1970's Wheelin' and dealin- How my dad got me a free go-kart

Not exactly, but this project is pretty dang close to the go kart my dad got me in trade in about 1978. It was a 3.5 horsepower, 28 mph piece of awesome for me.

My dad, Tom Emig, was a guy who liked wheelin' and dealin', as we called when I was a kid, in the 1970's.  He was a draftsman/engineer by trade.  He designed machines, and drew huge pictures of machine parts, by hand, pencil on paper, in those pre-computer days.  Those huge drawings, often 3 by 5 feet, were taken out into the factory shop, and machines were built from his drawings.  That's how he made a living. 

But dad had been a wheeler and dealer since childhood.  He'd find deals at garage sales, fix or repair something, and then resell it for some extra cash.  In his years after high school, he lived with his parents in Wadsworth, Ohio, and would buy and sell guns, cars, motorcycles, Vespa-type scooters, boats, and whatever other mechanical things he came across.   He graduated high school in 1955.  By the time he married my mom in1964, nine years later, he had owned 40 cars. 

 Here's my dad in front of one of his favorite cars, a powder blue, 1957 Ford Thunderbird, and a shot of the T-bird itself.  My dad owned three T-birds, a red 1955, a white 1955, and this one.  These classics sell for $35,000 to $50,000 these days.   Wish he'd passed one down to me.

The car buying slowed down when my dad got married.  By the time I was a kid, old enough to remember, my dad was buying selling guns from gun shows, he was an avid target shooter.  He also bought and sold bicycle parts, small appliances, and whatever else he could find a deal on at garage sales.  As my mom, dad, little sister Cheri, and me moved around Ohio in the 1970's, cabinets full of random tools, broken appliances, and random junk filled out basements.  Dad fixed stuff at times, but was always buying and selling little things.  In today's world, that's starting to become popular again, as people look for "side hustles" to earn extra money.  What my dad called "wheelin' and dealin'" in the 1970's, is known as "flipping" today. 

Of all my dad's deals when I was a kid, one was my favorite.   I was about 12, so it was 1978, I think.  My dad worked at Plymouth Locomotive Works, in Plymouth, Ohio, a company that made custom railroad locomotives, like this one.   

Like all factories, the shop floor at PLW got cluttered up with random boxes, scrap metal, unused pieces of machinery, and other junk.  One day, the owners walked through the factory, and and told the shop foreman to clean the place up, get rid of all the random junk.  So a list of stuff was itemized, a memo was typed up, and everyone in the company could bid on the stuff they wanted to get rid of.  My dad didn't want any of the big stuff.  But he knew the shop foreman well, and said, "Hey, I'll give you $15 for the junk pile in that little corner over there.  To the foreman it looked like a few old boxes, and some scrap metal.  The foreman said, "Deal, get it out of here in the next couple of days."
So my dad backed up his 1968, black, Mercury Montego, that my sister Cheri had named Herbie, after seeing the Herbie the Love Bug movie.  Herbie dutifully carried the junk to our house, and I helped my dad unload it into the basement.  My mom was not happy with my dad bringing home "more junk," but then, my mom wasn't happy very much anyhow. 

First we sorted out the scrap metal, pieces of copper, aluminum, and steel.  I went with my dad to a scrapyard that weekend, and he sold the scrap metal for $45.  Boom! triple his $15 investment back in a week.  So my mom had a little more shopping money, and the additional junk was forgotten by her. 

Over the next several month, my dad and I sorted out hundreds of assorted nuts and bolts, small machine parts, and other stuff from the $15 purchase.  On the weekends, I'd ride with my dad around to little junk stores, independently owned hardware stores, and other small businesses as he tried to sell or trade the stuff.  In the course of about a year, my dad made another $400 from the parts, little by little.  On one of those Saturdays, my dad and I stopped at a random hardware/junk shop not far from Shiloh, Ohio.  My dad talked to the shop owner, as I eyed three go-karts,hanging on wall.  My dad wound up trading some things called series parallel switches for a little money, and a brand new, $150 go-kart for me.  My dad was hoping for more money, but the owner wasn't in a buying mood.  But he saw me checking out the go-kart.  My dad and the shop owner talked, argued, told jokes, and wheeled and dealed for 45 minutes or so.  We left the shop with about $20, and the go-kart.  I was beyond stoked to have my first motorized vehicle. 

We lived on a rural gravel road, with very little traffic.  The perfect place for a 12-year-old, like me, to race a go-kart around.  I had a lot of fun on that go-kart, and learned how to slide a car, which came in handy driving in snow in Idaho, years later.  I even accidentally tipped the go-kart over once, while giving my sister a ride to her friend's house.  If you ask Cheri, she'll say I rolled it on her.  It wasn't that dramatic, it just kind of tipped over slowly, like Fred Flintstone's car when the big ribs are put on the tray.  But me and the go-kart, pretty much landed on Cheri, which was funny.  She still won't let me live that one down.

The moral of this story is, with a wheelin' and dealin' attitude, a flipping mindset, my dad turned a $15 junk purchase into about $450 cash and a go-kart for me.  Flipping is fun.  As our country drops into this crazy depression (yeah, that's what it really will turn into), a lot of people and businesses will be selling millions of items super cheap in the next few years.  It's a great time for flipping.  Keep your eyes peeled for deals near you. 

A few auction deals right now- 6/16/2020

 This this is for sale.  For real.

Here's a few things on the GSA (General Services Administration) auction site right now...

Brown leather couch in Sweetgrass, Montana- $10.

 Airplane fuselage- Redmond, Oregon.  DIY motorhome project anyone?  Where are the Monster Garage guys when you need them?  $2,000 minimum bid (not met yet).

