Your 5:00 AM alarm is ringing, you have two decisions, one to hit the snooze button and go back to dreamland and dream about what you will accomplish or two, jump out of bed and DO the work. You are a hustler, you jump out of bed, it is GO time! Your day is filled with meetings, emails, travel and more meetings. You jump into bed at midnight only to do the same routine the next day.

You are crushing it, killing those goals and giving your all! If this sounds familiar this is the lifestyle of top entrepreneur and motivational speaker Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary lives and dies by Hustling. Gary drives home if you want to be successful you have to give it your all, put in the work and hustle. He talks about most people wanting success but not doing the work. A hustler has that fire in their belly, the burning desire to succeed, and prove him/herself as a success.

What is Hustling? Define hustle?

Well, it is making that cash money, bringing in those dollar bills $$$$

Everyone is different when it comes to hard work; the real definition is putting in hard work that is completely focused on your ideal goal. Hard work is open to interpretation at your own judgment. The only person who can define if you are working hard is yourself. If you watch Gary Vaynerchuk, his definition of hard work is likely much different from your definition of hard work.

Perhaps, your hard work is getting out of bed by 10:00 AM and working 3 hours at your job. If this is your definition of hard work, then Gary can do what you do accomplish in week, Gary will do it in one day. You may have to change your definition of hard work a bit, and get up a little earlier, cut your Facebook activity from 3 hours to 2 hours day. Everything counts if you look at the big picture and I challenge you to take a look at your day to day routine, tweak two or three of your time wasters, like checking email, phone notifications, hitting the snooze button, anything if your life you’re using as a distraction.

The Hustle Meter

How do you keep track if you're hustling enough? Well, you have to be true to yourself and you are the best judge of yourself, for real! If you’re jumping onto Facebook, killing time scrolling through your feed, or if you’re watching too much tv, ask yourself if these things are helping you move your goals forward and if they don’t then eliminate them. Be aware of all the time killers and work on improving your focus on the prize. Distraction is the number one killer of goals in this age where everyone is trying to steal your time.

Eliminate Distraction = Success

Quick Tip: Remove all notifications on your phone, do not let these apps steal any more of your time.

At the end of the day if you feel like you gave it your all and did not get sidetracked then give yourself a great rating out of 10. Keep track of your hustle score each day. If you had a bad day then review why the day was bad and what you can do to improve it. Here is an example; the odd night I will have a coffee too late at night, which turns into a sleepless night -- this flows into the next day where my energy level is low and results in a day not as productive as I would have been happy with. Reviewing the day my hustle meter which was low for the day which resulting because of the coffee from the day before. Therefore in order to improve I need to add no coffee after a particular time into my daily routine if I want to operate on full cylinders and improve my hustle.

When you have passion for something, you are squeezing every last drop out of the orange

-Gary V

Maybe you work hard but not as hard as you would like, how do you improve your hustle? Here are 7 tips for improving your hustle:

1. Adopt the Immigrant Mentality

Adopt the immigrant mentality, you have a purpose, you have taken life into your hands and have the drive to take your business to the next level. You have to really want it, fight for it, put in blood, sweat and tears. Immigrants have that burning desire to turn their lives into something their family has never experienced before.

Gratitude, appreciate every breath, every piece of food and all the sacrifices the generations endured for you to be where you are at. All the fallen soldiers, all the hard times, all the tears. We are all lucky to wake up each day, life is precious and time moves damn quick, make every second count in order to move your goals forward.

In business, if you are not paying attention your competitors, the harder working company/person will soon take over take over your market share. You might say I work smart, well the next guy is working smart and hard too. There is no coasting to success when it comes to business. My point here, stay hungry and keep your eye on the prize.

If you are lucky enough to be first generation rich then you have a good idea of what it took to get your family rich.With the second generation rich the story becomes blurry and it became difficult for the generation to understand how much hard work was put in to make the money.

70% of rich families lose their wealth by the second generation

Having the immigrant mentally about hard work and building something for your family from nothing is a hustle mentality.

You may think you work hard you're definitely not hustling as hard as Gary but everyone is different. Ok, you accept maybe you could hustle a little harder and put in some extra effort but what are some tips to up your hustling factor.

2. Eliminate Distractions

I mentioned this earlier, we are in the age where everything is fighting for your attention. We have to fight for our keep focused and keep our attention on the prize and allocate time to be distracted. When I am working I make sure there is nothing around that might distract me and move me off track from working on my goals.

Turn off notifications

Use an egg time to allocate block of time of complete focus

Find your happy place - work in a location where you are not getting pestered with interruption

Block or hide distracting apps or websites - LeechBlock (Firefox) or StayFocusd (Chrome) to block the sites that distract you

If you can eliminate the distractions in your life then you can have more and be more, the choice is yours.

