It doesn’t matter if you’re if you’re a child or an adult. There will be times you want to say goodbye to your job because it seems like it would so much easier to make money on your own. But like my kids found out, the grass is not always greener on the other side. Nonetheless, I was really happy that they gave it a shot and got a little bit of a laugh out of the experience. Here’s how things went …
To Be Young Employees or Young Entrepreneurs?
This story starts with our 7 year old son. He hates his chores! (What little boy doesn’t?) And because he doesn’t do them (until Mom and Dad threaten his life), he rarely gets paid his allowance. This in sharp contrast to our 9 year old daughter who religiously does her chores without question and gets paid her full allowance every two weeks.
It’s tough to make a living as a kid. Your income options are limited. You can:
• Be an employee = Do your chores and you’re guaranteed to earn your full allowance every other week.
• Be an entrepreneur = Find another way to make money and excel beyond your allowance, but risk making none at all if you’re not successful.
The Idea to be an Entrepreneur:
My son has had his heart set on a Lego set for a little while now, but has made almost no money from allowance. So being resourceful, his wheels were turning looking for another way to make some quick cash.
His “great idea” after walking around our small neighborhood garage sale one weekend. How easy is this! You just sit in your garage, sell stuff, and make money! Forget about doing chores!
At first, even though his ambitions were in overdrive, my wife and I tried to dissuade him for a number of reasons:
1) He wanted to hold it on Sunday. Who has a garage sale on Sunday?
2) All the things he had for sale were toys around his room that probably no one would want to buy.
3) Marketing was going to be pretty slim. We live at the end of a subdivision where there’s no traffic and pretty much no chance that anyone was going to drive by. Plus, all my son had for advertising was one single sign.
4) And finally the greatest lesson of all:
The Greatest Lesson of All:
Just like an adult that gets discouraged with their job and tries to make it on their own, my son had already concluded at age 7 that there must be a better way. But also like many adults trying to be young entrepreneurs making it for the first time, he was also thinking that this idea was going to be a cakewalk; a sure-thing.
As his father, I really want the best for him. And as badly as I want him to do well, I felt this was an important life lesson that was better learned as a child than as an adult – that sometimes the grass ISN’T always greener on the other side. He would need to have this garage sale and decide for himself if it truly was better being a young entrepreneur or an employee.
The Big Day:
Sunday morning came and up went the garage sale. I’m using the term garage sale lightly because it consisted of a single fold-up table with about 15 small toys and some juice boxes. It was about what you would expect from a 7 year old.
I think it was about 15 minutes into it that our son came back in the house pouting that no one had shown up yet. “Get back out there!” we said, “You wanted to have this sale! You can’t quit now!”
Another 15 minutes went by with no activity. But then my son got the blessing that all young entrepreneurs need: His first customer.
Our wonderful neighbor who had been working on his house decided to take a break and stop by the sale with his small daughter. Sure he didn’t need anything, but he knew that it would really make his day to have a sale. During this time, our daughter noticed the small amount of success that her brother was about to have and IMMEDIATELY got out there with her own 10 items for sale. All-in-all, each of them made a few dollars by selling a few toys and couple of those juice boxes. It was very kind of our neighbor, and I think I see repaying the favor in the future by buying a few boxes of Girl-Scout cookies!
Unfortunately, the rest of the day was not nearly as fruitful. Hours and hours went by, and there were no further sales made. From time to time, they’d march up and down the perimeter of the lawn and wave the garage sale sign around. Sometimes they’d wave and yell to the occasional passing car. But it wasn’t enough to attract any further customers, except for one very usual stopper-by …
What Do You Call A Guy Who Drives His Limo to a Garage Sale?
Yes, the only other customer my young entrepreneurs had at their sale was some random middle-aged guy driving (himself in) a 1980’s limousine. I had been keeping my eye on them the whole day, and immediately made my parental presence known when he walked up so I could avoid any future Amber alerts. He quickly glanced over their lack of selection, politely said thank you, and drove away.
As strange as it was, my kids were very excited that someone in a limousine had come to their garage sale. “He must be very rich” they thought.
Live Another Day:
So all in all, I believe each of my young entrepreneurs made about $4. Sure, that’s almost as much as the $5 allowance they could be paid every two weeks. But then again, when you compare hours invested, it took them most of the day (7-8 hours) to earn that $4 before they called it quits. How long does it really take to make your bed, feed the pets, and clean up your dishes after you’re done eating?
As I mentioned earlier, the reason I let my kids do this is because I wanted to simply see what it was like. This wasn’t so I could crush their spirits of becoming young entrepreneurs. They needed to find out that it’s not just as easy as “set up shop and let the cash roll in”. Whether you work for yourself or work for someone else, work is work! Most importantly, I’m glad they were able to try this experiment in the safety of our home rather than when they’re 25!
What’s funny is that I don’t think this will be last time for either of them. Nor do I want it to be. When they get a little older and are able to understand things, I will teach them about things like investing or passive income. But perhaps the next time they get adventurous, they’ll think back to this experience and use it to make better and more carefully laid out plans for success.
Readers – What do you remember about being young entrepreneurs or young employees? Did you have a paper route, lawn business, baby-sitting service, etc? Did your parents help encourage you? What lessons did you take away from these experiences?
Related Posts:
1) Practicing Entrepreneurship the Fraidy-Cat Way – Using Your Job
2) Goal Setting When You Realize That All You Have Is Now
3) Overcoming Envy – Why Do We Hate Other People’s Success?
Image Credits: MMD, Google Maps
When I was young, I babysat and ran our garage sales, etc. My parents encouraged me as much as possible. When I was older, but still in high school, I wanted to start my own online business and my mom told me she would buy the hosting etc for me. It’s good to encourage entreprenuership but it’s not for everyone.
