Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have made their unprecedented move official: they’ve relinquished their royal backing, and paid back a $3 million loan from the Sovereign Fund that was used to refurbish their home, Frogmore Cottage. With that, the couple is officially independent. Their income will now have to be earned; support from Buckingham Palace, no more.
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The update is a follow-up to a January declaration that took the world by storm: the couple was giving up the titles awarded to a handful of people in human history in hopes of plotting their own course. Financial independence, they declared, was more valuable to the Duke and Duchess than any prestige their crowns or titles could offer.
A Peek at the Queen’s Receipts
The development brings another question to mind: where was all of that money coming from anyway? The answer is a controversial one. The costs associated with Buckingham Palace and the Royals’ lifestyles are paid by a fund known as the Sovereign Grant. Why is that controversial? The Sovereign Grant is a budget of public funds. Cue the outrage! Hold on. It’s not that simple. Those public funds were provided in exchange for the Queen putting her Crown Estate into a public trust. And that estate? It brought in a surplus in the hundreds of millions of dollars in the last two years alone. The trade isn’t such a bad deal for the Brits after all.
So what does a royal budget look like? In 2019, it totaled £67 million. Among the line items: £2.3 million for housekeeping and hospitality and £4.6 million for travel. Talk about living like a queen! And next year, some of those receipts will shrink a bit, as Harry and Meghan move on with their own lives. As to how they plan to manage life’s expenses, this week offered a big clue.
Their ticket to financial independence? A large check from a different source.
Wondering just how could someone could give up a seemingly endless supply of, well, anything in exchange for a life without official duties? The answer, it appears, is a windfall of another kind. The Royal couple was able to repay their $3 million loan thanks to a deal with streaming giant Netflix.
Not a bad payday. Say, Meghan and Harry, you might want to watch our episode, What to do with a Windfall.
We last assembled a list of “Free Fall Family Fun” in September of 2019. Then, the economy was thriving, unemployment was record-low, and kids were in school across the country. Little did we know how much more important cost-free entertainment would become just twelve months later. Today, as disposable income is fleeting and family time is more abundant than ever, we think it’s an ideal time to return to our list and add some new entries.
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Zoom Blast from the Past
There aren’t many things that are easier to do in the age of quarantine. Travel is all but impossible, socializing is taboo, and seemingly everything requires a webcam. But one thing is easier to do that ever before (and likely ever again): scheduling time with people you love. No longer can we say “if only we can find a time to get together.” Chances are, you’re available to (virtually) hang out with people you’ve lost touch with. And chances are, they are too. So how can you use this rare opportunity for connection? Consider using it to introduce your kids to people they’ve long heard of but never met. A “blast from the past” if you will. Perhaps it’s the college roommate who went on to build an interesting company, or the distant relative who gave you some great advice before moving overseas. We could all use a bit more connection these days. Reach out. Chances are, they’ll be thrilled you did.
Tourists for a Day
No matter where you live, out-of-town visitors often bring out the same revelation: “Well, we never actually go there, but it’s totally awesome. You should check it out while you’re here!” It’s easy to take our hometowns for granted. To forgo the impressive parks, historical landmarks, and iconic buildings and opt to lounge on the couch instead. This fall, take a Saturday to play “tourists for a day.” Check a few travel books out from the library, and dig through them on weeknights leading up to the free staycation. Give each family member a different colored sticky note to mark points of interest. Compare notes over dinner, and make a plan. You’ll make connections in the planning, memories on the weekend, and might even discover new favorite hangouts for years to come.
Family Invention Challenge
If you missed last summer’s Family Invention Challenge, we strongly recommend you take a look at it today. A kid-friendly spin on Shark Tank, the challenge turns problems and headaches into solutions (and even potential spending money.) It doesn’t have to cost a dime, but it could make you a few. Plus, it’s a great way to transform the bad habit of complaining into a good one: problem solving.
Neighborhood Leaf Bonanza
Kids and adults have different perspectives on lots of things. One of them most glaring: leaves. To adults, their presence is a chore. To kids, the more the better. Want to give your kids the leaf pile of their dreams? Team up with your neighbors to rake all of their leaves on a designated day, then collect the crunching wonders in massive pile on a tarp. Let the kids jump and play to their hearts’ content, then fill your yard waste bags together as a neighborhood.
