The Ecomonic Collapse of our lifetimes will happen this month... It's phoenix time

A great visual depiction of the idea of a phoenix, burning up then being reborn from the ashes, courtesy of Harry Potter.  That phoenix, Fawkes, gave a feather that is the core of Harry's wand.   

It's October 1st, 2019.  For a couple of years now, I've been writing and talking about the coming recession.  Back in early 2018, when the financial market thought the economy was going to surge for 3 to 5 more years, because of Trump's massive tax cuts, I disagreed.  I predicted that the stock market would start to turn down a month or two after the tax cuts were signed, because the promise of that massive windfall to corporate America, and the super rich, was the main force driving the markets up (here's one post, January 2, 2018).  President Trump sign the tax cuts on December 22, 2017.  Almost a month to the day, January 26thm 2018, the stock market turned downward, you can check the chart.

What I got wrong was the incredible manipulation that was going to take place to try and keep the market moving up, mostly to make the economy appear vibrant, and get Donald Trump, and a lot of Republicans in other offices, elected again.  Nomi Prins and her explanation of the collective central banks actions after 2008 helped me, and others, understand this weird financial Never Never Land we find ourselves in now.  There are trillions of government bonds paying negative interest rates, for example.  Are wealthy individuals and institutions really going to keep investing in bonds that cost them money?  I doubt it.

As I write this, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is only 26 points above where it was on January 26th, 2018.  Overall, the Dow is up 26 freakin' points in 20 months.  Not 26%, 26 points!  Healthy and vibrant economy?  Nope.  The bond yields have been dropping, and are now below the dismal inflation numbers, by and large.  And that's the strong part of the economy.  


Across rural, small town, and mid-size city America, things have been pretty dismal economically since 2008.  There are some exceptions, of course, but much of this country has missed out on the 10+ years of expansion that did happen.  For many rural areas and small towns, they've basically been in a great depression, a geographic great depression, for 11 years now.

I've been interested in futurist thinking since I was a kid.  I've been interested in economics since high school, and I'm 53 now.  This is my geek zone, long term social dynamics and economic trends are the weird stuff I find fascinating.

So now, I think we'll see this recession's "Lehman Brother Moment" happen this month, during October 2019. 

 I think we are very likely already in "the next recession."  But recessions are officially labeled months, maybe even years, after they actually happen.  So it's always arguable that we're in a recession, while we're in one.  But I think we're due for the big moment, a Lehman Brothers-style moment, this month, that will make the economic downturn obvious to everyone.  It  may be a collapse of GE, based on the allegations from about 6 weeks ago.  Or it could be the impeachment, the trade war, or something else.  But I think the big moment will happen in October 2019.   And yeah, that's going to suck for most people.  That's the bad news.

The good news is that the long term forces in play here are the collapse of the remaining parts of the Industrial Age infrastructure, and our long, messy, sticky transition into a functional Information Age world.  That's the phoenix part.

Things like our education system, particularly the college system, largely held up by $1.6 TRILLION of student debt, will meet the Disruption Monster.  College as an institution will collapse, much in the way we see the Retail Apocalypse now.  And then it will have to be rebuilt.  Colleges won't go away completely, we need them for certain jobs and career paths.  But many colleges will go under, or be absorbed into larger, more viable ones.

A perfect example is that Mount Ida College, where hardcore entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk went to school, is now out of business.  But Gary Vaynerchuk isn't, he's not only thriving, he's looking forward to this economic downturn, and the incredible amount of opportunities it will bring about.  Rich Dad, Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki is also looking forward to the coming opportunities, and talking openly about it.  Warren Buffet is too, I imagine, but he doesn't say it, although he drops a little hint here and there.

This economic downturn will be much more than a typical recession.  This is the Phoenix Recession, a collapse of much of the obsolete parts of the Industrial Age world, businesses, power structures, and systems, and new, Information Age businesses and systems will be built, taking their place.  That's the long term Big Picture that I see, and have been writing about as I have been able.  My question for each of you is, do you want to ride the collapse down and be crushed, or do you want to look ahead and help build a viable future, using today's technology, platforms, and opportunities? 

Personally, I'm in a really down and out place financially, and there's a long story about that, a story I won't get into.  But I'm looking to build something cool with some of the opportunities this economic downturn, this Phoenix Recession, will provide.  We're at the top of the roller coaster hill, are you ready for this ride?

