The stadium lights hummed, so bright they made the night sky look fake. Down on the field, the team was warming up, but for Lake Norman senior Ava, the real action was in the bleachers. She scanned the student section—a massive, roaring wave of navy and gold. The energy was incredible. The school spirit was undeniable.
But the clothes? The clothes were terrible.
It was all she could see. Stiff, boxy sweatshirts with iron-on logos that were probably already cracking. T-shirts with fonts so boring they looked like they were chosen from a default dropdown menu in 1998. It was the official gear, the stuff everyone bought because, well, what else was there? And it suddenly felt… wrong. Like wearing a cheap Halloween costume of your own school spirit.
The thought should have vanished with the final buzzer. It didn’t. It followed her home. It nagged her during chemistry class. Why couldn’t they have stuff that was actually cool?
That question was the spark. A tiny, annoying flicker that refused to go out. It’s the kind of question that, if you let it, can change everything. For Ava, it was about to turn her perfectly normal senior year upside down and fill her bedroom with a mountain of cardboard boxes.
The Notebook
It started in a spiral-bound notebook, the kind with little perforated edges that always tear unevenly. The idea of “starting a brand” was way too big, too corporate. It felt fake. So Ava just started making rules for herself.
Rule #1: Give it a deadline. Not “someday,” but a real, scary, can’t-miss-it date: the first home game of the season.
Rule #2: Start small. Forget a full clothing line. She’d make one perfect hoodie and two great tees. That’s it. Prove the concept.
Rule #3: Figure out the money. She counted her savings from a summer job bussing tables. That was the entire budget. Which led her to screen printed tee shirts. After a week of falling down internet rabbit holes, she realized they were the only way. They looked pro, they would last, and critically, she could actually afford a small batch.
Rule #4: Define “success.” What was the bar? She scribbled down a number: 100 shirts. If she could sell 100, this was a real thing. If not, it was just an expensive, slightly embarrassing hobby.
That notebook became her entire business plan. It wasn’t fancy, but it was real. Without realizing it, she’d essentially built her own smart goals template, taking the fuzzy, overwhelming cloud of an idea and turning it into a series of simple, actionable steps. A to-do list.
“Hi, I’d Like to Print Some Shirts?”
Sketching the designs was the easy part. Ava had been filling margins with drawings her whole life. She wanted a vibe that was more about the town, the lake, the culture of the school—not just a giant wildcat head.
Actually getting them made was another story.
Her first few emails to print shops were a disaster. One never replied. Another sent back a quote so full of industry jargon it felt like a deliberate attempt to confuse her. She almost gave up. Then she found Dave. He ran a small shop in a garage a few towns over. He answered the phone himself.
“Look, kid,” he said, after she’d nervously explained her idea. “This line here on your drawing? It’s too thin. It’ll look like a stray hair on the shirt. Thicken it up.”
He was the first person who treated her like a client, not a kid with a weird hobby. He showed her fabric samples, explaining why one cotton blend felt softer and why another wouldn’t shrink into a belly shirt after one wash. Placing the order with him was still terrifying—watching most of her savings vanish in a single click—but it felt right.
Of course, it didn’t all go smoothly. The first box of hoodies that arrived was the wrong shade of navy. Not a little off. It was a bright, goofy royal blue. Her heart sank into her shoes. It was a moment of pure panic—the kind where you think, this is it, I’ve failed. A frantic, slightly sweaty phone call to Dave later, the right boxes were on their way. It was a small disaster, but it felt monumental. It was the first real fire she had to put out.
The “Cha-Ching”
While the shirts were being fixed, Ava turned into a one-woman marketing machine. She built a dead-simple website. She bribed her friends with pizza for a chaotic photoshoot that captured the messy, fun energy she was going for.
The day she launched, she hit the “go live” button and then… silence. For a full hour, nothing. She was convinced she’d made a huge, expensive mistake.
Then her phone made a sound she’d never heard before. Cha-ching.
A sale.
Her best friend. Okay, that one didn’t really count. But then, another. Cha-ching. A guy from her history class. Cha-ching. A name she didn’t recognize at all. Each notification was a tiny jolt of validation. She sat on her bedroom floor, surrounded by boxes, packing every order herself and writing a “thank you” on each slip.
She blew past her 100-shirt goal in two weeks. But the real win came on a random Tuesday. She was walking down the hall and saw a sophomore she’d never spoken to in her life wearing one of her hoodies. He just thought it was a cool sweatshirt. He had no idea the girl who designed and packed it was standing ten feet away.
That was the moment. The moment it became real.
It all started because something just felt a little off. It makes you wonder, what’s a little off in your world? What’s that one thing you just can’t stop noticing? Because sometimes, that’s not a complaint. It’s a beginning.