Dr Mara Einstein on the cult of entrepreneurship and why not everyone should join it

Q: Thanks so much for joining us, Mara. Big fan of your work! You’re study the intersection of business and culture, and teach University students. Kick us off — what are your thoughts on this workforce shift towards mass entrepreneurism?

A: I have an issue with the Silicon Valley mindset that says “anybody can be an entrepreneur.” I’ve been pushing back on this for ten years. I’m a professor—not at an Ivy League school, but at a massively underfunded public institution. Some of my students are incredibly bright and will succeed no matter what they do, but a large part of the population are only there because they’ve been told they have to get a degree. Ninety-four percent of American high school students believe they have to have one, society is structured in a way that tells them they must get that credential.

Students say to me, “Oh, I’ll just become an influencer as a backup.” They don’t realise how much work goes into posting every day, coming up with ideas, and creating content that’s not only ongoing but also in your own authentic voice in a way that isn’t what 100 other people are already doing.

The Silicon Valley sales pitch is that anybody can be an entrepreneur. But the reality is some people want to be worker bees. We weren’t all created to be salespeople. Some people want to go into an office, be told what to do, work from 9 to 5, collect a pay check, and go home.

Unfortunately, many of those jobs no longer exist. And just because those jobs have disappeared doesn’t suddenly mean people now have the talents and skills to invent their own careers. That’s the myth that gets perpetuated. And it isn’t fair. It leaves a lot of people lost, trying to figure out where to go.

Q: This rhetoric and the loss of traditional work opportunities is leaving many people behind, especially the younger generation as you see first hand. What advice do you have for anyone feeling stuck?

A: Let me take my own path as an example. I really wanted to make a living as a writer. But I also wanted the safety net: health insurance, a job I couldn’t easily be fired from. I was a single mother and needed that for my daughter. I wasn’t convinced writing alone would sustain me financially.

When I leaving my job in advertising and marketing, I read Barbara Sher’s book I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was. She asks “what do you want your life to look like?”

I love to read, I love to write, I love to perform on stage. It took me six months of working through it and eventually I put those things together I saw the answer: to become a university professor.

So my advice is: don’t quit your job overnight just because you’re unhappy and leap into something else. Take small steps. If you want to be an actress, do a show at night while you’re still working. If you want to be an influencer, start posting online, get your feet wet, and see what the actual requirements are.

And if you want to be a coach, you can build that practice gradually alongside other work. I know it's also difficult if you have children, it can be a lot of juggling. But the principle still applies. Experiment while you have income, and see if it works before you go all-in.

Q: This is exactly it. But why do you think so many people get tripped up trying to follow this simple advice?

A: The reality is that the whole Silicon Valley mindset—that we should all be in the gig economy or have side hustles—comes from the fact that companies are not paying people what they should be paying for a 40-hour work week.

We should be paid the value of our work. Instead, the rhetoric from companies like WeWork’s “do what you love” has encouraged people to believe they have to love all of their work.

And it gets framed as if we’re freely choosing this. We’re told that we’re choosing these side hustles, choosing to patchwork our careers. But then you look around: wages aren’t going up, layoffs are constant. At what point is that a choice? That's the reality we’re being forced into.

Brooke Duffy wrote about this in her book Not Getting Paid to Do What You Love. She followed influencers for years and saw how much they worked and how most of them weren’t paid in money, only in kind. A free handbag. Tickets to a show. Experiences, not cash.

Today there are 50 million who people call themselves content creators, but only about two million do it full-time. Two million sounds like a lot, but compared to the total, it’s tiny. The income is precarious. I post to TikTok, for example. My best month I made $400. That’s not going to feed me. So for most people, posting content is not going to be the thing that lets you quit your job.

Q: You’ve explored how brands provide meaning and identity in today’s culture. How does that connect to the way that we think about careers today?

A: Institutions—religion, family, jobs—don’t hold the same kind of sway that they used to. If I tell my students somebody worked at IBM for 30 years, they can’t even imagine that. They can’t imagine that who you are and what you do would be that integrated.

So while those institutions have weakened, the marketplace has stepped in to replace them. Brands now don’t just have a logo, they carry a mythology and values. The Nike swoosh makes you think of athletic excellence. The Disney castle makes you think of magic. Fenty is about inclusivity. And then you’ve got companies like Lush who came off Instagram after the whistleblowing around teenage girls’ mental health and stayed off saying: “We don’t support this.” So brands aren’t just selling you products they’re selling identity.

And when your job no longer provides stability or meaning, you start looking elsewhere. A lot of people turn to influencers or coaches. That’s where it gets tricky, because influencers by definition are trying to shape you. I call them “cult lite.” Some of them are harmless, but others — Sam Bankman-Fried, Adam Neumann, Elizabeth Holmes — were basically running cons.