Fort Night
No, we’re not talking about a game, here. We’re talking about the old school, blankets everywhere, flightlight-in-hand, books open, phones off, cozy paradise that is fort building. But this fall, don’t just toss a pile to the kids and do the dishes. Join in on the fun with clamps and height your kids can’t access to create a maze of forts for the whole family to enjoy. When your cotton metropolis has been set up, turn on a family movie for a blockbuster screening under the blankets.
Rube Goldberg Machine
When the season’s first rainy day arrives, use the weather as an excuse to get creative indoors. Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist famous for making sketches of complicated machines tasked with simple assignments like wiping a man’s face with a napkin using a series of gears, gizmos, and gadgets. Today, a YouTuber by the name of Joseph’s Machines has brought the cartoons to life with real contraptions guaranteed to amaze. Get some inspiration from Joseph, then engineer a Rube Goldberg machine with your kids.
One night in the fall, then-junior Akilah Releford took her beauty insights to Twitter, creating a thread of her favorite beauty hacks and tricks. After hitting send, she headed to bead. When she awoke in her dorm room at Howard University, she glanced at her phone in shock. Her tips had been retweeted more than 30,000 times. Hundreds of messaged filled her DM’s.
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As she told Grow, “That’s when I realized that my love of makeup wasn’t just a hobby — I could turn it into a business.” Today, Akilah is the owner of a skincare company that specialized is vegan, cruelty-free products. As for revenue? She expects it to top $1 million this year.
Akilah’s is not the first success story set in a college dorm room. Far from it, in fact.
In entrepreneurial folklore, there are two sources for all brilliant ideas: garages and dorm rooms. This year, as social distancing redefines campus living, quarantining in your dorm room may not only be mandatory, but profitable, too. Need some inspiration? You’ve come to the right place.
Dorm dwellers: Shawn Fanning, Sean Parker and John Fanning
School: Northeastern University
Company: Napster
In 1999, digital music was in its infancy when three friends at Northeastern disrupted the entire industry with their (illegal) downloading platform. Some music labels were destroyed by their piracy, but the concept gave way to the legal digital wave that followed.
Dorm dweller: Michael Dell
School: UT Austin
Company: Dell
One of the most recognizable computer brands in the world was launched from a UT dorm room in 1984 using just $1000 in seed money to build his first computers.
Dorm dwellers: Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little
School: University of Houston
Company: WordPress
On the off chance you haven’t heard of WordPress, you’ve certainly been among the 15.5 billion pageviews the platform’s sites produced. But in 2003, the blogging and web building tool was just an idea between two friends at the University of Houston. The internet has never been the same.
Dorm dweller: Mark Zuckerberg
School: Harvard
Company: Facebook
Perhaps the most famous of all dorm-based billionaires, Mark Zuckerberg’s college startup was even the subject of an Academy Award-Winning movie (The Social Network). Zuckerberg’s dorm room was the setting for hacking, partnership disputes, and yes, the platform that started as a directory for Harvard students and became the international force it is today.
There’s no doubt about it: being a young entrepreneur requires the DNA of a pioneer. But groundbreaking doesn’t require that one go it alone. Many of today’s most wildly successful entrepreneurs started out as Biz Kids. In this week’s post, we dig through magazine articles, biographies, and newspapers to uncover 11 pieces of sage advice from some of the most brilliant entrepreneurs of our time.
Warren Buffett
Name: Warren Buffett
First Income: Door-to-door egg sales
Advice: “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
Oprah Winfrey
Name: Oprah Winfrey
First Income: Grocery Store Clerk
Advice: “You are where you are in life because of what you believe is possible for yourself.”
Name: Jeff Bezos
First Income: McDonalds Short-Order Cook
“One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.”
Sarah Blakely
Name: Sarah Blakely
First Income: Walt Disney World Cast Member
Advice: “Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know.”
Sean Combs
Name: Sean Combs a.k.a. P Diddy
First Income: Record Company Intern
Advice: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
Thomas Edison
Name: Thomas Edison
First Income: Selling candy on the train
Advice: “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
Beyonce
Name: Beyonce Knowles-Carter
First Income: Star Search television appearance fee
Advice: “Embrace mistakes. They make you who you are.”
