Best known for his 1997 financial education book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki has been teaching people about money and financial education ever since. This short video gives a great look at his basic idea, "buy assets, avoid liabilities." But most people are never taught what really makes an asset an asset. Kiyosaki makes it simple,
"Assets put money in your pocket, liabilities take money out of your pocket."
This video is part of a series with the young woman in the video, who's doing videos for the Millennial crowd, sharing Robert's knowledge with a new generation. Personally, I highly recommend Robert Kiyosaki's books, and I think Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and Cash Flow Quadrant, should be taught in school. But they won't be, so you have to learn this stuff on your own.
In a side note, a friend I hadn't seen in a while told me the other day that I should talk less about being homeless right now on social media, because it casts me in a negative light. I understand his concern. But a crazy series of things happened, and this is where I'm at. It's a long, ridiculous story.
Part of my role right now is to prove it's actually possible to work off the streets, and actually build a legitimate business over time. How do I know this is possible? Well, for one, Robert and Kim Kiyosaki were homeless at one point. Really. They lived in their car for about three weeks, then in a friend's basement for about 9 months, I think, as they put together a business plan. The business idea worked, it did well (before Robert wrote books), and they now own thousands of rental properties, stocks, oil service interests, and other investments. Robert tells the story in one of his books (Cashflow Quadrant?).
While I don't ever expect to make the money Robert and Kim do, the fact that I'm trying to build something, and slowly making it happen, may help other people make the leap to make change in their lives that's needed. That's a big part of why I'm open about being homeless right now. Also, it's the Information Age, people figure shit like this out anyhow. You might as well admit it up front, and move on.
Technology is taking over human jobs. Lots of them. I'm the taxi driver falling down the hole. I lived through the technological disruption of the taxi industry in 2003, though I struggled through 4 more years of it, before becoming fully homeless. In my case, I went directly from working 80+ hours a week to living on the streets the very next day. I, quite literally, became homeless from working too much. We live in weird times.
Six years ago, a couple of researchers from Oxford University, in England, looked into the problem of how many human jobs would likely be replaced by new technology in the future. The study, which concluded that 47% of jobs will likely be replaced by new technology. Here's the link to their research paper. When? In the next 20 to 25 years, so by 2033 to 2038, by their reckoning. We're six years into that 25 years now, and yes, a lot of jobs are disappearing.
Now I know most of your eyes just glazed over, thinking "what does this mean to me?" In the United States, I looked it up a few months back, and that "47% of jobs" works out to around 92 MILLION JOBS, 47% of the actual working population. That's a lot of jobs, and yes, they are already disappearing. Many people might ask, "are they sure 92 million jobs will disappear?" No, it's an estimate. My thinking is, let's say the researchers are off, and it's 20 % less jobs that disappear, that's still 73.6 million jobs going away. If the researchers are off, and 20% more jobs disappear, that's over 110 million jobs disappearing. My point is, whatever the actual number turns out to be it's an astronomical number.
Now a lot of new jobs will be created, but nowhere near enough to put all these people back to work. Looking forward, this is a huge societal issue, and it has already wreaked havoc on society, with the loss of tens of millions of good paying factory jobs lost in the 1970's through the 2000's. Right now we have over 7 million American men of working age who are just not working. They don't get counted in the "unemployment" statistics, because they're not looking for work. Don't believe me? Here's the guy who wrote the book about it. It appears that about 2/3 of these men get Social Security Disability checks, and/or other government aid. So now, your tax dollars are not only supporting the whole government, the massive federal debt interest payments, but also 7 million guys, and a large number of women, many just too lazy to work. Really.
This is just the beginning, most of the jobs haven't been lost yet, this problem will only get much, much worse. A very small number of people are looking for answers and ideas to deal with this huge and looming social issue. Most of those people are high tech people, who have a good idea where technology is heading, and how it will affect the job market. Right now, there are two main thoughts on how to handle this issue of tens of millions more people losing their jobs to technology.
