Funny Panhandling Sign 3

Another panhandling slogan I actually used when I was homeless.  This one was the best sign for getting teen and 20-something women to take my photo.  I have no idea how many times this sign wound up on Facebook back then.

Funny Panhandling Sign 2

Here's another one of the funny panhandling slogans I actually used when I was homeless. 

Funny Panhandling Sign 1

To explain why this blog is called "Bum to Bankroll," I have to first admit to being a bum.  I'm not talking about a guy who sits on the couch and doesn't take showers for three days.  OK, I'm that kind of bum, too. Sometimes.  But in late 2007, I could no longer afford to keep driving a taxi in Orange County, California.  I walked away for both financial and health reasons.  For almost a year, I lived on the streets of Southern California, panhandling to survive.  The streets sound cool in gangsta rap songs.  But they are far from cool in reality.  How did I wind up homeless?  By working 80 to 100 hours a week as a taxi driver.  No booze.  No drugs.  Well, a lot of caffeine to work them crazy hours, but that was it.  I became completely homeless by working more hours a week than most people ever will.  The industry was dying, and I just couldn't scrape up enough money to escape. 

My panhandling sign usually read "Homeless and Hungry."  Simple, to the point, and effective.  But after a while I started putting funny slogans on the back of my signs.  If nobody responded to the front of the sign, I'd show the funny slogan.  It worked a fair amount of the time.  This is one of the slogans I actually used when I was a panhandler. 

Business Income Is Not A Paycheck

In starting my own art business in the last couple of months, there's a lot I'm dealing with.  On one hand, that's good, I like to stay busy.  One the other hand, it can lead to stress.  Yesterday I delievered two large drawings to a local woman and she was stoked on them.  That put some money in my pocket.  I'm currently living with my mom, and have been since my dad died 3 years ago.  Since I was a taxi driver for years, I now think like a businessman.  Cash in my pocket doesn't mean that I have any money.  It just means the business has a little.  My mom, on the other hand, has always had traditional jobs that give you a paycheck.  When you get that paycheck, you buy groceries, pay bills, and maybe go out for dinner or a movie or whatever. 

In a small business, it's totally different.  I started my business with literally NO MONEY.  I've been building an online business with no computer of my own.  My laptop physically broke in late November.  I also have no smart phone, not even a dumb phone, very few business supplies, and lots of other immediate needs to keep this little business chugging along to the point where I can pay the bills I need to pay.  But my mom sees income as a paycheck.  I'm reminded we need milk.  And eggs.  I don't eat eggs... can't stand them.  And dish soap.  The bottle we bought last week is gone already.  The list continues.  My priority is to get my laptop fixed, because I haven't had the computer time to do everything I need to do.  I just barely have the money to get it fixed right now.  But that causes extra drama in the household.  This is just one of the multitude of issues that have reared their head in my life.  The drama part sucks.  But the art is a blast.  Gotta just keep plugging away.  Or as our Carolina Panthers football team says, #keeppounding. 

30 Million Unemployed and Underemployed in the US

This clip is not the most entertaining, but it's really informative about today's work environment.

In this Gallup article, The Big Lie, from a year ago, it states that the real number of unemployed people and severely underemployed people, tops 30 million in the U.S..  And now there's worry that we're dropping into another recession.  This is what this blog is about.  I'm one of those 30 million people. 

How did this happen?  Here are some of the main reasons, which I will go into more detail in with future blog posts.

-Millions of American jobs have been lost to automation in recent decades, this includes everything from industrial robots to computer programs, to everyday conveniences like ATM machines.

-Millions more factory jobs have been shipped overseas to countries across the world with much lower wages and less environmental regulations.

-The massive change in personal technology, like personal computers, the internet, cell phones then smart phones, social media, etc. has changed the way we communicate.  This has changed business and the workplace at a fundamental level.

-Technology has led to a new kind of job rising to the forefront, jobs that require more tech savy, more thinking, and more creativity.  These jobs pay well, but they're not what our school system teaches people.

- Our school system was created in the late 1800's to turn farmers into factory workers.  It completely fails to prepare today's kids for the jobs that now exist and will exist in the future.

- Most civic leaders still don't really understand this.  Our country is being led by people who still have the "bring back the high-paying factory jobs" mentality.  They're fighting the wrong battle at this point.

The Human Cost of Super Bowl 50

I'm not usually a fan of Fox Sports, but this is a really good  article about how San Francisco has driven the homeless from their "homes" to present a better city image for Super Bowl 50.  On one hand, I've become a Carolina Panther fan while living here in NC.  I've been an underdog throughout my life, and have a tendency to root for the underdogs I see.  That's what the Panthers always seemed to be.  Here's why I became a Panthers fan.  Years ago I was watching a game, it was third and fifteen, Panthers ball.  They RAN IT, and converted.  Next series it was third and 17, they RAN IT, and converted.  Next series it was third and 15 again.  They ran it, and converted.  I thought, "OK, I can root for this team."  Any team who can pound away like that has my respect.  So I want the Panthers to win the Super Bowl to finish off this amazing season.

But there's another part of me that knows how ridiculous huge events like the Super Bowl are.  I heard on the news that San Jose, Santa Clara, and San Francisco are spending $50 million on this football game.  Obviously, there are a lot of other things they could spend that amount of money on.  I've lived in San Jose.  So I know that "The City," as locals call San Francisco (not "San Fran" or Frisco") is an hour's drive in traffic from the stadium in Santa Clara, which is at the very bottom of the San Francisco Bay.  It huddles into San Jose.  So 40 miles from the actual staduim, homeless people have been pushed out to God knows where at this point.  That really, REALLY sucks.  The good news is that this attack on the homeless people's daily lives has backfired on the city.  Instead of quietly moving the homeless out of sight, San Franccisco's homeless problem has been brought front and center.  Hopefully some good will come out of all of this.

