For a variety of reasons, I can't get hired for even a lame job here in North Carolina. Most people here give me the standard advice: "Tweak your resume' and keep trying." But the longtime Californian in me says, "Screw that, I'll create my own job."
Right now I'm writing and self-publishing a book about my adventures in the early days of BMX freestyle in the 80's and 90's. I stumbled into the industry, and saw a lot of really cool things happen firsthand. After some trial and error, I decided to publish my "book" myself, laid out like a big zine. It's just going to be a D-ring binder with pages I write and layout myself, and copy and put together myself. Zines (pronounced zeens) were small, photo copied, self-published booklets we made to write about our friends and ideas in the 80's and 90's. Basically, it's what bloggers did before blogs. So I had the idea to do that, just on a bigger scale. I'm writing 20 pages at a time, and using the orders I get on my Go Fund Me crowdfunding page to actually fund it. Using advance orders to fund a business is an idea I got from a book called No Cash, No Fear, which it a good read for entrepreneurs. Basically, today's crowdfunding sites are a high tech way to do that much easier.
Another way to start a business with no money at all is to provide a service and charge for that. So how am I doing? I'm finishing the first 20 page section of the book today, and I have 2 orders so far. OK, a few more orders would be better, but it's a start. I'm adding lots of goodies and giving the book a real hand-made feel, so hopefully it will do better once a few copies are out there and words gets around. I'm also promoting it with my blog on the same subject.
Here's my BMX blog, Freestyle BMX Tales, with a link to the Go Fund Me Page at the bottom.
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