Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter

by Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson

You cannot construct a team and then expect everyone to instinctively know what position they’re supposed to play. That’s how confusion, and later frustration, sets in. If someone is not in a competitive mode, then it’s on you as a leader to activate that mode for them. From your top lieutenant to the lowest person on the totem pole, you need to be able to articulate not only where you need that person to go, but also the steps they should follow to get there.

The key is understanding that different people require different tactics.

that everyone on your team is going to have their own hang-ups, issues, and insecurities, and then address them with the appropriate energy. You can’t have a one-size-fits-all mind-set when it comes to effective leadership. You need to tailor a specific approach to every single person on your team in order to get the most out of them.

Know your worth. Then add tax. —UNKNOWN

Wouldn’t it be great if you always got paid your worth? Without having to fight for it? If every time you went for a new position, tried to negotiate a raise, or asked for a bonus, you were compensated fairly? Of course, life doesn’t usually work that way. If anything, the opposite is true.

But what you can do is be strategic. Ensure that, instead of getting overlooked, swept to the side, or hustled, you always receive maximum value for your efforts. It’s not as hard as it might seem. Even more surprising: oftentimes, the best way to extract that maximum value is by choosing not to drive the hardest bargain.

Today, I’m extremely strategic when approaching a new opportunity. Instead of focusing on just how big my initial payday is going to be, I try to evaluate all the ways the situation could benefit me—even those that don’t include a check.

You cannot, under any circumstances, compromise when it’s your vision on the line. You have to be prepared to go against popular opinion and turn down money—even if it jeopardizes your relationships—until you’re confident you’ve found the right opportunity.

No matter what you do, you have to be able to accept that your role is going to change. When you first break into a space or industry, you view that inevitability as a positive. If a company’s or organization’s staff didn’t evolve, you’d never get a chance in the first place. That endless evolution is the key that opens the door for you. Then you work a few years and start to get comfortable. You start to develop habits. If you’re good, you might make your company some money. Maybe even a lot of it. Then you’ll start to think that the company owes you. Not only for what they’re paying you in the moment, but for all you’ve done for them in the past, too. Maybe you start to take your foot off the gas a bit and begin to believe that your track record will secure your spot forever. Sorry, but the world doesn’t work like that. The same change that brought you in the door can sweep you right back out if you don’t keep pushing yourself forward. No matter how many promotions you’ve received, how many corner offices you’ve moved into, or even how many times you’ve seen your name in the headlines, you can never settle. You have to keep finding new ways to challenge yourself.

You need people in your life who are going to invite you to places you might not normally go, or send you interesting articles you might not normally read, or have you try food you might not normally order. You must find people who are going to inject new energy into your life. Because if you keep having the same conversations with the same people year after year, your energy is going to stagnate. Your ideas are going to get stale. Your momentum is going to get stuck.

In practically every corporate room I go into, I am surrounded by people who likely have had a lot more schooling than me. Who have read more than me. Who have been exposed to more culture than me. There was a time earlier in my career when those situations might have made me a bit insecure, where I might have looked for a reason not to enter that room in the first place because I didn’t want to feel stupid or uninformed. I was able to get past that insecurity by accepting that those people weren’t more cultured than me; they just had been exposed to a different culture. The culture I experienced growing up in South Jamaica was every bit as real as the culture a kid who grew up in Beverly Hills or the Upper East Side of Manhattan had been exposed to. They just had different foundations and priorities.

These days, I’m not intimidated anymore. Instead I’m looking for rooms where everyone else is more knowledgeable and educated than me. I love those sorts of rooms. Not because I don’t value my own experiences, but because I know that when I’m around highly

educated people, I’m going to be able to extract real value out of their input. When I combine that information with my own instincts and experiences, it’s the perfect formula to make amazing shit happen.

“Why not?” I asked. “He’s just trying to stay focused. He’s aware of his imperfections. We should celebrate that. Not attack the man for that.” “No, he deserves to be criticized,” he replied. “First of all, he’s going to the dinner as the vice president, not as a man. So when he says he can’t meet my daughter without his wife present, that means he’s looking at her as a sexual object. Not as a lobbyist, a policy expert, a senator, whatever she might be. He’s seeing her as a sex object first and foremost.” He had a point. I was starting to see where he was coming from. But my friend wasn’t done. “Here’s the other problem, 50. You know that the vibe is different when it’s just two people talking business versus when one of their spouses is present. When it’s just two people, they can get down to the nitty-gritty. Talk shit about their enemies. Conspire together. Trade notes and trade dirt. Discuss stuff they might not talk about in front of other people. That’s how a lot of business gets done in the real world. “But when a spouse is there, the vibe changes. The conversation’s about kids, vacations, or what TV shows everyone has watched. It doesn’t get down to the dirt.

