A Punch to the Gut

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm currently living in a situation where someone else is paying the rent and bills.  That sounds awesome and makes me sound lazy.  In fact, I'm working my butt off to get this little business up and running.  But I'm still tied to this living situation.  Yesterday, like so many times before, I was told that, due to an unforseen problem, we basically have no food money for the next three weeks.  We also don't have money to pay my medical insurance, and a few other things.

I started my little art business with no money.  OK, I probably had a buck in change, but for all intents and purposes, I started with nothing.  No phone.  My computer died right after I started, and all that.  But the biggest thing going against me was that I had no place to borrow money to get started.  I was unemployed, and for a variety of reasons, haven't been able to find a job here.  To make a go of my little business, I had to put virtually all the money I brought in back into the business, to build up a reasonable amount of start-up capital.  But because I live in a house where the head of household simply refuses to live within their budget, I get nickel and dimed all month for the little bit I do make.  It's one financial crisis after another, most of them self-caused.  As a result, my little art/writing business is on financial life support.

So why don't I leave?  Because if I leave, then I'm starting a business while on the streets.  That's pretty damn hard as well.  I'm in a frying pan versus fire scenario, either option is really hard.  But I've committed to creating my own business and I just have to keep plugging along, day by day.  But it is sooooooo fucking frustrating to have people really stoked on my artwork and not be able to afford to make prints of drawings or other things I can sell.  This is when my background in BMX freestyle and skateboarding come into play.  I make a mistake or fall.  And I get up and keep working.  Quitting doesn't enter the picture.

This blog seemed like a good idea at the time, but it wasn't.  Check out my newest stuff  at Get Weird Make Money.

Johnny Appleseed and Grandpa's Orchard

I remember seeing this cartoon in school as a kid in Ohio.  Johnny Appleseed was actually a real guy, and he wandered the general area of Ohio I lived in from 4th to 8th grades.  Once when I was about 12, a friend took me deep into the woods.  Normally this meant an afternoon of fishing or playing army.  But on that particular occasion, he wanted to show me something he found.  It was an old gnarled apple tree that was still producing apples, the only apple tree anywhere in that patch of woods.  He thought it was so old, and in such a weird spot, that Johnny Appleseed himself might have planted it.  He could have been right.  We both ate part of an apple, even though there were pretty green, just to say we'd eaten an apple off a tree planted by Johnny Appleseed himself.

When I was a little kid in Ohio, My grandpa and grandma on my mom's side lived in a pink duplex in Mansfield, Ohio.  Mansfield was the actual area where a guy named John Chapman went around planting apple trees in the pioneer days, earning himself the nickname "Johnny Appleseed," and spawning a legend.  All of us kids in northern Ohio heard the tale of Johnny Appleseed.  My grandpa Mayer was many things.  He was a German immigrant who'd come to the U.S. as a kid, worked his way through college, and went on to be a pharmacist who never made a single mistake at work his entire life.  He was also an avid gardener, and was usually out working in his huge garden when we'd show up on the weekends.  Unfortunately, these aspects of Grandpa were overshadowed by the fact that he was a really mean drunk.  My memories of him as a kid were this big guy with no shirt working in his garden.  Then he'd take a break inside, watch golf on TV, and drink a quart of Stroh's beer.  Then he'd go back out into the garden and repeat the process.  I've seen him drink five quarts of beer on a Saturday, and he'd get meaner and meaner after each one.  That sucked, because he could be a really cool guy... when he was sober.

In addition to the huge garden, grandpa started planting fruit trees in the backyard when I was four or five.  He planted apples, pears, plums, peaches, and a walnut tree, along with a lot of berry bushes.  For the next few years he pruned and fertilized and nurtured those scrawny little trees, which seemed like a lot of wasted work to my little brain.  But on a good day, he'd show off each tree and tell us how, if he took care of them for the first few years, those trees would grow hundreds of fruits in the coming years.  Sure enough, those first scrawny trees started yielding fruit.  By the time was was about ten, every trip to grandma and grandpa's house in the summer or fall would end with a big basket of fruits and vegetables to take home.  In a similar fashion, grandpa rented out the other side of the duplex, and wound up buying the duplex next door and renting that one out as well.  He ultimately took back half of the backyard of the second duplex, and planted a bunch more trees.  Those trees, as well as the duplexes, returned huge bounties for the rest of the time they lived there.

So what does my grandpa's orchard have to do with anything, not to mention Johnny Appleseed, who planted apple trees in Ohio 200 years ago?  Starting a business is a lot like planting a garden or orchard.  In the early days and years, you do a lot of work that you don't get paid for.  But if you plant the right seeds and fertilize and nurture them, then can return an amazing bounty in later years.  As I start my little business around art and writing, I keep grandpa's orchard in mind.  Today I was reading a book about business and social media in today's world, and even these guys immersed in tech used the apple tree metaphor.  I'm not just drawing pictures to make a few bucks.  I'm trying to invest a lot of time and effort in building a business that will not only allow me to do a lot of creative projects in coming years, but will hopefully have a long term positive impact, a little like Johnny Appleseed's  and grandpa's fruit trees.

But I live in a household where I'm the only one who does any long term thinking.  I'm continually harassed about not making enough money in my first few months of starting a business with absolutely no money.  In effect, every single day I'm encouraged to "chop down my apple trees" and buy a single apple. This is frustrating as fuck.  But I'm not in a position to move to any other situation at this point, so I just have to grin and bear the onslaught of negativity.  The point here?  Keep planting your apple trees and guard them against anything that might destroy them, especially the people who don't think about the future bounty those trees will bring.

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Boom Boom... Out Go The Lights

For the handful of people that read this blog, you know I'm a middle-aged guy who is starting over in life after quite a few years of trials and tribulations.  I'm currently living in an apartment that someone else pays for.  While that sounds like a good deal, the lack of rent is more than made up for in negativity and unnecessary drama.  Yesterday was a prime example.  Lying in bed yesterday morning, I heard someone wrenching on something right outside my window.  I figured it was the maintenance guys working on the heat pump or something.  I rolled over, and slept some more.

When I woke up later, I noticed my clock was blank.  "Crap.  The power's out," I thought.  So I got up, threw some clothes on, and took a leak in the dark.  I checked the rest of the apartment, and yep, the power was completely out.  It wasn't just a single breaker.

It turned out that the power got shut off because the master of this household (which obviously isn't me) just hadn't paid the bill completely.  I was able to draw my pictures by sunlight for a while, but the drama level quickly went through the roof, and I got very little work done.  As usual, I tried to calm things down initially, and to add some rational thought to the situation.  That's what always gets me into trouble here, rational thought is NEVER welcome in this apartment.  Long story short, I got kicked out of the apartment twice yesterday for offering my point of view, and a non-family member bailed us out.  It was just a bad day all around.  Hope today goes a little better.

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Achieving Your Goals

This clip of Jim Carrey shows the most extreme example of visualization and goal setting that I'm aware of.  It worked for him... it can work for you.

When I was in high school in Boise, Idaho in the mid 80's, I used to joke with my dad that I didn't really need to go to college.  I told him I wanted to start my own business, and that I didn't need a degree to hire myself.  We laughed and didn't think much about it then.  Well, I know he definitely wanted me to get a degree, but he didn't push the idea too hard.  I really did want to own my own business.  But I was incredibly shy then, and didn't have the personality to pull it off, though I tried a few times.  Now, three decades later, I am finally committing to building my own business.  Much to my surprise, I'm starting it with artwork, which seems one of the sketchiest possible ways to start a business.  I didn't even think of myself as a visual artist when I started this six months ago.  I was desperate in one sense, despite a wide variety of job experience over 30+ years, I could not get hired for ANYTHING here in this small North Carolina town where I wound up.  There are many reasons why this might be.  Maybe employers think I'm too old, too fat, too sketchy (since my last career was as a taxi driver) or something else.  But it became very clear I wasn't going to find a job here, let alone a well paying job.  Most other people in this area, facing the same prospect, would double down on applying for jobs, or try to get on Social Security Disability, which is seen as a career path in this part of the country.

