Selling Newspapers

A high school kid took a summer job selling newspaper subscriptions. He was one of those curious minds, and quickly picked up a pattern, that newlyweds were buying an order of magnitude more subscriptions than anyone else. A young man realized that if he spent all his time selling only to those couples, it would dramatically increase his profits.

In a week he got his hands on a married couples registry records. He started offering one free newspaper to every freshly married couple, then followed up with a subscription proposal call. The next month he wasn’t delivering newspapers anymore. It was done by two of his high school friends whom he has hired to catch up with a growing demand.

Later that year teacher delivered a lecture on how to properly fill out the tax return papers. As she was passing through the class, she noticed a mistake that one of the students placed on paper. There was wrong amount of zeros in the income field. To her astonishment student said that his numbers were accurate. Eighteen thousand dollars, he replied and looked at her. It was twice as much as the teacher was making that year. The child’s name was Michael Dell . . .

Later that year he purchased a brand new BMW, before he was old enough to even drive one.