
The Knack for Getting Money - lionhearted
http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/the-knack-for-getting-money
======
TimothyBurgess
The only problem I have with this... is that I've experienced firsthand the
other side of this coin. For a few years I was surrounded by a few people who
have a knack for getting money... by any means necessary. These people would
lie (not little white lies, big ones with negative impacts), manipulate, and
straight-up steal from others just to make a few bucks. They had no remorse
for the detrimental outcomes they brought upon those they stole from... no
compassion whatsoever.

When looking for those with a knack for getting money, look for those who earn
it... those whose ethics are no less than admirable... unless of course you
lack compassion and morals yourself. Those who manipulate and steal without
any remorse for others' lives need to be weeded out. They drag the rest of us
down and hold us back for their own selfish gain.

Some may consider this darwinism - survival of the fittest - but I believe
we've made much more progress as a species by working with each other than
against.

The last conversation I had with these people I spent years with was to try to
explain how their line of thinking quite honestly brings suffering to
countless people. Prime example, big banks making deals they know will fall
through regardless of the impact it has on the economy... look where we are
now. The type of people who made the decisions that led to the recent
recession, which caused a massive decrease in my father's hours at work, are
the same ones who want to perform a shortsale on his house because he has
fallen behind on his mortgage. As for the suffering I mentioned, let's just
say my father will give up his house over his dead body.

~~~
ehsanul
_They had no remorse for the detrimental outcomes they brought upon those they
stole from... no compassion whatsoever._

Sounds like they were simply psychopaths, hence lacking most emotion. It seems
like that emotion/empathy was selected for in our evolutionary history (or
perhaps it's just a side-effect of something else, don't know), so I don't
think psychopathic behavior could possibly be characterized as darwinism.

~~~
jacques_chester
Both strategies (empathetic and sociopathic) can be selected for; they're
relatively stable when combined. The sociopaths need empathetic people to prey
on, the empathetic people can tolerate the cost -- up to a point, at which
they cooperate to attack the sociopaths.

You might fairly characterise civilisation as the arms race between sociopaths
and everyone else.

------
Jach
Speculation, but I think the tendency toward sociopathic really helps avoid
any hang-ups over money. Sure, I'd rather sociopaths get on the Forbes list
rather than go out and kill people, but their personality is what I find
distasteful, and in any case it's an unnatural brain wiring, that's why I
think it's not so easy to just "become a [partial?] sociopath" if you want to
rake in money.

I tried the Cutco-selling gig for a couple months, and realized almost
immediately that I wasn't cut out for it. Sure I could follow the manual
(which was golden as far as things-you-need-to-do-to-convert), smile, talk
smoothly, answer questions, etc., but inside I think I just fundamentally
couldn't shake the feeling that "If these people wanted what I was selling,
they'd have gotten it already." (And I think that came out a bit whether I
wanted it to or not.) On a high level I know that can be false, but
intuitively, that's how I think; I hate ads and when I buy something non-
trivial it's usually after personal research, not because of a salesman.
Salesmen even make me less likely to buy something especially because I can
see through all their rhetoric. I find something really wrong with exploiting
the cognitive biases of people even if it's been done for all time, and even
if I do it sometimes subconsciously. We should be trying to eliminate those
biases, not feeding them.

All this said though, you don't have to be a sociopath or a real hustler to
see the opportunity of printing out new menus for a quick buck. That's more in
line with hacking than with money grabbing, I think. More similar to a college
student coming up with pizza money for a weekend than with going after money
as a goal in itself.

~~~
nostrademons
That's why it helps to believe in your product. PG once described his approach
to selling as "Make your product the best on the market, and then tell the
truth."

~~~
Jach
That's just another trick to make you a more convincing salesman, like
smiling. Of course they drill that into your head during the unpaid training
for Cutco, and hey, those knives are pretty badass, I still have and use my
demo set. It doesn't change the fact that I feel like "Well, if my product
really is the best on the market, what do you need me to tell you for? The
truth is out there, it doesn't have to come from me." I'm perfectly
comfortable with giving a list of facts about my theoretical product and why
it's awesome, or making people aware of its existence, what I'm not
comfortable with is making a story to get you to want it or pressure you into
believing everything I say, and I definitely don't like rhetorical devices
used for selling.

