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Article Publishing
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~ frugal startup movie |
A man is in the process of a business startup. However, his living situation is out of control. He has to keep moving, and rent is so high in his city that his funding for his startup is running dry. It costs $2500-3500 a month rent for a small place. All the apartments have bed bugs. To help his moving situation he rents a storage unit to store his furniture and belongings, since he keeps moving - he might as well just keep most of his stuff in a storage unit. He has trouble finding a storage unit, as they are all full and rented out by other people. He finally finds own storage unit owner willing to sacrifice one unit to him. It's the owner's unit that he uses to keep some stuff in, and he will just take those items home so he can give a customer a unit. The main character really appreciates this, as all the other units in the city are full. He remembers the owner for being thoughtful and helpful.
But, there is something severely wrong with this situation the main character finds himself in. His rent for living space (apartments) is running his startup funds dry, and he has to keep moving, so what will he do to solve the problem?
One day he drives to his storage unit, which, costs $200 a month to rent, and starts looking it over. He has a medium or large size unit, and it has one light bulb in it. He decides "I'm moving in here illegally". He turns his storage unit with a garage door, into a small miniature apartment - and uses the single light bulb outlet to power any small electronics (he buys an adapter to turn a light bulb socket into 110 volt outlet, which cost about $3.00 at a hardware store, or a dollar at a dollar store. He will have one electrical outlet to power his laptop, cell phone charger, or any small devices. No electric stove, no clothes washer. This is his apartment, and it costs him $200 per month - saving him 2200-3300 in rent costs. It's illegal and against the rules, but he will keep it a secret.
He sells his car, because he cannot drive his car into his storage unit and have enough space to live. He buys a motor bike, fairly small sport sized (not a Harley). He drives his motorbike into his storage unit parking it in the same place he sleeps. This is the most frugal startup business man - a guy willing to sacrifice his entire lifestyle and live in a 200 dollar storage unit, in order to cut costs and expenses. He sacrifices himself, for his business to reap the gains. With an extra 2200-3300 money each month he has virtually infinite funding for his small startup that has little expenses anyway, since his business is all done via his laptop. He has a postal mail address (rents a p.o. box) for all his personal and business mail.
His frugal nature and extreme sacrifice he makes (who would live out of a storage unit, illegally? Other than a street bum with a bit of cash to spare) ends up turning his startup business around completely: if he would have rented an apartment for the first year he would have failed and run out of funding. Now with the 200 dollar a month storage unit as his place of business and his place to sleep, his business succeeds, and after the first year and a few months, he is on his way to becoming a millionaire.
When he gets enough money that he can literally walk out of the $200 dollar storage unit and buy a house with cash due to a huge sale in his business, he decides to stay in the storage unit for just a bit longer... there is something, kind of a bizarre, cave man like, strange, nostalgic attachment he has, to that day he drove to the storage unit, looked at it, and thought to himself "I'm moving in". The storage unit, he owes so much to, for literally saving his business from failure, getting rid of a bed bug issue (the storage unit can't easily get bed bugs), and turning his entire life around. Eventually, obviously, he moves out of the storage unit, a little later - as it is ridiculous for a millionaire to live in a 200 dollar storage unit, illegally, when he can afford to buy a home.
Movie scene: At the end of the movie, he is going for a drive, and he is living the high life. He decides to drive by the storage place, for one more nostalgic moment. He is driving his motorbike, it just so happens. He stops in to the storage unit office, and talks to the receptionist, who is the owner of the place. He remembers the unit number he rented (they all have numbers on them) and he asks the owner if that unit is available.. The owner says he doesn't generally give people specific units, just what is available - but he looks it up and says that yes, that one just so happens to be available. The main character says "can I just go and take a look at it, I'll only be maybe an hour or so. You don't know how much this means to me, this storage unit changed my entire life - it is partly, or even mostly, responsible for making me a millionaire". The owner says "really, that's amazing, how could a storage unit make you into a millionaire, did you store valuables in there, and sell them and run a business? Or some other connection to the storage unit? ". The main character says "Not quite...". The owner waits, for the main character to explain the reason the storage unit made him a millionaire. There is dead silence. The owner then says "Well, if you aren't going to tell me, that's fine, it's your dirty little secret, not all of us can be millionaires and you'd be giving away your business plan I guess". Then the owner says "here's the key, there is a temporary lock on all of them if they are unused, if you remember from years ago. You can go and check it out, take as long as you want".
The main character drives his motorbike in to the storage lot, finds the unit number, opens the garage... and drives his motorbike in to the garage. He closes the door, turns the light on with the pull string. He realizes that the pull string is attached to an outlet (electrical outlet) that he forgot to remove when he moved out. He looks at it, and laughs. "This is what powered my business... this is what powered my laptop to turn me into a millionaire... A $3.00 pull cord electrical outlet". He sits down in the unit (there is nothing in it, it's empty), and enjoys the nostalgic moment. After quite a while of just sitting enjoying the moment, he pulls out his wallet which has a cheque in it. He starts writing a cheque. It is made out to the self storage business. Then he starts up his loud, expensive Harley Davidson motorbike. He closes the garage door and puts the lock back on. He rides back to the main office, with his bike idling outside. He gives the key back to the owner and whispers to him "I lived in there for almost year and a half, and ran a startup, and violated your terms and service." He hands him a cheque for $50,000, with "Thanks. I'm an animal." written in the cheque memo field. The owner looks puzzled, and can't come up with anything to say. The main character scurries off outside, his motorbike still idling, revs the motor bike, and roars off down the road, shifting into all gears revving the bike to the max RPM in each gear.
The reason the cheque was written for $50,000 is that now that the main character is a millionaire, he has plenty of funds, and, $50,000 happened to be the amount of money he saved while living in the $200 storage unit. A year and a half rent at $2500-$3500 a month is a lot of money he saved, thanks to the storage unit.
The owner re-looks over his "terms of service" which is given out to every person who rents a unit. He finds the text "You may not dwell, use the space to live in, or use the space to stay in overnight. No animals." He then looks back at the cheque memo field and sees "I'm an animal" on it, and laughs.
The decides to convert some of the units to rent-able economical office spaces, using funding from the $50,000 cheque to renovate some of the units - to help startup owners work out of extremely low cost units, without them having to pay high rent fees for a building. He modifies his terms and service to be much more lax. He even removes the part about not dwelling or living in the units, and leaves it up to the renter to decide if that is ethical or even legal.
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