Throwing some 80's New Wave at ya, Cyndi Lauper with "Money Changes Everything." And kicking a trash can full of pretend trash, because... well I don't know. Hey, the 80's were weird. A different kind of weird than today, anyhow.
I've been slowly working my way through the book, The $100 Startup, since I left Lancaster three weeks ago. It's a book that caught my eye in a library a couple years ago, but just not enough to pick up and read. While working with the bike business up in the desert, I thought it might give me some ideas that would help in my work there. The object on that was to get a lot of traffic to a big website real fast, and create an enormous cash flow quick. That is basically the opposite of how I tend to work. I work slow, step by step, and build gradually towards things. Ultimately, I realized I wouldn't be able to do what was needed there, and I headed back to Orange County (CA) to build my own small business.
At this point, talent-wise, I focus on three things: I do a unique form of Sharpie marker artwork that actually sells. I blog, write and publish zines and small zine books, and really want to get into writing actual books when I can. In addition, I have become good at building a web presence and building online traffic to websites for little or no money. That last skill is one nearly every small business can use, and one I could teach pretty easily in a zine, a small book, an ebook, and online course, a workshop, or in one on one consulting. The biggest issue I'm dealing with right now is that I'm homeless, and I got down here with about $20 in my pocket. That's not the greatest place to start.
I've been focusing on scraping up money both in homeless ways (panhandling), and through selling drawings (I've sold two in the last three weeks). Having been in and out of homelessness for many years, usually while working full time, I'm actually good at surviving on the streets. It's a lame thing to be good at, but I learned by necessity. So I've spent three weeks building a very basic level of stability, which is one of the many things people don't understand about homelessness. Like everyone else, I need a place to sleep, preferably a place where I don't get harassed, beat up, attacked by wild animals, or murdered. I've got that figured out, for the moment. I also need a place to go to the bathroom, a place to eat, a place to clean up or shower, a place to charge my old laptop and phone, and a place with wifi to write, blog, connect, and promote my work on social media. I also need money to buy food, and to buy what's needed to use restrooms, wifi, do laundry, and other basic stuff. So I've got those basic things figured out, temporarily. Things are always sketchy, and can change at any time, but I've got places to do the basic things, and can scrape up money for food, bus fare, and to survive day to day. That gives me a bit of a base to build from.
Once I hit that basic survival level of relative stability, then came the next stage, building a business straight from the streets. In this next phase, I need to get my California driver's license, I need an address to do that, then I need a 30 day bus pass, because that saves me $80 a month, then I need a small storage unit, because carrying everything I own every place I go really sucks. Then I need a P.O. box so I have an actual mailing address. Then I can get a bank account, and THEN I can open an online store, and THEN I can actually sell my artwork, zines, books, and BEGIN to build a business, create a decent cash flow, and finally make enough to rent a weekly room, or maybe a room in an apartment somewhere.
That's the way I've been thinking about things. Like everyone, I tend to get into ruts in my thinking. "I need this to do this, so I can do this, so I can do that, so I can FINALLY do the thing I really want to do." In reading The $100 Startup," I learned a lot of people starting small businesses do the same thing. They think of all these things they need to do, buy, build, and get ready, so THEN they can begin to get their business going. But then I read one little paragraph, a simple idea from a small business woman, Naomi Dunford, whose business, IttyBiz, helps other small business people get their ideas up and running. Naomi's thought was this:
"Many aspiring business owners make two common, but related, mistakes: thinking too much about where to get money to start their project, and thinking too little about where the business income will come from."
-Naomi Dunford, quoted on page 165 of The $100 Startup
That thought hit home with me. I was basically stuck in homeless guy thinking, "How can I panhandle or sell a couple of drawings to get all these things I need, so THEN I can start building a little business?" Rather than "Where and how can I sell some copies of my drawings or a zine,starting right now, to start earning an income now, and buy these things I need, to keep building the business into an actual, legit business. Yesterday was a weird day, everything felt a bit off. I kept just missing buses, and everything seemed more frustrating than usual. Living homeless, especially when you're reasonably smart, talented, and hardworking, is incredibly frustrating. Over the course of the day, I realized this was a big part of my problem, I was focusing on how to scrape up a few hundred dollars in "start-up money," rather than just beginning to sell the things I can get ready to sell over the next couple of days or weeks.
I pondered this idea all afternoon, and things started to fall into place again. I realized that I need to just start providing the service and selling the products I have now, and I thought of a few ways I can start doing that, in my current situation. So today and maybe tomorrow, I'll be getting the basic things together and ready so I can start doing that. That decision took a ton of weight off my shoulders. I don't need to stress about getting a 30 day bus pass. I'll get one day by day, until I can afford a 30 day bus pass, or to get my driver's license, or this or that or the other thing.
