If there is or was a favorite "first business" in America for the past one hundred years, it is probably delivering daily newspapers as a newsboy. Now, that business has shifted from eager youngsters on bicycles to less enthused adults in pickup trucks. I think that's too bad. Every young person should have the benefit of learning what is involved in the business basics of buying, selling and working with customers. Even people whose work area is a cubicle in corporate America would be better off having these skills at their disposal. In reality, each of us is a chief marketing officer and a self-sales manager.
Think of the many times while watching old movies that we've seen a newsboy working an urban street corner shouting the latest headlines to attract attention for his product. "Extra! Extra! Read all about it," was a shout heard on the streets of Manhattan from the early nineteenth century onward. That was an inspiration for me when I first took on a newspaper route at age 12 to deliver the Sunday edition of the Buffalo Evening News while growing up in Niagara Falls, New York. Finding that I liked making my own weekly allowance money, a business expansion for me was switching to daily delivery duties for the Niagara Falls Gazette which meant a larger potential income.
It was a real business because I had to purchase the papers for x, sell for y and deal with an interesting variety of customer personalities. Whatever was left over was the profit. If customers were late paying, or didn't come up with the $.75 per week, the effect on my pocketbook was immediate. But I was proud to walk the grounds of the Center Court public housing project carrying the Gazette in twin canvas bags. An older sister taught me how to run a simple balance sheet and my mother gave me a Sanborn Coffee can to hold my funds. I remember proudly wearing a change making machine on my belt to keep the coins organized on collection days!
With the world of physical newspapers shrinking faster than publishers would like, the ranks of paperboys and girls is trending downward as well. In 1990 which doesn't seem like very long ago, about 70% of the newspapers were delivered by youngsters. By 2008 that number had tumbled to 13%. This happened because in the name of efficiency newspaper distribution systems adopted bigger bundles to cover wider areas. All of this requires people who are old enough to drive and who own a vehicle. Enter the era of the adult newsboy or woman.
Also, I expect that the mindset of boys and girls between 11 and 16 years of age has changed. A lot of them would prefer to work their parents for the money rather than working a business or job to get spending cash. Another factor is that in too many of our country's urban areas parents and kids are beset by the fear of walking anywhere. It was only recently that I heard the phrase "Stranger Danger" which is insidiously infecting our society.
I know that many successful men and some women trace their success habits back to lessons learned on a newspaper route. Smokey Robinson the famous singer-songwriter tells a story of how his earnings as a newsboy were used to purchase the notebooks he used to write his songs. I'm told that Walt Disney, H. Ross Perot, Tom Brokaw, Wayne Gretzky, Jackie Robinson, John Wayne and Martin Luther King all delivered newspapers in their younger years. Thomas Edison was hustling papers at age 12 and Warren Buffett sold copies of the Washington Post. Maybe that's why he tried to purchase the company later!
In our society, we mark the growth of our children by their first steps, first bicycle or roller skates. Whether it's a newspaper route, lemonade stand, or computer repair service, they should also get a chance to operate a first business, even if there's no immediate profit. They'll absorb lessons as valuable as those any educator could give them. I'd bet that Mark Zuckerberg's parents are immensely proud that he had a first business!
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It was great....by the time I was 14, I had saved a few thousand dollars..
I started with about 25 customers and, with tips, made about $3-4 per week. Of course, then a candy bar was a nickel and you could buy a slice of pizza and a soda for 25 cents.
The big change in my business came when I entered high school and my school hours changed. Crowded schools required double shifts so I went to school from roughly 6:30 AM to 12:30 PM and was on my route by 1PM. This was the era of the stay-at-home-housewife and when they saw me pedalling through the neighborhod in early afternoon the first question they asked was not "how much?" but "do you deliver this time every day?"
I delivered the afternooon paper for 5 years, until I graduated HS. By that time I was up to $35 per week. A king's ransom for a 17 year old then.
The big advantage of all this was that the newspaper hired me during my college summer months to be a district manager and run the same local offices that I collected my newspapers from when I was a carrier.
It was my first, and only, union job (a guild, actually) and as a part-timer I was then making about $12 per hour.
Oh, yes, delivering newspapers also kept me in the best physical shape of my life.
It thrust me into the real world of business ... where corporations and individuals buy services and products, and sell them to one another, and require(!) you to deliver on your promises "or else." (Gulp!)
Partly out of desperation, and partly (I know now) out of hitherto-untested skill, I rose to the occasion and over time developed a name for myself. Although I have from time to time taken "the W-2 route" since then, the experience changed my entire viewpoint regarding "the corporate life" forever. Having been thrust to the bleeding-edge of having to "sing for MY supper" (and having somehow passed the audition), I have never forgotten ... and can never forget ... that every single company on this planet must do the same.
Nothing in my "early childhood of education" taught me one single thing about that. (I say that to somebody's shame... perhaps my own, for being so naiive.) The experience of being thrown out (and for no fault of my own) was one for which I was totally unprepared. The many years that I wasted(!) in "traditional education" I would have gladly swapped for ... preparation.