The Happy Entrepreneur

When I was a little girl I used to bundle up all my stuffed animals and drag them down the long, dirt lane that I lived on, out onto Holladay Boulevard. For some reason a lemonade stand didn’t sound appealing, maybe it was the stickiness, the pouring and filling of paper cups that would certainly spill, whatever the case, it made much more sense to me to sell my toys instead.

I only remember one man stopping by my roadside stand to buy my Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls. But it was the perfect sale because the Raggedy Twins had always given me a bit of the creeps anyway, and I’d much rather have two bucks to burn than their rather frightening mugs staring at me in my bedroom.

Earning those two dollars (and I use the word earning rather lightly here), was a high that couldn’t be matched and I was excited to duplicate the success. With the help of a friend, I decided to sell flowers next. Walking along the stretch of Holladay Boulevard between my house and my elementary school we gathered armfuls of deep purple irises. The flowers grew in thick patches in the grassy fields along the side of the road. At the time, Holladay, Utah, where I grew up, was a less tamed place, with horse fields and open stretches of untended land.

I wish I could remember whether a grownup pointed out to us that those flowers still belonged to someone or whether it wasn’t until I was older that I realized I’d clipped those blossoms out of someone’s yard. At the time it seemed like it all belonged to me. All that beauty was free for the taking.

Today the internet has made it a little easier for the entrepreneur in me to get my kicks. And it’s funny, but I still get the same high when I see that someone has ordered a print or a painting from me on Etsy. I hope I always keep that small sense of wonder and pleasure in realizing that I have something that someone else finds valuable.