But I spent most of my life in and around the actions sports and entertainment industries.  I've seen dozens and dozens of people start businesses and do projects starting with very little.  With that background, I simply made a decision last November to create my own job.  It was as simple as that.  My artwork was the only thing I'd made money at in the past years, though very little money.  I realized I had to step up my game artistically, and I started my business with absolutely no money.  I did a couple of drawings for my sister to earn my first little bit of cash, and I kept going from there.  I was living for free with my mom, in an quiet little apartment, so I had that going for me.  But we're always in financial crisis, which has been a big challenge.  I had no phone, no money, very few art supplies to start, a tired old laptop, and a background in blogging.  No one, not one single person, thought drawing pictures was a good idea.  Some of you realize that means I did have one more thing.  A belief I could actually do this.  I'd made my dreams happen, some of them, anyhow, decades ago as a BMX freestyler.  I know from experience that the "impossible" is actually possible.  That is the biggest thing I had going for me.  Then my laptop broke.  It didn't crash, the hinge literally broke.  So I was starting a internet based art business... with no computer.  My next few drawings paid for an old, but functional (barely) refurbished laptop.

As 2016 was starting, I realized I needed to raise money to really get this idea going.  I decided to go with a crowdfunding campaign, specifically, a Go Fund Me page.  I built the page and set a goal of raising $1,000.  I'll be honest, that seemed absurd four months ago.  I had no idea whatsoever if anyone would contribute.  For the first few days, they didn't.  Then my mom's best friend Linda took pity on me and donated $20.  It was a start, but would anyone else follow? I didn't know.

I looked at my approach, and revised it.  Instead of asking for donations, I raised my asking amount to $25, and offered to do a 12" X 18" original drawing for anyone who contributed, or a larger drawing for $50.  Like Jim Carrey in the video above, I started visualizing drawing pictures as well, though not near as intensely as I should have.  I started getting orders for drawings.  They started coming from people I hadn't talked to in years or from people I only knew through Facebook.  Now, about 31/2 months later, I've reached my goal when I include the drawings now ordered.  Officially on my Go Fund Me page, I'm $110 short, but I have orders to cover that.  I achieved what initially seemed like a ridiculous goal.  So I'm successful, right?

Yes and no.  I reached my monetary goal, that's true.  But it took me much longer than I'd hoped.  I wanted to earn that $1,000 in a few weeks, and buy a shelving unit to store my supplies, stock up on the Sharpies and paper and other supplies I use, have a couple hundred bucks in my checking account, and most of all, buy a good digital camera so I can start shooting my own photos to draw pictures from.  Well, I have a small stockpile of art supplies, but I'm low on certain colors of Sharpies.  My checking account in running on empty at the moment, mostly because I had to spend much more than I hoped on basic household stuff, like food and prescriptions and all that.  The good digital camera is still sitting in a store waiting for me, I haven't even come close to buying it yet.

The lessons here?  Goals need to be specific.  Visualization does work, but you have to actually do the work after you visualize it.  There are always other, unforseen expenses when starting a small business.  There are always aspects to the goal we don't think of.  For example, I visualized achieving my goal to earn $1,000 with my art, but I didn't get around to visualizing buying and using that digital camera.  Most importantly, goals are about building a belief that something will actually happen.  Also, goals are an ongoing process.  In six months, starting with literally no money, I can now call myself a "self-employed artist/writer."  But I'm not truly making a living yet.  So it's time to ponder on the goals I just achieved, and use what I learned to set the next set of goals to raise me to the next level.

Generally speaking... I'm stoked.  Things didn't turn out quite how I wanted them to, but then, they never do.  I'm off to a slow but solid start to building my own business, and that's what it's all about for me right now.

I'm no longer writing this blog, check out me new stuff at:
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Who Was Jane Jacobs?

This video above is Dr. Richard Florida, who has given us a new picture of economic development and where we are as a society right now with his concept of the Creative Class.  At 31:13 in this clip, he mentions Jane Jacobs, who was a great mentor of his.

Much like many other days, many of you went to the Google homepage today to find a doodle about some woman you never heard of.  Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jane Jacobs.  So who was Jane Jacobs?  She was a woman who wrote several books about cities, and how people interact in cities.  As Richard Florida mentions above, she saw her biggest contribution to the world as figuring out that it's the interaction of a diverse group of people that ultimately form small businesses, start-ups of larger businesses, and every other kind of "progress."  Economic development, at it's very core, comes out of these interactions of people in cities.  Jane realized that factories and multi-national corporations improved efficiency, but they themselves didn't cause economic growth.  It was people getting together, talking, arguing, brainstorming, and drinking that led to new ideas.  Those new ideas turned into a variety of things, from bands and art projects to small businesses, social movements, larger start-up businesses, and inventions and innovations of all kinds.

At a time when society is literally in constant and massive change, we need all the good ideas we can get as a species.  Jane Jacobs, who never got a college degree or accepted an honorary one, was the person who simply watched and saw the magic happening around her in Greenwich Village, and reported it to the world in her books. 

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Why The Rest Of The World Seems To Care So Much About Transgender People

This clip above is Professor Richard Florida, then at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, from about 2002 or 2003.  He's speaking to a group of civic leaders in San Diego, California about the findings in his then recent book, The Rise of the Creative Class.

I'm writing this on April 21st, 2016.  Less than a month ago, the North Carolina legislature passed a law, known commonly as "HB 2" or "The Bathroom Bill."  The law was passed in a special session of the legislature, and was so controversial that the Democratic state senators actually got up and walked out, refusing to even vote on the bill.  As most of you know, the most famous issue in the law is that transgender people are mandated to use the public restrooms of the sex on their birth certificate, not the gender they currently identify with.  The law had several other provisions, and was passed using the fear tactic that the legislature was trying to keep creepy guys from dressing up as women and molesting young girls in the bathrooms.  OK, nobody wants that to happen.  But in the 200+ cities that have a similar ordinance, including Greensboro, NC, that molestation case hasn't been an issue.  I haven't seen one case brought up where that actually happened.  HB 2 was passed hurriedly in response to an anti-discrimination ordinance by the city of Charlotte.

This blog post is not about whether you're for or against HB 2.  This post is about the incredible reaction to HB2, and the long term consequences of passing that law.  In less than a month since HB 2 passed, Bruce Springsteen cancelled a concert in Greensboro because of the law.  Ringo Star cancelled a show because of the law.  Pearl Jam cancelled a show.  Cirque du Soleil, a huge French Canadian circus, has cancelled all of its upcoming shows in NC, including shows in Greensboro, Charlotte, and Raleigh.  Paypal cancelled a planned expansion, including adding 400 jobs, to the Charlotte area.  Deutsche Bank, a huge German-based bank, has also cancelled a planned expansion in NC, this one would have brought 200 jobs with it.  Cyndi Lauper did not cancel her planned concert in NC, but instead said she would give the proceeds from that show to an NC based organization that fights for LGBT (that's Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, and Transgender) rights.  In addition, this law and its reaction have made national, and even world news, on CNN, MSNBC, CBS, and other major news programs.  In a very rare political move, top porn website X-Hamster first banned people in NC from visiting its website, instead putting up a page to let people know that the word "shemale" had been searched for over 48,000 times this year by North Carolina residents.  Later X-Hamster put up another page asking if you agree with HB 2.  It you clicked "yes," you were banned from its website.  In addition to all of that, the Raleigh convention center has reported that planned events totaling $7 million in economic impact have been cancelled.  The Greensboro convention people have just reported that events adding up to $5 million in economic impact have been cancelled in that city.  Future sporting events such as the NBA All-Star Game, NCAA events, and the X-Games are now in limbo.

If all that wasn't enough negative reaction to this state law, over 100 top executives at major companies also signed an open letter stating their opposition to HB 2.  Those who signed the latter include Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Tim Cook of Apple.  Even a top executive of Levi Strauss & Co. signed it.  Levi's jeans is now mad at North Carolina.  When's the last time you heard Levi's take a political stand?  To top it all off, Stephen Colbert opened his late night show a couple nights ago with a comedy sketch making fun of HB 2 that ended with guys dressed as Abe Lincoln and Robert E.Lee making out with each other.  Others are saying that BILLIONS of dollars in Federal money may be diverted from North Carolina because of HB 2, because of anti-discrimination clauses in Title IX laws.  At this point, it appears that the negative effects of passing HB 2 will likely run into the billions of dollars in coming years, and very likely tens of billions or hundreds of billions in lost revenue and business, because the Republican legislature and Republican governor McCrory of North Carolina have alienated most of the high tech businesses of the world.

I understand that social conservatives don't like gay and transgender people.  That's their right.  I understand that many people would like to pretend that gay and transgender people simply don't exist.  The issue is that HB 2 forces discrimination against some of these people.  It also keeps cities in North Carolina from passing their own ordinances that are more open to these people and other minority groups.  That's why so many people are pissed off at North Carolina right now.  They simply hate the idea of legislated discrimination.