1986 Cessna 210 airplane- El Paso, Texas.  $42,500 (reserve not met).  They have 3 of these for sale. A quick search showed these selling for $145,000 to $200,000 in good shape.  

2011 Ford Ranger XLT- Otisville, New York- $390.  Scrap title, can't be driven.  Still pretty cheap. 

A tidal wave of good deals...

This is from late April, and now it's playing out.  Neiman Marcus, J.Crew, J.C. Penney's, and Hertz are the big names that we know have gone bankrupt, and are trying to restructure, buy time, and become viable businesses again.  We'll see, eventually, who succeeds.

"There are tens of thousands of small and medium sized retailers, throughout the United States, that are closed, that are facing an existential liquidity crisis..."

-Mark Cohen, Former Sears Cananda CEO, in clip above

I've written this in several blog posts before.  Recessions (or depressions, like this one) are when the whole world goes on sale, and almost no one wants to buy.  That means deals on all kinds of stuff, including liquidation sales, bnakruptcy auctions, and other places. 

As those of you who read my last blog know, I've been struggling to make a living selling my Sharpie art for the last few years.  It's a long crazy story, but I was at a place in 2015, where I couldn't find ANY "real" job, and focusing on my artwork to earn money made sense.  I didn't have many viable options.

Now I'm back in the L.A. metro, and the economic collapse I've been writing about for three years has finally begun.  The artwork isn't going to make me a living in this environment.  I'll keep drawing, and selling drawings.  But I"m making a big pivot back to something I did as a side hustle back in the 2000's, mostly while I was a taxi driver.  When I was a kid,my dad called it "wheelin' and dealin."  These days, it's known as "flipping"... buying deals on houses, cars, and merchandise of all kinds, then reselling it for a higher price.   I got into buying storage unit auctions in about 2004-2005, and bought and sold several, while working 70+ hours a week as a taxi driver.  I actually tried to go full time into doing that, to escape taxi driving, but wasn't able to make it happen then.  I made money on every deal except one (which I'll write about soon).

The point of this blog post is:

Damn near everything is going on sale!

 It's not a single blow out sale.  There are several huge, long term, social and economic cycles and trends that are converging.  This convergence is wreaking havoc on the business world, and especially brick and mortar retail stores right now.  The Retail Apocalypse is hitting Ragnarok level.  There will be bankruptcies and liquidation sales all over the place.  That's on top of all the auctions and deals already happening in the world.  The time to flip everyday items for cash has never been better.  I'm writing a big zine on this idea, for people interested in flipping items as a side hustle or a business.  Here are a some of the random deals I found yesterday, doing a bit of research for that project:

 This Ford pickup truck is on a government surplus auction site right now.  $50 minimum.  No bids.  It's somewhere in Arizona.

 This boat is also on a government auction site, $25 minimum.  No bids.  I think it was in Louisiana, maybe Texas.  Somewhere on the Gulf Coast.  I know there are people in Louisiana that like to fish (or catch alligators).

This drum kit is on a government surplus auction site.  $10.  No bids.  OK, it's in Wyoming, a long way to travel for drums.  But somebody in Wyoming likes to play drums.  

This leather couch and chair were listed on Craigslist, FREE, in the L.A. area a couple days ago.  My point is, thee are a lot of good deals out there on everyday stuff.  I'm going to change my focus from trying to make a living off of artwork, to flipping stuff, like these items, to get back to making a decent living again (which will allow me to do other projects, like The Ultimate Weekend II video).  With the economy collapsing, there's never been a better time to do this.

 If you're looking for a good deal on something- pretty much ANYTHING- now, and the next 2-4 years, will be a great time to do that.  Cool furniture, a great guitar, cars, trucks, real estate, whatever.  If you like finding deals and reselling them for a little (or maybe a lot) of cash, it's a really good time for that, too. 

Stay tuned to this blog for more ideas on finding deals, flipping used items, and other ways to start or build a small business in today's crazy world.  

Why I started selling artwork 4 1/2 years ago...

Kurt Cobain, Sharpie scribble style drawing, 18" X 24", November 2017.  This was the first drawing that sold at my first solo show.

The first two decades of the 21st century have been a rough ride for me.  My weird line of odd jobs led to a good paying job as a lighting technician in 1998.  Basically, I was a lighting roadie who didn't go on the road.  I worked in a warehouse in North Hollywood, cleaning and prepping lights to go out to TV shows, movie premieres, and corporate parties.  I made $14 and hour, got a fair amount of overtime, and liked my job.  But I had what appeared to be a tiny hernia when I started.  That turned into a huge hernia, due to the daily heavy lifting.  I had to take time off, had issues with my insurance, was unable to get surgery, and wound up working as a taxi driver in late 1999, back down in Huntington Beach.

In 5 months, I went from a cool job with money in the bank to living in a taxi, working 7 days a week.  That was my situation as I watched the new millennium roll in, on New Year's Eve 1999.  I soon had a room to live in again, but a long period of struggle began.  My car got towed in 2000 for parking tickets, when I was just starting to get back into the entertainment industry.  Back to taxi driving, an industry which soon got disrupted by new technology.

That intro into the 21st century led to what has now been 20 years of financial struggle.  I just figured out that I've spent 11 years and 9 months in some form of homelessness, since August 1999.  I was working full time (or far beyond full time in the taxi) for 7 1/2 or 8 of those years.  And I've now spent 3 years and 9 months actually living on the streets, in three states.  There have been a whole bunch of reasons for this struggle, and that list does not include alcohol and drug use.  Those aren't my issues.  I don't drink at all these days, I just quit when driving a taxi.  I don't use drugs, other than the occasional prescription for an illness.  The stereotypical homeless issues aren't what led to this struggle.  I had an incredible amount of pressure from outside forces on my life, I didn't have a real strong direction at times, and I just couldn't find a "real job" for years at a time.  Nobody wants to hire a former cabbie for a "real" job.

