Two and a half wild years into life as a full-time freelancer and here’s one thing I know for certain: if you want to make it, you have to hustle.

Hustle is the golden key that frees you from corporate slavery; it’s your inexhaustible wellspring of wealth and abundance; it’s the only real job security on the planet; it’s the alchemy that transmutes your most exciting dreams into reality. 

Hustle is the road that leads from where you are today to where you want to go in the future — and hustle is available to EVERYONE.

Do you sense the intensity and passion I have for hustling? And why not?

Hustling — pursued in a very specific way I’ll share with you in this article — has allowed me to experience a life I wouldn’t have thought possible just a short time ago.

Let me tell you a story.

It’s the story of how I hustled my way from a struggling ESL teacher in Korea to a successful freelance copywriter in my first year in business . . . 

But, more importantly, this story outlines a three-step formula YOU can use to hustle your way to achieving more in your business, family and life.

What It Means To Just Add Hustle

Story time:

I keep a tattered, dog-eared index card in the back of my wallet.

And written on this crumbling piece of paper is a short paragraph and three statements that have changed my life.

I jotted this handful of words down while I was sitting at a neighborhood cafe in Ansan, Korea — the city where I lived and worked at the time.

It was 2013, and my wife and I were planning to move to America the following year.

The job market in America back then wasn’t great . . . and, besides, I didn’t really want to continue my career as a teacher.

For one thing, I’d been teaching for the better part of a decade and I was definitely burnt out; for another, I didn’t see how I could support a family on a teacher’s salary.

So I decided to become a copywriter. Actually, sitting at that cafe in October 2013 I announced to myself that I WAS a copywriter — although I hadn’t even landed my first client yet!

Was I “ready” to be a copywriter? Nope. Did that stop me from getting started? HECK NO.

Here’s what I wrote on that index card the day I decided I was a copywriter:

“I will be earning at least $80,000 per year by fiscal 2017. Per month: $6,600. Per week: $1,550. I will earn this money by rendering incredible service as a salesman and copywriter.”

My original financial goal was $60,000 per year, but I decided to go for the gold and bumped that up to $80,000.

This financial goal TERRIFIED me. It was more than I’d ever earned before and, immediately, all sorts of negative, limiting thoughts kicked in:

“There’s no way you can earn that kind of money.”

“Who do you think you are? You’re not even a REAL copywriter!”

“You better pray some school in America will hire you as a teacher.”

So to help me overcome these energy-sapping, confidence-crushing self-limiting LIES, I wrote three simple statements on the other side of my index card:

1. Positive Mental Attitude
2. Clearly Defined Goals
3. Massive Action

I didn’t realize it at the time, but those three statements have become my formula for what it means to hustle.

And if you’ve been putting off getting started, or you’re struggling to take your freelance career, small business, or new venture to the next level, I hope you’ll continue reading as we explore in detail what those three statements mean.

I’ve found this three-step formula powerfully effective in my own life, and I believe you’ll benefit from it as well!

Part One: Positive Mental Attitude

You will suffer hardships, disappointments, and setbacks — not to mention at least a couple of glorious “failures” — on your quest to build the life and business of your dreams.

We all get this on an intellectual level, right?

We KNOW that pursuing anything worthwhile is difficult work. But when we begin to actually experience those hardships it HURTS.

Suddenly fear and doubt begin to whisper: you can’t do this… you’ve made a huge mistake… wouldn’t it be so much easier to just give up?

And, yeah, it would be a heckuva lot easier to throw in the towel and call it quits.

That’s why I believe it’s critically important to commit to a positive mindset and then CULTIVATE that mindset every day.

A positive mindset gives you the resilience to battle through the inevitable doubt, frustration, disappointment and setbacks you’ll encounter on your way to building the life and business of your dreams.

What do I mean when I talk about a positive mindset?

One of the best explorations I’ve seen on how to build and grow a positive mindset comes from Dr. Carol Dweck’s outstanding book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.

In Mindset, Dr. Dweck — a psychologist at Stanford University — outlines two distinct mental attitudes: fixed mindset and growth mindset.

A fixed mindset says your talent, ability, and personality are a set part of who you are, like the color of your eyes or how many fingers and toes you have. Therefore, challenges, setbacks, and failures are devastating — and should be avoided at all costs — because they undermine you as a person.

FEAR is calling the shots in a fixed mindset.

A growth mindset, by contrast, looks at intelligence, ability, and personality as something you can develop. As a consequence, challenges and setbacks aren’t feared — they’re welcomed as an opportunity to learn, develop, and improve.

I’ve made a growth mindset the engine that drives everything I do.

Paul, you wrote a sales promotion for a new client and it bombed!

Yeah, that’s a punch to the gut. But get up off the mat, learn from what didn’t work, and try again.

Paul, you’re freaked out about interviewing a new guest for the podcast!