So what? you may say.  This is a tiny group pf people we're talking about.  According to Wikipedia, the best statistics estimate that 3.3% of the North Carolina population is part of the LGBT community, that's 244,000 people.  If all those people were in a single city, that would be the fifth largest city in NC, a bit smaller than Greensboro and larger than Winston-Salem. 

Why are there so many people outside of North Carolina taking a stand against this law?  Now we get to the work of Professor Richard Florida, who's groundbreaking work in economic development really got going when he taught at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh.  He explains his initial concepts in the speech above.  Professor Florida was teaching the well known theories of economic development, when he started realizing they weren't really working anymore.  Pittsburgh, much like Detroit, took a huge hit when the factories started closing in the 1980's and 90's.  But it had a great high tech and research scene, and tech start-ups like Lycos (a pre-Google search engine) spun off from Carnegie Mellon.  But the top students in computer science and related tech were all leaving Pittsburgh.  Even Lycos moved to Boston.  So Professor Florida put his nose to the grindstone and started researching why this was happening.  His research led him to identify a new class of workers in the world, which he dubbed the "Creative Class."  With the industrial revolution 300 or so years ago, agricultural jobs dropped to a small percentage of the workforce, replaced by factory workers in the 1700's and 1800's.  But in the mid-20th century a couple new groups began growing in the workforce.  The largest group is the service workers, a relatively low wage group that now makes up the largest population of the American workforce.  But as the factories shut down, another, mostly high paid group, began to grow exponentially in the workforce.  These are the scientists, engineers, artists, designers, writers, media people, and others who use their intellect and creativity as a main part of their work.  These people make decisions, use their judgement, and create new concepts and ideas.  This group of people is now the main economic driving force in the workforce of both the U.S. and other developed nations.

Despite the ability to use technology and work from virtually anywhere, these people tend to cluster in certain regions.  Florida's research showed him that these highly creative "mega-regions" where the Creative Class congregate have certain things in common.  He dubbed these attributes "The Three T's."  They are Technology, Talent, and Tolerance.  The places where the Creative Class cluster are also the regions doing the best financially.  It's that last "T," Tolerance, that comes into play with HB 2.

Generally speaking, the people driving today's tech-heavy economy want to live in a place that's tolerant to all kinds of people.  These creative people tend to abhor the idea of discrimination, especially official discrimination mandated by law.  Tech and creative people tend to be kind of weird.  The "computer geek" is a major stereotype we all know.  Though, in reality, tech people are often far from that stereotype. But for a city or region to thrive in the modern economy, they need to have a technology base (such as a major university), they need to be able to attract highly talented people, and they need to be tolerant do all kinds of different people.  HB 2 told the world, in effect, "North Carolina is not tolerant to various kinds of people."  That's why there is such a backlash to this law.  That's why this law will have an impact on North Carolina's economy that is completely unimaginable at this early stage.

You, as an individual, are free to believe whatever you want about marginalized groups of people like the LGBT community, transgender people, or any other minority.  But, like it or not, these people exist.  Like it or not, a huge part of the U.S. (and world) population believes these people, like all people, should have the same fundamental legal rights as everyone else.  But in today's world, overt discrimination will have huge financial consequences, as well as other social consequences.  Any city or region can pass any law it sees fit.  But the cities and regions that are seen as intolerant to minority groups will find it harder and harder to remain viable economically in the 21st century.  You can be as big a bigot as you want, but the business world is changing rapidly, and the extremely discriminatory regions are being left behind.  Hey, you can start living like the Amish if you want, they have viable economies without modern technology.  But if you want to discriminate against marginalized groups AND thrive in today's business world, it's going to get harder and harder.  If you're a millennial from North Carolina who wants to have a career at the leading edge of technology, you may very well have to move to somewhere else.  Little acts like passing HB 2 have huge consequences in today's world, consequences that may very well affect every single one of the 10,000,000+ people in this state.  Only you can decide if that price is worth discrimination.

Just for the record, I'm a straight guy who has spent most of my adult life in California, where I interacted with dozens and dozens of different groups of people, including people in the LGBT community.  My biggest insight to share from that is that people are people, and we have more in common with each other than we have that separates us.

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The Birth of DIY

NSFW.  Like every obscure idea that eventually works its way into the mainstream, the D.I.Y concept (Do It Yourself) has been co-opted by marketers focused on people fixing up their fancy houses who shop at Home Depot and other megastores.  But that's not where DIY started.  In the early 1980's, it was a punk rock thing, and this clip above explains it well.  A bunch of high school kids with lots of pent up energy and not a lot of musical background listened to the early punk rock from the late 70's.  These kids wanted to make their own music.  But no promoter would book them, no record company would record them, no big venue would want them.  So these kids started their own bands, and gave birth to hardcore punk.  They booked their own shows.  They recorded their own records and made their own T-shirts.  Some kids published zines talking about the bands and the scene.  Whatever needed to be done, they did it themselves.

As bands like Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, and many others toured and played, that DIY attitude spread.  I first heard of punk music when Phil, the main punker at Boise High School, sat next to me in History class.  He let me listen to his Walkman, and read me lyrics from the DK's and other bands.  The music sounded pretty horrible to me, but I liked the lyrics.  I was getting into BMX around that time, and I ended up on the only local freestyle team, doing our own shows in the Boise area.  The DIY concept crept into skateboarding, BMX freestyle, and other early action sports.  I started a BMX zine when I moved to San Jose, California, and my career took off form there, completely by accident.  I wasn't trying to get a magazine job, I was just doing what I loved, which was riding, writing, and shooting photos of BMX freestyle.  Around the country and ultimately the world, lots of other high school kids were doing similar things.

In the 1980's, we didn't have cell phones, the internet, blogs, social media and all the communications tech we have now.  But we used what was available and made the most of it.  Those weird kids going to small hardcore punk shows spawned not just a new form of punk music, but a whole DIY mentaility that reverberated through society.  Several whole industries owe part of their existence to hardcore punk and the DIY mentality.

I'm writing about this today, because I'm holding my first Pop-Up Art Show later today.  More DIY.  This event is less organized than most pop-up events.  I had an idea, I wanted to meet some of the other artists in this area, so I made $3 worth of fliers, handed them out and posted them around town, and put up a blog and a Facebook post.  I have no idea who, if anyone, will show up.  And that's the great thing about it.  Pretty much anything that happens will be great.  I can't really lose on a $3 investment.  If anyone shows up and we talk art and creativity for an hour or two, BONUS.

The hardcore music has faded into history.  Those early punkers, like myself, are now middle-aged.  Technology has changed drastically.  But the underlying spirit of Doing It Yourself is still waiting for people to make use of it.  What could you do for yourself today?

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Focus

If you're old like me, you remember this scene.  Karate Kid 2, I believe.  Now that I'm working on turning my hobby into a small business, one of the first things I needed to do was to focus.  Over the last couple of years, dealing with some health issues, I had a lot of time with not a lot to do.  Once I made the decision to create my own job by creating my own small business, it was time to buckle down.

The first thing that went was excess TV watching.  I'm lucky in a way, I can work on my artwork while listening to TV.  But I spend a lot less time in front of it, and more time listening to interesting, educative, and motivating talks on the computer while working on my drawings.  Another thing is to spend as little time doing non-work activities.  That's why I emphasized J.K. Rowling avoiding housework in the last post.  Sure, you have to do some housework.  But if you spend all your time cooking and cleaning, there's no time to run a business.  Unfortunately, I currently live in a place where housework is the only respected type of work, everything else I do for my business is considered "playing" because I'm not making much money yet.  This creates lots of drama, but that's just the nature of things right now.

Another aspect of focus is that in creating an art business, I need to do a lot more than art.  I'm really lagging at the accounting aspect right now.  I have all my receipts and stuff, but they're not very organized yet.  So I need to focus on that for a while.  My bedroom/studio/laundry room isn't very organized yet, either.  I'm working on that, step by step.

Twenty some years ago, after making the first video for Chris Moeller's fledgling bike company, S&M Bikes, I wound up roommates with Chris and a guy named Shaggy, who looked just like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo.  Chris was one of the young entrepreneurs of the BMX world then, and I wanted to learn the secret to starting a business.  As the weeks turned into months and years, I learned there really isn't any secret.  What Chris did was have the courage to start, and then he just got up, listened to some music to get psyched, and did whatever needed to be done.  The "secret" was just to focus and work hard and work consistently.  If the frames needed to be picked up at the welding shop, Chris talked someone into giving him a ride to pick up the frames.  He didn't even have his own car at first.  Then we'd put stickers on the frames, pack them in paper in boxes, and ship them out when they were ordered.  Day after day it was a job of figuring out what needed to be done, focusing on that, and doing it.  When the work for the day was done, it was time to go ride.  After that, it was time to drink.  Then it started all over the next day, focusing on the next order of business.  That's what I'm doing now with my fledgling art business.  Figure out what needs to be done, and focus on doing it, day by day.

