Motivational story of Kyle MacDonald - MQS

Good day readers welcome to the Motivational quote and story. Today we are going to start our story with a famous quote by Earl Nightengale, which is–

“Everything Begins with an Idea.” -Earl Nightengale

This is an ageless line still true to this date. There are so many persons around the world who changed their life completely with one small idea. One such person is Kyle MacDonald, he has one of the unique stories I came across recently. Today I will try to briefly discuss his story.

Who is Kyle MacDonald -

Kyle was born and brought up in Canada. He is a blogger by profession. In his childhood, he had a fascination with gaming like most of us. In 2005, this childhood fascination changed his life completely. Now the question is what was the game that gave Kyle the idea which changed his life? To give you the answer, we must know from where he got the idea in the first place, Yes, this is the most interesting part of the story and we are going to discuss this in our next segment.

Kyle MacDonald's Red Paperclip story - 

It was “One red paper clip” which gave Kyle an idea to start an online project to tread his red paperclip against a slightly valuable item. The inspiration behind this treading came to his mind from his childhood game named Bigger, Better, in which a person/ a group had to tread ordinary items against more valuable items. The winner will be declared to the person/ the group who finally possessed the biggest and most valuable items.

Kyle, in total, treaded 14 times and ended up with a firm house in Kipling town which is situated in Saskatchewan, Canada. Let go through all his interesting treading history, and see how he traded a paperclip for a house.

List of the treadings done by Kyle -

He did his first treading on 14th Jul 2005, where he traded a red paperclip against a pen, shaped like a fish. On the same day, he traded this pen with a door noob. He did his third tread on 25th July 2005 when he treaded the door noob for a Coleman Camp Stove. On 24th In Sep 2005, he traded this Camp Stove with a Honda Generator, which was his fourth tread. In the same year on 16th November, Kyle treaded his Generator with an “instant party” kit. He did his sixth tread on 8th Dec with a famous Canadian Comedian named, Michel Barrette, where he bartered his “instant party” with a snowmobile. Next, he did his seventh trade, where he bartered the snowmobile for a two-person trip to Yahk, British Columbia. In Jan 2006 he did his eighth trade, where he exchanged his trip against a box truck. He did his ninth tread on 22nd Feb 2006 against his truck for a recording contract with Metalworks. His 10th trade was made with American singer, Jody Marie Gnant where he exchanged his contract against a year’s rental fee in Phoenix (the capital city of Arizona). In the same month (April), he traded his rent agreement against one afternoon with Amiran iconic singer Alice Cooper. His twelfth transaction was made when he traded the afternoon for a motorized snow globe themed after KISS, the American heavy metal rock band. His thirteenth tread was made with famous American actor/director Cobin Brensen where he treaded the Globe for a role in the film named Donna on Demand. Kyle made his final 14th trade, where he traded the role against the Farmhouse I mentioned earlier. Isn’t this impressive, just think about where he began and where he finally reached the end.

Conclusion of the story - 

At a glance, if we go through the story of Kyle MacDonald, it might seem very easy, how he achieved this much of fame and the ultimate reward, but if we think deep we will find out the actual struggle and mental plotting that Kyle had to do during his treading, especially when you are starting something so unusual that even you do not have any clue whether it will be a success. Apart from all this, we should not forget the travel Kyle MacDonald had to do to make the trade successful. He did a lot of travel in various states to do the transactions such as Vancouver (where he did his first tread of "The red paperclip" with the pen), Washington (where he treaded the pen with the door Knob), Massachusetts (where he treaded the doorknob against the Colman camp stove), California (where he got the Honda generator against the camp stove), etc. Such a rigorous travel schedule, as per me, is not that easy at all. To this date, it is a mystery how this simple trading movement gained so much attention. When BBC asked Kyle the same question, Kyle replied, “ I have no idea”.

If we analyze the story of Kyle MacDonald, we can find out that there is a very powerful force that helped Kyle to become so successful. This force is nothing but the power of the internet, most of us know how to use it in our day to day life but it is much more than that, if we think about it has the power of changing the world, it can make something as insignificant as an unused red paper clip a thing to admire. Also, it has the most strange power of connecting people with common interests and bring them closer. Such an incident we can see in the case of Kyle, where his blog caught the attention of people with similar interests who extended their help towards Kyle which at the end of the day made the movement created with a Red Paper clip successful.

There is another interesting fact, if you ever had to visit Kipling city you will find out a huge Red Paperclip installed at Bell Park in the heart of Kipling City. This is to memorize the history of the movement initiated by Kyle Macdonald. At present, this paperclip structure holds the world record of the world’s biggest paperclip.