Richard Branson is a billionaire badass and has undoubtedly created a next-level EMPIRE with his Virgin brand... 

Virgin Orbit, Virgin Hotels, and Virgin Hyperloop are his newest innovations and this dude and this company quite simply have NO F*ING QUIT in them.

Recently I ran across an article written by the legend himself that contained 5 tips on how to continue to innovate and stay AHEAD OF THE GAME:

Focus on the problem -

Personally, I prefer to focus on the solution, but 6 in one & half a dozen in the other, right?

At some point or another in our lives, we will be immersed in the culture of a team that we play on or a business that we work for... 

Undoubtedly, the culture is created by the attitude and actions of the people within the organization, and ultimately, their collective demeanor and doings are what will constitute the overall evaluation of who the company is and what they represent.

Of course, it is imperative to have a viable leader that reflects the ethics and values the team wishes to instill from top to bottom... 

Without that leadership through action from the top representatives, it is very likely there will be a massive disconnect and a bunch of lone rangers going 15 different directions, many of which have the potential to lead the squad down a snake hole they should have never even considered.

Welcome to the Houston Astros the past few years... 

It’s been well documented in the Daily Hustle that their former manager, AJ Hinch, and I have a long-standing relationship and I have gone on record commending AJ for his leadership skills...

So what happened? 

The leader got caught in the culture. 

In 2017, Carlos Beltran arrived in Houston and pointed out the glaring reality that they were way behind in the sign-stealing game... 

Regardless of how you feel on the subject, stealing signs has been going on since the creation of baseball and many would argue that it is just part of the game... 

Beltran was notorious for picking up pitches either from visually reading a pitchers tendencies or decoding catchers’ signals from 2nd base. It has been said that he was instrumental in teaching many of the Astros young players what to look for and the best way to relay that information... All of which most people involved in the game would have told you are “fair play.” 

After that, I can’t really tell you what happened because I don’t know all the details, but apparently it involved a live video monitor near the dugout and banging trash cans to indicate what pitch was coming... 

It’s very easy to see how this so easily progressed...

Even with somebody who has been described as a quality leader at the helm and even with players and coaches who by all accounts are genuine good dudes, boundaries were crossed, and it is incredibly unfortunate for the Houston Astros organization and the game of baseball in general. 

Once they were picking up pitches and relaying signs, they realized they had the ability to take it a step further when they had access to the live monitor positioned right next to the dugout... Now, it was just a matter of relaying what pitch was called to the batter which can be done 10,000 different ways... Apparently, the trash can banging was their preferred method of high tech communication.  

The wrongful, over the top and relatively elementary methods were easy to rationalize... Just like nearly all other teams, the Astros were already stealing signs part of the time, now they had the ability to do it almost all of the time... 

Unfortunately, they couldn’t resist temptation and took advantage of the opportunity that has now ruined the image of the team, players and their World Series championship. 

I get how and why they were able to justify their actions... Ballplayers & coaches have been doing similar shit for 150 plus years so fuck it... Right?

WRONG.

This is the problem with sign-stealing... It’s cheating and it ALWAYS has been. Just like the steroid era, once that cheating can of shit worms is officially open and mass amounts of players indulge, the line of morality and sportsmanship isn’t just blurred, it’s fucking GONE and so is the culture... 

We now have otherwise good human beings who got caught up in a dangerous ...

Was down in Arizona coaching a baseball tourney when I knocked out 44 birthday miles... One of our kids' Dad just so happens to be a loyal Daily Hustler and offered to run a few miles with me... 

Figuring our dude hasn’t run more than 5 miles in years and he had never run more than 13 miles, I felt like 15 was a good number to shoot for...

Of course, the 15 large recommendation was met with laughter & resistance the night before, but after a few margaritas, I got our man RTL to buy in... 

Here’s the deal... We as a society constantly put restraints and limits on ourselves that have been established by other people completely irrelevant and inconsequential to us. 

The legend of the marathon goes back over 2,400 years ago and many people dispute the story which led to the ultimate creation of what has become the gold standard of the endurance world. 

My entire lifetime we have been held hostage by the preordained distances of the mile, 5k, 10k, half marathon and marathon... Yet the reality is that we can run whatever distance we want and we are capable of so much more than we & just about everyone else believes… 

Knowing that RTL had never run more than 13.1, I wanted to make sure he knew that even without training, he had what it took to bust through that barrier. 

This actually had zero to do with physical fitness and everything to do with going beyond what is perceived possible... That said, RTL joined me and Kowalski for not just 15, but 16 miles of the 44 and CRUSHED them like a gosh damn fucking champion. 

Sure he was a bit torn up, but we all know there is no victory in anything unless there are legitimate work and sacrifice put into the endeavor... When I saw RTL later that night using the handrail at the stadium to assist him with each step getting down the stairs, I knew one thing... 