By November of 2015, I was living with my mom, at 49 years old, for three years, after my dad's death in 2012.  We lived in a small apartment in a tiny town in North Carolina.  I couldn't get hired for any job at all, not even for a restaurant or gas station clerk.  We lived off my mom's social security check, and I drove her around for doctor's appointments, shopping, and scraped by.  The only thing I did that made any money was my weird, unique Sharpie marker art.  I'd occasionally get asked to draw a kid's name, by their mom, to put up in their room.  I'd done those drawings for my niece and nephew, and others wanted drawings.

So I decided to focus on my Sharpie marker art.  It wasn't some idea of "I want to become a famous artist."  It was simply that nothing else I was doing then gave me any chance of making any kind of living.  So I stepped up my artwork, started drawing people, and promoting my drawings on Facebook.  I had a following from doing several years of blogs, for the Old SchoolBMX freestyle world.  While I have always been a creative guy, I was never known as a visual artist.  I literally didn't have a dime when I started.  I only had some art supplies, and a $65 refurbished laptop, still running Windows XP in 2015.  I had no idea what would happen.

Because I was just scraping by for so long, and in and out of homelessness, I couldn't raise any money from family or friends to give my little business idea a real chance at "success."  But I started getting orders.  I learned how to promote my art well online.  I started selling artwork, originals that first took 22 to 25 hours each.  These days, my large drawings take 40 to 45 hours each, and I can sell them for $150-$160 pretty easily.  So I can sell art, at least until this Covid-19 shutdown hit hard.  But I was never able to make decent money for the time I was putting into my drawings.  But I HAVE been able to scrape by, as a working artist, for 4 1/2 years.  I had no idea if that was possible when I started. And now I have about 120 drawings to show for this time period.

With the Covid-19 pandemic, and the economic downturn, things have finally slowed down, though I was doing better when the virus first hit.  But I'm back in Southern California, where I want to live, and in a big metro where other options are available, now that the virus and recession have slowed down buying of almost everything.

I'm now going to head in another direction to work on earning money, though I still want to spend some time doing artwork nearly every day.  But I somehow managed to survive, though homeless much of time, as a working artist, starting from nothing, in an obscure, rural, North Carolina town.  I have very little money, but I have this body of work online, and have established myself as a unique and halfway decent visual artist.  And that's pretty cool.  I've sold about 90 originals and maybe 120 prints, over this time.  My art has sold, and is hanging on walls, on 6 of the 7 continents, a 8-12 countries, and a dozen U.S. states.  Really.  I never expected that back in 2015.

My point for this post?  I tried something that sounded ridiculous, and had a lot of success in spending time doing work I loved doing, but didn't make much money.  In crazy times, when options seem limited, you never know what is possible, until you try.

Kobe Bryant tribute art skateboard deck, one of my recent works. #sharpiescribblestyle

Paycheck mentality versus cash flow mentality

This peaceful sounding stream isn't in this blog post to make you feel calm, or help you meditate. It's here as a metaphor.  But it's a 12 hour video, so if you want to play this in the background to help you relax in these stressful times, go for it.  

Most adults in this world have a really poor understanding of money.  Our school systems were intentionally set up to not teach averagepeople about money.  But that's a whole different matter.  This is a short blog post to explain a very basic idea, since 42 million plus people have recently been laid off, though a couple million have been re-hired, which is good. 

When you work a regular job, you get a paycheck.  If we use water as a metaphor for money, a paycheck is like getting a bucket of money.  You get a set amount, and you can use all of that money, that "bucket" of water, to pay your rent, mortgage, student loans, car loans, and buy food, clothes, household goods, and other products you need to survive.  If you have some extra, you can put some in savings, or maybe invest in something like your 401k, stocks, maybe a gold coin or two.

When you're used to working for paycheck, for that bucket of water, when you lose your job, you suddenly lose that week's bucket, and the bucket you're used to getting each week or two weeks. So you nautrally think about how to get another bucket of water (money), on a regular basis.  You sign up for unemployment, so the government will give you another, smaller bucket of money every week, to get by, until you can (hopefully) find a new job. 

But if you can't find a new job, and you decide to start some small business, you need to stop thinking about buckets of money.  A good business person thinks about money as a stream, like that one in the video above.  A business tries to build a stream of money, and ultimately, several streams, or even rivers. all flowing constantly.  You want money coming in day by day, in a constant stream.  You may get on the phone or computer and sell your product to create that stream every day.  You may have an online store where you have people ordering your products online, 24 hours a day, and you ship out the orders every day.  So as a business, you have bits of money coming in, continually, not one big bucket each week.  When you need to pay a bill, as a business, to buy office supplies, pay the rent on your office, or buy products to resell, you dip a bucket into your stream of cash, you take a little water out of the stream, and pay that expense.  But the business' stream, of money, keeps flowing (if you're doing a good job running it). 

So if you want to go from being someone who had worked a typical job, working for a paycheck, for your whole life, to someone who runs a small business, you need to change how you think about money.  It's not about getting another bucket of money, a big check.  It's about creating a continuous stream of money flowing through your business.  So think about that for a while, as you plan for how to move forward in this weird, crazy, Covid-19 affected world. 

Being underestimated... Sophia Amoruso of Nasty Gal and #Girlboss

Read #Girlboss.  That's all I'm gonna say. 

