Ageless Entrepreneur by Fred Dawkins

Author:Fred Dawkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Published: 2015-04-13T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Exuberance of Youth

David was at least six foot five and towered over all of us. Like Dominic he had just graduated from secondary school, but he wasn’t a local. It turned out that he lived near Sam, who had become one of his first customers. He had driven out of the city that day out of loyalty.

Sam’s introduction was short and enthusiastic, but David’s talk was revealing. As commanding as his appearance might be, David was a shy, unassuming teenager who just happened to find an idea that left him with twenty-five thousand dollars in the bank as he tried to decide what to do next. University, or skip it? As Sam wrapped up his introduction you could see David tense up, and initially he spoke faster than normal.

“Okay, so making my own company all started when I was fifteen looking for a part-time job. I was handing out tons of résumés but wasn’t getting anywhere. I was much smaller then and nobody wanted to hire a fifteen-year-old. I was frustrated until my dad told me about this Ontario government program called Summer Company. To qualify you have to be between fifteen and twenty-nine and you can’t be working more than twelve hours at another job. You can start almost any type of business as long as it’s independent. You don’t have to register as a corporation and if you are accepted you receive a grant of three thousand dollars to start the business. When I heard about the three thousand dollars I wanted to do it. It seemed like a lot of money at the time; probably not so much if you were twenty-nine. So I decided to apply. The application consisted of a business plan and cash flow chart. With a little help from my parents I could do that. I knew how to work with Microsoft Excel from school and they helped me with the assumptions. We did three different scenarios because I had to do a lot of guess work and I really wasn’t sure how it would go. I ended up getting accepted, and I was the youngest person in the program. It provided me with a great experience and the satisfaction of being my own boss at fifteen. I really liked that part. Starting a company at fifteen is great. It seemed easy, maybe a little too easy.

“I call my company Juniors for Seniors. The idea started with my next-door neighbour who was older and needed help for raking leaves, shovelling snow, and computer training. Looking back at my three years of running my own business I can’t think of any job I’d rather have taken. This was the best job I could possibly have had while in school. It was flexible and could work around my schooling and sports, plus I was making and learning way more than anyone stuck at McDonalds or some other retail job.

“As you can tell from the name, I tailored my company toward seniors. Most of

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