A day later... 10/2/2019- The markets were down a couple hundred points yesterday, and I didn't expect a huge drop right away.  But as of close of the stock markets today, the Dow Industrial Average was down over 800 points.  It's a really rough start to Quarter 4 of this business year, and a lot of traders and investors are feeling a recession is more likely.  But this post was to predict that I believe the big event no one can deny, the "Lehman Brothers Moment" of this economic downturn will happen this month.  The markets will rebound a bit tomorrow or the next day, but the think the big economic bomb will drop later this month, and we'll be on our way down do about Dow 17,500, and similar percentage rate declines in the other averages.  

Recession Watch 2/6/2019

Here we see former Congressman and President Reagan 's budget director talking about the current state of U.S. economics in late January 2019.  The world economy is largely slowing down, China is slowing down (though still growing fast), and we have absurd amounts of government, corporate, and private debt.  For the decade since The Great Recession of 2007-2009, student loan debt has been bought out, repackaged, and sold to investors in a nearly identical way to how the sub-prime mortgage loans were before the Great Recession.  Those investments were a major trigger for that recession.

Last week, Jay Powell, Chairman of the Fed (Federal Reserve), caved to pressure, and didn't raise interest rates.  Raising rates gives him more ways to fight the next recession when it does actually happen.  He was doing the right thing last year by raising interest rates from the massively low levels they've been at for a decade, and not much better before that.  Super low interest rates allow Wall Street financiers, major corporations, and super rich individuals to borrow money REALLY easy, which makes it really easy to invest that money in sketchy ideas, or to flat out gamble on stupid shit.  It's the last one where Wall Street goes nuts and really sends things over the edge. Then we get some little straw that breaks the back of the financial bubble's camel, and we get the inevitable collapse.

Ten years ago, we never really paid the price for that recession, we've been in a rolling bailout, called "Quantitative Easing" to confuse all of you, and to keep the U.S. from the massive restructuring we really needed to go through.  Yet, hundreds of rural areas and small and mid-sized towns and cities never really came out of the last recession.  They're still struggling, as a handful of tech hub cities (San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Boston, NYC, D.C., Austin, etc.) go crazy with tech and financial market money.

There are all kinds of different factors already in place to toss us into the next recession. Combined, they make it look like the Next Great Recession will be worse than 2008.  That sucks overall.  But recessions also open up huge opportunities for the people who see it coming, and get in position to make the most of it. Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, in the video below, is one of those people, and is talking about this coming recession more and more lately, in his content.

A recession is when the whole country (or world) goes on sale, and almost nobody wants to buy.

We should have slipped into a traditional recession back in about 2016 or 2017.  But the financial world is completely manipulated these days, and the inevitable collapse has been postponed bit by bit.  But the longer it gets postponed, the worse it will be when it does happen, because the debt for government, corporations, students, and other individuals keep soaring.  So things are going to look kinda decent for another month, maybe two or more.  Then Powell will have to decide if The Fed tries this again.  But the financial house of cards is teetering more than ever, and that can't last indefinitely.  

By not raising interest rates last week, Fed chairman Powell  gave Wall Street and corporate America the crack pipe back, cause they were bitching like crazy about going to rehab, metaphorically speaking.  By doing this, Powell postponed the coming recession for a couple more months, and made it worse by doing that.

So what can an average person do?  You can reduce bills, pay off debt, buy gold or silver (which generally hold their value better than cash and other investments in a downturn), and you can look for side gigs or other ways to earn extra money when things finally do get tough.

Gary Vaynerchuk has built a $200 million digital agency (aka advertising agency) in the last decade.  Here's Gary Vee's take on other aspects of this next collapse:

Are you ready for the economic collapse? Gary Vaynerchuk is

I'm a big fan on betting on the inevitable, because it will eventually happen.  Gary Vaynerchuk has built a $200+ million digital (marketing/ad) agency in the last 5-6 years, and he knows a financial meltdown is coming, too.  He's actually built it into his long term plans.  How 'bout you?

I watched this consulting session, the full length video that this clip comes from the other day.  Another recession is inevitable, it WILL happen at some point.  And it looks like we're real close to that point now.  Gary spells out how this will launch his business to another level, not destroy it.  Don't bet against gravity people, it works. 

