Find Creative Solutions to Problems
That May Even Sometimes Involve Gray Areas
This article is part of a series entitled “The New Hustler’s Manifesto”. Check it out and let me know thoughts.
Find Creative Solutions to Problems
A year ago, I lost my sunglasses at South by Southwest. Now this would sound like a minor mishap, but it was the third pair I had lost, of designer sunglasses no less. Clearly I’m not supposed to have nice things, but I do like wearing sunglasses and knew I needed to get another pair. Well, we had a bunch of sunglasses made before SXSW for one of the companies I helped build called gSchool, and I thought, “Why not just get some cheap sunglasses made with something printed on them?” As I went to order some, I realized that I could only get 150 pairs as a minimum order. The awesome thing was, they were only about $1.50 each, so I said fuck it and ordered 200 pairs of recycled rubber wayfarer sunglasses with my name ‘Tony’ on the side. They are amazing, and I probably won’t ever have to buy another pair of sunglasses as long as I live. It’s kind of genius really, especially because I don’t give a shit what other people think about my cheap sunglasses. Could I have just bought another pair to replace my original pair? Sure, that’s one solution, but I wanted to be a little more creative.
About Those Gray Areas
Sometimes solutions are not always this clean, fun, and creative. Sometimes they are a little down and dirty. Sometimes they go just past the edge of ethical but stay just on the right side of legal.
In technology, and many other disruption-centric categories, getting people to use a product is never easy. You have to raise awareness, educate new users, study how people use the product, tweak messaging, track analytics, follow up, provide stellar service that’s scalable, and more. This is often a frustrating thing to deal with because it involves so many unknowns. It can be disheartening when nobody is buying the thing you have put so much passion into, or they don’t care about your initiative. Getting new users is such a problem that an entire new job category has been created over the last few years called Growth Hacking. Growth hackers are the definition of Hustlers. They are constantly finding new ways to solve problems, usually have a great network of smart friends, are not scared to push the boundaries of what’s “right”, and they have a fantastic sense of how to track their progress.
This carries over into any industry though and can affect your mindset no matter what you’re doing. In the Olympics, you can train harder or you can use performance enhancing drugs. For Girl Scout cookies, you can sell door to door or sell in front of a marijuana dispensary. For videos games, you can practice more or use cheat codes. For tech companies, you can create a great product and grow organically or find temporary SEO hacks and steal users from other companies. Are any of these things technically illegal? Well, maybe in the context of what you’re doing, but none of these things will get you put in jail. I mean shit, look at Lance Armstrong. The guy hustled the cycling world for years, made many millions of dollars in endorsements, became a hero, and then we found out he was breaking the rules. Will he go to jail? No. But he is suffering the consequences.
So you have to ask yourself, “Is there a gray area around what I’m doing and how far do I want to step into it?” “What will it mean for my reputation?” “Will this hurt other people and ultimately hurt me or my loved ones?” “Am I okay with that?” The fact that we even contemplate things like this is a great indicator of how painful growth can be, and how hard creativity is for some people. That difficulty leads us to procrastinate, put ourselves before others, lie, cheat, and steal. All so we can get where we want to go more easily.
“Creativity loves constraints.” — Marissa Mayer
Being a better you, or a better organization, can be achieved a billion different ways. You have to decided how “creative” you want to get, even if it means stepping on a few toes. Operating with constraints forces creativity, so embrace the difficulties, come up with interesting and elegant solutions, and hack growth. Just don’t break the law.
Side Note: I started a collection to start putting together stories of hustling tech if you’re interested in contributing your own stories.