I live for moments like that, when I can identify where I’ve been wrong about a subject and start to evolve my thinking. I don’t live to be right all the time or to have a bunch of yes-men tell me, “That’s right, boss,” when I say some dumb shit. No, I want to have my mind expanded and my perspectives shifted by as many intelligent people as possible. Every single place I go, I’m studying people. The way they say things, their attitude, information they share. I could be on the train, and I’d be watching people and taking notes. That’s how I learned business, by studying people I admired and how they conducted themselves. Smart people give away so much information through their words or their actions. Grab every single one of those gems that you can.

The world will see you the way you see you. And treat you the way you treat yourself. —BEYONCÉ

Whether you’re the boss, a partner, or just a worker, you have to create an environment where people can be honest about their character with you. Otherwise, you’re going to build unsustainable situations. That’s what ruined Ja Rule’s career.

After purchasing a Ferrari himself, Lamborghini recognized a number of flaws in the design. The cars were too noisy and had a notoriously touchy clutch, which had to be repaired. When he took his car in to have the Ferrari mechanics fix it, they wouldn’t let him personally observe their repairs, which pissed him off. Since Ferraris were already considered the best luxury sports cars on the market, Lamborghini saw these flaws as inexcusable. He decided to bring his critiques to Enzo Ferrari himself. Ferrari was deeply insulted that this “tractor mechanic” thought he could teach him something about race cars and rejected the advice. The moment created a deep-seated rivalry between the two. Stung by Ferrari’s snub, Lamborghini decided he’d turn his interest in cars into a professional pursuit. He wasn’t playing around, and four months later the Lamborghini 350 GTV debuted at the Turin Motor Show.

As competitive rivals, Lamborghini and Ferrari would bring out the best in each other’s work. Ferrari was never too interested in making street cars, as his passion lay in racing. Lamborghini was more focused on practicality and everyday use. If he hadn’t been pushing the market in that direction, Ferrari might have never come off the racetrack and into the street. The sense of competition forced both companies to evolve into stronger, more versatile versions of themselves. As it’s said, iron sharpens iron. The results of that competition were innovation and the building of dynasties. Ferrari and Lamborghini could have been friends, but a peaceful and gentle first meeting may never have inspired the creation of some of the best cars in the world. I’ve personally been a supporter of both brands over the years. I’ve had a few Ferraris and a few Lambos too. And while both are incredible cars, I’ve got to crown Lambo the winner of this particular competition.

I really believe that the better your opponent is, the better you become. It was true in the luxury auto business, and it’s true in almost every field. It’s certainly at the front of my mind whenever I start working on a new project.

People like to say I’m a hater, but nothing could be further from the truth. What I am is an appreciator. I’m always appreciating what other people are doing. Competing is not hating. It’s actually putting appreciation into action.

Jay took a lot of pride in Kanye’s victory. I think that’s one of the reasons he’s so disappointed in Kanye today. Jay knows how much he supported Ye during that period, but it still wasn’t enough for Ye. That probably hurt Jay. Jay even mentioned my battle with Kanye in his book Decoded, taking a little shot at me when he wrote, “Rappers who use beef as a marketing plan might get some quick press, but they’re missing the point.” I congratulate Jay for doing the right thing by his artist in that situation, but I think he was the one who missed the point. First, like I mentioned, there was no actual beef in that particular competition.

When asked toward the end of his life what had been the most important lesson in his journey, Honda pointed back to the moment he’d delivered the flawed pistons to Toyota. He had failed, but his determination to learn from his failure transformed him into a much more potent entrepreneur. “Many people dream of success. To me, success can be achieved only through repeated failure and introspection,” Honda said. “In fact, success represents 1 percent of your work, which results only from the 99 percent that is called failure.” Soichiro Honda’s story really connects with me. I know how hard it was to accomplish what he did. A lot of people have great ideas. Only a small percentage of them have the passion and work ethic to actually follow through and put it into motion.

How that person responds to their failure is going to determine the outcome of their journey. Are they going to let it kill their passion? Is that perceived failure going to make them settle for something less risky, like a nine-to-five working for someone else? Or will they experience a reaction to that obstacle that’s even more severe? They might become so dejected that they go off the deep end and start drinking or getting high every day. Or they might get so stressed that they find God and walk away from it all.

