THE

GETBULLISH.COM
GUIDE TO

I N K I N G
TH
MO R E
T I V E L Y
PRO D U C
AB O U T
MO N E Y

An E-book for Feminists

and Justice-Minded People Who Are
Tired of Being Broke
Table of Contents
This guide has been curated from articles written by Jennifer
Dziura and originally published on TheGloss and The Grindstone
(now owned by Defy Media) and also appearing on
GetBullish.com.

These articles have been fully updated for 2017. Enjoy!

1. Introduction
About GetBullish.com

2. About Jennifer Dziura

3. How Talking About Money Can Make You More of

It

4. 3 Ways to Think More Productively About Money

5. A Metaphor About Shoe Shopping That Is 100%

Relevant To Hard-Nosed Business Thinking

6. How to Run Your Career Like a Business

7. Are You Under-Reinvesting in Your Career?

8. Starting A Business When Youre Broke (Or,

Making Money During a Recession)
9. How To Make Money From Being Hip As All
Fucking Hell

10. How To Think Of Moneymaking Ideas

Introduction
About GetBullish.com

Bullish is career (and life) advice for people (mostly

women) who want to do their own thing.
Bullish debuted in April 2010 as a column that promised to take on issues
related to the workplace, money, and entrepreneurship. Now
headquartered at getbullish.com, Bullish has expanded into other topics
with which any gentlewoman must grapple: romance, friendships, travel,
gender relations, fitness, philanthropy, and more.

So why the term Bullish? The bull has long been the totem animal of Wall
Street the snorting, aggressive paragon of masculinity associated with
rising financial markets. We like to poke fun at the idea that real power and
success have anything to do with aggression (or balls!) So we stuck a
unicorn horn on a bull and the rest is history.

Bullish is now a hub for articles about being a career badass there's also
an annual conference, an online shop full of feminist gifts and productivity
boosters, and the new members-only Bullish Society.
About Jennifer Dziura

Jennifer Dziura is the founder of GetBullish.com and

the annual Bullish Conference.

Jennifer started her first company, an internet marketing firm, as an

undergrad at Dartmouth College. She speaks at universities about
designing your career, networking without being fake, and defining your
personal mission.

She believes you can make money and influence the world without being a
jerk. She believes in working harder and smarter now, so you can have
balance when youre wrinkly and covered in diamonds. She doesnt
believe in telling women to act like men in order to succeed. She believes in
risk taking, negotiating better by being genuinely willing to walk away,
gentlewomanly living, gravitas, espresso, prosecco, and helping other
women.

Her last name is pronounced Di-ZURA.

How Talking About
Money Can Make You
More of It

Do you think its rude to talk about money?

Ask any etiquette expert, or your grandmother, and certainly you will
discover that the answer is yes.

And yet, these same purported authorities also tell you that it is rude to talk
about your sex life. Do you follow that advice? Of course not, right? You
engage in certain types of discussions with certain types of friends. One
friend showed me a cellphone photo of her husband naked. She just needed
to share (I was impressed). She didnt say anything at all on Facebook.
Problem solved.

Most of us talk about our sex lives with at least one person. Yet many of us
do not talk about money with anyone at all. Were shortchanging ourselves
when we do this. What would most help you improve your life: knowing how
many people all your friends have slept with, or knowing how much money
they make and being able to discuss it?

Here are some reasons for a little more financial disclosure.

Quantify everything. Numbers provide goals, motivation, and rational

thinking about your career.

Its pretty normal to tell people I lost 30 pounds!, I ran a marathon in

four hours and 23 minutes!, Only three more credits until I graduate!, or
I ate 32 hot dogs in 10 minutes and came in third! That is, a great many
accomplishments are based on numbers.

Because of a cultural phobia in talking about money, though, its pretty

hard to proffer even vague announcements about financial victories: Hey, I
got a raise! Im pretty happy! I worked hard for it! Its even harder to get
any credit for, I increased my income by 30% this year through hard work
and clever negotiating! These sorts of statements are generally considered
rude at parties.

However, using real numbers when we talk about our successes allows us
to share our accomplishments, as well as to see what other people are up
to and set reasonable (or ambitious) goals. Similarly, I think the Internet did
a great service to adolescent men who type average penis size into
Google millions of times per year. Sharing actual numbers allows the
majority of men to realize that they are perfectly normal. Numbers give
context! Quantify everything!

I have a friend Ive known since we both made $25,000 a year. When she hit
six figures, I congratulated her! Making $100,000 a year as a freelancer is a
tremendous accomplishment! I dont know if anyone else congratulated
her, though, because I doubt there are that many people she was able to
share that fact with. But why? Theres very little else you could work on
every day for years and years, and then not be able to tell people about
when youre done.

You need a money friend. And, ideally, a money ally (or several) at work.

How do you make this happen? Id try to start conversations in this way:
Im asking for a raise/pitching a project/going over my records for the
year, and Im not sure if this seems normal. I know its weird, but can I ask
what you think about my money question? Then spill some kind of detail
that the person would actually know something about: I made this website
for a company, and they paid me $500, or I discovered that the person
one level above me at the company you used to work for makes $20,000
more than I do. See if you get a real answer or if the person squirms. Who
knows maybe your friend has also been dying for someone to talk about
money with. You could even try, Isnt it weird we know everything about
each others sex lives, but you dont know how much money I make? It
would really help me if you gave me some feedback. (You might have to try
a few friends.)

Finding a money ally is much harder at work. You have to be pretty ballsy to
initiate any kind of salary transparency in an office situation (and some
companies quite unethically, in my opinion actually forbid it), but think
of it this way: The company knows what it pays each of the employees, but
the employees dont know what the other employees are getting paid. This
allows the company to cheat and manipulate people, or it simply allows
inconsistencies to exist in the system because the people who would most
benefit from rectifying those inconsistencies dont know about them. That
is, the person in the position to notice that two people in the same job
receive drastically different salaries is generally someone with no incentive
at all to fix that situation.

If you got pretty friendly with someone at work friendly enough to

suggest that you share salary information whats the worst that could
happen? You find out that you make less, in which case you say, Wow,
thanks for telling me. This really motivates me to ask for a raise. If you dont
mind me asking, you must be a good negotiator any tips? Or, you find
out that you make more, and you say, Wow, thanks for telling me. I think
you are really doing great work here, and Im surprised to hear what theyre
paying you. And then listen to the person vent, and then offer tips if asked.
This second scenario is a bit awkward, but if it leads to that person
negotiating for thousands more dollars per year, it seems likely that that
person would be thanking you basically forever. The worst-case scenario is
still kind of a win-win, no?

Oh, and if someone delivers an envelope to your desk, open it without

reading whats on the front. That way if you accidentally open someone
elses paycheck, its the messengers fault, not yours. Im joking. Sort of.

Money Assumptions Help No One.

If your friends regularly drag you places that serve $14 cocktails, its totally
possible that they make twice as much as you do and neither you nor they
are aware of it. While you might think that they are recklessly fun and devil-
may-care with their money, they might actually just make enough cash that
they dont think about the price of drinks, and theyd be horrified to find out
that, when you do the math, you are sitting in a cubicle for 50 minutes to
pay for each bourbon-based concoction you sling back. Maybe theyd
actually be happy to go someplace cheaper if they actually thought about
it.

Assumptions are often wrong. Sometimes somebody is in the same

situation as you, and just happened to get a really good deal on an
amazing name-brand coat. Its hard to tell whether your friends spending
habits are normal or reasonable without being able to consider those
habits in proportion to those friends incomes.

Even Telling People Youre Broke Can Help.

Making money is a skill, like anything else. It can be improved, and one way
to improve is to know people who are really good at it, and to talk with
them about it. In order to do that, you have to disclose your position. If you
were trying to break into a new field and had no experience at all, there
would be times that it would be appropriate to disclose that anytime, for
instance, you find a benevolent expert who seems willing to help you out.
Same deal here. Telling people your financial state can work to your
benefit.

