Editor’s note: Inman News publisher and longtime innovator Brad Inman has launched a blog at BradInman.com that will carry "stories, ideas and lessons on starting businesses." His third post, republished here, recounts the lessons he learned from being an entrepreneur at a young age. Click here to read the original post.
In my first business venture, I partnered with my younger brother Jeff — we were 10 and 12 years old. With my mother’s nonstop encouragement, we started a window-washing business, Bucket & Brush Brothers. We handed out fliers to the small businesses in our hometown, Carlinville, a southern Illinois farm burg. The charge: $1 per business.
At our peak, we cleaned the windows for 20 businesses, which we completed in about five hours each Saturday. We were each generating $10 per week, which felt good.
From this early experience, I learned a few lessons.
- Sustaining a business is challenging, it takes discipline and a rigorous commitment. If you let up, you lose customers. If you call in sick, you lose customers. Calling your own shots comes with a responsibility that is unmatched when working for someone else. We shut down the business when I got hired on at Doc’s grocery store as a bag boy.
- A friend once described skydiving as "quintuple thrills." Fear, excitement, happiness and intense worry are feelings I have when launching a new business — the mix of danger and approval along with the rewards of grinding out solutions to problems. It is an experience that I love to repeat.
- Doing business with a family member or a friend can be a mistake with low odds of success. With F&F, you have trust. Personal loyalty, however, can get in the way of making smart and difficult business decisions. My grandfather described it as "soft heart, soft head."
- The product may inspire the business, but sales make the business.
- Wipe the squeegee carefully with a dry towel before applying it to the next window. Bring plenty of dry towels or the windows will be marred with ugly streaks.
Other sources and facts:
1. Squeegee techniques for window washing
2. According to Wikipedia, "the modern single-blade window-cleaning squeegee was patented by Ettore Steccone in 1936."
3. Thomas Edison’s first business was printing a newspaper, the "Grand Trunk Herald," in the baggage car of the Grand Trunk Railroad, allegedly the first newspaper published on a train.
Brad Inman is the founder and publisher of Inman News; he created and later sold online real estate lead-generation and marketing site HomeGain.com; and is the founder of TurnHere.com and Vook.com.
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