As a young boy, I spent countless hours devoted to the ultimate lemonade stand. Business has always intrigued me, and I would constantly beg my parents to let me sit out in our front yard with some sub-par lemonade and offer it to unlucky dog-walkers who came by. It started as just something I liked to do for fun. I enjoyed the aspect of getting to meet and talk to new people. However, it soon turned into purely a competition for my little brain. No longer was I satisfied with the casual passerby’s conversation or with just having a reason to sit outside and enjoy the warm sun on my neck. My obsession with the lemonade stand became one of toxic, money-hungry capitalism that left me with an unquenchable thirst for power. It excited me to the core to find new ways to cut production costs of my lemonade stand or to find a better way to make cars stop by. That’s where the real money was, and I did everything in my power to get those cars to stop short of throwing myself in front of them.
I soon became a slave to the manipulative marketing schemes that so many young businessmen before me encountered. Granted, I was only 11, but I sought out ways in which to get more people to buy my lemonade. The adults were trickiest, as you had to appeal to their emotions by being funny or cute, or playing to their soft side by hiding my sweet stack of cash from the day behind the stand and claiming I had not had yet one customer today. The other children, however, were so easily fooled. Their gullible faces would take anything I would throw at them. I could tell them my lemonade was from the tropics of Peru, or that it made you taller, or that it tasted exactly like the lemon-flavored starburst.
My love for marketing and business grew up with me. As a young adult, I now have my own small e-commerce business. Similar to my youth, I am constantly looking for ways to cut costs and to better market my products. The great thing about being a child selling lemonade is that you don’t have to adhere to any ethical or legal guidelines in the selling of your product. This is, however, not the case when running a real business as a young adult.
One of the biggest problems I ran into was shipping and packaging costs and management of my business. I had to make sure that I was paying an efficient price for my shipping boxes in order to still turn a good profit on my product. Especially with the rise of e-commerce in recent years, and an absolute blast off of e-commerce during COVID19 in 2020, I had to find ways to make shipping manageable and time-effective. I found that obtaining the cheapest shipping boxes possible while still properly wrapping and boxing my products was the most helpful in cutting down my costs of shipping and handling items. This is especially important for me because I don’t charge my customers for shipping and handling, so that must be taken care of by my wallet. Running a small business can be hard work, but it is very rewarding to have built up a company all by yourself and be able to call it your own.
Inside The Box 