Saxon's Survival Hour #204: SELF EMPLOYMENT FOR ANYONE

Today's excerpt begins on page 511 of The Survivor Volume 2.

By Kurt Saxon

There is something about working steadily for someone else that dulls the human mind.
Security is the main reason people give for fixed employment but the unrealized drawback is dependence.

With fixed employment you have a measure of security only if the business is growing.
You may even advance, getting higher wages.
But when the business levels off, so does your pay.
And as the pay scale becomes fixed, so does the routine.
So you are at a dead end and become just a part of the machinery.

A worker can go for years doing the same thing and getting the same pay.
Except for cost-of-living raises, which seldom make up for inflation's gain in the same period, spendable income remains about the same.

When a business hits its peak and is serving as big a part of its market as it can reach, it usually starts going downhill.
This is because the market has been saturated.
There is no more room for development, no new money coming in.

Then, even cost-of-living raises are hard to come by.
Then come the strikes.
Raises are given, prices of the products are raised, fewer people can buy and less money comes in.
As inflation eats into your strike-won raise, you must strike again, get the prices raised, lose even more customers and on and on.

That’s the way it's getting to be all over the country.
So if you work for others and think you have security, you may be insane.
You’d better check that out.

The main drawback of a fixed income is your dependence on things staying as they are rising inflation and increasing bankruptcies are throats to just about every wage-earner’s livelihood.

My early career was wasted in wage-slaving.
I was uneducated, unskilled, unbalanced and a drifter from job to job.
I could never keep a job long but the worst times were when I had a job I could do and stuck at it for up to a year.
This was a waste of time as my savings never equaled the price of anything worthwhile.

When I was going to college I worked parr time at a hospital doing kitchen duties for S27.00 per week take-home.
This was in 1960 and my rent was only $6.00 per week for a room with sink and a hotplate.
I spent maybe $3.00 per week for food so I didn’t need much.

Just the same, the hours were from four to eight p.m. and I didn’t like the work or the money, but a full-time job would have kept me out of college.

I was bitching to a wino name of Charles who lived in the same rooming house.
He was a house painter and suggested I get in the trade.
I'd never painted but had seen him at it and figured if he could do it, anyone could.
I had watched him on a ladder once, hanging on with an elbow, with a fifth of Thunderbird in one hand and a brush in the other.
He fell often but worked when he wanted to.

He wrote an ad for me: Painter; Fast. Reliable. Good References. S2.00 per hour and the rooming house phone number and who to ask for.
It cost me about $3 00 to run it a week in the Work Wanted section of the local paper under PAINTING.
Then I quit my job and sat back.
I had to because I'd have been at work when anybody called it’s dumb to quit one job before getting another.
So if you work, put in the ad the time you will be home to accept calls.

That lying ad took effect the first afternoon it ran.
I got a call from an old lady with a tiny kitchen I told her over the phone that for $2.00 per hour I’d supply the labor and the tools but she’d have to buy the paint.
She had the paint ready and I stopped by the Dime Store and bought a paint roller, pan, three different sized hand brushes and a plastic drop-cloth.

I took this on the local bus and started my first paint job.
The old lady showed me into her dark red kitchen and pointed to the bright yellow paint and went into her front room to watch TV.

I poured too much paint in the pan and just dipped in the roller, as the pan was too full to allow rolling the roller on the pan's ramp.
This doesn't work and it was several tries before I got the idea of pouring some paint back into the can and rolling off the excess paint on the pan’s ramp before rolling it on the ceiling.

You can’t imagine the mess at the beginning I had paint on me and had a totally yellow arm and a soaked torso through my shirt.
If that sweet old soul hadn't been in the front room watching TV, she’d have fired me in the first five minutes.

I’m pretty smart so I got the hang of it in the first half hour.
I did that little kitchen in four and half hours and got $9.00 and even compliments.

A few days later this pervert called me and asked if I'd paint bare-chested.
I was pretty naive and didn’t understand and told him that I wouldn't consider painting bare chested as I got enough paint on my chest as it was without painting shirtless.

That first week I painted two kitchens, a garage and a bedroom.
After awhile I seldom had to put in an ad.
I got a lot of repeat business and, working only when I wanted to, averaged $34 00 per week.
That wasn't much, even in those days.
But it was more than I had gotten at the hospital and in fewer hours and was sufficient for my needs.
If I wanted something more, I’d just work another day or two.
So even in this poor trade my income wasn’t fixed and I could choose my hours.
I could have worked all the time if I’d wanted to.

