This post by Douglas Ingram is exceptional:
Lessons in Entrepreneurship via the Lemonade Stand
It came up on my Google Alerts, and, wow, it's got to be one of the coolest things I've seen this year. And I've seen a lot of cool this year, so that's saying something.
Douglas's whole approach is really, really cool. Some excerpts:
We use the Dave Ramsey school of thought with our daughter. Each week she gets a small allowance that she allocates (her choice) to four different envelopes (a) spend (b) save (c) invest (d) donate.
I let Mackenzie use her “investment” envelope to buy the supplies. She counted out the money, she knew how much she was investing & I let her decide what she wanted to purchase (with a bit of guidance). Her total investment was $6.50 – including bottled water, ice, lemonade mix, fresh lemons, etc.
We discussed our marketing, how would we get people to purchase her lemonade. The concept of competition, marketing, sales tactics … you get the idea – some great concepts here. This was particularly funny part of our endeavour in that Mackenzie decided one of the best tactics for drawing in customers was dancing around, smiling big and waving while shouting “Ice Cold Lemonade”.
During our selling I encouraged her with some ways she could interact with her customers (selling) and attracting the crowds (marketing). This also resulted in a funny outcome. One particular patron who was perusing earlier said “dusty junk” was not in the mood for lemonade. However, after four very convincing sales pitches from the 5 year old she folded like proverbial cheap suit.
We then payed her investment envelope back (the whopping $6.50) and were left with her profit. We talked a bit about profit and the idea that in those 4 hours she made $15 in profit. Normally her allowance is $5 per week. The point she got very quickly was in a few hours of work she made “ALOT” (her words) more than what she normally does. …This was the best realization – she labored, she applied her ingenuity and her talents (ADDED VALUE) and then got to pocket the profit (GETTING A SHARE OF THE VALUE SHE CREATED).
It's inspiring. I hope I'm that good of a dad someday.
And also, if a five year old can make $15 in profit, what's stopping you? No excuses now! Cheers to Douglas and family, this is such a cool and inspiring thing.