When I was about fourteen years old, I signed up for something called Junior Achievement. It was a happy-go-lucky non-profit group that promoted business and entrepreneurship skills in children. Or basically, it was a bunch of kids in a room every Thursday night acting like middle managers with adult supervision.
My group ended up coming up with a business called Roc Creations. This was a clever play on our core product: cheap, homemade rock necklaces. We thought it was a brilliant, failsafe plan. After all, who likes necklaces? Everybody, of course. And how cheap are rocks? Pretty darn cheap, man. We just spent one Thursday at the beach, the next Thursday painting, and the Thursday after that drilling holes and tying string through them. We figured it was a solid plan, well executed.
Sadly, after a few weeks we realized we’d made a huge mistake. We’d bet all our chips on a losing hand. The necklaces failed to generate enough buzz and excitement at the flea markets, despite our screaming rhyming chants at terrified housewives, and we quickly tumbled into the red, piles of dead inventory and drill bit invoices mocking our poor judgment.
But then, like any good business, we evolved! We quickly changed our name to Roc-Cal Creations, and printed off a quickie run of cheapo laminated calendars. We tied them together with a dry erase marker, slapped some magnets on the back, and went door to door, neighbor to neighbor, selling these “reusable fridge calendars” for four bucks apiece.
Well, we managed to sell enough of them to get back in gear. We started to make money and established a strong business partnership with the lady in the markers aisle at Staples. Yes, it all ended well, but not without some late nights under a dim lamp with a dollar-store calculator, a stack of graph paper, and a pile of Laurentien pencil crayons, trying desperately to finish the numbers for our annual report, which was actually printed on the inside of one of our folded-up calendars.
It was a great experience and it really got my buzz going for running a business. That’s why I think it’s always fun when you see children running some sort of strange, hilarious, or terrible business. Because really, you’re just watching them learn stuff they don’t learn at school and have fun doing it.
How cute are the twins selling lemonade on the street corner? The gymnastics team running the barbecue outside the grocery store? Or the kid who takes your grocery cart back if he gets to keep the twenty-five cent deposit?
Those kids are all playing the game. So I say: go on, kids. Do it well. Next time you’re selling some rock-hard cookies or salty date squares at a Bake Sale, sign me up. Because we’re not just buying some mild indigestion, are we? No, we’re investing in the future.
AWESOME!
Woo hoo!
Last week I visited my old home town east of Toronto and spoke to local high schools on the first day of school! Thanks to the folks at Austin and Dunbarton for hosting me!
Huh. Kids in my town must be getting lazier. I can’t remember ever seeing adorable lil’ business children.
Not even a single stall with “L∃MONAD∃” scrawled across the sign.
One of the neighbor kids did a lemonade stand last summer. It was adorable. There’s car washes and bake sales for clubs and sports as fundraisers all the time.
The subject line to my daily email today said, “Resumen diario para September 14, 2012” What’s up with that?
It’s Spanish, means~ Daily digest for…
But I can’t explain why it was in “your” subject line today.
For a week in August, I had flicker pics in mine:)
hahahaha…. what’s going on? Is WordPress going crazy again?
We have a lot of kids in my neighborhood that set-up lemonade stands. I’ve never bought any though. Am I a meany? The girl that lives next door is our neighborhood entrepreneur. She has had lemonade stands, yard sale stands, and bracelet stands.
This summer I visiteda variety of stands; most were fund-raising for mission and service work in far off lands. How can one not invest in that!
Then there were 2 kids selling rock hard, walnut sized chocolate chip cookies for $2.00 a piece, just so they could afford to go to the waterslides… and I said, how can you not invest in that!
I’m all for investing in best practices for the children of our future:)
My youngest sister took this to a new level when she was, I believe, in 1st grade.
My three youngest siblings started a foot messaging business. They would grab the lotion (purchased by mom) from the closet and sell their services for 25c to other family members and family friends. It was actually quite lucrative since we had a very athletic and active family — someone was always coming home from practice with sore feet.
But this is where it gets brilliant! My sister, who had the original idea and who “promoted the business,” gathered 10c from every job that my brothers did — and left the grunt work to them. Which they agreed, was only fair.
Future boss in the making ;-)
Wow, fantastic idea! Hey, can I get a footrub for 25c? I have plenty of quarters here!
My friends and I had the snow cone concession at my sister’s softball games. Talk about fun! We had everything in a red wagon that we carted around. We ate the profits while we cheered the softball teams! It was total win-win!
I love to buy kids’ stuff. You see how their eyes light up when they make that $1. Fun!
P.S. Started my new job Wed. It’s brilliant! I love it!
Aye, kids. I never really end up seeing these wee little business kids. I always wanted to do one of these things myself when I was a kid. I did a lemonade stand once with my brother, but I can’t really remember it amounting to much. C’est la vie.
thank you so much for coming to Austin! I loved listening to your story!!
I’m from Brazil and I’ve done Junior Achivement too!!!!
Here’s my product of this year: https://www.facebook.com/wedowephone
The main idea is awesome!! Im selling a lot of then, even that the Company is already closed, great idea for earning some cash. Im selling this things for 5 bucks each, but if you want, we can make 2 pieces per 8 bucks and 3 per 10! with the right of gaining a free earphone!!!!! How many do you want? Send me your address (ps. im in brazil).
thanks this