Is It Truly EASY to Become Rich? (Money Guy vs. the Internet)

All right, let’s look at this next. Let’s see what our friends out there on the interwebs have to say about this million-dollar side hustle that’s so easy a 5-year-old could do. $10,000 of nothing, I make over $200 a week from a side hustle doing absolutely nothing. $100 in 15 minutes by doing one simple task, starting a print on demand brand. Bought a vending machine, you’re going to take surveys for this? $200 in one week, $9 to $600 per hour. Here’s how much money my laundry mat brought in in the past 5 days. It’s never been easier to get rich; it’s never been easier to get—it’s just so easy. I—but I will say there’s never been a better time to build wealth. I do agree with that, sure. I think the problem is everything we just saw, there’s an ounce of truth to some of it, but then most of it is cutting a corner off and working against the actual behaviors and things that will create wealth in the long term.

Because here’s what the actual myth is. The myth is that you can be lazy and get rich, that there are ways out there where you don’t have to do anything at all, you don’t have to figure anything out, you can just be lazy, and it’s so easy. Just follow these steps, buy the system, do this thing, and all of a sudden money is going to start showing up. And it’s this idea that you can create passive income. And what’s really, really interesting is even some of the things that we saw in there were maybe qualified as passive incomes, but they are more appropriately side hustles. It is another job; it’s another— it’s another thing that you are pursuing. So even if you’re someone who’s doing a side hustle and you’re pursuing ways to build a passive income, there’s a really good chance that you’re not lazy, and it’s not easy just to make that happen.

Well, I think it’s taking advantage of the fact that, yeah, a lot of stats show in this modern economy that we live in, that 45% of Americans are doing some type of activity that creates a side income for them, whether it’s delivering, whether it’s driving a rideshare, there’s all kinds of selling things on Etsy. There’s all kinds of ways that you can create alternative income sources, but none of them are passive or what I like to call mailbox money. And that’s really what those clips that infuriate me is they’re trying to make it seem like it’s so easy to just take, as one of them said, 15 minutes to just turn into hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. That’s just disconnected from reality.

All right, so let’s talk about some of the popular passive income ideas we talk about. Let’s talk about as it relates to this myth. Brian, can you be lazy and do this? Let’s think about, put it, is it what it really is—too good to be true promises that I can work very little to build all this money, and it’s just going to pour in. All right, let’s look at this first. The first one, rental real estate. Now, again, if you’ve been listening to us for any amount of time at all, you know we love rental real estate. We love real estate investors; we love folks who decide for that to be part of their financial journey. But in our opinion, there is a time and a place when it makes sense. And I would argue it is not a passive activity.

Yeah, even if you get the best-case scenario, you get the great tenant that is essentially going to live in this house long enough for it to pay for itself off them making the mortgage payments for you. Usually, you have to put work in on background checks, credit checks, making sure this person is gainfully employed. You know, you’re going to do some due diligence to make sure that this is a good tenant. But the reality is, we don’t all get those unicorns out there. You’re going to have people you’ve got to— you’ve got to kiss enough frogs before you get the Prince Charming that’s going to rent your property. You’re going to have people that, as I’ve shared, are changing engines in the living room that are going to get ticked off and go way beyond your security deposit of ripping off cabinet doors, poking holes. There’s all kinds of bad things that can happen with rental real estate that makes it not bad, just not passive. You have to be actively involved to be successful.

And the other thing that is so interesting is all those things that you just described cost money. All those repairs, all that maintenance, all that—if you’re trying to jump out at the very beginning of your financial journey and do this, it’s going to be real hard to overcome all of those things. And most of these things only work if everybody pays their rent. Think about some of these states out there right now. I even saw a post where somebody’s doing Airbnb or luxury property, and they get a squatter in there. Yeah, they’re not allowed to kick these people out for like 6 to 9 months. Be careful, you know? And I know, look, I know I get a lot of trolls are like, ‘Man, you’re just mean. You want—kick.’ No, there’s a reason I don’t do this type of real estate is because I do have too big of a heart. I would not be able to kick people out. But I’m telling you, this is the problem that makes it where it’s not printing money like they’d have you believe on social media.

All right, let’s talk about another one that they mention in that video. What about these community-based products? What about figuring out how to do ebooks or social platforms or blogs or affiliate marketing? Surely that’s easy, right? Surely I can just lay in bed, set it up in 15 minutes, and then just count the money as it comes in, right? Yeah, and I think we know a little bit something about this. We’ve been creating content since 2006. There is no doubt if you build a following, you can create products, digital products that can generate income. But it’s far from easy. Yep. And by the way, and everybody who says, ‘You just go use AI and set it up,’ that doesn’t work. You have to build an audience; you have to find people that trust you. And that doesn’t happen if you just try to create content without an audience. You’re going to find that you’re basically creating something that goes into a black hole, disappears, and you’ll lose interest and probably fall off within about the first 2 to 3 months of creating content.

