You are not a victim. That's
right. You're not a victim.

You can't be if you want to be successful
at business, successful in sports,

or successful in life.
Hey, now it's Dave Lorenzo.

This is the Saturday Side Hustle
here on the Inside BS show.

I'm solo today because it's Saturday.

We'll be back with Nikki g next week to
do the Inside BSS show that you've come

to expect. But today's Saturday side
hustle is all about your attitude.

Your attitude is everything if you
want to be successful in business,

life and sports.

And the reason I'm doing this show
today is because I had a couple

of things presented to
me this week that really

drew me in to let me understand the

mindset of people who make it
as entrepreneurs versus the

mindset of people who don't make it as
entrepreneurs or the mindset of people

who could never be entrepreneurs in the
first place. Let me tell you the first

thing that caught my eye and
see if it resonates with you.

So I post on LinkedIn every day

and this week I'm really focused
on posting written content in

addition to the videos that I've put out.

And I happen to think to myself, well,

this particular video that
I'm posting on LinkedIn,

it probably would be good
for my Facebook audience.

So I'm going to also try posting it
on Facebook to see if it resonates.

And I happened to see one
of my friends on Facebook

who was traveling and

something came up and there was a mistake

that this person made in their travels,

and they decided to make a video about it,

and they made themselves
into a victim in the video.

And I was so taken aback
because I'm thinking to myself,

okay,

so you made the mistake with the travel.
You screwed up

and you're trying to garner
sympathy as a victim because of your

mistake.

That's not something that
resonates with successful

people victimhood.

It's something that successful
people reject because when

you're successful and bad things
happen to you, you adjust.

You want an example, I'll give you
an example from the world of sports.

Jim Abbott. Look him up.

Those of you who are Gen Xers or Gen Xers,

Jim Abbott was a pitcher pitched
in several different major

league organizations with
one arm. That's right.

He was a one armed pitcher. He pitched
a no-hitter for the New York Yankees.

He had every reason to act like a victim,

yet he didn't. He persevered.
He worked on his grit.

And he's one of only a handful
of people in the history of

Major league baseball
to pitch a no hitter,

and he did it with one arm.

So if you're out there and
you've had to run a bad luck,

you lost a few clients
or you lost your job,

that sucks. I feel horrible
that that happened to you.

But you have two routes you can take.

Route number one is you can feel
sorry for yourself and you could say,

woe is me.

And you can literally cry in your
beer every night telling anyone

who will listen, what a victim you are.

Route number two is the Jim Abbott route,

and that's the route where you
figure out what you need to do

to be successful. What's
successful entrepreneurs do?

They figure it out. All along the way,

things happen. Roadblocks pop up,

funding sources dry up, clients go away,

suppliers go bankrupt.
Pandemics happen.

And you know what successful
entrepreneurs find a

way. Now, look,

if you belong to a peer
group like Vistage or EO

or the exit success lab that Nikki
g and I are putting together,

those things are lifesavers when

stuff happens to you as an entrepreneur,

but you can't show
yourself being a victim on

social media, not because of what
the world will think about you,

but because of the
mindset it creates in you.

You are never a victim because if
you're a victim, you're somebody who,

things happen to somebody
who doesn't recover.

You're not a victim, you're an
entrepreneur, you improvise, you adjust,

you adapt.

I had to teach this lesson
to my 12 year old daughter.

She's a volleyball player
and she's worked hard.

She played volleyball all last
year. She played on a club team,

she played on her school team.
She's taken lessons, she's working hard,

she's getting better.

But there are other kids who've been
playing for years and years and years

longer than she's been
playing. So in her club team,

she didn't make the top tier team,
she didn't make the second tier team.

She made the third tier team,
and she's very upset about that.

And she thought it was
unfair. And I said to her,

are the players on these other teams?

Are all those players on the other
two tiers of teams better than you?

And she said, yes. And I said,

then it is fair because sports
like life is a Meritocracy.

And even if it was unfair,

even if you were better than two or
three of the players on one of the other

teams, you didn't demonstrate
that effectively enough.

And that sometimes happens in life.

Sometimes the best person in life doesn't
get the deal because they didn't do a

good job of pitching themselves or
because they didn't do a good job of

explaining their value
proposition. So this past week,

my daughter found out that
she was on her school,

has an A team and a B team
for the middle school folks.

And she found out that she had made
the A team and she had her first game

yesterday and she didn't
get any playing time.

And she came in the car and she was so
upset. I didn't get any playing time,

I didn't get any playing time. And I said,

the starting six were really, really good.
I said,

and the one person who subs the
defensive sub called the Libero,

that's what it's called in volleyball.
The Libero defensive sub is really,

really good. And she said, but the
Libero is brand new and I'm brand new.

And the Libero had never played
volleyball. I'd been playing for a year.

And I said, yes,

but the Libero is a natural athlete
and she made several great plays.

I said,

you have to demonstrate in
practice that you are aggressive,

that you're going to outwork everyone,
that you're going to out hustle them,

that you're going to work on your talent
because you're not there at a talent

level yet,

that you're going to work hard to improve
your talent level so that you deserve

to be on the court. And
she said, yeah, but dad,

I did that last week in
practice. I said, yes,

that's why you made this team in the
first place. Now to get off the bench,

you're going to have to demonstrate
that consistently over and over and over

again.

You're going to have to consistently
demonstrate that you have that and you're

going to have to demonstrate that
you're improving your skills,

you're improving your talent,

and once the coaches are
satisfied that you've done that,

they're going to give you a shot.
And when they give you a shot,

if you screw up,

you're going to be right back on the
bench and you may never get another shot.

And that's exactly what life is like.

That's exactly what life is like as an
entrepreneur. Except as entrepreneurs,

we always believe that we're
going to get another shot.

We always believe there's
another opportunity.

So you have something as an
entrepreneur that you need to

rely on,

and it's the exact opposite of
being a victim and that's having a

burning desire.

Your burning desire manifests
itself in three ways.

The first way is that you're willing
to do more work than everyone else.

If you really have a burning desire,
you're going to do more work.

And that's the quantity of
your effort is better than your

competitors.

The second way burning desire
manifests itself is in the quality

of your effort. More intensity.
You're going to bring more focus.

You're going to do your research ahead
of time to get your Marketing message

exactly right, and the
intensity is going to be there.

So that's the quality of the effort.

And the third way your burning
desire manifests itself is in grit.

Your ability to keep coming back
no matter what life throws at you,

your ability to keep coming back,

no matter how many times you go
broke your ability to come back.

No matter how many times you
hear no when you're selling.

If you want to be successful
at anything in life,

particularly at entrepreneurship,

you have to become a
savage. I love this word.

Think about what a savage is.

It's somebody who just puts
forth raw, unadulterated effort,

somebody who's out there
battling every single day.

Your success as an
entrepreneur is completely

dependent on your ability
just to keep coming back.

Your savage nature is what's
going to make you successful in

entrepreneurship, and it's what's
going to make you successful in life.

I'm Dave Lorenzo. This is
the Saturday side Hustle,

and we'll see you savages back
here tomorrow for the Sunday

Special.