One stop on the road to freedom
A few weeks ago on a very hot evening my wife and I with our one year old son were headed to church for family night. On our way we passed a neighborhood lemonade stand being run by three small children with their parents standing close by. I slowed down and asked my wife if we should turn around and get some lemonade. She didn’t want any but said we should if I wanted some. So we turned around in a driveway up the road and went back to the stand. As I got out of the car I could see the children smiling as they realized they were about to make a sale. I walked up to the lemonade stand and asked how much. “Fifty cents” is all the very bashful little girl with ponytails behind the table said as she tried hard to look me in the eyes. I told her I would like one cup with lots of ice. Smiling real big she carefully filled my cup with ice and poured me some of the best homemade lemonade I’ve had in years. I gave her a dollar and told her to keep the change. Before I left though I said; “Stick with capitalism, it pays.” Walking back to the car I looked back and could see their father beaming.
Until then I had never really thought much about lemonade stands or the little steps one might take in life that lead them to eventually owning a business. I am a new small business owner now but come to think of it I always have been. When I was a little kid I shoveled snow all winter. I had a sled with a bag of rock salt, an ice scraper, an ice spike for breaking up thick ice and a snow shovel. I would pull my weighted down sled all over the neighborhood at five in the morning to catch people before they went to work. I even had several businesses around town that I would service every day. I was just a little kid trying to make an honest buck. And I did pretty well too. During the summers I would hand out fliers for local businesses and mow lawns. It should be no surprise then that now as an adult I own and operate a small web development company. It’s just a grown up version of what I started doing when I was eight.
So the next time you see a little kid with a lemonade stand, handing out flyers, raking leaves or whatever it may be let them know what a great job they’re doing by becoming their customer. It will put a smile on their face and help show them a road to a life of success. It may even make you feel better about yourself too.
Feel free to comment however you see fit on this and any post on this site. I am really interested in hearing about how you have influenced a future capitalist or how you got started in business yourself.
