Utkarsh Amitabh introduces his forthcoming book, The Passion Economy and the Side Hustle Revolution, framing it as a response to mass job losses from COVID-19 (he cites ~500 million lost jobs). He argues many displaced or underemployed people must create self-defined, self-regulated economic opportunities by discovering passions and building skills, networks, and multiple income streams. He highlights enabling digital tools (Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Stripe, social media), and leans on Daniel Pink’s framework — autonomy, mastery, and purpose — as core elements of meaningful work. The talk positions the shift as global (India, UK, Europe, US, Latin America, parts of Africa, Australia), previews case studies, mental models, and data to appear in the book, and ends with a call for collaborators and stories.
Questions this video answers
May 21, 2021.
500 million people.
Autonomy; Mastery; Purpose.
Chapters
Hi everyone, my name is Utkarsh and I'm going to tell you about my new book, which is called the Passion Economy and the side hustle revolution. 500 million people have already lost jobs in the COVID 19 aftermath and many more are about to. These jobs, unfortunately, are not coming back. So people who've underemployed, who are unemployed right now, need to figure out a way to create economic opportunities for themselves outside institutions, perhaps looking within and figuring out what is it that they truly care about and what's the unique contribution that they can make in the world. To figure out their question, people have to not look at hot trends and what's the next big thing thing. To begin with they have to ask what is it that they're truly passionate about? What is it that they care enough about that they want to dedicate the coming years of their life, building up the skills, the network, the aptitude, and creating viable economic opportunities through their passion? There are new tools that are coming up. Zoom, Microsoft, teams, Stripe using existing social media platforms. But when you combine all of them, you create a new kind of product. A product that gives you the opportunity to create a different kind of employment. I see lots of people who are either fired, perhaps they're going to quit here, quit their job, and then create multiple income streams for themselves. Perhaps they could be tech consultants by the day, jazz musicians by the night, and in between, find time to learn a new skill, perhaps stream their video game and figure out ways to develop three different kinds of jobs. The difference between traditional employment and this kind of employment would be that it will be far more self defined and self regulated than before. Daniel Pink, a blogger, a thinker, a writer, says that there are three key elements of meaningful work. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose. The intersection of all of them gives us the source of intrinsic motivation. And I think a lot of these jobs that will emerge out of this pandemic will be at the intersection of these three elements. People will be far more focused on creating opportunities for themselves where they can reliably have fun doing the job that they want. This won't be all fun and games. There will be lots of troubles, struggles, hustle involved, failed experiments, but. But there'll be this joy of discovery that'll be indescribable in the long term and even in the short term, if people look at experiments not necessarily as successes or failures, but essentially tinkering about micro projects that might lead to something meaningful, that'll be amazing. In this whole experiment or this adventure of figuring out what we are uniquely good at and what the world needs. I think this new side hustle revolution will come to fore kinds of jobs that we only read about. We thought that yes, maybe someday our children or our children's children, they will one day go it. But this revolution is happening right now. I see this in India, in the uk, in Western Europe, in the us, in Latin America, parts of Africa, Australia. This is a truly global revolution that is taking place and the people who will be able to reinvent themselves repeatedly, multiple times, drawing upon the strength of the communities they're a part of, they are going to have the kinds of incomes that they want and they're going to have a ton of fun creating the kinds of jobs that everyone is supposed to do or the kinds of jobs that back in the day people said, oh, once you have enough money, once you have enough degrees, once you accomplish whatever you're supposed to accomplish, AKA what society expects you to do, then you can finally begin to start following your passion and doing whatever it is. I don't believe that passions are fixed. We constantly evolve as people. What we want changes our relationship with the world. A community changes. But a part of the adventure of reinventing is learning to roll with the times. And in my book I'm going to attempt to capture some of this through case studies, through interesting mental models, through data, through insights that I've gleaned running network capital and scaling it from a small community that I started as a passion project to this macro country like situation that we have today, with hundreds and thousands of millennials in Gen Z coming together under one platform to learn with and from each other, and helping each other discover their careers that they truly feel inclined towards. I'm having so far a ton of fun thinking about the structure, writing essays, connecting with people, but it's most satisfying to run into those who are who've not quite figured it out, but they're excited by this possibility. In my book, I want to capture the essence of what they're saying, how they're feeling, what they're experiencing. Because not many times in our lives we get to see a revolution unfold in front of our eyes. We're all blessed in a way that a small glimmer of hope has come in the form of this passion economy space. And I look forward to co creating this book with the help of you. So feel free to get in touch with me if you feel that you have an interesting idea that you want to bounce off, or if you're observing some new trend at work in your own life. In your own communities. Feel free to get in touch with me. Take care and talk to you soon.
