The Grind

Unlimited swings

Life just happens some times, I had 3 sort of major things occur in the last month that all took priority over the daily hustle to grow ideas into cash. Im not sure if I have mentioned this here but my mother has had ALS for the last few years and has been at the "final stages" much longer than most people in her condition. Some of that really changed and took a down hill slide in the last month and it required a lot of my attention. I have the rest of my life to make opportunities, but only a very short time left to care for her.

So yeah, that took precendence over everything. And that alone would be enough. But with school ending the slew of summer activities started to take shape for my kids. My oldest graduated high school ( It really seems like that can't be real, that would make me old. lol) And my other 3 daughters have varying degrees of Autism. The second daughter being the most severe. Capitalizing on opportunities for her to have good memories is key. She is very very very schedule oriented and just wont do many of the things that people in her age group do. But we have a great church group that really watches her and helps her to be active in many activites. The yearly girls camp where they spend 3-4 days in mountain cabins in a truly cool place is one of the highlights of her year but it does require lots of preparation and time. So that was the second thing.

The third thing was me actually getting to do a new role. In my day job I am a software developer and that world is very cutthroat. You can be on top of the world one day and let go the next. I've learned over the years to get better at the times off, but nobody really loves unemployment. I always look at it in terms of autofocusing on passive income. It actually makes starting a new role harder every time, because I get closer and closer to income streams to replace my software career. I may always do a little software even after I hit my total freedom. You can solve so many problems with it, that im not sure i'll totally let it go. But either way, I went from not having any steady work since jan 1st to getting a short contract that leads to bigger things almost overnight. And that's the way it goes. I can search and search and search until im basically exhausted and then when i've about given up something just falls in my lap. That's kind of how this industry is. So prepping for downtime I almost look forward to.

Now I mentioned those things not to use them as excuses, because they're really not. I also did a lot of other things during that time that were productive. But I wanted to let you know, the person who feels like they're just drowning in a busy schedule, that's it's ok if you don't hit your goals exactly when you set them. Goals for me are more incentives than anything else. But i've learned that if you push to hard, you can often push away the best opportunities that are hiding in plain sight. Had I let the stress of unemployment, summer activities, and my mom actively dying get to me, I might have missed an absolute golden opportunity in the form of a short video series that I have since gotten completely obsessed with. The Koerner Office's Post.

Chris Koerner may be my spirit animal....and not because Im like him. I'm actually very different than this guy in a lot of ways. But we have the same mentality on something that counts. You have an unlimited number of at bats in this rat race, so just keep swinging. Chris is not only very intelligent but he's an uber optimist. Which I kinda like being the uber pesimist ( and almost always right ). To be fair im not down for the sake of being down. But I am the mayor of realville which is very very effective for me. But I need people like Chris in my life to help me remember to enjoy it. And you will not meet many people with a drive for trying new things like Chris. Even if his enthusiasm is a little much for you, I encourage you to check him out. Because no matter how dumb the idea may seem, he's right.....somebody made it work. There are no dumb business ideas, and if you learn nothing else here. Learn that. Somebody somewhere will take that dumb idea and run with it.

I have already stolen a few ideas from Chris and i'll be reporting on them soon. But how is the current situation with all the things that have come up. Well, kinda like the stock market around major world events, very up and down. The tallow business really slowed down, as I thought it might. But more from a lack of hustling and summer schedules than anything else. Fall will be a killer time for selling this line of products but summer's not the best when it's 110 and people are living out of pools. Still im cautiously optimistic of a new product that I very accidentally discovered while trying to sell the current product. More to follow with this in a few weeks. For now lets just talk about the money side.

I detest counting chickens before they hatch and so even though i've presold some of the tallow I don't really count it until it's in my hand or bank account. But I absolutely made my money back + about 90 dollars. And im talking a straight $90 profit. There is still more inventory and probably repeat customers forming, but for now im going to take the $90 and start something else while the remaining $180 or so rolls in. Im just going to keep that going on an as needed basis until the fall and then push it a little harder.

I can't count the cow I had butchered and sold some of the meat because it didn't come from the original source, nor can I count the 130 dollars from 1 months interest of treasury bills that just deposited. I can't even count the full money from the apple watch and a few other freebies. So Im going to literally take $90 just as it stands and turn that into something very profitable. I will then add the other sales from the tallow inventory when it all shows up. I did want to mention one more thing before we get into a new avenue though. These first few adventures have all been kind of unorthodox things. Not typical ways that are more mainstream so Im thinking about doing something that is very mainstream just to prove it can be a good flip

For now though. I want to mention an opportunity that was too good to pass up. For years remote control cars have been a thing Sometimes called RC cars and they can vary in how extravagant they are. Some are under 50 bucks and some are thousands and thousands of dollars. I myself am no huge fan of them but I do think they're cool. What I do find unbelievably cool though is the latest iteration of remote control vehicles and that is the heavy equipment ones. Excavators, bulldozers, dump trucks, etc. I don't know a single guy anywhere that's not a little fascinated with being able to contol one of these model machines to dig in sand and build little societies. It's just the greatest thing. But here again, not really a hobby I wanted to get into.

Buying, renting and selling them however is a different story. You see I stole an idea to get a big sandbox going with several of these machines and rent out the time to play with them. Little kids all the way up to adults will pay for that if you can price it right. So out of the blue last week I found an absolutely smoking deal on 4 of these machines together. Only $189 bucks to my door. The business ideas just went bananas in my head. Party rentals, park rentals, try before you buy rentals, Simply reselling them if the rental thing doesn't work at a later date. I will absolutely make money with this, and when I do, I'll tell the tale here. But for now it's a cool deal, just not tied into the original flip that we started.

So back to that. How am I going to turn my $90 into $180 or beyond? And that's where you come in. For the first time im going to do an audience poll. What on earth would people like to see that is a fairly regular idea. So moon rocks are out, thermite kits are out, farm stuff (because it's too easy for me) is out. I want something the masses look to and i'll put my own spin on it. Im talking one day car wash, bake sale, yard work, something boring but absolutely tried and true. And why would I do this? Because im going to add in something that would give you an edge and show you exactly how to do it better, or bigger. I am not collecting an email list. In fact im not even using one associated with this site. im going to do a junk email that just views several ideas and pick one. No need to give your name, just put "income idea" as the subject and i'll sort through a few to find one. You can send the idea to cotiasurvey@yahoo.com (old collection email used for coupon sign ups and stuff. But i'll resurrect it for a short time for this)

So yeah, that's it. Send me some ideas and we'll see how to make it more profitable or a quicker turn around than traditionally done. Let's see if we can get our total up to $300 for the next entry and get it there quicker. We're not too far from really impactful changes when you would be tempted to take a little bit out. I would urge you not to do that, self control is hard. It's hard for me too and i've been doing this a while. But I would like to remind you to always keep your mind on those passive income ideas that are unmanned. Vending machines, laundromats, RV parks, etc. That's the real goal when we get to the end.

June 14th, 2025