It’s all good. Review your previous interviews, take note of what works and what doesn’t, and get out there and make this new interview your best ever.

Without a positive mindset I would have given up on starting and growing my businesses long ago — and my life would be much emptier as a result.

Your Takeaway: Read Dr. Dweck’s Mindset, or other books on the power of positive thinking like Anthony Robbins’ Awaken The Giant Within and Dr. David J. Schwartz’s The Magic Of Thinking Big, and commit to INTENTIONALLY cultivating a positive mental attitude daily.

Part Two: Clearly Defined Goals

Do you know what you want out of your life and business? Do you REALLY know your heart’s true desire?

This is crucial. If you don’t have a clearly defined goal you’re a blindfolded archer who aims at a moving target that may or may not exist.

HUSTLE takes an enormous amount of effort and energy. But by focusing on a clearly defined goal you’ll ensure all the blood, sweat, and tears you shed lead to tangible results — instead of overwhelm, exhaustion, and frustration.

We’ll go deep on what it means to set effective goals in future articles and podcast episodes (it’s a topic I absolutely LOVE).

For now, let me share a barebones outline of how I pursue goal setting:

• Make your goal specific — For a long time, I wanted to “start a podcast”. That’s a pretty vague goal . . . and that’s a big part of the reason why it took me two years to launch Just Add Hustle. When I focused on “creating a podcast for beginning freelancers, entrepreneurs and small biz owners that brings them interviews with successful men and women in their markets” Just Add Hustle got off the ground. A specific goal is a focused goal, and focus = POWER.

• Write it down — In a study conducted at Dominican University of California in 2007, participants who wrote down their goals and shared them with a supportive friend were nearly TWICE as likely to achieve their goals than participants who merely thought about what they hoped to accomplish.

• Break big goals into smaller goals — How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. The same goes for big, exciting goals.Let’s say you want to launch a new e-commerce store. Think about all the steps involved. You’ve got to source a product, build a website, write your copy, buy traffic — just to name a few. It’s enough to make your head spin! (Well, it makes my head spin anyways!) But when you identify the single next step you need to take even the biggest, most exciting goals from from daunting to doable.

• Give your goals a completion date — You’ve probably heard the quote “A goal without a plan is just a wish”. Wishes are fine and dandy when you’re blowing out your birthday candles. But they won’t do a damn thing to help you build your ideal business and life. I’ve yet to meet a millionaire who wished her way to wealth and success. Transform your wish into an actionable goal by giving it a completion date. And then hit your deadline as if your future depends upon it! (Because it DOES!)

Your Takeaway: Seize the most EXCITING, IMPORTANT, ELECTRIFYING goal buzzing around your brain. Write it down on a piece of paper. Identify the single next step you need to take to make that goal a reality. Set a deadline. And then take action!

Part Three: Massive Action aka HUSTLE!

You’re tired?

Do the work.

Long day at the office?

Do the work.

Netflix queue bursting at the digital seams with new movies and shows?

DO THE DANG WORK.

You will hear approximately 3,498 excuses before the end of the day urging you to wait and take action tomorrow.

And every one of those excuses is a damn lie that keeps you shackled, sheltered, and playing small for the rest of your life.

HUSTLE says to hell with fear, excuses and playing small.Click To Tweet

It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from, how much (or how little) you’re starting with. If you’re willing to DO THE WORK, then you can and you WILL create a life and business that exceeds your wildest dreams.

Your Takeaway: Ask yourself “What kind of person will I have to become in order to achieve all I want to achieve?” and then DO THE WORK to become that person.

Is this the only way to hustle?

No, of course not.

But it’s worked for me and I’m confident it can work for anyone who puts it into practice.

Here’s the thing though: I don’t really care whether or not you follow this particular formula for hustling.

What is INFINITELY more important to me is that you do something — right here, right now — to take greater control of your destiny and your life.

You’re reading this blog and listening to this podcast because you have a spark of desire burning in your gut to do, create, and experience MORE — so what are you waiting for?

Don’t close out this page till you’ve committed to ONE action you will take RIGHT NOW to get a step closer to making your dreams your reality.

Go share this goal with your partner or roommate. Share it with the Just Add Hustle community in the comments section below. Heck, shoot me an email at paul@justaddhustle.com and tell me how you plan to move things forward — but whatever you do, do it NOW!

DON’T WAIT! Because your life and the value you can share with others is too damn important to gather dust on the shelf as you wait for the “right time” to get started.

(Spoiler: NOW is the ONLY right time to get started!)

Intense? Sure. But I’m a pretty intense dude. 🙂

And I want nothing more than for all of us to succeed together.

So consider the gauntlet dropped, my friend.

This post is my challenge to you — and to myself — to FURIOUSLY HUSTLE our way to a life of uncommon dreams.

The only question left to ask is: Are you in?