In an article I wrote about being late, I talked about a friend who surprise
is always late. That might be okay in a friendship, but its not okay in the
professional world. The point of the anecdote was that I could have sent a
lot of freelance work her way, but I never did, because she was very
irresponsible. The reason I mention it here is that if you are both broke and
extremely competent, the reverse is likely to happen letting allies know
your financial status will allow them to send appropriate opportunities to
you. In fact, being obviously both extremely capable and extremely
underpaid activates the justice sensors in many people, who will be actively
looking to rectify this great disparity!

Many people move up in their careers in small but frequent jumps from a
low-paying temp job to a slightly better-paying receptionist job to
convincing whoever youre the receptionist for to let you update the website
to then designing websites for a few dollars more than you were paid to be
a receptionist, etc. You dont have to become a millionaire all at one, or get
hired out of obscurity for your dream job. You just have to be hypervigilant
in looking for the next step.

So if your friends knew that you were a hard worker and currently making
$25/hour, or $32,000/year, or whatever, then they would know to send you
something that might pay a little more. If others dont know your situation,
its fairly likely that they wouldnt pass on some of those opportunities out
of fear of offending. (This advice especially applies to you if your job title is
way more impressive than your paycheck. If youre the Director or Editor of
anything, people assume youre doing well, possibly by tens of thousands of
dollars above what you actually make.) When I get an email from a friend or
colleague looking to hire for a position that pays less than $40,000 a year, I
basically just delete it, because sending it to friends who make $60,000
might look like an insult. But if I were aware that someone were really good
at her job and persevered despite making only $32,000, then Id forward the
email, secure in the knowledge that she wouldnt take it the wrong way.

It might even be possible to broadcast this information without having close

friends or allies with whom you discuss money. Possible Facebook status
update: I love working in public relations! My new goal: Make $70,000 a
year at it by 2019.

So get ballsy in talking about money!

Peter Post of the Emily Post Institute (seriously, is Peter Post not an
excellent porn star name?) says that, if someone asks you your salary, the
only appropriate response is, I make enough to get by.

I agree that thats a nice response to a nosy stranger whos poking into
your business, but thats not the conversation you want to be having with
people who could help you. Sure, it can sometimes be hard to be friends
across a large income gap (once the truth comes out). But life is unfair
we all have friends who are more or less attractive than us, and more or
less educated than us, and we don't die of awkwardness. Work through it.
Its worth it.
3 Ways to Think More
Productively About
Money

When I was nine years old, I discovered that my allowance was the lowest
of all the girls in my class (embarrassing!) and sometime later, started a
small business making friendship bracelets and also reselling all the best
(i.e., grossest) Garbage Pail Kids trading cards.

My classmate Crystal was rifling though my wares, which I kept in a Zip-loc

bag in my backpack. She questioned my business model how come I was
selling the good cards for more than they would cost in the store?
(Seriously, dont peoples parents explain these things to them?)

I said that, obviously, when you buy a pack of Garbage Pail Kids in the
store, you dont know which ones youre getting, and also that marking
things up was how all businesses operate. Stores, of course, buy things and
then sell those things for more than they paid.

Thats not true! she said, incensed.

Of course it is, I said. How else would they pay the rent and the people
who work there?

Youre stupid, she said, leaving without Harry Carrie, Adam Bomb, or
Babbling Brooke.

I think now, all the time, about how we live in a world in which the prices of
goods are completely unrelated to their actual value. It used to be the
case that only royalty could wear purple because, well only royalty could
wear purple. That is, the only means of making purple things was rare and
expensive. Now, it is unremarkable for a celebrity to receive, say, a $2
million engagement ring, and then protect it by having a cheap copy made
and wearing that instead the point being, of course, that the two rings will
look identical to anyone who isn't examining it with a jeweler's toolset.
What makes the "real" ring "worth" $2 million?

Today, in privileged parts of the world, most of the things we buy are
completely unnecessary to our survival, produced in factories abroad for
pennies on the dollar of what we pay, and often indistinguishable to the
untrained eye from goods at price points a full order of magnitude higher
or lower. If you hadnt seen a fashion magazine in five years, you would be
largely unable to distinguish $70 shoes from $1,200 shoes (a talented
carpenter and furniture maker I was dating once, while contemplating my
shoe rack, picked up a Louboutin and noted that it was shoddily
constructed, pointing out at least three places where it could have been
finished more skillfully).

Your job skills and freelance services are really a lot like those shoes not
that theyre shoddy, of course, but that theyre worth whatever people think
theyre worth at the moment.

I think a lot of us are at a disadvantage in thinking about money too

literally as though it really were a fixed, time-for-dollars or physical-
matter-for-dollars equation rather than an already-artificial way of keeping
score in a system long since divorced from bartering for survival needs.

Given the late-capitalist reality we live in, let's try thinking about money in a
more productive way.

Using Price Malleability to Your Advantage

I recently received the following email (abridged and anonymized):

I just spent an hour flipping through your columns Thanks to

the recent software boom, Im freelancing again. Im charging
about five times my former salaried rate (not every day, of
course having two young kids means I need more down time),
and Im desperately in need of a vacation. So the next step is
obvious: Its time to raise my rates until I get time off.

Too busy? Raise your prices until you get a vacation. (See Bullish: What to
Charge for Your Work and What to Pay Your Assistant.) You don't have to
justify this to anyone. If a client asks why your rates are going up, you can
actually just tell them that you're in such demand that you realized it was
time. The clients who judge your worth based on hours-for-dollars are your
least desirable clients anyway.

If you work in a regular job, its obviously pretty difficult to put the same
technique into practice. (The closest analog: If you attempt to negotiate a
raise and fail, you could come back and suggest more vacation time
instead.) This is one reason I regularly encourage the highly competent to
consider removing themselves from large, regimented corporations; even if
freelancing isnt quite for you, start-ups and smaller companies are much
more likely to be members of the make us some money and well give you
some of it school of thought. You dont want to be employed in any place
where, no matter how amazing a job you do, you cant ever be paid more
than people at your level or at levels above you. You do not want to do
business with an irrational bureaucracy.

If you have a good reason to remain in the corporate world for now, I still
strongly encourage you to develop multiple streams of income for your own
security and to make you less vulnerable when you negotiate at your job.

Frugality Can Be Responsible or Irresponsible

Do you feel guilty when you throw food in the trash? Why?

Yes, people are starving in the world, but you couldnt have helped them by
eating the food, or even by not buying it in the first place. If its somehow
disgusting to throw away food when people are starving, well they
dont know youre doing it, of course. This is a completely irrational attitude
based on some leftover cultural consciousness circa the Great Depression.

A lot of people have similarly irrational attitudes about thriftiness.

The kind of frugality in which you just dont buy things its hard to imagine
how that could ever be wrong. Sure, cut down on shopping. But then theres
the kind of frugality in which you are spending time to save money. This is
usually not a good use of resources for a capable young person.

Every time I am tempted to do my own laundry, or to cook a big meal when

I can get healthy takeout food within blocks of my apartment, I do the
math and think: my future children will be better off if I drop off the laundry,
eat a takeout salad, and get to work for real.
If your skills are more valuable in the marketplace than towel-folding, you
are not being thrifty at all by doing the towel-folding yourself. Have a
double espresso and plot your next move.

Of course, this requires that you be able to monetize at least some of your
time outside of a full-time job. There is virtually always some way to do this.

Money Now is Less Important Than the Ability to Make More Money Later

Sure, it's good to have an emergency fund. But if you are an ambitious
young person, your own career should be a better investment than any
retirement plan, ING account, or piece of real estate.

My audience is ambitious women who are still building their careers. I think
when you're in this phase of life and pretty convinced of your own
competence and ability to adapt and gain new skills it is a good idea to
sacrifice money now for the ability to charge more later. For me, this means
not over-filling my schedule with people I work with one-on-one; I need to
be reaching a larger audience, rather than dispensing information to one
person at a time. Would you be able to take your career to the next level by
paying your own way to conferences your job wont pay for, flying
somewhere to woo a mentor who would help you out, or putting on an
event that features you as an expert?

