Adventures in Entrepreneurship with Jeremy Hanks

Sno-Cone Kids

Anyone who knows me very well knows that I have a soft spot for entrepreneurs. Especially for kid/young adult entrepreneurs. Just the other night a young man knocked on our door and was selling wooden handmade and customized charts that you can hang on hour wall to track your kids’ growth. My wife turned him away, but I made her go back outside after him and bring him back. We bought one for Alex that’s blue with some animal cutouts on it. After we ordered it, he told us that ours was the first house he had knocked on with this new venture and that this was his first successful sale. His older sister makes the charts and he is going to do the sales. I used to go door-to-door as a kid selling Christmas cards. I know what that’s like. And I’m glad we were his first house.

Anyway, about a year ago, I rounded up some neighborhood kids that I had seen with their lemonade stand and had them come down and supply lemonade to all of Doba.

Well, a few weeks back, I was driving again and saw a roadside Sno-Cone stand. I flipped a quick u-turn and stopped to get a Sno Cone. On the way back to the office, I remembered the Lemonade Kids, so I sent my assistant Meagen back and she planned to have these budding entrepreneurs (Marci and Caden) come down to Doba last Friday afternoon and provide Sno-Cones to all of Doba’s employees.

     

Come to find out, Marci and Caden are the kids of Taylor Candland, an old friend of mine, Brandon Williams, and Blaine Nielsen that we used to work with at Netschools back when we were all still in school about 10 years ago. Taylor makes sure that they only get to spend 50% of their revenues–with the remaining going to take care of their church tithing contributions, some repayment to Taylor and his wife for fronting the costs of the Sno-Cone machine, and their savings. What great lessons those kids are learning!

Candland, LLC (aka Marci and Caden) did a SUPERB job delivering a great product at a good price to the Doba team. We’re going to have them back again before the summer is out. Here’s a challenge for everyone: find a way to help support kids that are chasing their entrepreneurship bug. Stop at lemonade stands. Buy products from people knocking on your door. It really is fun. And maybe someday, when kids like Marci or Caden end up being the CEO of massively successful company that has in some way changed the world, they’ll get up and tell the story of the time some crazy person had them bring their Sno-Cone machine into a company of 100 people.

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