Funding My College Experience

Everyone wants to have fun and I am no exception. Most college students are broke and unable to support themselves.

I was a college student but I wasn’t broke or unable to support myself because I hustled. College payments, rent/housing, bills, food, and fun were all expenses I had to cover as a 17 year old freshman.

That means a lot of hustling.

Luckily, hustling is normal as I’ve been doing it all my life.

I share my story with the intent of providing an entertaining read; this is not an example for one to necessarily follow.

For starters, I had a part time job at a grocery store as a customer service person/bagger/cashier and the pay was good compared to other retail jobs ($11/hr in 2016). I worked 30 plus hours a week so that was $200-500 weekly. Concerning work ethic and personality, I was top dog and I leveraged this into getting more hours. If I walked outside with a customer to help them unload their groceries, I knew with my gift of gab I would procure a tip.

More often than not I was able to do an exceptional job or act so gregarious that I would hint at me wanting a tip or straight up ask depending on the interaction. Some would reject but often times an extra $5 would end up in my pocket. As I built and nurtured relationships with customers it became a regular thing for them to upfront, give me tip money or I would sarcastically ask for a tip – all in exchange for my great service.

So now I’m making another $20-$100 a day working at the same place for the same number of hours. I even started using certain substances to make me even more sociable, helping me earn even more. Candidly, it also was done to maintain my sanity. I am a hustling motherfucker but please, don’t do drugs kids.

And mind you, this was not some wealthy area either which probably allowed my no-nonsense personality to connect with the customers.  

For 2 years, until the wheels fell off, I worked there. As management changed it was time for me to leave. Around my sophomore year in college, I started getting back into flipping which is buying and selling things for profit. I already was doing this with sneakers and cell phones back in high school, so I had experience. But now it was time to turn it up a notch as rent was due, tuition was due, EVERYTHING was due. I put the rest of my “fun” money into a course on phone flipping that I found on YouTube. The course taught me the technical side of the business, and this is where I learned the beauty of Facebook Ads. I was surprised in finding there were not many in the area who were flipping phones. With Facebook ads, I got a steady supply of leads. Of course, I was thrilled, my ass needed money.

Using my savings, I purchased a contact list from the teacher of the course which gave me access to companies who would buy the phones I managed to obtain. Instead of having to sell each individual phone myself through eBay or Facebook Marketplace, I could now move all the phones at once. This saved me time that I then put into furthering my infrastructure; I started going to electronic waste and battery recycling facilities where I found people recycled fully functional phones and found recycled phones that were fixable. I never made plans to learn how to fix phones, they were scooped up and sold to people who repair them. With the phone buying companies my margins were so good I started buying the phones from other local phone flippers which I then sold to my contacts. I’m lucky at least in my area I caught onto phone flipping early; so now it was time to eat off the efforts of others. In less than one year’s time I was earning six figures — a far cry from what I earned at the supermarket. I also put in more effort and hours at the supermarket compared to selling phones and I didn’t have to mess with drugs to market myself for tip money — I say this facetiously.

As time went on, the number of players in the local phone flipping game skyrocketed. My profits went down, and I stopped posting my own Facebook ads. Instead, I focused on sending as many phones as I could buy to the vendors from my contact list. Without having to go into the field and find leads, drive to the lead, negotiate a price, work on the purchased phone, pack and ship the phone, yadayadayada – I now had a lot more time, so I got a job.

It’s summertime. I’m on break from my sophomore year of college. I enjoy time away from school, but my income is shrinking. I’m also thinking about taxes. I decide to apply for a gas station; I’m looking to be hired as the overnight attendant. In my mind, whatever I earn at the gas station will be the income I disclose come Tax Day because I earned that money and wished to protect it like how a mommy bear protects her cubs.

I show up to the job orientation and notice almost everyone is younger than me. I realize I was hired for a part time position. That wasn’t what I wanted because the overnight position is fulltime and was ideal for my schedule. The guy leading the class is funny and there’s a beautiful girl I want to talk to, so I stick around until the end. Ultimately, I end up keeping the job. All those repetitions of grinding, working retail were still true of my identity. It’s funny to reminisce; I used to believe this retail job shit was who I am from those years at the grocery store (I was there from age 15 to 19). Consequently, I’ve worked a lot on my identity since then.

Working at the gas station brought me back to my time at the grocery store. The grocery store was busy, but the job wasn’t hard I just demanded a lot from myself. Now, at this gas station everybody had the same, high-level of work ethic. With there being less people who worked at the store, it was a core group of people, and most were looking for promotion to a management position. For a gas station, this shit was competitive.