The Economic Reality of 2018... and how to make the most of it

Why would the owner of a $200 million a year, tech savvy, digital marketing agency, make a video of himself hitting 40 garage sales and buying things for a dollar or two?  To show the rest of us how he got started as a business guy, and one of the best ways anyone willing to work can make some extra money in 2018 and beyond.

This guy above is Gary Vaynerchuk.  If you know who he is, you get this.  But if you don't, here's why I'm embedding this video, Episode #1 of Trash Talk, in my blog, and why I'm using this post to jump start my new Facebook Group: Making Money While Making Art.
Gary Vaynerchuk was born in Belarus, part of the former Soviet Union,  basically Russia.  His family brought him over here when he was 3, they lived in a tiny apartment, crammed together, and worked their asses off as merchants.  His dad worked at another family member's liquor store, then eventually bought his own.  
At a time when the future hope of immigrant kids was to get a good education, Gary sucked at school.  D and F student, he says.  But Gary got the merchant gene from his family, he could sell shit, even at a young age.  He ran a neighborhood lemonade stand franchise at age 5.  He was still afraid of riding a bike, so he'd cruise his 5 or 6 lemonade stands on his Big Wheel, where his friends worked for him, and pick up the profits.  By the time he was 11 or 12, he was making $2,000-$3,000 a weekend selling baseball cards at local mall events.  Then, at 14, as his legend goes, his dad took him away from his baseball cards shows, and put him to work bagging ice in the basement of the liquor store for $2 an hour.  Gary was not a happy camper at that point.  But he watched the store, and learned how things worked.  

He later realized that people collected wines, just like they collected baseball cards, and that opened up a lot of ideas for him.  He went on to jump on the internet idea way before it was business friendly, starting Wine Library TV on YouTube.   With his skills honed as a boy, and his interest in the internet, Gary took his parents' liquor store from a $3 million a year to a $60 million a year business from about 1999-2005.  He became known as a brash, hard cussing, young, New Jersey business kid who really understood "this internet thing."  

That led to TV show appearances, and speaking engagements.  With his parents' American Dream business set, Gary and his brother walked away, with very little money, and started a digital marketing agency called VaynerMedia.  So his "real" job is to talk bigwigs at major corporations into using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and today's real communication platforms to promote their products.  In addition to that, Gary puts out a shitload of content telling the rest of us what's happening in these worlds, and how to use it to promote what we're doing.  He's flying around the world giving keynote speeches about how the internet and social media have completely changed marketing and business, but the big corporations haven't caught up yet.  

Oh, one other thing you need to understand about Gary Vee... he plans to buy the New York Jets and win a Superbowl or three with them in the future.  That's his big picture plan. 

Throughout his life, he's made extra cash by going to garage sales and buying things cheap, and reselling them somewhere else, like Ebay.  Today's technology makes this possible for everyone to do.  He's realized that while a lot of people focus on starting high tech start-ups, there are millions of everyday people struggling to get by.  So since 2017, he's been talking about how anyone willing to work can make extra money flipping things they buy at garage sales, thrift stores, auctions, or discount stores, and making more money.  That's what the video above is about.  It'd funny, because Gary gets as stoked finding a stuff animal for 50 cents that he can sell for $20 as he does doing major business deals.  

As for me, I've been through a bunch of crazy years, driving a taxi, winding up homeless, unable to find any real job when I moved to North Carolina in 2008, and then focusing on my Sharpie art to start making money again.  I'm also a pretty smart geek who has always been interested in big picture economics, and looking to the future to see where our world is going.  At 52-years-old, I'm in a new city, getting my name out with my art, but also fighting my way out of homelessness.  I'm building a business, I started literally without a dime, and now I don't have an apartment, a car, or much else.  I've been self-educating on the way business and promotion work these days, which is why I blog to put out my ideas into written content, and help promote my art.  That's how I ran across Gary Vee's work.  So here's my take on today's world...
 

We live in a weird world these days, with everyone inundated by all kinds of media from all sides.  Millions and millions of people now watch really super-biased TV and online media.  These people have taken to believing complete bullshit on a regular basis, and that warped outlook, it's having an effect, not just in politics and the slow steady collapse of our democracy in Washington D.C., but in the business world as well.  Will everyday, real world Americans step up and bring our country back towards a place where people can disagree and argue, but come together and compromise when it's needed?  Time will tell. 

