One of my goals for 2024 is to be more honest. I don’t lie a lot but I tend to stick the truth in my front pocket every now and then when I don’t want to hurt someone else’s feelings or my own.

If someone tells me the saddest thing about their life right now and asks if I think they will be okay, I’ll say something like: yes, you absolutely will. I have no doubts!

But it’s a lie. They might not be okay for a long time before they finally are.

So in 2024, I’m cutting out that BS side of me and telling it like it is.

The next time someone asks me if they will be okay, I plan to tell them the truth:

Friend, I love you, thank you for telling me that. It’s rough, you’re tough, I have your back when all of this falls apart and when you’re picking yourself back up again.

But today I want to talk about lying because this hit my inbox:

When I saw that subject line, I thought:

That’s a lot of people lying! I’m pasting the entire email they sent me below:

It reminded me of the time I was one of these 56% of people. I was 21, fresh out of college, and interviewing for a job with Google. I have no idea how I landed the interview because my resume looked like string cheese but I quickly was denied the job. They claimed I lied on my resume. I didn’t. I just put the wrong month down for an internship I had. It was an honest error. It didn’t matter. They tossed my potential in the trash.

A friendly PSA from your gal pal over here: don’t lie on your resume. It’s never worth it!

In today’s newsletter, I’m highlighting odd jobs that pay people to lie. For those of you who like to make things up, these gigs might be for you.

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But first, a few quick odd things from my brain to yours:

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Are you lying to me?

• Magician

  • For this job, you must be a performer who is skilled in the art of illusion and mastery of tricks and is comfortable with entertaining many types of audiences (from kids hyped up on sugar to an unconvinced woman at a company cocktail party) knowing nonverbal cues and if they are feeling engaged. As a magician, you can either work independently, for an entertainment company, or be contracted through a venue to gain your claim to fame. 

  • While gigs can take a while to become steady, the average pay is $23 per hour. 

  • Here’s a VIDEO and ARTICLE on how to become a magician! 

• Fortune Teller

  • This job has been around for centuries and is still very much practiced today, and requires the use of special methods such as good old-fashioned crystal ball gazing to tarot card reading to predict a person’s future and help them make important decisions. For this job, you must have incredible communication skills and know how to interpret signs, as well as various magic and illusion techniques. 

  • While your palm might read differently, the average pay for this job is about $17 per hour. 

  • Here’s an Article on how to become a fortune teller!

• Actor

  • To make it in this industry, a good actor must be able to portray characters on stage or screen with the ability to convince the audience through line memorization, emotions, and body language. Other qualifications include conducting research, being able to modulate your voice, and being able to take guidance. 

  • Average pay is about $18 per hour, but depending on expereince, reputation, and landing the perfect gig, you can make quite the salary. 

  • Here’s a VIDEO on how to become an actor with no previous experience!

• Fiction Author

  • To captivate the reader with this job, you must have a strong imagination and creativity to develop characters, plotlines, settings, and themes that are both compelling and believable. This job also requires you to spend countless hours writing, editing, researching, revising, and setting yourself apart to be able to achieve your vision and build a fanbase. 

  • Though most fiction writers struggle to make an income on their writings alone, published books can bring in anywhere from $1000 to six figures a year. 

  • Here’s an ARTICLE on how to start writing fiction. 

• Call Center Scammer

• For this job, you have to be able to master the art of manipulation and ultimately get people to disclose their personal and financial information over the phone, typically by impersonating credible companies like Amazon and Google or government agencies such as the IRS.  To be a successful scammer, you must know your audience as well, which is typically elderly or people who are distracted.

• Here’s an ARTICLE on the confessions of a call-center scammer. 

• Corporate Spy

  • Usually hired by one firm to spy on another firm that can include attending meetings that discuss plans and operations, monitoring behaviors of individuals or groups, conducting surveillance, or shopping in a rival's store. For this job, you have to be okay with dancing a fine line between legal and illegal activity. 

  • Here’s a VIDEO on how to gain insight into your competitors with “competitive intelligence” and an ARTICLE on how someone made $2 million a year as a corporate spy. 

• Mystery Shopper

  • To be a mystery shopper, you need to be comfortable posing as a customer with genuine interest at a store, restaurant, or similar that you might not normally be a customer at. But be careful, you don’t want to get caught pretending or it wild defeat the whole purpose! You need to have good investigation skills and be able to report back accurate and helpful feedback to the company hiring you. 

  • Depending on how many opportunities are given, you can average over $700+ a week! 

  • Heres’s an ARTICLE on how to land this amazing job.  

• Undercover Journalist 

  • Responsibilites of an undercover journalist include developing and living as a fake person in order to gain access to a person, place, or organization. To be successful, you need strong dedication to your alias to be able to obtain video proof, fraud, abuse, corruption or anything else you have been hired to expose. 

  • Here’s a VIDEO on how to become an undercover journalist. 

• Bad Review Writer

  • For this job, you must have excellent writing skills and be able to convince potential buyers not to buy a product or visit a restaurant/hotel/store/etc, plus having a little bit of credibility (proof of previous reviews and a following on social) helps with this job too. Writing bad reviews requires a lot of research and creativity, as a lot of business are catching on and ready to take legal action. 

  • While it’s not the most consistent income, Craigstlist advertises that you can get paid anywhere from $5, $25, even up to to $50 per review! 

Here’s an ARTICLE on all the details needed to start in this business.

It was hard to find jobs on the internet that straight-up say a description of the gig require you to lie. So I asked ChatGPT for help. Here’s what it shared when I asked “what jobs reward you for lying”.

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I also searched Reddit and this was a funny response:

LOL!! This is niche but this response was funny:

🙌 Oddies But Goodies

• Enjoy diving into:

An article about jobs that liars are usually good at doing.

Another article on spotting liars.

A final article on how 43% of hiring manager lie on interview.

EVERYONE IS LYING UGH!!

• Tools I love:

I built these AI tools and am super proud of them.

The best fitness app - I use this daily

How I built my website

AI software

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