He’s only a freshman in college and is already an entrepreneur. He is learning business through Young Entrepreneurs Across America (YEAA). Caleb Rausch is a 2015 graduate of Maryville High School and now a freshman at the University of Cincinnati, where he is studying operations management and finance.
This summer, YEAA has hired him as an intern to run a business called Student Painters. It only involves exterior painting and he will serve as the branch manager, hiring as many as 10 people while practicing his interview skills as well as other basics of business.
Caleb has a lofty goal – $90,000 in business revenue for the summer. To do that, he has to paint about 45 houses. He has already attended a seminar which trained him to do estimates and manage his business.
Good marketing skills have already helped him line up work to start in late April. Sherwin Williams offers a training session where Caleb will send his new employees, so they don’t have to have painting experience. But I guess they just have to be quick learners.
What will he do if he hires people who don’t have a good worth ethic or just plain aren’t good at painting? After some thought, he said he would work with them and try to get them to improve because efficiency and quality are very important in his business. (We are talking about the outside of someone’s house, after all!) The tough decision would be if he has to let someone go. All these are skills he’ll need when he’s running a larger business someday.
Caleb has already had work experience at Roosters in Marysville and as a CrossFit trainer and his own car detailing business. So you can see he’s ready to go and eager to make money for his college fees for next year. All this business experience will also be good for his resume when he finishes college. Here’s a student who is willing to work hard for his money. You can contact him for house painting at 937-707-4750.
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More about social security scam
Two weeks ago I told you about my friend, Sharon, who experienced the theft of her Social Security number, and that someone tried to file a tax return in her name to get a refund. It was caught by the state of Colorado and IRS and she had no repercussions except to be extremely concerned about what might come later. Also, Sharon’s husband, Tim, recently received a letter from the IRS that said someone tried to get onto their site using his Social Security number. The IRS caught it.
(It has just been reported that there are more than 1 million attempts a day to hack into the official IRS site, and that most are unsuccessful.)
After the story ran in the Journal-Tribune, I received a note from Cindy Rausch who had a similar experience. She has been in the accounting/bookkeeping field for a number of years, and dealt with identity theft as well as working with credit bureaus, both personally and professionally.
She had this to say: “Please let your friend know the theft of her Social Security number and the issue with the IRS happens often now. One more thing she needs to do (and something that the IRS should have told her) is to look on the IRS.gov website under identity theft and follow the directions. She should notify them and then she will receive a letter with a PIN number to place on her return every year forward. This alerts the IRS that she is an identity theft account and in the future, even if she receives a letter from them about a bogus return being filed, she won’t need to do anything. They have it in their system to not except any return unless that PIN is on it.”
Cindy continued: “I can’t tell you how many times through the years we have the same issue, not only with the IRS, but also with bogus credit cards and Paypal cards. We did the same thing through Equifax as noted in your article and now don’t have many issues. We get an occasional letter from some bank saying they can’t open an account for us because they can’t get our credit information – so we know it works! The downside is there are some businesses where a card can be approved for a small $300-$500 limit and a person can charge on it right away. For those we have had to actually file a police report and send it to the company when we received a bill. These people are so smart that they have the items shipped to a P.O. box or Mail Store and disappear so you can’t find the person, but the invoice always makes its way to our address.”
It seems during these times, the convenience of a credit card is something we all cannot live without. But for many good things, there can be a bad side!
(Melanie Behrens – melb@marysvillejt.com)