About Joshua Allan Rich VII
Wrestling.
The Spladle
During my sophomore and junior year of wrestling, I mastered a more advanced move known to the wrestling community as the spladle. The move involves using your leg and arm to force your opponent into almost a full split. The move is known to be very painful and uncomfortable. During these two years, I made it somewhat of a challenge to use the move successfully as many times as possible. As I did this more and more, I put together a compilation of the all video footage that was available to show my friends and to frighten foes who saw it.
When I was young, my parents signed me up for a wide variety of sports to see what I would enjoy. I played baseball, basketball, and soccer but none of these sports seemed to really interest me. That is until my parents signed me up for the Jr. Vikes Wrestling Program, the feeder program for the high school wrestling team. I immediately loved the sport. I enjoyed how physical it was, and I liked the fact that winning was almost purely based on grit and determination. Especially as a young wrestler, the will to outcompete your opponent, was sometimes the only thing that determined the outcome. I have wrestled every winter since I started, and now I wrestle for the Voorhees Vikings at the high school. I still enjoy it just as much as I did when I started, but I am better now thanks to the knowledge and skills that I acquired over the years practicing and competing. Being on the mat all by myself is exhilarating to me, and winning the match feels even better.
Entrepreneurship.
I enjoy creating new things and I have always been interested in the idea of starting a new business. In fact, throughout my school years, I created several small businesses for both fun and to also earn money for myself. More than just a way to make quick money, I see these projects as fun and the field of entrepreneurship interests me greatly.
My trip to Northeastern.
During my junior year summer, I took a two week trip to Northeastern University in Boston for a program for entrepreneurship. It was a great learning experience and I had a lot of fun as well. During the program, all of the groups of students were required to create mock businesses and to present them to four judges, much like shark tank. It was very interesting and I enjoyed it a lot. I would recommend it to any aspiring entrepreneurs. Take a look at my team's and my mock business presentation for the program in Boston.
My different projects over the years.
The "In-School Gaming Website Project"
I started in 6th grade when I created a game website for other students in my school. The website was relatively simple and had a collection of free flash games. It also included some other features such as built-in Spotify, Netflix, and Pandora widgets. Recently I went back onto the website, and to my surprise, the visitor count had reached 15,458.
The "Homemade Candy Project"
A few years later, during my freshman year, I started selling “homemade” candy, which was really just the combination of standard gummy worms and a thick coating of sugar powder from kool-aid mix. It sold like crazy and was quite lucrative for a short period of time. It came to a bitter end when some of the school staff saw me selling my product. I was called down to the office and told that I wasn’t allowed to sell candy at the school because the catering company running the school lunches had exclusive food sale rights on school property. I had to permanently close my gummy worm business, but I soon would move on from food to selling products that didn’t violate any exclusivity rights.
The "Homemade Fidget Spinner Project"
A few months later I heard about a new toy called a “fidget spinner.” It was new at the time and I only knew one kid in the school who had one. It was majestic to me at first and seemed to interest other kids who saw it. That night I couldn’t stop thinking about how I wanted one very badly. However, I didn’t think it was worth spending money to purchase one online and I didn’t want to wait two days for shipping on Amazon. So, I decided to build one myself. That night, I took my skateboard wheels apart, took out the bearings, and spent a couple of hours making many non-functional prototypes. I tried a variety of glues but discovered that most bonded weakly with the steel bearings. Finally, at about 1:00 am, I made the first functioning fidget spinner. This one didn’t fall apart after a short period of time. Miniature zip ties fastened around the bearings to form the three-sided spinner seemed to work the best. They did not even require glue which was something I’d grown to dislike. I brought my creation to school the next day to play with it. A couple of people who saw it asked me to make one for them. I immediately saw an opportunity to make money and ordered wholesale bearings as soon as I got home. In two days I made 30 fidget spinners and sold them all within a week. I continued to make them until I had sold 60-65 fidget spinners. Like all fads, the fidget spinner craze soon died out and I needed a new plan.
The "Pop Socket Flip Project"
The next year, I did the same thing except with the latest fad: pop sockets. This time, I took a survey of the most liked style of pop sockets that I could buy in bulk. I took the five most popular styles and ordered a wholesale batch of them for $0.30 each and then sold them for $7.00. Being that they were sold online and in stores for $10.00 or more, I sold countless pop sockets with ease until this fad died out too.