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How a Welfare Mom Became a Billionaire by Not Doing Housework

The title of this blog post sounds crazy, but you probably already know the story.  Above we have a 2001 BBC documentary/interview with Jo Rowling, better known these days as J.K. Rowling, the billionaire author of the Harry Potter book series.  OK, technically she wasn't a "welfare mom," she lived in the U.K., so she was "on the dole" as they say over there.  If you watch this (quite interesting) program, you'll see Jo in her old flat, and at 16:34 she says that the way she got the first Harry Potter book written was by not doing housework for four years.  And then she caps it off with this line:  "Living in squalor, that was the answer."  Whether you like the Harry Potter books or not, you have to acknowledge that this one woman who had an idea for a story sparked an entire industry based on the seven books that told that story.  How big of an industry?  I've heard estimates that the Harry Potter empire has earned roughly $10 BILLION.  The books themselves have sold more than 400 million copies.  The movies turned into the highest grossing movie franchise in history.  There's a theme park in Florida.  Perhaps even more important, literally millions of kids in the last 20 years start reading really big books for enjoyment.  This one woman, once a single mom living off government subsistence, accidentally created a business empire, and turned a whole generation of kids on to reading.  Not a bad return for an idea that popped into her head while stuck on a delayed train.  

"So what?" you ask.  She had a great idea for a story and now she's a billionaire.  What does that have to do with the rest of us?  There's a huge lesson for our current society here.  A good idea, followed by a lot of hard work and persistence, can create an industry.  This is one of the main ways jobs are created in our world today.  All across the U.S., and other parts of the world, there are local government officials trying to bring jobs to their region the old school way.  That way consists of schmoozing executives at large corporations, giving them a pile of money, tax incentives, and necessary community construction projects, and getting those people to bring one of their business operations to that city.  Unfortunately, that is not working in most cases.  

Then there's a newer way to attract jobs to a city or region.  The city leverages a quality university with research capabilities, corrals venture capitalists, and tries to get entrepreneurs to launch high tech start ups.  Cities and small towns without a major research university are out of luck from the start.  Even those with a major college aren't having too much luck with this plan.  Why?  Because many of the major high tech companies are clustering in a small number of major cities.  They set up shop in these cities because that's where a large number of talented tech people are located.  Professor Richard Florida discovered this trend and explained it in his 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class, and has expanded on the idea in subsequent books.  But in his books, he emphasizes one thing, every single human being is creative.

Here's where J.K. Rowling fits into this.  She was a poor single mom, with an idea for a children's book.  She spent five years writing that first book.  She was incredibly determined... to simply get it published.  She found an agent.  Then the first 12 publishing companies approached turned down Harry Potter.  These were huge publishing companies who were experts in the publishing world.  They didn't like the book.  Finally, the 13th publisher decided to bring the book into print.  Jo Rowling was asked to come up with a gender neutral name, because experts didn't think boys would read a book written by a woman.  She added a relative's initial and became J.K. Rowling.  For all that work she got... drum roll please... 2500 pounds.  That's around $3500 to $4000 in the U.S..  She was working as a teacher to support herself while writing the second book.  Then U.S. publishers got wind of this odd book.  A bidding war began, and that finally earned J.K. enough money to work full time as a writer.  The whole thing snowballed from there.  

This is an extreme example, but random people with good ideas are where many of our industries come from these days.  Yet very few cities are working to find these people, help them start businesses, and see what comes of it.  This could be done for a fraction of what cities spend schmoozing large corporations.  

So now comes the question, is this practical?  Here's an example from my own life.  In the mid 1980's, I moved with my family to San Jose, California, when the nickname for that area of "Silicon Valley" was just coming into being.  Several of my mom's cousins lived there, and they were a hilarious and inventive group.  One of them, a doctor, had invented a crib for babies that made a baby feel like it was still in the womb.  It was warm, had a heartbeat, and other features to help keep babies healthy in their first months.  Another cousin told us that one day that he was looking at tea bags in the grocery store, and wondered why no one ever made a coffee bag.  We kicked the idea around, and thought it wasn't half bad.  There were definitely people out there interested in a single serving of coffee.  Now to make this more amazing, this was before Starbucks and designer coffee entered the picture.  This cousin never ran with the idea.  But now, 30 years later, single serving K-cups are in every grocery store.  Someone else had that idea, but they worked on it and brought it into fruition. My guess is that person is doing pretty well financially right now.

Coming from the actions sports world, I've seen dozens of whole industries emerge in my lifetime.  BMX started with Scot Breithaupt and a few others around 1970.  Bob Haro started doing tricks on BMX bikes in about 1977, that spawned BMX freestyle, which now includes several genres that are worldwide.  Nearly every action sport (except surfing and motocross) was born in the last 40 years.  Tom Sims, a Southern California surfer and skateboarder, made his first snowboard in his 8th grade shop class.  I've actually held that first board in my hands.  Tom wanted to surf on snow.  That's why he did it.  Now snowboarding is a huge industry and even in the Olympics.  Then, of course, we have the computer/internet/cell phone/tablet tech world.  These huge industries evolved in the last 40 to 50 years.  But there are many smaller but vibrant industries that spawned from some person's random idea.  In this area of North Carolina, a state not known for high creativity, there's another example.  Moonshiners souped up their cars in the 1920's, 30's, and 40's to outrun the police.  Then they started racing those cars.  Stock Car racing was born, which we know now as NASCAR.  

Finding decent jobs for millions of unemployed and under-employed people is one of the major issues facing our society these days.  Shouldn't we put more effort into finding and supporting those people with ideas that may spawn jobs, perhaps even whole industries?  What do you think?

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The Job Creation Disconnect

The Greensboro (NC) News and Record newspaper had a huge article the Sunday before last stating that this area has lost tens of thousands of good paying factory jobs in the last 15 years or so.  And if you're from this area, or much of the country, you're reply is probably, "Duh."  For those of you not in this area, the "Piedmont Triad" is the marketing name for this area in central North Carolina comprising the three main cities of Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and Highpoint, and the surrounding small towns.  This area traditionally was big in tobacco, textiles, and furniture making.  Guess what, many of those jobs have been outsourced to other countries.  In the tobacco world, the anti-smoking fervor also helped reduce that industry.  Like the article said, this area, like so many others, has lost over a hundred thousand jobs over the last 25 years or so.  We all know that.

As a recovering taxi driver, I'm one of the millions of people who hasn't been able to find a good paying job.  I've written for magazines, worked on the crews of TV shows, and done many other things over the years.  But none of that helps me get a job in today's work force here in North Carolina.  Unlike millions of unemployed people out there, though, I've been reading and educating myself on the big picture and macro-economic situation in our rapidly changing, tech-laden world.  Unfortunately, most of the people actually running our cities, counties, states and federal government have not read the books or listened to the dozens of lectures I have.  I know I'm a geek in this area, but it still baffles me how clueless so many people in power are to the big picture.  So here are some of the main issues in job creation today.  These aren't my conclusions, but the findings of experts in various areas.  This is why we're having such an issue finding good jobs today.

Robots:  I don't have exact figures, but industrial robots and other forms of technology have probably taken more former human manufacturing jobs than out sourcing.  ATM machines, for example, killed off hundreds of thousands of bank teller jobs.  We've all seen the TV commercials of the robot arms welding cars and other things.  That's where a huge number of jobs have gone.  Those jobs aren't coming back.

Outsourcing:  This started a lot earlier than many people today think.  When I was a kid in rural Ohio, people were complaining of a few companies shutting down factories and moving to the American South.  Some years later, big corporations started moving jobs into Mexico and Taiwan.  Then jobs went to Japan.  Then came Southeast Asia and China.  Again, those high paying manufacturing jobs aren't coming back.  Period.  Stop whining about this.  Those jobs existed for a couple of generations because of the labor unions and because industry was nation-oriented.  Once the business world got more global, American workers were just too expensive.

