How Dan Young founded PC Laptops: And became one of Utah's biggest mentors.

• Author: Young, Dan

I GREW UP IN LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, and was kind of a rowdy teenager. Because of this, I moved to Utah when I was 16 years old and lived with my sister while she worked at the University of Utah as an academic advisor. The arrangement only lasted probably 30 days before she was like, "You're out of here!" So I got a job in the mall at RadioShack to support myself.

Remember RadioShack?

I also started selling v at a swap meet on the weekends, though it was not good money. But then I saw this late-night knife commercial and the salesman was totally making a show out of it. I absolutely loved it, so I had this idea to dress up in my karate outfit and do a show for people in person. It was stupid, but people were entertained and entertained people buy stuff. After incorporating a show into my sales pitch, I began making $2,000 a day every weekend selling those knives!

Meanwhile, I was still working my RadioShack job, and one day this older guy brought in his radio to be fixed. I was able to replace a little fuse in order to get it working again pretty quickly. When he asked what he owed for the fix, I told him not to worry since it was a cheap part and an easy job. His response to me was:

"Do you like Chinese food?"

I said, "Of course!" Then this guy shared with me that he sold his company for a little over $1 billion. He was retired now and wondered if I had a mentor. His offer to me was that if I could keep his computers and electronics running, he would mentor me over a lunch of Chinese food each week.

I agreed and made $1 million in three years.

FOUNDING MY FIRST COMPANY

Every week I met with my mentor to discuss real estate, stocks, tech, and everything in between. One of his recommendations was that I get a new job, so I went and worked at a big electronics retailer. With the help of my menfor, I became their top sales guy and started PC Laptops a few years later after they had gone out of business.

That was over 30 years ago.

When PC Laptops first started, we were running traditional TV and radio ads, as well as putting up ads in movie theaters before the movies. I think almost everyone in Utah has seen me doing dumb stuff on a screen at some point over the last few decades.

As it turns out, we were really ahead of our time. The kind of stuff I was doing on TV ads then is exactly what viral social media is made of. Even now, I'll grab one of our videos from the 1990s and post it on social media and it's like it was always meant to be...