The Art of the Hustle

  ***

  The next day, Darrell arrived at the Vancouver International Airport. I was excited to see him. It had been a while since I hung out with one of my actual friends and not just one of my roommates. I was expecting the same excitement in return, but he just hopped in the back seat and barely acknowledged me. No hug, no secret handshake, just a lazy ‘wussup?’ and a quick nod. I didn’t take it too personally; it was just Darrell being Darrell.

  C H A P T E R

  N I N E

  Darrell had grown up a bit in Vancouver, so he was familiar with the city. Whether it was taking the bus, finding the best pizza places, or going to the best neighborhoods to look for an apartment, he seemed to know it all. So I just followed his lead.

  For the first few weeks, I conformed to Darrell’s lifestyle. We didn’t really do much. We would wake up and watch TV until noon, have lunch, shower, and then hit the town. We were supposed to be looking for work, an apartment, and getting our lives together, but Darrell had other plans. He was more interested in going around town writing graffiti and hanging out at the mall. I was being drawn into the ‘Darrell trap’ – the unmotivated carefree life.

  During dinner, Jack and Judy asked us how the job hunt and the apartment search were going. Darrell always told them about all the places where we applied for work and all the apartments we had looked at. It was a complete lie; we hadn’t done any of that.

  I think Darrell believed his dad would allow him to live in his house forever, but I was a little more sensible than that. At night, we could hear Judy screaming at her husband. She had reached her boiling point with us staying in the house. It was time to start making some serious moves, and we knew it.

  One day, Mr. Channing came downstairs to talk to me. Darrell was staying upstairs in the spare bedroom and was still asleep. I had been up for hours reading a Bill Gates biography I borrowed from Mr. Channing’s personal library.

  “Good morning,” Mr. Channing said.

  “Good morning,” I replied.

  “How’s the book?” he asked.

  “It’s good so far.”

  “So how’s the job hunt coming along?”

  “To be honest, sir, we don’t spend enough time looking for work. I don’t really know the city that well so I end up following Darrell around and doing what he wants to do.”

  “So is that your plan for life, just follow Darrell around?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Look, I know my son has some issues, but you seem to have a good head on your shoulders. You need to take control of your life.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Trevor, let me tell you a little story.”

  I settled in, waiting for Mr. Channing to tell his ‘when I was your age’ story.

  “Trevor, when I was your age, I was the father of two kids, my wife had just left me, and I was broke. It was one of the lowest points in my life. Instead of dealing with the problem, I found comfort hanging out with my friends and drinking until the early hours of the morning. I had no direction in life and therefore spent most of my time in dingy pool halls, drinking, gambling, and getting into trouble. Some of the guys who I was hanging out with at the time were…well, let’s just say they were not outstanding citizens. Many of them sold drugs and did all kinds of nefarious activities that were against the law. Even though I hung out with them, I knew I wasn’t really like them.

  Well, one day I saw this really cute girl walk pass me. She was so beautiful, I just had to talk to her, but I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I didn’t have the courage.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “One of my buddies dared me to go talk to her; he was making fun of me, calling me a chicken. So I got up, walked right up to her and introduced myself. I was really nervous, but I think she liked that in me. I guess she could tell I was a good person. After that, we exchanged numbers and eventually started seeing each other.

  As it turned out, she happened to be a loans officer at one of the major banks in town. So one day, I mentioned an idea to her about starting my own pizzeria. She loved the idea and set me up with a small business loan to start my own business.

  Fast forward a few years, my business was booming and I was doing well. I wasn’t rich or anything, but I was making a decent living. At that time, almost all of my friends were either dead, in jail, or strung out on drugs.”

  “Wow, that’s an interesting story.”

  “Do you know what the moral of the story is, Trevor?”

  “Tell me.”

  “The people you choose to surround yourself with can determine how your life turns out. Their influence can creep into your life in subtle ways that you may not fully realize in the moment. It’s important to be mindful of which direction you’re being pushed and pulled in. Do you understand?”

  I nodded my head in agreement as I understood what he was trying to say. It was the same message Ms. Bennett was trying to tell me. I wasn’t sure if this was just general good advice older generations liked to impart on youth, or if the universe somehow placed these people in my life to warn me. The funny thing was, in both instances, Darrell seemed to be the person they were warning me about.

  “So what ever happened with you and the girl?” I asked.

  “I married her.”

  Mr. Channing left me to heed his words of wisdom. I contemplated the message at the same time staring at the picture of Bill Gates on the cover of his book. I then glanced around Mr. Channing’s beautiful house. The first thought that occurred to me was, I need to start making money. From all the shopping I was doing, my bank account was quickly dwindling. Something needed to change.

