What’s one red paper clip to Kyle MacDonald?

You ever hear the story about a guy who traded a red paperclip for a house? Well, Kyle MacDonald’s that guy.  Kyle grew up in Belcarra, near Vancouver, Canada. He’s really into projects. Usually fun things that take on an obsessive element to some degree. Most noteworthy of these projects was the time he started with a red paperclip and traded it for bigger and better things until he wound up with a house.

You may have heard about Kyle’s red paperclip already. In this paragraph perhaps! Anyhow, It was a silly idea and it kinda turned out to be a big deal he guesses.  So big that the red paperclip has become his de-facto symbol and he’s somewhat known as “the red paperclip guy.” It makes for a pleasant ice-breaker whenever the topic of “so what do you do” comes up.

But he’ll let you in a little secret. He’s never had a personal fetish for paperclips, even red ones. In fact, the best thing he ever did was trade that silly red paperclip away in the first place! Such is life.

To Kyle, a ‘red paperclip’ is more of a symbolic thing, an idea that you’re ready to launch. A new project about to happen. That spark of insight or inspiration. The most important thing about an idea is to do something with it.  It’s all quite metaphorical and he could get really deep, but we’ll have plenty of time for that later. Please peruse though his site and he hopes you find some stuff you enjoy. He’ll try to have fun doing things, and a vast part of that fun is doing stuff other people dig.

Nowadays Kyle lives in Montreal with his wife Dominique.  (She’s got great healthy eatin’ cooking school called L’Armoire du Haut. )

Check out Kyle’s resources:
www.oneredpaperclip.com

This 20/20 video walks you through the 14 trades:

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