To me, my "career" is not my job. Instead it is the path of previous jobs leading up to my next one.

Like many young men growing up in less than wealthy homes in northern Illinois, my first paying job was in sales. Sales you say? Yes sales. At around 10 years old I sold myself door to door. In the summer it was mowing lawns, in the winter shoveling driveways. Throw in the odd jobs like running to the store for a neighbor lady and picking up discarded "pop bottles" for the three cent refunds and you have my introduction to business.

I later graduated to the obligatory paper route. But I still found myself spending more time selling people something than slogging through the snow to put the paper between the doors. (Yes even back then I went the extra err....feet to do a good job.) See most of my paper route customers were also the same people I did odd jobs for, sold my Boy Scout and school fund items to, and would sometimes leave their bottles on the porch for me to collect.

My fascination for swapping, trading, and selling came directly from my father. He always seemed to be "horse-trading" for something. I think if the family and drinking situation had been different my father would be a very rich man.

At any rate, when I was 12 my sister, in a round-a-bout way, kick started my sense of entrepreneurship by stealing two boxes of Christmas candles that I was selling for Boy Scouts. There were 24 candles per box and I was supposed to sell each candle for $3. I had already sold five candles before she got her hands on them. So I had $15 (ALOT of money then) and owed $146. (A fortune) there was no way that my parents had that kind of money to spare and I couldn't get the candles back from the people my sister sold and gave the candles to.

I thought I was going to have to resign from the scouts until I saw the same candles selling at the local drug store for $1. I ran home and got my $15 and ran back to the drug store to buy 12 candles (and a small bag of penny candy) and went to work. Not only did I recoup my losses from my sisters' sticky fingers, I came out the top seller in my troop. My "take" that year from candles was a Scouts Field book, backpack, canteen, flashlight, AND $24! I was practically rich.:)

Once that I learned I could sell stuff door to door for more than I paid for it I was off and running. I learned a lot the first year. For instance; something a young man thinks is "cool", doesn't really sell well to grown ups. All in all, the $24 that I made from candles kept me in business for another year. I had my own FM radio, bow and arrows, walkie-talkies, and not one, but two, Zebco 202 fishing poles. I was on my way!

One day the following year I came home from school to find all five of my brothers and sisters, some clothes, a carton of cigarettes, and my mom waiting for me in the family station wagon. We moved in with my aunt in the "projects" before my father came home from work. Thus ended my first business.