⚡ Quick Answer
No, the Side Hustle Summit was not a scam. It was a real, free virtual event (September 6 to 13, 2026) hosted by two of the most verifiable people in online business: Iman Gadzhi and Russell Brunson. That edition has ended and registration is closed. The checks below explain why it held up while it was live, for anyone weighing a future edition if one gets announced.
Looking for the full event review instead? Read our Side Hustle Summit review — sessions, hosts, pros and cons, and whether it was worth the time.
Was the Side Hustle Summit legit?
Yes. The event was real, the hosts were real, and attending was genuinely free. Below: who ran it, what the five days actually covered, and the one place your skepticism would have been pointed in the right direction. This edition has since ended, so treat this as a record of what held up rather than a pitch to register.
Searches for side hustle summit scam spiked while the event was open for registration, and that instinct was healthy. Free events from famous marketers deserve scrutiny before you hand over an email address. So we ran the checks: the hosts, the money, the fine print. Here is what held up, and the one place your skepticism should have pointed.
The case that it was legit
The hosts were checkable, and that mattered more than anything else. Most actual scams are run by people you cannot trace. Here, the opposite: Russell Brunson co-founded ClickFunnels, wrote three widely read books, and has operated in public for over 15 years (our ClickFunnels review covers that world). Iman Gadzhi built IAG Media, an education company, and a YouTube audience near 6 million, with a public history going back to his teens. Our profile of who Iman Gadzhi is goes through what is verifiable piece by piece.
The event mechanics were real and published. Five live sessions on fixed dates (September 6, 7, 8, 9 and 13, at 1pm Eastern), about an hour each, replays within 24 hours, registration with a name and email, no card required.
One detail we expected to find and did not: there was no VIP tier and no paid upgrade anywhere on the registration page. In this category that is unusual. Most free summits sell a recordings pass or an upgrade seat before the first session starts.
What the Five Days Actually Covered
Trusting an event and wanting to attend it were two different decisions. Here was the published schedule:
| Day | Session |
|---|---|
| Sept 6 | The Best Side Hustle To Start in 2026 |
| Sept 7 | How To Build Your First Side Hustle With AI |
| Sept 8 | The Untapped Digital Goldmine |
| Sept 9 | Russell Brunson, The Billion-Dollar Mentor |
| Sept 13 | Building Your Side Hustle LIVE! |
The order mattered more than the titles. Day one picked the thing. Day two built it. Day five built one live, which is the session that separated this format from a webinar that ends on a sales page.
The timing was the catch, and it was worth planning around. Sessions ran at 1pm Eastern on weekdays, the middle of the working day for most people who wanted a side hustle in the first place. The replays landed within 24 hours and covered anyone relying on them.
Want the full picture? We cover all five sessions, what we liked, what we did not, who the event was actually for, and whether we think it was worth the time. Read our full Side Hustle Summit review.
Who This Was Actually For
The registration page said it was built for people with no experience, no money and no idea where to start. That was honest, and it narrowed things usefully.
Five hours would have been a good trade if you recognised yourself here:
- You have tried to make money online and stalled at the part where you have to pick one thing
- You work full time and want something that runs beside the job, without a camera or startup capital
- You have bought courses you never finished, and you want to watch a method work before paying for one
- You keep reading about AI side hustles and cannot tell which ones are real
It would have been a weaker fit if you already run something that makes money and want depth rather than a starting point, or if promotional content inside teaching genuinely irritates you. Both hosts sell education, and the week ended where you would expect it to.
Why People Searched for a Scam
Three things triggered the scam searches while the event was live, and each deserved a straight answer.
The income framing. The marketing challenged attendees to build a “$373/day” side hustle and cited $55.6M+ in tracked sales from people who implemented the system. Those were the company’s own figures, reporting its strongest results rather than its average ones, and they were published instead of buried.
Which was the useful part. The number told you what the method produced at its best. The five sessions told you how: which offer those people picked, where the traffic came from, what they cut when something stopped working.
Whether that was worth five hours depended on how much of it you already knew. A best case is someone who ran the experiments before you did. What transferred to your niche was the method, not the number.
Worth being blunt about the ceiling here: nobody was handed $373 a day for showing up. The event did not pay you. What it could do was put one specific method in front of you, taught by people who had run it, and let five hours tell you whether it fit before you spent anything.
The free-event model itself. People assume free means bait. It is simply how events like this pay for themselves. The five sessions were free and complete, nothing inside them was gated behind a payment, and anyone who wanted to go further afterwards could choose to. Plenty of attendees watched all five and bought nothing.
Guru fatigue. Both hosts sell education for a living, and some people dislike the entire category. Fair enough. That is a preference, not evidence of a scam, and it applies to every free training event ever run.
That was the whole case, for and against.