What I think is wild is so many people fall into the camp of, ‘Oh, well, I’m going to do this because I’ve seen the brochure.’ Well, when you look at the brochure, all you’re seeing is the highlight reel. Listen to this: only 12% of full-time creators earn more than $50,000. I’m going to say that again: only 12% of folks that consider community-based products or digital products their primary occupation make over $50,000, while 46% of them earn less than $11,000 a year. 46% make less than $1,000 a year trying to build these social platforms. So this is not something that is super easy that everyone is doing. And yet right now today, one in four Americans say, ‘Oh yeah, I want to be a social media influencer.’ One in four kids say, ‘What I want to do when I grow up is I want to be an influencer on social media.’ This reminds me back when I used to go talk to high school classes; I’d ask all the kids, ‘What do you—how are you going to build your wealth?’ And they’d be like, ‘Well, I’m going to be a professional athlete. I’m going to be a performer.’ And all those things, they’re just the exception; they’re not the rule. And that’s what I always tried to explain when I was talking to these high school classes is that most professional athletes don’t make the money you see in NFL contracts or NBA. You’re only thinking about those things. There’s a lot of athletes that just don’t have that. It’s the same way with people doing digital products. As Bo just shared, this is—you’d be much better served developing a skill, a skill that you can get so passionate about that you can’t help but share content. But you have to have expertise; you have to be a master; you have to be doing something so good that you can’t help but share the good news with it. That’s how you build community. It’s not because you just want to be an influencer. You want the lifestyle of a YouTuber. Just wanting it is not going to be there without the talent, the aptitude, and the passion.

Okay, there was another thing that was in that video that I think is interesting that a lot of folks talk about. ‘Oh, I just want to do that because, again, if I do that, I can be lazy and I can become rich.’ And this idea, ‘I’m just going to go buy a business, or I’m going to create some sort of business, either buying a product and then reselling the product, or maybe I’m going to do Turo, or I’m going to have a vending machine, or I’m going to do a laundry mat, or I’m going to do something like that. Or if I just kind of get over the barrier of entry, then I’m going to lay back, be lazy, collect the money. Surely that is just as easy as it sounds.’ Well, let’s take each of those that you just said. I mean, if you create a business, that’s a side hustle like I said; we know that almost half of Americans do that. It’s not easy; I mean, it takes work. You’re probably going to spend 15 to 20 hours even creating something that is successful. Turo, I mean, drive it like a rental. I mean, do we really want to go buy a fancy car that people are going to be driving it ragged and tearing it up and taking it apart, doing all kinds of things? I’m not doing that with any of my nice stuff. And I also—I’m always amazed. Here’s another one, Bo; I saw a laundry mat in there. I’ve seen posts about Christmas tree farms. I always think, man, when they give me the numbers, isn’t it amazing? And maybe it’s because I’m an accountant in a CPA background; they always give me the revenue. Tell me the profit. I want to know where we are at with the hassle factor on this thing because you can tell me your revenue, but you might have razor-thin profit margins where it’s just not worth the hassle factor dealing with it because, like, for example, laundry mats. Yep, it’s a great example. A lot of capital involved in that because you have to buy the facility or rent the facility. You have to have all the capital; you have to have all the repairs. Because, you know, if somebody’s washing stuff, either they don’t own their own washing machine or they’ve soiled something so bad they’re like, ‘Not in my washing machine.’ You’re probably opening yourself up for people to treat it like a rental versus treating it like something they own. And there’s probably going to be more maintenance, more repairs, and just a lot of things that don’t show up in the revenue line.

So what I’m hearing you say is even if you do pursue that, you can’t be lazy and do it. It’s still going to take some active work to make it work. So then the question becomes, okay, well, are there passive income strategies that you like? Is there something that you guys would say, ‘Hey, yeah, this is a great way to watch money grow while you can, quote-unquote, be lazy and our answer be yes.’ That’s why we love investing in things like index funds, investing in the stock market, buying the S&P 500, or even just putting money in high-yield savings accounts. That’s interest-bearing; those are literally accounts where you can take your money, put them somewhere, and while you sleep, your dollars grow. Nothing I did yesterday made the stock market go higher or lower. Nothing that I did this year will make the stock market go higher or lower. And yet, when I put my dollars to work for me, they continue to grow through time and get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. You can be a saver and investor and, quote-unquote, be lazy and get rich doing that if you do it over a long enough time. Yeah, in index funds, we always talk about the S&P 500. But you could also look at real estate indexes; there’s—you know, things like that that syndicates, there’s other things that you can do that allow you to get into some of these sexier or sizzle-type things but still make it truly passive. I like the S&P 500 because it lets you just buy the innovation, all the technology, everything that’s evolving in the economy. You’re going to be part of that growth in the long term. All right, so myth number two: You can be lazy and automatically become rich. I’m going to say myth busted. That’s not true. Shame for lying like that. For more information, check out our free resources.