Entrepreneurial boy’s ingenious note goes viral

ENTREPRENEURIAL boy’s ingenious note goes viral after comedian Dave Hughes endorses quirky business venture.

WHILE their peers are playing Xbox and bingeing on Netflix, a new breed of Aussie kids are rolling up their sleeves and making a buck.

And, in an age of techpreneurs and app store success stories, they’re doing it the old fashioned way — hitting up neighbours for odd jobs.

Possibly the most dreaded weekly chore of all is taking the bins out, so St Kilda’s Sam Dawkins was onto a winner when he decided to charge his neighbours $1 a week to do it for them.

A promotional flyer for the service caught the eye of comedian Dave Hughes, who lives nearby.

He posted an image on social with the caption: “I want to buy shares in this kid.”

Mum Brigid Stewart told news.com.au Sam had already signed up four clients and had taken out his first load of bins on Wednesday night.

“He did pretty well — it took him about six minutes.”

I want to buy shares in this kid. https://t.co/71NiArfSKm

Posted by Dave Hughes Official Page on Tuesday, March 1, 2016

At $4 for a six minute job, that works out to be $40 an hour; not bad for a 13-year-old.

Ms Stewart said Sam was ready to upscale the business, had a spreadsheet set up to track his income and was even thinking about subcontracting work to friends.

“He’s pretty enthusiastic about it,” she said.

Hughesy’s post quickly went viral, attracting 26,000 Facebook likes and more than 1900 comments — including one from a proud mum with a similar story.

“My son started the same in August last year, to get himself to London for the cricket World Cup,” Point Lonsdale’s Ali Waight wrote.

“He’s sitting on just over $700 at the moment!”

Forget the lemonade stand.

Eight-year-old Max gets in on bin night.

She posted an image of her son’s note to neighbours, which reads: “Dear ....... , My name is Max and I’m eight years old ... I’m doing as many jobs as I can so that I can save enough money to go to England in 2018 to watch the ICC Cricket World Cup.”

The charming note goes on to propose a bin collection service for $1 a week, inviting neighbours to tick a box if they are interested. Bless!

“Nice to see kids work hard for what they want, good old fashion values — good on them,” Shaun Kane commented on the Facebook post.

“Pat yourself on the back lady,” Matt Fritsch wrote. “You’ve done a fine job bringing up this lad!”

It seems that kids these days are outdoing the world’s expectations.

[e-mail]