Hit by a truck.

Day 3: Money Earned = $0

On Monday I decided to take a drive. I needed to find a way to begin making money, and while I had an idea I had no way to manifest it. My business plan was to sell items and services to local businesses, such as pest control, lighting, janitorial supplies, power washing, paper goods, window washing, flier distribution, etc. Essentially, I would combine none core business materials and services under one roof, go door to door, and make an attempt to sell portions of it. This idea seems good to me but it left me with some problems.

Some items I would be required to sub out due to manpower and technology related reasons. Namely, pest control and power washing. There is simply no way I could do either of those. And the others, lighting, janitorial supplies, paper products, I would have to find a way to create inventory and sell myself. The former was difficult in the short term. How could I walk into, say, a pest control company, speak to the owner, convince him of my idea, and yet have nothing to show for it. No fliers, no business cards, nothing. I certainly wouldn’t look very professional nor would I be very convincing. The upside is there would be no upfront cost to me. I’d be subbing out my sales skills to them and they, their pest control service to me.

On the flip side the janitorial and paper supplies may be easier to get from a manufacturer, but from who? Also, I have no capital to begin stockpiling an inventory.

SImply put, I needed to get subcontractors on board first, try to raise some cash, then begin taking on inventory. I needed money for business cards, fliers, a small catalog, something to show a potential sub-contractor why I rock so very much. A job was needed, something quick and temporary.

Picking up my phone, I dialed a friend of mine, Bob, who works for a sunroom and window company. In the past I had worked briefly for him on the weekends doing trade shows. Bob also ran the marketing department and it was here that I could make a quick buck. All I had to do was ask to pass out fliers, those little door hangers, promoting their product. This is an easy job to acquire and no one really cares if you quit. I’d assume turnover to be very high with most quitting about 2 1/2 hours in, throwing their fliers in a garbage can and saying something like “Fuck this shit.”

All it took was one phone call and the next morning I was waking up at the god-forsaken hour of 5 o’clock, ready to pass out fliers.

I met Bob and two others, we’ll call ‘em Jim and Bubba, at 6 am at a parking lot in East Baltimore and we headed out to Bowie, about a 75 minute drive. During the drive we counted the fliers and rubberbanded them into 100 count bundles. That way it would be easy to count how many we had distributed. We dropped off Bubba first then, by 7:41 am, I was out on the street dropping fliers. Here, I made my first mistake. Bob said I needed a backpack and at I had to scramble to find one at 5:30 in the morning. I found a Gatorade branded one in my basement but it was too small to hold the fliers. The fliers measured 5″ X 11″ so I needed to curl them up in little balls, stick them in sideways, and be off.

For the first hour I hit the houses at a quick pace. Me, being polite, walked up and down every driveway and sidewalk between houses, refusing to walk in anyone’s grass. But the the day was getting hot and all that walking was soaking my hoodie and the shirt underneath with sweat. It was an Indian summer topping around 80 degrees in October, my hoodie made it feel like 100. I was jogging nearly the whole way that first hour, with quick bursts of a run between houses. At .15 cents per flier hung I couldn’t afford to spend time walking.

When I got done my first hundred I stopped, took a drink, went in my bag, and grabbed more hangers. Jim told me to carry two-hundred so I tried, but I found that I was nearly always dropping them, concentrating on not doing so, and this made me walk slower. I quickly threw half the pile back into my bag. It was at about the 150th flier that I began to feel every imperfection in my shoes that I would magically change if I could. The ball of my right foot was brushing up against something and I was afraid it might callous and burst. The arch in my right shoe was slightly off and pushing in the wrong places. At the end of my second hundred my feet hurt like hell. It had been two hours. At about 225 door hangers I called Bob and he picked me up to take me to a different area.

My jogging had turned into a quick pace at this point. I had a Latino guy refill my water bottle with a hose, and I continued to drop fliers. Somewhere, after three hundred, my right knee started to hurt, my neck was sore from the back pack, my legs felt like Jello. I kept going, though, and, as if on some weird acid trip I noticed things that I would have noticed before.

For instance, imagine a circle street. If you start on the outside, which I did, there are more houses because the loop is longer, there are also more courts. Yet the houses face inwards to the street creating smaller yards, so it’s quicker to walk between the houses. On the inside of the circle the houses have slightly bigger yards because they face away from one another, making the walking time between them slightly greater. At .15 cents a flier every second counts. Also, at every intersection the corner lots are further away from other houses making the walking time even greater. It might take 30 seconds to get to the next house in this kind of condition which means, time spent walking, not hanging, is time you are not making money. Considering I can hang a flier in about three seconds, much quicker than earlier in the day, and it takes 15 seconds or so to walk between the houses, every second counts.

Also, the types of knobs make a huge difference in how quick you can hang a flier. These fliers are the door hanger types. Near the top they have a hole with a slit in the side, meant to hang off a knob. The easiest to hang are the storm door lever types. Sort of a horizontal handle you push down on. In this case you walk up and push the hole over the handle and it takes, after some practice, maybe 2 or 3 seconds. The second easiest type are those C shaped handles on doors, these are decorative, and because most are round you just kinda slap the hangers on. Most of the time you only need one or two tries. Most of the time I got one on in 3 -5 seconds. Lastly are the damned knobs. They are almost always a problem because you can’t slap the hanger on front the front, you need to seperate the hanger at the split and get it on sidesways and it might or might not be a two handed operation. Time it takes? Anywhere from 5 seconds to whenever you begin swearing. Also, you get your fair share of doors without handles at all due to damage to a C shaped handle or, more likely, a storm door and it won’t stay on.

By the end of the day, I walked over everyone’s grass, jumped over flower gardens, fences, bushes, garden gnomes, whatever. No one’s grass or privacy was safe. Time spent walking is time I wasn’t making money and walking down a driveway for politness sake was suddenly absurd. I was sore as hell at 12:58 when Bob picked me up. I took off my shoes while I waited for him and laid down in the grass. My shoes were wet from  the dew on the grass and had been for hours. My socks were soaked. My water was spent. My whole body felt like a car had hit it. All I did was walk for five hours and drop 467 fliers. The way I figure it, if I walked 100′ between houses, I did over 36,000 feet which is about 7 miles. I bet I walked twice that, maybe 3 times that. I have no way of knowing.

When it was all said and done, after we picked up Bubba and Jim, I had dropped 7 more fliers than Jim “The Marathon Man” and about 150 more than Bubba. Not bad. We wound up at Chick-Fil-A for lunch. I got a number 4, switch the meat, lemonade, and a brownie. I went home and took a nap.

Even though I made $15 an hour, dropping nearly an even hundred fliers per hour, time traveling cut into my pay. I left my house at 5:50 am and didn’t get back until 2:45. Nearly 9 hours. I made $71.40 which I haven’t received yet. That’s $7.93 an hour for some really physical labor. A day later I still feel like a truck hit me.

On the upside I now have enough money to make fliers and business cards. And if I can get that I can get sub-contractors. If I can get sub-contractors then I can begin to make real money.

See you in the trenches.

Tim

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