Do the Hustle

"The Hustle" was the first song I ever learned to dance to (badly).  Hey, I was in 4th grade and didn't realize that disco sucked.  I also didn't really know what "hustle" meant.  I was a middle class white kid living on a farm in Ohio with no other kids nearby.  You can't really hustle cows. 

But now I know what hustle means.  I'm 9 days into the process of setting up my first Shopify online store.  Yes, I know you can set one of those stores up in a couple of hours... IF you have the photos and money in your bank account.  I'm broke.  And our ten year old camera finally wore out, so I can't take pictures right now.  No, I don't have a phone at the moment.  I'm pretty sure I've told you all before, I'm starting with damn near nothing.  I set an insane financial goal for myself 18 days ago, and that has completely changed my mindset.  That's one of the good things that goals do.

Last night I decided to start my online store with just stickers in it to start.  Once I scrape up a few bucks, I'll buy a cheap camera and take the photos and add my finished original drawings to the site.  Then I'll build from there.  Once I started building my Shopify store, I realized that you have to sign up for one of the monthly plans to actually open the store to the public.  I tried to do it, but it said there wasn't enough money ($29) in my bank account, which was (and still is at the moment) true. 

Yesterday, I thought up a bunch of ideas for original stickers, and wrote down some of the old ideas I had.  I came up with one new idea I really liked.  I woke up this morning with about 30 cents to my name, but I had several sheets of blank sticker paper left over from the last batch of homemade stickers I made.  I needed money to make the sticker masters and copy the actual stickers.  If you don't know already, you can buy paper (as opposed to vinyl) sticker paper at an office supply store in 8 1/2" X 11" sheets, it's about $20 a pack for 20 or 30 sheets.  Once you make a master of the stickers you want to make, you can copy the design onto the sticker paper on most good copy machines.  Then you just cut out the individual stickers.  This is how we made cheap stickers with Xerox art designs back in the 80's. 

One of the  weirdest things about living in a small North Carolina town is that it's really hard to make money here starting with nothing.  If you don't have something worth selling on Craigslist, scraping up the first few bucks is difficult.  People here tend to freak out if a stranger walks up to try and sell something.  But there is one legal, but sketchy, way to make a small amount of money over a couple hours time.  I'll tell you about that some time in the future, when I'm sure I'll never have to use the technique again.  In any case, I started this morning with about 30 cents and some blank sticker paper sheets.  I went out and did the sketchy technique and scraped up $3 in about an hour and a half.  By then I was thirsty.  I got a Diet Coke for $1.07.  That's not a good use of my small amount of money, but I don't drink coffee, and Diet Coke is my morning caffeine fix.

 My next trip was to the library where I typed up the words for the sticker, and printed them along with the photo I'm using.  I then went to an office supply store with self-serve copiers.  I made the initial copy of my design, 1/4 page size, and then made three more.  So then I put all four on a single sheet of paper, that's my sticker design master/duplication copy.  I used the rest of the money I had to make four copies on the sticker paper.  Then I cut the stickers using the free paper cutter there.  Bam! Now I have 16 funny stickers, each one I plan to sell for $2, to raise money to open my online store.  Like the song above says, "Do the hustle."

There are many ways to raise money to start a business.  You may be able to borrow money from friends or family.  I can't  do that right now.  You may be able to crowdfund using an online service like Go Fund Me or Kickstarter.  Or you can just start hustling.  I learned the power of hustling from Chris Moeller, pro BMX rider and the owner of S&M Bikes in the early 90's.  He scraped up some money, made bike frames or handlebars or stickers, and then sold them QUICKLY at a profit.  Then he reinvested most of that money and made a bigger batch of frames, bars, stickers, videos, whatever, and sold those.  He just kept repeating the process, pulling a minimal amount of money out to pay rent and buy food and beer.  His amount of working capital just kept growing and growing.  I found there was no big secret to how a teenager started and built a bike company from an initial $1200 loan from a family member.  He just hustled, day in, day out.  Now, so many years later, it's my turn to do just that.  Remember, most stuff doesn't sell itself.  Unless you're selling crack or something, but that's not a good long term business plan.   

Think something up.  Make a few of them.  Then do the Hustle.