Barriers were BROKEN.

Today is St. Patrick’s Day and because most of you Go Hards use this day to binge drink green beer and Irish whiskey, I figured we here at the Daily Hustle can at least give you meatheads a little history lesson so the adult beverages have some sort of context before you sickos black out...

St. Patrick was born in 385 AD and was the patron saint of Ireland who was largely responsible for bringing Christianity to Ireland... St. Patty’s Day is held on March 17th each year (the day St. Patrick died), and it has since turned into a massive celebration of the Irish heritage all around the world. 

Apparently St. Patrick used a three-leaf clover to explain the trinity to the pagan Irish and thus the shamrock and the color green has become the symbols that represent the holiday...

Unfortunately, St. Patty’s Day has come under attack for various reasons and many people have even tried to ban the holiday altogether... As a 3rd generation Irish American that is damn near 75% from the native land according to 23 & Me, I take great pride in the holiday and I am grateful to be able to celebrate my heritage and ancestors who have paved the way for me and the entire O’Byrne family...

Yup, O’Byrne is our original namesake, but the O was dropped and an S was added upon arrival into the United States. When the Irish first landed on Ellis Island, they dealt with all sorts of discrimination so “Americanizing” names were relatively prominent.

Maybe us Irishman overindulge a bit and we can be a tad boisterous at times, but the concept and idea of St. Patrick’s Day and the celebration of the Irish culture is an awesome opportunity to sit the kids down and teach them about the history and legacy of the Irish people... 

Look, we are all from different places around the world and what makes America great is that it is a gigantic melting pot of ethnicities and cultures... This isn’t something that we should try to bury, this is something that needs to be taught and celebrated regardless of hypersensitivities to various “appropriations.”  

Yes, we are all Americans, but we all have roots that stretch far & wide beyond this land... The beautiful thing about this place is that we are all different and so long as we continue to champion our differences while educating the next generation about the history & beauty of ALL cultures, the United States will continue to be the greatest mixture & nation in the world…

-EB

The head of our kids' school gave my wife a book last year, and as soon as she brought it home, I couldn’t stop eyeballing this thing... 

The title is Good Life Practice - A Quick Start Guide To Mindful Self Regulation and it was written by David Mochel.

There is nothing fancy about the cover, kinda plain and boring actually, and I don’t know Mochel’s story at all... 

As a matter of fact, I have never even heard of the dude and definitely had no idea about any sort of writing prowess he may possess... Yet, I do know the head of the school and I have a lot of respect for her, so I figured if she went so far to give Tarah a book, this thing must contain some serious intellectual savagery... 

Spot on.

When I opened the book, the first section was titled “Top 5 reasons NOT to read this book.” 

There is nothing new here 

I am not enlightened 

This is not a feel-good book 

It is not a quick fix 

You don’t need fixing 

I love this approach... 

So many people claim to have these revolutionary life hacks that will instantly make us all perfectly happy and healthy for the rest of our lives until the 500 virgins come to rescue us from the planet... 

They claim to be more knowledgeable and experienced while oftentimes speaking down to us and scolding us as if we are their kids that can’t stop screwing up. The ironic thing is that a lot of these people are socially inept and actually haven’t done shit with their lives...

Look, we here at the Daily Hustle are

In the late Chris Anderson’s quotation book that his family recently sent me, there is no doubt that Mr. and Mrs. Anonymous dominate the pages, and as a matter of fact, Chris actually dedicates the book to them at the beginning... 

Yet, there is also another dude that frequents the book and has a good number of fantastic nuggets of wisdom.

His name... Mr. Stick.

It’s not explained who Mr. Stick is and for the sake of this Daily Hustle, I am NOT going to do any research to find out... Sometimes it’s better in life when people remain unknown and we are able to use our imagination to create an entire biography and our own visual image... 

That said, I feel like we have all had a Mr. Stick in our life... The one teacher who was never afraid to NOT follow the curriculum. This was the teacher that told us to turn in our textbooks the minute we received them and then fired them into a cardboard box for the rest of the school year, never to be touched again...

The Mr. Stick’s of the world have no interest in teaching from politically correct books subjectively created by people trying to protect our youth from the harsh realities of an oftentimes dark history...

Those books don’t always tell the entire story but no worries because Mr. Stick does. 

If we want the real account of what went down at Woodstock in 1969, no need to try to read it out of a textbook when Mr. Stick and his VW Bus just so happened to be there with his 2 girlfriends, Penelope & Flower.

Got an email recently from former Clemson stud quarterback and loyal Daily Hustler, Tajh Boyd... 

At the bottom of the email was a quote from Thomas Edison that read:

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” 

Immediately, I copied and pasted the quote then put it into my notes section where I write all my Daily Hustles... Ironically, the next day, I ran across a tweet celebrating Thomas Edison and his 173rd B Day... 

