As a kid in the 1950's and early 1960's, Robert Kiyosaki lived on the poor side of a sugar plantation town in Hawaii. His dad was a teacher, and rose to the top education job in government in Hawaii. But Robert's real dad, like most people, didn't understand how money works. Robert's best friend's dad, who he calls his "Rich Dad," was building a bunch of small businesses at the time, creating assets for the future. That man went on to become one of the richest men in Hawaii. As kids, Robert and his best friend asked Rich Dad to teach them about wealth.
Now, 50-some years later, Robert Kiyosaki and his wife Kim own 7,000 rental properties, as well as gold, silver, interests in oil drilling companies, and many other things. His investments provide a huge monthly income, he doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to do. He could go fishing or play golf everyday, no matter what the economy does.
He writes books and teaches people about how money and finances work, because he knows how bad the system is rigged against average people, and that pisses him off. He knows where things are heading. Here he shares his views of the current bubbles in our financial world, he knows a huge crash is coming, and he's been teaching people financial education since 1997. This video gives a quick look at why most people are struggling these days, and I highly recommend watching it, and then reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and his other books that interest you at that point.
"Assets put money in your pocket, liabilities take money out of your pocket."
That's me on the right, running the Ferris Wheel at The Fun Spot, in Boise, Idaho, during the summer of 1985. The three young women on the ride are Kim, Michelle, and Pam, who all worked there. The Fun Spot was a tiny little amusement park tucked away in Julia Davis Park, close to the Boise Zoo, in downtown Boise, next to the Boise River. This is my carnie street cred photo. I spent so much time running the Ferris Wheel that I used to have pizzas delivered to me right there on the ride on really busy days. When the the pizza guy showed up, everyone got an extra long ride as I ate the first couple of slices. Photo by Vaughn Kidwell.
An 18-year-old with a dozen employees under me...
Like so many good and bad things that happened in high school, it all started with a party. I was grounded for two months of my senior year in high school, 1983-84. I couldn't go out with my friends at all. That was because I threw one party that year. The party itself wasn't such a bad idea. The bad idea part was that I threw that party in my dad's boss' house, that I was house sitting over Christmas break. The house didn't get trashed or anything, but I got caught, and put on family house arrest for two months.
Finally, at the beginning of March, I was allowed to go out with my friends again. We drove around in my friends' VW bugs, tried to meet girls, and then heard about a party in some trailer park, typical Boise Friday night. About 40 high school kids were crowded into this trailer, and I think someone bought a pony keg, which was in the back bedroom if the tiny single wide, and kids were lined up trying to get a beer. After the earlier trouble that year, I made a pact not to drink that night, trying to keep out of trouble. My best friend Darrin, however, was bent on getting well buzzed, if not fully drunk. He'd had a few beers already as we entered the party. He grabbed a cup and weaseled his way to the back bedroom. I stayed in the tiny living room, and tried to talk to some girls. Since I was deathly shy, that wasn't going well, as usual, so I ended up talking to some other friend I saw there. Suddenly the cry went out, "COPS!" We tried to bail out of the tiny, single wide trailer, but there was nowhere to go. The police were at the only door. The police just stood outside the front door, and wrote everyone of us a ticket for underage drinking as we walked out. At least half of the kids didn't even get their cup filled up at that point, though some had been drinking earlier. I didn't have a drop that night, but it didn't matter, I was there, and I got a ticket, too.
As my friends re-grouped, all of us with tickets in hand, we realized that only one person managed to get away and not get a ticket. That was Darrin, my best friend, the only guy who was actually pretty drunk that night. He didn't drink anymore than the rest of us normally, but he wasn't driving that night, so he made the most of it. He managed to slip out a tiny bedroom window and run into some nearby bushes, and escape.
As you can imagine, the fact that 40 kids got tickets at a party, a lame party at that, a rare occurrence then, was news around school. Us 40 ticketed kids started to get together at lunch, and strategize on how to handle the tickets, since we all had court dates coming up. It was in those lunch powwows that I got to know a kid named Doug. We hit it off, and became friends as the ticket process moved along.
