What was your FIRST BUSINESS?
 

As online entrepreneurs, we all have to come from somewhere. What was your first business? Did you have a lemonade stand? Newspaper route? Some sort of arbitrage business?

My first business: I rented out the American comic books my mom sent me to my Filipino classmates back in the 70s. Zero start up capital. Pure profit (I paid the dudes watching my comic stands--I had two set up on either end of the Don Bosco campus--with free comic reading time).

Inspiration for this thread: http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/29/smbu...ion=2007053010

I sold drugs to anyone that would by them in South Boston. I had 3 or 4 nignogs working for me. We pushed crack, marijuana, angel dust, coke, or just about anything else that people were willing to buy. Dangerous but extremely profitable.

I sold Yellow Fin Tuna

i sold tshirts and mix tapes all over the country at raves and underground electronic parties

b&e was a good enterprise back in the day :o

I fucked my fellow students' PCs with viruses and charged them for "repairing". I loved the no-firewall times!

Too bad I am fuckin lazy now

actually this is my first biz

My first biz is still ahead lol

I robbed old ladies for a living :)

at 15 i was airbrushing murals in peoples homes and businesses

my first business, this one
my first job, 1 month in a internet cafe (when i was 15 or so)

This was really my first and only bizz ever:)

I repaired computers :)

Executive search business

delivered packages for some nice upstanding Italian gentlemen

you're listening to electro?! :thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup

When I was ten my friend, my brother and I used to go all around the area washing cars door to door. As we looked to upgrade we added waxes, etc so were getting anything from 2 GBP to 5 GBP and between three of us it was anything from 15-30 mins work.

I can't really remember what we spent the money on, probably a mixture of sports equipment (we were always losing footballs, tennis balls, etc), candy/chocolate/etc and put some in our bank accounts to make our grandmother happy (she would match anything we saved each birthday)!

When I was in 4th grade, I made good money selling NFL football pencils. If you're in your mid to late 30's, you probably remember the pencils that came out and had the two colors of an NFL team and their logo on them...I discovered that my friend, who's dad owned a local drug store could buy them in these big boxes of 100, so I'd buy them at the box rate about $10 and sell the pencils 2 for 35 cents, so was making about 15 cents profit from every two I sold. If the kids wanted to buy them in regular packs at the store, they were something like 80 cents for a pack of 3.

I built websites and database systems in 1995

Edit that my FIRST company was t-shirts

i had a lemonaid stand when i was 6

i sold pirated cd's in highschool lol

I had two paper routes at the same time. One was a daily and the other was a weekly. Some customers received both.

Dj and making mix tapes.

Auto Deatialing. And made some nice money doing it.

I used to sell home made comic books when I was a kid......

And then I'd use the money to buy Playboy (with 8 years old or something).

Sold homemade cinnamon toothpicks in third grade.

Well, like any 9yo Canadian, hockey cards of course. :) I sure some people remember those days. You'd get your weekly allowance, spend it on packs of hockey cards, and see what'd you'd get. Then once a month the magazine would come out, explaining exactly how much each card is worth. So you and your friends would piss around trading cards, then every once in a while you'd goto the local store to cash in some cards for that whopping $3.50. :)

But nah, my first real business was online software when I was 17. Did pretty decent too. Just before I turned 16 my parents moved me to Texas, then the UK. I was a bit pissed at the whole ordeal, so figured out how to make money on my own, and by the time I was 17 I had a good $10K saved up, and was ready to move back to Canada. My mom almost shit herself when I asked the one morning if she could give me a ride to the airport, because I was going back to Canada. They had no idea what I was doing. :)

started repairing PCs and doing system builds at 13

I hijacked microcode of AMPS and TDMA cellphones, then user was able to change his ESN by keypad.

one guy showed me a "loner" and asked me - hey, could you do something better than this?!

Hmmmm interesting :)

I was a paper boy in the 6th grade. Made carrier of the month in my first month by doubling number of subscribers.

Pretty sure I sold kool-aide before then though.

Artistic Restoration

first entreprenaurial effort was as a beekeeper selling honey.

age 14.

built a bee hive in shop class in 8th grade, bought bees and queen by mail. sat it in the apple orchard behind the house and that fall sold about 50 bucks in honey and comb honey.

(big $ in those days)

i keep splitting the hives until i had about 25.

then i went away to college, bee mites came in, no one would maintain the hives and nature put me out of biz.

That's awesome. By the way, a large chunk of beekeepers' income nowadays come from pollination services. Seems quite lucrative due to the demand unleashed by the decrease in bees recently. Apparently, many swarms abandon their hives due to some virus or infection.

A couple that I did on the side:

Had about 30 MLMs going for a bit in the late 80's. Got a decent chunk of change from that :)

Had some 900 numbers in the early 90's

Adult was the first full time biz I've had and now I'm focusing on real estate with medical coding to fall back on.

Worked for others doing a lot of different things but these are things I've done on my own.

I still fuck fat chicks for 50 a pop. Why do you think I am into BBW?

OMG, I forgot about that - I did that in the 6th grade!

Dang. I haven't thought about that...probably since then. Amazing was able to forget the first (and only) time I decided to taste the cinnamon oil on its own. :helpme

I also made spending money in middle school basically having inschool garage sales. I'd bring in some of my old crap every few days and sell it for a dollar here and there.

Medical coding? As in medical transcriptions? If you need CHEAP workers, let me know. I have a few who have med transcription certification.

No, coding is different from transcription. :( I'm looking for coders but there are so many around here, I'll probably stay close to home. Thanks though :)

Lemonaid and BEER stand haha.. I was lucky enough to have grandparents who lived on the side of a golf course, I'd sell the beer for $1 cheaper than the card lady and people would end up sending a cart back to me (I was on the 3rd hole) to pick up more beer. I would clean house until they finally caught on and I tried to sell the pro some beer.

I also went door-to-door asking people if they wanted their car washed, worked out well. One time I found $150 in some guys seat. I gave it back to him, and in true karma fashion he bought me some new hockey nets.

Those were the days ;)