Last week I shared how my principal, Dr. Baker, stood up for me. This week is about how kids all across America learned about what I was doing and started buying Locker Boards.
I was selling Locker Board decks at my school for $20 each and saved up $1,000. I decided to invest that money into trucks and wheels so I could start selling complete skateboards.
I noticed that our local paper, The Sun Post News, had an office on Del Mar (the main street in downtown San Clemente). I asked my Mom if she could take me there so I could show them what I was doing.
I skated into their office on my Locker Board and the local reporter, Fred Swegles, was at his desk. I showed him my Locker Board and he immediately grabbed his old school voice recorder and started interviewing me.
He asked my Mom if he could send a photographer to our house to take pictures of me working in my shop and skating my board. Within a week his story hit, not only the local paper, but the Orange County Register.
My Mom helped me build a website and we started selling Locker Boards to people all over the OC and LA. I had an Instagram, Facebook and YouTube account and was posting videos.
Then, all of sudden we started getting orders from Florida, New York, Texas and all over the United States. We couldn't figure out what was going on.
Kids from all over the country started commenting on my YouTube videos that they had to do homework about me and Locker Board. I replied back asking how they had heard about me and why they were doing homework and they sent me a link to a website called Newsela.
Newsela is a website that teachers use in their classrooms for reading assignments, projects and more. Newsela had taken Fred Swegels' article and turned it into a lesson plan. Kids all across America were studying about me and Locker Board.
We couldn't believe it! We asked Fred about it and he had NO IDEA that it had happened and NEVER heard of Newsela. Fred's article launched my company across the US and we started getting attention from national media outlets.
It was an unbelievable break. It could have easily been a one and done article, but God had other plans.
Below is one of the pictures from Fred's article (if you click on it, it will take you to his story on Newsla).
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