Yayyy!

So, my 14-year old son and I had a breakthrough in the last three days… seven jobs, some big and some small… rolled in at the “eleventh hour” and we were able to finish strong in the “Thousand Bucks in a Month CHALLENGE!”

On May 9, I made the assertion that I could indeed start a small “Bizness”… a business funded with less startup capital than you might pull out of a Saturday garage sale… and end up paying off the initial costs, incidental costs of equipment and supplies along the way… and have an extra thousand dollars to boot! Also, to further make it a “challenge”, I could only do this on weekends and in spare time, not eight hours a day.

We’ve kept you up to speed with a number of posts. In the most recent post I said that it was getting to be a bit of a nail-biter because during the first phase of building our mobile screen repair “Bizness”, we had discovered that of the five advertising methods we were using, Bandit Signs were performing the best. SO, I laid off the other methods and ordered up eight times as many signs as we started with.

The nail-biting part? Well, because I stopped aggressively using the other marketingethods, relying on just the signs to get us the business… we had several days of no calls at all while waiting for the signs. Which got delayed. MAN!

On top of that, the signs cost about $210 which took us from nearly the halfway point (we had generated $490 profit by the middle of the Challenge) to only being ahead $280. That left $720 to go for me not to look like a total dipstick for bragging. Waiting on those signs to come in made me more than a little nervous.

But the Bandit Signs did finally arrive, and Pierce and I set about to work.  We put out about a dozen signs and actually got two calls before we were finished  😎

I know many of you don’t care about the “numbers”… the actual breakdown of our costs and income… but I’m including it for those of you that do. Here goes:

$    62.66 Initial Investment in six “Bandit Signs”
$  120.90 first order of equipment and supplies after we got our first orders; spline roller, utility knife, kits
$    24.98 for “petscreen” material
$    10.00 for gas (estimated)
$  209.40 for second order of Bandit Signs
$    30.00 for gas (estimated)
$    42.94 for screen build kits
$    49.11 again for kits
$    20.00 for gas (estimated)
$    25.78  for screen material
$    29.44 for kits and petscreen
$    20.00 for gas (estimated)
$    55.06 for screen material plus kits
$     12.40 thank you letters
$    20.00 for gas (estimated)
$  732.67 Total Expenses

Now contrast that against the paying jobs we took in over the period from May 9 to June 9:

$  167 two screen doors, one “petscreen”, $20 tip!
$  172 four screen builds, one small screen
$    67 (forgot details… sorry)
$    39 screen door
$  126 (forgot details on this one too… sorry again)
$    39 screen build
$    39 screen door
$    80 five small screens
$    98 two extra large screen builds
$    40 screen door, gave us two $20s
$    39 screen door
$  110 one screen door, one screen build and two small screens
$    32 two small screens
$    38 two large screens
$    39 screen door
$  189 one screen door, two large and seven small screens (hi Alice!)
$  308 ten screen builds, three small screens
$  148 one screen build, two small and two large screens, one screen door
$    80 five small screens
$    78 two screen doors
$1928 Total Income!!!

Yayy. So Pierce and I took an idea and some spare time and turned it into ($1928 – $732.67) = $1195.33 profit!!

The best things to come out of this 30 day, Thousand DollarChallenge were not this paltry sum of over a grand… naw, here’s some of the best things to come of it:

• Time with my son (#1 benefit of this whole endeavor)
• Showing him how to make a solid income with part time work… something that’ll help in college
• Proving publicly that opportunity is still alive and well in this great country of ours

And among other benefits too numerous to list… we also have over five hundred dollars’ worth of business lined up between tomorrow and Wednesday!

😎

Steppers, thanks for following this Challenge. Thanks for your support and from soe of you, prayers. We made it! I’m glad you were a part. Please weigh in with your questions and comments.

Keep Stepping,

kurt