Behind The Scenes Of Every Hustle Culture Bro Business
Behind the appeal, there is frustration, terrible mindsets, and a lot of wasted money.
You know the type. They hate people who come up with excuses. Live a life of hustling “all the time.” They have a Lamborghini and live in an expensive house. They’re fit and have a strict diet and exercise regimen. All of them are men.
And they all tell you that living this lifestyle is easy. It's so easy that what they’re offering will make you feel stupid for not having done this sooner.
The first time I was exposed to this type of person was when I first delved into self-improvement. The man was Tai Lopez, who was more subtle about these particular things. He exploded on the internet over his “I read a book a day” and "in my garage" memes.
He was selling various courses that day, and to this day he still does.
But his overall story of how he got there appeals to us all. He was not doing great financially, and he began to change his life around little by little. He went from couch surfing to reading books, building a business, and now offering various courses covering all kinds of different topics.
It’s all the same kind of story that you see time and time again with these individuals.
They make their millions through common revenue streams before offering courses and charging hundreds or thousands of dollars for them. There isn’t any real substance to them, as many — like Tai Lopez's— are simply covering things you can find for free and aren’t offering any guidance beyond a video or an ebook.
They offer you “passive income,” though the only thing that’s truly passive is your money leaving your bank account and into the pockets of someone who looks like a multi-millionaire but actually isn’t.
The Appeal Is There, But It’s A Fantasy
As we’re looking down the barrel of a recession, more wage gaps, and financial disparity and injustice in the world, these kinds of individuals appeal to a lot of us men. These individuals are in their early 20s or 30s, charismatic, and fit. Their interests are sports cars, detailed Twitter threads, and living in places where it’s always sunny, amongst other things.
In some cases, you’ll find them having more pious virtues as well, like believing in God. If they’re married or dating, their partner is a woman who could pass as a supermodel (or is one), and they occasionally speak out about avoiding porn and masturbating.
Overall, they paint a good picture that appeals to many men. On top of the promise that they achieved this so easily, it’s easy to get sold on this fantasy.
But all of it is a lie.
It’s a psychology, a way of life, that glorifies a particular view of what all men should be. Those who turn it down are either losers, lying to themselves, or complete fools.
After all, those who have “made it” have so much video proof and results to show for it. Look at all of those Lambos that they have that they totally didn’t rent for under $1,000 per day. They're completely trustworthy, especially now that you can just photoshop earnings.
AI now has made this even easier, as these same types of individuals can now begin offering courses on “cracking the AI code” and making millions of dollars. This is on top of using AI to do most of the work for them in building scripts or courses from the ground up in a few minutes.
In fact, they’re doing just that.
With this new technology, it’s clear that they’re jumping from fad to fad, offering the next big thing before moving on to the next new hotness. For Tai Lopez, it was online courses. For other gurus, it was dropshipping. And now it’s shifted to AI, with its endless possibilities.
These industries are still capable of making money. However, they don’t have as much wonder and hype around them. Hustle bros thrive on getting us to imagine making hundreds of thousands of dollars with something new. Once the market gets "oversaturated,” they move on to the next big thing.
Once you realize that’s their game every time, you end up feeling frustrated. Especially when you dropped hundreds of dollars on their course where they iterated stuff, you easily could’ve found out through a handful of Google searches.
Their Mentality Is Not The Greatest
When they aren't driving rented Lamborghinis or telling you their rags-to-riches story they rehearsed, they are frequently instilling a mindset in you. The reason I delved deeper into self-improvement was because the numerous things Tai Lopez talked about resonated with me.
Tai Lopez was more subdued in the webinar that I attended where he pitched his courses. He mostly talked about deep mistrust in institutions or intellectual movements. He didn’t agree with going to school and getting educated, citing how schools often don’t prepare us for the real world.
He has a point.
However, others go further than that. On top of refraining from porn and masturbation, they advocate for intense exercise routines, restrictive diets, and encouraging others to replicate their success without them being involved.
All of them have a very hands-off approach to their coaching, with the only avenue for connecting with them being through their brief videos or webinars.
And the problem is, they’re not instilling great values.
On top of their courses being riddled with people who call the course a scam, struggle to get refunds, or offer the same regurgitated information, the hustle bros themselves don’t have great views on various social issues.
Again, many are against the idea of higher education and government, and others take further steps.
Consider 24-year-old Sebastian Ghiorghiu, owner of a “seven-figure marketing agency.” Despite this claimed success, you still see him selling course after course. It’s bizarre, unless, of course, he’s lying about that business.
His true authenticity shines through in his other viewpoints, which remind me a lot of Andrew Tate's. He believes:
- A man’s wife shouldn’t have male friends or work at all.
- Any person who is overweight gives him an incredible amount of discomfort.
- There are only two genders.