Idea #1: This comes from economic development researcher and professor, Richard Florida, who wrote the epic work, The Rise of the Creative Class. His research, among other things, discovered the wide gap in income between the growing "Creative Class" group of workers, and the also growing number of service sector workers. His idea is to work with government and business to make service class jobs better paying jobs. Companies like Whole Foods and Costco figured out how to pay their workers better than many similar companies, so it's possible many other companies could follow suit. That's a really good idea. Florida's work has many other facets, and he continues today to research and write on this and related ideas.
Idea #2 comes from the high tech sector. The idea now being pushed by many on that front is Universal Basic Income. This is the concept of giving every single person, or at least every single adult, a check from the government each month. The thinking is that, with this basic amount of money, poverty will be largely eliminated, people will not have to live in poverty, and will be able to buy the basic necessities with their government check, and can work part time or full time to make more money. Obviously, the money paid out by the government to pay 330 million Americans $1,000 a month (or whatever amount), has to come from somewhere. That's $330 billion a month, a third of a trillion dollars, a ludicrous amount, even in today's world.
I don't think this is a good idea, even if it could, somehow, be financed. Just look at the people on living on Disability, and particularly the areas with huge numbers of people on Disability, like West Virginia and Kentucky. Those areas are also the epicenter of our opiate crisis. That's not a coincidence.
Here's my main problem with both of these ideas. Richard Florida's plan to raise pay for service workers would most likely require Congress to raise minimum wage quite a bit, and encourage the federal government to provide strong incentives to big business to pay workers more. Those ideas require our federal government to make really controversial plans, and actually take action, in the near future. Right now, our government barely functions at all. Smart ideas, no matter how helpful they could be, will not happen anytime soon in a big way, simply because our government won't be able to accomplish what is required, in a reasonable time frame.
The same is true of Universal Basic Income, it would require higher taxes somewhere, along with astronomical amounts of debt, and it would require smart and timely action by Congress and other parts of the federal government. That's just not going to happen soon.
So what does that leave us with as options?
My idea. Encourage and help individuals to create their own jobs, by starting micro businesses and small businesses. A micro business is generally a one person operation, whether it's an ebay store operated from a spare bedroom, working gigs like Uber and Lyft full time, or providing a needed service for local people or businesses. A small business is just a slightly larger operation, usually involving one or more employees, like opening a cupcake bakery, or a landscaping business, for example.
Here's the good part of my idea, Congress and government is not involved at all. It's D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself), grassroots economic development. When people need extra money, they'll start looking for gig work, part time work, or some "side hustle" to help make ends meet. That will happen naturally. In today's world, with all the technology available to most people, it is easier than ever to begin a wide range of money making and small business ideas. It's still not easy, and it takes a little thinking and a lot of work, but it is entirely possible to find ways to make money outside the traditional job market.
Rather than go to government officials and spend months or years pushing for large scale social plans, my drive is to go right to the people looking to make more money, and help them actually do that. That's what I want to make this blog about.
Yes, I know many of the posts so far are about Big Picture thinking, and the economy writ large. I'm into those things, those big ideas and futuristic thinking fascinate me. That's why I'm the guy writing this blog post. But at the same time, I got hit by technological disruption as a taxi driver several years ago. I know how much it sucks. I know what happens if you ignore new technology like I did. Right now I'm exactly what I'm writing about. I'm a former writer and video producer turned "content creator." I'm an artist and writer using these new media skills and tech platforms to promote and sell my artwork. So I'm right in the middle of all this myself.
As this blog moves along, I'll throw in my own ideas, things I've learned working with several entrepreneurs, or as a taxi driver or manager, and how I'm dealing with all the things I struggle with. But I'm also going to show people who are building micro and small businesses, and doing it successfully.
I'm definitely not against Richard Florida and other people working to make service jobs better jobs. That needs to happen. I just think it will happen slowly, compared to the massive loss of jobs happening as we speak. I'm not against the tech people toying with the Universal Basic income idea, and seeing if there are functional ways for that basic idea to work in some way. But personally, I like the simple and direct method, help people create micro and small businesses. And help that happen RIGHT NOW.