Elon Musk
Name: Elon Musk
First Income: Video game code
Advice: “I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.”
Melinda Gates
Name: Melinda Gates
First Income: Math tutoring
Advice: “If you are successful, it is because somewhere, sometime, someone gave you a life or an idea that started you in the right direction.”
Steve Jobs
Name: Steve Jobs
First Income: Part-time employee for Hewlett-Packard
Advice: “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”
Daymond John
Name: Daymond John
First Income: Flyer distribution
Advice: “Don’t focus on you, focus on what you can give others.”
Across the country, new schools are popping up. But in place of school bells, video calls ring. In lieu of passing periods, slipper-clad walks down the hallway. And standing in for teachers are good ole’ mom and dad. These new learning institutions aren’t charter schools, private schools, or even co-ops. And their desks smell a lot like this morning’s breakfast. Ah yes, they’re the homeschools we least expected – and the ones we might as well make the most of.
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Whether it looks like it or not, the 2020-2021 schoolyear has arrived. And boy, will it be one to remember. As some states attempt to open as usual, many others are keeping students at home to learn from a distance. This week, we present a few (accidental) homeschool resources for a country still under quarantine.
Doc-Style & Sketch Comedy Videos
As the viral reach of homebound Grammy-winning musicians have proven over the last few months, few things have the power to hold our attention like video. Over six award-winning seasons, Biz Kid$ told the stories of real young entrepreneurs, shot parody music videos, filmed sketch comedy, and addressed confusing money topics head-on. Some of the best clips from the public television series are available for free on YouTube and at BizKids.com. Those looking for full episodes can head over to Vimeo, where Season 6 is available for $2.99 per episode or $15.99 for the entire season. Also on Vimeo: three curated bundles of young entrepreneur profiles offering the best of Biz Kid$ for just $4.99 per bundle.
Parents literally operating a homeschool this year have a chance to teach a topic left out of traditional education all too often: financial literacy. It’s one thing to decide to tackle topics of financial literacy. It’s quite another to know where to start. Our dozens of free lesson plans empower educators with questions, vocabulary, discussion topics, and even family activities that build upon Biz Kid$ video clips with robust lessons to drive the topics home. We’ve even mapped the plans according to state and national standards, and translated a set into Spanish.
Need to kill some time before the next Zoom call? Our free games run the gamut of money topics. Run a simulated lemonade stand in Dollar-a-Glass. Learn about banking in Break the Bank. Manage money in outer space with Bring Home the Bacon. They’re all free, fun, and financially fit.
The only thing more inspiring to kids that careful stewardship of money? Making it. Our collection of resources for young entrepreneurs empowers teen tycoons with simple tools to put their best ideas into action. Our business plan template provides a simple and straightforward framework for thinking through marketing, sales, and profit. How 2 B a Pro tackles the “soft skills” of interviewing and selling, like proper attire, handshakes, and eye contact. And the 4 P’s of Marketing takes a deep dive into product, place, price, and promotion.
Independent Reading as the Path to Millions
If your child has the freedom to choose a book of their choice, give them a shot at millions. Our vibrant and engaging book from Workman Press, How to Turn $100 into $1,000,000, teaches kids how to make, save, and grow their own fortune. It’s the perfect solution for a financial literacy textbook, or even an addition to the afterschool reading list. Plus, it’s less than $12 on Amazon.
Want to see Biz Kid$ in action? Take a look at how (traditional) teachers have used Biz Kid$ in their own classrooms.
Even before the concept of the classroom itself was turned on its head, teaching was experiencing a transformation.
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Trends are nothing new to teachers. They bear witness to the lightning speeds at which students’ attire, vocabularies, and media habits shift. But they also experience another category of cyclical ups and downs: educational trends. What’s perceived as the ultimate teaching tool one year can become passé the next.
Nevertheless, an article on the topic caught our attention earlier this year. “30 of the Most Popular Trends in Education” was the title; TeachThought, the publication. Among their thirty observations are a few that are highly relevant to any educator who shares our passion for financial literacy. Today, we’re taking five of the trends to the next level, matching them with actionable tools, lesson plans, and ideas to bring them to life.