So that's the thought I'm working with right now, thank you Naomi Dunford for sharing that with Chris Gillebeau, who wrote The $100 Startup. Maybe this idea will resonate with some of you out there in a similar position. That's what this blog is all about.
The woman above is a former quant (math super geek) at investment banks Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns. Nomi Prins now writes and speaks on the economy, and specifically how the central banks of the world have led us down a path that has completely reshaped the world economy in a dangerous way. Her latest book isCollusion: How Central Banks Rigged the World. Her work really helps explain where the global and major nation economies are headed, dictated by the actions of the world's central banks over the last 10-12 years.
Big trends in today's work and business world
There are a bunch of big issues happening in our world right now that I see having a major impact on every single person, at some level. I've looked into these, to the extent I've been able to, over the last few years. I don't think there is any way that at top down approach will even begin to address these issues in time. I've come to the conclusion that the best way to deal with the underlying issues happening in the world of money, business, and the economy, is to encourage tens of millions of Americans (and people in other countries) to create their own micro or small businesses. A "micro business" is generally defined as a one person business. Without large scale entrepreneurship, I see no other way to keep most of the adults in the world working in some functional way, in th efuture we're heading towards.
Here are the big issues I'm looking at that led to this conclusion, and why this blog, and many future works of mine, will work on this theme of encouraging people to create their own "jobs", by creating small local businesses, a few of which, inevitably, will turn into large businesses and create other jobs.
-The continual rise in new technologies- Like it or not, new technologies, of all kinds, are continuously being invented, some of which survive and get implemented into business and people's everyday lives. The tech genie will not go back in the bottle, we're going to have to deal with all these technologies as they enter our lives, and figure out how to adapt to them. Many of our biggest problems today stem from not doing that very well. -The Big Transition- This is my name for the transition from an Industrial Age society to a knowledge-based, or Information Age society. Futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler (2007 Alvin Toffler interview) pinned the beginning of this change at 1956, the year there were more white collar (office) workers in the U.S. than blue collar (factory/industrial) workers. I believe we're not IN the Information Age now, but rather in a really long transition period between the fading Industrial Age and the growing Information Age. During this period, every industry, every business model, and every institution of any kind will be disrupted, and either collapse, or be intentionally reformed, into an Information Age version of itself, if it's still viable at all. Non-viable institutions, whether businesses or other organizations, will simply fade away into obscurity. I guestimate the end of this transition as being around 2040.
-The loss of another 90-95 million jobs in the next 15-20 years- This often cited 2013 study, by Oxford University, in England, found that 47% of jobs (in 2013) could be completely lost to new technologies by the year 2030. In the U.S., that's roughly 92 MILLION jobs that will disappear between 2013 and 2034. That's in addition to the tens of millions of jobs lost when the masses of American factories closed down, from the 1960's to the early 2000's. These jobs were lost to both outsourcing and new technology, like industrial robots and computerization of so many industrial procedures.
Obviously, 47% of all jobs, or roughly 92 million jobs, is a HUGE number, and it's easy to argue that the report overstated things. OK, let's say the highly intelligent people at Oxford were off by 20% in their estimate, and only 73.5 millions jobs wind up disappearing. The number is still astronomical, and catastrophic to the American workforce. Whatever the final number ends up being, it will affect tens of millions of Americans, and hundreds of millions of other people, around the world. -Disruption of industries and traditional business models- The new technologies of all kinds, like the growth of the internet and smart phones, in our everyday lives, for instance, have completely changed how people communicate. This has changed who people communicate to, how fast they can communicate, what types of communication they can use (text, voice, photos, video) and what portion of the world an average person can communicate with. These changes in communication abilities, along with so many other changes, have changed how business can, and does, operate, which led to entirely new business models. As younger people, armed with new technologies, experiment and explore, some create new business models that disrupt, and completely change entire industries very quickly.
There was a time when we listened to FM radio, and then went to a record store and paid $15 or $20 for a band's album of ten songs, on vinyl, CD, or cassette. Those days are gone, disrupted by Napster, then the iPod and other MP3 technologies, and other things since, like steaming. This type and scale of disruption will happen in every industry, in my opinion, and perhaps several times in some industries. Yet even today, in 2019, most small businesses barely use the new technologies and platforms to anywhere near their full potential. Even major corporations struggle with the world where nearly every consumer has a voice, a video camera, and a way to engage much of the world, share their opinion, and buy merchandise from their phone or laptop.
-The Fed and other central banks working to keep interest rates artificially low and to continue quantitative easing policies- This is the point that former investment banker, Nomi Prins, is making in the video above. The Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank, and other central banks, lowered interest rates to help businesses keep access to credit, during and after, the 2008 economic crash. Some countries actually have or had negative interest rates, meaning banks and businesses got paid to borrow money, in essence. Central banks also implemented "quantitative easing," which basically means they either used taxpayer money, or created money out of thin air, then bought their country's government bonds with it. In some cases they even bought stocks of certain corporations.
