Do you have what it takes to work for yourself? How do you start your own business? We all have to start somewhere. Here's how I started in the T-Shirt printing biz, some years ago. I can tell this story 'cause I believe the statute of limitations has expired!
Here I am, hawking T-Shirts in 1979.
I was
fifteen minutes from reporting to my first day of work as a minimum
wage dishwasher early one evening in June, 1979. It was my first
summer living out of my mom and dad’s house. Things had started
well enough—my intention was to sell wholesale T-Shirt printing
services, pumping out the jobs myself on a freelance basis. The first
week, I sold a gross of shirts to a local pub, making a gross of
dollars. Considering that rent for my summer sublet was all of $60.00
per month, I felt flush! But I hit the wall after that. Despite
hanging flyers all over Amherst and environs (including on the
enormous University of Massachusetts campus), the fact was that my
client base (dorms, student clubs and the like) had departed for the
summer and no one was buying.
Having spent most of my last $20.00
on a book that caught my eye (I’d convinced myself that this was
practical through some alchemical equation), I was ready to throw in
the towel and signed on for a dishwasher job on campus. UMass hosted
an odd assortment of conventions, seminars and crackpot camps in an
attempt to pay the bills over the slow summer season. I was to be
washing dishes in the campus dining commons for a group of several
hundred Transcendental Meditation practitioners from the west coast
who were convening a seminar on levitation. I did mention it was the
Seventies, right?
I was filled with despair at the bleak prospect
of washing dishes. I’d done my time as a dishwasher at a fast food
steak house in high school where I was required to wear a polyester
cowboy outfit. I had no desire to return to the low rent glory of the
dishwashing pit.
At fifteen minutes to the 7:00 pm diswashing
shift, a bolt of lightning struck. Of an instant, a fully formed scam
literally sprang out of absolutely nowhere and announced itself to
me. The underlying message was clear: YOU ARE NOT TO REPORT TO THE
DISHWASHING JOB!
I’d recalled that an acquaintance, Sue, who worked
in the campus center building, had mentioned to me that she had a
list of groups who were holding events in the concourse of the campus
center that summer. Sue had actually produced a list of the events
for me. She assured me, if I was to set up and sell T-Shirts at these
events, she would look the other way; not charge me for the space. It
seemed risky and a bit scurrilous, and I’d forgotten about it until
fourteen minutes to dishwashing.
It was a Thursday evening, and
that very weekend, the New England Camera Club was hosting their
annual convention in the campus center. I determined that I would
grace the show with their official (bootleg) t-shirt. The first
problem to conquer was lack of capital. I knew where I could score
some blank shirts for a dollar a pop, which I could print and mark up
to the princely sum of four bucks, but since I was down to $3.00 on
hand, it didn’t seem much of a plan. If I had a hundred bucks, I
could buy a hundred shirts and turn it into four hundred over the
course of the weekend, enough to finance a month of summer living!
Did I mention it was the Seventies? Very fortunate, as it turns
out you could hitchhike anywhere in New England back then within the
course of a few hours, a day tops. I elected my mom as my financier
and was on the road by five minutes to seven with my thumb up. As my
folks lived about 70 miles away, I figured I’d get there just
before the summer night settled in. I got a ride out of Amherst
towards the western burbs of Boston just about the time my shift
supervisor probably started wondering where the hell I was.
Okay,
so mom definitely raised an eyebrow at the plan, but recognized my
desperation and fronted the bucks. By early Friday afternoon, I was
back in Amherst at my drawing board putting together a cute little
cartoon logo featuring a guy who had a camera for a head. Somehow I
managed to rustle up the blank shirts and get them all printed by
eleven that evening.
The next day, I set up bright and early on
the campus concourse with a table that Sue scrounged up for me (she
was slightly horrified that I’d actually taken her up on her
offer!). By noon I’d made Mom’s stake back, and was up to $250.00
by the end of the first day.
By just past noon on Sunday, I hit
about $430.00 (having managed to get the shirts for .89, I had a few
over 100 pieces). At that point, an obnoxious fifteen year old (who
had been flirting with me earlier) returned. With an attitude of
scorn and derision, she asked if these were the official New England
Camera Club T-Shirts? I said that indeed they were!
A pale and
disheveled fifty year old sad sack with caved in shoulders stepped
forward and introduced himself as the president of said club. I
handed him the four remaining shirts, and barked “Here’s your
cut!”. I was breaking down the table over his protests and briskly
walking it back to the storage bay that Sue had plucked it from the
day before. Table tucked away, I smiled at the Pres. and thanked him
profusely. Then I turned on my heel and ran close to four minute mile
pace back to my flat, a remorseless 22 year old flush with success!
Now I admit that I’d pulled a fast one on that guy, but I am
hardly the only college kid to ever make a quick bundle of cash
bootlegging a few T’s. The moral of the story, such as it is, goes
like this: If you’ve got the BoHo self employment stuff, you know
it, because you have an anecdote or two a lot like this. Normal,
sensible, thoughtful people do not take risks like this, they do not
engage in such brazen behavior. They want “security”! You and me,
we’ll take the risk any day… for those who prefer the living
death of the secure government job and pension, they can have it!