As far as the ticket went, I went to court with three other people on the same day, we all had a pact to plead "Not Guilty," and fight the tickets, since most of the kids had little, if any beer since we got there minutes before getting busted. When it came time to plead, the three before me caved in and pleaded Guilty. Fuckers. Some integrity. But I held tough and pleaded Not Guilty. The way things turned out, since so many kids got the same ticket, the judge gave them all a warning, and no sentence. When I had my trial a couple weeks later, the judge was informed about what happened with the others, and I got off with a warning, too. But that whole big group had become better friends because of those tickets.
When late April rolled around, and we started thinking about summer jobs, Doug said he worked at The Fun Spot, which had six amusement rides, a food stand, and a miniature golf course. Doug, a senior like me, was the manager of The Fun Spot that summer. He worked there the summer before, and was assistant manager then. He started going in on the weekends, painting, and doing some other maintenance stuff, and asked if I wanted to start working there. So I went to work there, for the whopping wage of $2.05 an hour. I think minimum wage was $3.35 an hour then, but because of some Idaho law designed for migrant farm workers, the owner could pay us less than the federal minimum wage. Even in 1984, $2.05 an hour was lame pay. But it was some pay.
As the summer got going, and I became a ride operator, Doug tapped me, and a guy named Brian, a year younger than us, as assistant managers. We ran the park during the few days Doug wasn't there. Halfway through the summer, Doug got a higher paying job doing construction work, and Brian and me took over as managers. Suddenly, within a week or two of my 18th birthday, I was running a small amusement park, along with Brian. We had 12 employees under us, and the owner, who also ran a construction company, would drop off the cash drawer in the morning, and then take off. He came in to do major maintenance, and to check on things now and then. But he let us run the whole business operations on a day to day basis.
For nearly 20 years he had been giving kids who were 17-18-19 years old the chance to actually manage and run a business. He'd tell us the basics, and then it was up to us. We had to schedule employees, maintain the rides day to day, train the employees, get high school kids to pull weeds and mow the lawn area when it was 92 degrees out, make sure things ran smoothly, handle complaints from customers, test the rides every morning, clean the pine needles off the miniature golf course, handle employee disputes and drama, and actually run the business all day long.
Brian quit near the end of the summer, and I was sole manager for the last two or three weeks. It was a tiny, goofy, little place, and our friends often made fun of us for working there. But it was a huge responsibility for an 18-year-old, and experience I couldn't get anywhere else at that age. Even before The Fun Spot, I had this sense that I wanted to work for myself, and run my own business in life. But I was deathly shy by nature, had trouble talking to strangers, was a terrible salesman, and just didn't have the personality to actually start my own business in my 20's.
I wound up getting serious about the new sport of BMX freestyle and moved to California. Ultimately, I wound up in Southern California, working as a kind of sidekick to several really talented young entrepreneurs. As I did all kinds of work for them, and watched how they ran their businesses day after day, I got a sort of informal apprenticeship in enrepreneurship. I also began to read about personal development and other books, and began the long journey to become a person who could actually run a legit business of my own.
Now, at 53-years-old, I'm still on that journey. Technically, I've never run an "actual business" of my own, with a business license and all. But I've done a whole slew of other jobs, managed other people's businesses, and I've produced videos and sold them through small distributors. I was also a taxi driver for 6 1/2 years, which is not a job, it's actually a self-directed small business with really high overhead for the income possible.
So now, with a mixture of artwork, blogging, writing and publishing zines (and eventually actual books), and social media skills I've learned selling my artwork, I'm finally building a small business of my own. Part of what I want to do with that business is to help other people who are building or running their own small businesses, with social media and some of the particular skills I've developed over the 35 years, since I started working at a little amusement park in Boise called The Fun Spot.
I'll be sharing a bunch of things I've learned at various small businesses in this blog, as well as newer ideas on how technology has changed the whole world of business in general, and how Disruption caused by new technology is tossing old business models out the window, and opening up new opportunities. I'm also an amateur futurist, and looking forward, I think America is going to need to create millions of small businesses in the next 20 years, as things continue to change rapidly.
So that's where I'm coming from, I hope many of you find stuff that helps your business in this blog.