Imagine you cold write a a magic check, that didn't have a bank account balance backing it up. You could just write a check for a million dollars, deposit that check in your bank, and have a million dollars in your account. Then you could take that million dollars, and buy products from your own business. Your business would soar, right? That's an oversimplified way of explaining the $21 TRILLION (a trillion is 1,000 billion, just to remind you) in debt that central banks have pumped into the financial system in the last ten years, and how they did it. The Federal Reserve used this money to buy U.S. government bonds, and other central banks bought bonds from their own country. That's what quantitative easing is, buying your country's loans (debt) to add money to the financial system.
The ultra low interest rates and quantitative easing have added incredible amounts of debt to the system, 21 TRILLION dollars, which helped keep the world's financial system afloat, after the 2007-2009 crash/Great Recession. These programs were supposed to be temporary measures. But the central bankers didn't know how to stop these measures without creating another crash. So the central banks just kept these plans going, kind of like keeping Grandpa on oxygen in the hospital after a heart attack, a stroke, and kidney failure. He's on life support, but there's not much hope if you take him off. That's basically been the state of the world economy for the last decade. If you take the oxygen away, Grandpa's going to have a hard time breathing, and will probably die.
If interest rates go up, even just to "normal" levels, then the countries and businesses who've racked up so much debt have to make higher payments. A lot of them are borrowing money just to stay in business right now, and can't afford higher payments. So the next crash will be like 2008 in many ways, but with much, MUCH more debt, more debt than ever in human history, that can come crashing down. Yeah, that's gonna suck.
-The college system and the student debt crisis- The main trigger that led to the 2008 crash was $1.3 trillion in "sub prime" mortgage debt. Basically, millions of people who didn't have great credit, and who couldn't really afford homes, were allowed to get mortgages to buy homes from about 1997-2007. This happened because Wall Street financiers found a way to buy those mortgages, and repackage them into other investments called CDO's, and make a ton of fees selling those other investments to institutional investors, like cities, states, and retirement funds.
Over the last ten years, student loan debt has been bought, repackaged, and resold in a nearly identical way to the sub prime mortgages. The repackaged student loan investments are called SLABS, Student Loan Asset Backed Securities. Now, if every student pays back their loans on time, these are solid investments. But in this article, for example, we read that a million students default on their loans every year, and 40% of all students could default on their student loans by 2023. If a significant number of students default, then the SLABS lose value, and could be devalued, or straight out collapse, like sub prime mortgages did in 2008.
If that happens, which seems VERY likely, then colleges across the country lose a significant amount of their income. Colleges and universities are now the main employers in many small and mid-sized cities. So if the income of colleges goes down dramatically, then the economy of most college towns will go down significantly. Here's the bad news, most of the 150-200 good sized cities in the U.S. are college towns, where colleges and universities are the top, or one of the top employers. So that's not good.
-The Rise of the Creative Class and Tech clustering, as described by Richard Florida- What started as research to figure out why top tech students were leaving Pittsburgh after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University, turned into Professor Richard Florida's life's work, including discovering a new category of workers, the Creative Class. He found that about 1/3 of today's workers make their living using some form of creativity, problem solving, and decision making. These are the tech workers of the world, but also artists, teachers, media workers, scientists, engineers, doctors and others. One big finding of Florida's research showed that Creative Class people tend to find the place they want to live, and then look for work. They cluster in certain areas which already have other creative scenes, like places known for good art and music scenes. Very simply, highly creative people like to live around other creative people. The tech companies, unlike previous Industrial Age companies, go to where the talented people are, they don't just go to the city that gives them the biggest tax incentives.
So now we have much of the high technology industry, mostly clustered in about ten metro areas: The San Francisco Bay area, Boston, Seattle, New York City, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Austin, the Raleigh Research Triangle, and a handful of smaller tech hubs. This means that most of the United States., DOES NOT have a strong tech industry presence in its communities. Those are many of the same areas that lost most of their high paying manufacturing jobs as factories moved overseas, or lost human jobs to industrial robots and new technology. So we have 10 or 12 metro areas surging economically, and most of the rest struggling to create enough high paying jobs for their population. -The "Geographic Recession" caused by tech clustering- The tech company clustering, just explained above, led to huge areas of the country that never fully came back from the loss of manufacturing jobs, and never came back from the Great Recession of 2007-2009. For much of the U.S., particularly rural, small town, and small city America, it feels like the Great Recession is permanent. So we have tech hubs where 30%-40% of the people are doing really well, but the other 60%, largely service workers, struggle to afford rising rent, home buying, and other costs. Those centers are where much of the population is concentrated.
Then we have most of the country, by area, where a much smaller percentage of people are living really well, and 65%-85% of the people are struggling to survive, working one, two, or three low wage or gig jobs. The housing prices are much more affordable in those areas, other costs are often lower as well, but there aren't near enough high paying jobs for the majority of people to live well.
