Straight Up From 'Scratch Beginnings'

With nothing simply $25 and a haversack, Adam Shepard set out to bear witness whether the American Dream still exists. He headed for a city he didn't know — Charleston, South Carolina — with the goal of having $2,500, a car and a place to live by the finish of the year. Shepard chronicled his experiment in Scratch Beginnings. The book holds a few gems for average people working on their own lives — and you don't accept to be completely broke to learn from Shepard'southward experiences.

The Attitude of Success

In Scratch Beginnings, Shepard makes it immediately clear that his goal is not to create a rags-to-riches story. Instead, he gear up out to refute Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch, forth with similar books that claim that "working stiffs are doomed to alive in the same disgraceful conditions forever." Shepard'due south goal was to observe whether, with self-subject and the attitude of success he could actually movement beyond homelessness in nether a year.

The Long View

Shepard beginning stop in his experiment was a homeless shelter. The majority of the book is devoted to the seventy days he lived at the shelter and the men he met there. Those men fall into two simple categories: the guys with plans for lives beyond the shelter and those who have become utterly conceited with their lives. It'southward a elementary lesson. The guys with plans couldn't be certain that their plans would piece of work, but the guys who had stopped looking to the long view were certainly not going to make progress.

Many residents of the homeless shelter Shepard landed in relied on a local solar day labor operation to provided them with money.

The allure of just showing upwardly and working and getting greenbacks at the finish of the twenty-four hours is, to some people, superior to working a real job. Truthful, some of the laborers are temporarily unemployed, and some are working while they have days off from their permanent jobs, but notwithstanding others simply come up to work a few days a week whenever they demand cash. If they don't fell like working, there'south no need to phone call the boss faking an ailment or even so some other death in the family. They just don't go.

Information technology's an easy way to become by when you don't have a long-term plan. You can cover your basic needs and just sort of continue forth without a particular course of action. It took Shepard only a calendar week to understand that his priority had to be getting a permanent task. Merely making a long-term plan, whether you're living on the street or making ends meet, is the only way to move forrad. Without plans and goals, we're all stuck exactly where we are today.

Guts Get the Job

Few employers are willing to accept a adventure on a worker who's merely accost is the local homeless shelter. But at that place's one thing that can overcome just about every obstacle in getting a job: sheer guts. Don't take the skills? Don't have the didactics? Don't have the address? Going into an employer'south office and request for an opportunity anyway takes guts, but that can be enough to country you a job. Shepard learned that fact the difficult way, past getting passed over by a moving company uninterested in a prospective employee who lived at the local homeless shelter. Shepard made the moving company a especially gutsy offer:

Allow's make a deal. You send me out for one day with i of your crews. Whatever crew. And I'll work for free. Y'all volition have the opportunity to run into me piece of work, and information technology won't toll you a dime. If you similar me, super, take me on. If not, well, then nosotros will part ways and I tin can hope you I won't be a thorn in your ass, coming in here every day begging for a chore.

Not just did the manager say that he'd never heard an offering similar that, he was impressed enough to hire Shepard on the stop. That willingness to be assuming got Shepard through a few other rough patches chronicled in his volume and information technology's 1 of the greatest lessons I think most people can learn. Yous don't win big when you won't play big.

In The Finish

Adam Shepard wound up cutting his experiment short past iii months: his mother had cancer and Shepard went home to help her. He'd more than met his goal, though. Nine months through his experiment, Shepard had already purchased a used truck, rented and furnished an apartment and saved $5,000 — double what he had hoped to salvage in 12 months.

He did it without the connections and advantages many of u.s.a. take for granted. He landed a job through sheer guts, not listing his college degree and other qualifications on his applications. He figured out frugality on his own. He even earned a enhance during his experiment. Shepard'south story proves unquestioningly that it really is possible to reach your goals and beyond, even if yous start from scratch. I recall he more than made clear that success — at every level — isn't so much most the opportunities you're offered. It'south well-nigh the opportunities you make for yourself, your willingness to plan big and your efforts to chase your goals. Scratch Beginnings is certainly worth a read, especially if you want a little inspiration without saccharine sweetness.

More data about both Shepard and the book is available on ScratchBeginnings.com.

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/straight-up-from-scratch-beginnings.html

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