Brickhounds - your doggo in Lego
A story about starting small…
My 10-year-old son is always thinking about ways to earn money. A young entrepreneur in the making. Over lockdown, we built a replica of our pet Greyhound in Lego. Then we thought "we know other people who would love these, let’s sell them". Just like that, a business was born.
The whole business, apart from the design of the Lego model, was created over the weekend.
Too many people want to create the next “Uber of X” or some other world-changing new industry. Too many ideas require heaps of initial investment. It’s OK to think small and start really modestly. All you need is one tiny idea of how you can create something valuable for someone else. Do it a few times, and then grow from there.
Brickhounds doesn’t have a website yet, it just redirects to a Facebook page. We don’t have a stripe account yet because we’re happy to start out with simple bank transfers and work out the rest later. We don’t have any stock yet because the first customers will be pre-orders to fund our Lego parts order.
Is it going to earn millions? No way. I’ll never quit my day job over this. But even if it fails, we’ve invested a grand total of $70 (domain names, Lego pieces). Even if it fails, it was a really fun experience learning how to build virtual Lego models and instructions in Bricklink Studio 2.0, and how to navigate the Bricklink market of 3rd-party distributors for Lego pieces.
And no matter what happens, it will be a great learning experience for my son, who will get a taste of what it’s like to start a micro-business beyond lemonade stands and paper delivery routes. And it may earn him some money to save up for the gaming computer or the school camp trip he wants.
More people need to think small and just get started.