Hi Duane!

That was a fantastic post! :)

It shows what a little bit of initiative can do.... :)

I really enjoy hearing stories of successful business teenagers.... The reason why is because I tend to figure -- well, if a teenager can do it, then I should be able to too. :)

Thomas (my brother) started his first "serious" business in his teens, though his first business didn't work out financially, he got a lot of experience from it.... (Here's Thomas's earlier post about his first "serious" business - How I Lost $10,000.) His current business, distributing a particular brand of blank CDs, is doing quite well, and will soon expand into other computer-related products as well.... Thomas is only 20.

Just a couple days ago, I bought "Direct from Dell" by Michael Dell. Man, this guy was a teenage dynamo! You could see the hallmarks of success in his story already....

When he was aged 12, he liked to collect stamps, so he got a job as a water boy in a Chinese restaurant so he had money to buy stamps. He noticed that stamp auctions were quite successful, so he figured that the auctioners must be making good money. So he thought - why not do something similar?

He contacted a few of the other stamp collectors in his area and had them agree that he could sell their stamps on consignment. Once he had the stamps to sell, he placed an ad for "Dell's Stamps" in Linn's Stamp journal, a trade journal, and typed (with one finger) a 12-page catalog. From responses to his ads, he mailed out his catalogs. To his surprise, he made $2,000! And remember, he was just 12 years old!

When he was 16 (in the early 1980s), Michael Dell got a summer job selling subscriptions to the Houston Post. The way he was taught to do it was to just cold call lists of new phone numbers from the phone company. After a while, he noticed that almost everyone who bought had either just gotten married, or had just moved into new houses or apartments. So he wondered, "How could you find all the people who are just getting mortgages or getting married?"

He discovered that in the state of Texas, all couples had to go to the county courthouse to get their marriage license, which included the address where their license was to be sent. In Texas, that information was public. Aha!

Then he found out that certain companies compiled lists of people with new mortgages, ranked by size. He could go after the high potential high mortgage people first.

He wrote these people personalized letters offering them a subscription to the Houston Post.

By now, summer was over, but he didn't want to give up this opportunity, so he'd go to school in the day, and work at his business at night and on Saturdays. He got thousands of new subscriptions for the paper.

One day his economics and history teacher gave the class an assigment on filing your own tax return. On his tax return, Michael Dell put an income of about $18,000, based on his newspaper subscription sales. At first his teacher corrected him, thinking he had missed a decimal point. When she found out he hadn't, she became very dismayed. He was making more than his teacher did!

I've read a few books about billionaires, but Michael Dell's book is a real treasure.... He is the probably the most successful direct marketer in the world today. It shows that the techniques that Gordon talks about (particularly back in the private Study Group forum), or which you can read about in Jim Straw's "Own Your Own Mailorder Business," has the potential for great profits, as they are essentially the same direct marketing strategies used by Michael Dell. (One of Michael Dell's advantages was probably that he jumped into a fast growing industry.)

I've only read the first few pages of his book, but for me just those few pages was already worth the price of the book to me. :)

Thanks Duane, I like talking about these topics.... :)

- Dien


Join the private Study Group forum for just the price of Jim Straw's manual (today is the last day!)