Look at it this way there is someone in your field who makes ten to twenty
times as much as you do, and she does this using skills that are better but
not actually ten to twenty times better than yours. That woman was born
a drooling, incontinent baby just like everyone else. So, theres nothing shes
done that you cant. But you wont become her if you keep doing the same
damn thing for the same damn amount of money all the damn time.

When I was a child, a relative of mine once commented with much vitriol
that no human being should ever be paid more than $100 an hour. He was
outraged by some article in the paper about a lawyer or a CEO.

It didnt occur to me to ask, What if you could pay a supermodel to have

sex with you for just $105 an hour?, but it did occur to me to ask, What if
you ran a business and there was a guy who could help you for just one
hour and youd make a million dollars and he charged $10,000 an hour?
Wouldnt that be worth it?

This question made my relative absolutely furious. Price malleability is a

hard thing for some people to take. (Money should be doled out at a
constant rate based on how many hours you show up someplace and
suffer!)

But yes, if you can make other people millions of dollars, you can charge
$10,000 an hour. And I think youll get ahead faster by thinking of money as
an absolutely unnatural, contrived, artificial way of collecting points in a
complicated and largely unsupervised game of providing unnecessary
goods and services to one another within an enormous social network
largely ruled by perception and popularity, and in which you may make your
own inroads and opportunities through diligence and cleverness.
A Metaphor About
Shoe Shopping That Is
100% Relevant To Hard-
Nosed Business
Thinking

A friend of mine was recently pretty upset about losing money.

Julie bought her own apartment a few years ago, and is now moving to a
new city. Since its a bad time to sell, she decided to rent the place out.
Since shell be in a new city, she contracted with a management company
to find a tenant. The management company wanted renovations. She hired
a contractor.

Then, things started going wrong.

The tenant will be moving in later than expected. The renovations are going
to cost more than was originally quoted. She will have to rent the place out
for three years to break even on her renovations! Oh no!

I was like, Oh well, thats just the cost of doing business. I mean, the other
alternative is that you have to live in the apartment forever.

Of course, if Julie were broke, that would be a different matter. If you have
no money at all, you can justifiably become very upset about an unjust late
fee or $5 that somehow wended its way out of your wallet. But Julie is not
broke. She owns an apartment and was offered a good job in a new city.

The problem is that many people cannot conceive of a cost of doing

business because they dont really think theyre doing business. But we all
are, every time money passes through our lives.
Its impossible to get ahead if you arent willing to take some losses along
the way.

I remember being shocked as a child to learn that stores just planned for
shoplifting to occur, and built it into the price of the clothes.

You know how Victorias Secret just lets you take as many things as you
want into the dressing room, and also its pretty easy to put three bras on
at the same time and then put your shirt back on and walk out of the store
in a very well-supported manner? Yeah, thats why the bras cost $55.

While some stores crack down on shoplifting much more strictly, to get
shoplifting down to zero, youd have to make the store a very unpleasant
police state where well-heeled shoppers wouldn't want to shop. So, you just
have to build loss into your model.

You know how I have a lot of shoes? I said.

Um, yes, said Julie.

I do have a lot of shoes. I have reached the critical mass of shoes wherein I
already own the perfect pair for any outfit I could possibly buy. I dont even
think my shoe hobby is particularly wasteful, since, even though I buy a lot
of shoes, I can still only wear basically one pair a day, 365 times a year, just
like everyone else, so my shoes wear out much more slowly and will last
much longer than the shoes of people who have fewer total shoes. Buy
some red snakeskin pumps, you can wear them twice a year for life.

An aside as I wrote this week in Bullish Life: Towards a Monstrous

Regiment of Women, I think its time that frivolous girl-metaphors be just as
allowable in business as frivolous boy-metaphors. In other words, if
comparing this years budget to some kind of football play is cool, then so is
comparing it to shoe shopping. In fact, I might point out that shoe shopping
at least involves money, whereas football involves physically trying to make
people fall down so you can grab things out of their hands, which is
generally considered a bit rude in business.

So, back to the shoe thing. I regularly send off near-new pairs of shoes to
the thrift store. You know, sometimes you buy what looks like a cute and
practical pair of wedges, but it turns out that they made the wedge part out
of some kind of masonry material, and each shoe weighs more than your
entire leg, so you can walk in the shoes if you really concentrate, but if you
have to work that hard to wear a pair of shoes, theyd better be gorgeous
and encrusted with diamonds (and also probably not wedges). So I pack
them off to the thrift store and dont think a thing about it.

Then, when I wear the shoes that I do like, I consider the fact that their
actual cost is basically twice what I paid, since each excellent pair of shoes
is subsidizing a pair of shoes that just didnt work.

And thats fine. I dont feel guilty about it. I dont store shoes Im never
going to wear. Im happy if someone at the thrift store can get a near-new
pair of shoes for cheap.

I am very comfortable with the cost of doing business. It saves me a lot of

time and guilt and trying to return things youve already worn but wish you
hadnt. Instead, I spend the time and energy on pursuing my actual career
full-bore.

Here is a short list of money Ive lost and I dont regret at all because I
spent my time making different money instead:

I spent thousands on an executive education program that I had

profound philosophical disagreements with.
A shitty landlord did not repay me a deposit that, after the semi-
fraudulent deductions he took for damages, would have still been
about $2,300.
A boyfriend stuck me with $300+ in unpaid utility bills.
A company I enjoy working for never paid me for $200 worth of work,
and it would just damage my relationships to bring it back up again.
My car was stolen in 2003 and I had to make payments on the $9,000
loan for three years.

Those are all pretty substantial amounts of money! I did not grow up rich.
As a kid, I sometimes missed field trips because they cost $20. I have
permanent hearing loss that I probably wouldnt have if I had had health
insurance in my twenties.

And sure, I wish I hadnt actually paid those costs, but I say I dont regret
any of it because the amount of time it would have taken to sue a landlord,
try to collect money from an ex (awkward!), dig up old contracts and send
them to accounting people, and wander all around New York trying to
personally prosecute grand theft auto is really quite substantial.
And I used that time for other things, like writing articles and educational
books that Im proud of, getting a 780 on the GMAT to get hired my dream
job at the time (teaching for New York's top GMAT company), writing jokes
and going on comedy tours, and pursuing multiple income streams.

If youre wondering about the car yes, lets talk about the car. (Thats
what insurance is for, right?)

So, after my company failed, I moved to New York with $400 in my bank
account. I drove here, and parked my car on the street. In NYC, you have to
move your car every couple of days for street cleaning. I was exhausted
from failure, from moving and didnt do this as often as I was supposed
to. The car collected many tickets.

I finally put the car in a parking facility. In NYC, parking in lots and garages
is by the hour, day, or month, and some facilities actually store the
monthly cars off-site; you call 24 hours in advance if you want to pick up
the car, and they bring it back to the local garage for you.

I put my car in just such a facility. I might have become remiss in paying my
bill. I went to see about my car (and pay my bill) and was told by a parking
attendant that the old parking company had gone out of business and that
this was a new company running the facility, and they had no idea where
the old cars were.

I went to the police, who offered to file a report for the insurance. When I
explained that I did not have insurance on the car because I was broke and
because I wasnt driving the car, the officer laughed. When I suggested that
the NYPD investigate what appeared to be a massive multi-car theft, the
officer suggested that maybe I could figure something out by walking
around the neighborhood and asking local doormen if they knew anything.

I gave up. It was a better move for me to move on, build a career and life,
and become the sort of person who can absorb fairly large losses as they
are inevitable in life and still be okay.

After all, even if I had won, somehow, and gotten my car back, I would
have probably spent thousands of dollars worth of my time to recover it in
fact, I would have spent thousands of dollars worth of my time for a small
chance at recovering it.

But when youre young and building a career, you need to spend your time
on things that both make money and increase your capacity to make
money in the future, by building your skills, expanding your network, and
giving you good ideas and hard-won perspective. If youre down $9,000
from a stolen car, it would be better to move on and make $4,000 doing
something awesome you can put your name on than it would be to spend
the time running around town recovering the car just to be back where
you started in life before auto thieves intervened.

