Selling Stuff at School as a Kid: The Watch Lesson.

The sandbox you may still be playing in.

Before the watches, the author's commercial life was chores sold to his parents and favours traded with cousins. However, somebody who loved him underwrote every one of those deals. So none of them was really a transaction. You have probably run a sandbox like this yourself, even if you never called it that.

Ten watches and a hundred per cent of everything.

Then he found a discount distributor downtown selling good-looking watches at a low price. He did not know the words gross margin. Still, he saw that one number was small and another could be larger. That evening he emptied his desk drawer, and it paid for exactly ten watches.

This was his first real business, and the amount was trivial. However, the proportion was total, because investing all your savings at once leaves nothing behind. He walked to school carrying everything he owned in one bag.

What lunch hour taught about selling stuff at school as a kid.

He spent the whole morning not opening the bag, because his stomach closed at the thought. At lunch he made himself show two classmates. Then he said the only true thing he had: it cost far less than it looked. The first one bought without hesitating.

After class he pitched his teacher, who smiled and bought one too. By Friday the bag was empty, and he had roughly doubled everything he owned.