-Political Polarization in the U.S.- The current political polarization in the U.S. has deep roots in this economic divide, though there are other major factors as well. The tech hub cities, mostly urban and more socially liberal, tend to vote highly Democrat, and the rural areas, which for 40 years have become much more socially conservative, tend to vote largely Republican. The inability to make a good living both from older former factory workers, and for younger workers now saddled with huge student loan debt, has led to a huge populist movement here in the U.S. (and Europe as well). Here's the crazy thing, younger, college educated workers struggling with student debt tend to favor the far Left politically, gathering behind Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and other Progressives and Social Democrats. Meanwhile, older former factory workers, and rural, mostly White people, also struggling to make a decent living today, have been drawn to the far Right, gathering behind Donald Trump.
The crazy thing is, most of the people drawn to the populist movement, both political Left and Right, are becoming polarized for the same reason, they are having trouble making a good living in today's fast changing world. But for ideological reasons, often just because of where they grew up, they have become polarized to opposite sides of the political spectrum, which has shattered both the Republican and the Democrat parties. The traditional power players in those parties are struggling to maintain power, as new candidates farther from the center, keep gaining ground. This draws the politicians farther apart, so they have become tribal, and often refuse to compromise at all.
So we have tens of millions of average Americans pissed off for the same reason, because they can't make a good living these days. But because they've been attracted to opposite sides of the political world, the people they vote for can't get much, if anything, done. So at a time when we need a ton of "roll up the sleeves hard work" in Washington, and state capitals, to make lots of hard compromises that are in the best interest of almost everyone, just the opposite is happening. This is why I have no faith in serious top down programs happening to deal with all the issues I'm listing here. The poltical polarization will continue to just make all these issues worse, mostly by ignoring them or not acting at all.
-The Next Great Recession... coming soon to a business near you- Oh, and if the geographic recession crippling most of small town America, and the insurmountable student debt crippling metro/tech hub America, isn't enough, all these things are setting the stage for one hell of a Next Great Recession. On average, we have a recession every 4 to 10 years. We're at the end of year 10 since the last recession officially ended, at the moment. As I explained above, the ultra low interest rates set by The Federal Reserve and other central bankers, have had our economy on "life support" for ten years. Current Fed Chairman Powell, did exactly what he was supposed to do, and really slowly began to raise interest rates back towards a more reasonable level in 2017-2018. This gave The Fed a little room to act when another recession begins. He also reduced the number of U.S. bonds owned by The Fed, bought in the quantitative easing program.
The stock markets freaked out as rates were raised, because low interest money is like crack to Wall Street, and they're seriously addicted. As I predicted months before, the Dow Jones 30 (Industrial Average), and the broader stock indexes, began to drop a few weeks after President Trump signed the huge tax cuts in December of 2017. Since then, nearly every form of manipulation possible has been thrown at the economy to keep it from crashing. Most recently, hints of lowering interest rates and more quantitative easing have given. This appears to be a desperate attempt to keep the stock markets (the visible "economy") up, giving the illusion that everything's going well financially. The Republicans, of course, want the economy to appear to be strong until the 2020 presidential elections, because that tilts things in their favor politically.
The markets keep trying to begin their normal, and much needed, correction, and then are pushed and propped back up. But they only go to right around the previous highs, now approaching Dow 27,000. The fact that they keep stalling at nearly the same levels shows that there's no underlying reasons for the markets to surge significantly higher. If there was real momentum, real growth, we'd be at Dow 30,000, or more, right now. Look at the charts for the last 5 years, four times at the high levels in the last two years, for the DIJA 30, the S&P 500, and the Russell 2000 (one peak's a bit higher than the other 3 on the Russell). The Nasdaq 100 has been around the same highs three times. The fact that the markets hit such a dramatic wall of resistance, so many times, over two years, shows there's not much upside left to be had.
If the Fed actually lowers interest rates, that will definitely help the stock market, temporarily. But lowering interest rates is also a signal The Fed thinks we're either in a recession, or weeks or months from entering a new one, as you can see looking at when interest rates were dropped on this chart when you look at 1990, 2001, and 2008. -The Retail Apocalypse- One recent article spoke of more than 20,000 retail store closings, when you add stores closed in 2017, 2018, and planned closures in 2019. Another 15,000 to 20,000, or more, retail stores closed from about 2008 to 2014. This article from May 2019 claims that another 12,000 individual stores may close this year alone (2019), and up to 75,000 MORE STORES may close by 2026. Remember "the economy is doing great," and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. That's what we're told by politicians and much of the business news media, day after day. It's the business news media's job to keep people excited about being in the stock markets, but it's a hard job these days.
