Look at this thing, it looks as if a college art student were advertising in a faux product showing.
This colorful work of art belonged to a man who was homeless... or so I assumed just by his appearance. I have a friend who says, you can't judge a book by it's cover but you can get a pretty d*mn good idea.
I stop and say... "Well this is an elaborate homeless sign sir." And he laughs, I asked him if I could take a picture of it and gave him $2.00 for his time... it just felt like the right thing to do.
As I walked away I realized something. This man just advertised, got me to stop, inquiring about his sign and he made a sale. My next thought was... well what did he sell? And that's what I realized... he sold himself, his condition, his entire being was his product and this was his advertisement.
Time out here, I'm not saying he is scamming people, he looked for all intensive purposes homeless, and I could tell his condition was very real. He was probably somebody who had gotten laid off and fell on hard times... poor guy. However he learned to survive and adapt to his new life on the streets by collecting money from curious on lookers who would see his sign and say... Hmm what's this about? So how is that different from what Walmart does? Or what Microsoft does? All have widgets they want to sell and they advertise using fancy commercials designed to peak your interest and say... hmm what's that all about?
Is there a secret code amongst the homeless in terms of how to advertise? Is there a formula one can follow to be the most successful? This sounds crazy but I guess what I'm really asking: Is there a true business model for being a successful hobo?
I laughed out loud at, "Well this is an elaborate homeless sign sir." The most impressive homeless guy hustle I've ever seen was in D.C. A guy was selling $2 bedroom slippers outside of the club, which was brilliant because most of the women (myself included) were ready to slip out of their fashionable but painful shoes. I actually would've paid him quite a bit more, if he'd asked for it.
ReplyDeleteThat's some serious hustle. When I was in St. Louis, people used to hang around convention centers and sell cheap watches to all the people who didn't have one. (In those conventions everybody wore suits, most came without a watch to wear). They made serious money out there... I'm in the wrong business.
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