In an article I wrote called Bullish: How One Best Responds to Massive

F*cking Disrespect, I responded to a question from a woman who worried
that leaving her terrible job would result in having to pay back the moving
costs the company covered. Among other advice, I suggested that even the
worst-case scenario was just treating the money as an interest-free loan,
paying it back (if her lawyer agrees that she has to), and moving on.

Imagine the kind of person who never loses money. Are you imagining a
stingy old granddad? Is that the life you want?

People who are unwilling to lose money do not take risks; they work in very
stable jobs, and they tend to do very well with compound interest. And
thats it.

Its okay for some people, but probably not for people reading these kinds
of articles.

Three steps forward, one step back is better than one careful, plodding step
forward at a time, with lots of worrying in between.
How to Run Your
Career Like a Business

Sometimes in a land of magic and rainbows having a job can feel like
being part of a big, happy family.

And sometimes, being a freelancer can feel like being a free spirit who only
associates with people of her own choosing. (No Wall Street douchebags
allowed in my Bushwick apartment where I silk-screen t-shirts that say
fuck on them!)

Feelings can really cloud a persons thinking.

As I mentioned in Bullish: How Business is Like Dating, you might be

monogamous to your job, but your job is not monogamous to you.
Members of big, happy work families get laid off all the time. Companies do
not have feelings.

Similarly, in the freelance world, sometimes your clients are a lot like
friends. Or they are your friends. Which makes it difficult, for instance, to
raise your rates.

Running your career like a business with no apologies can solve a lot of
problems.

Growth is good

Back when I made $17,000 a year, I decided I was going to increase my

income the next year by 50%. That seems pretty reasonable, doesnt it, that
someone making $17,000 would want to make $25,500?

Screw reasonable. Who decides whats reasonable for you? The world is
nothing like your parents giving you an allowance. (What do you need
more than five dollars a week for, anyway? Youre a child! In my day.")
Lets just accept that growth is good. Why? Due to capitalist reality, we live
our lives in concert with corporations whose every move is predicated on
the idea of growth for its own sake. It is simply the air around us. Or, a
gentler version: because we are growing in every area of our lives, and we
wish our careers to reflect that.

Or, even better: if the companies we work for consider growth for its own
sake to be good, so why should we accept any lower of a standard? I
remember once hearing that the stars of some hit sitcom wanted a raise to,
say, a million an episode, which seemed unreasonable until I also read
that the producers were making something like eleventy-thousand-million
per episode, at which point it only seemed reasonable to pass the cash
around.

So, toss away any guilt for wanting a healthy rate of growth. And feel free
to constantly say healthy rate of growth. Its hard to argue with
healthy. You dont need a reason for wanting growth. Growth is good.

My core audience is ambitious women in their twenties and thirties. Some

of these women plan to have children, for which there is a limited window.
Some people think it's easier to take entrepreneurial risks when you're
young. Many of us experience substantially better health during these years
that we can reasonably expect to experience in future decades.

You need to use your twenties and early thirties to grow more than you
need, in case your career or body slows down later.

A 1.5% raise for inflation wouldnt be acceptable to a corporations CFO,

so why should that be an acceptable growth rate for you?

Sometimes, I find myself saying things that translate to, You know that
thing I do for you that you pay me pretty well for? It has come to my
attention that other people will pay me even more for it. So, I think we will
have to renegotiate, or part ways as friends.

When I say things like this, I think I have sometimes been afraid that
someone might ask, What do you need all that money for? But, in
actuality, no one has ever asked that question. If they did:

Its important to maintain a healthy rate of growth in my

career. (Again, who can argue against healthy?)
 While there are certain intangibles to consider, it would be
financially illogical for anyone to choose a lower-paying option
over a much higher-paying one, of course (Now shrug as though
youve just said, It would be illogical to add two and two and
expect to get seven. Peer quizzically at your interlocutor and
see what anyone can even say to that.)

Years ago, when I set the goal of increasing my income by 50% in a year, I
achieved that goal, and decided to just keep running with it by which, I
mean, aiming for 50% growth per year. Ive actually averaged 30-40%
growth per year, which pleases me, and which has forced some new ways
of thinking. You cant generally increase your income by more than 10% per
year as a regular employee.

Let go of good things for better things

When youre making a pretty good living and wondering how you can get to
the next level, you quickly realize that there are some limits to being an
employee. You might be in a position that doesnt directly generate revenue
for the company, so its hard to make a case for just how much value you
are providing. It may be that company policies or politics dictate that you
cant get paid more than others at your level (or above you, obviously). The
larger and more stratified the company, the harder it is to get around this.

And, of course, in some jobs you can work overtime, and in some salaried
positions you can negotiate de facto overtime (such as taking on additional
temporary responsibilities in exchange for a bonus), but there are serious
limits to how many hours you can work.

Sometimes, I manage to book 11 billable hours in a single day (this

becomes possible when I work with clients in Asia, Africa, and the Middle
East over the Internet at hours that are convenient for them and ungodly
for me). And then the next day I do not much. Selling your time for dollars
cannot lead to double-digit growth unless you can raise your rates
accordingly because you certainly cant work 10-50% more hours every
year.

For this kind of growth, you will need to think beyond hourly labor and
beyond employeehood. For instance:
 You could start a business on the side.

You could turn your on-the-job expertise into a book, e-book, manual,
video series, or some other information product that would generate
royalties or ongoing income.

You could become an intrapreneur (heading up a startup within an

existing company, generally with a profit-sharing arrangement or actual
ownership in the new company).

You could quit your job and start your own business. Keep in mind that
this doesnt mean you have to burn your bridges. Maybe theres a way to
start a company that your current company would like to do business with.
Is there a vendor your company works with that isnt doing a very good job?
Could you use your inside information to found a new company that would
do a better job? Could you partner with your current company? Could you
go from being a small part of your company to being its peer?

Overall, you might have to make the painful decision to let go of something
good (a job, a client, an opportunity) in order to reach the next level.
Companies discontinue pretty cool products all the time (leaving us to
stockpile our favorite shampoo, etc.), because the numbers just dont work
out. Having a target for growth gets you thinking in this way as well.

Multiple Streams of Income

Finally, Ive spoken often about multiple income streams. You might say
that I hardly ever shut up about it. I think anyone who has all their money
coming from one place (and doesnt have an enormous savings account)
should consider that an emergency situation needing to be immediately
rectified.

Businesses diversify, as should we. Do you have products or services you

can offer at multiple price points? For instance, can you offer consulting for
$150/hr and then a how-to manual for $40 so people can use your
expertise for a do-it-yourself option? (Of course, some of those people will
likely decide they need you as a consultant after all).

All that said obviously, there are some professions where double-digit
growth isnt very likely, as those professions cannot be practiced freelance,
or require millions of dollars to go into business on your own in (for
instance, it is very difficult to start your own pharmaceutical company).
If youre in one of those professions, Id ask some hard questions: Do you
love the profession enough to give up the chance to have the kind of career
that can be run like a business? Enough to give up double-digits in growth
per year? If yes, because you are down at the lab curing cancer, then god
bless. If not, I might re-think, or at least branch out. (We contain multitudes!
We are unicorns!)

There are an infinity of options out there, and they can be embarked on,
tested, combined, abandoned without regret, and retooled to create
careers that grow, satisfy us, and give back in generous proportion to what
we put into them.
Are You Under-
Reinvesting in Your
Career?

I was introduced to the word under-reinvesting by an entrepreneur who

had been told by the venture capitalists who had funded his startup that it
was a mistake to have money in the bank in the world of venture capital,
where its astronomical-returns-or bust, having money in the bank was a
sign that revenue was not being reinvested in the business, thus making
those astronomical returns less likely.

Are you under-reinvesting?

One of of the things I have done for a living is coach teenagers for the SAT.
When they are in the midst of their AP-exams-plus-SAT junior year misery, I
always told them: every hour of fun you dont have now is likely to lead to
many more hours of fun later when you are an adult and have your own
money and can legally have fun in adult locations. My senior year in high
school, I applied to 125 scholarship competitions. It was not fun. But: invest
time now, and later you are more likely to be able to buy all the shoes and
matching eyeglasses you want. Its like compound interest.

