If you don’t make money online you’re a bum.
That’s what some would have you believe. I’m not one of them. I’ve spent most of my life working 9-5 jobs with a smile on my dial.
Quitting your job to make internet money is nice. Telling everyone how you’re an entrepreneur now and too cool for school feels good for a week. The truth is a job is fine.
Until it isn’t.
I believe if you are gonna have a job, you better damn well be making some internet money on the side, if you want to survive and later thrive.
Let’s learn from Babs why a job and one income is a bad idea.
The story of internet sensation Babs
Let’s meet Babs.
*gets everyone to say “Hi Babs”*
Babs Owca worked a great job. She says she loved it. The best part was she worked for awesome people too. She imagined working there for a long time. In March 2022 she suddenly got laid off.
She liked her employer, they liked her. But soz. Bye Bye Bye.
Babs went to social media and shared her story. She wanted us to know good people who have a great two-way relationship with their employer get fired too.
Just a reminder that you’re disposable as soon as they decide you are.
Trying to find a job in a bad economy
Not enough people give credit to how hard it is to find a new job.
In 2019, I got thrown out on my ass from a job I loved, too. It was bloody hard to get another one, despite people telling me I had an impressive resume. Right now it’s a bad economy, so finding a new job is ten times harder.
Babs started applying for new jobs right after her sacking. Despite being a highly capable designer, she repeatedly got rejection letters saying she didn’t have enough design UI/UX experience.
She says “every job wants you to do at least 3 jobs.”
Two months later the news headlines say no one wants to work. She finds that weird seeing as she gets rejection emails within minutes of applying.
The rejection letter came so fast because humans didn’t send them. Nowadays most companies use auto-screening and stupid keyword searches in resumes to get rid of people.
(Like a freaking keyword tells you anything.)
To combat this stupid war job applicants are now told by recruiters and career coaches to insert hundreds of useless keywords into their resumes.
When we make up stupid rules we get stupid responses.
HR departments will never learn. To top it off most companies require you to write dumb cover letters that say little and often rehash what’s in your resume. No wonder Babs has been driven crazy by this insane process.
Here are a few career tips from Babs that I love.
Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash
Stop working late
Jobs make you disposable, no doubt about it.
Just ask all the workers getting laid off right now. They’ll tell ya. So there’s no point trading the most important currency you have — time — to work late for nothing. It’s not going to get you anywhere.
Once you show you’re a choir boy/girl who will happily work late and get taken advantage of, they’ll keep milking your titties like a cow.
Finish work early or on time, so you can figure out how to make money online in your spare time.
Stop reading emails after hours
Emails are the real epidemic.
They never stop. I haven’t had a job for 15 months and my emails still pile up every day like mounds of cow sh*t on a farm. Nothing you can do.
The temptation while working a job is to keep reading them. It’s to keep thinking you must read all these emails to retain your job.
The truth is smart employees ignore most of their emails.
If they don’t get a follow-up email they’ll likely not read most things. Instead of sitting on your couch reading work emails when you get home, use that time to read books and figure out how the online game works.
That’ll make you 10x more money than useless work emails.
Stop working on weekends
Without rest and relaxation your mind turns to mush.
Now that we all work from home for at least some of the week, there’s no separation between work time and YOU-time. Employers love it. They’re secretly grinning in their evil office lairs.
“Excellent Smithers.”
But your mental clarity takes a hit. Everything starts to feel the same. You become a robot made to work to the bone for a peanut salary.
Do this instead…
Use the weekend to build your tiny online empire.
“A job is income to live your life, not your life”
That’s what Babs says.
Too many people let their jobs and income define them. They have no real hobbies or interests. They just live to exist, wake up, and serve. That’s no way to live.
An income is meant to buy you experiences, not be the experience itself.
What saved Babs’s life
I said in the title that you don’t “have to” make money online.
I stand by that statement. Thankfully for Babs she didn’t take that advice literally. Over the weeks and months since March 2022 she hasn’t been able to find a new job.
I checked out her LinkedIn profile. It turns out she’s made money online on the side as of 2018. That income has kept her going since getting fired. Now she’s decided 4 years is enough of a test and she’ll work for herself permanently.
The lesson here is a second and third income stream is a backup plan. If the worst happens then all of your chips are not placed on one income inside the career casino.
You have options.
You can lay low for a while and still feed your dog. Or move state and try living in a different house to add some randomness to life.
Whereas if you don’t make money online and refuse to, then when (not if) your employer decides to sack a bunch of random people to increase profit and keep shareholders happy, you could easily be next.
Remember this: the longer you work for the same company the harder it is to move on if you get fired.
Recruiters will think you’re afraid of change if you work at one company for too long. You’ll also struggle at a new job if you’re not used to it. And you’ll be out of practice when it comes to the clown show that is the hiring process and applying for jobs.
Takeaway
Think about making money online to get a second income.
Let Babs’s story be an inspiration rather than a devastation for you. By default we’re all cogs in the machine. The only way you eventually break free and get access to F-You money is to use the internet to do it.