Yet even PG's advice is product-focused rather than selling-focused; can you
distinguish PG's advice from a simple bulleted fact-list? (And how well do you
think that alone will sell your product?) If your product _isn't_ the best on
the market (or so you think), taking PG's advice would tell you to get back to
work while a hustler would go out and sell it anyway. (They don't even
necessarily have to lie about anything.) PG's approach echoes the traditional
programmer reply of why he doesn't need a marketing team or need to study
marketing by saying "My product will speak for itself."

Anyway, can you link to an essay or post from PG where he said that? A quick
Google search didn't turn up a source.

~~~
nostrademons
It was a comment here, not an essay. I can't find anything with a search, but
this is a really hard one to Google for since I'm paraphrasing and don't
remember his exact words.

------
dmg8
The problem with hiring a hustler with a "knack for getting money" is that you
might be the one he ends up hustling.

~~~
hustlebear-judd
The problem with the word hustle is that it has a few very different
connotations.

Those who go far have moved beyond street hustling.

~~~
nedwin
So true. I have this print framed above my desk at work:

<http://joeyroth.com/charlatan-martyr-hustler/>

~~~
lionhearted
That's absolutely brilliant. Everyone should see this, it explains a tricky
concept really fast. Just submitted here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2185510>

 _(I think most martyr-types won't like it though...)_

------
danenania
This sort of begs the question: if your main drive in life is money, what use
is it to you really? It just becomes points in a meaningless game.

Someone driven to change the world or build for the sake of building, on the
other hand, is going to make something out of their money, even if they aren't
as skilled or single-minded in acquiring it. Money means a lot more when it
serves a purpose other than piling on top of itself and buying superfluous
stuff.

I'm sure there's a role for people with this approach in most companies, but I
tend to avoid them--mostly because they bore me to tears. Someone with ideas
and goals that supersede wealth accumulation is a lot more interesting to me,
and I'd much prefer to spend my time around such people and scrape by than
live in a mansion and listen to a bunch of polo shirt clones yammer on about
their real estate investments all day.

~~~
maxklein
Why play monopoly? Or play Call Of Duty? After you pass a certain income, you
realise you don't really _need_ what comes after that. But you're just
enjoying the game. You're enjoying the winning.

Games are not meaningless, they are fun. That's why we play them.

~~~
danenania
I get this, and I have nothing against games, but I guess my response is that
striving to accumulate more and more money seems like a shallow and tedious
form of competition to me in comparison to all the other 'games' out there to
choose from. It's similar to how I'd view someone who spends every waking
moment trying to optimize their fantasy football team or something. I think
people are free to get their kicks however they see fit if they aren't hurting
anyone, but I also think that person would get more from life if they tried to
expand their horizons.

~~~
maxklein
But making money is one of the most fun and meaningful games out there. You
can make many people happy with the money you have, you can make your life
better, you can travel to new places.

If you win your fantasy football league a million times, nothing changes. If
you win at the entrepreneurship game 20 times, your life becomes a whole lot
better.

~~~
danenania
"But making money is one of the most fun and meaningful games out there. You
can make many people happy with the money you have, you can make your life
better, you can travel to new places."

In this case, I'd say that making people happy and travel are the fun and
meaningful games. Money helps enable them, sure, but there are plenty of ways
to make people happy and travel without much money too, so if these are the
things that make you feel good, why not focus on doing them as much as
possible instead?

"If you win at the entrepreneurship game 20 times, your life becomes a whole
lot better."

Not necessarily. I guess this is the root of the whole discussion. It depends
how you measure.

"You find out when you reach the top, you're on the bottom" -Bob Dylan

------
sayemm
Best book on the knack for getting money is "How to Get Rich" by Felix Dennis,
founder of Maxim magazine (worth between $400-900M, that's what he says in the
book): [http://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Rich-Greatest-
Entrepreneurs/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Rich-Greatest-
Entrepreneurs/dp/1591842719/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297010573&sr=8-1)

Here's a good Inc. article on it too:
<http://www.inc.com/articles/2008/07/dennis.html>

Utter determination, fearlessness, tunnel vision, and hard work are his
answers.

