I never knew my grandfathers. My father lost his father when he was in high school, and my mother’s father died when I was three. I don’t remember him at all. As a baby, she said I was very attached to him. When I was older and started showing signs of ambition and independence, she often said I was a lot like him. He was an entrepreneur. He owned a successful printing company that employed many of the residents in the Pennsylvania town my mother grew up in. He was also an awesome marketer. I have a wonderful promotional calendar that features my mother as a baby from 1939.
I started my first business when I was 8 or 9. I made homemade donuts and sold them to my neighbors. I was relentless. I showed up at their door every day until they bought my donuts. My first stab at guerilla marketing…persistence and continuity.
My birthday is in August, so the summer after 10th grade, I could not get a job because I wasn’t yet 16. It made me crazy that I couldn’t work and earn my own money. I was not having it. So, I started another business. This one was a kids’ birthday party planning business, featuring me and two of my friends (who also had summer birthdays) as clowns. This was before clowns became scary. My clown name was Pebbles, and I wore my hair in pigtails.
We called the business Kidz Entertainment 3. We were a full-service party planning service, bringing everything we needed, including decorations, games, and even cake. I did most of the planning. We showed up at a client’s house, decorated the party area, welcomed the guests, and entertained them with clown antics and games. I was not a natural entertainer, but luckily my friends were. It was a lot of fun, but also a lot of hard work. Kids are hard!!! And I was not very good at planning out costs versus revenue. It was my first lesson in the importance of understanding your pricing model and ensuring an ROI on everything you do.
Kidz Entertainment 3 lasted just until we all turned 16. I got a job at the local fancy hotel restaurant as a busgirl. I appreciated the steady paycheck and the tips. But I was already planning my next move into the kitchen to learn catering skills. My desire to be my own boss had not been extinguished, just delayed. And the story continued…
