A couple of weekends ago, a guy was walking around the subdivision looking for customers. He was painting house numbers on the curbs in front of people's houses.
He was a bit older than I was. Under typical circumstances, painting house numbers on a curb isn't an unusual job for a teenager. But it isn't a typical job for someone in his late forties or early fifties.
I accepted his offer, and chatted with him a bit as he worked. He had lost his job, and was caring for a relative in the middle of all of this. This wasn't the first time he had gone out to drum up business. He was used to this hustle, and it's gotten him through a few times.
He did a good job. It looks nice. He offered a fair price.
I have a great deal of respect for him. Work is work, and he's getting out there to get some.
Entrepreneurship. Rainmaking. Hustling. Doing what needs to be done. It's what keeps the economy moving. It's what will get the economy out of the slump it's in.
I've talked to other webmasters of money sites who don't really consider discussion of side businesses to be part of personal finance. I don't agree with this. Trying some kind of low-risk side business can ultimately mean the difference between weathering a downturn in style, or crashing and burning. If personal finance is about income, the money from a side business is just as green as the money from a paycheck. The guy who painted the number on my curb credits his positive outlook to the previous times he went out to sell things. He knew that he could do what was needed because he had learned the skill.
It's far better to make the first tries at a side business when the only cost is time, rather than make those first tries when there's pressure to bring in money to put food on the table. That way, if you do have to rely on it to put food on the table, it's not as scary. You see the lemonade within the lemons, rather than dwell on being squirted in the eye with lemon juice.
The best outcome of all this? Not only can the side job put the food on the table, it can possibly take off and you can be better off in the long run than with the job.
And the guy who did my curb? I expect that I'll see him again. He's learned to come back for repeat business. Paint isn't forever.
It’s good to hear that he didn’t look down on the job of painting curbs. There’s so many people out there who, even in rough circumstances, won’t think about taking jobs that teens usually take. Kudos to him.
Hey mbhunter — I could not agree more with you. How can you talk about personal finance if you do not include the income in the discussion. If you have no income then there is nothing to talk about.