It was my senior year of high school and I was running for Central Region Vice President of DECA (a high school organization for business-ey kids, yes you can tell the nerds early).

I needed to raise somewhere in the neighborhood of $4,000 in order to cover the cost of campaign booths, flyers, giveaways, etc. Both Illinois DECA and some local high school’s contributed to the campaign, but I was left with around $3,000 to raise. The only problem, I didn’t have a job and I didn’t want to ask my parents. I knew that running a regular fundraiser selling coffee or candy wouldn’t raise nearly the amount of money needed. So I launched a different plan.

It was 2015 and portable power banks were all the rage. Everyone now had smartphones, but the battery life on these things was still quite lacking. I realized most stores were selling these things for around $20.

I went to my favorite website on the internet, Alibaba and realized I could buy these things for about $2/piece. I drafted up some flyers and got started. But instead of selling them to students myself I decided to sell them as a fundraising opportunity for other schools.