That's why I see this as my main focus these days, and why I started this blog, separate from my personal blog, to dive full bore into this idea. Personally I think the U.S. will need millions of small businesses to be built in the next 10-20 years. So that's where I'm putting my effort. I hope some of you find things that will help you in your life.
Borrowing this great scene again, this time with the further
appearances by Fawkes. Dumbledore's phoenix, Fawkes, goes up in flames,
and is reborn. In the last post in my personal blog, I predicted a
major event will happen this month that will make it obvious that we're
in for a serious economic downturn. I think we're in the verge of a
"Lehman Brothers moment," something in the business or economic world to
make it obvious things are NOT as they should be.
It is part of the natural order of things that there are times when something old must die, it simply must collapse, it must go up in flames, its time is over. And then, also part of the natural order of things,
that at that point, something new will be born, and will grow in its
place. The mythical phoenix is a symbol of that period of change. I
think we're at a major point like that in Western society as a whole.
Writing that last post, I realized, I see this next recession as the
flaming of the phoenix. While tough economic times are hard for most
everyone, I see the potential for something great to be reborn from the
economic ruins.
"May you live in interesting times."
-Ancient Chinese curse
If
you read my personal blog much, you know I've been drumming on about
this coming recession for a couple of years now. The reason is because I
see this next economic downturn as much more than a slow economic
period. Being the weirdo I am, I've been drawn to little known and
often overlooked social theories, and ultra long term trends.
There are several long term trends ending right now, in our little piece
of human history, and the best way to describe this time is a
transition of many transitions. That's why my overall theory is
something I call, The Big Transition. Not a creative name, but it
fits. We truly do live in "interesting times."
On one
hand, we are simply near the end of a bull run in our stock markets, and
in the real estate markets of the most vibrant urban areas. The stock
prices and real estate prices (in prime areas) have been going up since
early 2009. The stock markets have been nearly stagnant for the last
year ans a half, but hover near the high water mark. Things are
overpriced, and we're heading into a recession that will shake out,
prices will drop dramatically, some businesses will collapse or go up in
flames (if they have good insurance), and new ones will be born.
On
another level, we are still in the long transition from the Industrial
Age to the Information Age. The rise of many new technologies,
particularly communications, computers, the internet, and biology, are
rapidly changing what's possible in many ways, and changing our everyday
lives, the way we interact with each other, who it's possible to
interact with, and how business and organizational structures work.
We're leaving an economic model based on factories in nearly every town,
making physical goods, and selling those goods in mass market stores
nationwide and worldwide.
We're going into an economic
model based on nearly every person having a voice in society, a model
where every person carries a small device that is a phone, a publishing
company, and a TV studio, and a comedy club all in one. One person can
now share funny cat videos with a stranger next door and another in
Spain, publish a video or blog post that can be viewed by billions, and
can sell a homemade item and ship it to South Africa, or nearly anywhere
else. It's a world of tiny niches of interest, of many and
multi-cultural voices, and a world that's extremely scary to a lot of
people. It's a world where old business models from the Industrial Age
are collapsing, and where new, tech-enabled business models, are being
created, and disrupting the old. It's a world where the old school
power structures are straining to keep control, while many of their long
hid secrets come to light. We're in a period of massive change at a
frightening pace. In a word, it's chaotic.
On yet
another level, the United States of America, the grand experiment
created unlike any other, where any individual, with hard and smart
work, could create a business or idea, and move up in society, has
reached a point of peak corruption in many businesses and political
scenes. After a full, generation of seeing the rich get much richer,
while the lives of the majority of people have stayed financially
stagnant, or have gone down, the common people are pissed off. The
average people have had enough, and we've been seeing the beginnings of a
worldwide populist movement. The people, in the U.S., and everywhere,
are remembering they have the numbers, and ultimately, the strength, to
change things to a more fair system. It's never pretty, and it can be
brutal (like in Hong Kong at the moment), but it will keep happening.
