The surprising lessons about leadership a babysitting gig taught Minted CEO and cofounder Melissa Kim

I got my first job when I was 10—not at a lemonade stand or raking leaves, but babysitting. I started watching younger children for the neighbors and family friends in the fifth grade, taking on evening and weekend jobs that eventually turned into full summer days. By the time I was a teenager, I’d basically built my own small business: multiple families, recurring schedules, and a reputation I worked hard to maintain. At the time, babysitting just felt like a way to earn some money and independence. But looking back, it gave me the foundation for corporate leadership. Problem Solving The first lesson I learned was ownership because it wasn’t the kind of job where I could escalate a problem to a manager. If a child got hurt or something went wrong, I needed to take responsibility and handle it myself. This was before smartphones, so I couldn’t send a quick text to a parent or ask Google or ChatGPT for quick resolutions. I had to stay calm and solve the problem on the spot. That experience gave me an early understanding of what accountability looks like. When you’re responsible for other people, you can’t wait for someone else to step in—you need to take ownership of the outcome. Now, decades later, that’s still one of the qualities I value most in the people I hire and work with at Minted. The best teammates don’t immediately look around for someone else to fix a problem; they’ll step forward and figure it out on their own. Culture Counts My days babysitting also taught me how much culture matters. Over the years, I worked with so many different families. On paper, the job was always the same: keep the kids safe, fed, and entertained. But every family was different. Some felt easy even on the most chaotic days. And then others were draining, regardless of how manageable the work itself was. The difference was never the kids; it was that I wasn’t as compatible with that family. Every family has its own values, and