High Technology:  Technology has completely changed our world in my lifetime, and most of our industrial age organizations, and thinking, have not caught up with that.  One by one, our industries and institutions are crumbling in the wake of new societal norms and the way tech has changed the working world.  Today's high-paying jobs are largely in tech, computer science, engineering, and similar fields.  We don't have enough workers to fill many of these jobs in the U.S.  This is a huge part of the disconnect, on one hand, 30 million people, including me, can't find decent jobs, but there are thousands of jobs employers can't fill because we don't have the right skills.

Clustering and the brain drain:  No one in politics (that I've see) even has a clue about this huge trend.  The cutting edge tech companies have spent the last 25 years clustering in a handful of regions in this country.  Why?  According to professor Richard Florida (who wrote The Rise of the Creative Class), this happens because now the top companies are going to where the talented people live, rather than workers moving to where the big companies are.  In addition, many of the best and brightest people in our country are going to work in these few regions.  The San Francisco Bay Area (aka Silicon Valley), Seattle, the Boston/New York City/Washington D.C corridor, Southern California and Austin, Texas are the main spots where tech is clustering.  This creates a couple of big issues:  These areas are where venture capital and money are focusing and pouring into.  On the other hand, with the smartest people in these few areas, the rest of the counttry is not only struggling to create jobs, but they're stuck with the people of 2nd and 3rd rate intelligence trying to figure out how to create more jobs.  Pure and simple, most of this country is slowly dying economically, and they don't even realize it.  The area where I live is one of those regions.

Changes in communication:  Personal computers, the internet/world wide web, smart phones, tablets, social media and other advances in technology have completely changed the work world.  While most people use these devices and tech in their personal lives, they don't take full advantage of these technologies in the workplace.  In this area where I live, many people in their 50's and older avoid computers all together.  The civic leaders in most of the country don't fully understand how this tech is affecting society, and they're still trying to bring back the lost factory jobs.  The mayors, city councils, state legislators and governors are all fighting the wrong battle.  They're stuck in the mentality of the industrial world they grew up in, and simply don't have a clue how to create new jobs for the millions of unemployed people in these cities across the country.

This is just a brief look  at why we have so many decent people without good paying jobs, and why we have so many high-paying jobs that can't be filled at the same time.  I'll go into more detail on these issues in further posts.  My advice to the chronically unemployed:  Create your own job if you possibly can.  That's what I'm doing.

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Where Will the 21st Century Jobs Come From

In this Concordia panel discussion from 2013, several prominent people discuss one of the biggest issues facing society in the 21st century:  Where will all the jobs come from?  Short answer, no one really knows.

When I went googling for info on this subject, I was amazed how little turned up.  In a 2014 article I often cite, there are believed to be 30 MILLION or more unemployed and under-employed people in the U.S..  We're the wealthiest nation on earth, and yet we have a huge problem here.  I've heard reports that unemployment in France is 30% for young adults.  One of the panelists above states that unemployment in Greece for young people is 60% at the time of this discussion.  The big takeaway here is that the world needs to create tens of millions of good jobs in the 21st century, and no one has a clue how that is going to happen.  The most amazing thing is that this is a huge issue nearly everywhere (except Silicon Valley), but hardly anyone is doing anything about it.

Billionaire real estate mogul, reality TV star, and leading presidential candidate Donald Trump says that he has created thousands of jobs in his businesses, and will create "lots of jobs" if he becomes president.  Uh... OK... how?  He doesn't say.  His business empire consists of many hotels.  Would you want to be a maid or bellboy making $8 an hour in a Trump hotel, or say work as a Google intern making $5,000 a month?  Do you see my point?  Most of the jobs Trump has helped create are low wage service jobs.  As a former taxi driver in Orange County, California, where Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm are, I'll let you in on a little secret.  Every place that has a huge tourist industry, like Anaheim, CA, also has a ghetto nearby made up of all the low wage service workers who work in those hotels and resorts.  How many high paying tech jobs has Trump created?  Not many.

The other non-traditional presidential candidate with a big jobs plan is Bernie Sanders.  His plan is to put 13 million Americans to work re-building our country's crumbling infrastructure.  This is an awesome idea.  It kills two big birds with one stone, creates jobs and re-builds things that need it.  But could Bernie, a Democratic Socialist, actually win a general election?  If so, could he get a dysfunctional Congress to actually implement this great idea?  Both are pretty unlikely.  The other idea here is that presidents don't actually create many jobs.  Growing businesses create jobs.  For those businesses to grow, you need a fairly affluent middle class with lots of disposable income to buy the products those businesses make.  As we all know, that's what we've lost here in the last 30 years or so.

So we're back to the core issue.  Who is going to create MILLIONS of high paying jobs for the former factory workers and recent college graduates in the U.S.?  There's no good answer.  On one hand, there are lots of tech jobs companies are having trouble filling.  On the other hand, those are about the only well paying jobs these days.  Whenever I look at this problem, I keep coming back to one idea.  Entrepreneurship.  To really put people back to work in fulfilling, well paying jobs, millions of unemployed and under-employed people are going to have to create their own jobs.  There's no one else to do it.  Are you up for that?  Most people aren't.  None of us were taught to do this in school.  Schools actually do just the opposite, they were created to turn people into compliant factory workers.  Anyway you look at it, this is a big issue that not near enough people are working on.  That's what this blog is about.

Get A Job

This is probably the worst radio edit of all time for a really great song.  Have you ever been in a situation where people who see you just don't know what it's like?  Everlast.

It's frustrating.  This week, the drama nob got cranked to eleven here in the household.  I got blindsided by things I didn't know were going on.  On one hand, I was offered some help in an area that I could really use it.  I didn't ask for the help, and it was initiated by someone talking behind my back.  That's really frustrating.  I accepted the help, because it came at a crucial time, again, unasked for by me. 

On the other hand, a couple of people I have a lot of respect for told me, "Maybe you should get a part time job."  I just nodded.  I know millions of other people in this country hear this on a regular basis, too.

Their frame of reference is 30 years ago when they began their professional careers.  At that time, factories in this country were just starting to shut down and move to other places.  But the job market was still strong.  Jobs were easy to find.  Decent paying jobs were pretty abundant.  Entry level jobs were everywhere.  You could walk into the office of most any company, fill out a paper application, maybe give them a resume', and get hired, often times on the spot.

But we don't live in that world anymore.  The people who wanted to help me simply don't realize what today's job market is like.  They're intelligent people.  But they just haven't had to deal with this situation in years.  I've already applied for pretty much every entry level job in this town, several times.  Even entry level jobs now require a 30 minute online psychological evaluation, graded by a computer.  Our digital resume's are scanned by a computer and searched for the appropriate keywords.  Then, if you even get called (which I never do) there are multiple interviews for a job like wiping off tables and taking out the trash at McDonald's.  In the end, they person in charge usually hires their friends and relatives.  This is, after all, still a small town.

I'm not alone.  That's what this blog is about.  There are 30 million or more people like me, unemployed or underemployed.  I'm more motivated than many of these people.  Ive decided to create my own job.  I've been self-educating myself on how technology has changed our working world for years.  I'm now working 12 to 14 hours a day building a small business.  But none of that matters to people with a 1980's mindset.  They still say, "Get a job."  I nod, hold the frustration until I can release it later in art, and I go back to the 21st Century.  This blog.  My other blogs.  My social media.  My crowdfunding campaign.  My fledgling small art business.  I'm busy working in today's world.  They are entrenched in a world that began 30 years ago for them.  In that world they'll stay...  Until technology comes along and revolutionizes their industry.  It's only a matter of time.  Then they'll know what it's like.  That's where the song above comes in.  Keep plugging along people.  Create your own jobs if you have to.

Standing in line at the Job Fair

The world is changing rapidly.  Are you?

My name is Steve Emig, and a couple of years ago I was unemployed and went to a job fair at First Christian Church in Kernersville, NC.  At the time, my resume' was made up of taxi driving and gaps in employment.  I'd done a wide range of jobs before that, but no one seemed to care.  I didn't look good on paper and I knew it.  I also didn't look good in person.  I weighed well over 300 pounds and wore thrift store clothes that didn't fit very well, but they were the best I had.

I entered the church and started walking past the line of other people looking to get one of the 100 jobs available that day.  I kept walking and walking.  I thought I was going to see a "Welcome to Virginia" sign before I got to the end of that line.  The line wrapped around the gymnasium and I took my place at the end of it.  While most people were probably hoping for one of the few jobs available, I had different thoughts.  My thought was, "I should start a snack bar next to the line and sell food and drinks to everyone waiting."  My years in Southern California around lots of entrepreneurs gave me a different outlook than most North Carolinians.

