Good Old Fashioned Lemonade
Is there any icon of youthful entrepreneurship more enduring than the classic lemonade stand? A few lemons, a little sugar, sunshine, and smiles and voila - the piggy bank is stuffed! Of course even a business plan as simple as a lemonade stand is not without its pitfalls: bad weather, poor location, neighborhood bullies - these can all hurt the bottom line. In fact just about every business issue is addressed in this microcosm: having adequate supply to keep up with customer demand, marketing and promotion, market timing, customer service, customer retention, having enough cups…good thing the kids don’t know how tough all of this stuff is! And that’s my point, it is possible to overthink even the simplest of business plans and overwhelm yourself to a state where you won’t get started for fear of the complexities that you might face. Every business plan needs scrutiny, but they all need action too.
Now lest you think a lemonade stand is an absurdly trivial example, let me tell you about a very special one: Alex’s Lemonade Stand. Alexandra Scott started her lemonade stand at the age of four with a very serious purpose. You see Alex was a victim of pediatric cancer and her lemonade stand was her means of helping to raise money to help fight childhood cancer. Alex, unfortunately has passed, but by the time she was 8 her stand had attracted sales and donations of over $900,000 for pediatric cancer research. Her legacy now lives on in the form of the Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation which has raised over $5 million for childhood cancer research. Simply beginnings can lead to amazing ends that can truly touch people’s lives, especially if started with heart, drive and determination.