Showing posts with label new american dream. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new american dream. Show all posts

March 17, 2019

The Curious Case of the Spiritual Gangster

In an Increasingly well traveled world, the Barter Economy and Go-Givers Harvest the highest rewards, knowledge and Information.
The Why:
Travel is one of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself, because of the people you meet and the experiences you have, if you are open minded. In the past, I've written about how The Singing Cerveza Salesman who won my business, today I am going to write about how being generous with what you have can get you the experience of a lifetime.
The Story:
This story took place over the St. Patrick's day Weekend in Memphis, Tennessee. The name's will be changed as always. All events take place in and around Beale Street.
We Started on
Enjoyed a Parade of Boll Weavels, Shriners, Cruella DeVille Cars, and Memphis Grizzlies:
After the parade, we found ourselves at Silky O'Sullivans which was crowded and an amazing experience where I got to partake in a magical bucket. The experiences that this magical bucket called a "Diver" never stopped ceasing to amaze me. It caught eyes and attention, it was communal, and it brought people into our circle that will forever be friends for the rest of time. Our circle grew. The contents of this bucket could be traded, not for currency but for value. The value of a good time. As the day progressed on the contents of the bucket seemed to dwindle but sometimes people would share their time with us and somehow the bucket never seemed to get truly empty. The more we shared, the more a magical haze overtook me, that can only be described as the beginning of the magic of St. Patrick's Day.
The Magical Bucket:


Being from Nashville, TN, I wanted to drop in and say hey to my neighbors at Tin Roof in Memphis because I've been a fan of the Original Tin Roof on Demonbreun for as long as I'm allowed to legally remember.

Here begins the tale of how a pair of Ray-Bans magically passed over two of my close friends and led the spiritual gangster into my life. During the day I was wearing my glasses and couldn't wear my sunglasses. So my first friend wanted to borrow them, of course this is no problem! "J," now with a pair of sunglasses was able to meet "A." "A" had a pair of sunglasses that "J" was able to keep up with because a silly leprechaun kept knocking the sunglasses off A's head. So now my Ray-Bans were able to be commandeered by my good brother Forrester. Forrestor wore my shades until the sun had set and I had my contacts in.

These magical sunglasses were able to lead J and Forrester to their own spiritual gangsters, they had finally come to rest back on my head with one last task: find me a spiritual gangster.

Though my day had been arduous and my feet were calloused, I was not giving up hope to find a true intellectual conversation. The attempts throughout had been many, yet none were fruitful. Since Tin Roof in Nashville was familiar territory for me, Tin Roof on Beale Street quickly became a comfort zone in which I thrived. I introduced myself to some staff and sent regards from Tin Roof in Nashville.

The Dance floor seemed fun, but not this late, my spirit was dwindling and I needed a few more carbohydrates anyway. Returning inside, I found my way upstairs, I found my friends J, N, A, K, B, and Forrester up here!

How Amazing, the Magical Bucket and Sunglasses re-united us! I made more friends, a Real Estate Agent, an Attorney, and an interesting gentleman who's name I never got. But alas, the spirits were not in my favor... yet. All of these conversations were great, but none of them truly enlightening and all ended too soon.

That's when the wind shifted the tide and led me to Elle. Elle was tall, which I liked. She also seemed to be fairly un-amused with her current accompaniment. We hit it off pretty quickly with polite complements traded. Elle had an amazing story being from Hawaii originally, and you don't hear that very often! She Also had a Carmen San Diego thing going on especially since I think she mentioned having lived there, in fact it's where she started her company. I had to know more, why was she in Memphis? Was she merely visiting or did she live there? Elle actually moved her start up from San Diego to Memphis to catch a big Fish and as a salesman myself, I appreciated the willingness to travel, plus it made huge business sense. As the magic of the night increasingly took hold of the atmosphere, the Altruistic Leprechauns moved the magic hands of time and place. The Spiritual Gangster hat was of significant importance to Elle. Perhaps, perhaps not. I will never know.
The Hat:
The Curious Case of the spiritual gangster
But I do know that the exchange of ideas and thoughts in not only English but in Spanish as well was worth more than any classical education could buy. To read more on how to get more from your education while travelling abroad and the significance of learning a second language, read my article about Staying Healthy while Travelling Abroad. 

Before Hailing a ride, Elle and I exchanged items in order to guarantee we would re-unite at a future point. The Spiritual Gangster hat that she had placed such High Value on and my Ray bans which I didn't pay anywhere near to full price for were traded.

I valued very much my sunglasses because of the magic that they were able to work for my brothers and for me, so I wonder what magic and good fortune will bring because of the Highly Valued hat? Stay Tuned for the update of when the Spiritual Gangster Strikes again! Elle and Myself had exchanged so much information and generosity; however, it was time for me to retire to my room for the night. Elle was awaiting a friend anyway and I urgently needed a change of socks.

So I hailed a Lyft home and had one more amazingly intelligent altruistic conversation with my Driver, T. Fortunately, due to the wonders of technology I was able to get word of my brothers whereabouts and that Elle had finally reunited with her friend.
The Moral
What this whole story comes down to is this, that even though currency is simply a means of exchange, true value can be found from meaning, conversation, and experience.

Through true friendship, kind acts, and generosity, you can truly have an amazing time. As Eric Weinstein said in a Joe Rogan Podcast, "Take something simple like a harmonica" something completely unexpected and using it in a different way "Something you get as a party favor as a kid" he continues "There's 4 secrets and suddenly the world opens up" ... "There's so small a number of secrets and you have to have a reason." "They're small financial options, you can exercise them or you can not exercise them."