What We Checked Before Recommending It
| What we checked | What we found |
|---|---|
| Anonymous or untraceable hosts | No. Both hosts have 10+ year public track records |
| Payment required to “unlock” the free offer | No. Registration took a name and email only |
| Fake scarcity or fake dates | No. Fixed published schedule with replays |
| Guaranteed income promises | None. The figures shown were the company’s own best cases |
| Hidden costs | None. All five sessions were free and complete, and anything beyond them was optional |
How it Compared to Other Free Launch Events
We review free launch events regularly, and a pattern separates the solid ones from the forgettable ones: whether the host has a track record that exists outside their own sales page. The AI CMO Training and Krista Mashore’s AI challenge both cleared that bar, and both put real teaching on the table from the first session.
The Side Hustle Summit cleared it with room to spare. Two hosts instead of one, both with public histories that predated this event by a decade, and a format (five short sessions plus a live build) that left less room for filler than a single long webinar. Among the free events we covered that year, the credibility floor here was about as high as it gets.
The trade-off was the same as always: bigger names bring bigger marketing, and the income framing here was more aggressive than most. Anyone who could hold those two facts at once, credible hosts and loud numbers, got the value and skipped the trap.
If your doubt is about the business model rather than the event, that is a fair separate question. Our guide to AI side hustles explains which patterns in this space genuinely work, which are crowded, and how to test any income claim you are shown.
Comparing this route against trading, dropshipping, Amazon FBA and high ticket sales? That is the full scored comparison.
Where We Stood, and What We Got Out of It
Worth saying plainly on a page that told you an event was legitimate: the links to the registration page were affiliate links, and we would have earned a commission if a reader went on to buy something from the hosts afterwards.
So the same check applies to us. The five sessions cost nothing. Anyone who attended all five and bought nothing was out five hours and up whatever they wrote down. That was the whole exposure, and it never depended on what we earned.
Verdict: It Was Legit, and Worth the Week
The Side Hustle Summit legit question had a clean answer: yes, it was a real event from real people, and free meant free for all five sessions. The income figures were the company’s best cases, and the teaching held up on its own merits.
The downside was always small. For anyone starting from nothing, five hours with two operators who had both been public for a decade cost an email address. If the method turned out not to be yours, you would have known that by the second session, and it would have cost an afternoon. Not $497, not a card to forget to cancel. An afternoon.
Why it was worth registering while it was open:
- Free, with no card field anywhere on the registration form
- No VIP tier and no paid upgrade, so there was nothing to buy to attend
- Five live sessions on published dates, not a vague “coming soon”
- Replays within 24 hours if 1pm Eastern did not work for you
- Two hosts with a decade of public history you could check before deciding
This edition has ended and the registration page is down. If a future edition is announced, the same case for registering would apply, and we will update this page with the new dates.
Related Reading
If you came here to check whether this category is worth your time in general, not just this one event: AI side hustles that actually work and how to start an online business with no money cover the same ground without a registration deadline attached.
Specifically curious about the AI angle rather than side hustles in general? The AI Business Summit, hosted by Alicia Lyttle, ran September 30 to October 2, 2026. You can still get the full recordings on the official page as a $67 Replay Pass, and we cover it in our full review.
One payment of $67 · All 3 days recorded · Watch at your own pace
FAQ
Was the Side Hustle Summit a scam?
No. The event was real, ran on published dates (September 6 to 13, 2026), was hosted by two publicly verifiable entrepreneurs (Iman Gadzhi and Russell Brunson), and cost nothing to attend. Scam accusations around events like this usually come down to disliking marketing tactics, not evidence of fraud.
Was the Side Hustle Summit legit?
Yes, in the sense that matters: real hosts with checkable track records, a real schedule that was delivered, free attendance with no card required, and replays for registrants while it was live. The income figures in the marketing were the company’s own best examples, and the frameworks taught across the five sessions were what you took away.
What was the catch with the free Side Hustle Summit?
There was no catch on the free sessions. All five were genuinely free, nothing inside them was gated, and registration took a name and an email with no card. What it asked of you was the time: five hours across eight days, plus the replays if a session clashed with your schedule.
Were the Side Hustle Summit income claims real?
They were the company’s own reported figures, published as best cases rather than averages. The $373 per day framing and the $55.6M in tracked sales came from its most engaged students. Publishing the strongest results is the useful choice: across the five sessions you saw the practices that produced them, which is what you could apply in your own niche.
Who was behind the Side Hustle Summit?
Iman Gadzhi, founder of IAG Media and the education company behind the event platform, and Russell Brunson, co-founder of ClickFunnels. Both have public track records going back roughly a decade, which is exactly what most scam operations lack.
Is there a next edition of the Side Hustle Summit?
None has been announced yet. The registration page for the September 2026 edition is no longer live. If a new date is confirmed, this page will be updated.
Related reviews
How we checked this: every figure here is read at the primary source and linked, never taken from another article. Where a number is someone’s own claim about their product, we say so in the text. Read our full review methodology and affiliate disclosure.