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side hustles are a way for people to make money alongside their normal form of employment
the promise of a side hustle is that you can earn some extra money to treat yourself to a vacation
save for a future goal or simply to make your everyday finances less stressful side hustles can
take on many different forms ranging from flipping stuff on ebay to driving for uber some of these
hustles have the promise of making some very decent money and alongside a boost to everyday
finances some people might maintain the dream of making their side hustle their full-time job
this stream can be particularly alluring for people that are making a side hustle
out of monetizing their hobbies who wouldn't want to be paid for doing something that they would
have done for fun anyway it's a promising concept and it's no wonder that interest in side hustles
has exploded in recent years but if we try to be honest with ourselves nobody wants a side hustle
nobody gets home from a long day in the office and thinks to themselves i can't wait to drive drunk
people home from the bar or deal with customer complaints on my ebay store no people need side
hustles and if they are lucky they have convinced themselves that they don't totally hate them you
have probably heard platitudes like in order to be successful you need multiple streams of income or
nobody ever got wealthy off a nine to five and these ideas really support the idea of getting
out there and working on something more than your career side hustles and hustle culture in general
might look harmless after all what's the problem with motivated individuals doing a little bit of
extra work to put some more money in their pockets maybe side hustles can do some good and i promise
i will look at some examples that do genuinely make some sense in this video but as always my
main goal is to try to ruin a good thing and show you that this push to normalize and incentivize
side hustles is something we probably shouldn't be too excited about so it's time to learn how
money works which was made possible this week by storyblocks the best platform on the internet for
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with storyblocks now a side hustle should ideally be able to accommodate four important parameters
it has to make money otherwise it's just a hobby it has to be doable outside your
regular working hours it has to be something you have the expertise and resources to accomplish
and if it accomplishes this then why not make it your full-time job conveniently these requirements
give a would-be side hustler a checklist of very important questions they should ask themselves
before starting out but i am getting ahead of myself now let's start with the first one most
side hustles are just very small businesses and making money in business is surprisingly difficult
there is a reason why most of them fail you can go for the easy options like driving for uber and you
will be guaranteed a basic level of income so long as you pick up rides as they become available but
there are obviously problems with this system you will be giving a fair chunk of your income away
to the company that facilitates this work and even if you do fully commit yourself to driving in your
off hours the income you receive from doing this is likely going to be lower than most regular jobs
after factoring in additional insurance and the extra miles you put on your car i have already
made an entire video about the shortfalls of starting a business with apps like uber so i won't
dwell on these for too long and instead i want to look at side hustles that are more self-driven
flipping things in online marketplaces consulting or doing chores like gardening are other popular
options that give you the opportunity to make money without an app-based middleman
let's go with something very simple like mowing lawns for your neighbors on the weekend
this can make money so it passes the first test it's also done outside of regular working hours so
it passes the next test and you might think that you wouldn't need much expertise and resources to
set this gig up but you might be surprised most lawns only need to be cut once every two weeks
which means if you want to make this a consistent hustle you are going to need more than just a
lawnmower and a gallon of lemonade before you start making any money you are going to need to
go door to door asking people if they want their lawns mode it sounds easy but going door to door
to sell something is a terrifying experience for 99 of people and even people confident enough to
do it would be surprised how hard it would be to find enough people to agree with your services
to make wasting your weekend worth it in the first place and yes before you write about it
in the comments section i did have a job for three weeks doing door-to-door sales in college please
don't hate me anyway let's say you were made of the right stuff to go out and drum a business
for your weekend lawn mowing gig and it goes so well that you are fully booked out mowing lawns
you have to ask yourself the question of why you don't just make this your new full-time job if you
make more money at your regular job then perhaps you would have been better served just doing some
overtime if overtime isn't a thing in your office then perhaps finding a part-time weekend job in
the same field would work for you if you do make more money mowing lawns then maybe your answer
to this question is that you just don't want to mow lawns for more than one day a week that's
fair but then why the hell are you doing this to yourself if you enjoy mowing lawns less than your
day job then you have just signed yourself up for some well-paid torture but there is a solution to
this which is to focus on where you added the most value in your hustle in this example that would be
in the door-to-door sales if you didn't hate that then you would be best focusing on and pursuing a
career in sales where you can just focus on where you're good at without a need to push a lawnmower
around all weekend of course this is just one example amongst the plethora of different side
hustles available to you so don't take this as career advice on building your lawn care empire
but instead let it demonstrate that most value comes from specializing in one thing and then
doing that thing extremely well an extremely good salesman who spends most of their time
