One of my friends, April, has had a great deal of influence over my thinking in the last several months. Her opinions on where to live, what cosmetic companies to use, and what to read, have all greatly affected my day to day life recently. She often says “Rich Dad Poor Dad” is a must read and I had some time on my hands in January and decided to take a look. I was fascinated by what I read.
Over dinner one night I was trying to explain to my husband the crux of the book and began with Robert Kiyosaki’s story of being 9 years old and deciding to “make money.” How he tried minting lead nickels in his driveway, and then moved on to working for free for his “Rich Dad” and how he saw his first business opportunity in comic books. My daughter, perhaps because she is the same age, was equally fascinated. The next night my husband worked late but my daughter requested that I read to her and the rest of the children some excerpts from the book. For two weeks after that she would make comments about having a library in our garage and charging her friends. We talked the idea over and she realized that perhaps her friends would not pay to read books. She herself was not interested in going to any body’s house to pay to read books. She asked “what if I made them cookies and lemonade?” I asked her, “what if you just sold the cookies?” The problem then became “where?
I have a Network Marketing Business with Arbonne International and she sees me at the computer in the evening taking orders from my emails and placing orders via Arbonne’s website and either shipping product directly to the client or repackaging here at the house and then shipping product from the Post Office. Finally this all came together and she asked me… “Mom, what if I mailed the cookies?”
Well now that sounded good. My daughter isn’t peddling her cookies around the neighborhood and we have an extensive network of family and friends who would more than likely place an order. I agreed to provide her with ingredients for 4 batches of “sample” cookies and her first 4 orders and after that she would need to keep track of her own flour, butter, sugar and so on. We found a basic sugar cookie recipe and jointly agreed it might be good to just specialize in one kind of cookie for now. I am in a yahoo business group called “Mothers United In Business” and there I found a few girls to make her a logo and banner/stamps which we print out on paper and include in the shipment. She sent cookies to two of my cousins in college, my sister, my mother, and her grandfather all as free samples/birthday presents and then orders started coming in. I told her for my sanity she needed to limit herself to two orders a week as I take a 3 year old and a 17 month old to the post office with me when I mail them out. She has had 2 orders a week going out pretty consistently for 2 months now. Some one asked her what she plans to do with her earnings. She said she is saving for college. With 4 younger brothers and sisters that may be a good idea.
My thought is simply that through buying her own ingredients to make the product, and keeping track of what she spends on shipping, she is being offered the best lesson in accounting that any 9 year old could hope for. Whether her interest in the cookie business lasts 2 more weeks or a lifetime I feel that this “real life experience” with money will stay with her forever.
Now I just need to work on getting paid for my courier services to the Post Office!