- And that anything he says should not be taken seriously.
All in all, the various views resonate with people to some extent and that’s what’s so bothering. You have people like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson enjoying fame and notoriety, particularly for their regressive, deeply misinformed and toxic views around various subjects like women, wealth equality, and climate change, amongst other topics.
Depending on your own mentality it’s easy to adopt every part of that and become a mini version of those individuals. To say what they say but never enjoy the same fame and fortune that those individuals have.
I was fortunate enough to not be roped into those courses and decided to do my own digging. But for others, they either quickly learned they were duped and couldn’t recoup, or they leaned into that rhetoric and charted a new and regressive path.
This is part of the reason their courses are so useless. On top of not providing any proper guidance or new information, they fail to tell their audience the reality of pursuing these particular industries. For example, if you want to build a good dropshipping business, you need to look beyond a single Youtube video and delve into business, product design, and marketing.
Often times hustle culture screams at you to work your ass off but it doesn’t tell you what needs to get done or guide you in any way. They don’t offer new approaches or strategies. How these individuals got “rich” is by selling the destination and never the journey and scamming people into paying for whatever they’re selling.
Even if you don’t get sucked into whatever the guru thinks, their courses often lead people to being burnt out, resenting, loathing, and feeling lost about themselves and their lives. It’s not a good mindset to adopt at all.
Self-help at the end of the day should be making you feel good or at the very least giving you a sense that you’ve got more work to do on yourself.
The Shortcuts Are A Waste Of Money And Time
I understand the appeal of these quick solutions. Hustle grifters want to be offering those quick solutions and know that “working for 10 years on something you’re passionate about” isn’t going to make people sign up.
Even though the reality is you often have to spend somewhere around that time to actually make it.
They’re cultish in this sense that they’ll provide bits and pieces of the truth before wrapping you into their weird world where nothing really makes sense. For example, this culture is telling you to work your ass off, and to restrict your diet (to help you focus better) for your betterment. But in the same breath, they’re offering you quick and easy solutions.
The quick and easy solutions work for our primitive brain, but it’s weird when they tell you you need to go really hard for something you’re passionate about only to offer a system that requires minimal effort on your part.
So many gurus omit these parts because they want to attract as many people as they can. They don’t want to be telling you you actually need to have skills in these areas to grow and develop them and get anywhere. They’d rather keep you in this loop where you’re convinced you merely need to look the part rather than being the part.
You end up wasting a lot of time and money on this because what they’re arguing for is not at all practical the more you think about it.
Any person who has been in this game for several years can tell you that growth and improvement of skills and seeing results aren’t linear. When I first started writing, it was absolutely terrible. But I started to see spikes of improvement the more I spent time researching, experiencing life, getting myself out there, and doing other things other than writing.
Part of the improvement of skill does come from repetition, but there reaches a point where that is not enough. The problem is hustle bros only think you need to be repetitive. This is why they say you need to work 16 hours a day or 80-hour work weeks and that you’re lazy/weak/don’t deserve success if you can’t do that.
The reality is depending on the work you’re doing it’s more demanding. Writing feels simple. It’s just words on a page. But even the hustle bros know that emotions are powerful and that writing needs to convey that.
They take the easy way out by appealing to people’s fears, anxieties, anger, and frustrations. But it takes a great deal more for people to feel other emotions beyond those negative ones.
All of that takes time and effort. Sometimes an article can take you several hours to put together. Others can take less time. No matter my skill or how many words I write, I find it takes me at least an hour to put an article together on average. And at the end of it, it’s emotionally draining.
In the end, the best shortcut is the opposite of what they’re telling you is their greatest shortcut. Working less, finding meaning, and not buying whatever nonsense they’re trying to sell you.
On the surface what they’re offering is so appealing and there is some truth to it. You do need to work hard to find success, but that’s only one avenue. Reaching success and finding fulfilment in life goes well beyond just working day in and day out.
If your business is your meaning in life, then what that tells me about so many hustle bros is that their lives are shallow.
Ghiorghiu said in a video once that people tell him he’s out of touch and that those people can suck it.
Sick burn brah. Real knee-slapper there.
Spoken like a true grifter who thinks women shouldn’t work at all and that life is all about having expensive cars to make yourself feel special.
I’ve come to learn over time that success hinges on way more than the grind. You need to have passion, curiosity, talent, relationships, and a willingness to build on each of those. Clearly, those individuals haven’t bothered to do that.
And why would they? What matters to them is the hours you spend toiling and chasing after something that isn’t really there.
All of these individuals are one-dimensional. It’s why they use the same tactic over and over again regardless of what they’re selling. They never encourage you to double down on your unique abilities or identify them. All they want you to do is buy whatever they’re selling and be left as an empty husk as they drive away in their rented Lamborghini.
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