Potential Side Hustles for 2020

With 40 million people newly out of work as I write this, and another million or so likely to added tomorrow, side hustles are on a lot of minds.  Here's a very smart, hard working woman, sharing her best advice on side hustles.  This video was made in January, you know, before... things got epically crazy.  But many of these should still be viable, and maybe right up your alley.

There will NOT be enough good paying jobs for the next ten years. Period. Now what?

At the beginning of June, 2017, exactly three years ago, I moved out of my mom's small apartment in Kernersville, North Carolina, where I'd been living for "free" for nearly five years.  I moved into a lean-to, yes a freaking lean-to, in the woods in Winston-Salem.  I couldn't get hired for any job whatsoever in K-ville, and had begun to sell my Sharpie art online.  I started, literally, without a dime to my name, just art supplies, and a $65 refurbished laptop. 

My mom's place was a completely toxic environment, and she couldn't handle money.  Every time I sold a drawing, I couldn't even invest the $50 I made into more supplies.  I intentionally became homeless, simply to have the chance to build my art into a business, some day.  OK, it's still not a "real" business," but I've sold 90 or so originals, and over 100 prints, and have survived mostly off those art sales, ever since. 

After three days in the woods behind Bolton Park in Winston, some guy gave me an old, six man tent.  I lived in that for about 11 months, until a few days after the Carolina lynch mob showed up, in May 2018, insisting I stop blogging.  But that's a story for another day.  Anyhow, I had been a taxi driver before that, until computer dispatching (new technology) disrupted the taxi industry (before Uber and Lyft disrupted it more). 

I'm smart, I can learn most skills quickly, I work hard and smart, but I still couldn't find a job in that area.  ANY job.  I didn't start selling art with some dream of being a famous artist some day.  I started selling it because selling my Sharpie drawings was the only thing that made me any money at the time.  Art was simply the best place for me to start.  I've had several people help me along the way, in bits and pieces, but I've never been able to raise enough money, at one time, to give my business a legitimate chance at success.  But I have sold a lot of artwork. 

Three weeks into living in the woods behind Bolton Park in Winston, I started a new blog, combining my Old School BMX freestyle stories, my Sharpie scribble style artwork, and my thoughts on the future and the economy.  That last part is what my geeky, brainiac side is fascinated with.  The second blog post I wrote, this one, on June 27th 2017, was about the long term trend of humans losing jobs to new technology.  I embedded the very same video above in that post.  I saw this long term trend of massive job loss as one of the biggest issues facing our society in the next 20 years or so.  It's part of our continuing shift from an Industrial Age society, to a fully functional Information Age society.

A study by Oxford University, in England, in 2013, concluded that about 47% of all human jobs, could be lost to new technology, "in the next 20 years."  Hey, guess what?  We are now 7 years into that 20 years.  Even worse, 40 million Americans have lost their jobs in the last 2 1/2 months.  Most of those are supposed to be temporary layoffs, but it's becoming clear maybe half will be permanent. 

This brings us to the uncomfortable truth, there simply will not be enough good paying, traditional jobs, for the next ten years, and probably 20 years.  So what do we do?  

Professor Richard Florida, known for writing the book, The Rise of the Creative Class, and several later books and articles, suggests working to make service worker jobs better paying jobs, through unions, getting Congress to raise minimum wages, and other similar measures.  That's a great idea.  But it requires American Republicans and Democrats to work together on a major issue.  I simply don't see that happening fast enough, if at all.  Those who want to work on that issue, more power to you.

In three years of thinking about this issue, the best real world solution I see is for millions of Americans to start some kind of small business of their own.  For a couple of years now, I've thought working to encourage and help millions of Americans to "create their own job," in other words, some small business or freelance gig, is the best solution. 

With the Covid-19 pandemic triggering the already weak economy to finally collapse, we're now in the place where some solution needs to happen, fast.  So if you're suddenly out of work, along with 40+ million recently laid off people, and 4 1/2 million unemployed before that, what do you do?  Start by asking yourself these questions?

What skills do you have that you may be able to do as a freelancer, side gig, or small business?

Are you willing to learn the other skills needed, and take on the responsibility, of being a small business?

Look around your town or city.  What products and services does it need right now?  Can you provide any of those?

What do you actually like to do?  You're much more likely to stick with something you enjoy (for the most part), than with something you're doing just for the money.  

 What ideas came to mind answering these questions?  Start there.

As I struggle to get my own little business going, this blog will share my thoughts, ideas, lessons learned (from successes and failures), and videos from other people, creating and thriving in small businesses.  Hope it may help you in this crazy time we find ourselves in.  Much more to come. 

Where I see the economy going in the next 6-12 months...

Feel like a landslide hit your bank account?  So does most everybody.  My friend Kerry Getz does my favorite cover of that song, which I share whenever possible.

Right now- The bankruptcy wave just getting going.  Last year saw Sears going bankrupt, the once stolid retail behemoth of the 20th century.  Along with them went Gymboree, Payless Shoes, and several others.  This year Pier 1 Imports, J. C. Penney, Neiman Marcus, J. Crew, Papyrus, and now Hertz are among the bankruptcies in the first 5 months of 2020.  This article lists several others, and also has a link to a 2019 list of retail stores that went bankrupt.  In March, right after the Covid-19 shutdown began, much of corporate America was functionally insolvent.  They're alive now because the Federal Reserve created money, basically out of thin air, and bailed them out.  We will see a huge wave of personal, small business, and major corporation bankruptcies in the coming months, and years. 

June-Sept.- I think we'll see some other black swan (maybe another wave of Covid-19?) that will lead to another major stock market slide.  The market's going up for only one reason, the trillions of dollars The Fed is creating out of nowhere.  That is THE ONLY REASON stocks have gone up since the March bottom is the trillions of dollars The Fed pumped into the financial system.  There is no fundamental reason.  The Fed can't make trillions of $$ monthly forever with out destroying the the dollar.  They'll do that eventually, but hopefully not for 2-3 years. Those trillions bypassed the real, everyday, real world economy, which is what needs to be rebuilt.

