Digital edition  ·  RM29.90

The Great Hustler, written by Mohd Atasha Alias

A short novel about building a business, and about what all that effort is finally for. 120 pages, 19 chapters, and 19 exercises you can run on your own business this week.

Request a digital copy What you get

With a Foreword by Bill Reichert, Garage Technology Ventures

The print run Hard copies sold out in 2019. The digital edition is available now for RM29.90.

Front cover of The Great Hustler by Mohd Atasha Alias

What you get

The whole book, on the screen you already carry

  • The complete book, 120 pages, first published in 2018
  • 19 chapters, one continuous story from the stall to the reckoning
  • 19 practical applications, one at the close of every chapter
  • A Foreword by Bill Reichert of Garage Technology Ventures
  • Reads on a phone, a tablet, or a laptop
  • One payment, yours to keep, no subscription

RM29.90 One time

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Chapter one

The stall on Jalan Aji Segamat

Four fold-up tables, a blue tarp, and fruit he did not grow. That is the whole business. Ali works it the way most people work. Harder, longer, and without ever asking what the effort is meant to add up to.

Then a woman stops. She ignores the good durian at the front of the table and asks for the cheapest thing he has. Over the next two years, what she gives him is not advice. It is better questions.

What follows is a company, a failure, a buyout, and a morning after. This book is about that morning after, and about what a person decides to do with everything the hustle handed them.

This is not a book about working until you break.
It is a book about what hustle is for.

Hustle creates opportunity, but only disciplined learning, trustworthy relationships, sound governance, gratitude, and paying it forward turn opportunity into a life and a legacy that matter.

It is a story and a workbook

Nineteen chapters, nineteen things to go and do

Every chapter ends with a practical application. A short, plain set of questions to run on your own business. Here are eight of the nineteen.

  1. 01

    Find the problem close enough to your own life that you would still work on it in the slow months.

  2. 03

    Audit the strengths you keep brushing off, and split them into proven and untested.

  3. 05

    Set the number below which you stop, before the first failure sets it for you.

  4. 07

    Learn how to be worth helping. Ask for nine minutes, not a coffee, and come back with the work.

  5. 08

    Hire for the gap, not the overflow, and write the promise down the same week.

  6. 12

    Read the document you did not read. Your lawyer, not theirs, and take the two weeks.

  7. 14

    Keep the other ledger. Your real debts, at the real number, and a bucket for each dependent.

  8. 17

    Know exactly who can remove you, and who can force a sale of the thing you built.

Malaysia, 2018

The rooms where the book was first shared

Ten readers at an evening gathering, each holding a copy of the book A reader in a coffee shop wearing a shirt printed with the book title Two men at a bookshop holding a copy of the book between them The author speaking to a seated audience inside a bookshop A full room of about fifty attendees at one of the 2018 sessions
The events where the book was first shared, 2018
We do not need to teach people how to hustle. We need to help them unlearn the fear that stops them.

Bill Reichert Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures · from the Foreword

Inside the book

Four parts, one arc

  1. Part one

    The Stall

    Where the hustle starts, what he is actually good at, and the question he cannot answer.

  2. Part two

    The Build

    The site nobody visited, the first hire, the fruit nobody sprayed, and the ledger he was not keeping.

  3. Part three

    The Scale

    The other ten months of the year, and the company that quietly outgrows its founder.

  4. Part four

    The Reckoning

    The price of control, the second half of the plan, and a shop in Pendang.

Who it is for

Anyone who was told to work harder and never asked what for

  • Starting with almost nothing

    You have effort, a small table, and no map. The book starts there.

  • Running something that grew

    The company has outgrown the way you run it, and nobody has said so out loud.

  • Handing something over

    You teach, mentor, or employ young people, and you want a story they will finish.

  • Rebuilding after a loss

    Great hustlers do not grow through success. They grow through the morning after.

About the author

Mohd Atasha Alias

He has spent his working life among entrepreneurs, watching them start, fail, restart, and occasionally build something that outlasts them. He advises founders and business leaders across Asia-Pacific and Europe, and has worked with organisations ranging from Fortune 500 groups to first ventures.

Much of that work was done at Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation, and as a fellow of the eFounders Fellowship Program of the United Nations, UNCTAD and the Alibaba Group in Hangzhou.

The Great Hustler is his first book, an attempt to pay it forward.

The digital edition

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Hard copies sold out in 2019. The digital edition is the way to read it now.

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  • What to send

    Your name, where you are, and the email address the copy should go to.

  • Where it goes

    The partnership form on mohdatasha.com, which the author reads himself.

RM29.90
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