Freelance Your Way to Freedom

25The “Seven Streams of Income” Rule

The most powerful form of wealth‐building today isn't about earning a paycheck; it's about what you know.

— T. Harv Eker

I received both a high school and college education that emphasized the importance of finding one source of reliable income. It was subliminally marketed to us from the moment we sat down in high school economics class, to when the political science department at my college anxiously asked me where I “planned to work” after graduation so they could boast about the success of their students to other professors.

The idea of pursuing not one, not two, but multiple streams of income was nowhere to be found. If someone had suggested such a thing, both the class and the educators would have probably snickered. I caused a lot of snickering in my college classes for going against the grain. My alternative approach to political philosophy and the study of history was sometimes welcomed—only if it fit the narrative of the professor. Watching my curiosity annoy quite a few educators told me something powerful: I was teetering on the edge of discovering something big. Questioning the working world for its obsession with just one stream of income unknowingly launched me into the world of freelancing. It's funny when you can reflect on all of it years later, seeing that nothing, ever, is a coincidence.

As I learned more and more about this remote working economy and the potential of taking on a side hustle, I began to read a lot of ...