An typically overcast morning a few blocks from where I had my paper route in 1978

As mentioned in the prologue, my first job was a paper route. The year was 1978. I was 12 years old. 

Newspapers are clever. Paperboys don’t work for the newspaper, they work for themselves. They are self-employed. They are small businessmen. They are entrepreneurs. 

The newspaper you throw? You buy them from the paper. The bags you put them when it rains? You buy them from the paper. The satchel to carry them in? You buy it from the paper. The oversized handlebar basket? You buy it from the paper. The paper is published 365 days a year. There are no sick days, no vacation days. If you want a day off you have to find your own substitute.

My alarm would go off at 4:30 in the morning, but I only needed an alarm for the first few weeks. The papers would be waiting in front of my house, or if it was raining, tucked into the garage. The route covered about 20 blocks near my house. I worked it in a figure eight with a couple of spurs.

Mondays the paper was light and I could be finished by 6:00. Thursdays were almost too fat to throw. Sunday’s paper was double Thursday’s or worse; sometimes I wouldn’t finish the route until 7:30 or 8:00.

At the end of each month you go house to house on your route, collecting subscription fees. I still remember the numbers.

I had about 75 subscribers. The subscription was $4.50. Some people would give you a five and tell you keep the change. There was a police officer who lived in an apartment building on La Jolla Blvd. I still remember him because he always gave me $6. I don’t remember anything about the people who would write out a check for $4.50 and call it good, except that there were more than a few of them.

When I got my paper route I got my first checking account too. You had to have a checking account because you need to pay the newspaper for the papers, bags, rubber bands, and whatever else you bought from them each month to throw your route, and they don’t take cash. With only 28 days, February was a fat month; a rainy December was lean. The paper would credit you 1/2 cent for folding circulars into the paper, but it slowed the fold and wasn’t worth the extra 40 cents. Double circular days were slower still.

I threw the route for a year; 12 month to the day. Depending on the number of days in the month, circulars, and rain days, I’d make about $75/month; or about $900 for the year. It seemed like a lot back then. I bought fishing gear for myself; and for the first time, presents with my own money for my family at Christmas and birthdays.

I don’t know that I learned anything except that if you want to make money you need to do something that either not many people want to do, or not many people can do. That might help you understand why my hackles go up when I hear some new piece of miracle gear being pitched with the line “now anyone can…” If anyone can, and everyone wants to, no one gets paid.

I had another paper route when I was 14, but by then the $75/month didn’t seem worth it. I only lasted about 4 months. Next stop in the Entrepreneur’s Biography: The Blackberry Wagon.