The Hustle: Realizing Your Potential

In the 10 years of my professional life, I have thought: “if only a company could see my potential; if they could see that I am a rising star; if only they would point me towards wherever it is that they want me to succeed and if they would only know that I’ll totally learn it, get it done, work late, sell it, design it, whatever it is I have to do to realize that potential while bringing success to the company.”

This has happened never. And I’ve come to the conclusion that it never will. It’s only until this past year that I’ve had a huge epiphany:

the realization of my potential is up to me and not someone else’s company. The reason being is that the realization of that potential can only (and truly) occur outside of the boxes of corporate America (or someone else’s enterprise). And that the realization of my potential constitutes freedom. Working for a corporation as your single source of options and revenue does not constitute freedom so I will never realize my potential or reason of being by working for someone else.

Not only is there an ever-hanging, dangling carrot in front of you for your entire career but people put up with a lot of nonsense in the name of having fancy titles, the faint possibility of getting fat bonuses, working 60-70 hour weeks, with the hope of what? Making more money? Being even more important? Indulging your ego?

I cannot live my whole life chasing all those things that don’t matter. And much less while working for someone else. They say that you can’t really get rich while working for someone else. And that’s mostly true unless you’re a Tim Cook or Zuckerberg or Bill Gates. But none of us are them. What’s the other alternative to the above then? Realizing your potential through your own venture, your own business, your own hustle. There’s basically no other way. Winning the lottery is bad business and has shitty probability.

At all of the places that I’ve been, whenever I’ve begun to shine or begin tapping into my potential, office politics, bosses, seniority, mediocrity get in the way of me fully realizing that potential. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve learned so much in the corporate environment. I can speak using corporate vernacular with the best of them. KPIs. Deliverables. Objectives. Metrics. Forecasting. Profitability. But it’s the experience that I’ve had working for someone else and then starting my own businesses that have shown me how much more I can do if I do things on my own terms. The possibilities, then, are endless. And while I still have a 9-5 corporate job, I’m making deliberate steps everyday to eventually have self-sustaining income streams in the form of investments, businesses and assets. And I won’t stop until I get there.

I’m building a second business. My first business is a partnership with one of my best friends and so far it has been successful (which means it’s making money and we haven’t gone bankrupt in our first year). This second business though, is by myself. And while I still battle with self-doubt, continuously have voices in my head that say that I should give up, often times have baby panic attacks, fear of failure and doom creep in at odd times during the day, I know that if I am going to have a shot at realizing my potential… it’s going to be on my terms and it’s going to be doing my own thing.

And as long as I do something everyday to keep going forward and remain disciplined in my tasks with actionable goals and measured results, I can simply watch the thoughts in my head as they come in and let them dissolve into the nothingness where they come from. I don’t identify with them nor ruminate over them. I simply keep going and let perspective be the thing that keeps me stone cold sober. It’s either fail now then try again until I get right once or never try and pinch for pennies in my 70s with no hope for living my “golden years” in a dignified manner. I’ll take the “realizing my potential on my own terms today” any day.