The same applies to actual money, of course. Except that actual interest
rates right now are pathetic. If investing in your own career or business idea
generates more than a 1.5% return, youve beat the market.

In previous articles, Bullish has covered saving money without acting like a
Depression-era granny and saving up an emergency fund. But when is it
important to save, and when is it important to reinvest?

I think a lot of make coffee at home instead of having that latte rhetoric
is a bit of a holdover from some previous time in which "salarymen" worked
for a single company for a long time, and the nonexistence of the internet
made it harder to develop a profitable sideline or cobble together a living
from a variety of different pursuits. In articles that helpfully remind us that
our daily trip to Starbucks could be costing us thousands a year, I often
read some variation of, Its easier to save money than to make money.

But if youve got lifeblood running through your veins, some kind of youthful
energy still rampant, you have not gone gently into that good night, etc.,
this is misleading.

Hear me out on this. There are some people living such an extravagant
lifestyle that they could slash their expenses by 95% and still get by just
fine. But, for most of us, the slashing of expenses isnt that dramatic and is
going to lower our quality of life substantially. It would maybe be possible
to slash my food budget in half and still get enough to eat but at the
expense of one of the most enjoyable things in my life.

There is a serious floor to how much you can cut expenses. Sure, I might be
able to cut my food bill in half; if I gave up my iPhone and switched to the
most basic phone I could get, I could cut my cell phone bill in half. As
percentages, those figures sound impressive, but as actual dollars, were
talking about a couple thousand bucks a year. By living ascetically, I could
put an extra $2,000-$4,000 in the bank. Thats all fine and good if thats
your only option. But it probably isnt.

If you are regularly possessed of good ideas and the energy with which to
carry them out, its a better use of your time to strive to maximize income,
rather than to minimize expenses, as income is more fluid than expenses.

In the hometown I no longer live in, a bunch of 1-2 bedroom apartments are
listed for about $600 $1600, and it looks like a person could live
someplace pretty decent for about $850. The minimum wage is still $7.25.
People in top jobs Im thinking lawyers here, not millionaire housing
developers bill at $300 an hour. In other words, rent varies about 166%.
Income varies over 4,000%. In New York, its a little harder to calculate
because of the presence of the superrich, but their addition to the equation
only makes the point more dramatic. Wages have a lot more wiggle room
than expenses.

Now, its certainly easier to cut expenses than to make more money.
Anyone can cut expenses. Old ladies with coupon-clipping scissors can cut
expenses. But there are serious limits as to how far you can cut. Attempting
to double your income over the next five years requires more focus and
cleverness, but offers a theoretically uncapped potential. Over the last five
years, Ive more than doubled my income but I havent found a less-than-
half-price apartment, or a way to squeeze down the cost of a can of beans
by another 50%.

So, if you are young and smart, I think that living like a senior citizen on
Social Security is a case of under-reinvesting.

What would it look like to reinvest instead of over-saving?

Lets be clear: you should definitely save up an untouchable emergency

fund, and if you have credit card debt, you need to take care of that first,
either by cutting back or developing an immediately profitable sideline or
second job.

But once youve got that taken care of, think about the next $2,000 you
make and dont immediate need in order to live. Obviously, you could spend
it. You could put it in the bank, in a retirement fund, or in a money market
account. Or you could re-invest. If youre self-employed or an entrepreneur,
you probably reinvest all the time. The best use of about $2,000 I ever made
was when I promoted the internet marketing company I ran at the time by
holding a day-long internet marketing conference for small businesspeople
at a local private club. I made back the entire $2,000, and discovered that
people really, really love to hire someone theyve previously seen behind a
podium. A few years later, I spent about five months doing unpaid, nearly
full-time training to qualify for a gig I now have. And I maxed out: I didnt
save a penny during that period. Instead, I hired someone to run my errands
so I could do even more unpaid training. The gig was, as it turned out,
pretty life-changing.

If you are employed in a regular job, re-investing options include taking a

class to learn a new skill, attending conferences in your industry that your
employer wont pay for, or flying around the world to personally meet up
with a mentor in your field. (While telling a luminary in your field that youre
flying from New York to San Francisco to have dinner with her is a bit
creepy, you can always try It just so happens that Ill be in town for two
days and see if that prompts action after all, scarcity enhances the
perception of value!)

By the way, a recession is a great time to start a business. And when youre
young and sprightly is also a great time to get moving. An entrepreneurial
drive is much like a sex drive; strong (although perhaps unfocused) when
youre young, peaking at some point thereafter, and, for most people, likely
to decline everafter. Time to reinvest is while youve still got the juice to do
so.
Starting A Business
When Youre Broke (Or,
Making Money During a
Recession)

When I first moved to New York, I was campaigning for a Director of

Marketing job at a small company. I was also down to my last $150, and
then a suit bag containing my entire business wardrobe was stolen from my
car (through a smashed window) my first night in town.

I lost the job. But I was close enough with the company, after three
interviews, that they told me exactly what the deal was, and tried to string
me along a bit longer: it had come down to me 24, with entrepreneurial
experience and a scary maverick streak versus a woman in her forties who
came directly from marketing at (lets say) Procter and Gamble. Go big or
go home!

After a nine-week trial period, they reversed their decision, firing her and
hiring me to take over.

My first day on the job, I was given the product of her nine-week stint: some
graphs, and a Powerpoint presentation about how to best allocate a
marketing budget, when some money should magically appear. After
decades in corporate America, she had literally no idea how to market
something for any amount of money less than six figures. Give the woman
an Internet connection, a copy machine, a graphic designer, and a hundred
bucks, and her first move is to masturbate with Excel all week.

Times are tight! One of the most popular recent Bullish columns has been
Bullish: You Can Start a Business by Tuesday. I specifically focused on
women whose businesses did not require a lot of startup capital for
instance, these businesses dont require office space, or can be run out of
space rented by the hour. Its totally possible to start a business for very
near zero dollars.

A few ideas for starting up or generating cash on a shoestring.

Everybody loves barter

First off, there are professional barter networks that your business can join
(just google barter network). Youll typically pay a startup fee and some
monthly commissions in cash in exchange for access to a large number of
other companies that want to trade. This is a brilliant idea if you offer a
product or service with an expiration date theater tickets or spots in
classes, for instance. (You do have to pay taxes on your barter income.)

Bartering informally is a lot easier than you might think, especially when
what you want is, again, sitting unused or about to expire. In Bullish: How
Business is Like Dating, I told the story of getting my first job in New York
(at the company that hired and fired the Procter and Gamble lady) and how
the CEO kept calling me in for interviews that were basically excuses to
use me for free consulting (he took a lot of notes on my ideas, and once
insisted we meet in a park, exactly like a guy who wants you to be really
clear on the fact that This Date is Casual).

I finally got an offer by starting up my own marketing company in Union

Square, making the CEO realize that I wouldnt just wait around forever.
How did I manage this? Since I was down to my last $150, my options for
opening a company were limited. So I used barter: I posted an ad on
Craigslist suggesting that someone offer me a desk and phone in their
office (and use of their business address) in exchange for marketing help. I
had several offers within the day. What small business wouldnt want, well
basically anything in exchange for the use of a desk thats sitting empty?

By bartering an intangible (my services), I was able to set up a super-legit

business presence within days.

If youre telling the right people, you probably dont have to pay much to
reach them

In Bullish: How to Sell Without Selling, I wrote that if your product actually
provides benefits to people at a cost they judge to be less than the value of
those benefits, you shouldnt have to hard-sell them. If youre a salesperson,
you might be stuck selling something that fails to meet this criterion; if its
your own business, you have no excuse.

If youre starting your own company, make sure you know who, exactly,
your potential buyers are, and that they actually have the money and want
to spend it. (If in doubt, sell expensive things to rich people!)

Direct email sales is not necessarily annoying if the people you're

contacting are hand-picked and your offer is extremely on-point.

