What a Pothead in a Backpacker's Hostel Taught Me About Hustle
My best business advice came from a woman with no ticket, no money, and absolutely no quit.
Some of the best business advice doesn't come from a book, a conference, or a high-priced consultant. Sometimes, it comes from the most unexpected source, in the most unlikely of places. For me, that place was a six-bed dorm room in a Byron Bay hostel, and the source was a burnt-out hippie who just really, really wanted to see Ben Harper.
I was three-quarters of the way through my university degree and decided to take a year off to work and travel. My journey led me to a backpacker's hostel in Australia, where money was tight and my world was a mix of new faces and shared spaces. One of those faces belonged to a woman who started & ended her day in a cloud of smoke and didn’t stop talking in-between. She was a generation older than me and definitely lived life to the fullest. I enjoyed listening to her stories because she was an absolute vibe.
While we were there, a huge concert was happening, with Ben Harper headlining. My dorm-mate decided she was going, period. It didn't matter that she didn't have a ticket. It didn't even matter that she didn't have money for a ticket. In her mind, it was already happening.
The next day, she told me the story. She went to the concert venue and hopped the fence. Within minutes, she was tracked down by security and promptly escorted out. Undeterred, she walked to a different section of the fence and hopped it again. Again, security found her. Again, she was kicked out. This went on several times—a relentless cycle of intrusion and expulsion.
And then, something shifted. After being caught for the umpteenth time, the security guards just gave up. They were so exhausted by her sheer, stubborn persistence that they decided they just didn't care anymore. They let her in.
Her moral of the story, delivered with the knowing grin of someone who has gotten away with a lot in their life, has stuck with me for years: "Persistence beats resistance."
It's amazing how often I think about that woman, someone I only knew for two nights, and yet her mantra has become a cornerstone of my own business philosophy. Her approach cuts directly through one of the biggest traps we fall into: waiting for the perfect plan. We convince ourselves we need every step mapped out before we can begin, but the perfect plan is a myth. It’s a comfortable form of resistance that keeps us from the messy, unpredictable, and necessary work of actually starting.
My dorm-mate didn’t have a detailed strategy; she had a goal and was prepared to persevere through the inevitable obstacles that stood in her way. She understood that the journey begins not when the plan is perfect, but simply when you decide to start.
With a couple more decades under my belt I know now that every successful endeavor can be attributed partially to luck. But the most successful people I know have a habit of making their own luck through sheer persistence. They start where they are, and they just keep going until eventually, it pays off.
Now I’d love to hear from you.
When did you learn a valuable lesson from an unlikely source & what was it