Oh, and as a bonus, this week, we won’t even mention the educational elephant in the living room.
Growth Mindset
“I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.” A growth mindset is a frame of mind built on possibility rather than limitation. It’s the perspective that sees a roadblock as a challenge, and opportunity as an open door that begs the question, “why not me?” One of the most important ingredients in establishing a growth mindset is showing students what is possible. This is instilled by showing teens examples of others who have overcome adversity or merely made a small idea a big success. The ultimate win? A student who believes, “If they can do it, so can I.”
A single experience teaches kids more than months of explanation ever will. That’s the heart behind project-based learning. The concept is to let students stumble upon the realities of physics, for example, rather than keeping the concepts, well, conceptual. In financial literacy, nothing beats the experience of looking at hard numbers. That’s why each of our free lesson plans includes a Family Activity Sheet that turns concepts into hands-on projects the whole family can enjoy together.
If you haven’t heard of Genius Hour yet, prepare to get nervous. The concept is borrowed from Google’s policy of letting employees spend 20% of their working time on projects of their choosing. In the classroom setting (or a virtual one), students are allowed a set period of time to explore a topic of their choosing. For the Biz Kids in your classroom, this is a fabulous opportunity to point them to more in-depth entrepreneurship resources than the typical student would enjoy. Who knows: that extra hour of freedom could put a new invention into society.
If experience is better than lecture, what’s even better than experience? Fun! Game-based learning uses games as a way of offering digital experiences in topics not easily replicated in the real world. With more classrooms having access to iPads and computer labs, game-based learning is a fabulous way to teach kids how to manage money, even if they lack the resources to manage a real allowance or interact with a real bank.
Fifteen years ago, phones in school were a forbidden presence. Today, the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” concept is spreading like wildfire. Mobile learning is staked on the concept that if your students are going to be on their phones anyway, they may as well use that time for something positive.
Times like these can act as a wakeup call in so many ways. High on the list: the importance of saving. It’s easy to look in the rearview mirror right now, wishing we’d saved more in seasons of plenty. But there’s a more productive way to think about the topic when saving isn’t possible in the moment: make a plan for saving in the years to come. And if you’re lucky enough to be a teenager, we have good news: you hold all of the cards. Here’s why.
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Time is on your side.
The #1 superpower of youth is just that: youth! In saving and investing, time is essential. Interest compounds like a snowball, even earning interest on interest over time. The longer you let, say, a $100 deposit sit in an interest-bearing account or investment, the more interest it will collect. Just how much more? Take a look at two deposits of the same amount, for different spans of time. In the first example, Ben invests $2000 per year from age 19 to 26. In the second, Arthur invests $2000 per year from age 27 to 65. Compound interest works its magic, giving BEN the upper hand in retirement. Incredible, isn’t it?!
Curious what a savings habit could amount to? The SEC has a free compound interest calculator on their website ready to calculate your future riches.
Expenses are low.
Youth comes with many benefits. Unless your income is needed to support your family, chances are, your expenses are pretty low. It’s not that gas, movie tickets, and eating out are cheap. It’s that they’re wants. You don’t need much of what most teens spend their wages on. As a result, you have the power to save more than the adults tasked with paying for housing, utilities, and groceries.
Risk is relative.
When you have decades ahead of you before retirement, there’s plenty of time for a mistake to get worked out, and it’s unlikely that anything you lose is essential. Those who suffered most from the 2008 recession were those who had to withdraw their investments when times were tough. The vast majority of those who stayed in recovered from their losses and have profited nicely in the years since. Don’t need those dollars this year? Just stick with your plan. Time will likely work it out.
Warren Buffett isn’t afraid.
According to The Motley Fool Reviews, famed billionaire investor Warren Buffett has a famous line that goes like this: “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.” The wisdom behind the catchy line is that it’s easy for investing to look appealing when the entire investing world has done quite well. Translation: the market is high! It can look foolish to invest when your friends are complaining about their lost funds. Translation: the market is low! But such is the counter-intuitive nature of the stock market. Buy low, sell high. To buy low, sometimes that means getting in when everyone else is getting out. Global pandemics aren’t something everyone experiences in their lifetime. We’re living in fearful times. If you’re a teen with few expenses and decades to go until you need funds for retirement, it might be the perfect time to get serious about saving.
