What if I were to tell you most side hustles don’t actually work? And that most of these marketers of their side hustle are purposefully lying to you. With the rise of trendy topics like financial freedom, digital nomad lifestyle, and easy-get-rich-quick topic. People are now being smart with their money and are looking for ways to escape the rat race. If you are looking to start a side hustle, be wary of these side hustle lies.
Just look at Google trends on keywords like side hustles and digital nomads. Both of these topics have risen substantially with side hustle growing more than 10x at one point. It’s no wonder that there are so many marketers and promoters out there feeding you the dream that this side hustle might just be “your financial freedom job.”
Sell The Dream
Who doesn’t want to work remotely, not have to listen to a boss, and get to travel around the world however they like?
You can make $1 million EASY with this side hustle
Marketers are all feeding on your deepest and darkest desire, they know these topics are your weaknesses. That’s why they target these 10 questions to you to get you hooked on the dream.
1) FREE MONEY!
Why aren’t you taking the money? Join me come on?
Yeah, we have all seen and maybe click on affiliate links promising free money.
You’ll click it. I mean, why wouldn’t you?
Then, the catch comes:
- BUT FIRST! You have to XXXX
- Here’s what you need to do first
- All you need is XXX
We have all once fallen for the dream of getting free stuff without having to do much work. Hello, there’s no free meal in the world!
2) Easy to Start
This side hustle is probably the EASIEST you can get started and make money.
I have tried many different side hustles, and from my experience, the side hustles that are the easiest to make money are the ones people usually quit easily.
We have all seen the hype before. The e-commerce, investing, NFT side hustle boom where everyone was doing.
As soon as the hype dies down, all of these businesses quit entirely. If anything were easy in life, everybody would already be doing it.
3) Work Anywhere in the World
You can literally quit your job and work anywhere in the world!
Yeah, this comment catches people’s attention.😂 It’s quite sickening, to be honest. The idea of a simple side hustle that could be easy to start can easily let you work anywhere in the world.
Nonsense!
It took me over 6 years to prepare myself to become a digital nomad. Throughout that time, I had to plan my finances properly to take the leap of faith.
Having these marketers flex on working anywhere in the world without real care is dangerous and scary.
A Day in the Life of a 6-Figure Earning Freelancer👨💼
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4) Quit your 9-to-5!
This side hustle made me quit my 9-to-5, you can too!
I never really recommend anyone to quit their 9-to-5. Honestly, there is nothing wrong with working a 9-to-5, many marketers demonize a 9-to-5 job. What’s wrong with that?
Looking back at my 9-to-5 job, I do miss the simplicity of not having to worry about monthly earnings since at the end of the month, I would be paid by my job.
I believe most people should be working a 9-to-5 job since they aren’t able to dedicate time to work on themselves to build a business. Starting a business does take a lot of time and effort, so if you aren’t going to work on it, then you shouldn’t start a business.
5) Zero to millionaire in XX days or month
Giving a timeline to be rich does make people feel at ease when it comes to working on themselves.
The problem lies with sharing the timeline without sharing the journey to get there.
Yes, the goal always looks so amazing when you stand far from it and when you choose to work your way towards it. Somehow the goal doesn’t look as amazing as it once was.
I share my story of how I became a business owner in 4 years and people consider that as a timeline for themselves.
It’s crazy! Don’t do that!
Everyone has their own time and pace that they are comfortable working on. Many people forget that to be a business owner, there are countless mistakes and learning opportunities that I had to go through to be where I am today.
Obama retired at 55 while Donald Trump started his presidential campaign at 75. Everyone has their own pace in life they have to go through. So try to enjoy the process and not the idea of reaching the destination.
6) They will do all the work for you
This message related well to the hype of the e-commerce side of the business where all you needed to do was to pick a suitable product to market and that’s all you need to do since suppliers will hand the rest.
Seriously? How stupid can you be!
I remember telling my brother that when he first started his e-commerce business. I hate to break it to you but there is plenty of failed e-commerce businesses than successful ones.
The truth is that starting a business is a lot of effort and many hopeful people are just trying to find work that requires the least amount of time to produce the most amount of reward.
You only get that once you have invested enough! As a business owner, you need to dedicate a lot of time to building for someone to come by to support you.
7) Sitting by the beach enjoying every day
Sounds amazing huh?
Well, not really! Trust me, I have tried and tested.
The life of sitting around doing nothing is worst than waking up and working on something. Maybe you can sit on the beach for a few hours but not something you would want to do every day.
8) You can easily retire early
Lately, the FIRE movement, also known as Financially independent Retire Early has become a rising trend amongst millennials and Gen Z.
The movement talks about staying motivated to be safe and investing every spare cent you can into your investment to retire early.
The movement is a great one to have since it motivates and builds good spending habits. However, some people in the campaign have over-glamorized the FIRE movement.
You see, most FIRE movement activists spend at least 10 to 15 years working to escape the corporate lifestyle. Which by itself is truly remarkable! But marketers of this movement made achieving FIRE sound like a breeze which anyone can get there within 10 years.
That’s total BS! Everyone has their family responsibility and life expectations. Not everyone has the opportunity to save or even invest.
If the FIRE movement wishes to promote financial literacy, we need to start with understanding each other personal finance before we share our story to get people into FIRE.
9) Be your Boss
You get to do whatever you want, whenever you want!
Yeah, I get this a lot as a business owner myself. While it does have its perks, life as a business owner is tough.
You need to take all the responsibilities for yourself and anything that goes wrong is all your fault.
10) You don’t need a lot to get started
When was the last time you see a 6-figure business not needing a lot of gadgets to run their business?
I never believe that starting a business with nothing to work with is a good idea. You see, as business owners, we need to be constantly learning the latest tech, and the best strategy, and know what is trendy to stay on top of the business.
If you were to start with nothing, it’s possible. But it does take a lot of time to build a business. If you want to grow a successful business, you need to be investing in yourself and the business. Which in the long run, will cost you a lot of money and have a lot to work with.
What you need to start a Side Hustle
I think we have over-glamorized starting a side hustle. Talking to business owners who started their business as a side hustle they will tell you this:
Nothing comes easy starting a side hustle. Everyone starts from zero and getting your leads takes time to build. In that journey to make a side hustle into a business, many of your peers would give up or force you to leave for their responsibilities.
Those difficult times in making the business work are the point in time when we get to learn and enjoy the process of working hard for success. But the sad reality is that many will give up in those difficult times.