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 a really long and crazy story. At age 49, I wound up living with my mom in a small North Carolina town, and could not get hired for any job whatsoever. I sold a drawing in my weird Sharpie "scribble style," now and then. I decided to focus on making money with my art. That was in November of 2015. I literally didn't have a dime to my name. I had my art supplies, a room in a small apartment, and a refurbished HP laptop still running Windows XP.
I still don't make an actual decent living from my artwork. But in the last 3 1/2 years, I've sold over 80 of my drawings, most of them for $120 to $160 each, a few sold through a gallery for $250 each. These drawings, 18" X 24," take me 35 to 45 hours each to draw, on average. That's not much money per hour of drawing, mostly because I was homeless most of the time I've been drawing and selling these drawings, and have been selling them to pay basic living expenses. Obviously, if you start in a better position than I did, and you art is of a good quality, much more is possible.
Here's how I sold those 80 drawings:
1. I committed to doing what it took to actually sell my work. I decided I was actually going to do the day to day work needed to make and sell my Sharpie drawings.
2. I sat down at the computer one night, looked through all kinds of art online for about three hours, and asked myself, "What would I actually want to put on my wall?" I simple stencil of my first childhood hero, Bruce Lee, was the answer to that question. So I printed out the photo, and drew it in my style. I knew then that I needed to focus on drawing picture of inspiring people. That was the subject matter that worked best for my style at that time.
3. I tapped into the online following I already had from my BMX freestyle blog. I primarily used Facebook, my main social media platform at the time, to show people my artwork, and ask if anyone would like me to draw them something. My first orders came within a week or two of doing that.
4. I sold my art cheap to start with, and offered to re-draw any drawing people didn't like. A lot of people will tell you, "Don't lower your price, your art is worth much more than that." Those people don't actually sell art. They may make a lot of it, and show it off on Instagram and Facebook, but they don't sell much. Let people get a cool piece of your work for a reasonable price, and make sure they're happy with it. My first few drawings I sold were 12" X 18," they took me 8 to 12 hours to draw, and I sold them for $20-$25. The key word there is, I SOLD them.
Then I sold a bunch of 18" X 24" drawings, that took me 18 to 22 hours to draw, for $40 to $50 each. Again, I SOLD them. I got better at my craft, my drawings improved, and I raised my prices to $75 each, then to $100 each, then to the $120-$160 range. I always offered to re-do the drawings if people weren't satisfied. I never really want to re-draw anything, but I do want people to be happy with my work. These days, after thousands of hours of drawing, that's not really an issue. Guess what, not one person who bought a $50 drawing is bummed that my drawings later sold for $150. I'm now at the point where I'm raising the prices to $350. I'd rather not sell the original and sell prints at this point, anyhow.
5. I started a Go Fund Me campaign early on, the idea was to earn raise $1,000 quickly so I would have money to make prints to sell. I didn't just ask for donations, I did drawings for everyone who pledged money. In reality, I did raise the $1,000, but I did it drawing by drawing over four months time. The Go Fund Me campaign just became an easy way to order and pay for my drawings online. The $1,000 goal encouraged people to help me out and order a drawing. It also allowed me to draw every single day for four months straight, and get into the rhythm of being an actual working artist. By the time I reached my goal, I got set up on Paypal, and just kept taking orders online.
6. Moved to a city that had a decent art scene in North Carolina, though I couldn't afford any place to live. I wound up living in a tent in the woods, which I definitely DON'T recommend, and scraped by. Some guys who saw me drawing one day suggested I show my work to a local record shop, which I did. They liked it, and I wound up doing a small art show there. That shop, a really cool one, was Earshot Music, and Phred, the owner used my Kurt Cobain drawing for the online flyer (above). Only a handful of people came to the show, but one was an artist and collector from the 1980's New York City art scene. He bought the Cobain drawing the day before the show, and wound up buying three more drawings form me. I also sold about 10 more drawings through the record shop, most to one couple. That just shows the power of getting artwork out where people can see it.
