Online Business Myths That Gurus Peddle
Social media isn't reality
Somehow, against all odds, entrepreneurship has become cool.
Back in my day, it was nerdy AF and had zero prestige value. Now? Every broccoli-haired 22yo brags/lies about owning a business.
Times sure are changing.
This change in perception had the side effect of creating a wide open grifter-sized hole in the social media landscape that tons of platitude-wielding BS artists slotted themselves right into.
Becoming a business guru became a great way to make money.
To paraphrase the old saying: When there’s a gold rush, sell bullshit.
These people will say and do anything. The name of the guru game is engagement. They don’t care if their fake advice helps or hurts you. They aren’t thinking about you. They’re thinking about the precious algo and nothing else.
Unfortunately, when enough people repeat a lie often enough, the masses start believing it.
Here are a few of the most common social media-fueled business myths that need to die yesterday.
Myth #1: You need a ‘grindset mindset’
Overhyping/glorifying hard work is something that gets a lot of engagement on social media, but it’s not even close to the reality of running an online business.
If you’re doing the whole wifi money thing right, your “work” as a business owner should consist primarily of telling other people what to do (and staying on them to make sure they do it). Your goal is to minimize the amount of grunt work you do so you can use your brain for strategic, higher-level thinking (which doesn’t require much time and doesn’t feel like work).
I barely do anything on a day-to-day basis.
I swear, I have more in common with an elderly retiree than I do with your average corporate worker bee. I find myself doing things like going to yoga class at 1PM on a Monday or sitting in a coffee shop reading a book for several hours at 10AM on a Tuesday. There just isn’t that much to do.
Sure, you have moments where you have some kind of Big Project where you have to legitimately grind it out, but on an average day? Nope.
Myth #2: You’ll fall behind if you don’t stay on top of trends
The things you need to do to build/grow a business are really really really boring and mundane.
The idea that it’s some fast-paced thing where you have to strap in and hold on for your life or you might get thrown off is preposterous.
The reason why gurus are obsessed with trends doesn’t have anything to do with your interests, it has to do with the incentives of being a social media content creator.
You have to CONSTANTLY find new things to talk about if you want to make guru-style content creation your business model. You have to grab people’s attention every single day. If you don’t feed the algorithmic beast: you die.
That’s why the guru circuit goes nuts any time something new comes out; they finally have something different to talk about.
This is how the game is played. Understand their incentives, then proceed to ignore them.
You’ll never make real money if you constantly change course based on whatever’s currently trending on X or YouTube.
Pick a path and stay on it.