My third business

My third business was probably my most successful business. Again this was a joint venture in which I partnered with a friend. It was actually his idea. Our junior year of high school we decided to cut lawns for the summer. We made flyers for Guyswhocutgrass. We made tee-shirts with a logo and our phone number on the back as a uniform. We went door to door to almost every house in the town. We ended up getting a good number of clients and we were mowing about 20 lawns a week. A lot of people liked the fact that we were kids from the town who were saving up money for college (and other things). We charged by the job, our most expensive was $50, and did edging as well. We made a good team and were able to mow lawns very quickly. We used our own (family's) lawnmowers and my parents van was our transportation. We ended up getting more clients through customer referrals. We made roughly $300 a week each, cash, and over $3000 for the summer. We also did some landscaping, and other odd jobs. Then we left for college and gave most of our lawns to some younger friends. What we should have done was to hire on some younger workers and pay them by the hour while we still collected the money, but we didn't. So if you're in high school and want to be the CEO of your own company, start a lawn mowing business and make some money.

My second business

My second business was a tee-shirt company. We bought supplies from an art store - silk screen, tee-shirts, paint, etc. I used to be really into rollerblading in high school, doing jumps and tricks and grinding. We wanted to make some shirts they were "cool" we came up with the name Hybrid. We made some prototypes and one of my friends was sponsored. We figured since he was appearing in skate shows wearing our shirts would give us some free press. Our first and only real customer was my friends' dad. He ordered 25 shirts for his painting company. We designed a logo and printed it on the shirts and made the sale. We made a few different designs and printed a few shirts but we really never sold them and soon our interest wained. It was nice to have a few custom made shirts though.

My first business

I started my first business in high school. Some of my friends and I got together and decided to make some necklaces with clay beads (they were a fad at the time). We went to Ben Franklin (a local craft store) and bought some supplies. The total cost was less than twenty dollars for clay, rope, and metal clip ends. We assembled them and ended up with about thirty necklaces. After we started wearing them at school other people asked us where we got them. We told them that we made them and had a bunch more. We ended up selling about ten to other classmates for $5 a piece. Then we decided to try to make a nicer product. We put some of the money back into buying plastic beads, some white with etching and some turquoise in color. We wrote down some different combinations and took to the streets. Going door to door. One of my friends was very good at this and he became our salesman. We had been selling them for $5 a piece and doing well. He upped the price to $7 and did just as well. Things were going great. We had made over $100 in cash and had an inventory of about 20 necklaces. We didn't do any advertising (except wearing the necklaces ourselves) and did well by word of mouth. Then we were robbed by one of my friends' older brothers. The older brother and his friend raided our workshop (located in his basement) stole many of the necklaces and the money we had made. We kind of lost interest after we were unable to recover the stolen merchandise. The older brother gave away a bunch of necklaces to his friends thus flooding the market and decreasing the demand. The fad was gone soon after that and that was the end of my first business. Have you ever started your own business? What worked and what didn't? What can you learn from your experience?