

You’re not entitled to anything. Hustle for everything you’re worth - g0atbutt
http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/03/23/youre-not-entitled-to-anything-hustle-for-everything-youre-worth/

======
flipside
Hustle is essential, and speaking as someone who didn't used to have any,
without it, you're just relying on luck.

No doubt it's better to be lucky than good, but it's even better to be good at
being lucky. Hustle hard enough and you make your own luck.

~~~
cheez
How'd you get from someone without it to someone with it?

~~~
getsat
Well, the first step is realising that you need it. You realise that you've
been cruising complacently through life, taking the successes and the failures
as they come and hoping to be rewarded by your superiors for your hard work.

You then have an epiphany where you realise that you can be responsible for
your own destiny, follow your dreams and create your own wealth, thus freeing
you from the shackles of mediocrity and your "career".

After this epiphany, you start to see the world differently. It's ripe for the
taking. You will begin to see opportunities where you saw nothing of
consequence. You will begin to see how almost everything can be leveraged in
some manner to help you pursue your current goals. Your passions will lead you
to do socially ostracising things such as quitting your job to work full time
on your own projects for six months before you make a single cent in profit,
but you won't care. Your passions and the freedom to pursue those passions are
more important than anything now.

This is how it was for me, anyways. I'm about to hit the one year anniversary
of jettisoning my programming "career". :)

~~~
hammock
Well put. Hustle is not principally about hard work, rather it's about
resourcefulness- encountering an obstacle or finding yourself stuck in a rut,
and having the mindfulness, wit and unabashed boldness to hustle your way out
of it. The "epiphany" is what it's all about, once you realize that we build
artificial walls and barriers everywhere in our own lives, it is so empowering
to plow right through them.

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smallwords
Being covered in a blog/website/magazine/paper etc is a privilege, not a
right. Just because you’ve created a fantastic new [insert item here], doesn’t
mean it has to be covered.

When approaching, think about the benefits of your [insert item here] brings
to the users.

Geek tl;dr does it get someone laid, make their life better, bring comfort,
protect themselves or loved ones, Save them time (time is $$$) etc.

People are selfish, they want to know how [insert item here] benefits them in
some way. They alas do not care about you. They want to know how it benefits
them.

I know at first it may seem obvious how your [insert item here] will obviously
do [insert benefit/s here] but people don’t always ‘get it’. You must spell it
out to them.

When approaching people to write/talk about your [insert item here], you only
get a small percentage of someone’s time/day. So you must speak the benefits
of your [insert item here] and quick to grab their attention.

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petercooper
Along similar lines, here are some links relating to actually getting coverage
in the tech press (rather than sending nasty e-mails as mentioned in this
post):

[http://www.martinbryant.net/approaching-tech-journalists-
for...](http://www.martinbryant.net/approaching-tech-journalists-for-press-
covera) [http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/02/08/four-guidelines-
to-g...](http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/02/08/four-guidelines-to-get-your-
startup-coverage-online/) <http://www.copyblogger.com/irresistible-pr/>

And Michael Arrington spent some time on the topic in this video:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbUnatPfSgg>

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tardis
It reminds of a 3rd year undergrad I met. She complained about the difficulty
of getting a research assistant position because there's lots of competition
and she had to fill in lots of forms and applications. Since getting into grad
studies require some kind of RA experience, she was getting anxious for not
having one at the end of her third year. The disheartening part though was she
never actually applied to any of these positions. She just assumed they were
too hard to get.

It's like praying to God to win the lotto but never buying a ticket. How do
you expect to win if you don't have a ticket?

------
ludwig
Wait, I'm confused. They quoted figures of 8000 boxes at $4 each, but on Fred
Wilson's blog post the quote indicates it was 500 boxes at $40 each. Which one
was it?

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yannickmahe
I'm always amazed at the capacity people have for yelling at you when they are
asking for a favor. What is going on inside someone's head? It's like "you
need my help, don't make me hate you!".

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laf2019
Great article, I have tried to contact editors before but to no avail, I
really have to learn how to hustle

------
known
kill-or-be-killed ?