Ready to start saving? We’ll give you the tools.
At Biz Kid$, we’ve created dozens of clips, lesson plans, and activities on the topic of saving and investing. Here are a few of our favorites:
Pop quiz! What do the following have in common: lavish family vacations, spontaneous jet-setting, and ample family fun budgets? Answer: they’re all the subjects of parents’ 2020 daydreams.
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As family budgets are squeezed and travel restrictions expanded, it’s due time to remember an old saying: the best things in life are free.
And so today, we’re revisiting one of our favorite topics: creative family fun that comes with a pleasant price tag: $0.
Bigger or Better
Your junk drawer is a powerful thing; it’s about to create an afternoon of free fun. Find two small matching items, such as paper clips or mystery game pieces, then task your teams with trading the items in a public place or neighborhood for something “bigger or better.” (Wearing masks, of course!) Continue trading for a set amount of time before reconvening and awarding a prize to the team with the largest, most valuable item.
“Designer” Wallpaper Extravaganza
Refresh your kids’ bedroom walls with some decor of their own making! Using bare kraft paper, empty cardboard boxes, or even inverted grocery bags, Use paints to splatter, spray, stamp, and scribble your way to custom wallpaper that’s truly one-of-a-kind.
Pillow Mountain
Gather all of the pillows from around the house into the living room. Scoot your furniture together to form a barrier of couch backs, then fill the void with as many pillows and blankets as you can pack in. Your afternoon of tickle fights and hide-and-seek just got one cozy upgrade.
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Stick Fort Construction
Leaf piles are still months away. So what does Mother Nature have to offer right now? Sticks, twigs, and plenty of inspiration. Create a tent, fort, or castle using twigs and twine. Keep the sticks light, and offer a hand with “joint construction.” Best of all: the results are completely compostable.
You-Pick Picnic
Routine dinner doesn’t have to be dull. Once a week, take your family dinner out on the town. No, not to a restaurant; on a picnic! Rotate the destination selection assignment to a different family member each week. Cook what you normally would, then pack it up and have the picnic picker reveal their destination of choice.
Cardboard City
Wish you could take a trip to the big city? Bring the city to your dining room instead. Upcycle some large cardboard boxes into a skyline by using marker and a (grownup supervised) razor blade. Dim the lights, find a playlist of city-specific music, and dine away in your cardboard metropolis.
Snow Cone Parlor
Did Mother Nature have a hot streak? Make your own Snow Cones with a block of ice and a cheese grater. A sprinkling of sugar and a dot of vanilla extract will turn those flakes into a treat. Or, drizzle some ice-cold fruit juice on a densely packed snowball for a fruity treat.
Talent Show
You know your family is talented. Now show it off! Give each family member 5 minutes to recite poetry, spin a basketball on their finger, sing a song, or show off their most recent drawings. Mom and dad, you’re not off the hook. Our only advice: do this well before adolescence hits or the only talent you’ll see will be professional arm crossing.
Pantry Cook-Off Competition
Grocery budget running low? Don’t spill the beans; use the beans! (And anything else that’s been sitting idle in your pantry.) Host a cook-off with your kids, competing for best dish using nothing but what’s on hand. The challenge is real, the results are helpful, and the process will be a blast.
Indoor Camping
It’s time to put that tent taking up space in your garage to good use. Clean it off and bring it inside. Spend the night as a family in sleeping bags with flashlights and books in hand. All the fun of camping with none of the bug bites.
Scavenger Hunt
What turns bottle caps, graffiti, and people dressed in purple into a raucous good time? A scavenger hunt! Enlist the kids’ help to create a list, then set out to the local park or mall split into two teams, parents versus kids. The first team to return with pictures of all of the items on their list is crowned champion.
Puzzle Race
Puzzles have never been more exciting. Find two comparable puzzles and divide into two teams. Assemble as fast as you can, racing against each other for fastest puzzle completion. Have some popcorn on hand? Snacks make everything better.
