1. Got…? - Some of you remember the stone soup story. The principle is, take what you got and make something out of it. Got a ladder? Charge folks with houses $20 to $40 to take down their Christmas lights. It is cold outside and I dont want to do it. I would give you $40 to do the 30 minutes of work so I dont have to. 
2. Put’em on the Glass – Right now there are hundreds of businesses that have had their windows painted for Christmas. Grab that bucket and warm soapy water.
3. Gypsey – Got a car or a van? Spend $10 on some business cards and tell the bar owners that you are happy to pick up the drunks to take them away. Drop these cards off at the local college fraternities and sororities too. Make sure you make friends with the folks you pick up because there is no law against picking up a friend and driving them home from the bar. But there are laws against driving an illegal taxi cab. 
4. Reap what you sow - Right now wives are nagging guys to go out and “winterize” their lawns. This means dropping some grass seed for spring. Figure out how long it takes you to do 100 square feet (plus the cost of the seed) and fix your price. Like I said, better you than me. 
5. Time to eat – There are working folks in your neighborhood that are eating fast food everyday. These are the folks who now have a “I’m going to lose weight this year” new year resolution. Figure out a menu of nice dinners (do your calorie and fat calculations – all the incredients added up and divided by the number of portions.) Pack it up and sell it for double (even triple) what you paid for it with a little slip of paper with cooking instructions. The cool thing with this hustle is that the more customers you have, the less work per customer. Give them a menu to review. Hook them up with some free or half off samples for the first day. Get payment up front (for groceries) and deliver on time. There are recipes online and “cost effective” shortcuts to maximize your profit. Just keep your head up for the health department. They frown on doing this from your house. If you get enough accounts, thry to find a local commercial kitchen that rents out times for you to cook there.

Good luck out there Hustlers. It is times like these that made the Rockerfellers and Vanderbuilts rich. Keep hustling and I will be back with an update.  

Most people don’t know what $20 a week can get them. Hell I was told what it would do for me when I was 16 and I didn’t listen. If I had, I would have an account right now with over $100,000 cash in it grown from $20 a week.

To, for some folks, $20 is a drop in the bucket. It is lunch money. For others it means the difference between hamburger helper for the family and just plain helper.

$20 can be found almost under every rock in your neighborhood, if you know what kind of rocks to look for.

I get emails all the time (so if you sent one and I haven’t responded, hang in there, I am working on it). Most of the time it is stuff like “How do I get my hustle going?” or “Where can I get money to finance my hustle?”

The hardest part to locking down a strong hustle is money and patience. If you have ever done any kind of crime, you know that you spend a lot of time waiting. You are either waiting in the bushes for traffic to clear so you can break a window or you are waiting for the store to clear out a little before you run in there. Maybe you are waiting for a foggy night to do your dirt or you are waiting for a homeboy to call you up with the ok on the spot where he works.

Most of the time it is a gut check. You ask yourself, does it FEEL right. Being kids of the 70’s and 80’s my friends and I used to call this our “Spidey Senses”. Some of my other friends called it being ghetto psychic. It is how you know someone is a cop, even though you don’t really know. It is the gut feeling to know that now is the time to act.

But the waiting to act is hard. That is the hardest part to get over. You can have millions in the bank but unless you check the gut, keep it in your pocket. This is why I think that those who grew up in the game have an advantage over those who didn’t. You can smell danger. The other advantage is that you know when to take the risk of running up and smashing that window.

So now that we know that you have to have patience to know when to act, you have got to find the dough. Money has a funny way of multiplying. Think about it. When I was a kid, I sold candy on the schoolyard. I had a little store in my backpack. Actually I carried a duffel bag that was half candy and half books with zippers on both sides. I stole about $2.00 worth of nickel gum and Jolly Ranchers from the 7-11 near my house. I would go back and pay for them as I have the money now but they closed like 12 years ago.

