The Challenge with Everyone Starting a Side Hustle

 For: Management & Project Managers

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I've been observing our mission to ignite agency with participants through side hustles, and I wanted to share some thoughts on how we might strengthen our approach. This comes from a place of learning and reflection, not criticism.

Starting a side hustle is essentially starting a business. I don't claim to be better than most Enviro Champs. But I have exposed myself to more business books and tried more ideas than most participants. Thus far, I've failed for 5+ years, but what has been working—or what I'm naturally drawn to—is investing my money (capital).

This short diagnosis focuses on different temperaments and offers a contribution toward avoiding the mistake of placing 1,000+ people into the single category of "start your own side hustle."

Two Frameworks to Guide Participants Better

1. The Four Quadrants (Robert Kiyosaki)

E = Employee → S = Self-Employed → B = Business Owner → I = Investor

Our current approach: Get everyone toward S (self-employed side hustles)

Better approach: Help participants identify where they naturally fit, then coach accordingly. (Needs more effort, of course.)

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2. Leverage (Naval Ravikant)

Three types of leverage to build wealth:

1. Labor: Other people working for you (e.g., to scale factory outputs or manufacturing goods). Still works, but complicated + you need loans to begin.
2. Capital: Money working for you. Investments, assets, things that generate returns while you sleep. Powerful but you need money to start.
3. Code/Media: Software you write once and sell forever. Content you create once and distribute infinitely. This is the new leverage, and it's the most accessible. Products with no marginal cost of replication. But also highly competitive.

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Real Examples from Our Programme

Example 1: The Artist's Girlfriend (Imbali - strategic employee) 

I bought paintings from a guy in Imbali (not in SEF). His girlfriend (in SEF) showed me his work.

Current pressure: She's trying to compete selling hot dogs and perfumes.

Better fit: Become his employee/marketer—create online content that attracts buyers. For every sale, she reports shared profits on the SEF Monthly Income Tracker because she's directly involved. This is labor leverage.

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Example 2: Ayanda Zondi (Plumber - Self-employed) 

Currently under SEF but also self-employed. Posted on DUCT socials.

Next level: Train 2+ ECs on his methods and 1 marketer. They become his labor. He becomes a business owner whose income doesn't stop when he's absent. Each trained EC reports individual profits from jobs they assisted on. This is business ownership.

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Example 3: My Investing (Capital Leverage)

Current monthly income (from dividends): $2.45 Real-Estate Fund + $0.50 Microsoft = ~R53/month.

Not impressive. Wouldn't make the Profit Leaderboard top 10. 

But: In 5 years of consistent feeding, that R53 becomes R500-R800/month. This is capital leverage. Feed your investments for the first half, they'll feed you in the second half.
I'd do terribly selling hot dogs or plumbing—not my temperament.  

My Porfolio + Individual Companies that are Growing.

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The Reality Check

Mission: All 1,000 ECs start businesses

Problem: I still struggle to support my neighbor selling eggs (R90 for 30) when Checkers sells them for R69 plus discount cards, plus I get everything else I need in one trip. Efficiency wins.

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Suggestion

Don't force everyone into self-employment (Quadrant S).

Instead:

• Identify temperaments: Who's a natural employee? Business builder? Investor?
• Match strengths to quadrants: Some thrive as skilled laborers in someone else's business. Some build teams. Some deploy capital. 
• Expand "side hustle" definition: Include collaborative ventures (artist + marketer), apprenticeships (plumber + trainee), and capital deployment (investing stipends)

The goal isn't 1,000 hot dog stands. The goal is 1,000 people achieving self-reliance through income leverage that fits their temperament —while learning business skills, artistry, and value creation."

I hope this helps. 

