NevBlog

Neville's Digital Surrogate Brain

Curb Painting Part 2

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(See Curb Painting Part 1 if you haven’t already)….

…$15!  Checkout the screenshot of the self-checkout line I went through:

The stencils I bought were the bendable cardboard kind, which are good for when the curb you’re painting is curved.  However I wanted the inter-locking brass stencils for flat curbs.  I also wanted these because they inter-lock and stay in place, rather than having to tape each number together (see how they snap together?):

Next I tried a practice run on some more newspaper using the new materials I bought and the new brass stencils.  It came out pretty descent:

If the police, fire department or ambulance service was looking for this house at night, it’d be VERY hard to see this address label.  So next, I wanted to prove how much better a raggedy old curb address looks when painted over. I purposely used a smaller border to show this was the same curb, just painted over it for dramatic effect:

Look at the difference!  You can still see the original outline I left as a comparison.  THIS is why people will buy this service.  Over the years I’ve also refined some secret tricks I use to sell more.  I’ve also learned what NOT to do that will leave you struggling to find jobs.

To see the video I made about this (and where I pretty much hold someone’s hand step-by-step to show them how to do this), enter your name and email below:

Painting Address Numbers on Curbs

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I’ve seen people do this all day, charge up to $40 per painting and do whole neighborhoods:
Re-painting the address numbers on curbs of houses.

I always thought this was a cool and easy way to make some extra money. So in some spare time this week I bought some plastic stencils (About $8) and some black/white outdoor spray paint (About $10) and decided to see how hard it could be.

I took the materials outside and gave it a rough shot on some newspaper:

It was a little messy, and I had to end up cutting the stencils apart, but my first painting came out alright. Not perfect, but alright.

I then started using tape to seal any loose areas of the stencils together, and I successfully made a semi-neat spray of the numbers. This isn’t hard stuff, but it takes a little trial and error testing.

I’ve seen lots of neighborhoods around Austin where I couldn’t find a house because of the lack of address numbers, think of what would happen if a police car or ambulance couldn’t find your house number.

Perhaps in the next few weeks I’ll give this a shot. I tried it out on some old curbage at my apartment complex, and it turned out decent….very rough….but nothing a little practice won’t clean up.

This would be an awesome way to make a good $100+ a day for a couple of high school kids or Boy Scouts. Actually, anyone could setup this little curb painting business for themselves and make a quick income!  It involves an easy service you can sell door-to-door that people will gladly pay for.

It seems everyone nowadays is talking about “Making money doing nothing” …..which is great….but making money from good old manual labor is sometimes very rewarding!

My first tries of the curb painting were a little rough, and I wanted to actually DO this door-to-door, so I bought new materials and made my own custom curb border out of cardboard I had laying around the house.  I was surprised how cheap everything was!  Altogether my total at Home Depot came out to less than……

GO TO PART 2 –> of the experiment (I did a much better job on my second tries)!

Using a Flask

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I am really cheap, and hate spending money. However, I also like to go out and have lots of fun, which generally costs $$$.

After I turned 21, I realized the sheer amount of money people waste at bars. Here in Austin, TX. we have a thriving Downtown nightlife, consisting of several streets of busy clubs and bars…needless to say there are tons of places to throw away your money.

From about 9pm till 2am, the main product being sold all over Downtown is alcohol. Clubs/bars make almost all their money from alcohol, restaurants make much of their money from alcohol and even cruise boats make much of their money from drink sales. It’s actually pretty ridiculous how much money is made from alcohol sales.

To combat these high prices (and allow me to be extremely cheap), I will sometime bring a flask out with me. This thing cost me $20, fits perfectly in my back pocket and holds roughly 5 oz. of liquor.

What I can’t stand about drinks are their extremely high margins. Liquor is ridiculously marked up almost everywhere. Another thing I begrudgingly have to do every time is tip. If someone simply opens a bottle of beer for me, does that warrant even a $1 tip?? I tip, but don’t like it. After a tip, an already expensive drink becomes even more expensive.

If I know I’m going out, but don’t want to spend a lot of money, I’ll fill the flask with a liquor of choice, for example, rum. This way I can ask the bartender for JUST a Coke with ice. I’d say about 70% of the time they’ll give it to me free. I can then secretly mix in some rum, and have a Rum & Coke.

Ghetto? You bet!