Among other things,  I'm a geek who's always been a futurist, looking forward to where things are actually going, and trying to figure out what coming problems we might be able to partially deal with beforehand.  Here are a few of the actual facts about our current economic situation, facts that are often ignored, because they don't really fit the playbook of either political party's narrative.  

-The U.S. has a recession every 4 to 10 years, historically, and it's been 10 years since the major collapse of 2008, and over 10 1/2 years since The Great Recession actually started.  So we're due for a recession before too long.

-American college students have racked up $1.4 to $1.5 TRILLION in student debt, which is more than the $1.3 trillion of subprime mortgage debt that triggered the collapse in 2008.  Most of this student debt has been turned into investments called SLABS, and sold to institutional investors, who probably didn't fully understand what they were buying, just like the subprime debt a decade ago.  

-In addition to the student debt that's suffocating the Millennials, there's an absurd amount of personal, corporate, and government debt as well.  If interest rates go up (like they have in the last few days), all that debt gets more expensive to pay back.  That's when it gets really ugly in the economy.

-Another huge secret is that AT LEAST 7 million American men, of prime working age, are simply not working.  Period.  The just gave up on the idea, it seems.  There is a growing number of womoen in this category as well.  This is a higher percentage of the working population that is out of work than during The Great Depression of the 1930's, and it's a much higher actual number of working age people not working, than ever, in our history.  This is why the unemployment rate is historically low, but workers' wages are not going up.  There are millions of people, mostly men, but women as well, sitting on the sidelines.  Some of them would probably go back to work if there were solid, high paying jobs to go back to.  It is suspected that about 2/3 of those men get some form of Social Security Disability, and that program is full of scammers living off your tax dollars.  (Source- Nicolas  Eberstadt/ Men Without Work).

-In today's world, nearly 50% of American workers work low paying service jobs, and that number is growing.  About 30% work in what researcher Richard Florida calls the "Creative Class" (arts/design/tech/media/engineering/management/science/teaching, etc.), and that number is growing.  They do well financially, averaging $70,000 a year as of 2012.  Around 20% of the population is still in the traditional, 20th century-style Working class ( about 7-8% of those are actual manufacturing, that 20% also includes transportation, construction, etc.).  This number is shrinking, generally.  Meanwhile, agriculture and logging make up only about 1% of the workforce.  My point here is though there are lots of jobs, at least half of U.S. workers right now work low wage service jobs, and the working class doesn't pay at the level it did 40 years ago, when you figure it with inflation.  (Source- Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, you can see the figures above in the second chart in this article).

So half of the U.S. working people are just struggling to survive, many with two, or even three, low paying, often part time, jobs.  The next 20% to 30% or so are making good wages, but many of them are younger people and are saddled with ridiculous amounts of student debt, so even they are struggling, just with nicer apartments and maybe newer cars.  So while the economy has actually been growing for 9 years now, 2/3 to 3/4 of our country aren't living well.  They're just getting by.  The top 20% or so feels the growing economy.  But most of the country doesn't get the good effects.  

While entrepreneur and marketing hero Gary Vaynerchuk doesn't spend time digging into these facts I've listed above, he sees the everyday version of it in his never-ending travels, in the real people he talks to and meets with.  That's why he's showing people how he made money from garage sales (and still does when he has some time) when he was coming up, and the money really mattered to him.  He sees "flipping" merchandise and a way to move up for the 60% to 80% of the people out there struggling.

There's nothing new about average people buying things one place, and selling those things for a bit more somewhere else.  Thousands of years ago, indigenous people everywhere traded items across whole continents.  Christopher Columbus wandered into the Caribbean in 1492, while looking for a better route to get silks and spices from China and India. What is different in today's world, is that nearly everyone can use Craigslist, Ebay, Facebook Marketplace, LetGo, Etsy, Shopify, and other ways that average people can sell things around the country and around the world.  THAT ability of average individuals to trade worldwide is new.  Well, 20 years old or so, but new in human history.  

That has changed everything.  Digital media, the ability to send a song, a story, and article, this blog, a video clip, or a movie around the world in seconds, digitally, is another thing that's completely changed the game.  The biggest traditional businesses in the world STILL aren't up to date on how this all works.  That makes for some amazing opportunities for average people, like you and me.  There are great opportunities... IF you are willing to take the time and learn how things actually work in today's business world, and IF you're willing to put out content, connect with people, build a following, and put in the hours of 21st century work to make it happen.  

