights with very short breaks for rest between sets. That helps me get toned and get a cardio workout at the same time.

Unlike a lot of people, I don’t look to caffeine to enhance my energy. Coffee has never really been my thing, and you won’t find me knocking down Diet Cokes during the day (though I do enjoy a ginger ale with my salad). I get my energy from working out, and that hour or two in the morning carries me through the rest of the day.

One aspect of my lifestyle where I know I need to improve is getting as much sleep as possible.

I contributed to that misconception for many years. I used to say things like “sleep is for broke people” or “I don’t like to sleep because I might miss the opportunity to turn a dream into a reality.” The basic motivation behind those messages was correct—that you have to be willing to hustle harder than your competition if you want to win. But I shouldn’t have connected hustling harder to sleeping less. In recent years, I’ve learned that some of the most successful people out there are also big sleepers. Jeff Bezos says he prioritizes sleeping eight hours every night because it makes his thinking much clearer. Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg, also makes getting enough sleep a priority, saying that staying up all night might help you get more things done in the moment, but in the long term proves to be very “counterproductive” because it makes people “anxious, irritable and confused.” It’s a strategy echoed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who says, “The real secret is the most successful people have awareness of what their body needs and sleep whenever necessary.”

A lot of the steps I’m prescribing in this chapter—sobriety, working out, eating right, and getting enough sleep—can feel very daunting if they’re not currently part of your lifestyle. Don’t let that deter you. I’m a firm believer that no matter how formidable they might feel, there are very few negative habits you can’t break in thirty days. Whenever I’m trying to improve an aspect of my life, thirty days is the goal I set for myself. And I’ve always been able to meet my goal in that time frame.

What I was hustling for, and what I’m still hustling for today, is freedom.

To be an effective hustler you must be able to identify what you want. It doesn’t have to be a big concept like freedom. There might be something much more specific you have your sights set on. Your goal might be to be the first person in your family to graduate from college. Or to open your own restaurant. Or to save up enough money to travel the world.

You need to set a goal for yourself. Ask yourself: What is it that I want? Be honest. It might be something that will help a lot of people. Or it could be something incredibly selfish. It might be a seemingly impossible goal. Or something that’s almost within your reach. It might be a plan you’re proud to share with the world. Or something you’re never going to tell more than a handful of people about.

I’d say my biggest goal now is to give back. When you reach a certain pay grade, you become more conscious of what’s happening back in the communities you came from. Instead of worrying about what you’re about to do, you shift to focusing on your legacy and how people are going to remember you. Am I going to be remembered for making popular songs and selling flavored water? Or positively impacting the world? I hope that it will be for the second. That’s why, on a local level, I put my money behind projects that clean up playgrounds and promote healthy living for young people. On a global level I’ve developed projects that promote conscious capitalism (more on that later), and support the United Nations World Food Programme, which is going to provide a meal with every energy drink that is sold through our project.

It might sound out of character for me, but I believe vision boards are a very powerful tool in calcifying what you’re working toward. When you force yourself to articulate your vision in words, you set a powerful energy in motion. You give something that was just a thought, or maybe even just a feeling, a real presence in the world. You make it a real thing. It’s easy to get started on your computer. Go to Google Images, and type in everything you think you’d like to have in your life: “beachfront property,” “Range Rover,” “pit bull puppy.”

Ask any successful entrepreneur what their greatest attribute is and you might be surprised by their answer. It’s not their negotiation skills, strategic planning, or ability to understand new technology. No, they’re all going to tell you the same thing: their greatest skill is being an astute judge of character.

Pick the right people and you can build a team that will take you to the top. But pick the wrong people and it can derail your vision before it ever fully gets on track.