October 17, 2011

"I bought a 3,600-square-foot house when I was 19."

"My friends who would come over would wonder when my parents were coming home. 'No, they’re never coming home,' I said to them. 'This is mine.'"

Said Dan Schneider, who made his own money using his aptitude for business and management.  (It's a really cool interview at the link.)

21 comments:

MadisonMan said...

Maybe if I was interviewing with him I'd bring ice cream.

Methadras said...

This guy is the quintessential entrepreneur that Erkle and his leftard cadre in the Occupy movement want to bury and make him pay for all of their grievances.

rcocean said...

Judging by his picture he needs to go back to bicycling 30 miles a day.

edutcher said...

Sounds like The Blonde. She was about 21 when she bought her first house and Daddy had to co-sign.

gbarto said...

It was a cool interview. The most interesting bit though is the interleaving of ease and good sense: the ice cream, the 3:00 rule and the bonus structure all seem designed to deal with things with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of return in such a way that minimizing hassle maximizes productivity.

rcocean said...

Or maybe go to a better tailor.

Clothes make the man.

Known Unknown said...

There's another successful Dan Schneider out there.

He was the fat kid on Head of the Class. Now, he's the mind behind iCarly and other pre-teen hits on Nickelodeon.

bagoh20 said...

", I dropped out of school when I was 16. I have a ninth-grade education. But I was getting pretty big customers. I would pay one of my friends to cut school and come with me to the city and we’d go into a hospital, and we’d sneak up to the top floor and we’d put fliers in the interoffice mailboxes from the top floor to the bottom floor about a special deal for hospital employees. And my phone was ringing for orders before we were even walking out of the building, because this was when there weren’t cellphone stores on every single corner. Then I started to get sick of going out and getting customers. So, I figured, why don’t I open up a store and just sit there and have people come to me? So I opened a store right when I turned 18, and I grew that to about 12 stores before I was 20."

See that. Stay in school kids, or that could be you.

bagoh20 said...

Nothing about this kid's success was just luck. His is a very valuable story for those who wish to occupy our world.

WV: protess

F said...

Could we pay him to go talk to Obama for an hour?

jeff said...

Clearly he is stealing from the other 99%. Obviously he just wakes up and someone gives him all those companies and money that could be going to some 26 year old pot smoking slacker with a degree in womyn studies. EAT THE RICH!

Chip Ahoy said...

Sixteen in the 9th grade? That bit doesn't quite compute, he should be graduating by then or nearly. I graduated at sixteen then within two months, abruptly turned seventeen. So, using myself as template then and applied to all humanity, I notice this little gap.

Bert said...

Very Cool-you have to admire this guy.

bagoh20 said...

"Sixteen in the 9th grade? That bit doesn't quite compute"

I would guess he was just too busy getting on with life to do well in school. As successful as he was at that early age, it was probably hard to sit and listen to adults drone on when he was already leaving them in his dust.

Can you imagine his 9th grade teachers telling him he'd better do his homework, or he'd never amount to anything, and then have him go home and do it? Not likely.

There seems to be an (anecdotal) correlation between doing really well in business and poorly in school. I think it has something to do with being willing to choose your passion when confronted by demands for conformity, while still remaining driven and honest. That seems to make good a business person and a bad student.

jeff said...

"Or maybe go to a better tailor.
Clothes make the man."

Yeah, what a loser. Maybe if he dressed better he might make something of himself.

Peter V. Bella said...

Some of those flopupiers should read about this guy.

Wince said...

I dunno, the sequence of his early ascendency seems a little hazy to me.

16 = Drops out of school, meteoric rise from "gofer" to head chef, leapfrogging line cooks with 10-15 years more experience.

17 = Elbows out employer to take over balloon animal business.

17.5 = B2B cellphone salesman. And they said, “Oh, we want this guy to work for us.” They just kept calling, “Come work for us. Come work for us.” So finally, I said, “All right, I’ll try this.” So I got into B2B [business to business] sales at 17.

18 = Established first store (under nose of his B2B employer?).

18-20 = So I opened a store right when I turned 18, and I grew that to about 12 stores before I was 20.

19 = In between, bought 3,600 sft house, presumably with cash (how much credit can a 19 obtain while presumably dumping all availble risk capital while ramping up 12 retail locations?).

20+ = Makes first big score. I built up the network of stores, then sold them off individually. After that, I started a company that wholesaled mobile phones. I did that for about two years and the company did really well, with more than $35million in revenue.

Jim S. said...

You do realize that your post linking to a story on the founder of SIB comes right below your post linking to a story about the fraudulent founders of Sybil Inc., right?

Patrick said...

If only he had stayed in school. Let's see, he'd have learned, uh...how to sit behind a desk and listen to someone drone on all day, how to follow meaningless directions, all sorts of stuff.

Why is education mandatory again?

Tim said...

"Could we pay him to go talk to Obama for an hour?"

If it could possibly work, it would be worth the chance...but does anyone really think anything about this guy and his experiences would resonate with Obama and his worldview at all?

Other than the fact he'd be hit up for a contribution for Obama's $1 billion reelection campaign?

Eli Blake said...

I bought a 3600 square foot home when I was 39. Had it foreclosed on when I was 49 and the ARM shot upward and had the house eating well over half of my and my wife's combined income.

Living in our old mobile home, on land that we own, and it is almost completely paid for. Much better off, in fact.