I clicked on the article and immediately discovered that Edison, who is most famous these days for his invention of the lightbulb and his long list of fantastic life motivating quotes, was not just a one-hit-wonder who talked the talk, this dude was a multifaceted, intellectual, hard-working badass that walked the walk of all walks... 

In total, Edison had 2,332 patents worldwide and his first invention at the ripe age of 22 was actually an electric vote recorder which was created in 1869... 

Still trying to figure out how the fuck in the 21st century I was still voting by checking boxes with a number 2 pencil, but that’s a story for another Daily Hustle.

Building off of yesterday’s ski parent Daily Hustle, we are going to take today to celebrate the father of what could be the greatest competitive skier of all time, Mikaela Shiffrin... 

Jeff Shiffrin grew up in New Jersey and was an avid athlete and musician... He ended up at Dartmouth and then later met his wife, Eileen, while she was working as an ICU nurse and he was doing his residency at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Brighton, Massachusetts.

Both parents shared an immense passion for the mountains and skiing so they moved to Vail, Colorado shortly after marrying and immersed themselves smack dab in the middle of the growing mountain living subculture.

“Mom and Dad never pushed us to do anything, they guided us,” Taylor, the Shiffrin’s son, recently told the Denver Post... 

Ohhhhhh, I LOVE that... Obviously we have a serious problem with parents pushing kids into activities only to have it backfire, and oftentimes, lifelong child or parent resentment will follow... 

Yet, on the other hand, apathy is lethal and if we don’t GUIDE our kids toward receiving a proper education and accumulating experiences through some form of structured activities, we sure as shit aren’t doing our job either.

“He was a believer in the process, not in the results, and because of that he ardently fought against the notion of pushing someone towards a specific objective. Because you can’t achieve those objectives without the process.”

Sounds like Jeff was a man after the Daily Hustle’s heart... 

The most important thing that we preach here is that the process is EVERYTHING and specific outcomes are too often way outside of our control so there is no sense letting the reward indicate whether or not we succeeded or failed... Our execution of the process has been and always will be the ultimate indicator. 

Taylor said that the most important thing to his father was family and he had a special phrase for the kids... 

“Be nice, think first, have fun.” 

Once again... LOVE IT.

The only two rules we have in the Byrnes house are NO WHINERS and BE KIND. 

Typically, if we aren’t whining and we are being kind, everybody is thinking first (most of the time) and having fun... 

Taylor continued... 

“He would often say anything that brings immediate pleasure or enjoyment with ease probably isn’t good for you and it’s not worth it.” 

You see Mr. SuperSoft, I’m not the only one who warns you against that massive cocaine & hooker habit of yours... Immediate gratification that has no sort of emotional or meaningful connection actually isn’t gratifying at all... It’s fleeting and will leave you feeling empty and possibly even contemplating swallowing a 12 gauge... NOT a good idea.

As a parent of 3 kids who has somehow gotten heavily into youth ski racing, I applaud all those who have come before, all who are currently in the trenches, and all who will embark on the arduous journey in the future...

And no, I am not talking about the kids that train like damn near professionals and fearlessly huck themselves down super steep mountains on race day all for the glory of a 5 cent metal... 

I’m clearly talking about the ski parents.

For years I have thought about what constitutes a “true leader.”  

In my world, I have dealt with teachers, coaches, and mentors that have helped guide and mold me into the person that I have become... 

Along the way, I have encountered some incredible leaders that have made a tremendous impact, not only on my life but on the lives of many others as well.

Yet, I have also come across countless people who happen to be in a leadership position that has no fucking clue what being a leader is all about...

These are the people that, first and foremost, look after their own ass well before thinking about what is best for the team or organization.... They are social recluses that lack basic communication skills, and even though they may say the right things, their despicable and selfish actions speak far louder than any bullshit words. 

Authenticity is non-existent, and these people pretending to be leaders because of some sort of title thrust upon them are simply pawns for a system predicated on a toxic culture created by bad people.

Inevitably, the ship will hit the iceberg and the entire operating system will combust... 

The only question is whether or not we are able to hop on a lifeboat early enough, or we end up going down with the sinking ship. 

Oh yea, in case you were wondering, that penis faced captain we have been talking about, he jumped ship a long time ago and is sucking down fruit cocktails on “Go Fuck Yourself” island... 

Now that we have officially defined the “False Leader,” let's investigate what actually makes a “True Leader.” 

In the late legendary ski coach Chis Anderson’s quotation elevation book, the quote that sums up a “true leader” just so happens to be the first one supplanted in the “leadership” section:

“The true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions and the compassion to listen to the needs of others... He does not set out to be a leader but becomes one by the quality of his actions and the integrity of his intent.  In the end, leaders are much like eagles, they don’t flock together, you find them one at a time...” 

Let's just all make sure we spread our wings... CA FUCKING CA!!!!!!!!

-EB