------
bootload
_"... became a millionaire by 24 at which point I bought a large modern house
in Bel Air; got ranked among the top 10 Commercial Real Estate agents in
California and the top 20 Commercial Real Estate agents in the World at Remax
Commercial for 2005 and 2006; ..."_

Is selling in the real-estate boom cycle a good indication of how to make
money?

~~~
sokoloff
Selling in the boom and then stopping and doing something else when the boom
busts is, to me, evidence of having a knack for getting money.

------
ojbyrne
This has "survivorship bias" all over it. Why not just write about how lottery
winners have a knack for getting money?

------
_corbett
I'm surprised about the negativity here, one of the most fun parts about being
an entrepreneur is exercising this knack for getting money aspect (I'd say
start a non-profit if your business has nothing to do with this, but they have
to hustle too).

As to it being about money or manipulation, to me it's about seeing or
creating opportunities that no one else can then chasing and obtaining them.

------
geekfactor
One thing that jumped out at me here is the 'many irons in the fire' aspect of
hustling. This seems to go against the grain of 'focus, focus, focus' to which
I think many of us ascribe, or at least aspire.

For example, YC is supposed to be about entrepreneurs not ideas... I wonder
what YC would look like if accepted teams were told to start pushing on their
three best ideas simultaneously?

------
adelevie
This seems to be channeling Tim Ferris. Forget the quality of your ideas, just
change your mindset, and all will be spectacular.

------
Osiris
I think the knack for getting money is probably entirely based on drive and
conviction. I think it's a personality trait. Despite having several business
ideas, I find that I just don't have the drive to get them going. I want to
get those business ideas off the ground, but I have a hard time getting past
the planning stages or putting in more than some minimum effort.

I usually find myself distracted by ridiculous things like TV or video games.
I also tend to talk myself out of things saying I don't have the skills, or
the contacts, or don't know how to get started, or don't know enough about the
industry.

I admire the real entrepreneurs who have the drive to get their businesses
going and I wish I had it. Hopefully it's a skill one can learn.

~~~
lionhearted
> I admire the real entrepreneurs who have the drive to get their businesses
> going and I wish I had it. Hopefully it's a skill one can learn.

Pretty sure it's a skill/skillset and can be learned, yeah. I think the key is
incremental progress + celebrating even small victories. I've pissed away tons
of time on surfing the internet or video games, but improved by looking to
scale it down and then celebrating when getting there even a little bit.

I was just reading this, it's relevant:

<http://sivers.org/book/TalentCode>

Look to do whatever small action gets you a little closer, and then celebrate
when you get it done. Then repeat. I find the celebrating to really help,
since big changes take a long time and you do suffer a lot of that time - if
it's for a far-distant payoff, it's harder to stick with it. You can bring the
payoff closer by celebrating every time you do things even a little more
correct. Do whatever little step you can do and complete and then celebrate a
little. Feel free to email me if I can help at all, or you've got specific
questions, or you want to brainstorm a little on good next steps to take and
complete.

~~~
chipsy
I think it's both something you practice and also something you motivate
yourself for. I had some entrepreneurial episodes as a kid, which I enjoyed
and found some success in once or twice, but somehow forgot about in the
teenage years. I started exploring the possibilities again, but I would say
that I only got properly shocked into the mindset again after(surprise)
getting hustled myself, in a bad way, and wanting to make up for it.

Knowing and relearning the "child's reality" is important to success, I think.
It gets you past all the blind spots that derail businesses.

------
nachteilig
It's too bad we can't bury this obnoxious and poorly written article. Don't
bother with it.

------
jhaglund
"ill make a grand moving snow today"

Did 50 Cent really go shovel snow? I thought that was a double entendre (and a
joke), "moving snow" being a euphemism for selling cocaine.

------
calvinfroedge
While I agree that getting an idea off the ground takes a lot of what's in
this blog post - it's important to draw lines...and I think you develop those
lines only with experience. A lot of times the quick buck (even if
substantial) hurts you later. Sometimes the quickest way to start building
skyscrapers is to learn to weld.

~~~
calvinfroedge
Incidentally, another HackerNews link is exactly what I'm referring to....
[http://andrewchenblog.com/2011/02/05/stanford-cs-major-
seeks...](http://andrewchenblog.com/2011/02/05/stanford-cs-major-seeks-
salesmarketing-monkey/)

