Some students make their money from working after-school jobs. Wyatt Driver and Ian Thomas have started a business selling and installing Christmas lights for people and businesses. While the money is nice, that’s not the only reason they do it.

“It’s kind of an easy way to make money, but it’s always been something cool. I always went and drove through those drive-through lights and saw all the Christmas lights, and I always thought that they’re really interesting. I’ve always wanted to help people hang up stuff, or help people around their house. So that’s one of the main reasons,” junior Ian Thomas said.

To them, helping people is a very important part of the job, because a lot of people wouldn’t be able to have Christmas lights without them.

“The very first job we did was with an older lady, and I really liked helping her, because there’s no way she was gonna do it, but I really like bonding with people. With older people, I know they can’t do it, and they probably would do it, so we always try and cut the people who are unable to do it, we try and cut them a break,” Thomas said.

They’re very understanding of people without the ability to do it themselves, and that’s what sets them apart from other businesses.

“It’s the first year doing it for people. I do my Christmas lights every year at home,” junior Wyatt Driver said.

Even though this is their first year doing it, they already have clients lined up and have plans to expand the business.

“We’re planning on expanding it quite a bit. We got an LLC and insurance, so we’re an official business, and we’re qualified for it all. If we can expand it, like get all of Lee’s Summit and then expand it even farther than that, and see if people are willing to want Christmas lights,” Thomas said.

They’ve also made sure to divide the work up evenly between them to ensure that neither one is doing too much, and they can keep getting clients.

“We both do the work at the job, but on top of that he manages taxes and all of the insurance and financial stuff. Then we kind of both do advertising, but I have control over the Instagram. We’re gonna make a TikTok and Facebook account. We had one, and then it got hacked, so we had to make a new one,” Thomas said.

They don’t just do Christmas lights, however, they offer other exterior home services, such as power washing, gutter cleaning, and more.