Just in case you might want to try this, here are a few tips.
Get a book on decorating and study the painting section.
Then go to a paint store and have a clerk tell you what you’ll need.
Your ideal start would be to paint as much of your own home as you can for practice.
A couple of days painting your own quarters would get most of the bugs out of your technique.

Charge about a third of what a Union painter gets.
Don’t worry about Union Interference.
People who hire bargain painters want bargains.
They won't pay Union rates and so don’t really expect Union skill.
Union painters wouldn't be interested in such jobs, anyway.

Three dollars an hour for non-professional work is fine, especially since you don't have to declare it for taxes.
It’s all yours unless you want to pay taxes on it.
Most of the guys I knew in the trade never declared their income because there was no way the Feds could check.

No matter what, do as good a job as you can and be extremely honest.
I was never asked for a reference but those who I would have used as references hired me for one job after another.
These were mainly landlords who hired me to redo vacant apartments.

After a time I charged $2.50 per hour and could have gotten more had I become a contractor.

Never work for a non-union contractor.
You won’t be fast enough to make a profit for him and he'll fire you.
If you are fast enough you might as well be a contractor yourself.

Contracting is where you give an estimate and accept a set fee for the job.
When people asked for an estimate I would say I needed a license to be a contractor so I just charged by the hour with no estimates.
I didn’t have the kind of mind where I could examine a job and fell how long it would take.

Contracting is more profitable, and I’m not sure about the license, but when you make an estimate, you’re stuck with it.
If you estimate a job will take eight hours and it drags out to sixteen, you’d be better off working by the hour.

I worked this way, off and on, for years.
I was temperamentally unsuited for steady work.
But I could be charming and polite to anybody for a few days, which kept me a fine fellow through most of my bigger jobs.
Most of my customers were very nice and liked my work, although I was never really fast.

If I could do it, you can. too.
You’d be surprised how much work goes begging because unskilled people don’t know they could do it and skilled workers price themselves beyond the property owner's means.

Work in painting, home repairs, etc. is all over the place and you'll learn this if you’ll only put in an ad.
One place I was painting at, there was this young moron also doing painting on a picket fence.
He didn't even scrape off the old, loose paint.

I noticed he had wet his pants and asked the lady how such a nebbish could get work from anybody.
She said he only charged 1.50 an hour and did all sorts of little odd jobs.
This was mainly for old people who simply couldn't handle any sort of labor and preferred a mental defective to no one at all.

I met many other odd-jobsmen.
They started out just as people who could do something, or were willing to try.
They simply advertised that they could do a certain job and they had been busy ever since.

It doesn't matter what you do.
Painting, hauling, odd jobs, home repair, carpentry, electrical work, typing, babysitting; a few lines in your local paper will keep you busy.
An old fellow who was going with my mom had been a painter.
He told me he had worked my system all during the depression and had always lived well.

It isn’t all roses.
You'll get an occasional griping, abusive customer you can't please.
Then there are those who’ll want you to be licensed, bonded, insured and all that.
If you do your best at say. S3.00 an hour, they're getting a good deal.
If they don't appreciate that and give you a hard time, to hell with them.
They're stupid.
But this type is rare.
Most of your customers will be just good, poor people who need a bargain and have sense enough not to give a bargain like you a hard time.

If you happen to be a professional and a Union tradesman, this sort of work would be moonlighting.
I knew professionals who cut their pay by a third to be independent.
A Union painter or electrician would contact apartment house owners and be on call all the time.
No need to worry about licenses.
If you're giving a landlord a bargain, he's not going to turn you in to the Union or the licensing place or the IRS or anybody.

So if you are temperamentally unsuited for steady work or have been laid off or fired, put in an ad.
Even if you're in fine shape and just need some rxtra income, put in an ad.
If employed, you can tell a caller you'll be free on the weekend or at night.
They don't care when you work if it's convenient for them.

You try getting work this way, even if you have a job, and you'll be surprised how needed you really are.
You'll never be worried about unemployment again and the worse the economy gets, the more secure you'll be.
Places have to be kept up and if money is tight, Union workers stay home.

Another good point is that while you're working on such jobs you are still free to follow up leads on better opportunities.
You can also go to school or work on some home business that you don't expect to make money on for awhile.
So if you are too young for steady work, retired, slightly handicapped, a dingbat, have a rotten work record, or whatever, you are still highly employable in this field.

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Kurt Saxon thought civilization would have collapsed by now.
He spent the majority of his life collecting knowledge of home based business.
His goal was for all his readers to survive at a more comfortable level than those that were less provident.

He knew the importance of communicating at a level folks could understand.
Most of what he has compiled for our benefit can be easily understood by everybody.

He also includes a subtle sense of humor.

You can find the majority of his life's work here.

Hear him read his stories.