The most I’ve ever spent on a single drink was at an upscale club in Miami – $17 for a Vodka & Red Bull. Imaging my surprise when I pulled out a $10 bill to pay, but was quoted $17….and then I had to tip $3!! TWENTY DOLLARS for a small drink in a plastic cup filled mostly with ice!! OUTRAGEOUS. I can buy 20 Double Cheeseburgers from McDonalds for that money.

Another thing I do when going out is use CASH ONLY. I NNEEEVVERRR charge drinks to a card. This way you can SEE how much money you are throwing away, and I can control my spending much better this way. A $20 bill can generally cover an entire night (Generally which I end up spending mostly on Pizza :-) and leave me with some money the next day.

Outsourcing Lesson & Examples

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Outsourcing has been a thing big companies have been using for years, the main reason to slash costs of manual and intellectual labor. However, there is probably even more benefit to outsourcing for smaller companies, yet a lot of people have no clue how to utilize it.

I’ve outsourced projects before, but thanks to a mentor of mine, I’ve been exposed to several projects and shown the CORRECT way to do it.

There are three major tips I’d give:

1.) Be specific as possible.

2.) Include non-lengthy descriptions.
Make sure you write where everything should go, how it should work and what it should look like.

3.) Use visual aids.
Photoshop will be your best friend in making a design project go smoothly. If you already know what you want, the best thing to do is make a Photoshop representation of it, then the programmer will do their thing and make it work. These are especially important if you’re using an offshore programming team, as subtle language differences sometimes spoil directions.

4.) Always bargain.
Outside the United States, especially in less developed countries, bargaining is a typical part of buying stuff. Programmers will often quote you way too high, so you just have to bargain down the price. If you stink at bargaining, go to RentACoder.com and set your own project price.

I’ve learned if you don’t a put a lot of effort into planning the project, it will come out terrible, take a long time and cost a lot of money.

If you spend a lot of time initially spec’ing out the project, it will go extremely quick, come out great and cost less since the programmers know exactly what to do.

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TWO OUTSOURCING EXAMPLES:

1.) This is a spec sheet I made recently for my online business House Of Rave. It outlines for a Shopsite programmer what I want done using visual aids and short descriptions in an outlined form. This way if there’s a problem, I can say “Section 1.c has not been done yet.”

You can view a snapshot of the Word document below:

2.) This spec sheet is from my recent FacebookProfile project I did a few weeks ago. I knew EXACTLY how I wanted it to look, so I created a visual representation of the site using Photoshop and then marked up specific sections and functionalities.

I didn’t already know any WordPress designers, so I posted this project on RentACoder for $220. A few hours later I selected the highest rated programmer to respond and the project was done in no time.

What was great about this project was the very little communication involved, as I had already so specifically stated what I wanted. Generally there is a lot of discussion back and forth between customer and programmer if it’s not clear what is wanted.

You can view a snapshot of the Word document used for the FacebookProfile.com specs:

Medium to large projects get much harder, and the important part is staying on top of the project and documenting progress.

FINDING A PROGRAMMER:
If you’ve got a project, first spec it out so you know exactly what you want. Then go to any of the following sources to find someone to do it:
1.) RentACoder.com – You can set your own price here, view other projects by the bidders and read their feedback. Basically an Ebay for any sort of project. Also try eLance.com.
2.) Craigslist.org – Simply post your project in your local city (or better yet, a big city like San Francisco or NYC) in the Gigs –> Computer section. You’ll be surprised at how many responses you can get locally and from abroad.
3.) Forums – If you’ve got a very specific project you’re working on, go to some popular forums about that subject/software/hobby and post the job.

FacebookProfile Stats, Entpr Year, New Apt

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The condo I was living in with two rommates was sold, and we have now moved to a college-based community of apartments like I used to live in. These apartments are great because everyone living there is a student of some sort, they have lots of great amenities, and best of all individual leases. This means if you have four people living in an apartment, and three of them move out, the last person is not stuck paying the full rent….just their share. This way I can be very flexible about my living arrangements.

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I recently followed an idea for starting a Facebook based site which offers Facebook Tricks etc, and it’s coming along nicely. I’ve been getting some decent traffic, up to 350 unique visitors a day and growing.

Right now the site is making less than $1 a day from the one Google Ads, but it’s not even been online for two weeks….so I’m not worried yet. A problem with Google Ads is they base the ads on page content….mostly Facebook talk. Needless to say the pay per click rates are low, even though I’m getting a lot of clicks.

It’s sometimes getting above 1,000 impressions a day, so I’ll start looking for other ad systems that pay higher rates for page impressions. Here are the stats from the last few days:

This is actually turning out to be a fun little project!