The coaching industry has the same spectrum. On one end you have legitimate coaches with real expertise. On the other, you have people scraping content, packaging it into courses, and selling the same “make $10,000 a month” promise. If somebody says, "I can teach you how to make $10,000 a month, just run. Don't walk, run the other way. Because they absolutely cannot. I don’t know where that number came from. But what you begin to have is this sort of pyramid scheme of people and that’s how it starts to resemble multi-level marketing. Coaches coaching coaches who coach coaches. It’s not about teaching skills; it’s about creating a downline. What’s being sold isn’t learning often it’s about identity and hope.

Q: There are absolutely some scammy coaches and businesses out there. Have you seen any worse offenders?

A: Andrew Tate ran something called Hustler University—now he calls it something else. The pitch was: pay me $49 a month and I’ll teach you how to market yourself, how to pick up girls, how to make money online.

But the reality was you never interacted with him. You interacted with guys he paid, whose job was to bring more people in. It was essentially a recruiting scheme. No one ever got access to Andrew Tate himself.

Another one I’d warn people about—though a lot of people don’t think of it as coaches coaching coaches—is Mindvalley. On the surface, it looks like personal development. They have some legitimate people on their platform, but also hundreds, maybe thousands, of questionable classes.

What really struck me in researching them is that you can’t find anything negative about the company online. That’s unusual. It reminded me of the Mormon Church. Years ago, when ex-Mormons made response videos, the church flooded the internet with so much “I’m a Mormon” content that the critical stuff got buried. Mindvalley does the same thing: they pump out endless content and “honest reviews” that all pivot into, “this changed my life.” Look closely and you’ll see affiliate links. People make money if you sign up through their video.

And here’s another tell: they put out a video saying, “If people tell you there are too many coaches, don’t believe them.” Why would you need to make that video unless, in fact, there are too many coaches? It’s self-serving.

Q: Why do you think people are so susceptible to these schemes?

A: From what I know about multi-level marketing and cults generally, people are drawn in when they’re vulnerable. When you’re feeling unsafe or insecure, maybe you’ve been fired, gone through a breakup, or lost someone then you’re more open to promotions that throw you a rope. You’re anxious and want to feel better so may latch onto whatever is being offered.

I don’t think people join because they’re bad or foolish. They join because they’re people, and they’re looking for hope.

That’s part of why I wrote Hoodwinked, to show that this isn’t unusual. The “cult mindset” isn’t just Jim Jones in Guyana. It happens in multiple spaces of our society. The desire to feel secure, to feel taken care of, is universal. But when it comes to your career, you need to ask: who am I talking to? What’s their vested interest? If it’s not in you and your growth, walk away.

Q: Thankfully there are lots of legit coaches out there (!). But what guidance or red flags do you offer for people looking for a coach of their own?  

A: There is real value in working with coaches. I’ve been in marketing for 40 years, and yet when it came to branding myself, I needed help from a coach on my own stuff. The best experience I had was with someone who let me try their services a little, then upsold me once I saw the value. Upselling isn’t inherently bad, it’s fine if you’ve already proven your worth.

The red flags are when you have no transparency on their background. Ethical coaches should make their experience clear and easy to find and be proud to say: “I worked in HR. I’ve coached X number of TED speakers. I’ve built marketing campaigns.” Whatever it is, it should be visible.

And the flip side is true: if you’re a coach, make sure your credentials are easy to find. Nothing makes me crazier than a 20-year-old calling themselves a life coach. You can’t claim life experience you don’t have. If you don’t have real expertise to share, maybe coaching isn’t your path.

Q: There is a lack of imagination about other careers available, it seems. How do you talk with your students about their career choices?

A: I try to tell them that online work in general is precarious. If you’re a content creator, you’re precarious labor and always at the mercy of the platforms. Algorithms change overnight, and what made you money one month can be cut in half the next. That’s not like working for IBM for 30 years. It’s unstable.

People limit themselves by looking at social media and saying, “I could do that,” and then trying to copy someone else. What they don’t do is ask, “What am I good at that nobody else knows how to do?” That’s the key.

When I realised my students didn’t grasp this I created a class called The Business of Media . They were coming in saying “I want to be Steven Spielberg” or “I want to be Katie Couric” as they didn’t see the breadth of roles available. You can be a lawyer in entertainment, an accountant, a camera operator, a marketer. I wanted to show them all the different segments of the media industry, so they’d understand there are multiple ways in.

My concern with this generation is they’re not in offices and so they’re not learning careers the old way: by walking down the hall to ask your boss a question, or having coffee with colleagues and picking up knowledge informally. Those relationships carry you forward. If you lose your job, you call the people you worked with. That’s how networks grow.

So I worry about students, and even my daughter, spending too much time alone and online. But what I’ve discovered is that when you do this kind of online, portfolio-style work, you actually find yourself in multiple communities. That can be a good thing but only if you’re intentional about it.

That’s the key. If you want to work for yourself you have to manufacture the community and the learning that used to come with an office. You have to go out and find the groups that will support you and help you build your business.

And you have to find your people. Relationships that algorithms can’t take away.

To learn more about Dr Mara Einstein, including her books, upcoming podcast and speaking engagements including three in NYC visit her website and follow her on Instagram.