An hour or two later, I gave my resume' to a few companies.  One company had a stack of paper resume's well over a foot high.  Hundreds of them.  I handed my resume' to the lady and she added it to the huge stack.  I was so depressed as I walked out of that church that day.  I never heard from any of the companies.

An online article last year said that there are now at least 30 million unemployed and underemployed people in the United States.  I'm one of them.  In my case, I've decided to create my own job.  I do a unique style of artwork with Sharpie markers which you can see at Steve Emig Art.  I'm now working seven days a week doing something I love.  I'm not charging enough for my drawings yet, I'm working on getting my name out there right now.  I'm also a blogger and writer, and have some books I want to right in the coming months and years.  This blog here is dedicated to all of us in the 30 million looking for meaningful and well-paying work.  I hope you'll find something in this blog to make you laugh and help pass the time as you wait in that ridiculously long line at the job fair.  Enjoy.

If you're depressed and need a quick laugh, click here.

If you want to know who the heck I am, go back to the previous post. 

If you want to hear about the best book I've read about finding work in the 21st century, click here.

If you think your life couldn't possibly get any worse, click here.

If you want to see two formerly homeless guys who are now successful, click here.

If you want to know why your resume' doesn't get you a good job, click here. 

Many years ago, when my younger sister was in college, she had a big decision to make.  I created a list of questions to help her figure her dilemma out.  It worked.  Over the years, I've turned that list of questions into a workshop called "How to Find Your Passion in Life."  I'm thinking about starting to give these workshops again.  If you're interested in attending one of these workshops here in the Triad area, email me at: stevenemig13@gmail.com .

Who the heck is Steve Emig

This crazy clip is video I shot at the 2-Hip King of Dirt contest at Mission Trails in 1991.  Mission Trails is a desert area outside San Diego, California with lots of hiking and biking trails.  This happened four years before the X-Games started, a year before Mat Hoffman built the first mega quarterpipe, and 12 years before skateboarder Danny Way built the first full Mega Ramp.  Most of the best BMXers in the world were at this contest, and no one had seen a jump like the huge "Death Jump" you see in this clip.  We were all actually afraid someone might die at this contest. 

My name is Steve Emig, and I've lived a pretty weird life.  I was born in Ohio in the 60's, making me one of the old farts of Generation X.  I lived in a series of small towns in Ohio until I was 13, when we moved to New Mexico.  I was a smart, dorky kid who sucked at sports.  I was scared to death most of that year in New Mexico, but I came to love exploring the desert during that time.  A year later, my family moved to Boise, Idaho, where I lived all through high school. 

In a trailer park outside of Boise in 1982, I got into BMX bike riding.  My friends and I rode little jumps and tried to out ride each other night after night.  That fall we learned there was a BMX track in Boise, and we started racing BMX.  I raced all through 1983, then got into the emerging sport of BMX freestyle.  Basically, I was a high school kid doing tricks on a little kids' bike.  I loved it, but everyone else thought I was a n idiot.  But I stuck with it, becoming part of Idaho's first BMX trick team with friend Jay Bickel. 

A year after high school, my family moved to San Jose, California, an area which was just starting to be called "Silicon Valley," because of a lot of computer companies in the area.  I started a BMX zine, (pronounced zeen) which is a small, self-published booklet.  My initial reason was to give me an excuse to meet and interview the pro BMX freestylers in the area.  While I did that, I worked at a local Pizza Hut.  In a turn of events that still boggles my mind, that little zine got me a job at Wizard Publications, the company that put out BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  Suddenly I was part of the BMX industry, and couldn't really believe it.  Instead of reading about the top pro riders every month in the magazines, I was meeting them, writing about them, and driving the photographer to photo shoots.  At 20 years old, I was a guy who never took a single college course, and suddenly I was proofreading two global magazines, and writing articles.  My life went off in an unexpected direction.  I went on to work at the business that put on the BMX freestyle contests, and then moved to a video production company owned by Vision Skateboards. 

I went on to produce and/or edit fifteen low budget bike, skateboard, and snowboard videos.  I contributed to 7 different BMX magazines, and self-published over 30 zines.  I stumbled into the TV production world, and worked on over 300 episodes of a dozen different TV shows.  I spent four years as a crew guy on the set of American Gladiators in the early 90's.  Then, in 1995, I burned out.  I drifted away from the BMX world, though I was still riding my bike every day for fun.  I was sick of working on lame TV shows.  I wanted to produce my own shows, and start my own business, but I just didn't have the personality and the guts to do it. 

I started reading lots of books during that time, on business, economics, philosophy, religion, and personal development.  I went to work as a furniture mover, sometimes moving three houses or apartments in a single day.  It sucked.  I continued to try and figure out what life was all about and where I fit in to this weird world we inhabit.  I went back into the entertainment industry, working as a lighting tech (basically a roadie).  It paid well, but I had to quit because of an injury.  I couldn't do the heavy lifting anymore.

Still not sure where I really wanted to go in life, I wound up working as a taxi driver in 1999.  I did that off and on, and also struggled with homelessness for several years.  Finally the taxi industry took a big dive in 2007, and I became homeless.  No booze, no drugs.  I just couldn't find a job that paid enough to get away from cab driving.  I lived on the streets of Southern California for nearly a full year, panhandling to survive.

With my life stripped down to a daily struggle for survival, I gained a whole different perspective on life.  Many of the personal doubts and issues I'd been struggling with faded.  But I wasn't able to find a good job, or start a business to get myself off the streets.  I called my family in November of 2008, and they scraped together money to fly me to North Carolina, a place I'd never lived.  Remember November of 2008?  The global economy was one the verge of collapse, and no one knew what was going to happen.  There were no jobs to be had here in Kernersville, NC.  Eventually I became a taxi driver in Winston-Salem, but couldn't make a decent living at that. 

Finally, last fall, I decided I needed to create my own job.  I'd been doing this weird type of drawing with Sharpie markers for nearly a decade.  I stepped up my game, and worked on getting work drawing pictures for people.  I'm still in the early stages of this, but I'm drawing seven days a week now.  I'm not charging enough to really pay for the time I put into each drawing, I'm more focused on getting my work out there and building a following at the moment.  I also have two or three books in my head that I want to self-publish in the next two or three years. 

At a time when 30 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed, I realized that my best bet was to create my own job.  This blog is dedicated to those 30 million people looking for meaningful and well-paying work in today's crazy world. 

Resumes Are Like Butts

Lets face it, resume's are like butts, everyone has one and most of them are full of crap.  The tech guys in this video talk about how they got great tech jobs.  They did it through personal connections and building cool stuff that shows a potential employer they knew what they were doing and could actually finish something.

That said, I'm not a tech guy.  I did actually get one job from a resume'.  After years in the TV industry in Southern California in the early 90's, I burned  out and wound up working some lame job in Orange County after a while.  I learned there was a small equipment rental company within walking distance of my house.  I didn't know anyone there, so I typed up a resume' and took it over to them.  But I knew from experience that bosses doing the hiring rarely read an entire resume'.  In the TV production world, nearly all jobs are filled through personal contacts.  So in the very bottom of my resume', I wrote, "lost in the woods ages 4 to 9, and raised by raccoons."  I walked over to the company, handed my resume' to the manager, talked a couple minutes, and walked home.  A couple days later they called and said they needed some help for a few days.  An hour into the job, I asked the guy I was working with why they called me.  He said, "We just wanted to see what a guy raised by raccoons was like."  We both had a good laugh, and I made $100 a day prepping equipment for a few days. That was the only time I ever got hired off a resume'.

These days, much of the working world operates like the TV production world did back then.  There are lots of qualified people seeking every decent job.  So how do you set yourself apart?  In the old days, the trick was to make friends.  That hasn't changed.  What has changed over the past 25 years is the internet, smart phones, and social media.  Are you on Linked In?  If you're looking for a decent job, you probably should be.  I'm creating my own job, so I haven't bothered with it.  But I do use Facebook to get art jobs right now.  I'm working my existing network.  Are you?

Here are some tips I've learned from my blogging and social media experience. 

1.  A blog, website, You Tube channel, or good Twitter feed show people you can actually do something.  I blog about my days in the BMX freestyle industry in its early years.  I have a blog of the artwork I'm doing right now.  And I have this blog, aimed at the 30 million unemployed and underemployed people in the U.S.  I'm one of those people, and I got to the point where I had to create my own job.  (More on that in future posts).  What a blog, vlog, You Tube channel, custom Facebook page or other web presence does is show that you're self-motivated.  It also establishes you as a possible expert in your field.  That's a good way to meet people who need talented employees or freelancers.