I also found one studio/gallery owner who really liked my work in the downtown art scene there, and she sold a few more. I wound up having trouble getting paid for some of my work there, so that relationship wound up bittersweet. She promoted my work a lot, but also had trouble paying me sometimes because her cash flow issues. That's another risk of this that you just have to deal with as things happen.
7. When I moved into the tent in the woods, I had several blogs going. I brought them all into one single personal blog, Steve Emig: The White Bear. Though three of my blogs drew good sized followings over the seven years before that, I wasn't sure anyone would read a blog about old school BMX freestyle stories, Sharpie artwork, and my thoughts on the future and the economy. But that blog just had its two year anniversary, and has 76,000 page views in two years. My blog readers are where most of the early buyers of my artwork came from, and where I still keep getting some art sales from. I highly recommend a blog, or for most people these days, a Vlog, to promote your artwork, in addition to Instagram, Facebook, and whatever other social media you're using.
8. I used Pinterest to help build my web presence for my artwork, and I found one good hashtag to use all the time, #sharpiescribblestyle. I use other hashtags, particularly on Instagram, which I'm not very psyched on, to be honest. But Instagran has a huge reach, and can definitely get you followers, and maybe sales. Use the social media platforms most that you actually like most. Nearly all my online sales I've done have been handled on Facebook from people who read my blog. But I took the time to make sure that is you look up #sharpiescribblestyle on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or Google images, you'll see A LOT of my drawings. That just took work, day after day, of actually taking the time to put stuff on each platform, with tags and hashtags, day after day.
Like I said, I did this while living much lower, and with less resources, than most all of you reading this will ever have to deal with. I'll go into more depth on these ideas in this blog as time goes by. But these 8 ideas above are the basics of how I sold over 80 major pieces of art, while homeless most of the time, in the last 3 1/2 years. Hopefully soon I'll be able to finally get to a place where I can turn this writing and art into an actual, stable living. I've had a lot of headwinds holding me back at times, but I've had a lot of people help me out, as well, at key moments.
My battery's going dead, no place to charge at the moment, so I'm going to post this and proffread it when I can. Sorry for any typos at the moment...
Out of the 100 or so drawings I've done in the last three years, these are a few of my best. "Tainted Love/Harley Quinn" I last saw hanging in The Mix Gallery in Richmond, Virginia's arts district on Broad. I left Richmond about six weeks ago, and with help from a friend, made it back out to Southern California. I sold this drawing cheap, to get a motel room, after spending a week in the hospital from a severe medicine allergic reaction. I was homeless and just needed another night to recover, I didn't really want to sell it. This my personal favorite drawing, it's one I did to hang on my own wall, someday. I drew it while living in a tent, for a day when I eventually worked my way out of homelessness, and actually had a wall.
"Biggie Smalls" is another one that turned out really well, and sold immediately, for $120, I think. Yes, these drawings are all done with Sharpie markers. I blow up a photo I like on a copy machine, and tape the big pieces together to get a large version of the image. Usually I put on the music or a documentary about who I am drawing, to get their vibe and story, and I shade the entire back of the large copy with pencil. Then I position it over my actual drawing paper, tape it down with masking tape, and go over the basic outline with a pencil. It's called a graphite transfer, when I go over the front of the photo copy, the pencil dust on the back leaves faint lines. That's a technique I leanred in grade school, I think. I transfer the basic outline, and where the main shadows are. So yes, I cheat. People who aren't artists, when I would tell them this, usually say, "Oh, you just trace it." Actual working artists, then they see my faint penciling of the image would say, "That's not cheating, lots of artists trasnfer images in some way." Mostly they'd say that, because they couldn't even figure out who it was a picture of. I outline the shadows as much as the actual outline of the image in the photo, so it looks weird, and even I have trouble figuring out what line is what sometimes.
Then I take a normal size, fine point, black Sharpie, and outline whatever I can. Some outlines I end up doing with ultra fine points, or just with shading, if it's too subtle for a heavy black line. Then I start the shading process. In my drawings, every single color is actually 3 to 8 colors of Sharpie, ultra fine point scribbles, layered over each other. I started playing with markers in 2002, came up with my "scribble style" shading in 2005, and kept working on and refining it for another ten years, before I started doing these drawings.
