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One Minute Odd Job Tip

As I start this newsletter, I’m hit with the challenge of how to start.

The one thing that I’ve learned about any worthwhile endeavor is that sometimes you just have to start where you are, and refine and improve on the fly.

That’s the Tip: if you have an idea that you want to start, just start where you are. The only day that’s better to start a business than today is yesterday or the day before, or the day before…. so be patient, it’s a work in progress and we hope to provide value for the time you spend reading what we put together. In advance, thank you for giving us a few minutes of your time in reading the Odd Job Tips Newsletter

>>> NEXT WEEK: We will talk a little bit about the different categories people derive income, based on where their money comes from—Employee, Self-employed, Business owner, or Investor.

Strictly Business:

Since this is the first edition of the Odd Job Tips Newsletter, I’ll address a little bit of who I am and why I have an interest in this subject.

I grew up in the Midwest on a dairy farm. From an early age, I was always interested in having my own business. When I was a kid, our local barber raised a small patch of popcorn and sold it in his shop. I happened to get my hair cut in about January (I was 12 years old) and mentioned to Bob (his name was Bob. I think Bob is a great name for a barber!) that he must be getting ready to grow his popcorn. He said, “Oh, I have too much to do, I can’t do that anymore.”

I remember sitting in that barber chair for the rest of that hair cut with this great feeling of “There’s OPPORTUNITY here! I need to take advantage of it!”

So I asked him if I could grow popcorn and sell it. He thought that was a great idea, since he had a customer base who looked forward to buying his popcorn. Bob was a great mentor. He told me what variety of seed to buy and walked me through what to do. By fall I had my first 1 pound bags of popcorn that Bob put in his shop to sell. It was a great experience!

When I started that little enterprise, I really didn’t know the details about how to do it, but I jumped in — yes, ignorance is a little blissful. As I encountered a problem or challenge, I just addressed it as it came. It all worked out pretty well. As I’ve taken on new opportunities, I’ve learned that that’s the way with most new endeavors.

Short Bio — Over the years I (and then together with my wife) have done all kinds of things to support ourselves. When I was 15, I contracted shingling roofs. I rode my bike to the jobs after having the shingle supplier deliver the shingles to the job site. Later, I was a flooring contractor in the Lake Tahoe area. My wife and I had a natural beef and chicken business where we produced our own natural meat and sold it to our own customer base at the Minneapolis Farmers Market. We started one of the first bio-hazard remediation businesses.

We lived in Europe for about 8 years and taught English as a second language there. We have also been the marketing arm for a mortgage loss mitigation business. We’ll stop there. This really just scratches the surface of the income sources we’ve had. As we develop this newsletter, we’ll tap into these experiences and share what we’ve learned — good and bad. It should be an interesting, and I think humbling too, since not all enterprises have been glorious successes.

Some Odd Jobs You May Never Have Considered:

Number 1: This is a “We Did This” Job — User Testing, usertesting.com. This is a small gig job that I’ve done in the past. In short, you get short jobs to test the usability, functionality, and how you react to websites. The jobs take about 15 minutes and you make $10. Once you sign up and are approved, you’ll log into the platform and as jobs come through you accept them and do the job immediately. At times there are moderated tests that are scheduled in advance - they take a longer time and of course, you’re be paid more. They pay by Paypal. If you Google “Usertesting” you’ll find other opportunities like this. I tried a couple of them with limited success. It’s a good little side gig that you can work in your down time (in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep, for example). However, it’s nothing to count on. In my experience, sometimes there are a lot of jobs available and at other times it’s very slow.

Number 2: You can make a side business out of renting out some of your free space. You can rent out your living room for meetings or gatherings, and your backyard for a small party or some other kind of get-together. Or, how about this: Rent out a space in your house for people to store things - kinda like, your own mini-storage!

It really doesn’t matter how big or small your space is. It just matters how it fits into your life and how creative you’re willing to get to make it useful to a person who needs to rent some space for an hour or the entire day or whatever. Remember the old axiom, “Find a need and fill it.” That really applies with this idea.

There’s even a platform available now for a person to make this happen. It’s called Neighbor. We don’t have first hand experience with Neighbor, but, if you have some free space available, it may be a great way to turn it into a stream of income.

Number 3: If you (or at least part of you) likes being in front of the camera, this may be a perfect fit for you! Be a body part model, this is where your hands, legs, arms, and even ears might get their moment of fame in the spotlight. (I think, for a while, George Costanza was a hand model on Seinfeld.)

Number 4: There is no doubt that farming is a challenging way to make a living. Here is a new approach that seems to be working for one brave entrepreneur. Rent the Chicken was started by Phil and Jenn Tompkins of Freeport, PA.

Their goal is to provide a food source closer to their customers’ tables. This concept is sometimes called farm-to-table, and it was what we were doing when we had our natural beef and chicken business. Take a look at their website. Maybe it will spark some ideas for you.

Number 5: This is another “We Did this” Job — Take DNA Samples at prisons. It was interesting, to say the least, to go to a prison and swab the inside of the mouth of an inmate. I don’t remember how much I made doing it, but it was worth the time. You will have to search around for companies that you can get on with to do this, but basically they send you some FedEx envelopes with all the PPI and the equipment needed to take the sample. You then schedule with the local prison a time to go in and take the sample. When you arrive you go through the procedure to check in at the prison, and a guard will walk you down to a private room where you will ask some questions of the inmate, then swab the cheek and put the swab in a special sample bottle (provided). Then you get walked back to “Safety” and drop the sample in the FedEx box. Not too difficult and . . . interesting!

This Weeks Quotes:

• “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

  ― Oscar Wilde

• “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”

  ― Albert Einstein

• “You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”

  ― Dr. Seuss

• "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now." - Chinese Proverb

Some Random thoughts: As I finish up this first edition of our newsletter, my mind is flooded with ideas of future content - and at the same time, frustrated with wanting this to be better than it is. It will evolve, I know that. Right now what’s important is that it is started!

This is probably the strongest message that we have for anyone reading this now: Don’t wait, any action is better than inaction! You can refine as you go. That’s the way all businesses work.

Also, I know I’ve focused mostly on your own business in this issue. In fuure issues, we’ll be adding more content focused on remote jobs, and also jobs to travel to such as opportunities for Workampers.

A Book for Success — One of my all time favorite books for success in business is Setting the Table by Danny Meyer. Danny is a restaurateur in New York City — one of, if not the toughest, restaurant market in the world.

As of the writing of the book, he never had a restaurant failure, pretty incredible! I think I heard recently that he has closed at least one of his restaurants. The book is about so much more than the restaurant business though, it is about serving people in the best way, and then as a by-product, making a good living doing it.

A main focus of the book is about taking a potentially bad situation and not just correcting it, but actually making it an exceptional positive experience. I suggest reading Chapter 10 “The Road to Success is Paved with Mistakes Well Handled”, then go back to the beginning and read the whole book.

Some Snarfy Jokes:

1. There’s a fine line between a numerator and a denominator. (Only a fraction of people will get this joke.)

2. What do dentists call their x-rays?

Tooth pics!

3. Did you hear about the first restaurant to open on the moon?

It had great food, but no atmosphere.

4. What did one ocean say to the other ocean?

Nothing, it just waved.

5. Do you want to hear a construction joke?

Sorry, I’m still working on it.

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