Tapping Into Hidden Markets for Extra Income



We all have individual talents and some of those may be considered weird but depending on how well you're willing to market yourself, you can make a few dollars in your spare time.  Sometimes, it's our personality that gets us into a unique position.  For instance, the Starbucks barista that made the joke about quitting their job (real genius... in this economy) because of having to make a special order for a paying customer.  

Now, we're not going to talk about retail salespersons that work on commission and spend precious time on fickle customers.  However, there are some personality types or persons with skills who thrive on the challenge.  Instead of setting themselves up for failure, they can go on to better things without having to return to college or trade school.

I was just going through my file directory and saw files from classes that have no use today.  Tens of hundreds of files...I've been in school since 2009 (I took a couple of year-long breaks and got two degrees).  Anyway, as much as l love filing, I dread going through each folder, selecting the files, or wondering if there's some important note that I could use.  

Oh yeah, hoarding does run in my family and while my physical spaces (home, personal vehicle) are relatively clean, I definitely have an overload of files. I'm probably the only person on my block that still has 128GB flash drives. The difference between me and my family is on a good day, I'd pay someone to consolidate everything of relevance to an external drive.

An excellent example of this is a man named Richard Kirschner,

a.k.a. Jackson Galaxy, or the Cat Daddy.  Look at old episodes of My Cat From Hell and check out the crazy look he had.  Even better, he used his unique talents to unravel the mystery of having cats in the home.  While he didn't start the sudden fascination with funny (or funky acting) felines, it's probably safe to say that his branding helped bring about a renewed interest in buying a cat as a pet.

So the guy in the Starbucks video above is a little annoying.  I posted this because, in light of the barista (who got the ax, btw) and his disregard for social media rants per company policy, I have to wonder if this will be part of a future hiring process.  It's not like customers are trying to make things difficult for baristas but for those who've dealt with a surly barista (they exist in the 'hood...not all but enough to reconsider), would you give them a humungous order because you could?  In my neighborhood, I could see them politely excusing themselves and about two minutes later, getting in their car and driving off to the nearest employment office.

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