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Thanks to “Bob”, I was tipped off about the Austin Entrepreneur of the Year awards last week, and I attended the event with Kunal of Grade-A-Books. It was one of the better events I’ve been to, with a great pre-event, event, and after-party. Then later out to Downtown!

This picture is a good sum-up of the night!

Getting Things Done

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I’ve being doing enough work to get by.
I have NOT been doing enough work to set myself above the rest.

Quite frankly,

This has to stop right here, right now.

Facebook Profile Website

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I’ve tried the advertising-only website before with FancyBlog.com, but the income wasn’t worth the effort and interest waned and invariably so did the site. I see more potential on this new advertising-only site, and hopefully it can become pretty big if I play my cards right.

The new site is called FacebookProfile.com, which is a Facebook tips/tricks/fan site.
Facebook is a social networking site with massive popularity amongst the college population. It’s clean, fast and constantly adding new features. Noah from OkDork works at Facebook and is always ranting about “How awsome my job is” and “How cool it is to work at Facebook” all the time.

I didn’t want the site to look like a blog, but I love the functionality of blogs. So to make posting easier, I used WordPress, but created a custom design theme that imitates the Facebook design:

FACEBOOK SCREENSHOT:
FACEBOOKPROFILE.COM SCREENSHOT:

This way when people stumble upon the page via search engine or link, they know for sure it’s a Facebook-related website…without even reading a word. Since search engine traffic is already rising quickly (even after only a few days of being online), this is important.

To create the site I:

  1. Installed a regular WordPress system on the FacebookProfile.com domain.
  2. I literally took a screenshot of my actual Facebook profile from the internet, then Photoshopped it to include the WordPress blogging elements (Pages, Categories, RSS Feed etc.)
  3. Started writing a few posts just to keep some content on the site for the programmer.
  4. I then found a WordPress designer through RentACoder who could retool the website to look like my Photoshopped rendition of the webpage. This cost me $220. I probably could have got this done cheaper, but I paid more to get someone who could do the project quickly, had a high ranking on past projects and prior experience with WordPress.

The idea for this project came randomly while I was searching for domain names for a different project. I also remember reading about a whole cottage industry that revolves around MySpace custom templates, images, text and media add-ons….and thought Facebook might eventually move somewhat in this direction.

I’m still working on bugs, such as how to prevent WordPress from auto-formatting my Facebook ASCII Art text….but those are just small hurdles. The site has already been getting 50-100 unique hits a day, which is not bad for a non-advertised site which has been up for 7 days.

So FacebookProfile.com has officially been launched….not much content as of yet, but more to come!

Past Weekend Update

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New account balances are as follows:

General Account – $ 1,357
Spending Account – $ 77
Spending Account 2 – $ 403
Investment Account – $ 2,523
Bill Account – $ 981
Permanent Savings – $ 5,549
Charity Account – $ 338
Stock Portfolio Value – $ 11,323
Roth IRA – $ 6,574
Emigrant Direct – $ 1,007
Total Liquid Assets – $ 30,132

Credit Card Balance – $ 0
Business Holding – $ 5,309
Total On Hand – $ 35,441

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My first stock sale in a while occurred on Friday. I had a $23 limit order set for Syntel (SYNT), and made a profit of $681. I’m in the process of restructuring my portfolio, so I will start buying around October which is generally not a very hot month for the stock market.

I’ve accumulated $5,549 in my permanent savings account which is earning a very small amount of interest (less than 1%). I need to put some of this money back to work in low-risk areas.

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I found the popular marketing blog Brand Autopsy pretty interesting, and recently asked the fellow Austinite John Moore to coffee. We met up and had a great conversation. After spending years in the marketing departments of Starbucks and Whole Foods, he really knows his stuff.

John Moore of Brand Autopsy

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My income for April was pretty slim. Several stock shortages forced me to cancel several orders, leaving House of Rave profit at only $1,080 for the month. Ouch! I’m looking to correct that discrepancy this month.

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This past week I had the opportunity to attend a huge event held in Austin. CEO’s and politicians were in abundance, but my favorites were Michael Dell, Steve Ballmer and Colin Powell. Unlike the speeches I usually attend which have mostly students present, the subject matter was much different. The resounding theme of this conference was: Making the world a better place through the use of technology.

I’ve never seen Michael Dell do a solo speech, but he was actually really good and pretty funny too. The day before his speech I got to speak with Mr. Dell one-on-one for about 3 minutes which was rather fun!