You almost had your own online business in high school? That’s pretty awesome! I’m wondering if my daughter will hit me up for the same thing in a few years.
I wasn’t very entrepreneurial as a child but we after a really bad snow storm when i was a child we walked miles and knocked on dozens of doors to ask people if we could shovel their driveway. It took us the entire day and I was completely sore by the end of it, but between my brother, a friend, and myself we ended up netting about $80/each. It was pretty sweet!
That blows away the $10 I made in snow shoveling! Nice work!
What a cute story! We have a super creepy older guy in our neighborhood, and I always make my presence known when he’s around. He will walk by the bus stop and just stare at our kids…who does that?!
Anyway, it’s a good thing your kids learned the lesson that making money is HARD! It sometimes takes all day to make any money at all, and sometimes businesses fail. I think they will be super smart with money because of this experience!
Us parents have to watch out for the CREEPERS!
Thanks! I hope my kids remember this lesson when they get older. From time to time I have to remind myself about it!
This is cute, and a good lesson learned. When I grew up chores weren’t an option they were a requirement.
Yeah …. how did we get away from that?
I know kids these days don’t have much responsibility and the influence of friends who parents haven’t raised them right only makes it worse. One of the most important things I learned as a child was respect and saying yes mam and no mam. That is now a thing of the past. It is sad.
I remember a friend and I selling lemonade and “artwork” in our neighbourhood, which got basically no traffic to it. It was still fun though!
I remember my sisters trying to sell friendship bracelets. I’m pretty sure they had no traffic either … but it was still fun for them.
My daughters are 4 and 2 and I am always worried about being able to teach them financial responsibility at a young age. This is such a cute story and your children are adorable. I hope mine will also be showing entrepreneurial skills soon.
Thanks! 4 and 2 is so little! You’re going to be so surprised what their little minds think up. Sometimes I wonder “what made you guys think of this”?
What a fun story! That guy in the limo would creep me out, too….so random! I didn’t get an allowance as a kid, so I waited for birthday cards to come in the mail or set up lemonade stands. My lemonade stands were only mildly more successful than your son’s garage sale! As a teen I baby sat and did much better for myself. 🙂
The limo thing was SO random!
The birthday cards were always awesome, but TOO far in between. You girls have got it made with babysitting! Both my sisters really capitalized on this as well during their teens. I didn’t get my big break until 13 with snow shoveling and mowing yards.
It’s good that you taught your kids this lesson. Maybe he’ll work a little harder on his chores now.
When I was a kid me and my sister had a paper route for a while. One time Me and some neighborhood friends tried setting up a stand to sell hockey cards too. Unfortunately with that we only got people trying to lowball us. Shoveling driveways was a pretty standard winter tactic too.
Canada, hockey cards, and snow – I should have seen that coming! 🙂 I’ve still got all my sports cards sitting in a box in the basement. That was one childhood investment that never really worked out – and a great lesson too: Despite what the Beckett price guide said, a sports card is only worth what someone will pay you for it! Thanks for sharing!
Great story. I am looking forward to those times with our kids. They may not know it now, but those are some invaluable lessons they learned. I was not very entrepreneural as a kid. I do remember my first “real job” at 14. I wanted to quit numerous times, but thankful to my parents who taught me to stick it and & that no one gets ahead by quitting when it’s tough.
Ahh yes, being a teenager and working is a whole other life lesson! I remember how badly I wanted to quit my job as a teen too, but then I wouldn’t have any money! The best lesson from working as a teen – don’t screw up or you’ll have to come back to that crappy job! 🙂
That’s so funny — what a fun day! When I was a kid, we set up a card shop in my friend’s dad’s tool shed. Problem? This shed, like all others, was located far from the street. We sold one kid one card, not even covering our complimentary Jolly Ranchers that we provided.
Even if you didn’t have the location down, those Jolly Ranchers were some marketing dynamite! Even today we use candy to attract people to our booths at conventions. That was some pretty clever thinking as a child!
I used to pet sit and cut grass as a kid. I’m glad my parents encouraged it because it kept my entrepreneurial spirit going! Look at me I own a blog!
Pet sitting was way better than cutting the lawn! Feeding your neighbors dog or cat was like 5 minutes of work and 55 minutes of playing with the animal. Mowing a lawn – that was hard work! I did quite a bit of that as a teen. I never really thought about it, but it probably did in some way help prep me to start this blog. I’m making way more than $15 now! 🙂
When I was a kid, I used to go to this strawberry farm where you could pick your own berries for 75 cents a quart. I would then sell them door to door for $1.50 a quart. I soon learned to spend the extra time to pick the very best berries or they wouldn’t sell.
Not a bad lesson! You’ll never impress the customer if you don’t have something really good to offer.
I absolutely LOVE this! I’m always on the lookup for real-life examples of things that I can do and teach our little boy when he’s older, and this was a perfect example.
When I was a kid I mowed lawns for several ladies at church. We definitely didn’t get an allowance, though doing our chores was still mandatory.
Thanks Justin! You’re much closer to experiencing this sooner than you think!
Aww that’s so cute! I remember I did the same thing for several summers when I was a kid. One year even had an origami stand instead of lemonade. It was a very windy and disappointing day let me tell you. Lesson learned!
Despite the outcome, you definitely get some brownie points for “origami” – now that is a creative angle!
You are an amazing father, MMD! When I was teenager, I used to help my father in his car dealership. He always paid me like any other employee, and treated me like any other employee.
I think those lessons that I learned in my early teenage years were the best in terms of learning work ethics, dedication and hard work.
Thanks Shilpan! I 100% agree that what you learn as a child is important because it shapes your work habits for life!