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A Dad & Entrepreneur learns from Lemonade Day

This is a guest blog post from Chris Bailey, Founder and Principal of inspectiv, a customer experience consultancy. Chris’s daughters participated in Austin’s Lemonade Day on May 6th. Going through the experience with his daughters, he learned a lesson that many parent’s struggle with – how to help and guide your child to success without overwhelming them and still keeping it fun. I asked Chris to share his blog pre-Lemonade Day and post.

Lessons Learned on Fun & Uncertainty

I managed to suck all the joy out of what should otherwise be a fun business venture for my daughters.

Tomorrow is Lemonade Day. If you don’t know much about it, it’s a great way for kids to learn about business and entrepreneurship (learn more). In preparation, my gals are going through the workbook doing the math and exercises needed to figure out how much material they’ll need in order to make their goal. How do I choose to contribute to this process? By making it far more difficult, overwhelming, and anxiety-ladden than it should be. Yes, that’s me: Mr. Unfun Business.

Problem is, this is one of the biggest gremlins I face in my own work. When uncertainty arises, I don’t just get serious…I become something like a black hole of grimness, sucking the life out of any task. I find flaws in plans. I identify all the risks. I – though quite unintentionally – take activities that could be thrilling and turn them into miserable drudgery. In other words, I work obsessively to create certainty. And I fully understand that this is all for nothing since business and entrepreneurship is all about navigating the waves of uncertainty.

Uncertainty. It’s one of the fundamental personal challenges I face as a startup business owner. I know I cannot expect to succeed without coming to grips with this inability to deal with all the uncertainty that comes with entrepreneurship.

Yes, starting and running a business isn’t all fun and games. But it sure better be interesting, exhilarating, and worth doing. If I’m going to teach my daughters they can be successful businesswomen and that business is about courageously bringing our creative vision into reality, then that must start with my example. Now let’s make some lemonade.

It is a happy ending though. Lessons learned – for everyone …

As a post-script to the experience, both girls did have a lot of fun. We debriefed over dinner on Sunday night and some of their takeaways were:
1. They bought supplies they thought they needed, but really didn’t need. This added to their overhead and cut down on profits. In the grand scheme of things, they barely broke even.
2. While they did make decent sales, it wasn’t close to the number they assumed in their business plan.
3. Their product was fantastic, but it came at a cost to their profit margin. They chose to sell a premium freshly squeezed lemonade for only $1 per 9oz cup. They discussed whether it would have been better to sell a mix at that price or increase the price for the premium drink.
4. More marketing ahead of time might have brought more customers. We have an advantage of living on a well-trafficked street…but more posters and handouts could have produced more sales. For instance, they went to five neighborhood houses on Saturday night. Of those five houses, four neighbors stopped by. That was a huge takeaway of what worked.
5. Waving to cars as they passed didn’t always work but some people did stop and come back.
6. Coming to the car and taking orders was a nice touch.
7. They want to do it again. Both girls felt there were things they could learn from and improve the next time they run a lemonade stand.

The lessons in the Lemonade Day workbook are designed to be as applicable to real world experience as possible. We hear it all the time, “I learned just as much as the kids did.” Truly successful entrepreneurs do just as Chris and his daughters did. They make mistakes. And then they learn from them, adjust their plan and try it again.

Do you have a story about your Lemonade Day experience? Share it with us. Tweet @LemonadeDay, Facebook [Lemonade Day], or email (mandy@lemonadeday.org) a pic or video of your Lemonade Day and we’ll post it on Lemonade Day’s Stories Pinterest Board. Re-post the link and send your friends to comment, like and repin. We’ll send the top contenders Lemonade Day fan packs each week!

Submit a video of you Lemonade Day story on Qukku and your child[ren] could be the next Lemonade Day spokesperson! Enter here. We’ll pin all My Story videos to our board too so you can be entered into TWO contests!

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