Sam Madlala

2025 Powerful Insights

 

2025 Powerful Insights 

Read more books than those who have a formal education, developing this into a lifelong habit. — Robert Greene

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Please, read books. Not just captions, or carousel posts, or what made it to the top of your feed. Read books. Long ones. Complex ones. You cannot build a mind with weight on the back of social media ephemerals. Intellectual depth demands patience. — Twitter

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You don't look like your goals. You look like your habits. Effort never lies. — Twitter

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Do so much work it would be unreasonable that you don’t succeed. — Alex Hormozi

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The old paradigm: go to a good school, get a degree and get a good job... is dead. The new paradigm: find your purpose, start a company, create and lead is our future. Entrepreneurship is the only future career. — Peter H Diamandis

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The most productive periods of your life in terms of original ideas and initiatives were probably when you were lonely, broke, with no one to believe in you, and no one to support you, that’s when you grew the most, because you had no other choice: these moments of despair are actually opportunities, you just need to recognize them and use them to your advantage. — Orange Book

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“The hardest thing to teach a student—and the hardest thing to believe consistently—is that there is nothing ‘out there’ to go and get. There is no part, no career, no opportunity for which you should be searching and scrounging and coveting. All of the preparation is within, and you keep yourself mentally and physically fit; you remain generous with yourself and others; you stay deeply in study about your craft. Whatever is yours will then arrive.” — Marian Seldes

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"Evil is whatever distracts.” — Franz Kafka

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“Hell is other people.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

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How to win at life

1. Commit to doing a hard thing
2. Do the hard thing
3. Feel good about doing the hard thing
4. Become someone who enjoys doing hard things

— Mark Manson

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Unhealthy addictions happen when you have too much free time and not enough purpose; no one who has a clear idea of where they want to be ten years from now would voluntarily reduce their chances of success. — Orange Book

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Even if not everything that we have learned is explicitly used, the accumulated knowledge gives a hidden resonance to our words, and this fullness earns the confidence it inspires. It is a great secret: to give radiance to an idea through the twilight that surrounds it. It is a further secret to preserve its power of convergence in spite of that radiance.

What you have failed in now will prepare you to succeed in something else—to succeed, ultimately, in the way that everyone who is worth anything, and who truly persists, is sure to do. — The Intellectual Life

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Acting with Power: ⭐⭐⭐ ****“In the theater, what it means to give a powerful performance is to accept and own the truth of what it means to be a human being: to be strong and weak, accomplished and fallible, powerful and powerless, all at once. This, actually, is the challenge that professional actors face every time they get in character. To play any part authentically, an actor must accept the character without judgment. And this is true for the rest of us as well. By accepting that each of us is all of these things, by learning to value all of these truths and show all of these sides of ourselves when appropriate, and by handling our mistakes with grace and equanimity, we become more resilient, less ruled by shame and self-loathing, and, ultimately, more powerful. Ironically, this is where authenticity comes from: not trying to be more yourself, but learning to accept more of yourself.” — Deborah Gruenfeld

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2025 Best Writings: In here you’ll find book summaries, quotes, and powerful paragraphs similar to the above. Approach it with a notebook. IT’S POWERFUL.

Sam Madlala

Leave a comment ⭐

My Kind of Writing -- "Repetitive Affirmation Creates Belief" - by Alex Brogan

 

Repetitive Affirmation creates belief. Beliefs become conviction. Then things begin to happen.

Most people wait. They’re passive observers of their own lives. They think beliefs just happen to them. They don’t.

Your beliefs are not random. They’re deliberately constructed. Either by you or by others. The person who controls your affirmations controls your future.

Look at the most successfull people. They didn’t stumble into conviction. They hammered it into existence through daily ritual. They said the same things to themselves over and over until the impossible became inevitable.

The average person’s mind is a battlefield of conflicting affirmations. One day they’re worthy. The next they’re not. One day then can. The next they can’t. This mental chaos produces exactly what you’d expect — nothing.

Conviction isn’t born from variety. It’s born from repetition. The same words. The same thoughts. The same images. Day after day after day.

Most people’s self-talk sounds like this: “I hope this works.” “Maybe I can.” “Let’s see what happens.” This is the language of the spectator, not the participant.

The conviction-builder speaks differently. “This will work.” “I can.” “This is happening.” — Simple, direct, absolute. No hedging. No escape hatches.

The most dangerous affirmation is the one you don’t know you’re making. The unconscious one. The one that runs in the backround while you sleep. These are the affirmations installed by others that you never chose.

Your job isn’t just to create new affirmations. It’s to find and destroy the old one’s. The ones sabotaging you silently.

Most people try positive thinking for a day. Then quit when the universe doesn’t instantly rearrange itself. This isn’t magic — it’s agriculture. You plant. You water. You wait. You harvest.

