The Illusion Of The Side Hustle: The Employee Who Unethically Steals From Their Employer To Make A Big Break

It begins innocently—always does. A friendly wave at the reception, a few “Yes, boss!” chants during morning stand-ups, and then silence… the kind of silence that only happens when your marketing lead is quietly siphoning your top 50 clients through a backdoor WhatsApp group chat named “Loyal Customers Only.” Of course, “loyalty” here refers not to your business, but to their treacherous ambition, greased with ego and microwaved by the delusion that entrepreneurship is simply a matter of swapping logos and duplicating menus.

I’ve been in business just long enough to earn a PhD in Betrayal and an honorary degree in Satire. Twenty staff—yes, twenty—have tried to either clone my business or create a Frankenstein version of it. And while the idea of competition excites policy analysts and the makers of TED Talks, in the real world, it’s often executed by half-baked dreamers with stolen spoons and a misplaced sense of destiny. One even had the gall to steal equipment. You know, casually borrow a blender and a POS machine, like it’s a wedding souvenir.

Here’s the real comedy: they fizzle. Every single one. Not because the gods of entrepreneurship are particularly vengeful, but because building a business is not an act of duplicating revenue streams—it’s the back-breaking, sleep-depriving, ulcer-inducing act of building systems. But no, they don’t see that. What they see is the KES 10 million a month in gross revenue and do a quick back-of-the-napkin calculation: “If he’s making KES 10 million, I just need KES 2 million to live like Bien without the concerts.”

Read Also: Ignore Your Employees And Their Mental Health At Your Peril

Let’s address this arithmetic for the record: Income minus ignorance equals bankruptcy.

They miss that behind that KES 10 million lies a KES 12 million headache. Rent, salaries, power bills that can kill an elephant, taxes that seem to be written in ancient Latin, and yes, KRA  officers who think your juice bar is a front for money laundering. But none of this deters the delusional copycat. They think entrepreneurship is plug-and-play. They don’t pause to learn, study, or intern. They just clone, steal, and hope.

According to a report by the Kenyan Bureau of Statistics, over 80% of small businesses in Kenya collapse within the first five years. Do you think it’s a lack of passion? No. It’s because they ran into ethical debt before they even had financial debt. You cannot build a fortune on the ashes of betrayal and expect it to flourish. Karma is not a myth; she’s a quiet investor in every start-up you launch with stolen clients.

Take one ex-employee of mine—a customer service rep turned spiritual entrepreneur. She started redirecting customers from our business line to her number. It’s laughable now, but I remember how seriously she took it—like a coup plotter about to dethrone the king using slingshots and motivational quotes. She lasted three months. Clients fled. Charm can only mask incompetence for so long.

Ethics in business is not a luxury—it’s infrastructure. It’s not the chandelier; it’s the concrete. Stealing ideas, clients, or equipment is the business equivalent of building a mansion on jelly. The market may not punish you immediately, but the collapse is guaranteed. You see, clients aren’t fools. They know quality. They can smell chaos behind your Instagram filters.

And no, this is not bitterness talking. I admire the ambition. But ambition without integrity is just economic terrorism. You can’t plant maize in another man’s farm and expect to be called a farmer. If you’re inspired by your boss’s vision, great. But the ethical route is to resign, announce your plans, and compete fairly. That’s how grown-ups play the game.

Ironically, most of these people never really hated me. They envied the results and underestimated the struggle. They didn’t see the sleepless nights, the early days when I paid staff from personal loans, the weekends I skipped family gatherings to troubleshoot the inventory software that kept crashing like a drunk uncle. They only saw the profits, the press mentions, and the perceived ease.

A Harvard Business Review article from 2021 warns about the “mirage of entrepreneurship”—the dangerous illusion that replicating a model guarantees success. It emphasized that without understanding company culture, value chains, and brand equity, replicators almost always fail. But my ex-staff never read that. They were too busy registering, so Fresher or Very Fresh or Not So Fresh But Close Enough Ltd.

Ethics is not just about “being nice.” It is the currency of sustainability. People don’t do business with brands; they do business with trust. And you cannot outsource trust. You build it over the years. You guard it like a jealous lover. When you betray it, you lose more than customers—you lose your reputation. And in business, that’s death by a thousand unfollows.

Let me be clear: there’s nothing wrong with leaving a company and starting your own. That’s how we grow ecosystems. The problem is how you do it. If you loot your boss’s files, clients, or inventory to start your ‘dream,’ then your dream is already a crime scene. It’s not a business; it’s a hustle in lipstick.

Read Also: Emerging Trends Shaping The Lives Of Corporate Employees

To every entrepreneur reading this: don’t take betrayal personally. You’re not the problem. You’re just the latest station on their pilgrimage of shortcuts. Most of them don’t want to build—they want to arrive. And business, sadly for them, is a process, not a destination. It’s a grind. A grind that doesn’t forgive pretenders.

So yes, laugh it off when your operations manager suddenly becomes a “founder.” Celebrate when your intern decides to launch a replica using Canva and vibes. Let them go. Let them taste the deep waters. Let them discover that running a business is not just a matter of opening a shop; it’s about surviving storms. Daily.

A survey by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group revealed that ethical conduct in entrepreneurship is directly tied to long-term brand loyalty and access to capital. Investors don’t fund thieves. They don’t back copycats. They look for resilience wrapped in values. But again, who has time for values when you’re busy measuring success in likes?

Look, I’ve seen it all—tears at the end, apologies sent via mutual friends, half-baked confessions in job applications, and the famous last line: “I didn’t realize how hard it was.” Of course you didn’t. That’s because you never built anything; you just tried to hijack a vehicle you couldn’t drive.

So I’ll say this once more: ethics is not optional. It’s your insurance policy against irrelevance. Build it into your business the way engineers embed steel into concrete. If your house collapses, it should be because of market forces, not because you started as a liar.

And if you’re the one being betrayed? Congratulations. You’ve officially leveled up. Because only people who build valuable things get copied. Just ensure that in all your buildings, you never stoop to their level. Don’t become cynical. Keep doing the right thing, the hard way. It pays, eventually.

Remember: shortcuts are for thieves, not trailblazers. The trail is long, dusty, and full of snakes. But it’s still the only path that leads to legacy.

Read Also: Dear Entrepreneur, Here’s The Impact of Delayed Salaries On Employees And Organizations