The weather was beautiful this past weekend, so on Sunday, my daughters (ages 8 and 6) and a friend decided to set up a lemonade stand on the sidewalk in front of our house. I was all for this activity, so that they would stay outside and keep busy. While they made signs, I ran to the store and bought cups, Country Time lemonade mix and ice. It was fun to watch my daughter and her friend sort out how to best arrange the table, where to put the ice, how to hang the signs, where to keep the money, etc. It reminded me of two business owners who wanted to make their mark on the business and end up squabbling over the little things.
What these girls really needed to focus on was drumming up some business and getting people to BUY their lemonade! By the time they were set up it was after 3:00 and the pedestrian and bike activity on the street was dying down. I explained to the girls that they couldn’t just sit there and wait for people to come to them — they needed to do some advertising to let people know about the lemonade stand.
So they made a some flyers and my daughter’s friend “Kate” had the idea of riding bikes around the neighborhood telling people to come by. “That’s great!” I said, “but make sure someone stays here to watch the stand in case a customer comes by.” Of course the six year old was left behind to conduct the real business, while my 8 year old and Kate rode off on their bikes. They came back shortly, and needed some lemonade — I said, “Don’t drink all of your product, or you won’t make any money.”
“We’re not,” said Kate, “we found some customers and we need to take them some lemonade.” Kate had determined the best way to get people to buy the product was to knock on doors. Which they did and actually sold lemonade door to door. While I’m not a big fan of door-to-door sales, this strategy seemed to be working for them. I made a few calls to neighbors and eventually some people made their way to the lemonade stand and the girls made a total of $6.75. Not bad.
As I reflected on the day, I realized my children had learned a good lesson that Sunday afternoon, a lesson many business owners struggle with. You can have a great product and a great location, but unless you market your product/service, what’s the point? You can’t wait around for customers to come to you. You can’t even shout your message out and expect people to hear it. You need to take the product to the customer. You need to make it convenient for your customer and you need to focus on SELLING your product to make money.
Next business lesson for my daughters: paying your suppliers for your product.