I once handled the marketing for a whole foods co-op that had run out of
cash and thus amazingly run out of food to sell. It was early November,
Thanksgiving was approaching, and the co-op had never bothered to do
anything about the fact that they were four blocks from PETAs national
headquarters. I designed some flyers (so retro!) with a picture of a happy
turkey and some text about saving turkeys by ordering your vegan Tofurkey
early. I spent $5 to print them, and sent an intern to go put them on all the
cars in PETAs parking lot. Can Google target like that? Well, yes, actually.
But not for $5.

Monetize your alumni

Do you have friendly ex-clients who cant really buy from you anymore?
Youre a nanny and the kids grew up? You make custom furniture and the
persons house is pretty much now full of awesome furniture? You edit
dissertations and the person finished their PhD? Youve already
photographed a couple's wedding even if they do get divorced and
(separately) need another photographer eight years later, dear god, theyre
not going to hire the same one.

Plenty of businesses have an alumni base of happy customers. If the

business relationship has come to an end anyway, you have almost nothing
to lose by contacting these people. If you annoy the living shit out of them,
whats the worst theyre going to do? Tell people they really liked buying
things from you, but now you email them too much? You can live with that
Yelp review.

If youre sitting on a list of happy ex-customers, either 1) find something

new to sell them, or 2) hit them up hardcore for referrals. It is possible to do
this in a non-annoying way. For instance, offer them something free that
they can give to a friend. (It was so great being your doula/your sons
math tutor/your headhunter. I am doing a free seminar / giving away free
intro sessions next week and wondered if you knew anyone who would
want one.)

This idea of monetizing alumni is actually how I met my best friend. We

were both doing low-rent modeling jobs (some photographer whos building
his portfolio pays you a few bucks for your time, and the photos are
generally only published on his website), and many photographers only
want to work with the same model once, no matter how much they like you.
So, I posted an ad on Craigslist, suggesting that there must be other low-
rent models who have lists of satisfied clients they cant work with again,
and that these models could meet up and trade lists. Molly Crabapple
now a journalist and memoirist said, This girl is taking this way too
seriously, but then we met at Barnes and Noble and immediately
monetized each others client lists.

In sum, even when it's a terrible freaking recession and everything sucks,
people still buy things every day, and the rich only get richer. I don't like
that status quo, but it's still possible to take care of yourself in trying times.

Furthermore, like the Procter and Gamble lady who couldnt function
without a massive marketing budget, many of the more privileged members
of our society have similar inabilities to adapt to hard times. If you want to
start a business, don't use the economy as an excuse to "wait it out."
Instead, hard times can be an opportunity to outsmart those people.
How To Make Money
From Being Hip As All
Fucking Hell

When I was a kid, I assumed that everyone on television was rich. Because
showing off your dancing beagle on whatever program was the 80s
equivalent to The Ellen DeGeneres Show obviously represents both a huge
financial windfall as well as a sustainable business model.

We now live in an era in which it is painfully clear that fame does not equal
money. Reality television stars frequently ruin their Google results for all
time in exchange for less than an annual middle-class salary. There are a
few exceptions all the other Real Housewives are jealous that Bethenny
Frankel actually had a business plan all along, and a product (Skinnygirl
Margarita) that other human beings would actually like to purchase for
their own pleasure and consumption. I was in a pilot for a TV show on a
major network and was to be paid $9,000 per season if it took off the idea
being that, obviously, being a logic expert who helps people figure out how
to steal cake would help me to advertise similar services in real life.

Ive written before about how being attractive is helpful, but does not
translate into money as readily as a person might think. Being awesome (or
hip, cool, popular, famous, etc.) also does not just convert itself into money
the way one might assume.

I received a question recently from a reader who is doing awesome work

and surrounded by starving artists.

Hi, Jen. I have a career dilemma, and as an avid fan of Bullish, I

hope that maybe you can help me.Im 24, and a photographer. I
moved to LA about two years ago to shoot circuses. My parents
have been fully supportive of my life decisions despite the fact
 that, while there are many ways to make a good living as a
photographer, photographing tiny circus troupes with no budget
isnt really one of them. In my time in LA, Ive met several
photographers who share my particular niche, and upon getting
to know them better Ive come to realize that many of them are
still living paycheck to paycheck, despite being extremely well-
established, talented and good with their money. It frightens me.
Is this my future? When I first moved here, I often worked for
trade. Ive gotten thousands of dollars worth of circus classes
and private lessons in everything from tightwire to playing the
drums. It was pretty neat to expand my horizons, but once I
finally got to the point where people knew me and knew my work
was good, I started asking for money. I considered my fees wildly
low; Id ask for $100 to shoot a dance show, for example, when
one of the more established photographers I know would charge
$350 for such a job. Headshots for $75. Anything to help pay the
rent.And people wouldnt pay it. Not only that, my asking for any
kind of money, from anyone, turned into me being banished from
their world. People would stop returning my calls and emails just
because I was asking what I considered an exceptionally fair
price for something that I went to college for and worked hard
on. Often if I did get a reply it was along the lines of Oh my
rabbis nephew just bought a camera and hell shoot my
wedding for free, and suddenly Id be out the $500 that was
going to pay my rent that month.

Oh, starving artists working for starving artists! I once told my mom that I
didnt believe in her Avon business, because she was only selling products to
other stay-at-home moms who didnt have any money either and who
would later expect a quid pro quo when they had Tupperware or naughty-
lingerie parties that she would then be obligated to attend and patronize,
thus wiping out the months $30 profit. My mom was not interested in
hearing this from a twelve-year-old.

So, lets dive in and lets talk about how you can actually make money
from being awesome, because a lot of awesome people in this world are
totally fucking broke, and other awesome people are doing really well, and
its obviously not all about the art.

You cant make money from people who dont believe in capitalism at all.

I know a wee bit about circus troupes. They tend to function under a sort of
all for one and one for all ethic (hey, I saw Freaks).

Maybe this is artistically beneficial and creates a sense of camaraderie. I

dont know. But, financially, an everyone-in-this-troupe-is-equal ethic is
great for beginners, an impediment to those trying to get ahead, and
demoralizing for mature performers wondering how theyre ever going to
live without a roommate.

I have heard many a tale of woe from, for instance, the dancer who
choreographs (and dances in) a performance for twelve dancers, and ends
up getting paid the same as the guy they found on the street and recruited
because he was strong enough to lift four people at the same time for thirty
seconds somewhere towards the end. Were all in this together! By which
we mean that, the harder you work, the less per hour you will actually end
up making in the end! Yay incentives!

Obviously, the question writer is not, herself, in a circus troupe. But color me
unsurprised that circus troupes refuse to pay for photography. They often
barely pay people who dangle from cables by their teeth.

Furthermore, shitty photographers will happily photograph circus shows for

free, and broke people always accept a shitty free thing over a higher-
quality alternative that costs even a very small amount of money. Its a
knee-jerk reflex I well remember from back when I used to instinctively buy
the very smallest, cheapest package of everything (8 trash bags! Fun-size
Miracle Whip!), even though I knew those were the worst deals.

People who have been broke for a long time dont know anything besides
crisis mode. Your arguments cannot win against a persons deep-seated
fear or simple lack of actual dollars to work with. People who dont have
health insurance are simply not good prospects for professional
photographers.

It is also very likely that performers are interested in photography of their

events for rather different reasons than the question writer or the general
public would be interested. When people take photos of my presentations,
for instance, I want the photos to make me look good and to show exactly
what Im doing in a way that will help sell the presentation to future buyers.
Shots that a professional would discard due to an undesirable shadow are
sometimes exactly the ones I want; the ones with perfect composition and
lighting often just dont show anything that is useful to me.

What Im saying is that if someone photographs my speech, Id rather have

a moderately-talented person snap 200 images than an extremely talented
person take 8 perfect photos. Its like when youre shopping on Etsy or eBay
the artsy photos often dont show you the merchandise as well as the less
professional (but dead-on) ones.

So, in terms of making money from circus troupes themselves well,

obviously thats not working. Its not even as though there is some other,
more famous or experienced circus-troupe photographer out there who is
making a good living doing circus photography. Theres no endgame here.

