Hustle

One of my favorite stories that I retold in the Principles of Entrepreneurial Progress is the story of Sara Blakely , the founder of Spanx, selling her "unknown" footless pantyhose product to a buyer from Neiman Marcus for the first time...

At 27 years old, Sara had been struggling to make a living selling fax machines door to door. She had no business degree and less than $5,000 in savings. With her footless pantyhose prototypes, she convinced a hosiery manufacturer in North Carolina to produce a limited run of commercial samples only after the representative from the manufacturer shared the idea of footless pantyhose with his wife and daughters. He could not see the value in what Sara had created, but they could. They persuaded him to give it a shot. With commercial samples in hand, Sara started cold-calling department stores. Now, getting a new product into a department store is no easy feat; in fact, many who have tried will tell you it’s impossible.

The challenge is even greater if the department store is well-known and high-end. On the How I Built This podcast, Sara described her efforts to get into Neiman Marcus as her first retail account:

“I called them. . . . I just called them. I went in the Yellow Pages, and I looked at the Neiman Marcus number in Atlanta, and I said, ‘Hi, I’m Sara. I invented a product. Can I come and show it to you?’ And the lady laughed and goes, ‘Ma’am, we have a buying office, and it’s in Dallas.’ And I said, ‘Oh, what’s their number?’ So, she gave me their number and I started calling them, and I just kept calling and trying to get to the hosiery buyer. And I called for days at different times, and she answered the phone, and I took my shot, and I said, ‘Hi, I am Sara Blakely, and I invented a product that is going to change the way your customers wear clothes. And if you give me a few minutes of your time I will fly to Dallas and show you.’ She said, ‘Well, if you are willing to fly here, I will give you 10 minutes of my time.’ And I said, ‘Great!’ And I jumped on a plane, and I flew to Dallas. And I was in the meeting with her, and she was this beautiful woman, impeccably dressed. I’m in the Neiman Marcus headquarters. I have a Zip Lock bag from my kitchen with the prototype in it, a color copy of the packaging that I had created on a friend’s computer, and my lucky red backpack from college that all of my friends begged me not to bring. . . . In the middle of my meeting with her, I could tell I was losing her, and I just knew it was my one shot, so I said, ‘You know what, Diane, will you come with me to the bathroom?’ And she just paused. She goes, ‘Excuse me?’ I go, ‘I know, I know, it’s a little weird. Will you just please come with me to the bathroom? I want to show you my product before and after.’ And she said, ‘Okay.’ And she walked down the hall with me. I had on my cream pants without Spanx on, and then I went in the stall and put Spanx on and came out. And she looked at me, and she goes, ‘Wow! I get it! It’s brilliant.’ And she says, ‘I am going to place an order and put it in seven stores and see how it goes.’ I couldn’t believe it. I got in the car, and I was shaking.”

After this experience, Sara worried that Neiman Marcus would drop the product if sales weren’t strong, so she called up everyone she knew and enlisted them to purchase Spanx off the shelf. She later mailed each of her friends a reimbursement check, bringing her total profits to zero but keeping perceived demand high.

Although unorthodox and clearly unsustainable, these urgent and deliberate problem-solving behaviors are not atypical for entrepreneurs in the earliest stages of their businesses as they seek to make progress with their new ventures. In many instances, such actions are necessary and a productive means to facilitate progress.

My collaborators and I have labeled this behavior as entrepreneurial hustle, defined as

“an entrepreneur’s urgent, unorthodox actions that are intended to be useful in addressing immediate challenges and opportunities under conditions of uncertainty.”

Our research shows that entrepreneurial hustle not only facilitates progress amidst uncertainty but also increases the likelihood that an entrepreneur will attract the support of external stakeholders, be they investors, customers, partners, or early employees.

A Hustle Equation

To help entrepreneurs think about what hustle might look like, I have developed a crude hustle equation, which accounts for (1) the short-term outcome that one desires in the entrepreneurial process, (2) the action that will be required to achieve that outcome, (3) how that action might be carried out with urgency, and (4) how it can be accomplished in an unorthodox way.

This equation won’t tell you exactly what you need to do or how you need to do it, but it will help you think through how you can incorporate more hustle behavior into what you are doing so that you can leverage its benefits in your entrepreneurial journey.

Fisher, G., Stevenson, R., Neubert, E., Burnell, D., & Kuratko, D. F. (2020). Entrepreneurial hustle: Navigating uncertainty and enrolling venture stakeholders through urgent and unorthodox action. Journal of Management Studies, 57(5), 1002-1036.

Fisher, G., Stevenson, R., & Burnell, D. (2020). Permission to hustle: Igniting entrepreneurship in an organization. Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 14, e00173.

Burnell, D., Neubert, E., Fisher, G., Marvel, M. R., Stevenson, R., & Kuratko, D. F. (2024). Entrepreneurial hustle: Scale development and validation. Journal of Business Venturing, 39(4), 106407.