The Drive
After my success in the advertising market, I was confident to invest the money into another company. It was still during school.I decided to tackle a mainstream market -- Landscaping.
I looked around approaching the winter season and asked myself, what do people want and would pay for during the winter season? What are the difficulties citizens of Montreal face during these harsh conditions? Many instances popped into my head right away, like scraping ice off a car before work, salting the pathway, cleaning the driveway, or shoveling the pathway after a snowstorm. It clicked that people would pay for emergency snow shoveling off people's pathways. Perhaps too old to do it themselves or simply health driven.
They'd pay me 10$ a week, per house. I would hire someone and give him 50% of the profit. 5$/week each if snowed once a week, which is realistic.
Here, its common to have 1-3 snowstorms a week. One pathway takes at most 5 minutes. If you worked 3 times on a single house, you work for 15 minutes and gain 5$. That's technically 20$/hr. 2x the minimum wage, and a job that requires minimum travel (walking distance, neighborhood travel).
Genius. I set myself to work. I invested in the utilities, and advertising papers. In need of employees, I decided to do something new (and frowned upon in business) and hire my friends. I made them sign contracts, which sounded foreign to them, but its a simple act of business you must do.
I got a few customers. The idea was to hire minimum of 5 people, and that means 5 neighborhoods. Each neighborhood would have at least 10 houses as clients. Thats 50 houses. After I paid my employees, I would get 250$ cash at the end of the week. Thats for sitting on my ass and making sure everything is going smooth. 250$ is 25 hours of minimum wage. I would do at most 1 hour of work just making sure everything is going good.
Sure, if I kept at this plan, maybe by now I would be successful. But I quit after the first season for a couple reasons. One, its hard to hire employees in this field. If you want to hire a friend, it means they no longer are your friend. Don't challenge that. It's been tried, it's been failed. Everytime. Nobody is best friends with their boss. If you are, then your boss isn't doing a good job at managing.
And two, its manual labor. Fuck that. I'm more used to interacting with customers at most or sitting on my computer making money. I hated the fact of travel. Even now, I have a retail job that is 5 minutes of walking distance from my house.
We failed the winter season, getting minimal customers. I hired my friend for this house this one morning, and he did a terrible job, as pointed out by my client. I fired him on the spot. He did get a paycheck, but was hired for 5 minutes.
This trend went on for several months. I got a few customers during the winter season earning minimum wage basically, and it wasn't worth the travelling in the harsh conditions and doing manual labor for cheap cash at the end of the week compared to what I was earning last year, which was sitting on my computer earning 100$/hr.
Summer
Summer rolled along and with the stubborn entrepreneurial mindset I had, I launched myself to cut people's grass and wash cars. I printed the flyers, and got to work. Same principle as winter. The idea was just as winter, I charge 20$ for cutting grass. My employee gets 15$ and I, I get 5$. And that's per house. I saw a vision of at least 5 hours per employee, and having 5 employee in the beginning. Thats 125$ a week for sitting on my ass making sure everything is going smooth. Like I said, just like the summer. I got 3 customers. I did terrible. I did the work, and earned profit, but not nearly enough. It was at this time I said fuck it and spent a lot of my money in frustration (i.e purchasing 2 cars, blowing money generally) and got a retail job. Easy money.
Moral
Despite my success in other industries, does not mean I'm good at everything. We all have failures. I thrive from them because without setbacks we will never go further. Life is like a bow and arrow, you pull back and have set backs in life, but eventually it will release and you'll go further than you've ever imagined. The setbacks should fuel your motivation, not drain it. It should give you reason to prove others wrong, not be the reason to give up.A winner is determined not by their success, but how they get back up after their failures