I dont mean to bum anyone out I mean to offer alternatives!

But in order to open new paths, you have to close yourself off to old ones.
You have to make space. You have to stop painfully pursuing people who
never wanted to be your clients. It sucks, it hurts, and it makes you feel
unappreciated for the efforts youve made so far. Losing a business model
like losing a dream or a relationship is worth a little grieving period.

The best you can hope for from the circus troupes themselves is probably to
try to become an honorary member, and thus get paid a fair share (in
quotes it should be pretty obvious what I think about this manner of
motivating people). Perhaps you could become the official documentarian
of some troupe, and receive whatever cut is doled out to the members.

Even this seems unlikely.

You will need a new business model.

You can rarely charge directly for coolness; you must practice coolness
arbitrage.

Even among the highly successful, it is often the case that prestigious gigs
dont pay well. Vogue covers dont pay. Performers at the Grammys get
union scale (and access to swag). These gigs are loss leaders. That is:
1) It is very hard to make money being cool around other cool people.

2) It is very easy to make money being cool around uncool people.

3) In order to do this, you have to build up your reserves of coolness at a

financial loss.

4) You must then meet less cool people and exchange your coolness for
money.

Here, Im defining coolness as whatever quality some people, somewhere,

think is cool. Im not passing artistic judgment. Said another way:

Coolness arbitrage is absorbing hipness from people who have

hipness but no money, and then selling this hipness to people
who have money but no hipness.

This is a time-honored business model. Here is James Brown shilling for

Japanese noodles. I know an event planner who booked Justin Bieber for a
bat mitzvah for only the cost of a middle-class home. There are club owners
in the Middle East who consider flying a Kardashian to Dubai a reasonable
publicity expense. About $2 million seems to be the going price to get even
the very top performers to do a private party in an oil-rich nation.

It is totally possible to do this in a not-too-cheesy manner, without dancing

for dictators. I know someone who runs a burlesque troupe that puts on
awesome events in bars (for sweaty $10 bills), which allows the troupe to do
PG-rated, much less awesome shows for corporations (for thousands). I
dont consider this selling out; a burlesque performer whose corporate gigs
allow her to afford health care is going to be much less likely to burn out,
and this is likely to redound to the artistic merit of the shows that still take
place in bars. Its a healthy interdependence of income streams.

Similarly, for many years I co-hosted an adult spelling bee in a bar in NYC.
Sure, I did it for the glory (and a little beer money) and also so I could
have a website offering spelling bees for corporate parties.

To successfully practice coolness arbitrage, you must find customers who

are totally unlike you, and treat them with respect.
Keep in mind that your customers who pay you in part due to your massive
hipness need not necessarily be soulless corporations or wealthy
douchebags; they can be totally excellent people who make fantastic
contributions to the world, but work as CPAs, are required to wear neckties,
have a couple of kids and thus dont get out much, etc. These people are
not necessarily bad.

(If you hate all rich people, you will certainly sabotage your own finances at
every turn. Find a wealthily-awesome role model. I mean, do you hate Mindy
Kaling? Toni Morrison? J.K. Rowling? You can look up any of these women's
net worth on the internet.)

Recently outside the Chelsea Market, I paid $30 for a t-shirt, sold by a
woman being hassled by the police for her apparently illegal table. My
companion agreed that the t-shirt was cool, but commented that $30 was a
lot. I was delighted to pay it.

The thing about making cool hipster t-shirts (mine had a picture of a
typewriter and said "Tap that!") is that cool hipsters like them but resent
having to pay real money because, after all, if they felt like it, and they
sort of do, they could start their own screenprinting line and maybe they
will and now theyre a little pissed off that youre doing it and they certainly
dont want to give you $30. You are too much like them but youre actually
doing something and they resent you for it.

In Bullish: Doing Business With Friends (And Still Having Friends, and a
Business), I wrote about my several years in comedy, trying to get friends to
attend my standup shows:

After years of pestering friends into attending standup shows, I

started lessening the separation of church and state and
mentioning to contacts from my other businesses that I did
standup. Most of my business contacts didnt know any other
comedians, so they thought this was pretty cool. One of them
Mr. Banker Guy immediately hired me to do a birthday party
for $400. I realized that, instead of making my friends pay $15
cover fees to comedy clubs (where I didnt even get any of the
money!), I shouldve been asking my friends if they knew any
other people like Banker Guy.
In sum: Sell things to people who are looking to buy! End of story. You do
not have the power to create a new market. If you were Apple, you could
convince people they needed some type of crazy new tablet, because you
would have millions of dollars for marketing and a huge existing customer
base. But even Apple cant really sell iPads to destitute people.

Here are a few practical suggestions:

Headshots for actors? Actors are, of course, notoriously poor. Instead: take
free headshots of the most famous people you can so that your portfolio is
amazing. Email major bands asking if the lead singer would like to be
photographed, etc. (Plenty of people would be much more flattered by this
offer coming from a circus photographer than from just a headshot
photographer.) Once your portfolio contains famous people, start selling
headshots to businesspeople. (Why is no one doing this? If I hired a
headshot photographer, Id kind of worry that I was being compared to
models and actresses and that the photographer didnt really want to be
photographing me. So if someone advertised exactly what I needed, Id feel
all welcomed and invited and would come equipped with cash.) Specializing
in making people look powerful, welcoming, and smart is probably a pretty
good sideline. Likely more lucrative than making actresses look pretty.

One photographer I know started doing portraits of celebrities first

starting with pretty accessible people, like authors (if you type for a living,
its sometimes surprising when someone really wants to see your actual
face!), and ultimately getting some more mainstream celebs. Soon, he gets
a call from a family in the suburbs of New York How much to photograph
our children? No one wants to go to the burbs, so he quoted the first
number that popped into his head. I think it might have been $3,000.
Great, they said. Arbitrage at work.

If people out there are really into circus photography, but have no special
connection to circuses or other impetus to hire you, maybe you could
expand your business maybe you could start an agency that supplied
circus performers for weddings and corporate events, which you would then
photograph. Of course, there are laws associated with acting as an agent
but there are also perfectly legal arrangements in which you work with
existing agencies, or in which you simply have the client pay the performers
directly without your taking a cut, and you build a makin it happen
charge into your photography fees.
Whatever you decide to try, the question should always be, Who, exactly,
are the people who have money and are ready to spend it on this?

Question writer, I hope thats been helpful! And if you are hipper than all
hell and wondering when the money starts rolling in, I hope this has put you
on your way to some profitable arbitrage.
How To Think Of
Moneymaking Ideas

I hope I don't have to sell the idea that thinking of moneymaking ideas is a
good thing. Who doesnt need more moneymaking ideas?

I am a strong believer that money can indeed buy happiness, especially if

your unhappiness is directly caused by a lack of money. I also think the
world will get better when women and people of color make more money
and thus hold more power, because in a capitalist system, money does
indeed mean power. Also, scotch is expensive.

So, lets talk about how to think of good moneymaking ideas, whether
youre looking for a new career or just want additional income streams on
the side.

Here are some ideas.

Track your own spending

No, not so you can be thriftier! DIFFERENT PLAN HERE. What did you
actually spend money on in the last two weeks? Keep a list. Include boring,
routine purchases.

How could your buying experiences have been better? Are there
alternatives you would have preferred if available? What do you spend
money on regularly without even thinking? What was your most annoying
buying experience?

Now try to think of an improved version or an alternative.

I once got an idea for a Christmas tree delivery service after watching a
mild-mannered professor leave his home (I was tutoring his son) to go buy a
Christmas tree. He seemed a little unsure of himself. A tweedy,
fiftysomething professor is carrying his own tree, in a town in which you can
have anything else delivered? Why not Christmas trees? You wouldn't have
to buy a Christmas tree lot to make that happen; you'd need to make a
clever app and website and figure out how to market the service and
then farm out the sales to Christmas tree vendors who would deliver for
you.

I once started a luxury catsitting service after having a terrible experience

with a local catsitter. I hired one employee and became a customer of my
own business, to make sure it worked the way I want.

