It All Started with a Cat

When I was 5 years old, my parents did something that would change my life forever.

They gave away my cat.

Now, it wasn’t really MY cat, but it seemed that way to me.  When you’re 5, what’s the difference?

I was devastated.  I remember crying the whole way home from the farm where we dropped off the cat.  In order to console me, my parents told me that if I saved up my own money, I could buy my own cat.

Challenge accepted.

For the next 6 years, I poured over cat books.  I knew exactly what kinds of food, litter, bowls, and toys I wanted for my kitten.  I browsed animal shelter catalogs online and saved some pictures on the computer.  I knew all there was to know about cats.  And to top it off, I was fortunate enough to live next door to some awesome neighbors who hired me to take care of their cats when they were gone, so I had experience too.

For the first six years, I thought lemonade stands were the only way for a kid to make money.   That all changed when my dad brought me a book called Better Than a Lemonade Stand.  It was filled with about 50 different business ideas for kids.  I was exhilarated!  The ideas in the book sparked the entrepreneurial spirit within me, and I started a muffin delivery service in my local neighborhood soon after – I was 11 years old.

It was my first business venture, and I loved it!  I learned how to keep a profit and loss spreadsheet, create flyers on PowerPoint, price competitively, manage my time, shop for ingredients, pitch a sale, and so much more.  First, I would go door to door pitching my sale and collecting orders, and then I’d have my parents drive me to the store to buy my own ingredients.  Finally, I would get up early on Saturday morning, bake muffins for 2-3 hours, then deliver them by foot.  I ran this business successfully for over a year, and then I moved on to my next venture.

My second business was a coupon distribution business.  My mom drove me to various small businesses in my area and I pitched my sale – buy a spot in my coupon book, and I will personally deliver 80% of them by hand.  I got about 6 businesses to take me up on my offer.  The next step involved spending a few hours in the print shop creating my designed coupon booklets by hand and stapling them together.  After that, it was a matter of delivering them to 80 different households in my neighborhood.  I learned a lot from this one too… For example, some people don’t want free coupons, which puzzled me greatly.  😀

My big break came when I was able to procure a nannying job for two young girls at the age of 12, which lasted for that school year.  From there, I was able to procure a few other babysitting/nannying jobs.

All this time, I was still looking at cat profiles online and visiting cats at Petsmart.  Finally, 8 years after we gave away our other cat, my parents took me to a humane society and I got my very own kitten, Maysie 🙂

I learned so much about entrepreneurship and hard work, but more importantly, I discovered the amazing feeling of struggling hard for a victory.  I’ve experienced this many more times in my life since then, but that was my first taste of it.

Dream, struggle, victory.  Every fulfilling success story is like that.

You must go through the struggle in order to get the victory, and you won’t go through the struggle unless you have a dream.

Keep dreaming, keep struggling forward, and get your victory.

 

Until next time,

Hope Frances