Description:

Living in an area that has bad winter storms, snow can turn from entertaining and beautiful to obnoxious and dangerous very quickly. People find themselves having to get up extra early to scrape the windshields on their cars or shovel the snow off their driveways. My idea was to offer my services to the people in my neighborhood to do this daunting task for them every morning. They would tell me what time they leave in the morning, and I would ensure that the snow/ice would be scraped off their windshields and shoveled off their driveway by the time they left for work that morning. I would ensure that it would be done within 30 minutes before they left so as to make sure that if any additional snow fell, it would be light enough to drive over or just brush off with the windshield wiper.

How I got the idea / found the employment:

I got the idea because in the mornings, I always saw people having to stand outside in their nice work clothes and scrape the snow off their windshields. I figured this was something simple enough that I could do in an efficient, short amount of time and could charge people for. As simple as the task it, it is not fun to do when you are running late for work or woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I figured that doing this service for them would be comparable to waking up to breakfast in bed. It was easy to find employment because there were plenty of people in my neighborhood that were more than willing to accept my services.

Challenges I faced, and how I overcame them:

Many people didn't need my services for their cars because they parked in their garages. Also, many people preferred to have their driveway shoveled, which took a lot of time and therefore I couldn't work on as many houses. I overcame this by accepting more jobs to just shovel the snow in the driveway. Because it was a more time consuming job, I was able to charge more for this service than scraping windshields.

What I learned:

I learned that you can earn a lot of money by simply offering to do mindless tasks that people find daunting, repetitive and frustrating. Also, adults are frequently very friendly and willing to help the youth in their own neighborhoods.