Entreprenuer at a Young Age
I was helping my mom clean out her garage a few weekends ago, and came across these beauties: two VHS tapes in a branded case, bar-coded for sorting.
This is how I remember it:
My dad has always been a “computer guy.” He did some work at Longs Drugs to network their computers; back when Longs carried video rentals. After my dad’s help, they decided against renting out videos, and they sent their some-700 video collection home with my dad.
My dad saw this as an opportunity. He bought shelving units for our garage to set up our very own video rental store at our house. At the ages of eight and nine, this was mine and my sister’s summer job. We made labels with our “Hunter Video Visions” moniker {Hunter is my maiden name}, had a database of all the movie titles we owned {sorted by bar code}, and offered a search function where you could find movies by actor {of course, my Dad did all of this, but we were involved every step of the way}. My sister and I delivered fliers door-to-door to the whole neighborhood every summer proclaiming our unbeatable price of $1 per day movie rentals.
Did it work? You wouldn’t believe it. People would knock on our door, and we’d open our garage. Parents would rent movies and drop them on our doorstep the next day. Kids would buy soda and candy and come back later for more. It was a total success. We updated our movie selection every couple of months with a new VHS from Costco. Many summer days, my sister and I would leave the garage door open for people to rent videos, and we’d watch Batman Forever for the hundredth time {funny how you can do that as kids – watch the SAME movie over and over}.
So a few weekends ago, my mom and I donated what was left of Hunter Video Visions. We eventually moved out of that house, and didn’t set the shop back up. It was my first taste of responsibility, computer programming, and the entrepreneurial spirit.