The Silliest 60k Women’s Handbag And The Worst Side Hustle (Ever)

The movie Zoolander has some really funny moments (the sequel not so much).  Regardless if you like the movie or not, its mockery of the fashion world is spot on.  The film’s villain Mugatu comes out with a fashion line that is based on being homeless called Derelicte. He then pitches it to Derek Zoolander for his fashion comeback.  The entire movie is max silliness.  You only have to pick a fashion show at random to see some outfits where real life meets fiction.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look at this woman's handbag.  It costs $60,000. 

60k!  Now some entrepreneurs will look at that and say to themselves “Self, I need to start a clothing line!”.  I get it when you see people pay that kind of money for an accessory it looks like an awesome business.  You don’t have to go too far online for gurus who will teach you how to make a quick buck with merch or clothing line.  In my experience, this side hustle is neither quick nor lucrative for 99.9% of people who try it.  In fact, it might be one of the worst side hustle ideas ever.

Clothes And Merch Won’t Change Your Finances Any Time Soon

Yes, on one level,  it would be awesome to be able to get people to buy a handbag for 60k.  On the other hand, the Louis Vuitton brand was founded in 1854.  Not sure you want to wait 170 years to be making that kind of money.  The key to a great side hustle is to be able to make money quickly.  The inherent problem of clothes and merch brands is one of scale.  

In order for them to work, you have to be able to sell a lot of products.  This requires either a giant ad spend or a built-in audience to sell to.  Even if you have either of those things (or both) it is still a huge gamble that people are going to even want what you are selling.  Add in the fact the margins are not great.  This is especially true if you go the drop shipping route, where people are fighting over pennies (literally).  

I am not saying that entrepreneurs aren’t making money doing these things but it usually takes a while to get it rolling.  Therein lies the problem.  In my opinion, the primary reason you should consider a side hustle is to give you more time, not less.

The challenge with merch and clothing lines is that you must build an audience of fans to get any kind of traction.  It is not something you can do quickly, so I view it as not a great option.

Side Hustles From Worst To First

One of the reasons I love the acquisition game is because the whole point of buying a business is to skip the step of building out a customer or fan base.  The tech space is full of great examples of how valuable this can be.  In 2012, Meta (then Facebook) bought Instagram for $1 Billion even though they only had 12 employees!  Why did they do this?  The engineers at Facebook could have made their own version of the app in one day.  What they could not do was replicate the 30 million users they had.  Can you start to see the advantage of the buy versus build strategy? 

I am always going to say that acquiring a business is the best side hustle out there.  You might be surprised to learn though that I do believe that there are other options that can work as well.  I made a video breaking down some of the best (and worst) side hustles.  You can watch it here:

If the video was TLDW (too long didn’t watch) one of the other awesome side hustles I talked about was coaching.  There are few things more rewarding than helping someone achieve their goals.  This is one of the main reasons I started Acquisition Aces in the first place.  Success is great but if you can bring others along with you, it is even better. 

I am always shocked at how much faster people can get their first deal done than I did just by being made aware of what I learned not to do.  It makes all the mistakes I made worth it.

As always, if you want to compress time frames and have me coach you on every part of the process, book a time to chat with me here: Calendar

Ben, I Want to learn more…

If you feel that you are constantly working "in" the business instead of "on" the business and feel that your goal of financial freedom has led you to a prison of your own design.

You are not alone, I used to be there as well.

I have 5 companies and counting and work less than 20 hours a week on them - COMBINED.

It is not rocket science and I can help you do the same for your business.

Choose a time on my Calendar and we will get to it.

Onward,

Ben

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