  At around 7:00 in the evening, I went upstairs to Darrell’s room and knocked on his door. There was no answer. I opened the door and saw him completely passed out. “Hey, Darrell,” I said.

  “Whaaattt?” he let out a miserable groan.

  “I’m going to start my own business.”

  He still didn’t move or say anything.

  “Darrell, wake up, man, this is important,” he was obviously not the best choice for a business partner, but I needed him. I knew if I talked about all the money we would make, I could get him on board with the idea.

  After he woke up a bit, I began my pitch. “Okay, here’s what we do. We go to The Home Warehouse and get one of those high-powered pressure washers. Then we go around charging people to pressure wash their driveways. We can even approach businesses and clean their awnings, sidewalks, elephants, you name it!”

  “Okay, so how do we ‘go around’, we would need a truck or something.”

  “Then we get a truck,” I retorted back immediately.

  I had given this a lot of thought and consideration before I decided whether the plan was feasible. However, Darrell was on board almost instantly – probably not a good sign, but I ignored it.

  “Alright, so I checked online and priced out pressure washers. The cheapest ones I found cost about $1,500.00. Once we pick that up, we can get a cheap truck for around $2,000.00. We also need some miscellaneous gear, like gloves, goggles, boots, and maybe a couple signs for the truck. We could probably pick up all that stuff for around $200.00. We still need money for insurance and gas for the truck, oh, and advertising too. I haven’t priced that stuff out yet, but I think our total startup cost will be under five grand.”

  I gave him a moment to let the information sink into his brain.

  “The work won’t be too bad, and the money will be good. We can charge fifty dollars an hour for the pressure washing, and we can also use the truck in other ways as well. I was thinking we could also do trash removals and small moves.”

  “Okay, bro, let’s do it,” Darrell said.

  “So, Darrell, I can come up with $2,500.00, but I need you to come up with the other $2,500.00 so we can get started. What do you think?”

  I knew Darrell didn’t have $2,500.00 – he probably didn’t even have $
250.00 – but his dad did. I could have easily financed this project on my own, but by bringing Darrell on, I didn’t have to risk all of my money up front, plus I would have a partner who could do half of the work.

  Just as I had expected, Darrell asked his dad for the money. It took a little convincing, but after we showed Mr. Channing our business plan, he knew we were serious. After all, he knew firsthand what it was like to be passionate about an idea, but not have the capital to get it off the ground.

  Over the next couple of days, we followed Mr. Channing’s lead. Since he had chipped in Darrell’s share of the investment, he appointed himself as a silent partner. At first, I was enthusiastic about his involvement in the company because of his life experience and business savvy. But almost immediately, this enthusiasm waned and was replaced by great reluctance. Mr. Channing soon revealed another side of himself than the benevolent mentor I first thought he was. He was arrogant about his abilities and on several occasions referred to himself as a business and marketing genius – a strange statement for anyone to utter about themselves regardless if it was true. As such, all of his ideas were implemented and ours were dismissed.

  That would be okay if he truly was what he claimed to be, but I saw no proof of it. In fact, there was a lot of evidence to support the contrary. The more I thought about it, Mr. Channing was only successful because of his wife. Underneath the fancy exterior of the Shaughnessy home, Mercedes Benz, and designer clothes, he was still a street hustler, but in all the wrong ways. Landing a woman like Judy was his ultimate achievement in life. In addition to that, he was incredibly condescending. It was beginning to be Jack’s company and we were just his employees.

  The sole reason I entered into this venture was to avoid being an employee, so I was a little annoyed from the start. Any respect I still had for Mr. Channing was eventually lost when we were in a hardware store and I saw him casually sneak several expensive tools under his jacket and walk out without paying. I couldn’t believe my eyes at first. I called him out on it, but he denied it completely. Now I had a few more pieces of the puzzle about Jack Channing; he was a thief, a liar, and delusional. His egotism and highly questionable ethics convinced me early on that we needed to remove him from the picture as soon as possible.

  I swallowed my pride and worked with my new team as best I could. With our pooled money, we put together everything we needed. We found a decent truck, we picked up the pressure washer, had some signs and some t-shirts made, and we even secured our first client, Mr. Channing’s next-door neighbor. I had prepared a set of flyers that we could hand deliver throughout neighborhoods to get business. I also created a survey/thank you letter to give to clients. The survey was designed to give us insight on how we could improve our business, and the thank you letter would leave a good impression on the client so we could get more referrals.

  We were officially in business.