 Body language is the language of the world, and that's a tale for another day.


If you enjoy reading my stories, insights, and perspectives, please consider donating! There are several ways and if you'd like be a patron, your generosity will help my go on my biggest endeavor ever in writing a book. Thank you for reading!

April 27, 2011

How to Make a Million Dollars

Hello readers. It is currently 9pm and like most of my good ideas, they are either generated in the morning shower, at night while lying in bed, or while watching Netflix! While watching the Twilight Zone I began to think about my blog and things I could do to help out my readers even more.

The purpose of this Post:

A lot of folks want to know how to make money online, from home, or simply more quick and easily. Maybe you just want to quit your 9 to 5? I will be following this post with a lot of separate segments that I will eventually include into one big article on Frugal Son. This is the first post in a segment of posts I will be making on how to make money by starting with nothing more than a computer, your brain, and virtually no capital.

The List:
This is a list of ideas to make money and ways to net you a million bucks.
-Start a Website
-Invest in a Mutual Fund 
-Gamble (not recommended)
-Become a day trader
-Open an eBay store
-host a web show
-spend and save wisely (already touched on)
The Catch:
None of the above is going to snag you a million dollars over night. To get there, you need to be a hard worker, have patience and perseverance, time, and money. Of course, I will be showing you the ways to use all the above in a combined form to increase earnings and get you the money faster.

Now, there are some spectacular ways to make money instantly, like winning the lottery. Which is highly unlikely (but if you do, I suggest you go see a financial advisor immediately!) You could score a Hollywood contract, or become a famous musician. For the sake of this article, however, we are going to assume you are like me as well as every other average person in the globalized world today.
Let’s start with a few things you can do for free. If you aren’t already doing the following, I suggest you start! The sooner the better.

Start a Blog

Blogs are cheap, easy, and manageable ways to increase your income. Simply write a blog about things you are passionate about! The internet is global and links to trillions of users every day, chances are, someone else is passionate about the same things you are. To start making money set up an Adsense account linked with your blogger account. Setting up your blog is simple and easy (even easier if you have a gmail account). You are viewing a blog provided free my blogger.com other blogging tools include wordpress and hubpages. A man named John Chow is earning $30,000 a month on his blog!
It might seem daunting at first but don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it and start making money in no time!
The biggest tips I can provide for blogging are the following:
-Focus on content, not the cash
-Get connected through facebook and the blogosphere
-keep at it, make a new post AT LEAST once a week
-read other blogs and learn from others
-develop content around a subject or niche that you find interesting

Starting a blog is probably the fastest and easiest way to start making money online with little effort. I started Frugal Son to have something to do in my spare time. I pay $10 a year to have it hosted under a domain name to make it more of an official website. This was the single greatest change I made. Shortly after the Google Adsense checks started flowing in. I believe there is something behind the psychology of a .com website over one that has blogspot in the title.

Keep at it and you will surely be the next John Chow! 


An easy way to easily make an extra $100 each month is by taking surveys online for payment. A lot of companies are willing to pay you BIG MONEY to hear your opinion so they can give you better products.
There are a lot of “paid survey sites” on the web today, and I’ve tried several. Most of them are a scam or not very trustworthy. Until recently, I had given up on paid surveys until I found CashCrate (Click here for my FULL review). In essence, CashCrate has 24/7 support and the best surveys. Not to mention a great referral program. You can easily make $20-$30 within the first few days of signing up.
Click the link below to sign up:



Slow and Steady:

I won’t sugarcoat this, the following ways to make money online are not the fastest way to earn cash, BUT effective over the long term. These will take extra work, and maybe even daily input; Luckily not too much.


People have been making money on youtube for years, the catch is, it is necessary to have a lot of traffic to your channel and your videos. If you think you are performing well, submit an application to become a youtube partner. You will have ads placed on your videos and will receive a percentage of the revenue generated. This takes time and patience, maybe even s small monetary investment for better recording equipment. Set up a youtube account (you probably already have one), start making and uploading videos, and make an effort to keep them nice. Youtube has several resources on how to become a partner and ways to get there.
My tips:
-be diligent
-upload short videos
Users don’t want to watch a 10 minute video unless it’s a tutorial.
-be funny and creative
-be nice to other users, NEVER post negative comments.

Web Show

Starting a web show is fun. I broadcast myself as well as a popular game called Starcraft II. I cast games of top starcraft players. You can do the same by using sites like ustream, justin.tv, and livestream. The only site I know of that has a partner program like youtube is justin.tv. Have enough viewers and subscribers, and justin.tv will ask you to be a partner.
The following is a link to my live stream on justin.tv, in fact, you may be watching me live right now!


Starting a stream is simple and mostly easy. There are ways that are harder, but I use a program called Xsplit broadcaster that makes streaming simple and fun.
The good thing about justin.tv and youtube is they virtually work in sync. You can use your youtube videos to promote your broadcasts and you can upload your broadcasts to youtube. You might also want to think about uploading your content to blip.tv a website much like youtube, except you are already a partner when you sign up. They pay you each time someone watches your videos.

$$$$$$$$$$

I hope you enjoyed the tips to start your way on a fun and exciting adventure to making money online. Set up your mediums and get to work! Once you’ve got some extra income, check out part two, what to do after you've made your first check.