That’s the approach all true winners take. It’s the attitude Honda possessed when he said, “My biggest thrill is when I plan something and it fails. My mind is then filled with ideas on how I can improve it.” Think about that. He didn’t look at failing as a setback or a defeat. He called it a “thrill.” Something to be excited about. Imagine if you could view your own life that way. Nothing would ever be able to get you off your game.

But, as I grow older, the one thing that becomes clearer to me each and every day is that I don’t owe anyone a thing. And neither do you.

Life can be like that too. You want to save people, but in order to do it without you both getting pulled under, you need to keep a little distance. That is not to say you should never try to help. Does it feel good to put a person on to a new opportunity? Of course it does. I’ve spent my whole career trying to do exactly that. When I’ve played basketball I’ve always gotten more pleasure out of an assist than scoring on my own. But if someone keeps missing the shots you set them up for, it’s not your responsibility to keep feeding them the ball. There are a lot of players out there; your job is to win games, not keep running back up and down the court with the same clowns who can’t get the job done. Time to call for a sub.

What’s upsetting isn’t just that our relationship has become so toxic, but that she passed that sense of resentment and entitlement along to our son. He’d been given every advantage in the world, far beyond most kids born in the ghetto, but he still feels like he’s been somehow cheated or robbed by me. It’s a scenario I never imagined I’d find myself in with my firstborn child, but here we are.

There is one question you must ask about every person in your life, no matter how long you’ve known them: Does he or she ever make deposits into my life, or do they only make withdrawals? If the answer is “withdrawals,” then that’s someone you need to distance yourself from immediately. Remember, no one only makes one withdrawal. Would you only go to an ATM that kept spittin’ out free money just the once? Hell no. You would go every single day until the bank figured it out. Well, people are the same way. Until you shut them down, they will keep taking and taking until there’s nothing left. I’m getting rid of all the people who only make withdrawals. I’ve already lost people who meant the world to me—namely, my mother and grandmother—and I’m still doing just fine. There is zero reason I can’t cut all the other people who are trying to drain me instead of fill me up.

Mark couldn’t believe it. “What? You did what?” he said almost jumping out of his seat. “Wait a fucking minute, wait a minute. I finally found a guy who can find his fucking pockets and he’s leaving? Bro, we gotta get together. We gotta hang out.” He was excited because he was always the guy who people would expect to pay the tab. Now someone was finally willing to make a deposit. That caught his attention. We’ve ended up becoming good friends after that night, and Mark’s made plenty of deposits into my life. He’s someone who already did the rapper-turned-TV-executive thing with Entourage and Boardwalk Empire, and he’s given me a lot of valuable advice and insight. I would have never made that connection with him if I hadn’t reached for my wallet that night. I know everyone reading this isn’t in the position to pay for a fancy meal in an LA restaurant, but you are in a position to make deposits with the right people.

Professionally, you can always contribute to morale no matter what position you’re in. If you’re part of a team, it doesn’t cost a cent to be the one with a positive attitude. That doesn’t mean you have to kiss your boss’s ass or be fake. You just have to stay upbeat about things. Be the person who doesn’t bitch or moan when you get a tough job or assignment. Be the person who is smiling and open to interacting with co-workers instead of putting on headphones and hiding behind a computer screen. Be diplomatic, and try to identify a resolution when your co-workers aren’t getting along.

As long as you are making consistent deposits, it’s okay to approach your boss and ask to discuss a raise. But whatever you do, do not start that conversation by pointing out how long you’ve been at the company. If someone comes to me talking about how long they’ve been around, all they’re doing is giving me confirmation that it might be time for me to get them the fuck out of there! If you have been around forever but I’m not proactively giving you a raise, there is probably a reason. Instead, when you have that talk, keep the focus on what you’ve been contributing. Revenue, of course, is the best thing to be able to point to. But it can also be some of the nontransactional things we’ve mentioned: upbeat energy, helpful diplomacy, punctuality, and creativity. If you’ve been making those deposits on a consistent basis, it’s probably going to stand out. And you’ll be rewarded a lot quicker than the person who has been at the company a long time but is only interested in drawing their paycheck.

We were able to feed a lot of hungry kids through that program, but there’s obviously so much more work to be done. My hope is that programs like the one we did with Street King can create a template for what I call “conscious capitalism.” That means, instead of hitting a billion-dollar lick and then just sitting on it, these CEOs start to make giving a fundamental part of their business plans. The World Bank says that if the top Fortune 500 companies donated just 1 percent of their earnings to charitable organizations, it could alleviate extreme poverty across the globe. Just 1 percent. I don’t think that’s too much to ask of any corporation.