On
yet another level, America has been built on the idea of common people
as business people. Originally (after stealing the country from the
Indians), Americans were farmers, traders, and shopkeepers, creating
their own destiny. Born in the early stages of the Industrial Age,
America saw, and dominated, in the rise of the factories, and reigned as
a super power in the late Industrial Age. But with that came the rise
of jobs, and most Americans went from being small businesses in the late
1800's (whether a farmer or shopkeeper), to being workers, punching a
time clock ,and relying on a paycheck. Now, with the rise of new
technologies over the last 50 or so years, many Americans are turning
back into entrepreneurs again, or trying to. So that's another major
shift that's happening.
Another transition is that
we've been a country that looked up to the business people for 350
years. But now the common people are rising, and standing up to the
large scale corruption in many businesses, and other institutions. As
that rise bubbled under the surface, a new mentality has been rising to
dominate the American collective psyche. This is what P.R. Sarkar,
philosopher and theorist from India, calls "The Warrior Mentality."
These are people who prize physical abilities and courage, more than the
salesmanship and manipulation of Industrial Age business culture.
People
doing scary and courageous shit have been slowly and quietly rising up
in stature for several decades now. Some of these people are the
obvious, when you think of the core values of courage and physical
ability, the soldiers, police, firefighters, and professional athletes.
We all know these jobs take physical ability, and courage, at different
levels. But courage is also needed, and demonstrated, by action sports
athletes, activists, artists of all kinds, pioneers of all kinds, and
entrepreneurs.
The Warrior Mentality is becoming the
dominant mentality, and the wishy washy fence sitters are getting the
boot. This is why nearly all of us hate most of our old school
politicians these days, no matter what political party you belong to.
Our long term politicians are schemers who will flip at the drop of a
hat, they are not leaders. As all of this chaos happens, the
average people are looking for courageous leaders, or (as we've
unfortunately learned the hard way in the last couple of years), people
that pretend to be courageous leaders, and can con a large part of
society into following them. But those types show their true colors
soon enough, and most people see through them before too long.
Ultimately, the truly courageous, they will become our new leaders, in
business, in political circles, and in other organizations.
So, in my geeky, big picture view, all of these forces and changes are coming together to make this next recession a time of incredible
change. And incredibly scary. That's where the courage part comes
in. I think this next economic downturn, which will be severe, as the
major shakeout of our lifetime. A lot of major change will happen in a short amount of time.
Like
the phoenix, one thing after another that we know well, will burst into
flames and die off. That will be catastrophic on many levels, and
painful for many people. But this is all to make way for new things
that are, and will continue to be, born.
Bad selfie, while sitting outside the downtown library in Richmond, Virginia, where I was living homeless, earlier this year. I had just walked a long ways, carrying all my stuff, on a hot humid day, and I found this little ledge to sit down on and take a break. I turned around, and saw this sign. This photo just seems to sum up being homeless, anywhere you go, you're not wanted, it doesn't matter where it is.
For the last 20 years, since I left my good paying job as a "Hollywood" lighting technician, because of an injury, my life has been this crazy struggle, skipping along the bottom of society, struggling in and out of homelessness. When I mention that, or people see me and realize I'm homeless, they jump to all sorts of conclusions, nearly all of which aren't true.
I've now spent about 10 years in some form of homelessness. About 7 1/2 of those years, I was working full time, way beyond full time (70-100 hours a week as a taxi driver), or near full time. Here's the kicker, I don't do drugs, legal or illegal. I don't drink at all anymore. I'm not an alcoholic who went through a program to quit, I pretty much stopped drinking (which I didn't do much, anyhow) while working as a taxi driver. After driving drunks home every night in my cab, I just stopped drinking, I just got sick of the world attached to beer and booze.
I did struggle with depression, in a serious way, after my dad's death in 2012. That got serious, but I went through group therapy, took meds, worked through all that. I weaned myself off the depression meds a couple years ago, while a friend from group kept an eye on me in case I got sketchy.