2.  Use social media to meet people in your chosen field.  As a 20-year-old kid in the BMX bike industry many years ago, I learned that the trick to finding work was to get around the people who make stuff happen.  In any industry, there are relatively few people who are really pushing the progression of the industry.  These days, you can often friend those people on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, link to them on Linked In, or connect in many other ways.  Here's the big trick:  don't connect and ask for a job.  Follow what they publish.  When you have something worthwhile to add, comment or contact them.  Make it short, sweet, and to the point, as the old cliche' goes. 

3.  Social media superstar Gary Vaynerchuk took his parents' New Jersey liquor store from $3 million in sales a year to over $30 million a year.  He did it with internet marketing, a video series, and social media marketing.  He stresses to GIVE what you can to people.  Get to know them, make friends.  Then, and only then, ask them for help, a reference, a job, or to make a sales call. 

For tips on using today's technology in the work world, check out You Tube talks (and blogs and books) by Seth Godin, Mitch Joel, and Gary Vaynerchuk.  There are plenty of other people you can learn from, but these three are a great start. 

A Bunch of Jobs Better Than The One Youre Applying For

Again, NSFW.  Here's the funny part, I've actually turned down one of the jobs on this list.  I was offered $9 an hour to test video games in the early 90's, and wasn't interested.  I'm just not a big gamer.  I do actually know a photographer who did some boob adjusting one day.  As the story goes, (and I believe him), as a photo assistant one day, had to stand behind Cindy Crawford and push her boobs together to give the appearance of a bit more cleavage.  Even crazier, he gave up the fashion world to become a top BMX bike photographer. 

As for me, I saw dozens and dozens of boobs while working as a taxi driver.  On one occasion, I had a passenger pay my way into a strip club and... well he paid for some other attention as well.  Why?  He had just returned from another country, and all of his friends had other plans that night.  I got paid to be a professional wing man, sort of.  Good work if you can find it.

Jobs Worse Than The One Youre Applying For

Uh... if you haven't figured out by the still shot, this is a big NSFW.  NOT SAFE FOR WORK, just in case any of you aren't familiar with that acronym. 

I've had some weird jobs over the past three decades.  I spent one day unloading coffins on a TV set.  I got pummeled as a crew guy on American Gladiators.  I've cleaned up the puke of strangers as a taxi driver.  But.. these jobs are all worse.  Somehow animal renderer didn't make the list. 

Are You Having a Bad Day

If you think you're having a bad day, watch this.  Nick Vujicic has no arms, no legs, a loving wife and kid, and more speaking engagements then he can possibly handle.  Still thinking you're having a bad day?

Follow Your Gut

Bleek job prosects.  Heavy Metal.  Tight pants. A huge beard.  Porsches.  Magnus Walker followed his gut through life.  You didn't.  That's why you're standing in a half mile long Job Fair line and he isn't.  That's all I'm going to say about this TED Talk.

How Two Brothers Who Didn't Want to Get Jobs Accidentally Created a Huge Business

Several years ago, Bert Jacobs and his brother graduated college and didn't really feel like getting "real" jobs.  So they made some T-shirts up and sold them in downtown Boston.  Then they made some more shirts.  In this video Bert tells a great and entertaining story of how their business grew into something neither of the brothers expected. 

How a Book I read 27 Years Ago Predicted Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump

This video is a Power Point presentation of P.R. Sarkar's Law of Social Cycles.  This is the most incredible theory on human society I have ever seen, and this video only has 373 views.  If you are interested in how society changes over time, and have 43 minutes, check out this video.

In the late 80's, I was living in Southern California and working in the BMX bike and skateboard industries.  My dad, a design engineer, got a job in North Carolina.  For Christmas in 1989, I flew to my parents' house in Greensboro, NC for a week.  I didn't take my BMX freestyle bike, which I usually rode two or three hours every day.  I was bored out of my skull, and picked up a book to read while in NC.  That book was The Great Depression of 1990 by economist Ravi Batra.  Yeah, I know, it's a pretty boring sounding book to most people.  But I wanted to start my own business then, and was taking an interest in business, economics, and the future.  For me, it was a fascinating book.  Many of you may be thinking, "Wait, there was no Great Depression in 1990."  Technically, that's true.  What we did have was a "double-dip recession" that lasted from mid 1990 to about 1996.  That's about as close as you can get to a depression without actually having one.  One many levels, Batra was right, the economic downturn just wasn't quite a deep as he predicted.

That brings us to the next question.  How did he predict that economic quagmire?  Ravi Batra was from Indian descent (India Indians, not the Native American ones) and he was familiar with The Law of Social Cycles, thought up by P.R. Sarkar.  It's an amazing and deep theory.  But here's the gist of it.  Sarkar believed that there were four basic mentalities in any society.  These are the Acquisitors (business focused people), the Laborers (those who work for the others), the Warriors (people who earn a living with courage and physical abilities), and the Intellectuals (those who earn their living with their brains).  At any given time, one of these mentalities is dominate in society.  That dominant mindset shapes all of society.

Here's where it gets really crazy.  One of these mindsets can dominate a society for hundreds of years.  There's no set duration.  But the four mentalities dominate in a certain order, the order I listed them above.  By Batra's estimation, the U.S. has been in the Acquisitor Age since it first formed as a colony.  In 1989, he said we were getting to the point where the business world was ripe with corruption, and the average people were getting tired of being screwed over.  That corruption would lead to the collapse of the Acquisitor (businesspeople) Age, and the Laborers would rise up en mass and fight back to even things out.  Basically, since I read that book in 1989, I've been waiting for a big populist movement in this country as a reaction to the massive corruption and wealth inequality.  

Some of the first evidence of this societal change was the Occupy Wall Street movement.  It started with a small group of activists, and seemed to catch fire across the country in a matter of weeks.  Simply put, it was an idea whose time had come.  People across the country (and much of the world) were sick and tired of working harder, longer hours, all for a decreasing standard of living.  People of the Baby Boomer and Generation X have watched thousands of factories close up, the jobs taken by robots or workers overseas.  There seem to be fewer high paying jobs and more low wage service jobs.  In addition, younger people struggled through college only to end up with a mountain of debt and few good job prospects.  Then came the real estate market collapse and The Great Recession.  That horrific economic downturn morphed into a really anemic economy.  Politicians kept trying to tell us that the economy was back.  But us everyday people knew better. 

Then, as the 2016 presidential campaign got going, a couple of unexpected candidates jumped in the race.  On the Republican side, New York City real estate mogul, billionaire, and reality TV star Donald Trump started making fun of nearly everyone.  His crazy, racist, sexist, inflammatory comments sparked a lot of media attention... and supporters.  At first his fellow Republicans saw him as a joke.  No one took him seriously.  But his hatred, anger, and salty comments have now turned to votes.  He tapped into a huge number of people in the U.S. who are pissed off about something.  A lot of these people are racist.  Some are religious fanatics.  Some are sick of no longer having high paying factory jobs like those that existed 20 or 30 years ago.  As a group, Trump supporters are afraid.  They're afraid of an uncertain future in a slew of different ways.  Now we've come to the point where much of the Republican establishment is actually trying to wipe out their top presidential candidate because he doesn't represent the Republican party they worked so hard to build.  In a sense, it's a surprise political revolution.

On the Democrat side, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders came out of nowhere and started attracting crowds of 20,000 to 30,000 people to his events.  He's a die hard progressive, and a self-proclaimed democratic socialist.  The Democratic Party thought Hilary Clinton was a shoe-in for the nomination.  She is leading at this point by a fair margin, but Bernie Sanders has tapped into a populist sentiment in the U.S. that the Democratic leadership didn't realized existed.  On both sides of the political aisle, candidates no one expected to do well are showing just how much American citizens are sick of politics as normal in Washington D.C.  Bernie Sanders actually campaigns on the platform that this country needs a political and economic revolution.  The highly educated, highly motivated political operatives of both major parties have no idea how to deal with Sanders and Trump.  These unexpectedly strong presidential campaigns seemed to surprise nearly everyone.  Except perhaps economist Ravi Batra.  Using the Law of Social Cycles, he saw a huge populist movement coming nearly 30 years ago. 

