I gave my friend the answer to his financial problem, but he did nothing with it!

When you give away free advice they treat it as if it has no value. And I guess, in their eyes, it doesn't.

It's really funny: All my friends know what I do for a living. They know I quit my job last year to work full time for myself. They know I am selling information products on the internet and doing quiet well (no bragging -- just trying to make a point) And one will occassionally ask me to help him get started doing the same thing.

The last time, I spent an evening (note: I gave up my evening because he had to work doing the day) with him. I had identified a market of people just begging for a certain type of product and I had figured out where to get the content for a members only website to sell to this market. I gave him all my research, showed him what the competition was doing, how to dig out a niche that the competition was missing, exactly where to get all the content, how to set everything up on auto-pilot, etc., etc. This would have been about a 2 week project from start to finish.

So what happened? I bumped into him about a month later and he said he was taking a frontpage class at the community college and "looking for office space for a new project."

I went ahead and hired some people off elance to put together the content for the website. I spent about a week polishing the content and getting everthing set up.

The site now earns me an additional $1000.00 net per month.

My friend is probably interviewing secretaries. :)

> A friend of mine is the maintenance man for
> a condominium complex. His pay is average
> (gross around $2400 a month)and he complains
> about not having enough money to do what he
> wants and just lives paycheck to paycheck.

> One of his responsibilites is to pressure
> wash the walkways and parking stalls and
> that gave me an idea that would be of great
> help to him.

> I drove around the surrounding neighborhoods
> and noticed several homes with rather small
> to medium sized driveways. Pressure washing
> those sizes could easily be done in an hour
> or less.

> My idea was to create two versions of a
> simple flier offering driveway pressure
> washing. One would list a price of $85 for
> the larger size (still on the small side)
> and $65 for the smaller driveway that could
> be done in around 30 to 40 minutes.

> I would distribute fliers to only those
> homes with relatively small driveways. Then,
> if the response was low, I would go door to
> door with flier in hand and offer to
> pressure wash driveways for those who would
> schedule a job THAT DAY for the reduced
> price of $59 for the larger size (instead of
> the flier price of $85) and $45 for the
> smaller size (instead of the flier price of
> $65) if they would agree to before and after
> photos for our marketing.

> Based on my past experience, I know this
> will work.

> I told my friend about this and offered the
> following: I create the flier and he
> distributes them. Then, if the response is
> low, I would go door to door while he is
> with me and I would do all the pitches and
> secure all the jobs and then he would do the
> work and keep all the money.

> He gets off work at 3:30 pm and has Friday
> and Saturday off. He also has use of the
> pressure washer.

> Just two pressure washing jobs a day at an
> average of say $60 per job from direct flier
> response and going door to door would give
> him around $600 a week working 5 afternoons.
> That would match what he already makes and
> literally double his income.

> He's still "thinking about it" and
> it was almost a year ago that I proposed
> this to him and he's still complaining about
> lack of money.

> Go figure!!

> Lawrence