Little Entrepreneurs

Today I am venturing out with our intern Paige Osborne to ask for donations for the Fall Family Festival and it brings to mind the many times in our childhood when Landen and I went door to door selling items or asking pledges for numerous things. We started out absolutely loving the job of going door to door thinking we had the most important job in the world… We were quite the entrepreneurs…whether it was for missions or ourselves (Olympia Sales) we were bound and determined to make a fortune some way or another.
Our first selling experience was fruit. We had to take over this Fruit Fundraiser because the youth were not doing their job to sell for Speed the Light (missions)…so the task was placed upon Landen and I and our two cousins Stephen and Shane…and yes the four of us young ones (ages 6,8,and 10) sold more than the entire youth group! We felt entirely victorious…so we took on other jobs... bike-a-thons, Christmas Cards, Christmas Ornaments, walk-a-thons, Calendars, Cookbooks, Candybars…you name it, we tried to sell it for missions.
For a while Landen and I sold for Olympia Sales for our own income. We got to keep $2 from each item that we sold. We would usually sell in the Spring and the Fall…that way we had money for Christmas presents and vacation! Of course, Mom and Dad taught us to lay out our tithe and a portion we gave to BGMC (missions). Although we passionately enjoyed selling door to door (cold or heat) we were not into pressuring people to buy or support. We had an entire little sales pitch to throw out. Landen would say, “Hello. We were just wandering if you would be interested in buying something from our magazine.” Then I would take over and talk about the magazine and all of its great products. The people would usually invite us in and we would make a new friend or two, then they would make their purchase (because face it…who could resist?)…and we would be on our way. However I remember at this one lady’s house I decided to mix up our little pitch a pinch…Landen gave his short, friendly welcome then I said, “Here you can look through our magazine and see if there is any junk you would like to purchase”…the lady smiled and suggested the we may not sell too many items if we call it junk! However she agreed to look through the magazine and ended up finding some sort of “junk" to purchase.

Later on, Landen and I made it a pact to always make a purchase from children selling things door to door and I believe I have stuck to that and I will continue.