Anyway, I flipped that $2.00 in candy into $4.00 that afternoon. I went and bought $4.00 in candy and sold it for $8.00 the next day. I did this until I was making between $10 and $20 a day net. That’s a pocket full of cash for a 3rd grader in 1983. I took those profits and rolled them into extending my line and setting up distribution (selling candy is like selling crack or weed or anything else). I was the Nino Brown of the elementary school.

But all I needed was that seed money. So here are some ideas for setting up your empire, starting with your first $20. By the way, I have done each of these things myself so i know they work.

Tow Yards – Many Tow Truck companies have impound contracts with the cops. When people don’t pick up their cars, the tow yard doesn’t want to sell them like they are a car lot (they usually don’t have a license to sell cars). So they sell them for scrap to the local junkyards. Offer to sell those cars for them for a split of the profits. They only get $50 to $200 for the salvage on those cars. You might get the car with a salvage title, but my first three cars had salvage titles and that didn’t bother me. Plus a lot of those salvage yards just sell those cars anyway. You are acting as a broker and can list the car on craigslist or ebay if you want. If you have $50 to $200, just ask to buy the car from the lot yourself and don’t split the upsell value.

Recycling – I am not saying go get a bicycle and a bunch of bags and hit the garbage cans. Not that there is anything wrong with that, those people are Hustlers in their own way. I am saying to go by the local bars and restaurants and talk to someone. Maybe it is the owner or the manager or the security guard that is guarding the dumpster. Offer them 50% of the recycled value of the cans and bottles. You swing by once a day, week or month – whatever works. You will make a few extra dollars for sure and you could even turn this into a little business. I used to do this when I was a kid. I didn’t have a car so I would just go to the restaurants around the grocery store and get them to give me their bottles. I would turn them in at the store for cash. It was an easy $10 for an hour of work in 1982 when minimum wage was a little over $3/hr in California.

Mobile Car Wash – If you live somewhere where people like to drive, then going to their homes and telling them that for $5 to $10 you (and your kids or spouse or friends) will wash their cars. If it works out you can set it up so you can stop by once a week to once a month. Use quality soap and nice cloths and bring your own hoses and nozzles so you don’t have to borrow anything from the owner. Make sure you have nothing sharp on you (watches, belts, keys). You can even take a camera with you and take a picture of each car (to document existing damages) and have a check list with a drawing of a car (like the rental places use). In the winter time, shovel snow. Get to really know them and get them on an oil change schedule too.

Be a Mobile Store – People buy water. You can buy it bulk, cheap. Go places where people are exercising (the park, the gym, the community center, little league ball games) with a backpack lined with water resistant cloth (think solar reflectors from PepBoys or thermal blankets). Freeze some of the bottles and put them on the bottom. Make a T-Shirt at Zazzle.com or CafePress.com that say “Water $1.00” or “Snack Pimp” or something like that. If you are in a wheel chair and like to beg for money as your hustle – don’t go panhandle – put some hooks on your wheelchair and be a mobile store. I am far more likely to buy something from you than give you my hard earned money for nothing! And likely people are more likely to give you money if you at least make the effort to sell something.

Make Something – You know how to do something. What are your friends calling you up to help them with? You help people all the time even if it is moving furniture. Do you have a truck, rent yourself on Craigslist for people who need the help. Do you know how to make necklaces? Are you willing to learn something? Open up the PennySaver or phone book to the handyman section. What are other people doing? Learn it and do that too! I have a concrete back patio that my wife wants to stain. It is stamped so there are a lot of brick-like patterns. She wants me to get out there and stain each “brick” individually in alternating colors. Yeah, it will look good and it is easy to do – but I don’t want to do it. I would pay someone $500 to come do it for me over the weekend. I would pay for the stain, brushes and kneepads. And in California as long as it is under $500 you don’t need a contractor’s license. There are a lot of guys like me with more money than time. You have more time than money. Go get their money.