August/September/October- According to this CNN article, just over 30% of Americans didn't pay rent at the beginning of April, 2020.  The Covid-19 shutdown hit a nation of people wallowing in historical amounts of debt, and living largely paycheck to paycheck.  While th eWhite House says things are great, Americans are getting behind on rent.  But it takes 3 to 4 months for the first people who don't pay rent to be evicted, with many more coming later on.  The same goes for the people who stopped paying their mortgage in April or May.  By late summer, we we begin to see the very first of a massive wave of evictions and foreclosures, both in residential real estate, and in many forms of commercial real estate.  This huge wave of defaults will probably grow through the last half of 2020, and continue well into 2021, and beyond.

November- If Joe Biden wins the presidential election ( I still believe Trump will be removed from office before the election, as crazy as that sounds), then the stock market will drop again, since it'll mean fewer massive handouts to keep propping up the banking system, Wall street, and older, industrial era, multi-national corporations.  Capitalism means that businesses that can't compete die off.  We have the opposite of that right now.  The U.S. is stuffed with the "zombie companies" Mohamed El Erian has been talking about.  They need to go belly up if they can't hang. The longer the bailout of poorly run banks and major corporations goes on, the longer the depression (and it IS a depression, 10% drop in GDP is a textbook depression) will go on. 

Early 2021- The College Apocalypse begins visibly (it's already going with small colleges).  Think the Retail Apocalypse, but with colleges.  In this economic downturn, Disruption hits the college and university world, and many will die, others will re-create the idea of what a college needs to be for the 21st century.  This will go into high gear when the Student Loan Debt SLABS collapse, like the subprime CDO's did in 2008.  Few people realize that student loan debt has become the new CDO's in the last 12 years.  This will be real bad for many smaller cities and towns, dozens of  "Eds & Meds" towns and cities, and a key reason why I think this is a 5-7 year downturn/stagnant economy, not just a 1-2 year recession.

OK, I'm homeless, working to get my own situation stable, and I just don't have the time to do the research now and blog very much on the economic picture.  So this is my outlook from May 27, 2020. 

Want a stable career for the Tumultuous 2020's?  Become a bankruptcy auctioneer.  I'm serious.  We, as a society, have let the crazy people  and morons run the show for decades, now it's time to pay the price.  This is going to be rough for most people.  But this decade also holds some of the greatest opportunities of our lifetimes.

If what you're doing doesn't make you a living (like me at the moment), step up your game, or take the time to learn something more viable for the 21st century, hyper-connected, Information Age world.  There simply will not be enough high paying traditional jobs to build a new American Middle Class, millions will have to start their own small business, of some kind, for that to happen.  You up for that? 

Why have I been blogging about "the next big recession" for three years?  Now.  What's happening now, that's why.  I could see a major economic shitstorm coming.  I did not anticipate the Covid-19, aspect, at all.  This pandemic shutdown has shifted the economic collapse into high gear.  It's happening much faster than even I expected.  Remember, with crisis comes opportunity, people.
 
You can read my thoughts on the Big Picture leading into the Tumultuous 2020's in my online book:
Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now (Book 1)

Seth Godin interview at the beginning of the Covid-19 period

It's May 20th, 2020, as I'm writing this, and our world has changed radically and dramatically in the last two months.  Seth Godin has been one of the most forward looking, well thought out, and informative voices on marketing and entrepreneurship, of the internet era.  This is a great interview sharing his thoughts as we head into an era where every manual about how things are done just went out the window.  As always with Seth's talks, listen, learn, ponder, and then put the ideas that grab you into practice. 

Gary Vaynerchuk of VaynerMedia talking about the Flip Life

As of this morning, 36 million Americans have filed for unemployment in two months.  A lot of people are struggling now, as the Covid-19 virus shuts life and businesses down across the U.S., and much of the world.  Damn near everyone is looking for ways to make some extra cash right now.  Yes, I know you can't go to garage sales, or even have one, in most places.  But this video will get you thinking about other opportunities while we wait and see how the job market, and the real world economy shake out.  There are lots of places to look for bargains online, if flipping, or "wheeling and dealing", as we called it when my dad took me to garage sales as a kid, interests you. 

33.5 million Americans file for unemployment in 7 weeks...

In a quick hit to jobs, never before seen in American history, we now have 33.5 million+ new unemployment claims in tha tlast 7 weeks (as of today, May 7 2020).  This number doesn't include people who've had their hours reduced, had their pay cut, or independent contractors and gig workers who have less work.  Here's the CNBC report on today's unemployment numbers. 

Peter Dinklage: One of the best short motivation videos- Light up the night

The way life has worked out, I've never seen a single episode of Game of Thrones.  It's not that I don't like dragons and boobs, I do, just haven't had TV for a long time.  Every once in a while you need a little boost to get the day off to a good start.  This 3 minute video is a really good one. 

30 Million Americans Unemployed in Six Weeks... Now What?

This MSNBC report relays the continuing huge number of people who have filed for unemployment in the last six weeks.  It's Sunday, May 3rd, as I'm writing this post, this report is from last Thursday.  

To put this 30 million number in perspective, in "normal" times, about 200,000 people a week fall file for unemployment.  So instead of 1.2 million people filing in the last six weeks, 25 times as many people are laid off and looking to unemployment checks.  There are roughly 160 million people of working age in the U.S., so 18.75% of that number have lost their jobs in just six weeks, on top of the official 3.5%  (roughly 4.5 million people) that were counted as unemployed.  So that's 34 1/2 million people, out of 160 million, not working right now.  Yes, most of these recent layoffs are expected to be short term, but we're in a situation where everything happening is largely unexpected.  There are also 7 million + more people who are unemployed, but not looking for work, but that's a whole separate issue.