This blog is going to focus a lot on building an art and creative based business in today's world.  That's what I'm working on doing.  That's whqt millions of other people are going to have to work on doing as the world keep changing, as we go into the next recession before too long, and as technology keep replacing human jobs.  

I know this was a long post, and most of you don't like reading for that long.  But I had a lot I wanted to get across as I focus more helping artists and creative people, like myself, survive, make money, AND be able to do our creative work and make money off that, when possible.  

I'm starting a new Facebook group today, "Make Money While Making Art."  Friend me on FB and ask to join to get more ideas on these subjects.  Steve Emig on FB, in Richmond, VA.  

Alright... thanks for taking the time to read this long intro post, now get back to being creative...
 

Why huge businesses (and towns and cities) die

I'm an artist who actually sells art on a regular basis.  I don't make a real living at it yet, but I'm getting there, and I literally started without a dime.  I'm also homeless at the moment.  The night before last I slept outside a few hours after 13 confirmed tornadoes, one fatal, blazed through this area.  Yet I spend time on this blog, Facebook, Pinterest, and not Instagram every day.  I "produce content."  For free.  For anyone interested.  Every day.  Why?  Because I realize that that's the game now.  I listen to Gary Vaynerchuk nearly every day as well.  Gary doesn't tell you what you want to hear.  He doesn't get you psyched to "Go for it!"  Gary has been working with the internet as a businessman since about 1997.  He's been using social media since it popped up.  He was on You Tube on day one.  He tells us all what's happening, where things are going, and why you have to simply accept it and deal with the change that's happening.

Toys-R-Us, the long time dominator in the toy sales world, is out of business because they didn't listen people like to Gary Vee.

Your world, no matter what you do, has been dramatically changed by new technology in the last 20 years.  It's happening faster and faster, and there's a lot more to come.  And there are a lot more old school companies that will collapse in the next few years.  Listen up.  Why?  Because your world will be rocked by what is happening.  You can learn the skills to take advantage of this change.  Or you can walk out of your job crying and surprised when they lay your ass off because they went out of business like Toy-R-Us, and Blockbuster, and all the other businesses dying off now. 

It's up to you.

It's Gary Vaynerchuk's fault I'm the world's greatest homeless Sharpie artist

I just listened to this keynote speech by Gary Vaynerchuk while I was drawing a Sharpie doodle art picture.  The video hit YouTube 49 minutes before I turned it on.  This is why I'm a 52-year-old goofball drawing cool Sharpie drawings for a living.  Because I know Gary's right.  And, because as I started to figure that out, first listening to talks and reading books by Seth Godin a few years back, and then some Mitch Joel, and then a ton of different TED Talks, and then Amanda Palmer and then Gary Vee and Simon Sinek and others.  While I was getting started, I was at a point in my life where I WAS the guy with no phone, like the guy he calls up on stage in the clip above. And I was the guy with LITERALLY, no money.  Seriously, shit was that fucked up , I started without a dime.  I was living with my mom at age 49.  Instead of blowing my head off for that reason alone, or because I couldn't find ANY "real job" in Kernersville, North Carolina, or because I weighed over 300 pounds, or because all my teeth are broken off at the gum line.  I decided to start drawing stuff in my Sharpie style that I would actually want to hang on my own wall, and to create my own job with that.

Yeah, when suicide gets discussed, or thought about, those are some winning reasons to do it.  I know, I damn near did it.  Shit gets bad sometimes.  Life is tough.  We all have crazy battles of one kind or another.  I was coming back from an actual overdose attempt.  I've been there.  I had some crazy shit start happening in my head a few years back after my dad died.  I went to the psych ward.  I had a complete asshole for a psychiatrist who put me on super strong meds and damn near made me a zombie.  I struggled through that shit for a couple of years.  But I LIKE to work.  I LIKE to create stuff, I LIKE to start new projects.  I LIKE being creative.  It was always there.  But the meds sucked.  So I stopped taking them.  Then my symptoms went crazy.  I went overboard and took enough lithium to kill a yak in 2015.

I damn near died.  I spent a couple days in intensive care, then got dialysis in my neck to get as much lithium as possible out of me, then several days in a regular hospital room while I was too weak to stand up.  I had a "sitter" in my room to keep me from doing anything else stupid.  That's some low level intern who just has to sit there 12 hours a day, just in case I would try anything. 