So there are 5 solid ideas. Not everyone can do all of them but anyone can do at least one of them. Take that little money you get and throw it into a CD or savings account or Roth IRA or mutual funds or something. Sit on it and let it grow until you find the next hustle.

If I had done this when I was 16, and increased my savings to my earnings, as I got older – I would have over a million dollars cash in that savings account. Life is funny like that. When you get older you see all the missed opportunities. But while you are looking back at them, don’t forget to look around at the here and now. You don’t want to be 10 years older looking back to now thinking about all the opportunities that you are missing right now.

That bar/restaurant I am opening started from $20. I fixed some computers and stuff when I was 16 years old. I taught myself how.  I read books at the library and hung out with other people in that kind of stuff and learned what I could. I charged $20/hr to fix any computer problem that I could fix. I used that money to buy a 1966 mustang for $1,200. I sold that Mustang for $2,500 to help put together the down payment to buy my first house. I sold that house for $200,000 more than I paid for it. I took about $100,000 of that and paid off all my debt and used the rest to buy a crappy little bar in the ghetto. The other $100,000 I used as a down payment on the next house.

I set that bar up, cleaned it up and squeezed every dime out of it until it was the most successful 1100 square feet in that neighborhood. I took the money from that and leased a very high traffic and visible spot in the good side of town. Just by moving into the new building the value of that business has doubled. Remember what they say about real estate? Well it is the same for businesses too – “Location, Location, Location”. The day I open the doors the business will be worth about $500,000.

It all started from a $20 hustle.

Keep Hustling

So the reader said that he wanted to know, as he develops into his carreer as a teacher, how to keep an eye out for a hustle that he could jump into and take advantage of.

Hustles present themselves to you every day, no matter where you are. They show up, hang around for a minute and pass on to the next guy if you failed to grab onto it.

I dig teachers. I have a bit of an envy for teachers which is probably why I set this blog up in the first place.

I have friend who is a teacher that got into real estate as his sideline hustle. He now owns a few houses hat he rents out. He isnt making a killing on the month to month. Each house only brings in a hundred bucks or so a month – but in 20 to 30 years they will be paid off and worth a few $100k each. I have another friend who is a professor at a pretty large university. He took his expertise to the next level and saw that an educational and theraputic tool used in the field hadn’t been changed in 50 years. He and I modernized it and made it cross cultural. He invested $25,000 and flipped it into $125,000 in a year.

I have another teacher friend who has written and published three books. Another teacher friend that owns an ice cream shop. One more teacher that runs an after school tutoring school (think Sylvan or Kumon). I know that one of my teachers (economics teacher actually) went on to open a couple of drive through sub shops (think ToGos or SubWay).

The best thing you can do is find something that you are an expert in and something that you care about. Find a way to use your resources as a teacher (other teachers, your union, your students) or review your environment (antiquated tools or teaching materials). You can take a look at your goegraphic location (empty retail spots across from the school). As a teacher, you are exposed to a few hundred kids a day. This is not only a test market but also a potential client pool.

The district probably has an issue with you actively promoting your business in class, but if you work with other teachers to host a fundraising car wash in the parking lot of your business for the school band, or host after school study lounge at your coffee/ice cream shop – there is likely no conflict

If you work in a poor school and see the things that happen to students in that area, think about writing a book or teaching guide for other teachers. Offer to lecture (for pay) at a local college. Think about hosting workshops for educators in the same environment.

As a teacher you have a world of opportunity around you. Plug into it and you will be surprised at what pops up. If you work in another field though, the same types of opportunities are around. I have worked fast food, retail, industrial and almost any type of job that you can think of. Every job presented an opportunity, if you were looking for it. Think about your job. What sorts of contacts are you making? What types of people come to your employer? What niche is your employer missing?

Answer these questions and you are on your way to developing your hustle.

