Around fourth grade, I thought I was on to something huge. I had a neat little business idea. I wanted to get sheets of white board material and cut out personal sized dry erase lapboards. I wanted to round the edges and put a sticker on the back with my logo. I wanted there to be a little dry erase marker holder at the top and for kids at every elementary and middle school to be able to have access to these boards, which I dubbed “Sock-it Boards”. I worked with Gerry Brossard, my buddy and owner of Fast Signs on Harbison to come up with a sticker and a little logo with the name “Sock-it-boards” and my mom’s cell phone number 803-429-1443 and a little colorful sock in the background.
Oh, how I love looking back on the thought that I used mom’s cell phone as ‘the company’ contact phone number…that was all that I had back then. I didn’t have a cell phone. Later, when I could afford my first phone was I able to put my actual phone number on marketing materials. I am truly grateful that mom didn’t balk at this. I mean, it wasn’t like anyone called for a dry erase white board, but if it would have gone viral, I would have dealt with that problem. Maybe even bought mom another phone and a new phone number. Ha!
The idea to Sock-It-Boards was sparked when we used similar whiteboards in class one day and were required to bring in an old sock to use as our eraser. My classmates and I loved the idea and thought we needed more of this…one for every student in every class. I had plans to sell them to Jim Shirley, past-principle of Irmo Elementary School. Once he was sold, I was then planning to take it around the circuit to other school and districts. I even made a prototype model in my parent’s basement. Now, thirty years later, there are dozens of companies doing this idea. The individual student lap boards were about 9×12” and I was going to sell them in bulk for classrooms. Students could practice writing on them without wasting paper or use them for math problems.
I am grateful that my parents did not hamper my entrepreneurial thinking process by not letting me make a prototype or print up marketing labels with the logo on it. It would have been so easy for them to shut it down and say NO to wasting money and time with and idea like this. Instead, dad even helped me with the cuts of the sheet of whiteboard that we got from Lowes. He had all the tools to help me round the edges and clean it up. Dad’s shop was a wood worker’s dream. We had an entire full basement under the 4000 square foot, three story home. I’ll never forget dad taking me to construction sites that he would spot on the way home from work. Our home was one of the first ones build in the neighborhood. My parents found a prime lot, centrally located in the corner of the neighborhood. Dad would come home, change out of his suit and tie and then ask me if I wanted to ride with him to get some wood scraps.
We would go to the construction sites and look through their wood scrap piles that were obvious the contractors were planning to burn. There would be all kinds of wood, 2x4s, 4x4s, 2x6s, 2x10x, you name it, those trash piles were gold mines for stocking up the wood inventory in dad’s wood working shop. He made sure that he had a wide variety of wood for when the time came to build something fun, his wood piles was fully stocked and sorted with all kinds of shapes and sizes.
Growing up, I found out quickly that if I were to build a tree house in the woods of my back yard, I could escape from my siblings. I found that those construction site scraps made the perfect foot holds if they were nailed directly into the tree. No one helped me with the tree house, but it was huge and a place to retreat in the afternoons.
I definitely remember that I would get scolded for not putting the tools back on the wall where I got them from. Especially if I left the tools outside in the rain. Oh, daddy didn’t like that. His shop at the Sheffield house had everything an adventuresome, outdoor-lovin’ boy could ask for. Wood, nails, drills, hand saws, miter saws, drill presses, stationary grinding wheels (which I later learned how to sharpen lawn mower blades by watching Granddaddy), and a fancy high-tech commercial vacuum dust collection system…you need it, Dad’s shop had it.