My main issue, the thing I've struggled with most, was simply not being able to find a good paying job after taxi driving went down the tubes in about 2003. I struggled in the taxi until 2007, then had to quit for both health and business reasons. Like millions of other people in other industries, the taxi industry got disrupted by new technology. First computer dispatching replaced the old CB radios in the cabs, which changed the game, and then Uber and Lyft popped up. Boom! Business over. Like millions of people who lost factory jobs in the 1970's, 1980's, and 1990's, I had to find a new way to make a living. And I have struggled with that.
During that same time period, there has been a ridiculous amount of outside pressure and influence on my life, from a variety of sources. I can't really tell the story of this, though it's been the dominant theme of my life for 17-18 years now, because it's so ridiculous. Finally part of the story came out, and all this weird stuff happened, supposedly, because I scored absurdly high on an I.Q. test 34 years ago. Someone, somewhere, decided they needed to control my life because of that. Supposedly. So I've struggled through nearly two decades of crazy adventures, busting my ass to simply survive, and I can't explain this whole mess to anyone. The story is just too fucking crazy. It would be more believable to more people if I said I got abducted by aliens in 2001, brought back ten years later, then dropped in the woods of Oregon where I lived with a Sasquatch family for a few years... and now I have to start over. That kind of crazy tale is actually more believable than what's actually happened in my life.
So I have 20 years of craziness I can't really talk about. Now I'm 53, homeless, living in the Hollywood area, with a mouthful of broken teeth (20 years of no dental insurance after a life of too much sugar), and working to rebuild my life and start a viable business around my Sharpie art and my writing.
What I do have in common with many of you reading this (hopefully), is that I'm working to build a creative/artistic based business, and make a living from that. What I don't have in common with most of you is my starting point. I started actually selling my Sharpie art, 4 years ago, while living with my mom, in a small North Carolina town, literally without a dime to my name. After applying for about 140 jobs over a year or so, and not getting called back, it became obvious a traditional job wasn't going to happen. So I decided to focus on my Sharpie art, which made me a few buck now and then.
I've sold over 80 major pieces of art in four years, nearly of all which took 35 to 45 hours to draw. So while most people look at me and see only a complete failure, I've actually sold more pieces of art than most of the best known masters of painting in their lifetimes. My drawings may suck, in your opinion, compared to the great artists, but 80+ people thought they were worth paying for. That's something. No I'm not making a "good living," at this, even after four years, but I have survived through some tough times, by selling artwork. However lame my life may seem, there are thousands of people out there who wish they had sold 80 pieces of original art. That's something. Yes, I have a long way to go, but I have made quite a bit of progress in some areas.
So now I'm dealing with a weird paradox, as I work to build my art/writing business in a new area, in the cliche' of all cliche's, Hollywood, California. On one hand, as a homeless man, struggling for food money, bus fare, and basic need money, day to day, my main focus is simply keeping my spirits up, and not getting deeply depressed. The struggle of homelessness is a struggle not to succumb to depression and give up. The hardcore street people you see in large cities have mostly given up. I've found the way to keep my spirits up while homeless is to give myself little "gifts." In my case, it's mostly food, I'll spend a little money on a caramel sundae at McDonald's, or buy a $6 pepperoni pizza at Little Caesar's. Little gifts to myself help me keep feeling like an actual human being, a person who will do cool stuff again, some day, not the "homeless person," most people see me as.
But as an entrepreneur, trying to start a small business, I need to spend as little money as possible, to put every dime I can into my little business, buy more art supplies, or copies of drawings to sell, or money to promote somehow. So my biggest struggle right now, is making small amounts of cash day to day, and to try not to eat too much, but to eat enough to keep my attitude positive, because I get really grumpy when I don't eat much.
We all have our struggles, the things we battling and struggling with right now. That's mine. What's yours? What's keeping you from the small business, or small creative business, you really want to have?
I took one copy of my "I (heart) Sunny Days" VW bug drawing, and went to Laguna Beach for it's First Thursday Art Walk last night. This is the first time I've hung out in Laguna Beach during the Art Walk, and I wanted to show off my work, and see what people thought.
