Again, you're pulling a handful of examples out of thin air as if this applies to the millions of people in America. I could probably also dig around and find the names of three people who won the lottery. It doesn't mean that I should work hard and expect to win the lottery. You are completely ignoring the odds in favor of platitudes and meaningless rhetoric. It's not going to happen.
It will never happen for you with that attitude (unless you win the lottery) Sure, those examples were on the extreme as far as income generated but there are thousands of people every year who start small business and many of them are successful enough to allow the owners to quit their regular jobs and make a comfortable living income. When I first graduated from LSU I found that the world wasn't beating down my door to offer me a high paying job (or any job at all) in my field of General Studies. At a point of near desperation when I didn't have enough money left to pay the rent I placed a classified ad in the newspaper offering to paint houses. I really didn't know much about painting other than having painted my parents house but it turned out I was pretty good a talking people into giving me the job of painting their houses. Most of the jobs I got were your standard three bedroom ranch style house and I got to where I could do a pretty good job and usually do the whole job in one to two days, depending upon the weather and the amount of preparation I had to do. It wasn't long before I was averaging about $500 a day when the weather stayed nice. Now I didn't go to college to end up painting houses but for the time I did it it was pretty lucrative. Judging by the number of trucks you see every day pulling a trailer loaded with lawn equipment it seems like everybody and his brother are in the business. Seems like it would be overcrowded but I have talked to some of those guys and they all have as much business as they are able to handle. A friend of mine's son is a student who has a part time lawn service. The kid pulls in about $4,000 a month. In the mid 90's I had a job making about $60K. I hated my job even though it was good money. I had to force myself to go every day but I did it because I had to. In my spare time I started playing around online (which was new to me and most everybody else at that time). I found a way to make a few hundred a week even with the limited amount of time I had to put into it. I ended up quitting my job and growing my business into a monthly cash flow almost as much as my job paid me yearly. So anybody who is satisfied with what they do and how much they earn by all means stick with it. If not there are always alternatives
Attitude has nothing do with it and unlike you, I have millions of examples in America as evidence. It's math, man. You can't argue math. I mean, you can argue math, but you look pretty dumb doing it because at the end of the day 1 + 1 always equals 2. No matter how much you want it to equal 1,000,000, it will always equal 2. Until you get that through your head, you're just saying words that don't mean shit...
Starting a business is easy; making it into a profitable business is another thing. As Red alluded to, for every success story there are another hundred stories of individuals who failed. In many cases their failure wasn't even a result of poor decisions they made; rather, circumstances. But when I hear people say, "Just go start a business!" I laugh. The statement demeans the smarts, grit and persistence it takes to make it in business, especially when you don't have big money backing you. I started my business from $30,000 that my wife and I saved by sacrificing many luxuries for several years. When you have to do it that way you make very careful and well-considered decisions because you understand what it took to earn every nickel. The days of an average person walking into a bank and getting a loan to start a business are over. It just doesn't happen anymore. Occasionally you will hear about a local bank doing so but forget about talking to the Wells Fargo and Bank of America's of this world. So in many ways the market has been rigged against the common man who wants to start a business and need working capital to do so. I have been fortunate that I have been able to build my business without the aid of banks and, God willing, I never will. That said, I understand with all clarity how many lucky breaks I got along the way. A situation here or there go a different direction and maybe I'm not the success story. Even now I fight against corporate giants like Ashley Furniture, Rooms to Go, Mattress Firm and Sleepy's who intentionally go after guys like me. Their pockets are much deeper than mine so many times I have to cut my profit out altogether just to stay relevant and keep the engine moving for another day. So when I hear people make flippant references to others simply starting a business, I laugh a little and then I cringe. This is foolish advice and advice that is easily doled out from those who have experienced success. Only recently my sister and brother in law cam to me with an idea for starting a new business and my advice to them was to do their homework, be sure they can put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads while they build their business and to expect it to be hard, unglamorous and sometimes downright tedious.
All true. The key is having a plan. I turned $14 spent in January of 2011 (which was on a gift card I got for Christmas) into a virtually work free business with sales near $150K. I never busted my ass to get it off the ground, or sacraficed, or had to do any of that bullshit. I just knew what I was doing, and every deal allowed for another bigger deal. Until I hit capacity. After I hit that wall it was either bring in someone else and accept radically reduced margins and a lot more work for a little more money or maintain and have some quality of life. I chose the former.
You, sir, are the embodiment of the American Dream. Unlike all the naysayers on this thread who exemplify the pussyfication of this country into a nanny state you got off your ass and acted instead of whining that the odds were against you.
Anyone watch Vice? Apparently scrapping is huge right now. Scrappers are tearing apart american cities, selling the scrap to scrap yards, and the scrapyards are selling it all to china. So basically we are tearing down what was our Industrial Age (buildings, and scrap metal in these buildings) and fueling China's industrial revolution.
Two years ago the company my brother had worked for for 30 years went out of business, leaving him unemployed. For the year it took him to get another decent job he went out looking for scrap metal every day. He has a mortgage and two kids in college and he was able to at least make ends meet by scrapping. His wife teaches elementary school so she doesn't make all that much. Scrapping is pretty competitive. There are a lot of people out there riding around in pickup trucks looking for scrap metal