The gap between affirmation and manifestation is filled with one thing: persistent action. Belief without action is fantasy. Action without belief is drudgery. Together, they’re unstoppable.

-- Alex 

4 Books on Identity, Freedom, and Becoming

4 Books:

✅1. James Dale & William Rees — The Sovereign Individual (1997)
✅2. Alexandre Dumas — The Count of Monte Cristo (1844)
✅3. Peter Attia — Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity (2023)
✅4. Anna Lembke — Dopamine Nation (2021)

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Theme:

Humans never genuinely pursue happiness; they only pursue relief from uncertainty. Happiness emerges momentarily as a byproduct whenever uncertainty briefly disappears.

Here's a glimpse of each book. The order is deliberate. The Sovereign Individual takes the crown for most compelling, powerful, and urgent for an eagle-minded person.

1. James Dale & William Rees — The Sovereign Individual (1997) ⭐

Rees and Davidson argue that the Information Age rewards those who master digital tools and reject dependence on traditional institutions. The sovereign individual is not employed—they own skills, assets, and leverage that transcend geography and government control. Digital literacy is not optional; it is the dividing line between those who thrive in the new economy and those left behind. Code, networks, and portable expertise become the foundation of freedom, replacing physical capital and institutional credibility. The book's core insight: your ability to operate independently in a digital world determines whether you command your future or remain subject to forces beyond your control.

• Chapter 1 Distilled:
• Chapter 8 Distilled:

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2. Alexandre Dumas — The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) ⭐

Edmond Dantès is a young sailor on the verge of marriage and promotion when jealous rivals falsely accuse him of treason. He is arrested on his wedding day and thrown into the Château d'If, a fortress prison, where he is forgotten for fourteen years. But Dantès does not merely escape—he vanishes completely, shedding his former self to construct something new. With the help of a fellow prisoner, Abbé Faria—a brilliant scholar and polymath—he educates himself, discovers a hidden treasure, and emerges as the wealthy, calculating Count of Monte Cristo. His transformation from naïve sailor to aristocratic mastermind happens in isolation, beyond society's gaze and judgment. The lesson is profound: true reinvention requires withdrawal from the world that defined you. You cannot rebuild your identity while still performing for the audience that expects the old version. Dantès emerges not as a reformed version of himself but as an entirely different being—wealthier, wiser, and unrecognizable. To disappear is to reject continuity with your past self and create the conditions for radical transformation.

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3. Peter Attia — Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity (2023) ⭐

Attia dismantles the illusion that health is intuitive or self-evident. Longevity requires measurement: blood markers, metabolic data, strength metrics, sleep quality. What you don't track, you cannot improve. Most people drift through life reacting to symptoms rather than optimizing inputs, and they pay for this neglect in their final decades. Attia's framework is simple but uncompromising: if you want to live well at 80, you must behave like an athlete at 40. Tracking is not obsession—it is clarity. It converts vague intentions into actionable data and forces confrontation with reality rather than hopeful assumptions.

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4. Anna Lembke — Dopamine Nation (2021) ⭐

Lembke reveals that modern life is engineered to exploit our dopamine systems, turning normal people into addicts—not to substances, but to behaviors: phones, food, validation, comfort. She introduces the brain's pain-pleasure balance: every intense pleasure (porn, binge drinking, social media) is followed by an equal and opposite pain (guilt, craving, emptiness). The bigger the dopamine spike, the deeper the crash. The escape is not moderation but radical honesty about what controls you. Most people deny their dependencies because naming them demands change. Lembke argues that breaking free requires confronting the truth without euphemism: you are addicted, it is harming you, and only complete transparency (with yourself and others) creates the conditions for recovery. Dopamine-driven cycles thrive in secrecy and self-deception; they collapse under honest scrutiny.

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These four books shaped how I think about freedom, health, and identity. If you read one, make it The Sovereign Individual. If you read all four, read them in this order.

Sam Madlala

ZIZO - Zoom-In Zoom-Out

Let's talk about Transformation!

For context:
This article explores all 16 Hardwires from A2B Transformation – helping you move from dependency (A-levels) to independence and self-direction (B-levels).

What are Hardwires? Neurological patterns formed throughout your life – from birth to now. Shaped by your DNA, environment, parenting, choices, and experiences.

Exploring the first one on our list: 1/16

Independence & Risk Taking

2 minutes reading.  