Almost every area of the drawing starts with either lime green scribbles, yellow, or pastel orange. I start with a color close to opposite of what the final color will be. I may do half the drawing in lime green scribbles, to start. But some will be tight scribbles, some will be medium density scribbles, and some will be wide, spread out scribbles, depending on what's needed to wind up at the final color necessary. I do one pass of each color, at the density needed. So my drawing will look mostly lime green for a while. Then green-yellow, then orange. I usually color in several large areas, that will end up being completely different colors, at the same time. So during the drawing, they all look pretty much the same, until the last one or two colors are scribbled on top .
Once I have the large areas at close to their final color, I start working on the smaller and more detailed areas. After the original pencil sketch, it's all in ink, and I simply try to mess up as little as possible. I almost always to the face last, so if I fuck that up, then I spent 30 or 40 or more hours drawing for nothing. I like the bit of added pressure that gives. Once I have the detailed areas colored. Then I go back and blend the transition areas of the drawing. My drawings can look like they're done, and I'll sit down and put 4 or 5 more hours in, getting the details the best I can. Since it's ink, if I don't stop at the right time, I'll over-do it, which does happen.
Unlike paint, I can't go over a whole color, or start again. I get one shot at each layer of color, in each part of the drawing. I do use one or two small dabs of white-out on every second or third drawing, usually no bigger than a pencil eraser. That happens when I draw a black line where it should be, usually. Then I'll draw 5 or 6 layers over the dab of white-out, to fix it. I screw up something, actually several little things, in every drawing. The trick is to make them blend in, so no one else notices the fuck-ups. When I look at my drawings, that's what I see, the mistakes that I should do better next time.
These drawings, on average, take 35-45 hours each, for an 18" X 24" picture. The Beatles drawing (on my personal blog here), took about 55 hours, that's the record so far. I've done around 100 drawings since I got serious and started doing these for money in late November of 2015. I've sold at least 81 drawings in the three years since, most for $120 to $160. A handful have sold in galleries for $250. Several of the early drawings I sold for $40 or $50. I sold them "cheap" because I was homeless most of the time I was drawing these, and I'd work a week, make $120, and live off that while I drew the next one. I was living in a tent in the woods, drawing at libraries or McDonald's, when I drew most of these. To see more of my work, search #sharpiescribblestyle anywhere, my stuff's all over the internet and social media.
I was hoping I could find a video of a Sleekcraft by Nescher 23 foot jet boat, like the one I bought at a storage unit auction in Huntington Beach in 2007. This not only looks like the one I bought, this looks like the very same boat. It's that close. The exterior seats had some tears, but were in a lot better shape, but otherwise, this looks identical. I looked at the timing of this video. This, possibly, could be the exact boat I boat I bought, it looks that close. Crazy
From 2003 to to 2007, I got stuck in the the taxi business. I came out of full homelessness in 2003, got my driver's license straightened out, got my taxi permit again, and went from being a guy living in the bushes and working in a restaurant at a mall, to a taxi driver working 7 days a week and sleeping my cab. I planned to save up for 4 or 5 months, and then rent a room in a decent apartment and get back on track.
Unfortunately, a month after I got going again, the taxi company took out the old CB radios we used to communicate, and put in the new dispatch computers. I had just got back in the swing of things, I figured out which nightclubs were best which nights, and was making about $400 week for two weeks straight. Then, literally from one day to the next, our business dropped to almost nothing, because of the new technology. I struggled, like every other driver, to pay $550 or 600 every week for my taxi, and pay another $300 a week in gas. All I had after that was food money for quite a while. 12 hour days turned to 14, then 16, then 17 or 18 hours, six days a week, and only 8 or 9 hours on my "day off." I got a cheap motel room one night a week, bought a pizza, watched a little TV, then slept for 12 hours straight and did it all over.
I made a little extra money buying storage units at auctions, and reselling the stuff, but not enough to leave the taxi business. By June of 2007, I was burned out, I was having serious health issues, and looking for an escape from the taxi business. One day there was an auction at the place where I had my storage unit in Huntington Beach, California. I parked my cab, and joined the other 15 people walking around to bid on units.