So now what? Huge numbers, well beyond anything seen in most people's memory, are expected to keep being laid off, due to the Covid-19 virus pandemic.  What happens now?  One obvious thing is that millions of people will be looking for some other way to make some income, either temporarily, or perhaps from now on.  That's what this blog is about.  Finding new, and legitimate, ways to earn extra cash, find a side hustle, gig work, or start a micro business (1 person operation) or small business. 

I've got a long, but not epic, head start on all these people.  I was a taxi driver years ago (2000-2007), when that industry took a dive, even before Uber and Lyft entered the picture.  After filling out over 140 online applications over a couple of years, with no job offers at all, I started focusing on a weird, but unique, form of artwork I do, to earn money.  I've scraped by, sold a lot of drawings, but am not making a real living yet.  But I've learned a lot in that process. 

Yes, this post is pretty boring, but I wanted to set the tone, I'm someone who is also working on building a new way to make a living, I've had some successes, and made a lot of mistakes.  I'll share what I've learned, and also share videos and ideas from people who've been successful on many different fronts, and people who have good ideas.  Stay tuned, lots of ideas to come...

Why I started trying to make a living with Sharpie art

Goofy alien drawing, in my Sharpie scribble style, from 2011, I think.  I figured out a cool way to shade with Sharpie markers in 2005, but I wasn't sure what to do with that style.

In late 2015, I was miserable.  Can anyone now, in April 2020 relate to that?  Yeah, I thought so.  I was 49 years old, 368 pounds, unemployed, and living with my crazy mom in a tiny apartment in a small town in central North Carolina.  I could not get hired for any job.  Period.  Not a cashier job at a gas station, not a restaurant job.  Over 140 online applications, over a couple of years, led to nothing.

I've done all kinds of work, three years in restaurants when I was younger, and hard labor like furniture moving.  But I have also written for BMX magazines, worked on the crew of TV shows like American Gladiators, been a roadie-type lighting guy in the Hollywood area.  My most recent "career" was as a taxi driver, 5 1/2 years in the Huntington Beach area of Southern California, and then a year when I moved (though I didn't want to) to North Carolina, where my family wound up living.

I was born near Akron, Ohio, and grew up moving around small towns and rural Ohio as a kid.  I was a smart, really dorky, Midwest kid.  I was an incessant daydreamer, and liked to read and draw and wander around the woods.  My childhood was a time, the 1970's, when the American Middle Class was still going strong, and there were thriving factories in every city and small town.  Men worked in the factories, or the office next to the factory, like my dad, a draftsman/engineer.  Women mostly stayed home with the kids.  Families could live on one income pretty easily then.  Most couples could save for a few years, maybe borrow a little money from Grandma, and buy their own house, while still in their 20's or early 30's.  My parents bought their first house for $10,000.  But we moved a couple years later, while I was still a toddler.

Every adult I knew hated their job, or at least hated their boss.  But they wouldn't quit.  They made good money, and hating your work for 40 hours a week was the price everyone was expected to pay for providing for their families.  It was simply not to be questioned.  You didn't have to like your job, you just had to do it.  Companies back then didn't want your ideas or thoughts, they just wanted to My dad, a mechanical genius, really liked his work, solving mechanical problems, and designing machine parts, or whole machines, like buses or locomotives.  But there was also some asshole at work that made the job tough to deal with. shut up and do your job.

Then, in the late 1970's, something weird started to happen.  Factories, which everyone assumed would be in business forever, started to shut down.  At the same time, new technologies began to appear and invade our lives.  Cable TV.  Pong, the first video game.  Personal computers that you had to learn code to operate, but couldn't really do anything.  Video cameras.  Technology kept progressing, and part of that was new tech and industrial robots that took millions of  human jobs, while millions more jobs were outsourced to places with cheaper labor.  Those Midwestern factory jobs first went to the American South, like Alabama or Mississippi.  Then jobs moved to Mexico, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and eventually China.

The slow-paced world I knew a kid, that never seemed to change, started changing rapidly while I was in high school.  To find better jobs, my dad moved us west.  From 8th grade in Willard, Ohio, we moved to New Mexico for a year, then Boise, Idaho for my high school years.  A year after I graduated, my family moved to San Jose, California, where my younger sister went to high school.  I finished my summer job in Boise, managing a tiny amusement park, then moved to San Jose.

Though I was pretty smart, I didn't have any money to go to college, and didn't have any real career draw.  I wanted to start a business of my own, someday, so I "took a year off" to work and hopefully figure things out.  So I worked at the Boise Fun Spot amusement park, then a big Mexican restaurant.  In San Jose, I got a job at a Pizza Hut, and soon became the de facto night shift supervisor.

What sent my life in a weird direction, was getting into BMX bikes in high school, while we lived in a trailer park, for a year.  I got into BMX racing, and then, in 1983, the emerging sport or BMX freestyle, or trick riding.  I was one of those kids that always sucked at sports growing up.  With BMX, I found something I loved enough to stick with, and get good at.  BMX freestyle, which was something most people didn't even know existed in 1984-85, became my life.  I riding my bike, practicing my tricks, for 2 or 3 hours everyday, and often more.