Oops. I almost closed this one out without this final thought. Even though you are working for your employer, think about them as a potential customer, partner or test group. You may come up with a way to help your bosses do something more efficiently or less expensively.  Tread lightly and talk to your attorney first, but give them a shot. If you are a good employee and a hard worker with a million dollart idea, they may be first in line to throw some dough your way.

Keep Hustling

One thing that is pretty much available to anyone in the United States is Internet access. Coffee shops, libraries, Internet cafes, schools are all potential sources of computers with cheap or free internet access.

Now, you might not be able to charge folks to use these free computers (but if you can, I might have a job for you because that would mean you are on top of your sales hustle). Anyway, so you now have this incredible resource. Every day, people like you are making a few dollars to a few thousand dollars using the Internet. I have. I was making a few hundred dollars a month on eBay about 8 years ago spending about 4 hours a month posting items and mailing them out. I didn’t do anything special. I could probably start it up again if I wanted too, but it was boring. I make better money now doing things that are more fun for me – and isn’t that the real hustle?

Now this doesn’t mean that I don’t still spend time online. I spend time for fun and I spend time for work. I visit a lot of different sites but most recently I have noticed a trend. Some call it social media, some call it social networking and some call it online “friending”. Whatever you call it, it is this century’s way of pooling your resources to get your hustle off the ground.

I am putting out a list here of sites that I visit and use on the daily basis. Some of these I may only use a few times a week because they don’t require my constant attention. Others I use when I have questions or feel the need to reach out a little. Some help me maintain my “real world” contacts and other help me meet new people who help me grow my personal empire.

These are sites that you can use to build your hustle, your crew, or plan your organization.

Money

You may know from a previous post that there are a lot of places online to find some seed capital. Here are just a few.

• Prosper
• Zopa
• Lending Club
• Kiva (for our international readers)
• Loanio
• Virgin Money

Personal Networking

Networking is important. It is really how you build your crew. When I used to run around in the streets, people knew me. I had a reputation. People knew that they could come to me to find some hard to find items or to find a deal. When I grew up, got straight and wanted to expand my hustle, I realized that I needed to create a NEW network. That guy who can get you car stereos on the cheap isn’t going to help much when you want to land that million-dollar contract. This is what you need to do – make new contacts. Each of these sites can help.

• Tribe find people in your area working their own hustles.
• Myspace the easiest to get going because you already know someone on MySpace. Yeah, you really do.
• Facebook This site used to be invite only. It is basically a MySpace knock off for the college set. Now, it is the “friendly” equivalent to LinkedIn.
• LinkedIn I have clients, colleagues and friends who contact me through LinkedIn. It is strictly business oriented. And when I get a new business card, this is the first place I go to see if we are going to hook up.
• MeetUp this site helps you find and meet people in person. My only warning here is that the entrepreneur groups have a lot of MLM salespeople. MLM is not my kind of hustle, if you can hump it out, more power to you.

Business Communities

Business Communities can be networking resources, but I find them more of a collaborative tool. This is where like minded people get together and expose each other to industry related news, advice and tips. I probably use these sites as much as the networking sites.

• Bank of America Small Business Online Community is a pretty cool site where you can get some advice.
• Microsoft Startup Center
• American Express Open Forum is a place where small business owners get together to share tips and ideas.
• Advisor Garage is a site where business pros ca offer help to those coming up. It is still in Beta phase now but looks promising.
• Entrepreneur.com Another resource site for you know who
• Small Business Wiki is a dumb name for a site like the others above. Dumb name, but a good resource.

Web Resources

• Google Analytics if your business has a website, then you need this. On one of my businesses, I track visitors, get their network location and call them up. I tell them “Thanks for visiting my website, I am calling to see if you had any questions not answered by my site.” This site is also cool if you do any marketing. You can watch your visitors spike when a new ad or marketing campaign launches and know what works.
• Google Alerts I get emails every day of my name popping up online or one of my businesses or competitors showing up in the news. This is how I do it. It gives you an excellent competitive advantage.