In the parking area right below my second floor unit, was a boat, one full of clothes and random junk, that I'd walked by many times. It was a big, weathered jet boat, with a little cabin area inside, under the piles of junk. The boat was up for auction that day. Bidding started at $5, and a homeless man, who I knew spent his days in a storage unit in that complex, and made a little money helping people move, bid $5. Someone else bid $10. $10 on a 20 foot + boat, sitting on a double axle trailer, with weather and time flattened tires. It looked to be in decent condition, in a sea worthy sense, it just needed work to clean it up and probably get it running. I couldn't fucking believe it, without thinking, I said, "C'mon people, it's a BOAT." I bid $15. The homeless guy bid $20. I bid $25. One of the guys standing there, not bidding, said, "The trailer alone is worth $1,000." Another guy jumped in, and we bid back and forth, and I wound up buying the old boat for $95.
Over the next few days, I took some photos, did some research, and tried to find someone who would buy it for $500 or $1,000, just for trailer. I learned it was a 1978, 23 foot, Sleekcraft by Nescher, made by the premiere jet boat maker in the 1970's His company was later purchased by AMF sporting goods, and 2 or 3 years after that they split again. The boat had an inboard Oldsmobile 455 engine, I didn't know if it worked. There didn't seem to be any oil leaks, it just looked weathered. My research showed that for $95, I bought a $22,000 boat and trailer that needed about $2,000 to $4,000 of work to get it back on the water, even if the engine needed to be rebuilt. It would take another $3,000 or so to completely re-cover the seats and stuff. By the time I figured that out, it was the beginning of July, 2007.
The taxi business in Orange County sucked 9 months out of the year, but the summers were decent. Working my standard 80-100 hours a week, I could make $350 to $400 a week in June and July, and maybe a bit more. I spent a lot on food, but not much else. In August, the best month, I could usually make $600 to $700 a week in my pocket. With this info in mind, I formulated my plan.
I paid $200 to rent the parking spot where the boat was parked, right outside my own storage unit. I cleaned all the junk out of the boat, mostly clothes and random junk that people who were moving from units had dumped in it. I cleaned the whole boat, and took some Armour All to the seats. I used gaffer's tape to cover the rips in the seat for the time being. It was a fucking cool boat, capable of over 60 mph, once running, and carrying 6 or 8 people. I was happy with my purchase.
I paid another $200 for the parking space in August, planning to pump of the tires, and find an friend in the desert somewhere who'd let me park it cheap, while I had a mechanic go over the engine, and a boat expert get everything else up and running, while I drove the cab all day. My plan was to get it water ready, maybe take it out once of twice, and then put it up for sale for $16,000 to $18,000, and come down to maybe $12,000 to $14,000 for a quick sale. That would be enough to get me away from taxi driving, and start doing the storage auction thing full time. I thought I was finally about to escape the miserable life that taxi driving had become. I actually liked driving a taxi, but the dispatch computers killed the industry, and worked us all into the ground, even before Uber and Lyft entered the picture.
But business didn't pick up, in fact, August 2007 kinda sucked. The only month a year I made decent money fizzled in to $300 weeks. As it turned out, the first inklings of trouble in the stock market, what would eventually become the Great Recession, hit investors in August 2007, and apparently a lot of people I drove were day traders, or took a quit hit in their investments, and partying at the local bars and clubs dropped off dramatically. So I never made enough to get the boat repaired. I didn't have the contacts to find a partner to work with, and get it done. I was working 80-100 hours a week, I didn't have time to mess with it. I had to put those hours in just to survive as a taxi driver then.
I went into the office of my storage place, I knew the lady there well, and told her the story. She now knew it was a $22,000 boat sitting out there, if fully fixed up. Rather than not pay the parking space rent for three months, she said I could sign the boat over to her, and she'd find a buyer, and get her parking space back. So I did that. The boat, MY $95 jet boat, was gone in a week. So my biggest opportunity I ever bought while buying storage unit auctions ended up costing me $495. That was the only time I ever lost money buying a storage unit at auction.
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.