As I said, my identity was changing – I came from this grinding type of work, but I was quickly understanding that this type of work would not get me to my goals. I was also spoiled by the money I made from phones which was less time consuming, required less effort and was way more lucrative. When one asks the right questions, one receives the right answers. From pondering over what do, I decided on sports betting.

The last two years of my five-and-a-half-year college experience are a monumental moment in my life. I was used to hard work. With phone flipping I experienced having others work for me. And in this new era of life, I would learn more on the science of money and the art of wealth. I started realizing money doesn’t really exist, it’s an expression of energy and the expression comes or goes both easily and frequently. My experience with gambling was playing dice which is big where I’m from. But my pursuit in it began due to my love for the sport of mixed martial arts. Growing up I boxed so combat sports was always close to my heart. Ever since I was a kid my father and I would watch MMA on TV; I remember the early days of UFC and PRIDE was the best. Watching King of the Cage, Affliction, and Strikeforce on HDNet fights was my childhood. With my understanding of the sport, I should be able to profit.

After finding an online sportsbook, it was time to make money. I started by only betting on outright winners of a fight which is called betting on the moneyline. In the beginning, I was winning a lot, but it wasn’t anything lucrative because of the amount I was betting. My desire to bet didn’t last long as I remember losing three times in a row which left me with a bad enough taste to stop betting. Sure, I stopped but only to happen upon a new method of attack – this time in the world of boxing. I discovered outrageous odds were given to heavily favored fighters and I know there’s far less upsets in boxing because of a more limited ruleset – boxers can only punch limiting their paths to victory. So, I started betting on favorites with odds of -1000 and higher. Though the catch was I had to bet large amounts to win worthwhile money. Finding success, I would combine multiples of these bets, called parlaying, which gave me better odds to win more money, although that decreased the probability of winning. After a month of doing this, I realized I wasn’t going to make enough money from boxing fights that only happen on the weekends, if at all. Betting on boxing wasn’t as frequent and if I lost, that was a lot of money to recoup.

I found I hated losing more than I enjoyed winning. How could I achieve this in a way where I could make money frequently? Employing the same method of betting lower odds, I stumbled upon soccer. Now I don’t know much about soccer, but I was thinking the scores are so low that there had to be someway my mind can make money. Around the beginning of COVID, for whatever reason, soccer match scores were even lower than normal; I definitely noticed this. The logic behind it was that COVID affected the players and the game. It was also around Christmas and teams from Christian countries seemed to score even less or not even try as hard. I started live betting on the “unders” meaning the match would not have more than a certain number of goals scored or one team would score less than a certain number of goals. The online sportsbook I used had multiple alternatives of the “under”. It looked something like less than 2.5 goals, less than 3.5 goals, less than 4.5 goals. Usually, online sportsbooks, would just have the “less than 2.5 goals. This is what alternatives for game totals is and with more alternatives or options, the odds are worse, but the probability goes up. I would do this all day, making $10-$33 per game, doing this enough to make upwards of $600 a day. On New Year’s Eve, I left the gas station.

I don’t know how I got into betting on soccer, and I still don’t know much about the game. It’s one of those divine kind of things the universe allows to happen. Alas, I was having success with the soccer betting until I wasn’t. After a few losses (remember I’m betting a lot to make a little), I just wasn’t comfortable with putting $500-$600 on a sport I didn’t know much about. Instead of learning the game of soccer I chose to apply my same strategy towards basketball. MMA is my favorite sport to watch/follow but basketball is the sport I spent the most time playing and understanding. And with my knowledge of basketball along with the experience I gained betting soccer I knew I would find a way to consistently earn money.

A lot happened as a product of necessity. I had left the gas station prematurely as the phone flipping money ceased; the connects I had who bought the phones stopped doing business, probably due to COVID. So now my brain was operating at a heightened level because I needed money. I scoured the basketball lines for a way to bet like how I bet soccer and that’s when I found it – spread betting. In point spreads, it’s betting on teams winning or losing by a certain number of points. Again, the online sportsbook I used had increased options for these point spreads. Yes, they had lower odds but I’m looking for the surest of bets and with these lower odds (more probable), my knowledge on the sport, and the tools I used for statistics, I had faith I could earn the money I needed to pay for school.

Using my resources, I developed a system for success allowing me to win over 95% of the time. Finding success took running into major obstacles and working on my negative attributes. Anything I did relating to gambling was difficult. My interest in self-development increased tenfold. I got recommitted to my workouts and overall health. I started programming and reprogramming myself with affirmations, mantras, and manifestations. I began meditating and purposefully visualizing. I learned more on how to run a business; this was my first LLC.  And there was so much more. These are the invaluable lessons I learned during this period.