If you haven’t heard of the “One Red Paperclip” project, you have to go check out the story at http://oneredpaperclip.com. Then come back here.
Kyle MacDonald, of Canada, wanted a house. But being young and under-employed, he knew this dream was not in his immediate future. Kyle wanted to be able to provide for himself and his girlfriend. He wanted to own his own home. He wanted something bigger than a paperclip.
So he put an ad on Craigslist, the popular classifieds website, with the intention of trading that paperclip for something better. A girl in Vancouver offered him a fish pen in exchange for his paperclip. He traded the fish pen for a doorknob and the doorknob for a camping stove. Before long he had traded the camping stove for a generator for a neon sign. Not long after that, avid snow-globe collector and television star Corbin Bernsen and the small Canadian town of Kipling were involved, and Kyle did finally trade up and got a house!
When I heard about this a few weeks ago, I thought it was amazing. How did he get that many people to trade up and up and up? Later that week, I received the news my daughter would need braces. Cha-ching, the cash register in my head popped up a dollar amount that I know I don’t have. This was depressing because if I don’t have enough for braces, how am I going to send my son to college NEXT YEAR?!
Then I remembered the one red paperclip. “I can do this. I HAVE to do this!” My children are counting on me to provide for them the education I’ve told them for years they really need. They know I want them to be able to provide a better life for themselves than I have been able to provide for them. They’ve seen me work hard for years and years and, to be very honest with myself, never yet get ahead.
Now I’m not going to complain, because I’m working hard to move myself forward. I’ve started my own business and am working every spare moment to get off the ground and grow. But it’s not going to grow enough to afford tuition, room and board at a college.
Why am I doing this? If I can turn a green fuzzy pen into two college educations, and have loads of FUN, and meet a lot of interesting and helpful people, why WOULDN’T I do this?
If you want to help me, sign up for my future video trade alerts. Forward the link to this website to all of your friends. Put the link on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, anywhere you can. The more people who read my story, the more likely I’ll find the next person who has something to trade.
