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What is the best thing to do? Is Craigslist still a good hustle? Is the storage auction business still a good hustle? Is eBay? Is Amazon? What should I do? Out of all of these things, what’s the best one? These are the questions I hear all the time.
There’s someone making a shitload of money doing all those things. It’s not the hustle, it’s the person behind the hustle that makes all the difference. You’ve got to wrap your head around your abilities and stop looking at what other people are doing.
When I got in the storage auction business, it was commonly believed that storage auctions were not the way to make a full-time living. A guy told me. “You seem to be doing pretty good there with those units, but don’t make this a full-time living thing because it will break your heart.” I said, “Thank you.” Then I went on to make it a full-time living.
The thing is if there are many people doing what you’re doing and they’re saying it’s hard and I can’t make enough money or I don’t have enough sales, I guarantee you if you look up under the skirt you’ll see some panties with holes in them. The infrastructure is too small. They don’t really buy the proper items. There are so many variables that go into why seller A is making money and seller B is losing his shirt. It goes back to experience, expectations and a belief in self.
I mean I was making more money per week on eBay than some people are making today per month busting their asses. If you are pushing your business, you will realize that at some point what you’re doing isn’t going to get you where you need to be. At that point, you’re either going to quit or you’re going to start implementing policies and procedures that will move you toward your desired destination.
I’ve only seen a handful of people really figure out that Amazon and eBay is not their business. I’ve seen so many people flip flop on this thing, and I’ve been consistent since I’ve been on YouTube. I went through it.
The real deal is you make your hustle shine. It’s up to you. I don’t care what it is. I have people in the writing community who think I am nuts because I am working on creating my own publishing empire that is beyond Amazon. People say, you know, they get great distribution. Which is true, if they know you’re there. If you’re not well known and you don’t have a following, being on all those sites is going to diffuse your success.
I know someone who is a writer who is doing very well and the only place they have their books is Kindle. They don’t have them anywhere else. But, this person listened to me. This person went to work and put out 25 books in the last two years. Now, every month the checks just come in because she built something.
One of the mistakes people make is going into something with no skin in the game Everybody tries to do this stuff with the least amount of money possible in case things go wrong. On the surface, it’s very smart. On the experience level, it’s very stupid, because you’re not going to get that experience. You can put your big toe in the water all day long testing the temperature, whereas the person who goes off the diving board and jumps in, they find out the real deal very quickly. They can make better decisions than you can.
I don’t understand why so many people want to follow someone else versus charting their own path. I think part of the problem starts with the education system which prepares you to work for someone instead of working for yourself. There are two phases where you get screwed. The first phase is when people tell children, “You can be anything you want to be. Dream large.” That goes on from kindergarten until about the sixth grade.
From the seventh to twelfth grade, things change drastically. You are told, “You’ve got to get a real job. You can’t be anything you want. You’ve got to be realistic.” Then you go to college and it gets worse. Sure, paying $80,000 for this philosophy degree is a good path.
The difference between a hustle and a business is that a business is something that makes money when you sleep and that you can sell later on because it is above and beyond you. If you have to go in and stoke the fires every day and you make no money when you go on vacation, then you have a hustle.
As long as you continue depend heavily on third party websites, you’re going to delay temporarily or permanently learning how to start your business from scratch. It’s hard. It’s very hard. I think it’s a worthwhile pursuit, because the skillsets you’re going to learn are going to be so valuable in so many areas of your life, it’s going to be ridiculous. So many people put if off.
Starting a business forces you to talk to people beyond your circle. It forces you to grow up. It forces you to get confidence. It forces you to become a person who can communicate with many different people wherever they are.
This country has a robust infrastructure for entrepreneurship. There is no other place like this in the world. You can turn this video off today and begin working on a business that will support you and your family in a year’s time. There are very few places in the world where you can do that. It’s something people take for granted.
This new system is fucking everybody including white males that had it great for a while. You need to have the ability to produce income without a job. It’s a skill you’re going to have to acquire.
When I look back on where I’ve been, I had marketable skills coming out of the military. A constant thought that plagued me was I remember always thinking I could do more. When I was told to stay in a job and work my way up the ladder, I thought, “Fuck that ladder. I don’t want to work my way up the ladder. I want to build a spaceship and build my own fucking galaxy.”
That’s where my mindset was. It creates problems. When you’re dealing with someone who lives a fear based life, you scare the shit out of them with talk like that. They think that’s crazy talk. People who live in fear always think about all the bad things that can happen if they try something new instead of all the good things that could happen if they win. Entrepreneurs scare the shit out of people.
Having a business saved my ass. By having a business, I had a place to go that was mine that I was able to control with a level of authority that you will not get anywhere else. I could bring people in or kick them out of my business with ease. I’m beginning to understand why people build compounds.
Having that pride of ownership and accomplishment that comes with owning a business is something everyone should experience.
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