Money Services

Everyone needs some help figuring out their money. It is easier when all your money fits in your pockets, but when you start pulling in a little extra, things get complicated. It is better to learn good habits now.

• Mint.com is a free money management site. It has a lot of cool features including letting you know when your credit card payments and bills are due via email (mine go to my cell phone). It is like a free version of quicken but a lot easier to use.
• Geezeo.com another money management site. This one has a forum called “Money Confessions” where people anonymously post how they are spending their money.
• Wesabe Another online money management site worth mentioning.
• CreditKarma is a site that lets you monitor your credit score any time you want. This site is FREE and legit.
• PayPal – Love it or hate it, Paypal is the leading way to exchange money between individuals online. Owned by eBay.
• Google Checkout – Google’s service for buying items in online stores without giving your credit card details to the merchant. No person-to-person exchanges.
• MoneyBookers – a popular alternative to PayPal, especially in countries where PayPal still doesn’t let users receive funds.
• Billster allows you to track your bills as well as helps you figure out how to split shared bills with your friends, partners or roommates.
• Annual Credit Report The government offers this site so you can get a free copy of your credit reports. It’s free, once a year.

Information and Resources

There is a lot of information out there. Here is a good start to get you rolling. This is one list that I will keep updating so check back.

• SlideShare is a site where business pros upload their PowerPoint presentations. Now you can see how the big rollers are getting the job done. This helps for that first time you have to give a presentation to a room full of suits.
• DocStoc.com There are a lot of free and downloadable documents including Non-Disclosure Agreements and Independent Contractor Agreements. It doesn’t beat a lawyer – but it is cheaper.
• SBA Small Business Planner more business help from the government
• SCORE is a site to find a mentor to give you a hand up.
• IdeaBlob is a place where people throw out ideas for new businesses or products. You never know where that next idea will come from.
• EntreWiki same thing as IdeaBlob.

So obviously this isn’t every site out there. It isn’t even a complete list of the best sites out there. It is just a list of good sites that I visit. If you are reading this post, and you run a valuable site like these, post a comment. If it looks good, I will allow it through so others can check it out. If you have a site that you don’t run but you know is cool, post it and I will set it up for others too. Also, check back because I will be updating this post as better sites show up.

Keep Hustling

Two travelers come to a village, carrying nothing more than an empty pot. Upon their arrival, the villagers are unwilling to share any of their food stores with the hungry travelers. The travelers fill the pot with water, drop a large stone in it, and place it over a fire in the village square. One of the villagers becomes curious and asks what they are doing. The travelers answer that they are making “stone soup”, which tastes wonderful, although it still needs a little bit of garnish to improve the flavor, which they are missing. The villager doesn’t mind parting with just a little bit to help them out, so it gets added to the soup. Another villager walks by, inquiring about the pot, and the travelers again mention their stone soup which hasn’t reached its full potential yet. The villager hands them a little bit of seasoning to help them out. More and more villagers walk by, each adding another ingredient. Finally, a delicious and nourishing pot of soup is enjoyed by all. 

Now, I copied this story from Wikipedia because I didn’t feel like retyping it. But basically thats how I remember the story. Now, according to Wikipedia, the two morals of the story are:

1. We can all work together, co-operate and end up better off.
2. If you want to get people to do something, don’t tell them how desperately they are needed. Don’t try to appeal to their sympathy and kindness. Instead, create the impression that you are giving them the opportunity to be part of your success.

I can kind of go along with that, but they left a part out. The biggest part of this story is that the two travellers stood in the town square. They went where they could get the most exposure. To plug another post “They went where the food is“.

Now, to the point of the post. Most projects need a little money to get rolling. Even projects that can be planned and executed effectively can usually be done faster, better and with bigger payoffs if you have a Money Man in your pocket.

I get emails and phone calls about where to get financing. I mentor start-up entreprenuers and their first question is almost always “Where do I get money?”. Well, there is a lot of places to get money, so here is the breakdown.

