Before age ten, the speaker built a worm business near a river dock using his grandfather's electrocution device to stun worms from the soil, then sold them for 25 cents each from an orange spray-painted roadside sign. He compares his childhood hustle to modern entrepreneur Peter Levels.
You ever heard of Peter Levels? I have. Dude, he's the man and we're going to talk about him. So I've got a similar-ish story. My first, now this is where our age gap is going to come in a little bit. And this is my first entrepreneurial venture, man. I had to be, let's see, where was I living? I was under 10 years old. There was this path down next to our house where we lived right on the river. And we had this path where the fishermen would bring their boats down and launch them behind our house. And there was this little dock back there. And so every day I'd see these guys coming and going and I see my grandfather has this fork thing with a wooden handle and a cord that comes out of it that you just plug into the side of the house. You get the grass wet, you stick this thing in the outlet, you stick it in the ground after the ground is wet and it just electrocutes worms out of the ground. So like, I don't know when, how long these things were legal for and when they stopped making 'em, but it was literally just the only thing stopping me from getting electrocuted as, you know, an 8-year-old was the wooden handle. And so I just grabbed this wooden handle, stick this thing that's just electrocuting worms outta the ground in and I'd start yanking worms out. They'd be coming right up to the surface. I'd throw them in this peat moss that I had in a cooler in our basement, and then I put them in cups. And I had a big sign that I put on the side of the road that said, "Worms, 25 cents," spray painted in orange spray paint. I'll never forget it. It's burned in my memory.
