My daughter is at the age where kids have lemonade stands. That first spark about making her own money burst out this weekend. We were making Christmas ornaments like we do every year, and she had the idea to sell them.  As I sit and brainstorm with her of which family members she can give each one to, I can see the dollar signs in her eyes--- she’s got the fever.  On one hand, I want to encourage generosity and thoughtfulness, I really WANT her to want to make some gifts and keep the spirit of Christmas alive.  But on the other hand, I want to raise an entrepreneur, I want her to have the confidence to build her dream. AND the skills. 

So I let her run with it, and encourage every idea, even the ones that I know will not work.  She was obsessed, talking about it for hours, about pricing, about where to set up a table to get the most traffic, about making ornaments year round for other holidays, about donating a % to charity. She went to bed talking about it, she woke up talking about it, and even though she and I knew that our neighborhood had just about zero traffic, when she asked me where the card table was, I knew she was going to set up shop today no matter what.

How excited I was! Her first ‘lemonade stand’!  Except it was her sequined popsicle stick stars.  And within 5 minutes a neighbor made the first purchase! Nevermind that she sat outside for 4 hours and only sold 3 ornaments.  The point was she DID THIS, on her own, and was not hung up on her profits as much as the experience of selling.  And the ideas “Mom, we must set up another location tomorrow, we need to move around to reach more people”.

All I could think about today is my experience with the book “Rich Dad Poor Dad”. If you own a business and have kids, read it.  If you do not own a business and have kids, and are sick of working “for the man”, READ IT.  The idea is about raising entrepreneurs, but the lessons transfer to the adult reader too. Owning your own business requires confidence and risk taking (smart risks hopefully!), and these qualities can be taught.

One of the big takeaways for me from the book:  making yourself available to take those opportunities. So many of us find the reasons that business idea will not work, or reasons why we cannot start our own business. So I could have said: “Oh Elly, no one will be in our neighborhood today, you will spend hours outside and not get many sales, I don’t know where the card table it, I don’t have any change to give you for your stand” etc.  Instead I helped her become available to this opportunity (the ornaments were made already, why not?) So I tried to be supportive without taking it over, help set expectations for slow sales so she would not be too disappointed, and she got her first taste of having a business. And she loved it. And she brought a boombox outside halfway through the day to pipe Christmas music into her “store”.  No one was there to hear it but her, but it’s a valid idea! I was proud and impressed.

There is so much more to the book, about the value of networking, about keeping the goal to have a business that does not require YOU for 40-60 hours a week for it to be profitable, about acting on our ideas instead of just thinking.  So read it. And next time you see a kid’s lemonade stand, buy one, you are building an entrepreneur.