Drew's Story

When our oldest son was 14, he flew to Idaho to spend a month of his life
"That he will never forget."

He took Drew to a Toastmasters' Club Meeting, a writer's conference, and to visit a variety of his friends who were also entrepreneurs in their own ways. He taught him to get the best buy for his dollar and to watch for opportunity where others often see none.

The time he invested was spent planting seeds.

Understanding isn't as important as believing.
Seeds don't often resemble the plants they grow to be.

At the time, our family was representing a book company that sells homeschooling resources at seasonal conventions. We wanted our oldest two children to experience some type of business so they could learn the principles of business before they had a family to drag through all those wonderful lessons with them.

We traveled during the spring and summer, redesigned the shelves for our 40' display every year of the five we worked for them, learned about inventory, customer relations and basic marketing.

We also learned a tremendous amount about the books we were carrying since we used many of them in our homeschooling and read many others on the side. We were privileged to listen to veteran moms exhort and instruct each other in the midst of the chaos in our booth.

To this day, we are thankful for the experience we gained and the friends we made during those years.

But when Drew came home from Idaho, he announced that we were working too hard for not enough pay and there were easier ways to make a living. The next year, we quit.

Don't trade your time for dollars.
Work smarter, not harder.

During that same year, Drew also apprenticed two days a week with another friend of ours - a Christian auto mechanic. Not only did Drew learn the basics of mechanics, but he also gained an appreciation for an outgoing personality, like his mother has.

Until that year, Drew had been a rather quiet, reflective type of child. The auto mechanic would take him to the auto parts store to buy parts and while there, he would invite whoever was at the counter to go back to his shop where he would change the part for the customer. He would talk to anybody.

Drew soon learned that his mother was not the only person in the world who talks to strangers.

Drew now talks to strangers. In fact, he's never met a stranger.

Be careful who you allow to apprentice your children.
Not only do they learn the subject matter,
they absorb the character of the teacher as well.

 

The last year we worked for the homeschool book company, Chris Davis of Elijah Company, our competitor, asked if we would build him a new set of shelves. So the three of us, Dad, Mom and Drew, designed some rolling wooden shelves to fit the space and that Chris' wife, Ellyn,and one son could transport.

We needed eight. So Drew pushed all the furniture up against the wall, stood the couch up on end, and set up shop in my living room. His carpenter dad instructed him at night on what to do and the next day he would diligently build one shelf.

In the meantime, we moved to Tennessee to the Back Side of Nowhere.

When Chris saw the shelves, he wanted eight. So Drew went to work again to accomodate our competition.

Share your blessings.
Make friends with the competition.

The move to the farm was one of the best things that ever happened to Drew.

When we lived in town, there never seemed to be anything to do even though we were always too busy. Our small house on two acres in a rural neighborhood seemed to be plenty of space. But as more children kept coming and as we bought more books to build a home library, the space seemed to shrink every day.

So when we moved to twice the house in the middle of 44 acres with two creeks, woods and a six acre front field, all four boys were ecstatic. For months, they explored the woods, played in the creek, and we all learned to garden. Then we bought goats.

When we let the three nannies out of the truck, they immediately ran to the back corner of the property, jumped the fence and hid in the neighbor's hay barn.

That was the beginning of the education Drew gained about training animals (and little people as well) that eventually included lessons with calves, sheep, rabbits, and one wonderful water buffalo named Bully.

Since he had to repair fences as part of the job of farm manager, he trained a blind bull to voice commands and to pull the wagon Drew built to haul his T-posts, wire and tools. He also rides the bull, who is now a steer, whenever he wants to go to another part of the farm.

He dammed the creek and stocked the pond which resulted. He cut down trees behind the house and built a pasture for the cows he bought. He dragged the logs to the garden where we built raised beds for a garden. He bought and installed solar panels on the roof for alternative energy and discovered America's new shopping outlet - eBay. He invited a goat expert from Texas and hosted a seminar complete with a full barbecue for the local goat breeders and some of our homeschool friends.

Raising animals teaches more about human nature
than humans teach about nature.

One of the popular things to do in the country here in the south is to go to flea markets on holiday weekends. Our favorite one is called Dog Days in Ardmore, a town on the TN/AL line, named because hunters sold their coon hounds there. Now you can buy anything under the sun there, including all kinds of animals.

One Labor Day weekend, we gathered up everything we wanted to get rid of, packed our utility trailer to the ceiling and made a weekend of it.

Across the road, a man was selling rabbits his overheated rabbits for $1.00 each. Drew picked out 50, bought some $3 and $5 cages from the vendor next to him to put them in and revived those rabbits at the stream near our campsite.

The next day, Drew sold the rabbits for twice what he paid plus the cost of the cage, which he sold with each rabbit. Who wants to carry a rabbit around a flea market?

He brought the remaining rabbits home which eventually ate up his profit in rabbit feed.

He learned a valuable lesson.

A fast nickel is better than a slow dime.

During my pregnancy with baby #7, Drew often took all the little children outside to help him build a barn. At night, his dad would give him carpentry advice for the next phase. The next day, he lined up all the little children with hammers driving in the nails he started.

Make good use of cheap, idle labor.

In 1999, he bought some solar panels on eBay to put on the roof. Not only did he learn quickly about solar power but he also learned about the power of selling to a huge market.

He only dabbled with eBay briefly but introduced the rest of us to a great new project. We began selling extra copies of some of our collectible books on eBay and couldn't believe the profit margin we were getting.

We listed four titles we had paid 25 cents each for on eBay. The ending bid of all four auctions was $186.

Several of my friends told me that was nothing. One neighbor had bought a china tea cup at a yard sale and sold it for $2,000 on ebay.

Many folks were earning $200,000 a year selling all kinds of different items.

Two of the younger children became interested in learning more about auctions. They both eventually attended Ebay University, a one day seminar that came to our area.

A good market is more important than a good product.

After we bought our first investment rental property upon the recommendation of a friend, Drew discovered his love for real estate.

Immediately, the pipes thawed in the only vacant house. The next day, he gave management of all 13 houses to Drew, who had just turned 19. Drew immediately bought a cell phone, hired contractors to repair the house, ran an ad in the newspaper and in three days had the house rented.

The contractors couldn't believe how young he was.

He wanted to learn more about how to buy houses so we flew to several seminars across the country to get an education. The seminars seemed expensive but if we had sent this young man to college we would have spent just as much or more.

Plus, he was learning from a variety of teachers who were actively doing the very things he wanted to learn to do and who had proven to be successful in business. We soon started a real estate investment with a friend and now have monthly meetings with investors who each bring a different perspective of what to do with a house.

He asked me to start a real estate investment club with one of his friends and that has become my monthly support group meeting.

If you want to fly with the eagles,
don't hang around with the turkeys.

He bought a house in the county that needed a few repairs. In spite of what he had learned, he thought he could save a few dollars by making repairs and painting himself.

After taking twice as long as a professional, he finally hired a painter to redo the job right.

He hired an interior decorator to choose the colors for him and the buyer bought the house because it was colorful, "not like all the other houses."

Hire the right professionals to do your business.
Spend your time building your business.

Today, he continues to learn all he can from others about real estate and investing. To visit his website, click here. And don't forget to sign his guestbook!

To join him on an entrepreneur's email discussion group, click here.

To learn more about eBay, click here.

To learn more about a Lifestyle of Learning, click here.

The bottom line is this:
Let life's projects teach your children about the bottom line.