(Community Matters) Running in today’s Austin Business Journal
Mikaila Ullmer, 5, who calls her business BeeSweet Lemonade, was among those who participated in last year’s Lemonade Day. The Austin youth will be doing so again May 2.
It is not coincidental that so many legendary entrepreneurs — from John Rockefeller to Bill Gates — had paper routes or lemonade stands growing up. With that in mind, the Entrepreneurs Foundation is organizing Lemonade Day to promote entrepreneurship and because Lemonade Day is about helping kids understand that if they want money, they can earn it.
On Sunday, May 2, thousands of young entrepreneurs will begin their first businesses at locations all around Austin. Lemonade Day Austin helps kids of all ages learn to set goals, plan businesses, set budgets, seek investors (mom and dad, in most cases), count expenses and calculate profits. Some even decide to donate to their favorite nonprofit.
This fun, free event is sponsored by Trilogy Inc., the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas, Imperial Sugar, H.E. Butt Grocery Co., Acton MBA, Charles Schwab, Buena Vista Foundation, 7-Eleven and many other community businesses and nonprofits.
Lemonade Day, which takes place in 17 U.S. cities, helps kids think like entrepreneurs and experience operating a business. There is no need to explain that the how-to book — disguised as a comic book — was designed by one of the nation’s leading nonprofits whose mission is to provide leadership, knowledge and resources to promote healthy children, youth and communities. All they have to know is that it is relatively easy and fun and that they get to keep the money.
There is also no need to tell the kids we are launching a pilot research study to understand the impact of Lemonade Day on behavior and attitudes, nor that it could result in a long-term research project exploring the impact of entrepreneurial interests and abilities on developmental assets.
Each child who registers for Lemonade Day, with the support of a parent or caring adult, receives a yellow backpack filled with the tools needed to create a successful lemonade stand business. When I talk to kids, especially those from communities where businesses are not part of their daily conversations, about making their own money, you can see their eyes light up. For too many, it is an entirely new concept.
Talk to most successful businesspeople and you’ll find they had some sort of business as children:
- Nav Sooch, co-founder of Silicon Laboratories Inc., delivered newspapers for three years.
- Richard Garriott, co-founder of Origin Systems Inc., sold Boy Scout products door-to-door.
- Bertrand Sosa, co-founder and president of MPower Labs Inc., did not let language get in his way. He started a Spanish-speaking lemonade stand shortly after moving here from Mexico.
- Brian Sharples of HomeAway Inc. had a lemonade stand and a paper route.
Some businesses were even more exotic.
- Julie Gomoll, the founder and CEO of LaunchPad Coworking and social media maven behind julessays.com, created a cardboard puppet show theater one summer and a haunted house one Halloween.
- Mickey Millsap, CEO of Givability, and Jason Black, CEO of Boundless Networks, earned extra money in grade school buying candy at the corner store for five cents, marking it up, and selling it to classmates.
- And shortly after my aunts told me they had paid for seashells at the beach in Galveston, the neighbors called to report a 5-year-old selling caliche shells from our driveway door-to-door. Hey, that must mean a connection with social entrepreneurship too.
On May 2, support the 10,000-plus budding entrepreneurs setting up lemonade stands in all parts of Austin. Who knows? You may be buying a glass of lemonade from the next Michael Dell, who had a newspaper route.
– by Eugene Sepulveda, CEO of Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas
Community Matters 