The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted.
— The journals of Kierkegaard

Last night I realized I'd stopped thinking like a builder and started thinking like an employee. Here's how it happened.

Risk taking, or rather, the spirit of risk taking moves parallel to feelings of self-reliance and autonomy. Whereas the spirit of settling for a job, corporate or otherwise, with minimal risk or minimal uncertainty on behalf of the individual, moves parallel to feelings of dependency and self-doubt.

When I dedicated over 3 years to learning investing and active trading — living on a $25 government subsidy and my mother's support — I mostly planned and visualized what I would build, how I would recruit, how I would diversify my wealth, how I would explore countries...

However, in recent months after landing a job in 2023, though I still develop myself and invest portions of my income and am no longer reliant on subsidies, I can notice my attention leaning more on: How I am perceived by colleagues, how I could get promoted to this or that role, how I could polish my CV for a higher paying job, how I could meet some employer who'll be impressed by my work.

It's crucially important to recognize something here — and I've tried to write about this before in Bruised but Not Broken:

"The universe is so designed that we humans and animals alike must get acquainted with the fact that life has guaranteed challenges.."

When I was unemployed, I had other challenges, which were as uncomfortable, but not greater: I worried about rent, food, and losing large invested capital. Now employed, I have other challenges which are as uncomfortable, but not greater: now I worry about colleagues' and bosses' impressions, ruminating over saying the wrong thing in a meeting, and losing out on promotions & bonuses. 

Likewise, there are benefits. But here, there are serious differences and one is greater.

Now I can pay the rent, have monthly income, and my corporate skills are being sharpened. But the spirit hovering over me is dependency and a quiet erosion of self-reliance.

Before, I couldn't pay rent and I didn't have monthly income — but I had autonomy over my time, I was sharpening self-sustaining skills, I was focused on building my empire. And the spirit, now looking back, that hovered over me was self-reliance and independence.

"Independence in thought, philosophy, morals, and culture are as important as financial independence", writes Morgan Housel in an article: Pure Independence

Kierkegaard was right: I was noble-hearted when the task was difficult and mine. Now the task is easy and someone else's.

In closing, I value and appreciate my job for the sustenance and privileges it has exposed me to — but I recognize where it is leading. And frankly speaking, I highly doubt the dots will "connect" and somehow find myself in my once envisioned empire where I called the shots. Most likely to happen is just a wasting away of years, with the flicker of fire in me getting dimmer and dimmer. And my corporate camouflage getting larger and larger — the mask of someone who's grateful just to be here, who's learned to stop wanting what he wanted.

But awareness restores choice. The moment you see the drift, you can steer again.

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the comfortable swamps of good-enough, the almost, the not-yet, the never-will-be. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Sam Madlala

• Notes: Unemployed = material anxiety but spiritual freedom. Employed = material security but spiritual captivity. 
• Other reads:
• Bruised But Not Broken 
• The Sovereign Individual - Summaries 1997 

🧠 Transformation and Rewiring: The 16 Hardwires Series

Let's talk about transformation! 

This article explores all 16 Hardwires from A2BTransformation – helping you move from dependency (A-levels) to independence and self-direction (B-levels).

What are Hardwires? Neurological patterns formed throughout your life – from birth to now. Shaped by your DNA, environment, parenting, choices, and experiences.

How to assess yours? A2B offers assessments for all ages. Interpretation coaches help break down your results and their implications. Learn more: Hardwires Assessment 

THE 16 HARDWIRES:

1. ZIZO (Zoom-In & Zoom-Out) - Read 
2. UP (Unconducive Parenting)
3. ABU (Abuse)
4. MOM (Matters of the Mind)
5. ADD (Addiction)
6. OLM (Old-Minded)
7. ATT (Attitude)
8. VIC (Victim)
9. ECO (Ecosystem)
10. LOC (Locus of Control)
11. LOR (Low Resources)
12. LIB (Limited Beliefs)
13. VEN (Vengeance)
14. EGO (Egotism)
15. WIS (Wolf in Sheep's Clothing)
16. HEA (Heartless)

In the coming posts, we'll break down each hardwire in simple terms. Jump to the ones that interest you most!

Next up: Deep dive begins 🧵

• ZIZO (Zoom-In & Zoom-Out)