Crowd Funding My Small Business

Singer/songwriter/musician Amanda Palmer went to college and then worked as a self-employed "human statue" for years while getting her music career going.  She's now one of the best known musician/entrepreneurs out there.  She has a really hardcore following of around 25,000 people.  That makes her a loser to most major record companies.  Yet she did a crowdfunding campaign to produce an album a couple years ago and raised a record $ 1 million+.  She encourages people to download and torrent her music.  Yet she's doing better than most musicians out there, and doing it on her own terms.  If you are an artist, have any kind of business (or even a non-profit), I highly recommend taking 14 minutes to listen to her TED Talk above.  It's a great insight into how to be a working artist these days.

A couple weeks ago, I started a GoFundMe campaign to raise $1,000 to get my small business going.  For the most part, I'm hitting up old friends from the BMX world, and other people in my Facebook world.  I had no idea when I started if this would actually work.  To my old friends and acquaintances, this raises a bunch of questions.  Why didn't I start a business 25 or 30 years ago like so many of my friends did?  Why don't I have a "normal" job at age 49?  Why did I suddenly decide to become an artist?  Why not go drive for Uber since I used to be a taxi driver?  Why am I broke at my age?  Why would anyone give money to a guy who used to be homeless?  Why don't I borrow money from my local friends and neighbors here in North Carolina?  I'm sure it goes on and on. 

So here are some of those answers.  I wanted to start a business 30 years ago, but I was way too shy to be a good salesman.  I've learned over the years that, like it or not, selling is a huge part of running a business.  That sounds obvious, I know.  But a lot of people, especially in creative work, work on an idea but aren't able to sell it.  Either you have to be your own salesperson, or you have to hire one.  That's why my 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend didn't turn into my own business.  I wound up teaming up with Chris Moeller, one of the best salespeople I've ever met, and producing the first couple S&M bikes videos.  The Ultimate Weekend, my 1990 personal project, sold about 500 copies in the U.S. and an unknown amount overseas.  I sold the world rights to it.  In 1993, the S&M Bikes video 44 Something went on to sell around 8,000 copies, making it one of the best-selling BMX videos of the 1990's, and possible all time.  I made a decent low-budget video, and Moeller sold the hell out of it for years.  But I wasn't able to sell on my own then.

Why am I broke and starting over at age 49?  After an injury in 1999, I left my good paying job as a lighting tech in Hollywood and became a taxi driver.  Taxi driving isn't a job, it's a small business.  We had to pay lease on our cabs every day or every week, ranging from $550 to $875 a week.  On top of that, we had to pay for gas, another $300 a week on average.  Keep in mind that the average ride was about $12, and we normally got one ride every two hours from dispatch.  If you do the numbers, they don't add up.  In the good times, a taxi driver had to really know the area and the bar and club scene, AND had to hustle like crazy.  I earned a great reputation of always paying my taxi lease, even when many other drivers were getting behind.  Then, like so many other industries, new technology entered the picture.  Taxi companies went from radio dispatching to computer dispatching.  In one day, literally, a single day, the whole business changed.  The companies put a lot more cabs on the road, and it became harder and harder to scrape by.  I gained a ton of weight working those crazy hours, and started having serious health problems.  I had to walk away because of the poor business and health issues. 

Ultimately I wound up in the small town of Kernersville, North Carolina, right when the Great Recession hit.  I couldn't find ANY job.  Here, in this highly conservative part of the country, backgrounds like mine, with a wide variety of jobs, don't play well.  By one estimate, there are about 30 MILLION unemployed and under employed people in the U.S. right now.  I'm one of those people.  I decide to take matters into my own hands and put my full effort into art and writing.  Those are both things I've made some money at in the past, and I've actually made my living writing at times.  Instead of fighting for the handful of factory jobs left or fighting everyone else for a low pay service job, I'm creating my own job.  To do that, I need some help.  This is where the crowd funding campaign comes in. 

I've learned there are different ways to use crowd funding in today's world.  One example is a guy named Cat Man, the Carolina Panthers self-proclaimed #1 fan, who gets on TV and the jumbo tron nearly every game.  But he didn't have the money to go to the Super Bowl to watch his beloved Panthers this weekend.  So he launched a GoFundMe campaign to ask for donations.  Last I heard, he raised something like $8,000 in a couple of days.  Good for him. It wouldn't be a Panthers game without Cat Man there.  He's that much a part of the scene.

I'm taking a different tack, similar to the way start-ups use Kickstarter.  I'm not asking for donations, I'm asking for orders.  For $25 I'll draw you an original picture that I usually sell for $30.  And I'll throw in a zine, too.  Why?  To jump start the business and get it going quite a bit quicker.  I've been doing a few drawings, but I need to find work on a much more consistent basis.  It's working, slowly but steadily.  I'm far from making a living at this, but I'm on my way. 

The biggest thing I've learned about crowd funding, from books, online sources, and Amanda Palmer herself, is that you need a following of some kind for this kind of fund raising to work.  My network online is limited mostly to old school BMXers, but that's where I have to start.  In this new blog, I'm working to set an example for the other 30 million unemployed/underemployed people out there as to what's possible in today's world.  Things don't work the way they did 20 or 30 years ago.  It's a whole new game, and a lot of people are having trouble adapting, myself included.  This blog is a chronicle of my journey from a former homeless man to someone able to thrive in today's world.  You're along for the ride if you keep following.