HUSTLERS OR ENTREPRENEURS?

Some people are so poor,all they have is money"-Patrick Meagher
 Recently, the titles entrepreneur and hustler have been used as if they are one and the same. To be blunt and candid, they are not! The difference between an entrepreneur and a hustler lies in the passion of each. Hustlers are passionate about doing whatever it takes to get money while entrepreneurs are passionate about adding value to people’s lives (for profit).

Hustlers can do anything just to make money. They don’t have a definite business plan. What determines the next business they want to navigate is solely money and profitability. Barack Obama said, “Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself.” It is money that gives hustlers directions. In fact, they can do anything as long as it will bring them money. Hustlers don’t solve problems; they’ll rather perpetuate problems so that they can still be relevant.
An entrepreneur has a definite business plan; they don’t shy away from the fact that they want to make money but more importantly, they are pre-occupied with the values they want to add to the lives of their customers. An entrepreneur’s goal is to create solutions to solve problems or to enhance something that is already in existence.
Moreover, the entrepreneur makes informed choices and takes calculated risks. They take full responsibilities of their outcomes. To be an entrepreneur, you must have long-term goals to keep you from being frustrated by short-term failures. An entrepreneur understands markets and trends and they use their emotional intelligence to work effectively with others to achieve their aims. An entrepreneur easily identifies opportunities and creates them where there are none. An entrepreneur has integrity and is willing to make investments and sacrifices. The reverse of all these is true for a hustler, who is an opportunist with a sharp eye for money. They are calculative and sometimes, manipulative. They can only see opportunities but lack the initiative to create them. Ultimately, the hustler is short-sighted and lacks any real long term vision.
The reason why most businesses fail is that the people at the helms of affair are not entrepreneurs; or in a definite language, they lack entrepreneurship spirit. They are better referred to as hustlers. Hustlers lack focus and consistency and most times, they are involved in diverting business funds into other seemingly profitable ventures.
The fate of hustlers can be summarized in one line: they are doomed to work forever for money or for real entrepreneurs that have made value and vision their core responsibilities. Though a hustler can make a good living, but an entrepreneur can achieve financial independence and separate his time from his money-making abilities. A hustler remains a prisoner to his own system and once he stops hustling, he stops earning! An entrepreneur, once he has built his own system, he is able to walk away from it, come back many months later, and find it doing better than before he left. It is not difficult to see who will reach financial freedom under this model.
Becoming a hustler is a full time job. Hustlers are not totally bad in themselves and that is why they are needed by entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs need hustlers to identify immediate opportunities. To shift to a better business world, we need to make a revolutionary shift from ‘hustling mentality’ to ‘entrepreneurship mentality’. This is the new face of the business world, hustlers are gradually becoming  endangered species in the modern business world and it is a matter of time before they sink into oblivion and those that refuse to change has already sealed their fate; they will hustle forever!


Transforming a hustler to an entrepreneur is not an act that is taught in school or at least not the type of school I went to. Socrates said, “An unexamined life is not worth living”, it is high time we examined ourselves for who we are – Entrepreneurs or Hustlers?
So my questions to you all are:
 Are entrepreneurs born or made?
 How does a hustler become an entrepreneur and escape his doom?
 What are your experiences of being a hustler; where has it taken you to in life?
 Will you suffer the pain of transforming from a hustler to an entrepreneur or suffer the pain of remaining the way you are?

TO MAKE BUSINESS REAL AND AUTHENTIC; IT IS HIGH TIME WE LEFT THE HUSTLING MODE!