71–80 of 97 posts
I shoplifted copies of Adobe software from a bookstore and sold them on Ebay. Eventually I felt bad about this and turned myself into the bookstore owner and paid them back. This was high school. Does that count as entrepreneurial or just plain stupid? I'll leaning toward the latter.
While at university I managed to get a contract to temporarily install covert CCTV recording equipment to catch staff stealing from a chain of UK retailers. I wasn't making much money until I discovered I could park outside a local swimming baths, sleep in the car, and then wake up for a swim and a shower in the morning. Sadly as soon as I locked the car, the alarm was set. If I turned over during the night, the car…
I'm guessing you mean you "made money" because you saved on rent?
Paper route. I went through a couple rear axles on my bicycle because the papers were so heavy. At one point it just snapped right in the middle. I guess I'm dating myself now, you kids don't remember what an actual newspaper looks like.
I'd have loved to have had a bicycle on my round(s). (Sunday mornings were the killer day, here in the UK the Sunday editions of newpapers are 2-5x the size of normal editions.)
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Trading time for money doesn't scale.
Tell that to Skadden Arps.
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Tell that to Skadden Arps.
It's scalable for the partners at Skadden (and similar service firms) to trade time for money because the time they trade is that of other people (viz., associates, and/or analysts at investment banks) who put in prodigious hours in the hope of becoming partners themselves someday in the distant future.
Later
You fleshed this comment out, which is great, but I want to be careful to say I'm not endorsing the business model of wringing hours out of people's speculative hope that they'll reach the top of the pyramid. We don't have "work 60 hours a week and make partner" model, for instance.
But the general principle of developing and refining skills to the point where they enable you to ramp up new people and deploy all your people more effectively is a good one that works in a variety of different cases.
Tech is myopic (extremely) about professional services; many of the largest firms in our economy are effectively scaled-up professional services companies.
I wrote an ERP system for SMBs. (Enterprise Resource Planning, Small/Midsize Businesses). My first sale was to a 20 person automobile aftermarket wheel manufacturer for $20,000. I remember sleeping with the check that night.
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What makes you say that? There are plenty of gigantic professional services firms.
Trading time for money doesn't scale.
My first $10,000 ever made was playing video games. It was all made in one weekend at a Quake 3 tournament. It was my first tournament ever, so it was fueled solely on excitement, fun, and sheer determination. I completed 2nd place, took home a giant check, trophy, and was at that moment in time the #1 U.S. player.