Kyle MacDonald had a plan - start small, think big and have fun. Róisín Inglemeets the Canadian entrepreneur who took a red paperclip and turned it into a house
On Big Brotherlast week, housemates were given 60 seconds to think up as many uses as possible for a paperclip, a psychological experiment designed to test the originality and flexibility of their thinking. As expected, the housemates threw out many weird and wonderful ideas - one of them proposing the paperclip could be used to excavate ear wax - but nothing came close to Kyle MacDonald's ambitions for this very humble piece of stationery.
MacDonald is the Canadian twentysomething who spent exactly a year turning one red paperclip into a house. He will forever be known as the Red Paperclip Guy. "I'll be telling this story for the rest of my life," he says with a grin that indicates a life spent dining out on the one red paperclip story is perfectly fine with him.
As dining-out stories go, it's pretty hard to beat. In July 2005, MacDonald was 25, in between jobs and feeling guilty that he still hadn't finished the CV he was supposed to have completed weeks previously. Dom, his girlfriend, was supporting them both, while he was searching for, not a job exactly, but for "something else". As he sat by the computer in his rented Montreal apartment, he asked himself a question. "Did I really want to implement the five secrets of the perfect résumé or did I want to do something else?"
The "something else" sounded much better to MacDonald, whose entrepreneurial parents made a living from their creative ideas, one of which was a widget to stop restaurant tables wobbling. "I didn't want to sell myself to anyone. I just wanted to do things. I wanted to explore. I wanted to play. I wanted to be."
Lately he'd been reminiscing about a game he used to play as a child in Vancouver. A game called Bigger and Better. The idea was that you'd take a small object, say a spoon, and go door-to-door to see if anybody would trade something bigger and better for your object. "When you made a trade, you'd go to another door and see if you could trade your new object for something bigger and better. Eventually, with enough hard work, you could end up with something bigger and better than you started with," he remembers.
Your spoon, for example, might be exchanged for an old boot and the old boot for a seen-better-days microwave and the seen-better-days microwave for a working fridge. There was a legend doing the rounds, "a suburban myth", says MacDonald, that some Bigger and Betteraficionados had started the game one morning with a toothpick and ended the day as proud owners of a car.This spurred on MacDonald and his friends. They had started out one day hoping to trade a Christmas tree, but discovered Bigger and Betterwas harder work than they thought.
That was 10 years ago. Now sitting at his desk staring at his unfinished CV, he decided to give Bigger and Betterone more shot. The plan, he says, was to "start small, think big and have fun". In his book cataloguing his adventures - in addition to the house spawned by his red paper clip - he documents the exact moment he decided which first item he would trade. "I looked down at the desk. It was a mess. Things strewn everywhere. A pen. A roll of tape. Way too many cables. A stapler. Computer speakers. My resume and cover letter. An unmailed letter. A postcard. A banana peel. A framed picture of an eagle in flight. Various cereal bowls in various stages of not being washed. I looked back at the draft copy of my résumé and cover letter. Two sheets of paper held together by a red paperclip. One red paperclip. It was perfect."
After the initial euphoria, he became less confident, afraid he'd fail and be humiliated, but he still kept the paperclip in his wallet just in case. "Then one night I was with my Dad and he asked me a thing he always says, which is, 'What would you do if you weren't afraid?' That night I put a picture of the paper clip on trading site Craig's List, with the idea that I would trade up to something bigger and better, like a house."
MacDonald is in Dublin to promote the book, accompanied by a buddy called Evan, a friend he made during his trading days.
Together they've been doing the media rounds including a spot on Richard and Judy. MacDonald has already sampled Guinness and is intrigued by the story of all that cocaine washing up in west Cork. He is curious and engaging and down-to-earth, exactly as followers of his oneredpaperclip.com blog might expect him to be. It was always, he says, about the experience, the journey on the way to the house rather than the house itself. The book is called One Red Paperclip, How a Small Piece of Stationery Turned Into a Great Big Adventure. "Most people just like the idea that I traded up from a paperclip to the house, but it was a full-time job for me. It was hard work and there was a lot riding on it," he says.