pushing around a lawnmower is not going to make as much money as an extremely good salesman
who focuses on closing deals a website developer will on average make more money building websites
all day than they would by building their own website to try and sell socks online
this advice goes directly against what you might have heard about most millionaires having seven
different sources of income so who's telling the truth here well this claim originally comes from
a 2002 study published by the irs which tracked 6053 wealthy individuals who had died between 1996
and 2002. the study looked at their tax returns and found that these millionaires had seven
distinct forms of income investment income earned income rental income royalty income capital gains
profits and interest income immediately you can start to see the problem here
most of these income types are simply the result of being rich to begin with not from going out and
hashtag grinding the study also showed that most people built their wealth by building one business
or focusing on one highly compensated career which they could then use to buy up assets that would
provide these other income streams the claim that the average millionaire has an average of seven
income streams is also pushing the wording of this report to the level that it's an outright lie only
29 of millionaires in this study reported five or more streams of income with the majority having
just three still impressive but it's not out of the ordinary for a wealthy person to have a job
get some dividends and earn some money from interest in a savings account this rather
disappointing reality is a far cry from what some people might want you to think when they say this
phrase but i'm sorry nobody really gets rich by doing half a dozen jobs there is also one
other problem with drawing any conclusions from this study which is becoming a common theme for
this channel and that is selection bias this study looked at people that died between 1996 and 2002.
most people die when they're old older people especially rich older people have had more
time to accumulate assets to diversify their income away from their primary earned income
most of you watching are a long way from death hopefully and 99 of people that achieve massive
financial success at a young age do it by maxing out one income stream or you know getting a nice
inheritance that works too so if the common belief about multiple income streams is not true why then
do you see it repeated everywhere the cynic in me wants to say that a lot of people spouting
this nonsense have some kind of hidden interest in selling you a course or something on building out
your next income stream and that's definitely part of it but honestly i think that most people that
perpetuate these ideas are people who genuinely need to believe it's true young workers have never
known a world with the level of job security career progression and opportunities available
to the generations that came before them having a backup form of income in case you get fired
out of the blue one day no longer sounds like doomsday prepping it's just prudent advice i am
also well aware of people that need multiple gigs to support themselves and their families because
they don't receive enough income from their main job but to be fair this should be called what
it is which is working multiple jobs to call what someone is doing in these situations a side hustle
is just sugar coating a shitty situation so despite what i have said so far i don't want you
to brush the whole idea of side hustles off i just want to make sure you are asking these questions
so you can avoid wasting your time working just to make some guru or tech company rich so what
would a decent side hustle look like i have no doubt that some people have already left comments
pointing out how hypocritical it is of me to point out the shortcomings of side hustle culture
on a youtube channel that is literally my side hustle but i do practice what i preach and i did
ask these questions before i started making videos does youtube have the potential to make money yes
it's by no means a guarantee but if you work hard and are extremely lucky it can be very rewarding
is it doable outside my regular working hours yes i can make videos any time of day do i have the
expertise to make it work yes i work in banking so i have experience on the subject matter of my
channel and i did some online courses in video editing as for the question why not make it my
full-time job well i want to and it's hopefully something i'll be able to do full-time this year
i didn't start this as a side hustle i started this as something i wanted to make my primary
business building a business on the side of your regular job is a great way to try things out
it lets you experience what running a business is like and it's much less risky than going all
in and depending on the success of a new business to put food on the table but what are some things
that make sense to do if your plans are to just keep your day job long term there are actually a
few take an example like credit card churning this is where you will sign up for new credit cards
spend money you normally would on living expenses to qualify for sign up bonuses and then exchange
those bonus points for cash anybody with decent credit can do this it only takes a few minutes to
fill out an application form and some bonuses can be worth thousands of dollars there are examples
of people making this their full-time jobs in fact i made a video about a man who did just that last
week but unless you find a loophole in the system you are really limited by the amount of the sign
up promotions on offer and how many credit cards the bank will let you have open at any given time
credit card churning is just one example of a side hustle that actually does make sense
and i'm not even saying it's the best one but it works to show that if you ask these
questions before starting a new project you won't be sucked into doing something you hate
because some schmuck on the internet said you should be working 120 hours a week in your 20s
now if instead of finding opportunities to work more you instead want an excuse to work less
then go and watch my video on the surprisingly solid case for a 3 day work week thanks again
for storyblocks for making it possible for everybody to keep on learning how money works