A pair of boots and a willingness to callous your hands goes a long way.
“When I was 16, I rented a 300-pound aerator I had no business renting & lifted it into the bed of my truck because I didn’t have a trailer.
I fibbed to my neighbors:
‘I’m doing your neighbors yard, want me to do yours?”
I had to extend my 4-hour rental to 4-weeks.
Work wins.”
-Ray Zingler on X
If you were to look under my bed when I was a teenager, you’d have thought I was a drug dealer.
Thousands & thousands of dollars of unorganized cash stashed in coffee cans, tupperwares, and random boxes.
I was a mowing, blowing, weed eating, furniture moving, dump hauling machine.
I remember one year for my birthday I asked for a headlamp.
Why?
Because mowing season ran through October, and to keep mowing, I’d have to cut in the dark, after football practice.
But one of the most lucrative things I did, was aerate yards in addition to my mowing/weed eating operation.
I remember dad rented one, one year to do our own yard and I quickly saw the opportunity of offering this service to not only some of my existing yards, but also the neighbors.
So, like any serial entrepreneur, I went door knocking.
“Hi mam, I’ve rented an aerator and will be aerating folks yards in the neighborhood, I’m actually doing the neighbors on either side of you, would you like me to do your yard as well?”
While slightly untrue, I knew the power of FOMO, even at a very young age.
There’s another $100 in my pocket.
It got to a point on my street where I was able run that bad boy, that felt like steering a cruise ship with a broken rudder, across property lines because I had so many yards lined up.
I don’t know if I was more thankful for the cash, or for not having to turn that mother trucker of a machine near as often, but I was thankful, nonetheless.
As I reflect on those days, I remember I didn’t “enjoy” the work at the time, but for some reason I just kept doing it. And it wasn’t even my parents pressuring me to “get a job”. Hell, there were many times where they told me to chill out.
I think subconsciously I knew there was value in the hard work.
It wasn’t about “the jobs” or really even the cash.
The work was feeding my soul, I just didn’t fully understand it at the time.
There is an abundance of opportunity out there.
And guess what, you don’t have look very far, either.
Go get it.
