The Side Hustle Thread (split from Bees with AZD)

Quote: Fleastiff

They met, dinner, drinks and the sack. When she woke up the next morning he asked her if she would like to come sailing around the world with him. She said yes. And now they have a multimillion dollar yacht, considerable electronic posessions, a library of recorded songs and haven't worked a day in their lives ever since meeting each other.

Just as an aside to how multimillionaire yachties live: there is never a need for much clothing. A recent video featured her gathering up about a dozen of the bras she had recently worn, dumping them on the shower floor, adding a few squirts of goop from a plastic squeeze bottle and turning on the shower for a few minutes. Bras all washed. Warm tropical sun dries them very quickly. Its a matter of lifestyle choices. If you like sun, sand, surf, sailing, fishing, diving then you just don't bother investing much time and energy in doing a laundry. Millionaires after almost eight years of sailing around the world together and never working. What a life.

Don't think they achieved this feat as experts. He had sailed for half a year before someone told him his sails were on backwards. They did one video where they were doing 22 knots and had no vests or harnesses or lifelines on at all. Often the videos show him with hands near dangerous equipment and eyes looking into the camera rather than on nearby winches. But it sure beats working for a living.

Note: At 22 knots, if he had gone overboard without a vest and without a lifeline the yacht would have sailed on so far that the girl would have lost sight of him and even if able to turn around and conduct a search would hardly be able to identify the search area with any degree of precision. And even that presupposes she witnessed him go overboard. Likely not to have heard any shouting in high winds at the time.

THOUGHTS ON 10 YEARS OF CASINO PARTY DEALING.

Player: How do you get out of this casino?
Dealer: Lady, I have been trying to figure that out myself for years now!


This month is 10 years of my casino-party dealing side-hustle. Time for some reflection.

Thanks you, Wiz, for having the sites that tremendously helped me fine-tune my learning. It has helped more than you know. I owe you a beer next time I hit Vegas.

Actually it is more than 10 years if you include the false-start in AZ. Our company had a casino theme for a Christmas Party. These parties were huge, 1,000+ people. So I sat at a game and the dealer was A-W-F-U-L. Nice kid, but no training. I had only played at a casino maybe once and I knew he was doing awful. Went to another table, the girl was better. I file the memory.

So months later I am broke. I see the ad on craigslist, needing dealers. I figure that awful kid ain't any dumber than I am, so if he can do it, I can. We get some actual training, a rare thing I later learn. I work one night and can never fit another in my weird work schedule.

I move back east, in with my folks. I am *really* broke now. So instead of waiting for an ad, I hunt down a company doing the parties. I ask if then need anyone. "Hell yeah, what are you doing night after tomorrow?" Work my first gig. The $75 feels like a thousand!

I hound them for work, but takes some time to be on the A-Team. I get there. I find a second client! Eventually I even get asked to work for a third a few times a year. Things have ebbed and flowed, but boy what you learn!

---The money helps and adds up. People can laugh at me, but I will tell them that doing this is the difference between me having my house or still being in major CC debt.

---We are supposed to wear a cumberbund, but I switched to a vest as the former looks stupid with no jacket and no good for a guy with any kind of gut. One pit-boss at first got on me, but as an A-Teamer there was little he could do. Now HE wears one! But everyone likes the pattern on mine best.

---Somehow I still have the same tux shirt. If you figure out what part of my costs it is, I still have an ROI that I got back 1-2,000 times my investment there!

---I've had near fistfights at my table, players almost starting a fight with me over the rules, drunks passed out, and all kinds of things. "Real" dealers are free to say I do not know "what the real thing is like" but they cannot say I am a total newbie, either.

---Work craps alone with some of these clients and there is not a casino on earth you will not hold your own as a dealer on a full crew with back-up. Heck, work some of these groups and you can handle being on a street-craps crew!

---At the casino, I now spot weak dealers like lions spot weak antelope. I don't take advantage, but you key-in on it naturally.

---Been around more than a few local celebs and some amazing places. After some time you really don't care much there. How hard the night is to work becomes all that is important.

