2 Starving Mature Students, desperately seek work

If you looked at my CV, you would never know, but if the truth be told, I have some lost years between leaving school and becoming "responsible"! In fact, at least 6 years if we’re being honest!

I told my parents I knew what I was doing but honestly, I had a misplaced sense of confidence that was not based on anything other than it enabled me to carrying doing what I wanted.

I was nearing the end of this period of bumming about when I decided I really wanted to go travelling. I worked out I needed about two thousand dollars for 4 months, including travel and visa costs. My target was to survive on about $70 a week, but I wanted enough for $90 or $100 ideally. (This was a LONG time ago kids!)

I wasn’t really employable and so it was difficult to just get a job to earn the money. I couldn’t ask my parents for more money because I was too proud (even if I wasn’t, I would guess they wouldn’t have given it to me anyway)

So I was kind of stuck. How was I going to get the money? Jim was coming with me and we were in the same boat as far as finances were concerned, so we sat and talked for hours on end about how we could get the money.

‘Wouldn’t it be great if we found a job where we just needed to paint a long fence for 8 hours a day for the whole 10 weeks?’ Jim said.

‘Oh my goodness, imagine being that lucky!’ I said.

I was 23 years old. Jim was 24. Our lives were sufficiently empty that the idea of painting an endless fence 8 hours a day would have been a dream come true!!

But there was no fence that needed painting. There was no work at all.

‘Should we put an advert in the paper?’ Jim said.

Ever the optimist, I said ‘saying what?’

‘I don’t know .. anything!” Jim said laughing.

‘You know what .. that’s a GREAT idea!’ I said. The words just appeared in my head at that very moment. ‘TWO STARVING MATURE STUDENTS DESPERATELY SEEK WORK TO SUPPLEMENT GRANT. WILL DO ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING!”

‘That’s brilliant!’ Jim said, ‘I’ll put the ad in tomorrow'.

And so he did. The ad was less than $5 a week. It was in tiny writing in the back of the local paper. Even if you knew it was there it took ages to find it.

But immediately that the paper went to press .. BOOM!!

We were inundated. We did gardening. Car washing. Painting. Patios. Sheds. Ceilings.

If someone phoned up with a request, we said yes and then worked out how to do it once we started! We always said yes, of course, we can do it sir! But we had two really simple rules. One .. always be ‘nice people to do business with’. And two .. always over deliver - we told them we worked from 9am to 5pm, but ALWAYS got there long before 9am and ALWAYS left long after 5pm. Simple really. We got as many referrals as we did from the ad.

The most bizarre job we ever did was inoculating a herd of sheep! Can you imagine .. me and Jim .. a field full of sheep .. a syringe .. and absolutely no veterinary experience whatsoever. But with $35 each a day at stake, those sheep were getting their shot whether they liked it or not!

Well, as it turns out, sheep are harder to catch than you think .. We managed to round them up into a hastily improvised pen. And we didn’t let them out until we’d stuck ‘em with the needle.

My job was to jump on their back, grab hold of their horns and then hide their heads so they couldn’t see the needle coming. It was hard work. In fact, it was exhausting.

To make matters worse, it was raining heavily and we were sliding around all over the place on the soggy grass.

We were getting more desperate the longer it was taking.

‘Grab that big one’ Jim said.

I lunged at this giant furry sheep and grabbed him around the neck. In one masterful movement, I pushed off my left leg and my right leg shot up and over his head in a Judo-esque manoeuvre that surprised even me. I was now sitting on the sheep’s shoulders with his head between my legs; I was holding his horns, one in each hand, and facing the same direction as the disturbed sheep.

I bent my legs to steady myself and looked over my shoulder at Jim.

Funnily enough, the sheep didn’t take kindly to any of this and shot off across the paddock! I was leaning back trying to stop him, gripping onto the horns for dear life, my blue wellies stretched out in front, skidding across the wet grass!

‘Help!’ I shouted as I hurtled off at ridiculous speed. Jim was laughing so badly he was completely unable to offer any assistance.

I let go of the horns and the sheep flew out from underneath me.

It took Jim a full five minutes to compose himself. ‘You looked like one of those pantomime acts with the comedy false legs hanging over the sides!’ he said.

I had a complete sense of humour failure.

The ad was so successful, we ran it for two years! We turned away more work than we took. It was phenomenally successful. When Jim grew up and didn’t want to do it anymore, I carried on for another 12 months with Gary. Same ad, same words, same paper. It never got old. It truly was the gift that never stopped giving.

Out of all the jobs did, we only bit off more than we could chew twice. One was crazy paving around a swimming pool. It was nuts!

And the other was those sheep!

Apart from the staggering amount of bizarre experience we got on the job (that was the first time someone showed me how to hypnotise chickens), we met some wonderful people but most of all, for the first time, I really felt the pull of entrepreneurial promise.

The idea that I could create a business out of a $5 ad that consisted of 14 words and a phone number and a couple of values that left our customers feeling happy changed my view of the world forever.