In With The Old

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I’m starting a journey wherein I have to turn back the clock a bit and draw on some of my skills I developed in high school. In reality though, it’s not common for highschool kids to learn what I have to do, so I guess I’m ahead of the game.

I’ve started on the path again with an idea that I believe has so much potential!

Hold up, I’m doing it again… I’m getting ahead of myself. So let’s take a step back to 2002.

I’m 16 years old, in going into grade 11. I’m not popular. Everyone knows who I am and for the most part are kind to me, but no one I felt really liked me (waaahhhh lol). So while they are out doing whatever teenagers do (drinking drugs I guess?), I’m at home trying to figure out what I can do with all my spare time. I know I know, I was a loser. I was shy. I wasn’t ‘fun’ in that I didn’t drink really and the first time I did, my friends nearly drowned me after pushing me into a pool that had the cover on it. Scary. Still have a very healthy respect for water. (And if we dive deeper into my issues, my first real girlfriend didn’t help…)

(Oh yes, you’re reading correct. Protest The Hero. I had them to OS twice!)

I’d been putting on concerts at our local YMCA and on my own for the people in the community and my friends bands. I was able to make a little money each show (between $100-$1000). So I had some business sense and was fairly well known in the community by local politicians and our local media.

I enjoyed it. It was the only time where I was ‘The Guy”. Everyone loved my shows and I was the only one to bring it to the level I did. It was a great feeling. One I wanted to repeat over and over… so I wanted to carry this passion into other things. I loved making money and for something to be mine.

So I developed an idea… a pressure washing/deck/fence/concrete cleaning and treating business. The market was very open to it and more and more people were interested in making their old patios look new again. This idea evolved into what would be called… College Bound Power Washers.

Oh it wasn’t perfect, far from it… but it was mine. I wrote the business plan. I won two government awards for it. I’d managed to, in the course of 6 months, turn an idea into about $10,000 in both revenue and in cash awards.

But I learned it wasn’t the business for me. So I sold it.

Then college… where I experienced what I didn’t in highschool with consistency… popularity. Every day another party and another drink. But I’d lost my determination to make the big money. After 1 year of this, I couldn’t do it anymore. Drinking had lead to great times and not so great times.

I tried to regain the ‘passion’ I had in the other 2 years of college without much success. A frustrating breakeven “Girls of” Calendar. An unsuccessful attempt to start a marketing company based on partnerships, and 3 other ideas which just never took off like I originally thought they might.

So here I am. It’s midway through 2010 and I think I’ve finally come up with the idea of ideas… the idea that will put me into (hopefully) the 30 under 30 category. Something I can really get behind and run with.

And the group of people who I’d be selling it to are already excited for it (I told 5 people about it… but there are literally 1000s of potential buyers). I already have commitments to invest once I get to a point where I can show a basic product.

But step one… I must go back to my roots and write up a great business plan to obtain a business loan to get this idea off the ground! RBC has a program for young entrepreneurs which I intend to try and get.

(Also, I’ll need to partner with someone who’s capable of doing all sorts of coding for a website. If you might be interested, let me know.. we’ll talk after you sign a NDA haha.)

I plan on documenting some of my day to day stuff here on my blog! So if you’re at all interested in business, you may enjoy reading these series of blogs that will follow.

So wish me luck folks! I’m about to start an adventure that I’ve been wanting to get on since I was 16.

As The Streets song goes though “A Grand Don’t Come For Free”.