Interesting that this forum popped up this morning.  I just had this talk with some teenagers this last week.  Yesterday, we revisited the topic with some despair on their part.

You can make fast money... IF... you are fast at what you do!  Let me try to explain.  I do not want to promote any particular business, but as the teenagers asked me last week, "Allowances are not enough, what else can we do?".  As one who takes pride in promoting entrepreneurship, I was in heaven!

The first thing I asked them was, "What are you exceptionally good at?"

How many of you can guess what five teenage boys said they were exceptionally good at?  If you are a parent of such gents, you won't be surprised of their answer.

"Gaming", they chimed in unison.

I had to laugh (internally of course).  The conversation led on to the discussion (besides "what else" questions) of "what are you exceptionally good at that other people find value in?"   Now they began to understand and explained, "but that takes to much time!".  They were referring to yard work, washing cars, scooping the traces of pets out of the grass, washing windows, etc.  

After the initial complaining of "takes too long" and "stupid work" and "why do parents hate gaming" and "why won't anyone pay us to play games", they as a group finally came to the conclusion that this was the ticket:  Find something they were exceptionally good at that lots of people would pay them to do and that they could do it quickly. 

"Hallelujah", I shouted!  You see, that alone is PROOF that there is a God!

They moved on to decide what was the best undertaking to seek after, how much they could charge, how many clients they could get.... and so on.  They had it all figured out to the "T", that with the five of them, they could accomplish the tasks very quick and thus have more clients.  The work wouldn't seem so difficult and would be more fun that way too.  Wow, they just formed their own team.  I was glad to have sent some young entrepreneurs off to make a difference in the world.

That was last week.  Yesterday, three of them showed up (my son is the mastermind of this group by the way - :) ).  Now, two of the group has decided that they don't like doing "the task" and they want to do something else.  The remaining three were in despair about losing part of the work force.  I think we all deal with this in our businesses.  With some encouragement along the line of "you can do it", they decided to make a promise that no matter what they have to do, they will all do it and help each other out.  I was actually thanked!

They figured out how to make fast money.  They are working as a team, focused on the same goal, providing something of value to others, doing the same thing as often as possible and they are committed.  The best lesson of all is that they came to understand the meaning of "fast money":  "the speed at which one may accumulate money by providing a service/product that another person really really wants now".

I love teaching kids the value of team work a.k.a. Network Marketing.  I'm very happy to say that I am surrounded by great teams. 


Fast money is made by speeding up the awareness cycle to the right customers of what you have or do.