My Son Wants a Job. I said Hell No.

I've tried to teach my kids that they can do anything.

Pretty typical, right?

Most parents do.

My mother always told me I could do anything I wanted. My dad said the same, adding that "anything" did not include swinging a hammer for a living.

But though they told me this, they didn't demonstrate it.

My dad, a construction worker, was a slave to 1,000 bosses. He was good, but he had to go wherever the money was and do whatever the job was, and he was never all that excited about it.

He trudged through the work, but was he doing what he wanted?

No.

Same story with my mother. She was among the original "Mega Agents" in the real estate business and had all the trappings - the Mercedes Benz, the house, the billboards, and a 24-7-365 work week.

She looked happy. She appeared to be doing what she wanted, yet she was miserable.

So they both told me I could be whatever I wanted, yet they were both in jobs they hated.

They didn't demonstrate it.

Then, when I was old enough that I wanted to make money, they said, "Go get a job."

And I did.

At Mayflower Seafood in Monroe when I was 13.

Fast forward to when my oldest son was old enough that he wanted to start making his own money.

"Go get a job."

And off he went.

Same for the next 3.

They all have "jobs."

And yet "a job" is the very thing I've worked so hard to escape because working 9-5 Monday through Friday made me miserable.

And I'm only just now beginning to escape it.

I thought I'd gotten out when I started working for myself. Free at last! It took about a year to realize I hadn't escaped anything. I'd just traded a boss who wasn't me for one who was.

It's only once you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, that you have truly escaped.

But since I'd been primed to "get a job" by my parents, teachers, schools, i.e., "the system," it took me 45 years to figure that out.

It took me that long to see that there really are alternatives to normal jobs that pretty much anyone can do.

And only now can I see that, like my parent's advice for me to "get a job," my advice to my kids to "get a job" is terrible!

When Sam, now 12, started talking about making money, he wasn't old enough to get a job. So I said, "Figure out something you can do until you are old enough to get a job."

After a couple of weeks of discussing it, in one of those "why in the hell didn't I think of this before" moments, I suggested we start a business together.

Today, our first shipment of products arrived.

Sam and I are going into business.

We'll be selling the product online, which means he can learn about making money while he sleeps. It's a product that nearly everyone uses, and people pay high prices to acquire it in a natural and organic form.

We can sell it in person - at farmer's markets and craft shows.

We can sell it on Amazon.

Etsy.

Even eBay.

Who wants to guess our product?

I'll even give you a hint: with how we're doing it, it's a very wholesome and clean product.