Archive for the ‘Kids & Entrepreneurship’ Category
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
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Utah Business Week 2006
Long before television’s “The Apprentice†turned private sector enterprise into popular entertainment, Utah Business Week was making corporate culture a real-world experience for high school students. In recent years, more than a thousand Utah high schoolers have participated in Business Week, and this year—just a few weeks ago in fact—I was fortunate enough to be able to speak a group of them up at Utah State University (in Logan, UT).
In all, about 150 students were in town to learn about the principles of business, how to work as a part of a team, and participate in mock company meetings and business simulations. The weeklong event’s organizers asked me to present an hour session on what it means to be an entrepreneur, and
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‘Kidpreneurs’ Gain Respect, in The Netherlands!
Why are the Dutch always beating everyone else to the punch, especially Americans? Springwise reports that Dutch Postbank recently started a campaign aimed at budding entrepreneurs.
Kids who open one of Postbank’s “Easy Blue” accounts qualify to receive a briefcase containing materials for printing their own t-shirts (aka bizznizz attire), stickers, letterhead, flyers, and business cards. To get started, the young businessperson logs on to bizznizz.postbank.nl and decides what type of business he or she would like to run. Postbank suggests washing cars, walking dogs, household chores and mowing lawns, as well as an intriguing ‘entertainment’ category.
Then it’s time to pick a name, create a logo using an online design wizard, print promotional material and start advertising: throwing flyers through as many neighborhood mailboxes as possible.
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Drinking ‘the Kool-Aid’ versus Lemonade
I don’t know what it is about me and kids and their lemonade stands, but I stopped by another one yesterday afternoon; this time while on my way out of town to speak at Utah Business Week.
“How long have you guys been out here?” I asked. “Since this morning,” one of the older kids replied, ” adding, rather dejectedly, “and you’re our first customer“.
It didn’t occur to me until I drove off that I could do something to help their business (aside from paying a quarter for my own cup of their delicious lemonade). The traditional lemonade stand business model is this… set up shop and wait for people to come to you. Simple enough, and depending on weather, location, and
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Kicking ‘em to the Curb: Kids and Entrepreneurship
When I was a kid, I went door-to-door selling Christmas cards. Mind you, I lived on a farm in southern Idaho, so “door-to-door” meant getting on my bicycle and riding a few miles in one direction, and then backtracking and doing the same thing in the other direction. These days, with urban sprawl creeping steadier and steadier towards the rural regions, and with all the distractions kids have (think television, Xbox 360, PlayStation, and even soccer tournaments and beauty pageants), I’m not sure many 8-15 year-olds get to experience the same types of solitary entrepreneurial endeavors.
I’m a big believer that solitary entrepreneurial endeavors—like selling lemonade on the side of the road or going door-to-door to sign people up for a newspaper
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