Thursday, December 2, 2010

Knife Sharpening Hussle

"How much do I get paid?", is a question never asked by my young cousins.
"How can I get paid?", is.
In order to make money for the holidays my young cousins already have a business which owns and hangs Christmas lights and decor on people's houses.
But this past Thanksgiving I bought a new knife sharpener.
Upon seeing this my niece (always the first to think of a new hustle) thought that I should pay her to sharpen all the knives in my house.
She's a bit young to handle cutlery on her own so I helped her with the job.
"I could make money doing this for everyone!", she said.
The thing is, she could - everyone has old dull knives filling a kitchen drawer.
We printed fliers and arranged pick-up dates for my neighbors.
We sharpened the knives (@ $3.00 a pop) and returned each knife with the newly sharpened blades covered in cardboard and two pieces of tape with the name and address written on each.
In one day my niece made $189.00.
Upon seeing this my male cousins decided to expand her operations to include more neighborhoods.

Sure, these kids will probably end up working for someone else - maybe at a job they don't even like - but they will always have the foundation of creating opportunities where others see none.
They may get to the point where they create their own models from which they can create their own businesses with the information learned from these jobs.
My niece bought my knife sharpener from me and now employees her older cousins to do the work.

2 comments:

DF said...

Teach them young UBJ and they'll grow up knowing there's more than one way to make money. The reason why so many people are unemployed and feeling bad is because they don't have a backpocket Hustle.

Now the knife hussle as you call it is indeed unique and 189 bucks is by far is enough for anyone to think anything is possible.

You got to love your niece as she even is on to step 2 and that's hiring other people to make money for her. Be careful you might be raising the next Martha Stewart.

uglyblackjohn said...

Yeah... I play favorites with my young relatives - and she is by far my favorite.
She lives with both of her parents but she loves when she gets a chance to hang out with me.
The kid is fearless - she'll even roll with me through the hood and speak to everyone.
She'll even catch when I fail to offer help to someone who may need it.
The kid is the ish.
But yeah... my friends laugh that the youngest GIRL seems to be the one running things with her older cousins.