For a lot of boring, routine online purchases, I could be persuaded to switch

to a business that was somehow more fun or convenient, or more socially
conscious or matched my values.

The easiest sell in the world is getting people to switch to buying something
from you when 1) its something they buy a lot anyway, 2) your offering is
just a little bit better, and 3) switching is easy. Switching banks and gyms is
hard, while switching smoothie shops or online office supply stores is easy.

Services for the very rich

I have often recommended providing services for the rich as a

straightforward path to more income without straining yourself. By
straining yourself, I mean annoying the living shit out of your friends and
family, trying to get them to buy things they dont want or cant afford.
Most peoples friends are pretty close to their own income level. Artists tend
to hang with other artists. Etc.

If youre looking for extra income streams while keeping your full-time job,
providing services to the wealthy is a great way to augment your income
significantly with a minimum of time. In some cases, the fact of your full-
time employment makes you more credible as a service provider. I once met
someone who had hired a microbiologist to give microbiology lessons to a
four-year-old. A kid who was basically at the level of Monsters aren't real!
Are lions real?" was getting the personal attention of a Ph.D.

If you are that Ph.D., you really only need one wealthy client to have a
significant source of income. It might be hard to get an Etsy store to make
$100 a week, but thats easily achievable by providing basically any service
to the wealthy.

Note that not all of the rich are good customers. I once fired a hedge fund
guy as a client. He was cheap, argued about my rates, and made me ask
him for money (and go through a whole big rigmarole of watching him write
a check like I was robbing him somehow) rather than having a check ready
when I came to teach his kid. KEEP IT CLASSY, WALL STREET.

I find that people who work for their money are often pretty into spending
money to make their lives easier or more pleasurable, or to free them up to
keep making money, whereas people who inherited their money are often
more into conserving their money and being really cheap with the help. But
those are wild generalizations, of course (and hedge-fund-guy was self-
made). Im just saying that being rich is only one qualifying factor. And
sometimes working for an unpleasant, cheap rich person can be a great
way to get that rich person to refer you to other rich people (the richer
people are, the more they seem to want a personal recommendation from a
fellow rich person, regardless of how many stars you may have on
Taskrabbit).

Note: women have always more likely to tell others about products and
services theyve enjoyed (in my own experience, fantastically more so). I
might be more inclined to keep an unpleasant woman client than an
unpleasant male client, provided she was pleased with me.

Once you are established, you can be pickier about your clients.

What is the most outrageous service you could imagine the rich buying?
Think of something that would be easy for you to personally provide, but
just so ridiculous that no ones offering it. Is it so interesting and
outrageous that the press would cover it? So crazy and luxurious that
people who have more money than they know what to do with would at
least try it once, just because they can? Great! Now you are a book doula
for wealthy peoples memoirs, or a person who maintains home espresso
machines and hand-delivers imported beans, or a germ doctor who
sanitizes peoples doorknobs and keyboards. iPhone efficiency consultant?
Juice cleanse sommelier? Fair trade tarot readings? Naptime consultant?

Or just offer some normal stuff that rich people buy anyway, and find a way
to do it better. NYC has six-figure dogwalkers, and NYC has poor, struggling
dogwalkers. Figure out what six-figure dogwalkers are doing right, and add
just one tiny improvement.

Nothing is frivolous
We live in late-stage capitalism. Most businesses that Westerners are
involved in are sort of frivolous and unnecessary. Somebody out there is
making tons of money licensing the Iron Man character and putting his
picture on little boys pajamas and novelty trash cans. Fast food restaurants
keep competing to add more meat to their meat sandwiches. Many
extremely wealthy people are involved in buying and selling other peoples
bundled mortgages and shit like that that provides way less value to society
than Iron Man childrens decor.

So please make no apologies whatsoever if you think of a way to make

money from cats, glitter, shoes, or any other stereotypical girl thing that
some shitty person tells you isnt serious enough. You are always perfectly
welcome to become a dry-shampoo magnate and then a great
philanthropist. Sara Blakely is the worlds youngest self-made female
billionaire (from Spanx). Quoth Blakely, "My own butt was the inspiration.

Novelty is overrated

You dont need to come up with something completely new. In fact, you
probably dont have the advertising and PR budget to explain something
brand new to people. There were actually lots of tablets on the market
before Apple came out with the iPad but none took off until Apple threw
its enormous clout and budget behind convincing people they needed yet
another device.

Im a big fan of selling people something they already understand, but just
changing one thing in an amazing way. Its this thing you totally already
get BUT FOR KIDS. Or, BUT FOR BEGINNERS! Or, AND WE SERVE YOU
COFFEE. Or, DONE REALLY FABULOUSLY SO THAT MOSTLY WOMEN AND
GAY MEN WILL LIKE IT.

Take something that always seems to be provided in a macho way and

provide it totally differently. (Cross-training workouts, anyone? Automotive
accessories? Why cant I buy that organizer that turns your passenger seat
into a mobile office without having to go into an ugly store that smells like
gasoline?)

How about a handyman service thats provided entirely by women? (Motto:

We will not creep you out when we are in your house!) Same with in-home
tech support. I want a lady Mac genius to come over and make all my
devices work better.
Here: couple Lesley and Kamau Ware started an art gallery that caters to
first-time art buyers. (Its an art gallery, which I understand but I wont
feel stupid or poor there!) Lesley also runs an eco-friendly fashion camp for
children!

Look for recurring purchases

A lot of the most clever-sounding business ideas are a little too clever.
Theyre so clever that people say, Wow, thats awesome! Maybe Ill buy/do
that one day. That would be amazing. You know one day.

NYC has a ninja-themed restaurant. I went once! It was an experience. And

now its done. New York, of course, gets a steady influx of tourists, which
makes this business feasible.

A workshop where a burlesque dancer teaches you how to be a vixen? That

sounds fun, and it totally exists, but youre probably only going to go once,
and theres probably not a lot of urgency. I dont need to be a vixen right
now. Its a very fun idea, but Id just prefer to sink my own time and money
into something that people will buy more often, and forever.

Really easy investing

Starting a business isnt for everyone at every stage of life (although I often
argue that entrepreneurship should be thought of as part of the modern
lifecycle if nows not the time, assume that time will come).

So, hey, lets talk about investing.

If you can get a good 10% on your money, then $20,000 in an investment
account will get you $2,000 a year, which is equivalent to a lot of peoples
raises. Thats kind of great, especially since you dont have to do anything
and cant get fired from your investments.

Obviously, most people reading this dont have $20,000 lying around, but I
mention that number because, to me, thats the level at which investments
really count as a source of income. So, keep that in mind for eventually.
Its not an insane goal.

In the meantime, though, heres a more achievable investment goal. You

know how when you check your online account, youre always sort of
bleeding little bits of money? Various monthly services youve signed up for,
takeout, coffees? Make it a goal to do that in reverse. Its pretty cool when
every time you check your account, its like, Oh, $3.60 just arrived from
somewhere. And you just kind of shrug and dont think about it much, the
same way you dont think much about a Starbucks charge on your card,
except BACKWARDS.

You can get started investing in peer-to-peer lending on Prosper or

LendingClub for under $100. If youve got $2,500 and invest in 100 loans at
$25 each, youll be substantially diversified, but you can absolutely start
with less.

Brainstorming versus executing

This is just an article about brainstorming. Later, youll have to make

decisions, and figure out how to execute.

Some ideas, like Christmas tree delivery, may be just too much hassle for
the potential rewards.

Some ideas are a little too precious. Reject ideas that are more about your
personal identity than about what people want to buy. If youre imagining
how impressed your friends are going to be, this very well might be the
wrong idea.

Dont jump on an idea until you can point to the people who are ready to
buy from you.

But its healthy, in a capitalist society, to keep your entrepreneurial muscles

active. Otherwise, youre defenseless. Try for one moneymaking idea per
day. With 365 days in a year, youll have plenty of ideas to pick from.
 I N T H E
J O
U L L I S H
B
C I E T Y
SO

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