What the hell is going on? Here's what's going on. The "Retail Apocalypse" is the technology enabled Disruption of the Industrial Age, consumer goods, sales and distribution system. Large numbers of good sized stores, spread across the nation in malls and shopping centers, worked well through the 20th century. But millions of people would rather order many things on their phones or computers now, and have them delivered.
Far fewer people want to take the family to the mall these days. Because of this, 400 of the 1100+ American malls, are expected to close by about 2023. Some have closed, and many more are on the Dead Mall list. Those are the malls with 70% or fewer stores still open in them. There's even the DeadMalls.comwebsite chronicling the demise of U.S. malls in real time. What's happening is that the Industrial Age retail stores system, which was great for 100 years, is breaking down, and being replaced by online sales, big box stores, and discount retailers. That's Disruption in action. The stores that are closing down are/were run by people who didn't take changing technology seriously, or simply didn't bother to adapt to it in time, if at all.
It's common to hear people blam Amazon for all of this. It's not Amazon's fault, as so many people claim. Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder, was just one of the few who saw the incredible potential of the internet to sell stuff, and then worked his ass off to build a new way of selling and distributing merchandise. It's not just Amazon. Ebay allows hundreds of thousands of smaller sellers to do the same. So does the Amazon's resellers program, along with Etsy, Shopify, and other online sales platforms. You can bitch about Amazon, which turned 25 years old yesterday, by the way. But Sears (& Roebucks) disrupted the small town general stores with mail order in the same way, 140 or so years ago. It just took them 50 years to complete the process, because things moved much slower then.
Why am I not mentioning global warming and climate change?- Global warming, climate change, and changing weather patterns are huge issues, no doubt about it. These issues affect some people directly now, and will affect millions more people 20-30-40 years from now. But the economic issues I'm writing about here are affecting most people right now. These issues will affect every single person in the U.S., and most of the world, in the next 2 or 3 years. These economic issues will affect far more people, far more deeply, far sooner, than climate change. These economic issues, which are basically being ignored by nearly everyone, could possible take down civilization as we know it. There's that much crazy shit happening, and coming down the pike soon.
Climate change is only an issue, if we're around to deal with it. These economic issues are a much bigger deal, that will hit far more people, far sooner. That's why these have my attention now.
And now for the good news...
"Recessions are when the whole world goes on sale, but almost nobody wants to buy."
-Steve Emig (me)
If you're one of the people who actually read this big article (congratulations! And thank you), you now have a bird's eye view of why so many things seem so crazy these days, in the job market, business, and the economic world. These things are all tied together. Most people don't want to think or learn about "the economy," yet the bitch about not having enough money every day. Money connects and affects every single one of us, unless maybe you live in a cabin in the Yukon Territory where you fish, hunt, and trade goods with Sasquatch. I'm guessing not many of you fall into that category.
You now have an idea where things are headed. You have the internet, Google, and You Tube, you can verify the facts I've shared, and contemplate my original ideas. You can learn, from free online how-to articles and videos, how these new technologies work, and how to apply them to your work and life. Most importantly, you can look at the future or your own industry, your own job, or that business you've been thinking of starting, and see what makes sense for you to do going forward.
-The internet and other platforms that can help almost anyone build a small business- Nearly every individual in the U.S. can access the internet, and can learn, communicate, share, trade, and sell, with millions of other people now. Using online platforms and phone apps, you can make money in thousands of ways that weren't available a generation ago. But you have to come to grips with the fact that all of this is actually happening, whether you like it or not. That ability to simply acknowledge what's happening, is one of the biggest obstacles society faces. Millions of people simply refuse to believe facts and reality these days. The future will be a huge punch to the gut, (and everywhere else) to these people, and they will really, really struggle with it all.
I get it. Hey,I liked shooting BMX videos on a Hi-8 camera, editing with the actual tapes, and making VHS copies of my video to sell, in 1990. But those days are over. I got walloped by Disruption in the taxi industry in 2003, and struggled with it until late 2007. I wound up homeless. I was a diehard Luddite, I didn't want to deal with "that internet/cyber stuff." And I paid a huge price for that.
I changed my mind after I started blogging for fun in 2008, and began the long process of figuring out what it takes to be a writer (and now artist as well) in today's high tech, hyper-connected world. I learned bit by bit, very slowly. You don't go to college for this stuff, you learn online, with self-directed education. You do this in addition to college, if you want to be an employee. You learn this instead of college, if you want to start your own business. That's your choice, each person has a different path and dreams in life.
I'm still struggling, and homeless once again, for the moment. But I've sold thousands of dollars worth of art, and some written work, online in the last three years. I'm getting to the level of making a decent living, bit by bit. This blog is to share ideas and help other people who are, or want to, do the same thing, in your own way.