One of the distinguished guests at the conference was Dato Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the Prime Minister of Malaysia. I’m not sure how to pronounce his name, but I managed to get two photos with him during a press conference! Much to my surprise, he actually looked a bit like the Prime Minister of Malaysia from the movie Zoolander!


He had so much security around him that I didn’t dare approach him for a picture without permission. Instead I asked his head press secretary to take these pictures for me.

I was really excited to see Steve Ballmer speak. He didn’t act like this, but he was still fun to hear. Once again, the speech was about improving the world through the use of technology, so it was mainly a speech about what Microsoft has done to help. I was already in the very front row, but I really wanted to snag a picture with him….no luck though:

My FAVORITE speaker through this entire event was by far Colin Powell. I thought a staunch, former Secretary of State would be speaking….instead the guy was an absolute comedian!! He had the whole place in laughter most of the time, all while peppering his speech with serious points. He’s 69 years old and has been doing this for years, and you could easily tell. I truly enjoyed the time he spent speaking. His speech was incredibly natural, he never used the teleprompter or stood at the podium and it seemed he honestly enjoyed being up on the stage doing his speech.

Michael Dell Speech at University of Texas Austin

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This Tuesday Michael Dell gave a speech at the University of Texas which I attended.

I had met Michael Dell before, and from what I understand, he doesn’t particularly like public speaking. The “speech” was actually a moderated conference with a UT professor, then was opened up for Q&A.

The moderated part was not as engaging as I had hoped, because the large audience was simply watching two people talk to each other. I had more hope for the Question & Answer session, but it turned out to be rather disappointing, not from Michael Dell’s responses, but the quality of the questions being asked.

Some of the interesting points I picked up from the event were:

  • “Try not to be the smartest person in the room. If you are, find another room.”
  • He wakes up at 6am every morning and works out (A very common theme I’m seeing).
  • He did not use investors to grow Dell. I started clapping when he said this.
  • Said managed services may be Dell’s next big thing. For example: If Boeing doesn’t want to do all their own printing, IT support etc…Dell will take care of it all.
  • The way you order pretty much anything in China is: 1.) You place an order online or on the phone. 2.) You receive two numbers, an order confirmation number and a Bank of China transaction number. 3.) You take your money (Often literally a sack of money) to the Bank of China, and they transfer it to Dell.

I generally go after speeches and try to talk to the person and get a picture, but he literally DARTED out of the place when the event was finished. Oh well, I still have my previous Michael Dell Picture!

Karen Katz – Neiman Marcus and Randal Pinkett

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Last Thursday was a very busy day, but I had the opportunity to see two very interesting people. I got to attend a speech given by Karen Katz, the current CEO of Neiman Marcus. I haven’t seen many women CEO’s speak, so it was nice to hear….however I don’t recall her once mentioning or complaining about being a woman in the business world, and she’s done great.

She started working at Neimans in 1985 then worked her way up to CEO in 2000. She’s a UT alum and then went to graduate school at Harvard. During her speech you could tell she knew everything about retail from the ground up.

Some things I found the most interesting about the speech:

  • When she first applied with Neimans, she did not get the job.
  • The web-based store at NeimanMarcus.com does $600+ million in sales a year! (I love how NeimanMarcus, Nordstroms and other large retailers setup their websites…I want to find out what they use and copy them).
  • Her favorite brand is Target….says she spends massive amounts of money at Target (Interesting….)
  • “A brand is not saying what it is, it’s what the customer THINKS it is.”
  • Average Neimans shopper has a household income of $200,000+
  • “Selling is a skill to master. You will ALWAYS be selling no matter what you do.“

It turned out to be a good speech, and I got a picture with her afterwards:

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The same day, I attended the Austin Big Idea event which helps people start and grow small businesses. The main headliners were Gary Hoover (who I met the day before) and Dr. Randal Pinkett, the Donald Trump-selected Apprentice.

Dr. Randal is actually a really amazing person (and basketball-player-tall). He’s a Rhodes Scholar, graduated with five degrees, owns a multi-million dollar company, and was selected as The Apprentice.

He gave a speech talking about the importance of small businesses, and his experience starting one himself. One main point he drove home was to create a lasting entity….A company that can sustain itself if the founder was suddenly taken away. He got lots of reaction out of the audience, and he actually turned out to be a GREAT speaker!

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Action Plan after the speeches:

1.) Research what NeimanMarcus, Nordstroms, Macy’s use for their online web stores. They all look very similar and have super-simple shopping carts. I like.

2.) Begin process of making small businesses much larger, and delegate some of the work.