Friends and Family – most of us don’t have family with money. So you might say that this is a dry well. That’s not true. Remember the stone soup story. If you can find 10 family or friends willing to invest $100 each in you, you can raise $1,000. If you can borrow the money, thats better (as not everyone wants to deal with friends and family as business partners.) I have done this myself. It is never easy, but approach your family and friends like you would a strager. Have your business plan in hand (did I mention that you should always have a business plan?). Explain to them why you need the money, what the business is about and how soon you could repay them. Have a promissory note on hand too. Even if your business fails, you want to pay these people back. They are your family and if you pay them back, they will lend you again.

Your Network – Now my family always told me that when it comes to people, there is family, friends and acquaintances. Your network would be considered all the people you know that you wouldn’t call your ace boon coon, your number one roll dog. You know who I am talking about. Your co-workers, neighbors, old schoolmates, your employer – all these people are open game. Friends of friends are a great source too. I can’t tell you how many business contacts I have made that came from a friend saying “You know I can’t help you but a friend of mine…”

SBA – SBA stands for Small Business Administration. Now I have never done this myself but I know people that have gone through the process. There are loans available for almost any type of business for any reason. These loans are actually funded by banks and credit unions but guaranteed by the federal government (believe it or not, the government wants you to be rich. They can squeeze more taxes out of you that way and you will hire other people and they will tax them too.) They are worth a shot because they are more likely to lend you money than a bank would.

Banks – Yeah, don’t waste your time. You are basically asking them to give you money with nothing that they can go after if you don’t pay. This is called an unsecured loan and unless you are pulling down serious dough, a long time customer and have a high credit score, you have better chance of getting their money with a gun.

Credit Cards – A sucker’s bet. Don’t do it. I don’t care how sure you are that you are going to pull off the score of the century. If you are late once on a credit card, that rate could go up to almost 30% interest. That is a hole that is almost impossible to dig out of. You are better off tricking for the cash.

Now most of you know about these options. But I am going to share afew other lesser known “Stone Soup” options to get some money.

Peer to Peer Lending – This is a fancy way of saying that there are people out there with money that want to lend it out to people like you. They want a return on that investment. The cool thing about P2P lenders is that you may have the opportunity to talk to the people lending you the money. See, they want you to succeed. So they may offer you free advice or insight that gives you ammunition to hit your target more accurately. Here are a few sites to check out:

• Prosper
• Zopa
• Lending Club
• Kiva (for our international readers)
• Loanio
• Virgin Money

Not all of these are technically P2P but each of them has a way to get you the money you need.

Special Investors – Now you can call these guys “Angel Investors” or whatever you like. I have dealt with these guys and I have had one of my projects funded this way. My experience was great. I have no complaints. But the question is “Where the hell do you find an investor that you don’t know?” Well that is the trick man. You can find some online. You can start by going to the town square and set up your pot and get the fire going. You can reread this post to get the ball rolling but I did leave something out of that post. I left out something very important.

Most people hate their jobs.

I know this sounds obvious and stupid, but think about it. Everyone wants to do what you are doing. They want to be the Captain of their own ship. Most of them just don’t have the stones to jump in the mix. This means that if you find someone who makes a lot of money at their job, and you offer them a piece of your life, they will trade that money for your time.

In simpler terms, find yourself a Dentist, a Doctor or a Lawyer and let them in on the action. Statistically (and in my experience) these people hate their jobs more than anyone else. They are literally dying to find someone like you. I get hit up all the time by doctors and lawyers in my circle who have the next great board game or business idea. They have the dough, they just don’t have the time.

So, if you want to get your hustle going, set your pot of stone soup up in the village square. That means that you have to let everyone know that you are on the scene and you are going to hustle your way to the top. You will be surprised how many people will want to throw a little something into your pot to get a taste of your “Stone Soup”.

Keep Hustling