In San Jose, I knew there were a handful of pro riders in the Bay Area, and many good amateurs.  So I started a zine, a small, self-published, Xeroxed (the term we used then for photocopying), mini magazine.  I read about zines in FREESTYLIN' magazine.  I started my own zine as a way to meet the San Francisco Bay Area freestyle riders.  That worked, and soon I was riding with some of the best guys in our tiny sport.  My zine wound up landing me a job at Wizard Publications, the publisher of BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines, located in Torrance, California, southwest of L.A..

At the end of July in 1986, I got on a plane in San Jose with my BMX bike, a suitcase, and $80.  I was picked up at LAX, and driven to Torrance, by my new co-workers and roommates, Gork and Lew, and FREESTYLIN' editor, Andy Jenkins.  I was suddenly a part of the BMX bike industry, and riding with the top riders in the sport at night.  My heroes had become friends and acquaintances, at age 20.  While most people my age were working lame jobs or a junior in college, I was proofreading two national magazines.

I didn't click well with the guys at the magazines in a working way.   We all got along, but I just wasn't punk rock enough then, and not the right fit for that crew
.  I soon got laid off, and they replaced me with some unknown, East Coast BMXer/skater named Spike Jonze.  He turned out to be the right guy for that job, and crazy talented in the long run.

I got a job editing a BMX freestyle newsletter.  That led to producing low budget videos.  That led to a job at a skateboard video company.  That led to working on TV show crews in my mid-20's.  And that led to me burning out in 1995.  I wound up working as a furniture mover, and doing a few other odd jobs in the 1990's, and then becoming a taxi driver in 1999, then into the 2000's.

Taxi driving began to die in 2003, when the CB radios used for dispatching in the cabs were replaced by dispatching computers.  I wasn't a tech guy, wasn't real interested in computers or "that internet thing," in the early 2000's. I didn't own a computer.  I went to the library and rented time on a computer to check my email, and Google a couple of things.  I was a serious Luddite then.  I didn't realize then that it was new technology that would kill the taxi industry, first with cab dispatch computers, then later with Uber and Lyft.

So I ended up a deeply depressed guy, living with a crazy woman, my mom, in a state that I fucking hated, North Carolina, in 2015.  The only thing that I did then that made me any money, was doing Sharpie drawings of kid's names.  Moms from church, or from my niece's cheerleading team, would ask me to draw the names their kids in block letters, fading the kid's favorite colors.  I made $20 each for 4-5 hours work.  But I did one drawing every few weeks, if that often.

Finally, in November of 2015, I decided to focus all my efforts on making money with my Sharpie art.  I started, literally, without a dime.  My mom was always in financial crisis mode, and I lived there for free, in exchange for driving her wherever she needed to do, doing the "man" things around the apartment, and that kind of thing. My mom, being who she is, belittled and berated me for not having a job 15 hours a day.  It sucked.

When I did make a little bit of money, when I sold a drawing or something, she immediately created a crisis that needed exactly that much money.  Then nagged me until I handed it over.   When it comes to guilt trips, my mom is a Yoda-level master.  One of her brothers thinks she has Borderline Personality Disorder, though she never has, and never will go to a psychiatrist.  How bad is Borderline?  Put it this way, if Satan had a horrible mother-in-law, she'd have severe Borderline Personality Disorder.

I was struggling with serious depression the whole time I was living there.  Coming back from the worst bout of depression, I decided to go with my creativity, double down on figuring out on how to make money with my artwork.  When I started, I had a bunch of Sharpies, a dollar store sketch pad, and a $65 refurbished laptop, still running Windows XP in 2015.  The one asset I did have, was that I had blogged about Old School BMX freestyle since 2008, and I had a small but hardcore blog following.  They became my first customers.

 Princess Leia drawing I did in late 2016.  By some quirk of fate, I started this drawing  a couple days before Carrie Fisher got sick, and was still working on it when she died. 

I stepped up my art game, and drew a picture of Bruce Lee, my first hero as a kid, as an example.  I sold a drawing for $20.  Then got asked to do another.  Then another.  I've scraped by for 4 1/2 years now, across three states, by selling drawings.  I've actually sold over 80 major original drawings, and over 100 small prints.  I sold them all pretty cheap, BUT I SOLD THEM.  I'm still selling them.  I'm still struggling, but as so many of America's businesses shut down, I'm still working.  One good thing about drawing, no one has to be within six feet of me while I"m working.

Since I started with absolutely no money, and moved out of the toxic apartment in NC.  I've been homeless most of the time since.  But I have also managed to keep working, despite a slew of really crazy circumstances.

Along the way, over these last 4 1/2 years, I learned a heck of a lot about using my blog for promotion, and using social media platforms for building my building my web presence as an artist and writer. 

So as I continue to work to build my art from a kind of small time freelance thing, to a legit business making me a decent living, I'm starting this blog to share things I've learned about marketing and small business promotion in today's world.  As I looked around in recent months, I've seen that most businesses, of all sizes, don't use today's internet, social, and mobile technology to anywhere near its full potential.  So this blog is a way to share my own lessons learned, and tips, as well as share tips from the other people starting, building, and running micro and small businesses well. 

There are all kinds of facets to running a business in today's world.  One major aspect is that we've had over 26 million people laid off in the last 5 weeks, due to today's economic downturn, triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic.  This means millions more Americans suddenly need alternative ways to earn money.  So that's the basic idea I'm starting this new blog with. 

Here's a second version of the original Bruce Lee stencil drawing I did, when I got serious about making money from my unique Sharpie art.  #sharpiescribblestyle

Laid off? Need cash quick? Here are some legit ways to make money

OK, Gary Vaynerchuk runs a $200 million digital marketing agency now, and a sports management agency, and a few other things.  But "flipping" stuff from garage sales, as a teen, is one of the ways he got his start.  It's the 21st century, the Information Age, and Gary Vee is one of the guys you need to listen to on a regular basis to keep up.  His content is everywhere.

