Crypto, Forex, Affiliate marketing & The Vicious Business of Hustle Culture
There’s a new culture carving its niche in Nigeria — its language is universal — money.
Given a dollar for every thread or ad that has popped up on my Twitter feed about a side hustle;
I will buy Chelsea Fc, broker peace between Ukraine and Russia, drink vodka with Vladimir Putin, wrestle some bears in cold Siberia and late at night make a fire to roast the Reindeer while keeping warm, sprawl on the raft.
We sit around the fire where babushka tells a story as old as the establishment of the kremlin.
All talk, Nigerians
The Nigerian.
There’s a new order, a tall one — if you are to survive Nigeria, you need to work and grind 24/7. No look Uche face.
It is a popular culture that has embroidered itself to the fabric of 1000 ways to get rich. This is just one out of a thousand, the second, yahoo?
You gerrit?
You need to earn passive income — a word spammed like a GTA cheat code.
Hustle, a new trend, has carved up its space as a culture among the multitudes of existing ones.
The flag bearers of the grind culture are all on the internet.
They show you the dollar commissions earned with their fancy accent, enthusiasm, a lovely backdrop, and receipts as proof.
How?
As you may have guessed, hustling, working remotely, they preach that you too can share in the dream. Not me, them, or whatever pronouns people use.
Here’s their constant mantra;
Nobody ever got rich working 9–5, work harder and smarter, diversify your portfolio, learn as many skills as the number of times the president travels out to increase your chances of blowing up (a Nigerian term of becoming terribly wealthy to afford all your extravagance).
Don’t get me wrong; there are legit Gurus out there. Unfortunately, so are the charlatans building a reputation off of a dream and a premium fee to a course.
The chances of the average Nigerian with access to the internet having engaged or come across crypto, Forex, affiliate marketing, and yahoo are high.
I can imagine most people with multiple income streams, when asked of their side hustle with a grin, will mention the usual suspects.
Some of my friends have even gone into crypto, Forex, affiliate marketing with hopes of making it silly. Sooner they realize the dream couldn’t be further from the truth, if they do.
I have tried, failed, and won some of my online endeavors. With enough experience as a seasoned failure, I feel qualified to tell it in an unbiased light.
Rusell brand once said,
“As long as the serpent of self-will is intermingled with a requirement for a particular outcome — you’ll never achieve a peaceful outcome.”
Hustle culture at face value incentivizes diversification. Where’s the harm in telling people to work for extra money in a society like ours?
Honestly, none!
But the misleading truth perpetuated warps the vision of when and why you should start side hustles.
It even wrecks the relentless pursuit of getting better at a craft and spins people into a shiny syndrome contest.
So there’s an underlying truth hidden away from your scope of vision, one that will need a little digging to find out.
Of course, they wouldn’t want you to know how to break a wheel spinning cash into their pockets.
How money works, a YouTube channel created a checklist on requirements for a good side hustle;
- It must make money
- It must have a flexible schedule
- You must be capable of doing it proficiently
A side hustle is an interesting concept to make money from a skill, usually not as a main chic, sorry, hustle but a skill learned as a hobby or for monetization.
Side hustles are like every other business could fail. Fundera reported a 70% of small business owners fail in their 10th year in business.
Well, one could say if it takes that long to fail, sign me up.
Wait, there’s a caveat — revenue and profit are distant relatives. So a business could generate income (revenue) and still be unprofitable.
In the study were some interesting findings;
The recorded income tax returns of wealthy individuals came from 3 income streams for the 70 percentile.
It also showed that most of the income sources were not from as you were meant to believe, grinding between several hustles, instead being rich and inheritance had its slice.
One could argue other income streams had since sprung and 3 income streams at the time was the norm. Things have changed, and you can take on more side hustles, then you would have missed the keyword “Rich” from the study.
Fundera’s research on small business is mild compared to trading; crypto, Forex, Stocks, Indices.
The stats are appalling, and to think most Nigerians are drawn to these hustles will only add to ever growing pile of victims.
Then you hear common phrases like Forex na scam and some memes, which I find funny making rounds on the internet.
Why do most side hustles fail? Are village people forever near or?
Pareto’s 80/20 principle used to determine areas to focus your efforts to achieve maximum efficiency further buttress this point.
80% of your income will likely come from 20% of your hustle.
Find that one hustle that creates the bulk of your income and max it out.
It takes time, years, and luck to be wealthy. The rigorous path is a turn-off for many, so they look for an easier route, a setup, soap, an update, a template, anything but the process.
“Don’t fear the man who knows 1,000 techniques. But fear the man that has practiced one technique 1,000 times.”
Bruce Lee
The grind culture indoctrinates you into a matrix of doing more with an effort to keep you busy than productive and, at the same time, their cash cow.
To take this piece as a deterrent against taking up other hustles is to mock the Nigerian working class, far from it.
If anything, it’s a warning against buying into the trend of blowing up too quickly.
Also, it’s a freeing disposition to a pipe dream has the youth confused about the wealth creation process.
The pointer is the recurring lack of diligence, specialization, and scaling before diversification has been failed to highlighted by the hustle trend.
People want to take the easy way than develop their skills to an elite level, become so darn good, scale and do as the rich, “diversify.”
I expect this to be met with strong opposition from some benefactors of the culture. I won’t be down exchanging blows in the comments.
Oh, well, I remember there’s a Gen Z phrase used to justify irrational actions these days — if I broke na my business.
Honestly, it’s your problem.
Why should I care?