3. Improve Daily

Experiment with improving tactics and work on improving by 1% each day. In order to know where you are at you have to review your day each night and write out what you did and what you can improve for the following day. The next day work on improving the items you highlighted and continue the cycle each day. A journal is key for writing and keeping track of the data.

In order to improve on a daily basis, you need to have a daily routine. I recommend reading the Miracle Morning where Hal Elrod outlines how to give yourself an hour each day in the morning to work on yourself:

Meditation

Affirmations

Visualization

Exercise

Reading

Journaling

It is hard to improve if you do not know where you are at and where you are going, this routine has been the miracle to moving my hustle meter further each day.

4. Never Give Up

Being an entrepreneur is not easy. Whoever said it was easy? However, if you're truly passionate about it, keep working at it. You won't succeed overnight, and there may be times when you think to yourself 'should I just give this up?' In some cases this can apply BUT I believe you should try your utmost best and try every avenue before giving up. This is another reason why it's a MUST to surround yourself with people who inspires you, who educates you and motivates you. You hang out with someone who hates life, then you will become the same person.

Remember you only fail when you give up. As long as you keep trying and keep trying, and are relentless in your vision to succeed then you will achieve whatever you set your mind to. This type of attitude is the attitude needed to hustle hard each day, as each day counts and the days add up to big things.

5. Think Big

Sure you started your business by yourself, you created it from zero to something. You handle all the marketing, accounting, social media accounts, and so much more! You're overwhelmed with so much work BUT giving up one or few tasks somehow isn't easy? We all fall into this trap when we just find it so hard to give up control. If you want your business to grow, you have to do bigger things.

Hire a virtual assistant who can do a million small tasks for you, and you'll be surprised how much room and time you'll have in your hands. Now you can use this time doing something bigger for your business such as expanding your products or maybe creating another business you've been wanting to. Don't be afraid of handing in little or small tasks to someone else. If you plan on running your business on a one-man-show kind of thing it'll be very difficult to get ahead.

If you want to make a million dollars per year then you have to value your time as if you make a million dollars per year.

The average person works 2080 hours a year

1,000,000/2080 = ~ 480.80

Every hour you work should then be valued at $500/hr. If you find yourself doing $5/hr tasks because you think you can do them better, this isn’t the mindset. You have to think big and only work on tasks that are highly valuable if you want to become a millionaire.

6. Fail Often

In order to improve and get better, you have to fail. People who hustler accept failing is part of the learning experience to become an expert.

‘Every master was once a disaster’

-T. Harv Eker

Remember the time when you were a little kid and learning how to ride a bicycle; you started with training wheels and rode your training wheels into the ground until the bike could no longer stand up on its own. Then came the big day when your dad pulled off your training wheels and pushed you off on your own to ride into the sunset. Well if you were me, ride into a face plant on the pavement. I fell and fell and fell some more but I never gave up and now at 36 I consider myself to be a decent biker. If I gave up on after the first fall I would have sacrificed many years of the joy of riding a bike.

You have to have the same mindset when you’re working on succeeding in life, fail often and fail fast. Keep working on your vision and never give up, there will be failures, accept that and keep trying, and fail fast and fail yourself forward.

7. Surround Yourself with Positive People

The legendary Jim Rohn always talks about “You are the five people you surround yourself with”. If all your friends are crushing and hustling hard then this will become your norm.

If you hang out with A player you will soon become an A player, unfortunately, this is not only in sports but in business too. If you do not have any players in your network, reach out to someone outside of your network, find a mentor and start affiliating this type of crowd.

Part of my morning ritual is I listen to a podcast when I walk to work called Entrepreneur on Fire by John Lee Dumas. John Lee Dumas’ interviews top entrepreneurs worldwide, I learn things like how they overcame failure, tips for success, tools for success. On a daily basis surround yourself with people who are doing the things you want to do.

Stand on the shoulders of giants, do not reinvent the wheel, learn from what other people have done and get the jump start by following their footsteps. This will not only save you a bunch of time but also a bunch of money. For a small price of a book, you can 1000x your investment if you learn from leaders and learn from their failures.

Listen to Gary V the ultimate hustler, listen to his podcast, subscribe to his youtube channel, read his books. If you want to become a great business hustler and accomplish big things then I recommend immersing yourself in his content.

Now you have all these tips in your back pocket get out and hustle and check out our blog for lifestyle, self-improvement, and fashion at here.

Entrepreneurs mentioned above:

EOF by John Lee Dumas

Gary Vaynerchuk

Books

Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World