My heart rate went crazy, they were afraid I might have a heart attack a few times.  Then I spent several more days in the psych ward, in the addict section, because that was the only bed open.  I did my days.  I drew a few lame pictures with crayons and colored pencils because I just couldn't play spades all day like the others.  And I got out.

You know what, I had insurance that paid for three weeks of all day therapy, Cognitive Behaviorial Therapy (CBT).  That helped.  I got on meds that really helped.  I got a new psychiatrist that was a cool guy and actually gave a damn.  A few months later I decided to focus all my energy on drawing my Sharpie pictures and turning that into a small business.  I had a bunch of Sharpie markers, a small pad of sketch paper, and a $65 refurbished laptop that was running Windows XP in late 2015.  I'm that guy.  I'm the guy Gary jokingly makes fun of.  I had no money.  My mom is always in financial crisis.  I didn't have a phone.  I STILL don't have a smart phone.  I have a friend, a guy who digs my art and has bought a bunch, that's going to give me his old phone soon, and turn it on for a while to help me get things going better.  So I'll FINALLY deal with learning Instagram before too long.

I'm that guy.  My mom and I fought so much, that I took off, and literally lived in a tent in the woods of a different city, for 9 1/2 months, to get my Sharpie art business off the ground.  It was tough.  But I also loved doing it, and I knew it was the right step for me at the time.  So now I do a totally original kind of Sharpie art, and I make consistent money at it.  Not a lot yet, not enough to live on, but I'm on the way.  I'm old, slow and steady is fine with me.  I can wait.

I just left the city where I turned $15 and a box of Sharpies, while living in a fucking tent, into an income of $500 to $600 a month, in a year.  Go ahead, laugh it up.  Then figure out the ROI on $15 to $500 a month.  The end number is small, but the ROI is big.  Coming out of homelessness is hard.  Starting an art-based business is hard.  But I got it going.  And I just left that city to head back out West to Southern California, where I know a lot of people, where I spent most of my adult life, and where it's far more entrepreneurial than where I was.




But a guy flaked on paying for the last drawing I did.  I took a bus to a city I've never been to, and got temporarily stuck.  I spent the last three nights sleeping in bus stations.  I'm typing this blog post in a library in the hood of Richmond, Virginia.  I'd never been here until 40 hours ago.  That's as far as I could get on the money I had, and I was traveling on a half a shoestring budget.  Small business people and entrepreneurs get that. 

Several people in my old city got pissed and held off paying me money they owe me. So I'm in a city I've never been in.  And I'm STILL drawing my Sharpie pictures.  I'm still blogging.  And I'm going to sell some of my art to someone over the next day or two.  That will get me to a Facebook friend's place near Chicago.  I'll get that phone and start promoting my stuff better.  I'll keep learning and self-educating.  I'll keep drawing Sharpie art.  I'm going to draw Gary Vaynerchuk a picture of Al Toon that will blow his fucking mind before too long.  Because he's right.  The internet is changing EVERYTHING.

I'm the old guy.  I'm the guy who didn't surf the web until 2008.  I'm the guy who started with no money, selling art on Facebook, on Fred Flintstone's old laptop, a few months out of the psych ward. This isn't a "poor me" story.  Your story may be worse.  But I've been through a fair amount of shit, and I'm doing what I love doing, and building a business out of it.  It's taking a while, but it's happening.  At some point, it will start happening faster.

I'm that guy.  And I'm working my face off, as Gary says, to draw really cool pictures with Sharpie markers.  That's my thing. 

What's your thing?  Listen to these two talks.  Then go do your thing.

Google "#sharpiescribblestyle" to see dozens of my drawings.

A few hours later:  When I embedded these to speeches into into my blog earlier, I had no intention of writing the post.  This is one that just came blasting out of me.  I just went through and proofread it.  Then I contacted someone who asked about a drawing a couple months ago, and I got the info needed and green light to start the next drawing.  I'm working again, even in a really sketchy situation.   And it feels really good. 

Gary Vaynerchuk says you're soft... and he's right

Gary Vaynerchuk cusses a lot.  So NSFW.  If cussing bothers you, grow up.  Gary Vee also drops a ton of knowledge about business and marketing and building a business in today's world.  One week from now, owning your own business is going to look like a much better idea.  Just wait. 

Watch this video.  Stop whining.  Work your ass off.