BrainTrust Query: Lemonade Day Sunday - Battling the 'Gimme Attitude'
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from the Retail Doc blog.
Lemonade Day, started by Michael Holthouse in Houston four years ago, shows youth K-12 how to become entrepreneurs.
When hundreds of thousands of kids in over thirty cities participate this Sunday, they will embark on one of the oldest methods entrepreneurs were exposed to early in life -- opening their own lemonade stand.
But this isn't about opening a Lemonade stand. Anyone can do that...
Through a series of ten lessons that include setting a goal, budgeting, site selection, advertising, opening a bank account, giving back to charity, and others, they learn more than 40 skills they'll need in real life. They have to open whether it is raining or sunny. They may make enough money to pay back their investors, they may not. If they have a partner, they have to pay them or split profits in some way. If they want their sister to wear a sign by the road, they'll have to pay her
Kids
will learn in life that they won't get credit just for showing
up -- they
get rewards for showing individual initiative and pursuing goals and dreams.
They have to overcome their fears and follow a path they may never have taken,
but that has great rewards.
And that's great, but there's more...
Lemonade Day's mantra is "spend a little, save a little and give a little." Last year kids sold $6.8 million worth of lemonade, with the kids giving back $2 million to charities of their choice.
And that's really great but here's why you should give a damn.
American Business, small businesses, big businesses, non-profit businesses -- you name it -- have been devolving lately.
Where once they were the ones creating a world of abundance for employees, for communities, and indeed for America itself, many have become increasingly focused on, "What can be given to me?"
That gimme attitude has created a true "lack" mentality in our culture and, most importantly, trickled down to our youth. Just because they want something, they feel they should have it -- not due to hard work, to being clever or taking risks; that the answer to their golden future was in someone else's hands.
Lemonade Day became important to me while I was chatting with a contractor's assistant working on my house. He shared that he hoped his son could grow up and get a job at the local prison because "that's the best job he could get." No one ever tripped the entrepreneur switch for him, so he figures the same fate probably waits for his kid.
I was lucky. On my own I discovered entrepreneurialism...
Back in 1967 I wanted the new More of the Monkees LP which cost $2.99. I was able to find a way to get the money by becoming an entrepreneur. I went door-to-door selling flowers from my mom's garden. I was nine. This was at a time when kids were encouraged to go to college and get a safe job working with a big company.
In a world where "safe" jobs are disappearing, it will be up to the individual to make a living for themselves. If we don't turn on that entrepreneur spirit in kids, we are looking at generations of people who won't be able to start anything. And when they show up at your store to work, they won't be bringing anything but a "gimme attitude." And how will that make you or them money?