The 10 Year Old Who Makes over a Million Dollars a Year on You Tube

This post has a personal connection for me.  Last Thanksgiving, I was invited to my sister's house in Greensboro (NC) for dinner.  She was cooking, family members were chatting, and my niece and nephew were texting.  Typical family during the holidays.  In the course of conversation, someone asked about my sister's best friend from high school.  My sister said something like, "She's doing great, she's married and has two kids.  Oh... and her 9-year-old makes over a million a year on You Tube."  I laughed.  My sister said she was serious, then pulled out her phone and showed me one of these EvanTube HD videos.  She wasn't kidding.  When Evan was five, his dad, who's an accomplished video producer, thought it would be fun to have Evan review some toys on You Tube.  So they made a video and uploaded it.  Then they made another video... and another.

In the clip above, you see Evan at age seven putting together a Lego set with 3,800 pieces, rated for ages 14 and up.  Evan is a really smart kid, personable, and does great in front of the camera.  His You Tube channel took off, gained hundreds of thousands, and ultimately millions of views, and attracted attention from toy makers.  Now he not only gets free toys, he gets paid to make videos reviewing them.  This is a business that didn't even exist 15 years ago.  Evan and his family didn't set out to make Evan a superstar or a school age millionaire.  They just made some fun videos, made them in HD with good editing, and it took off from there. 

My point is not that you should write to Evan and ask him for a loan.  My point is that in today's weird, high tech enabled, connected world, businesses like this are possible.  Just for the record, as I understand it, most of the money is going into a college fun for Evan and his sister.  Evan and his family are using technology to their advantage.  Are you?

Two Formerly Homeless Guys Talk Success on a TV Show

Gotcha.  Did you know that legendary comedian and TV host Steve Harvey used to live in his car?  If you watch his talk show regula'rly, you may have heard him mention it.  In this clip, Steve interviews DeStorm Power, a formerly homeless guy who became a social media mogul on Vine, and has turned that into a TV hosting job on BET.  Listen to what he says.  Work hard.  It's possible.  What's holding you back?

Confessions of a Former Luddite

Like most high tech Luddites of the 1990's and early 2000's, I didn't really know where the term "Luddite" came from.  This short video explains it, if you're curious.

Here's what screwed up my thoughts about the internet.  In the late 90's, one of the guys I worked with was lead singer in a band.  It wasn't a huge band, they played good ol' rock n roll, and they had a hardcore local following.  He invited me to a party at the band's house after one of their shows.  It was a good party, guys and girls drinking an socializing, music playing and all the normal party stuff.  At one point, someone led me into another room.  In that room were several drunk party goers surrounding a computer screen.  On the screen were several small pics of other people they were communicating with.  "That guy's in Norway!" someone said, pointing to one of the pictures.  That was my introduction to the internet.  Drunk and stoned people in Anaheim, California typing messages back and forth to drunk and stoned people in other parts of the country and the world.  I wasn't very impressed.

A year or two later I became a taxi driver, and spent most of my time sitting in the taxi.  At that time, the Dot Com boom was in full swing, and it just seemed ridiculous to me.  I didn't like new technology.  I didn't see any point in changing.  It sure looked like this "whole internet thing" was a bunch of hype.  I decided to just wait it out for a few years, and see what became of it all.  Sure enough, the Dot Com bubble burst in the early 2000's, and things fell apart.  At that time, I was still working as a taxi driver, and couldn't afford a computer.  I spent most of my time sitting in my cab and waiting for calls.  I would occasionally go to the local library, rent a computer for $5 an hour, and check my email and look a few things up on Google.  That was it for me.  I still saw no point in the whole internet thing.I didn't get it.

Then, in 2003, the taxi company I worked for switched to a computer dispatching system.  Every cab had a $2500 computer mounted in it, and it KILLED our business.  Literally overnight, our business dropped to almost nothing, and I struggled to survive.  Like so many other people in other industries, I was minding my own business when technology came out of nowhere and completely changed my industry.  I wasn't able to escape taxi driving over the next few years, and I worked more and more hours, and eventually wound up homeless.

A year later, when I moved in with my parents in North Carolina, I had daily (and free) access to a computer for the first time.  I started playing around on it.  I was unemployed, in my early 40's, living with my parents, and really depressed.  The Great Recession was in full swing, and nobody was sure what was going to happen.  I started blogging about my early days in the BMX freestyle world.  I didn't think anyone would read what I wrote.  It was just a creative release for me.  After about a month of blogging, one of my posts went viral in the old school BMX freestyle community online.  I didn't even know there was an old school BMX freestyle community online.  Suddenly I started reconnecting with lots of old friends through the internet.  My BMX blog became the #1 blog in its niche in the world.  I did a follow up blog when the first one ran its course.  That blog became #1 in its niche.  I was still unemployed, but my blogs about BMX, and later homelessness, drew in over 160,000 page views.

One day someone emailed me and wrote, "you know some people make money with blogs, right?"  I had no idea.  So I started looking up blogging and learning more about it.  That took my life in a new direction.  I'm basically a writer at heart, and I started learning how technology had completely changed the writing industry.  I began searching for my place in this new and changing world.  I also learned that very few people actually make money form their blogs.  But blogs are really good even if you don't directly make money from them.  That led to this blog you're reading right now.  Millions of people in this country are now unemployed or under-employed.  One big reason is because technology (and social change) have completely changed the game where work and business are concerned.  This blog is to share what I, myself, have learned on these subjects.  Hopefully you'll get something positive out of this blog that will help in your work life. 

High Praise For Middle Aged Entrepreneurs

In this article in Venture Beat, they report that actual research is showing that middle-aged entrepreneurs are actually more successful more often than the young entrepreneurs that turn into media darlings, and then go under.  The studies say that life and work experience are the reasons more older entrepreneurs find long term success.  Good to know.

Seth Godins Linchpin idea in 9 minutes

If you're checking out this post right now, there's a good chance I just gave you a flier about this blog while you're standing in a ridiculously long line of people at a job fair.  Bored?  Sure you are.  Nervous?  Probably.  That person a few people ahead of you may have a much better resume' than you.  Or maybe not.  What does it take to get a great job in today's working environment?  Heck what does it take to get any job in today's working environment.  Seth Godin says it takes a "linchpin."

Who the heck is Seth Godin?  He's a marketing guy who dove into the world of the internet in its earliest days of the 1990's.  More than anything, Seth really understands how today's technology is changing the working world.  He gets it.  One of his books, Linchpin, talks about what type of person is really valuable in today's working world.  The video clip above gives you a quick look at this idea.  Now, look at that line in front of you again.  Do you have 9 minutes to listen?  This idea could totally change how you think about work.  Listen to this clip.  After that you can watch his full, 52 minute speech on You Tube, or even better, you could read the book.  It's worth it.

Panhandling or Guerilla Marketing

I'm not homeless like I was a few years ago.  But I'm not making a good living yet, either.  Why shoot a photo like this?  It's funny.  In today's social media world, funny can go a long way.  This photo will get a few shares.  Heck, it might wind up getting a lot of shares.  If it brings some people to my blog, this piece of cardboard with hand lettering has done its job.  If it makes you chuckle, then it has really done its job.

Funny Panhandling Sign 15

I actually used this sign back in 2012.  At the time, I didn't have a PayPal account.  I just thought it was funny.  I really like this sign, because it shows just how much, and how fast our world is changing these days.  If you go back to this post, you'll see there is a panhandler in Michigan who actually has a website and accepts credit cards on his phone with Square.  Or at least he did until his phone got stolen.  This may seem like a big joke, but on today's world, this is the kind of thinking it takes to get your life back on track if you're really down and out.  Homeless people just can't walk into a factory, fill out a paper application, and interview for a job like they once did.  These days our resume's are digital, the job scans keywords, and it's difficult to even talk to the person doing the hiring in many cases.  If they do interview you, what do they check next?  Your background, probably your credit report, and your social media.  These changes in the hiring process make it much, much more difficult for a homeless person to get hired for the job that may eventually pull them out of their financial quagmire.  If you haven't been homeless, or chronically unemployed, these ideas may never have crossed your mind.  But they're a reality in today's world.  And that's what this blog is about.  On my journey to get my life back on track, I'm dealing with many of the issues that 30 million other people are dealing with in today's rapidly changing working world.  Just because you can do the job, doesn't mean you can get the job.  Even if you do get the job, it might not pay enough to get on top of things financially.

I've been near the bottom.  I've lived on the streets and panhandled to survive, despite my reasonably high I.Q., my willingness to work hard, and my background of working long hours.  It still wasn't enough.  If you can relate to any of that, you'll probably find some interesting posts on this blog.  Good luck on your  journey through these issues.