It's spring time, and that means entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk is driving around New Jersey harassing deer, and snapping up garage sale deals on coffee mugs, stuffed animals, collectible toys, and whatever else looks flippable. And you knew it was coming, limited edition Mug Life T-shirts are out. #muglife. Entertaining, informative, and inspiring, like usual.
The toys above are half of a thrift store purchase that cost me $1.90 in Richmond, Virginia, at the Goodwill Outlet store, last fall. Dumbo was from about 1975-1980, and sells for $12 or so on Ebay. I paid about 20 cents. Ernie was from 1980-85, and was selling for $6-$8 then. Since I was homeless at the time, Ebay was difficult, without an address, a bank account, and a place to store these things. I tried to sell them locally, on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, But had no takers. I ended up giving them away. Yes, I lost my $2 that time. But the deals are out there, that's the point. Wheelin' and Dealin'
I'm a kid of the 1970's, my dad was what people called a "packrat" back then, what's called a "collector" on American Pickers, and what some people a hoarder now. We didn't have the crazy hoarder houses you see on TV shows. Even though we moved nearly every year our basements and garages were full of shelving units, boxes, and cabinets, all piled with pieces of machines, tools, gun parts, motorcycle parts, and random mechanical things, that my dad intended to fix or build, "some day." Most of this stuff he either traded a friend for, or picked up at garage sales and gun shows. So I tagged along with him, learning the fine art of "wheelin' and dealin' as people called it then.
Buying and selling was a hobby for my dad, and for most people into garage sales, back then. The factories in Ohio, where we lived, and the whole country, were booming. Most people made solid, Middle Class incomes, and making a living off of garage sales wasn't necessary. But my dad nearly always made a little bit of money on his deals. When my mom was a little short for food money or whatever, my dad would always tell her he'd try to "borrow $5 or $10" from somebody at work. It wasn't until I was 14 that my dad told me all that "borrowed" money came from his gun money, well over $2,000, a few dollars at a time.
Though my dad hated violence, he was an avid target shooter and gun owner. Once I was about 8, he'd take me to gun shows, where he'd buy and sell guns, gun parts, reloading supplies, military surplus stuff, and whatever seemed interesting. He taught me to walk the whole show, see what was there, and scout out what seemed like good deals. He taught me to talk casually to people who had something he wanted to buy, and not seem to eager. He taught me to walk away when they wouldn't come down to the price he wanted to pay. That walking away, in a polite and friendly way, often was the trick that got the price to a decent level. He also taught me to bundle a few things together at times, or add something in trade to sweeten a deal.
My favorite deal I saw him do was when friend, a guy from work, another avid gun owner, had a little suitcase with 30,000 pro gun bumper stickers. Yes, I know a ton of people are anti-gun now, because of all the horrible mass shootings. Those are terrible tragedies, and there is no easy answer to solve that issue. But those incidents were rare when I was a kid, and target shooting was a common recreational sport, and many people in Ohio hunted as well.
In any case, my dad paid $30 for the case of 30,000 bumper stickers when I was about 5 or 6 years old. That's 1/10th of a cent each. There were 6 different bumper stickers, and he had 5,000 of each. For the next ten years, I watched my dad sell those stickers for $1 each, 1,000 times what he paid for each one. I watched him add a few stickers to a deal to sweeten the pot. He didn't try hard. Bumper stickers were a natural trading item at gun shows. Ultimately, my dad made well over $300 cash for his $30 investment, and got another $300 to $500 in trade, maybe more. Then, with my mom sick of seeing that little case in the basement, he sold the case, and the 20,000 or so remaining stickers, to another guy, for $30. Watching him milk that $30 investment for a decade, in my childhood, was a great lesson.
In today's world, the high paying factory jobs are mostly gone. Tens of millions of people are struggling. More important, we have the internet, computers, and smart phones, which offer a whole bunch of new ways to both buy an sell things, to a much, much wider audience. Flipping, as wheelin' and dealin' is now called, and retail arbitrage (buying consumer goods at one store and selling somewhere else), is a huge industry. Ebay, Amazon resellers, online stores, and all the other web platforms and apps, have tens of millions of items, new and used, that people are buying cheap and reselling somewhere else.
My own main experience in this was mostly from buying units at storage unit auctions, which I discovered accidentally in about 2005. I tried to turn this into a business to escape the downward spiral of the taxi industry, and I did make money consistently. But I was working 80 + hours a week in the cab, and I didn't make enough to make it a career. The funny thing is, the Storage Wars TV show started a couple of years later, and Daryl, "The Gambler" on the show, is from Huntington Beach, where I lived, and he was at the first storage auction I ever went to .
This is a Snoopy/Peanuts colorform set, where you have the little, rubber, flat people inside, and you stick them on the background scene in some way. This version, with the circle seal in the lower right corner, is the 35th anniversary remake of the original set. I bought this for about 20 cents (paid by the pound) at a Goodwill outlet store. These sell for $9-$10 on Ebay, and the 1972 originals sell for about $20.
