Ever since my teens, I had always been slightly curious about location independent income.
I knew that I was a good writer and was able to tell compelling stories with my words and especially my dialogue.
In high school I used to write screenplays involving the kids in my school for fun, instead of paying attention. I did this in between writing revenge fantasies where I would usually pull pranks on the classmates who I didn’t like which would result in them getting injured or killed.
My science teacher thoroughly enjoyed them, but my father discovered them, did not like what he saw, and told me to never write anything creatively ever again. Yes, he actually said this to me.
I always knew I had the creativity and the natural talent to put words together to create any kind of world (or argument) I wanted. And I knew that I could do this and get paid for it. But I was always taught not to do this and to instead do what everybody else did: Go to school, get a job, make a difference in the world, etc, etc, etc.
My combination memoir and recovery book for people who have been beaten down by life, Why So Butthurt covers this in much greater detail, but a lot of the pressures placed on me by people (certain friends and family included) who wouldn’t even shrug if I died tomorrow prevented me from using my creativity to start a business.
By late 2010, watching people play video games and provide commentary on them on youtube (known as a “Let’s Play” or LP) had become a regular pastime for me. The people who were doing this were generally not getting paid for it outside of collecting ad revenue for the videos they made.
Back in 2010, it was not easy to do this. Streaming websites like Twitch were in their infancy, and YouTube still took down LPs sometimes, especially if it was a newer game. But certain individuals were courageous enough to actually pursue a location independent income with LPs.
Enter “Darksyde” Phil Burnell. In the fall of 2010, Burnell’s job had downsized, resulting in him losing his job.
Deciding to take a big risk and live off the 6 or so month severance package from his job, Burnell decided to attempt to make money from the videos he was making on youtube, which were a brand of LPs that were like none other at the time.
While most other LPs at the time were filmed with capture devices that had mediocre quality and microphones that had very bad sound quality, Burnell pointed a camera at his TV and recorded his videos this way. This improved the sound quality of the videos without compromising the video quality too much.
It became a method that became extremely profitable, resulting in consistent six figure incomes, according to his socialblade stats) from 2011 until about 2015 or so. During this four year period, Burnell was heralded as the “this could be you” type of youtuber.
Another thing that set Burnell apart was the way he narrated the LPs. Most LPers of the time played mostly retro games, providing a walkthrough type of commentary. Burnell played newer games completely blind.
Seeing this proved to me that it was possible to be able to acquire location independent outcome. But by 2015, the quality of Burnell’s work began to get a little worse. He began to complain about haters as well as declines in viewership. But I remained faithful.
This all stopped after Burnell revealed he had gotten viewers to donate for a project he abandoned, and took all the money instead of returning it. I decided not to associate with someone who was that unethical.
These days, Burnell is doing about as well as I am financially in that he hardly has money. But there are two differences between us. I slaved away and wasted years of my life at a minimum wage job because I disliked myself too much to think I was worth anything better. I was comfortable and nihilistic – a pretty sad combination.
Having no such self esteem issues, Burnell ran a successful business for roughly four years. Burnell had the chance (and many of them) to turn things around for the better just by being self accountable. Both of us made the mistake of being much too content, but at least I had some semblance of an excuse.
About five years after discovering Burnell, I discovered a blogger and consultant by the name of Caleb “Blackdragon” Jones. Like Burnell, Jones also made (and still makes) money independent of location. And he does this very, very well.
After reading some of Jones’ materials, I discovered that Burnell made two major mistakes in running his location independent business.
First, he treated his customers (aka his viewers) very poorly. Most of Burnell’s viewers were either rabid fans or people who mocked him. What he didn’t understand was that both of them were necessary for building his business.
Sure, Burnell did have his share of unreasonable customers (certain viewers actively tried to make his life difficult), but in his infinite paranoia, Burnell thought that all his viewers were like this in some aspect.
As my business grows, I expect (and am hoping for) a lot of criticism. But when I do encounter it, I will choose to not act like Burnell and think that anyone who says anything bad is “out to end my business.” Because I am interested in being an entrepreneur, the only person who can end my business is me. Burnell never understood that.
