Joshua Tab Freshman Seminar: Monologue
When I was nine years old, I made my first business deal. My mom was never a genius when it came to technology, so when she had something to do online, she would always turn right to me, her youngest son. My road to entrepreneurship all began with this fur coat. It was among a pile of unwanted belongings my mother kept in our attic. She asked me to sell it online. Naturally, I hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. I remember asking, “Online to where?” She responded “eBay.” So I went on Google, searched “eBay,” clicked on the website and clicked “sell.” An hour later, there was a bidding war going on for an old coat stuffed behind boxes in my attic. As I grew older, my “businesses” became more and more proficient. I was continuously striving to find ways to expand. By the age of thirteen, I realized it’s not what you know; it’s who you know. So I started talking to everybody, even people I didn’t know. I started a MySpace page, a YouTube account and a FaceBook group where I would advertise my cousin’s new clothing business. For every t-shirt bought online from his website using my “code,” I would get a commission. The five hundred dollars I made during the first week of having the MySpace page led me to believe I was very persuasive, even when convincing total strangers to buy clothes. So I started to wonder how well I would do in convincing people I did know. A week or so later, nearly all of my friends were wearing a new shirt, sweater or pair of jeans. My business only ended when my cousin ran out clothes.
