My Very First Job

I was 14 years old. An older friend was turning 16 and wanted to start applying for work at local businesses. He asked if I wanted his paper route. I did, and thus begun the most entrepreneurial employment of my life. I owned the local turf for delivery of the Kansas City Kansan newspaper. They printed issues every afternoon except Saturday, and also printed a Sunday morning edition. To get the job all I needed was a bicycle, motivation, and $15 to buy the paper bag, coin changer and subscription book.

It really was an entrepreneurial job. I owned the customers. I bought the newspapers, rubber bands and plastic bags. I collected the subscription fees door to door. My income was whatever was left over from collected fees after expenses. I think I netted about $15 per month. If I wanted to increase my income, I found new customers to subscribe to the paper. There was very little interaction from the newspaper. I would tell them how many copies of the paper I needed, and they would drop them at the end of my driveway. I would roll them, and either band or bag them depending on the weather, and then set out on my route to deliver to each customer. I delivered the paper from my bicycle each week day after school. My father drove me on Sunday mornings so that I could finish in time for church. Once a month I would visit each house and collect the monthly subscription fee. Some of my customers would pay several months ahead. I liked that. Others were deadbeats.

One in particular was a family that eventually gained a level of notoriety. Their last names were Chiaverini. Their son Tony, became a middle weight contending boxer. He fought for the title at least once, but that was after I delivered papers to his family. All I knew about them then was that they repeatedly stiffed me on the subscription fee. I always wondered why anyone would not pay a kid for the newspapers they read. Every month I would knock on their door to collect the subscription fee, and they would never answer. I think I carried them for nearly a year. Subscription fee for the KC Kansan was $1.50 a month so they were into me for over $15 - a entire months profit.

Then one day I knocked on their door, and the father answered. I told him what I was collecting for and the total he owed. To my surprise, he didn't even blink. He pulled out two $20 bills and told me the excess was to pay ahead. Wow! I had $40. I don't think I had ever held that much before. I was rich!

Occasionally, the KC Kansan would incent their carriers to increase subscriptions. They would offer increasingly valuable gifts for hitting certain levels of new subscribers. It was up to me to figure out how to sign them up. I would usually badger family acquaintances first. If that did not get me up to the level of gift I wanted, I would then ask current customers if they knew anyone who might like to subscribe. However I went about it, I always found myself one subscription short of the gift I coveted.

I remember one instance when I was reaching for that last new customer that would result in the gift of my dreams. I approached a family I vaguely knew from church and went through my sales spiel. They said no, they were not interested. I pressed harder. They said no again. My voice broke and a tear ran down my cheek. They said yes. I got my transistor radio. I haven't used that tactic since, but it is still in my repertoire.

Gone are the days of paper boys. I am not sure it would be safe in today's environment. The days of home delivered newspapers are also going away. Soon, print media will only be available on the Internet. But when I was a kid, it was not a bad gig. And it taught me much about business.