I'll go into more detail in future posts on flipping ideas. But here are some places you can buy items to flip: garage sales, thrift stores, auctions of all kinds, online auctions, Craigslist, and Chinese distributors like Alli Express.
Here's where you can sell these items at a higher price (hopefully)- Ebay, a Shopify or other online store, your personal website, Facebook Marketplace, Let Go, Wallapop, the local flea market or swap meet, or Craigslist.
You get the idea. For more ideas on how to make some extra cash, or how to help get your own small business going, check out WPOS Kreative on Pinterest.
Mug life bitches! No that's not a typo... MUG, not THUG. America's favorite garage sale hunting multi-millionaire hits the driveways and garages of New Jersey on a rainy Saturday last fall (2018). He finds the cheap coffee mugs, he scores big with Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars, stuffed animals ("plush toys" these days), and lands a huge collection of collectible Olympic pins. All told, his $75 in garage sale finds turns into about a grand on Ebay. Why does a guy who owns a $150 million a year digital agency do this? To prove to everyone out there that hustling can make virtually anyone some cash. He's a hustler from childhood. #fliplife #garyvee Check out his content, it's everywhere. Gary's entertaining, and gives you ideas on how to make some cash when you're starting out.
Check out WPOS Kreative on Pinterest for more ideas on making money and building a small business in today's crazy world.
First of all, Gary Vayherchuk cusses a lot, or curses, as he says. If that bothers you, don't watch this.
Why would a guy with a $150 million digital agency get filmed going to garage sales, and trying to get 50 cents off of a $1 coffee mug? Some people would say hype or image. Seriously, I consume a lot of his content. He likes, maybe straight up loves, doing this shit. He talks about it all the time in other videos, behind the scenes, business consulting sessions, and even keynote speeches. Gary's entertaining, and this series of videos shows you something pretty much anyone can do to earn some extra money. If you go really hardcore into it, you can make a living doing this type of thing.
I've done this, at a small level, since taking a Magic Rub eraser my dad gave me (he got them free at work as a draftsman), cutting it into 8 little pieces, and selling each one for a dime. That was in 2nd grade in Massillon, Ohio. My dad was loved "wheeling and dealing," as we called it when I was a kid in the 70's, and I got the bug from him. I've never done it full time, but I've made some money through my life doing "flipping," as it's now called. I love these videos, as entertainment, inspiration, and as a money making how-to. Maybe you will, too. If you don't know, check out Gary's content, it's everywhere, @garyvee. This is his first installment of Trash Talk, from last fall (2018).
Check out WPOS Kreative on Pinterest, or hit me up (Steve Emig, Lancaster, CA) on Facebook, and ask to join the WPOS Kreative FB group.
So... you're in a bind, this thing happened, that money didn't come through, money is stuck in some account you can't access because it's on hold or something. You just need a little money in your pocket, wallet, bra, or on your card, TODAY! What do you do?
Nearly everyone gets into this situation at some point. Crazy ideas may pop into your mind. You think about selling a kidney, but that sounds really painful, and you don't have a black market organ donor in your Snapchat contacts. You could put Grandma on the corner to turn tricks. She's got dementia, she wouldn't remember, anyhow. But that's mean... and she was the Grandma that always made you cinnamon toast as a kid, you don't want to do that to her. You could start selling crack, but, let's face it, you're not as street as you pretend to be when you sing along to old gangsta rap songs, and Biggie and Tupac got shot. You don't want that. You need a LEGIT way to put a little bit of cash in your pocket TODAY.
Here are some real ideas...
