Anything I wanted to buy during Middle School and High School, I had to pay for it myself. Meaning, I never received an allowance. Today, I am truly grateful for the clear understanding that if I want something, I need to work and save my money for it…I am not given a monthly or weekly allowance. This helped instill in me a work ethic that is hard to describe. I was a young man and knew that I would eventually want to buy a truck. My older brother had bought a single cab two wheel drive Ford Ranger with a little black plastic tool box on the back and a huge whip for an antenna. I wanted a truck too. Let me rephrase that, I wanted one but what people thought of me and the image of a cool truck was super important back then.
“When can I buy a truck Dad?” I asked him a few times. Dad always told me I could buy a truck once I had earned the money. “Whenever you get the money son…. I could care less if you have a truck or not…besides, you are safer on a bike anyway.” With that in mind, I had no other choice but to earn money for myself. Looking for work and ways to make money, one of my neighbors took a likin’ to me early on. He enjoyed hunting as a hobby and when he saw me walking my yellow Labrador, named Ace, one day, he asked me if I had ever taken my lab hunting.
He was surprised when I replied no. My dad was not a big hunting kind of guy. The idea of him sitting in a tree stand all day long or go wade out in the middle of ice cold water to shoot a few mallards just didn’t make much sense to my dad. My neighbor saw that I was trying hard to train my dog. He invited me up one day to his garage when I was walking my dog around the block. Step up here into my office…I’ve got something that I think you will like!” I had no idea what it could be, but I really admired this guy.
He had a really nice house, a sweet Lexus and his wife had newer Range Rover. I just envied everything about him. “Sure,” I replied as I nudged my dog with he leash to change course and follow him up his steep driveway. He walked me around the front of his gorgeous home, around to the left side where there was a small entry way to his basement. I had to duck my head to enter into the small door of his crawl space. When we were under his house, I was amazed. It was an unfinished crawl space that he had converted into his man cave. He pulled out a frozen duck from his freezer and broke off a wing and handed it to me. “Here Matt, use this to train your dog to be a real hunting dog. Tape this onto your retrieving dummy and use it with him with every day. He will get used to finding it and smelling what he needs to hunt down for when we go hunting.”
“Have you ever been bird hunting before?” I shook my head no. “Get that dog trained and lets go see what he can do.” He had me hooked. Then, the next time he saw me walking Ace around the block he asked, “You want to make some extra money?” I impulsively replied “Sure!” He took me again into his basement and showed me a few dress shoes that he had laid out on the counter. He said “Have you ever shined dress shoes before?” I had never shined shoes before but had watched my dad do it. I did not think this would make me some quick money at age 12, but, I tried it anyway.
I shined my Mr Chaplin’s pair of shoes and returned them to him. When I completed the last shoe, he replied, “You could really make some money by going to my neighbor across the street and ask him if he would like any of his dress shoes shined.” That neighbor was Mr. Mansfield. I bought supplies, created flyers and distributed them to all of paperboxes in my neighborhood which was over 100 homes.
I would pick the shoes up from the customers on Saturday mornings, clean them, and deliver them back the same night. My parent’s basement turned into the shoe cleaning room and my bicycle became my mode of transportation.
When I picked up the shoes, I handed the clients a checklist for them to fill out what they wanted on the half a piece of paper. It was so simple looking back on it. They would check if they wanted a liquid or a wax shine. And because I am partially color blind and in an effort to not mess up their expensive dress shoes, I asked them to check which type of polish they wanted.
The “return time” was important because if they needed them by a certain time, it helped to know that. They all were picked up Saturday morning and delivered to them by that night, but if they needed them by a certain time, I wanted to make sure I met that deadline.
I earned over eighty dollars profit in just a few weekends when I was only 12 years old. My father taught me to give 10% to the church, 50% to savings, and the rest was spending money. Where else can a 12 year old earn $80 bucks?