The second mistake that Burnell made was that being a youtube content creator was his only source of income. A Youtuber by the name of “Dank Net” calls this the “Dark Syde Disorder.”
This is where you are forced to do something you kind of don’t like because you have been out of the job market for so long that the chances of getting the job you used to have are really low. Going into the 2020s, we’ll be seeing a lot of cases of the “Dark Syde Disorder.”
Burnell’s biggest mistake was not taking the time to diversify his income at all, which is a shame because despite all his flaws, Burnell has marketable skills that can allow him to diversify his income streams.
This is a mistake I see a lot of people making. My own folks have made this mistake, where their only source of income is from their retirement checks.
Nearly all of my buddies make this mistake, where their job is the only source of income. This is not good at all, and with the instability of today’s job market, having only one source of income is like walking on thin ice. These days, you need two, possibly more.
If somebody like Burnell took Caleb Jones’ advice, he would not be in the spot he is in right now.
Here is a good example of why you need a diversified income. I am currently “working” for about 6 different clients on Upwork, a freelancing platform. These are six different individuals who want me to write stuff for them.
When I first started seeking out and doing work for clients on upwork roughly a year ago, I did not have so many clients. I only had about three or so. So if I “ran out” of work to do, I would need to spend an entire day finding clients and hope that one of them liked what I was offering enough to get me to do some work for them. Not good.
If you are going to make money freelancing and somewhat succeed, you need to be doing all kinds of work for all kinds of clients. This is how diversification of income begins.
However, there is no chance in hell that I could only make money from clients on upwork and call myself a successful entrepreneur. That is only the start. This is why I want to write books, and eventually do consulting. This is called selling information, and it is never not going to be in high demand.
So now let’s move on to the next thing that Burnell did wrong: Not treating his customers well.
I will eventually publish a separate blog post on how to treat customers when I get good at this stuff, but for now consider this. The clients I work for on upwork are my customers. They want good service from me and expect it. And I expect myself to do excellent work every time, especially when it comes to writing things, which is my specialization.
If at any point they do not like what I have delivered, I have no problem refunding what they agreed to pay me. I have refunded clients on upwork many times for work that they did not like.
Any entrepreneur who is interested in even a modicum of success MUST understand this and be self accountable for the things they do for others. It is the people who do not do this who are the real “scammers” who are out to cheat people out of their money.
To conclude this, let’s go back to the moment where I knew Burnell was a scammer.
To me, a scammer is a person who’s only motive is to take advantage of others for personal gain by either manipulating their expectations about certain things or their emotions.
Burnell did both. In this video, filmed roughly three years ago, Burnell explains why he had to back out on a project that his viewers were providing funding for.
Take heed; this is exactly what not to do when you have done a customer (or group of customers) wrong.
Fans gave him a lot of money to redo the webseries Burnell mentions in the video. He is extremely manipulative in the way he goes about why he had to abandon the project (he does this at around the 28 minute mark).
He dangled the possibility of the series continuing over fans’ heads and held their money hostage. This gave him a rationalization to keep the money instead of give it back, which anyone else would have done.
Burnell then qualifies this by saying that people who do work when they are contractually obligated to do it results in mediocre work. As a freelance writer, I know for a fact that this is not only untrue, but if it were true, freelancing would not exist.
Phil Burnell is a person who lives to take advantage of people at all costs. I take advantage of others as well, but I also let them take advantage of me. People like Burnell clearly do not do this, and it shows in their actions, which, as I demonstrated before, are the words.
Developing and acquiring a location independent income is a wonderful thing. But it requires you to triple your commitment in terms of being self accountable.
If you are not willing to be self accountable (through actions, not words) enough to seek out multiple income streams and treat the people you are doing business with well, then you have no business acquiring location independent income.
Anybody who is interested in being location independent in their vocation needs to do all they can to avoid the Dark Syde Disorder.
The Blog of Joelsuf 