*Okay, calling it a successful startup business might be a bit of a stretch, but a few thousand pesos of profit a night for a couple of high school party boys felt like we were the most successful people in school.
Bull market...
Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well and in good spirits despite the crypto market's big correction. Before anything else, Hive price went down to the 0.22 cent levels, which can be concerning as my Hive holding had been cut down almost 50%, but it's back up so no worries on my end. Do I think that the bull run is about to end? IMO, not by any stretch of the imagination. Of course, I don't know what will happen next week, next month, or even in the next hour. What I do know is that more and more people are becoming interested in BTC. Some people I know personally recently asked me about crypto and it was a bit surprising because this person is the least interested in crypto, so that moment was surreal. LOL. In any case, I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that institutional players, countries and whales' interest in accumulating more BTC have increased, which is a great indicators that the best is yet to come, but that is not my topic for today so I will leave it at that for now and move on to what I wanted to share. 😀
We were shaped by our experiences...
Lately, I've been thinking more about how to better educate the young ones on financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and topics relating to money matters. I feel that this is an area that can be improved immensely because of the volume of information we see on social media and the web. I mean, there's so much information that it can be difficult to discern which advise merits consideration. Content creators have become so good that bad advise can look like phenomenal insight into one's financial world.
Looking back at my personal journey, my friends and I were into a lot of stuff when we were young (elementary and high school). Most of these activities had some sort of financial remuneration and / or profit tied to it; somehow we like having extra cash for stuff we wanted to buy or just for everyday needs. For example, we loved playing basketball, so we have "friendly" bets on games in the playground, shooting threes or free throw. The same goes for billiards, bowling, sepak takraw, badminton, etc. Most of us were on the varsity teams and were active members of the sports club so we got our regular extra cash from these "events" since we get regular training and mentorship from seniors and coaches. Kinda nice to have a small advantage, big rewards situation. The playground boys don't really mind that we play in inter-school meets. Some even relish the thought of beating varsity players for playground bragging rights.
Do what you love and the money follows (sometimes...) 😆
At the same time, we also loved music and going to parties. We always hung out at one of our friend's house near the school that almost always ended up as a party as more people found out about it. Playing music with what we had at the house was fun, up to a certain extent. One day, someone brought disco lights to liven up the place and it added to the atmosphere. Then a bigger speaker came. Then a more sophisticated sound system. This became the basis of how we created our mobile disco lights and sounds business back then. It was a #startup that started with a few spotlights, indoor speakers, turntables, smoke machine, etc. Mostly, personal stuff that we had lying around and pooled together. I had a a big collection of audiophile cassettes and mirror ball at the center of my room back then, so that was one of my first contributions to the business. Eventually, we set up parties for family and friends, which got us our first paying clients.
It turned out to be a great win-win-win situation. Essentially, we get paid to party (most teenagers would love to get paid while partying 🥳); we work on some weekday evenings and on most weekends. We get free food and drinks, meet the ladies, enjoy loud music, and go home to change clothes for us to do it again for three nights on most weekends.
In hindsight, I guess that's one of the things that really got me into entrepreneurship. And because of that project, I realized that our hobby can become profitable and transform into a real business with a good team and less of the drama. I dropped out of the group when I went to university in Manila, but they continued the business. I don't really remember what happened afterwards because I was busy with school stuff and my new life in the big city. I saw that some of my friends involved with the business went abroad to become full-time musicians and OFWs so that might have killed the business. For me, it was fun and profitable while it lasted.
Conclusion
For what it's worth, engaging in different fun and entertaining activities can be profitable. People, especially the younger generation, can follow their heart and be happy with the choices they've made. Business should not be serious and stiff all the time. While we were lucky to be successful earning few bucks during those days, it also had it's drawbacks. Our grades suffered and some of us became attached to the party life. I almost missed the school bus for the trip to take the UPCAT because we had a gig the night before, but I was lucky enough to pass. In hindsight, knowing how to balance schoolwork, sports activities and party life is a must if one is to become successful in life.
And that's it for today, I hope that you are all doing well especially since the holiday rush is upon us. I avoid going out because of the traffic, hoping that it will get better after the new year. Wishing all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
*Please check out the Canva template I edited and used for this post ---> HERE.