My Kids Are Entrepreneurs
A little bright light in the midst of Covid
I started dropshipping in the summer of 2016. It was a fun hobby for a while and I made some real money doing it. I didn’t get into it so much for the profit potential, but more as a entry level exercise in creating multiple income streams.
At the time, I had a teenager and a middle schooler. Even though they both tried to act as if they weren’t listening to all my talk about multiple income streams, I still kept talking about it all of the time. I was trying to instill something in them that my mother had told me at a young age.
At 7 years old, my mother told me “When you grow up, no one will ever take care of you other than you — no employer, no government, no spouse, no parent. You will have to learn to take care of yourself.”
That message always stuck with me, so I did everything I could to learn how to be completely independent of relying on someone else for income.
For a couple of years my kids watched me order products, gave me advice on my website, cheered me when I made a profit, ooohed and aahhed over my bank account balance, but all in all, they weren’t interested enough to do it themselves. My thought at the time was perhaps they didn’t have the entrepreneurial bug and there wasn’t much I could do to change that.
Fast forward a few years. Both of my kids were employed in local jobs prior to coronavirus. My oldest had been working for a couple of years and my youngest had been employed for about a year.
In mid April 2020, both of them lost their jobs due to coronavirus.
Neither one of them applied for unemployment.
After losing their jobs, both of them started rounding up things from their youth they could sell. My oldest set up an online shop and started selling specialty trading cards. Although he started by making $60 on a single semi-rare card he had collected at some point in his youth, he quickly moved to buying low on one site and selling high on a specialty site. Although he qualified for a stimulus check, he actually used some of his stimulus money to buy more cards and he put the rest in the bank. He made several hundred dollars. Maybe more than he would have made at his old job.
My youngest was not eligible for any stimulus money, but she rounded up her entire collection of American Girl dolls, clothes, accessories, priced every item (lots of items), took pictures of it all, and listed all on eBay. In addition to that, she got her old sewing machine out of the closet and started sewing doll clothes and masks to sell online. She made hundreds of dollars and is working towards other things she could make and sell. Last month, she opened her own Etsy store.
What I’m most proud about is that never once did I tell them they had to find a way to make money in some other way after losing their jobs - they did it on their own.
They’re not ‘traditionally’ employed, but still they bring in a nice income for their age and experience level, and while they’re not making thousands, they’re taking the first steps towards taking care of themselves. I just couldn’t be prouder.