1. Get cash a advance on your credit card. Yes, you have to pay it back, it's a loan, usually with hefty interest. But it might be necessary of you're really in a bind. 2. Draw money out of a line of credit you already have set up. Again, this is actually a loan, and you have to pay it back, with interest. But it can help in tough times. 3. Go to your bank, talk to the manager, and ask for a line of credit that you can draw on today. If you've been banking there a while, and are in good standing, it's likely you may qualify for a line of credit. Again, this is a loan, and you have to pay it back, with interest, over time. 4. Sell something you have laying around to a friend, family member, or neighbor. 5. Sell something you have laying around on Craigslist. Yes, we've all heard bad stories about Craigslist. But those are rare. Use your head, take a friend to the meet up, meet in a public place that has video. You can even meet in front of the local police station. Be safe, but it works. I've done this many times myself. 6. Sell something you have laying around on an app like Let Go, Wallapop, or a similar apps. Same thing, be safe, you know the drill 7. Cash in a jar of change you have. Coinstar machines take a HUGE cut, nearly 12%, but they're convenient. There are similar machines, with no fee, at most bank offices now, and the money goes right into your account. If you roll up coins, old school style, you may be able to sell them to a local store. Hint: If you actually use money, like real, old fashioned paper money, to buy things on a regular basis, take the change left over and put it in a jar somewhere. We tend to forget about these things, until we really need them. See that change in the photo above? Guess where it came from. That's right, my "change for a rainy (or broke) day" jar. 8. Cash in recyclables. Here in California, these add up pretty quick. Most other states they don't have the same deposit they do here, but aluminum cans are always worth a little. 9. Pawn something of value (power tools, jewelry, musical instruments, guns, bicycles, your kid sister, etc.) at a pawn shop. Pawning something is a way of getting a short term loan. The pawn shop gives you a tiny loan, usually about 10% of the resale value, for an item, and you pay them back with a little bit of interest, usually in 30-60-90 days. See all that stuff sitting in the pawn shop, that's mostly stuff people pawned and never picked up. Don't be one of those people. 10. Sell something at a pawn shop. Pawn shops buy stuff, too. They'll pay you a low price for it, but it's cash in your hand on the spot. In tough times, it can be worth it, especially if the item is something you don't use anymore. 11. Have a garage, yard, or inside sale. This takes a bit of planning the night before, and you can post your sale online, and make actual signs to hang up, directing people to your sale. This, obviously, is mostly a weekend thing. An "inside sale" is a garage-type sale when you live in an apartment. Direct people to your door, and set stuff up in your living room or kitchen. This has some risks, but in a decent neighborhood, with friends there to help you keep an eye on things, can be done safely. 12. Sell plasma. Plasma is basically the fluid in your blood. It's almost the same as giving blood, except that you're hooked up to a machine for 45 minutes or so. If you don't like needles, this isn't for you. There are basic health criteria you have to meet. If you have a recent tattoo, have been in jail in the last 30 days, are homeless, or have spent lots of time in foreign countries, you probably won't qualify. This can be done twice a week, generally, and you get around $20 the first time, and $40 or so the next time. Drink lots of water the day before, and get to the place an hour before it opens, and get in line. Yes, I've done this before. It's not bad, actually, if you have the time. 13. Sell jewelry, gold, or silver coins to one of those "Cash for gold" places. 14. Sell jewelry, gold, or silver coins to a local jeweler. 15. Sell an old cell phone in one of those "Cash for phones" machines. I've seen these most in Walmart entry ways. I've never done it, but it's another possibility. 16. Sell vinyl record albums, CD's or DVD's to an old school record shop. This isn't near as big a thing as it once was, but there are still record shops in most large cities that will pay cash for good music. 17. Sell old CD's and DVD's to a pawn shop. You won't get much, but it is possible. 18. Do some kind of small job for someone. It could be a friend, family member, someone in your dorm, or whomever. Clean out the garage, walk the dog, clean up the dog poop in the yard, paint their kitchen, whatever. You get the idea. 19. Drive around your area, check the curbs, the dumpsters at local apartment buildings, and pick up the things people are giving/throwing away. Then sell those things on Craigslist, Let Go, or similar place. Curb giveaways, and dumpster giveaways. You'd be surprised what people give away. True story, I actually found an antique, oak dining table, handmade in France in the 1870's or so, by the dumpster at my storage unit. This was in 2006 or so. It was in two pieces, and needed work, but was really high quality. So I put it in my storage unit, and I took some photos of it, and took them to 5 or 6 antique shops. One shop paid me $150 cash for the table, about 4 days later. If I would have spent $1,000 getting the table repaired and refinished, I could have sold it for $5,000 to $8,000, on consignment, in a few months. That's how good of a table it was. But I didn't have a grand to drop repairing it. There are some really amazing things being given away. People give old pianos away all the time on Craigslist. They need work, and they're hard to move, but there's money to be made for the right person.
20. Go to the Craigslist section called "Free," and find something that has a little value that someone is giving away. Go pick up that item, then sell the item on another site or platform, like Facebook Marketplace, or LetGo. Yes, Gary Vaynerchuk made this idea famous a couple years ago. But it's a variation of the idea above, which I actually did before I ever heard of Gary Vee. His content rocks, by the way. Check it out. 21. Babysit for someone. 22. Panhandle. This is for the really desperate people out there. Get a piece of cardboard and a marker. Write "down and out," "homeless," "just lazy" or whatever applies on it. Then go to a local freeway off ramp, or urban street corner, look pathetic, and stand there until someone gives you a little money. I've been homeless where I had to do this to survive. People panhandle because a small percentage of strangers will give you a little money (or food) to help you out. ONLY do this if you are homeless or truly in need. I'm talking to you, you young hippies who travel this way because you don't want to get a job. You can get a real job, but many people can't. Always be polite when panhandling, and always say "Thank you." When you get back on our feet, give to someone else in need. Keep the circle going.
Check out WPOS Kreative on Pinterest for more ideas on building a small business and to see my Sharpie art, #sharpiescribblestyle