---I do not get how a dealer can end up a problem gambler. At all.

---The "side hustle" thing is intoxicating. By this time next year, all my "side income" will be about 1/3 of my desired income. It will also be "subsistence level." I think back 18-20 years when there was no way I could walk away from a job I despised as I would starve. Now I do not worry quite so much.

Next report in 2028!

There was a study eons ago in California based on volunteers going into asylums as 'ringers'. The coordinating grad student went on to write "Learned Helplessness" and later "Learned Resilance". I think many gamblers have learned how to land on their feet. Reading craig's list, calling a company, keeping alert, already having some gear that you had acquired, all these things were springboards to your being able to pen your retrospective post.

People calling themselves Amazon nomads travel from state to state shopping at big box stores for items they can sell at a profit on Amazon

Quote:

Though nomadism offers competitive advantages, most of the merchants I spoke with cited more personal reasons for their professions.
“I love living on wheels,” says Rose Pile, who travels in an RV with her husband and four sons. “If you don’t like your neighbors, if you don’t like your location, you just move.”

“The best part is just seeing the country,” says Jamison Philippi, who recently spent nine months on the road clearing out closing Toys R Us stores. In 2014, he was sleeping on a yoga mat on a friend’s floor in Nashville and struggling to find work. He never took vacations growing up and always wanted to travel. Amazon selling seemed like a solution to both problems. In the last three years, he estimates he’s shopped in 45 states.

“Freedom,” Jason Wyatt quickly answers when I ask him why he decided to quit his job as an aviation electronics technician, sell his house in Georgia, and buy an RV. “Janis Joplin once said — though I believe it was actually Kris Kristofferson’s song — ‘freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.’

Quote: rxwine

People calling themselves Amazon nomads travel from state to state shopping at big box stores for items they can sell at a profit on Amazon

I know a couple that does it for eBay. It's amazing how it is possible, but it is. They stay local, over a couple hundred mile radius. One store chain they hit.

Quote: AZDuffman

I know a couple that does it for eBay. It's amazing how it is possible, but it is. t.

A lot of work for not much money, that's
how. If you took all the time involved,
all of it, I guarantee they aren't even
making minimum wage. That's because
when you work at home it doesn't
feel like work. I busted my ass 7 days a
week selling on Ebay, 100 hours a
week at least. But it didn't feel like
work.

Quote: Evenbob

A lot of work for not much money, that's
how. If you took all the time involved,
all of it, I guarantee they aren't even
making minimum wage. That's because
when you work at home it doesn't
feel like work. I busted my ass 7 days a
week selling on Ebay, 100 hours a
week at least. But it didn't feel like
work.

They do well. They will take all day hitting stores in this one local chain. Or when they have a dealing gig (they do the same dealing gig as me) they will stop along the way. They clean these places out. The have this phone app that rings like an old cash register when they make a sale. It always goes off several times on a trip when we carpool. They sell easy six figures a year.

Once she found some size 20 or so sneakers, cheap. Sold them for $150 or so. Not her usual line but easy cash. They have a niche that works.

Quote: AZDuffman

They do well..

So did I. 100 hours a week. I knew
people who did what you're people
are doing. For every home run there
are lots of foul balls. You just go go
go all the time, like a shark. If you
stop you die. I knew a couple
that made a living dumpster diving.
Their fave was Hallmark dumpsters.
They are always throwing away new
merch that isn't selling. All kinds
of stuff; cards, Xmas ornaments,
small toys. Ebay fodder.

Quote: Evenbob

So did I. 100 hours a week. I knew
people who did what you're people
are doing. For every home run there
are lots of foul balls. You just go go
go all the time, like a shark. If you
stop you die. I knew a couple
that made a living dumpster diving.
Their fave was Hallmark dumpsters.
They are always throwing away new
merch that isn't selling. All kinds
of stuff; cards, Xmas ornaments,
small toys. Ebay fodder.

They just have 1-2 items in various sizes. Currently they are moving to FL and looking for a new supplier.