The trades started trickling in slowly at first. He traded one red paperclip for one fish pen, that is, a pen shaped like a fish. During each trade he would travel to meet the trader, taking a photo of the exchange and writing about those involved. He traded one fish pen for one doorknob, a doorknob with a smiley face carved on the front. One doorknob was traded for one red generator, which caused MacDonald trouble when it was confiscated by the New York Fire Department. "It was almost the end of the road for us but we managed to find the generator and the game was back on." One red generator was traded for an IOU for a keg of beer and a neon sign, a group of items MacDonald called One Instant Party.
It was at this point that the project began to garner the kind of publicity crucial to the rise of any internet phenomenon. He traded One Instant Party for one snowmobile owned by celebrity Canadian broadcaster Michel Barrette. The Canadian media went into a frenzy about MacDonald's plan to trade up from a red paperclip to a house, and by the time the snowmobile was traded for a trip to the remote Canadian resort of Yahk - which was traded for a van, which was then exchanged for a recording contract - the world was watching to see if MacDonald would succeed.
The corporate offers were also flooding in, but MacDonald resisted the temptation to cash in. "I always wanted to make sure that the person who was trading with me actually had use for the item I was trading. The recording contract went to Jody, who was a singer-songwriter, and her trade was a year's free rent in a duplex in Phoenix," he says. Some people thought he might stop there, but the house was still his ultimate goal. "I was on CNN five times. It started to go crazy. There were trades coming in from all the world."
The next trade, an afternoon with Alice Cooper, only added to the media frenzy, and when MacDonald traded this for a snowglobe, albeit a motorized Kiss snowglobe, his legions of fans were not happy. "People thought I was trading down, and I know that's what it looked like, but I had a secret up my sleeve. I'd been exchanging e-mails with Corbin Bernsen, an actor from LA Law, and I knew he wanted to trade something with me. I also found out that he had one of the biggest collections of snowglobes in the world," he says. "One man's trash is another man's treasure, and Corbin wanted to trade the Kiss snowglobe with me for an acting role in a movie he was directing called Donna on Demand."
At this point officials from the rural Canadian town of Kipling, Saskatchewan, stepped in for the 14th and final trade, asking MacDonald if he would like to trade the movie role for a house. The rest is paperclip history.
Spielberg's Dreamworks optioned the movie rights, and now there's the book and a worldwide publicity tour. There was also a public housewarming to which the world was invited and, earlier this week, the unveiling of the world's largest red paperclip in his new home of Kipling.
MacDonald has not let any of it go to his head and will marry Dom later this month, not in Kipling but in Dom's home of Quebec, much to the disappointment of residents where he is now a bona-fide celebrity. "My day-to-day life hasn't changed. I have started doing some speaking engagements in schools and I have a bunch of new ideas I'd like to try. My Dad says he still doesn't know what he wants to do when he grows up and that's an attitude I think I'll always have."
He says the main message of one red paper clip is "that if you have an idea, start it somehow, take small steps, think big and have fun. It was incredible to get the house, but I would trade it all for the experience." Any advice for any budding internet entrepreneurs? "I'd say, question your motives - be sure why you are doing it. I was working towards something and I had tons of fun doing it. Now I want to do something bigger and better than one red paper clip." Chances are he probably will. u
One Red Paperclip: How a Small Piece of Stationery Turned into a Great Big Adventure, by Kyle MacDonald, is published by Ebury (£10.99 in the UK)
TRADING UP: Kyle MacDonald's path to glory
1One red paperclip 2One fish pen 3One doorknob 4One camping stove 5One red generator 6One instant party 7One famous snow mobile 8One trip to Yahk 9One van 10One recording contract 11One year in Phoenix 12One afternoon with Alice Cooper 13One Kiss snow globe 14One movie role 15One house in Kipling