Okay, guys. Midway through our Sri Lankan adventure. Made a mistake and decided to hire a car. That was a three-hour process. There’s a legit no road rules here. It is freaking nuts. Buses just come out. Anyway, this video is not about driving your car. What I am really be going here though is about the hustle that happens in developing countries. The place reminds me a lot of India, and obviously very close, but also Africa, in Kenya where I spent a bit of time back in 2012.
The hustle that happens here, much like Brazil, they’ll hustle over everything. They’ll hustle you for a car ride, for a tour. They’ll hustle you for a taxi. They’ll literally do whatever they can to make a dollar. The reason why is that they value it so much. Because so many of them live in poverty, a dollar goes a really long way and tourism is so important.
I think that so often as entrepreneurs we can fall into the trap of just getting lazy, of getting complacent because we’ve got a bed, a roof over our head, we’ve got somewhere to sleep and some food to eat, and that hunger leaves us. You come to a place like this, for example, and you just see so much commerce as a necessity because they just don’t have the opportunity. You look at…I was listening to a video from Bill Clinton.
He was talking about our generation, Gen Y, as being the first generation in the history of man to get to choose what they want to do with their working hours. We actually get that choice. Our parents didn’t get that choice nearly as much as what we do. Our great grandparents definitely didn’t get that choice, and they sacrificed a lot for it. You come to a country like Sri Lanka where there is choice, but there’s only choice for certain people, people that have gone and become educated.
There is still people that live in Sri Lanka, particularly in rural Sri Lanka, that will never get the opportunity to choose though. They’ll be forced to work in hospitality or taxi, for example. It just doesn’t happen. I just want to encourage everybody to take note of what it’s like to…if you have hulking mobile phones on the street corners of Sri Lanka or if you were trying to sell Pepsi and cola in a local mini mart, or if you’re a taxi driver in one of these countries, you have to work so much harder just to be able to make ends meet. You would see everyone as a potential customer and you’ll go after it.
Just the other night I was walking down Galle Face Beach, a beautiful beach in Sri Lanka, and I just happened to be walking. There was a guy walking in front of me. I ended up catching up to him and he sat down and had a conversation with me. Five minutes later, it turns out that he has a taxi company and he was prospecting me. This happens in Sri Lanka. I didn’t mind because I appreciate the hustle, but then it was a case of, “Let me get your number I’ll give you the best deal. Tomorrow I’ll connect in.”
He got all my details. I actually gave him the wrong hotel. I told him I was staying at a different hotel down the street. He identified that it was the wrong hotel. He went to the wrong hotel. I wasn’t there, so then he went to the other hotels in the area until he managed to find me in the room that I was in. This is the level of hustle that it takes to try and get business. He called me four or five times yesterday to hire me a car, and now I’ve got a hired car.
So you’ve got to go to that level of that extreme. If you can take a third world hustle mentality to a first world country, you’ll stand out because the reality is people that live in the Western world get lazy. They forget what it took to get them there and most of them never had to get there. They were just born there and they take the liberty for granted. When you have to hustle to pay the bills and your full day’s work ends up equivaling to two or three, maybe $10 Australian, the world takes on a whole different shine.
So, guys, I’m here in Sri Lanka. I’m going to give you more updates as I go on this journey over the next couple days. Got heaps to share from Dubai that I still haven’t got done but I’ve got limited battery life and I want to make sure I can actually see where I’m going before I die in this car. I just want to encourage everyone to keep picking goals to live strong, live with passion. You know the drill by now.
Above all else, you want to live life on your terms because there are people in the world that just can’t. A perfect example is these tuk tuk drivers that are out there hustling. I’m not sure if you can see it properly, but these tuk tuk drivers, they’re going to probably try and kill me. They’re right there hustling, making things happen. Guys, you got to remember what it was like. Imagine if you were driving that as well instead of driving your Mercedes Benz, how would the game change? Lots of love guys. Good luck and God bless.
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