I asked myself what someone who has little money could actually accomplish to get the homeless back home again, and this is what I came up with — The Lucky Penny.
It has to be hand-searched, not bought in rolls, and it has to be unusually brilliant and unusually lucky to have been found, which covers a very slim territory, meaning that they aren’t all that easy to find, if you’re looking for speed-search.
The captured coins need to then be packaged, first in the small sleeve, then in the large packet, along with a backing card that contains the information about the coin, why it’s so lucky, etc.
Pennies From Heaven is a way of thinking. Let’s look at the situation of the homeless — first of all, there is no “the” homeless, every case is different, and money is not the only reason someone ends up on the street or in a tent city, and none of those reasons makes the victim at fault, but that’s where society places them.
So with little or no personal money, where do I even START???
Okay, first of all, you can’t FEED someone off the street. You can feed the body some food some of the time, but you’ll have to get money to do that, and while you’re getting the money for the food, who’s cooking it?
Then who delivers it, and to whom, and with what plates, knives, forks, spoons, cups?
It’s a LOT more complicated than one person can handle, but there IS a way to help and at the same time do some service and get some Merit.
Merit is the ticket that buys you out of this lower swamp level, and nothing else will do it. You need Merit, and that’s not just “good deeds” or “good intentions”.
Those and a couple of bucks MIGHT get you on a city bus, but it WON’T get you off The Wheel anytime soon.
There is no DIRECT ROUTE from homeless to employed and living at home. It’s a hard and complex road that must be taken step by step, but here’s the thing — if you merely feed the homeless, they may survive, but they still have no hope.
When you give them a JOB and they’re their own boss, you’ve given them HOPE, plus MONEY, plus PRIDE.
When you sell a Lucky Penny, you’re not begging — it’s not a handout. You’re self-employed and you’re on your way back up the ladder rung by rung, one step at a time, and the first step is to get out there and sell a HUNDRED Lucky Pennies in a single day.
Then bring $25 back to me, and I’ll set you up with a hundred more pennies ready to sell.
A Lucky Penny Distribution Center can be outfitted with medical team, food service, shelter and public assistance programs as well.
The Seller has a definite part to play in the value of the coin. Some of the coins are from the 1960s and are in and of themselves worth a buck or two, but most are just plain old beautiful specimae of the Coin Minter’s Art.
Same coin, different seller will produce different results. Some Lucky Penny Resellers will be lucky to get a whole dollar for a Lucky Penny, while others — and I can think of several that I’ve known for years — would regard a day where they didn’t get a $20 dollar bill for every Lucky Penny they sold as a Bad Sales Day.
What I mean is, it’s YOU, not the coin.
You tell the customer, “Every dollar YOU give for a Lucky Penny means that I can give away THREE Lucky Pennies to the Homeless”.
The first three Lucky Pennies are free for the homeless, then they pay a quarter each for them, which makes them an Official Lucky Penny Reseller.
You need not be actually homeless to sell them, and I myself sell them in parking lots as I go into a Raleys Supermarket or a crowded shop, and then give some away — you’ll soon need to start a Lucky Penny Distribution Center, and you can get merchants to give you money if you promise to put the center elsewhere.
NIBY is the word you want — Not In My Back Yard is what it means, so if you can promise to keep those homeless people far, far away where they won’t mess up the environment, they’ll give you plenty plenty money.
You can threaten to open the center right there on their block, if you can’t manage to raise enough to put it elsewhere.
They call it “Protection”, where I come from. Never mind that — it’s a lot of work for a simple and outdated comic gag.
So you SELL them Prepackaged Lucky Pennies, 4 for a dollar. They are RESELLERS, not bums! It’s a job! They have a job! They have a BUSINESS! They have some HOPE for the future, not just a day to day grinding down to deadness.
See? It’s not a handout, it’s a BUSINESS, and you are your own boss. You alone decide how many you’re going to sell in a single day, and YOU ALONE decide what to do with the money you earn.
You can sell these to merchants around town, 4 for a dollar, and they keep the profit or you can leave a coin DONATION drop for the customers.
It’s not just Lucky Pennies — there’s a whole project that takes them step by step off the street, but before you can get a job, you need a permanent address, a place to store your stuff safely, and a way to clean yourself up and get dressed for job interviews, plus a place to store food and feed your face.
Getting off the street is the Number One Priority. Until then, everything else has to wait, except the breadline, the soup kitchen and the tent city. It’s not just a matter of money — there’s a LOT of rehabbing to do to get ready for the stress of upward mobility.
Getting off the street is the Number One task. It starts with owning yourself once again, and that means “having something to sell”, reliably and dependably, being your own boss, deciding your own fate, as much as you can at the moment.
First step is to buy some Lucky Pennies at four for a dollar, and then sell them to friends and/or strangers, and then use the resulting money to buy more, and keep doing that, using whatever you can spare to add to your stash of Lucky Pennies for sale, up to a thousand Lucky Pennies, if you think you can handle selling them or getting a group or work circle to sell them, eh???
You can potentially sell up to a thousand Lucky Pennies a day, in the right sort of crowd, such as a county fair or a love-in, your choice, and if you’re WORKING the crowd with a dozen resellers, you’ve got a good chance at making enough to start a very nice Lucky Penny Distribution Center right there in your own neighborhood or in someone else’s.
“Did you want fries with that?” is the automatic battle-cry of the fast-foods server at the drive-by window, and you should take the example, once you have the dollar in hand —
“Did you want your Lucky Penny encased in an Acrylic Keepsake Capsule?” you offer. It’s only an extra buck, and it only takes a second — you can carry a bunch of them right in your jacket or vest pocket.
I’d recommend those 24 pouch vests to carry all the stuff you’ll want to have with you if you perform a Walkabout Sales Routine.
The type of neighborhood you work the hustle in will determine the style and type of hustle you’ll run.
A hustle is merely a job, usually on the street — it can run the gamut, but what can’t? Upscale the sale for the extra buck!
Use this with the other Great Street Hustles — here are the 5 Best Street Hustles:
- Lucky Penny Hustle
- Caliente Popcorn Hustle
- Hot Sauce Hustle
- Guitar & Song Hustle
- Spare Change Hustle
Of course the spare change hustle hasn’t changed in all these years, so spare change is changeless.
Thank you for your service!
See You At The Top!!!
gorby