An 18-year-old with a dozen employees under me...
Like so many good and bad things that happened in high school, it all started with a party. I was grounded for two months of my senior year in high school, 1983-84. I couldn't go out with my friends at all. That was because I threw one party that year. The party itself wasn't such a bad idea. The bad idea part was that I threw that party in my dad's boss' house, that I was house sitting over Christmas break. The house didn't get trashed or anything, but I got caught, and put on family house arrest for two months.
Finally, at the beginning of March, I was allowed to go out with my friends again. We drove around in my friends' VW bugs, tried to meet girls, and then heard about a party in some trailer park, typical Boise Friday night. About 40 high school kids were crowded into this trailer, and I think someone bought a pony keg, which was in the back bedroom if the tiny single wide, and kids were lined up trying to get a beer. After the earlier trouble that year, I made a pact not to drink that night, trying to keep out of trouble. My best friend Darrin, however, was bent on getting well buzzed, if not fully drunk. He'd had a few beers already as we entered the party. He grabbed a cup and weaseled his way to the back bedroom. I stayed in the tiny living room, and tried to talk to some girls. Since I was deathly shy, that wasn't going well, as usual, so I ended up talking to some other friend I saw there. Suddenly the cry went out, "COPS!" We tried to bail out of the tiny, single wide trailer, but there was nowhere to go. The police were at the only door. The police just stood outside the front door, and wrote everyone of us a ticket for underage drinking as we walked out. At least half of the kids didn't even get their cup filled up at that point, though some had been drinking earlier. I didn't have a drop that night, but it didn't matter, I was there, and I got a ticket, too.
As my friends re-grouped, all of us with tickets in hand, we realized that only one person managed to get away and not get a ticket. That was Darrin, my best friend, the only guy who was actually pretty drunk that night. He didn't drink anymore than the rest of us normally, but he wasn't driving that night, so he made the most of it. He managed to slip out a tiny bedroom window and run into some nearby bushes, and escape.
As you can imagine, the fact that 40 kids got tickets at a party, a lame party at that, a rare occurrence then, was news around school. Us 40 ticketed kids started to get together at lunch, and strategize on how to handle the tickets, since we all had court dates coming up. It was in those lunch powwows that I got to know a kid named Doug. We hit it off, and became friends as the ticket process moved along.
As far as the ticket went, I went to court with three other people on the same day, we all had a pact to plead "Not Guilty," and fight the tickets, since most of the kids had little, if any beer since we got there minutes before getting busted. When it came time to plead, the three before me caved in and pleaded Guilty. Fuckers. Some integrity. But I held tough and pleaded Not Guilty. The way things turned out, since so many kids got the same ticket, the judge gave them all a warning, and no sentence. When I had my trial a couple weeks later, the judge was informed about what happened with the others, and I got off with a warning, too. But that whole big group had become better friends because of those tickets.
When late April rolled around, and we started thinking about summer jobs, Doug said he worked at The Fun Spot, which had six amusement rides, a food stand, and a miniature golf course. Doug, a senior like me, was the manager of The Fun Spot that summer. He worked there the summer before, and was assistant manager then. He started going in on the weekends, painting, and doing some other maintenance stuff, and asked if I wanted to start working there. So I went to work there, for the whopping wage of $2.05 an hour. I think minimum wage was $3.35 an hour then, but because of some Idaho law designed for migrant farm workers, the owner could pay us less than the federal minimum wage. Even in 1984, $2.05 an hour was lame pay. But it was some pay.
As the summer got going, and I became a ride operator, Doug tapped me, and a guy named Brian, a year younger than us, as assistant managers. We ran the park during the few days Doug wasn't there. Halfway through the summer, Doug got a higher paying job doing construction work, and Brian and me took over as managers. Suddenly, within a week or two of my 18th birthday, I was running a small amusement park, along with Brian. We had 12 employees under us, and the owner, who also ran a construction company, would drop off the cash drawer in the morning, and then take off. He came in to do major maintenance, and to check on things now and then. But he let us run the whole business operations on a day to day basis.
For nearly 20 years he had been giving kids who were 17-18-19 years old the chance to actually manage and run a business. He'd tell us the basics, and then it was up to us. We had to schedule employees, maintain the rides day to day, train the employees, get high school kids to pull weeds and mow the lawn area when it was 92 degrees out, make sure things ran smoothly, handle complaints from customers, test the rides every morning, clean the pine needles off the miniature golf course, handle employee disputes and drama, and actually run the business all day long.
Brian quit near the end of the summer, and I was sole manager for the last two or three weeks. It was a tiny, goofy, little place, and our friends often made fun of us for working there. But it was a huge responsibility for an 18-year-old, and experience I couldn't get anywhere else at that age. Even before The Fun Spot, I had this sense that I wanted to work for myself, and run my own business in life. But I was deathly shy by nature, had trouble talking to strangers, was a terrible salesman, and just didn't have the personality to actually start my own business in my 20's.
I wound up getting serious about the new sport of BMX freestyle and moved to California. Ultimately, I wound up in Southern California, working as a kind of sidekick to several really talented young entrepreneurs. As I did all kinds of work for them, and watched how they ran their businesses day after day, I got a sort of informal apprenticeship in enrepreneurship. I also began to read about personal development and other books, and began the long journey to become a person who could actually run a legit business of my own.
Now, at 53-years-old, I'm still on that journey. Technically, I've never run an "actual business" of my own, with a business license and all. But I've done a whole slew of other jobs, managed other people's businesses, and I've produced videos and sold them through small distributors. I was also a taxi driver for 6 1/2 years, which is not a job, it's actually a self-directed small business with really high overhead for the income possible.
So now, with a mixture of artwork, blogging, writing and publishing zines (and eventually actual books), and social media skills I've learned selling my artwork, I'm finally building a small business of my own. Part of what I want to do with that business is to help other people who are building or running their own small businesses, with social media and some of the particular skills I've developed over the 35 years, since I started working at a little amusement park in Boise called The Fun Spot.
I'll be sharing a bunch of things I've learned at various small businesses in this blog, as well as newer ideas on how technology has changed the whole world of business in general, and how Disruption caused by new technology is tossing old business models out the window, and opening up new opportunities. I'm also an amateur futurist, and looking forward, I think America is going to need to create millions of small businesses in the next 20 years, as things continue to change rapidly.
So that's where I'm coming from, I hope many of you find stuff that helps your business in this blog.
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