I learned years ago that people don't really buy original art for the beauty or look of it, for the most part. People tend to buy the artist, and the artist's story, as much as the work of art itself. So I had no idea how people in a city full of all kinds of very good (and some not so good) artwork, would react to the Sharpie drawings of an unknown, homeless guy.
To my surprise, this simple drawing of a convertible VW bug stopped a lot of people in their tracks. That's hard to do, and that's pretty freakin' cool. Most seemed to think it was a painting of some kind as they walked up and saw my drawing at a distance. When they got closer, quite a few people seemed to realize (because I wrote "Sharpie drawings" next to it), that it wasn't a painting, and it was done with Sharpies. While most of the people walking by didn't notice, busy with their own stuff, two or three dozen people stopped, looked closer, and gave me really positive comments. Two or three people said they'd never seen anything like this (with Sharpies), and a couple called it "amazing." I said, "Thank you," and told them no one else in the world draws in this style, it's my creation. So while no one wanted to buy a drawing, or commission one to be done, the reaction from Laguna Beach passers by was really good.
I posted up on a bench on the corner of PCH and Forest, in front of an ice cream shop, and this gate hangs on a pole there, about 8 feet out of the ground. I'm sure there's a story to it, but I don't know that story.
This guy, who looked a lot like a pre-heart attack Kevin Smith, poured a little water on the ground and busted some dance moves. Crazy as it sounds, he had some really good footwork, aided by the wet bricks. He also had some print on canvas he was trying to sell, and showed me a video he edited for some rapper, who was having an online contest to make a video to his song. Not epic, but quite creative. There are a lot of weird characters wandering around Laguna Beach, and that's always a good sign. There's also a lot of really boring rich people. Gotta take the good with the bad.
A lot of people walked their dogs around during Art Walk. This St. Bernard was the big guy, and the mellowest, of the four-legged bunch. Remember, St. Bernards were some of the first "service dogs," they carried casks of brandy around their necks, seeking out people who were lost in the snow, in the French Alps, if I remember correctly. Something like that.
My little art portfolio sitting below the dog waiter statue beside the ice cream shop, in downtown Laguna Beach.
When it comes to describing what good "content" is for a business to put out, Patagonia, the company, is my go to. I went to YouTube and searched "Patagonia," looking for videos by the company, not about the region in Chile, and this is one of the first videos I found. There's the "patagonia" logo in the beginning. That's it. There are no Patagonia commercials in the middle of the video interrupting you. There are no fashion videos at the end, promoting a certain jacket or shirt by the company. People in the video may be wearing clothes Patagonia clothes, but I didn't notice. There were no close-ups of logos that they sneaked in to the video on the down low. This is a well made video about a group of surfers looking for huge waves they'd heard rumors of near Selkirk Island, off the coast of Chile. This video is a gift to you from the company Patagonia. No strings attached. That's the mark of great content.
When we talk about "creating content" for today's media platforms, "content" is simple. It's written words (text), spoken words or music (audio), photographs, or video. To create content, you make something with text, audio, photo(s) or video, and you put it on some platform where people can experience it. That's it.
You personally, or your business, makes some kind of content, and you put it out on a blog, a website, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Instagram, a podcast, Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat, Linked In, TikTok, Medium, Reddit, or one of the other platforms out there for content. Then you let people experience it. That's content creation. These platforms, by and large, are available for free. Millions, in a some cases, billions, of people check out these platforms. With today's internet and technology, you can put content that has the potential to be experienced by a huge number of people. In most cases, you make this content available for free. You give a gift of some cool photo, thought provoking piece of writing, funny photo, interesting audio bit, or cool video. Why? Why would you "waste" time and money to create pieces of content and give them away for free? Because people like gifts. That's it. You give people gifts of content, and you hope a bunch of them will come to believe in you or your business. People begin to have a favorable opinion of you or your business, you "build brand." When people need a product or service you supply, whatever that product or service is, you want your business to be the first one they think of. People who have enjoyed your content then become customers. If you continue to do a good job as a business and a content creator, people have a tendency to be fans, and customers, for a long time. That's why you create content.