In the last 4 weeks, during this economic meltdown (forget the word "recession," we're way beyond that already), 22 MILLION Americans filed for unemployment, after getting laid off.  Another few million will probably be added in tomorrow's numbers.  That's on top of the 65-ish% of Americans who couldn't and a $400 unexpected bill before the Covid-19 pandemic, and the financial meltdown began.  LOTS of people need cash quick right now.  Are you one of them?

You need cash quick?  
What do you do? 
Yes, everyone's supposed to be homebound at the moment, but that will end before long.  Here are some ideas to start with...

Flipping merchandise-   It's simple, Buy Low, Sell High.  Buy stuff one place at a good deal, sell it somewhere else at a higher price, and make a profit.  Garage sales, yard sales, auctions (online & physical), discount websites, store closeouts, mainstream store sales, these are just some of the places where you can buy stuff cheap.  Then you sell on eBay, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, LetGo, Wallapop, your own store (online or physical), a swap meet/flea market booth, your own garage sale.  The key is to know a deal when you see one, AND pounce on it and actually buy the bargain.  Then, have a place to sell it.

Gig jobs- Yeah, lots of good and bad in the news about gig jobs these days.  Hey, I was a taxi driver for 6 1/2 years, one year of which that was actually a cool way to make a living.  Probably not a career for most people, but it may help tide you over financially for now.  Uber, Lyft, delivery services.  Google it and see what's possible in your area. 

Personal services- Do you have some skill that you can teach other people.  Any skill?  How to play the trumpet?  Teach grandmas how to work their new iPhones.  Tutor kids in math since you rocked it in high school.  Whatever.  We live in a very fast paced society, and one on one teaching, either online or in person, is big now, and will be a major sector of the economy going forward.  Just watch.

Help your neighbors during this quarantine-  I met a woman two days ago who said she's been making cash, and helping neighbors, using Nextdoor.  I didn't know this existed.  Check it out, be legit and responsible, and don't scam.  Help the neighbors, do some shopping, stand in a line the older people can't, and make a few bucks during quarantine, and afterwards. 

Give plasma- Yeah, You can make $100 or more in a week letting the scientific vampires suck your blood.  It's just like giving blood, but it takes a bit longer.  I've done this several times.  Google it in your area.  There are health restrictions, recent tattoos, illness, or lots of foreign travel may get you denied.  These places will open up again soon, and they'll need blood plasma, they always do.  Drink a lot of fluids, and take iron supplements, that's my advice. 

OK, it's a short list, but there are hundreds of variations of these few ideas (except plasma).  That should get you thinking...

The economy is nuts... I need to make money somehow... now what?

Here's one of the many reports  about the 22 million Americans that have filed for unemployment in the last four weeks, as the Covid-19 shitdown goes on.  It's Sunday, March 19th, as I write this.

In November of 2015, I was living with my mom, at 49 years old, in a small apartment, in a small town, in central North Carolina.  It was a toxic living environment, in a town where I couldn't even get a restaurant or cashier job, in a part of the country I hated being in.  My life sucked on pretty much every level.  The only thing that made me any money then was doing drawings with Sharpie markers, in a unique way that I invented, that I call "scribble style."  Unable to get hired for any job, after filling out around 140 applications in a couple of years there, I decided to create my own job.

Here's a drawing I did of Kurt Cobain, that was in the first, and only solo, art show I've done, in November 2017.  The owner of Earshot Music turned it into an online flyer. This drawing sold the day before the show, an hour after going up on the wall, which was awesome from my perspective.  Several sales came from that one inty show.

So, like most things, that didn't go as  planned.  I started, literally, without a dime.  I had some art supplies, a bedroom to draw in, a $65 refurbished laptop (still running Windows XP), and a following in the Old School BMX freestyle world, from my blog.  That has been my main customer base.  I've become a working artist, if not a profitable one.  I've scraped by, homeless most of the time, but working drawing, and blogging and continually learning about online and social media marketing, to promote my work.  In 4 1/2 years, I've sold over 80 large, original drawings, each of which takes 35-45 hours to draw.  I've also sold 100 or so small prints.  While this is by no means a raging success, most artists don't sell that much work in their entire careers.

I've done some things right, and made plenty of mistakes.  I've had a lot of headwinds from outside sources that have slowed my progress down dramatically.  Now, about 4 1/2 years later, I'm back out in Southern California, the place I call home.  Still homeless, but I'm able to keep working, to some degree, even while the Covid-19 shutdown goes on, and while the long anticipated "next recession" takes hold.

I've been blogging about the loss of jobs to new technology since at least mid-2017, maybe before.  This post, from June 2017, is the first remember doing on the subject.  I've been an amateur futurist my whole life, and have watched the big house of cards of our current economy stack up into place.  It was obvious, to the few watching closely, that this "recession" would be a bad one, at least as bad as 2007-2009.  I personally think it will be much worse.  But I also know that recessions are the greatest times of opportunity for many businesses, and especially for starting new businesses.

While I work to build my own little business in today's high tech enabled, hyper-connected world, this blog is going to be things I've learned, and ideas from others about how to start a micro (1 person) or small business, in today's world, how grow a small business, and hopefully how to thrive in the craziness of the next few years.  That's the basic idea.  I've done several blogs, fairly consistently since late 2008, and they always wind up going in directions I didn't expect at the beginning.  So we'll see where this one leads.

My main blog over the last 2 1/2 years, Steve Emig: The White Bear, is creeping up on 100,000 page views, and I thought it was time for a change of pace.  I have a couple different directions I want to work in now, and helping people (and myself) start and build small businesses is what this one is about.  Lots more to come...