Hero Hour
Parenting a toddler? Chances are, their heroes aren’t far away. Take your kids on a trip to the local fire department. Call ahead to confirm availability, and bring drawings or cookies to thank them for their service. Your kids will likely get to see their shiny equipment up close, and they won’t be the only ones whose days were made.
Local Activities
Sometimes, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel for free fun. Plenty of local venues have free activities. Library storytime, community concerts, and even “First Friday” events as many museums offer hours of fun without a single dollar in admission. Check your city’s community calendar to see what’s happening.
Paper Boat Race
Have access to a creek? Give each family member a sheet of waxed paper or aluminum foil and an assignment: craft the fastest boat possible. Then take your paper boats to the creek, position someone at a designated finish line, and let ‘em loose.
With unemployment rates skyrocketing in recent months to their highest levels in decades, parents around the country are facing similar conversations — about trimmed budgets, canceled vacations, and uncertain futures. Such topics can feel defeating, but they aren’t without precedent.
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In fact, most of us have them: vivid memories of a dinner table discussion about financial difficulty.
Dad lost his job.
The bills are past due.
You can’t go to camp this summer.
For some of us, the memories are marked by sadness and fear. For others, a sense of unity and closeness. When rainy days arrive, communicating clearly and peacefully is essential. And following these guidelines is a great place to start.
Have a Goal
First, know why you’re bringing the family’s financial situation to your kids’ attention. A bad reason: to vent your worry. A good reason: to provide understanding surrounding cutbacks and ask for kids’ participation in the family’s season of frugality. Before you begin your meeting, channel your inner Oprah Winfrey. Oprah? Yes, Oprah. It’s been reported that the Queen of Media begins every meeting with the same question: “What is your intention?” Defining yours will help keep you focused and rational if and when your children respond emotionally.
Offer Assurance
When I was nine or so, my mom was driving our car down a spiraling offramp when she said, “Oh gosh, we lost the power steering.” Not having any experience with driving myself, I assumed this meant we could no longer steer at all, and would soon be slamming into the curved concrete wall. To my young mind, the options were binary: steering or no steering. And my lack of experience brought immediate fear.
A child’s understanding of money is typically simpler than yours. You either have money to spend or you don’t, right? When bringing up your family’s financial situation, it’s important to rein in their wild imagination by speaking clearly about what is not happening. Perhaps, “We have plenty of money to pay for our rent and electricity, but we just need to cut back on eating out this month” or “We have plenty to eat, but we’re choosing to finish our leftovers so we can afford to pay for your soccer cleats.” In other words, no son, we’re not about to hit the wall.
Ask for Help
Kids don’t need to be included in every ebb and flow of your financial life. When you do include them, their role should be clear. Perhaps you’re explaining why they’ll need to make some money of their own in order to pay for camp. Or why you need them to pack their lunches for a few weeks. When your chat has concluded, your child should understand their role and know how they can contribute to the family’s success.
Follow Up
Some kids are natural talkers: the ones who repeat our hasty comments at the most inopportune moments. And others are internal processors — more likely to stare out the window than chat about their feelings. The first type will likely voice their evolving thoughts on your conversation, while the second may not. In the days following your heart-to-heart, ask questions to probe if there are any irrational fears or misunderstandings still lingering. Make space to clear the air, even while the situation is still at hand.
If your money problem is a temporary one, call another family meeting when it’s been resolved and explain how the issue was tackled and what role the family’s contributions played in bringing it to a close. Naturally, your kids will be happy to know that the money freeze has thawed. But another emotion will arise, as well: the satisfaction of knowing that they played a meaningful role in the family’s finances.
Each summer, teens exchange their bookbags for aprons, uniforms, and name tags, taking on seasonal jobs for extra cash. These grocery clerks, ice cream scoopers, and lifeguards fill the needs created by seasonal businesses while satisfying a need of their own: spending money.
But this summer is different. Many pools are closed (scratch lifeguarding), restaurants are struggling (forget ice cream scooping), and furloughed adults are filling many of vacancies that would have fallen to teens.
A recent Bloomberg article entitled “Young Americans Struggle to Find Jobs, Internships This Summer,” explained, well, you get the idea.
Even once-guaranteed jobs are being eliminated. A New York City, a program that employs around 75,000 teens each summer was scrapped altogether.
Owning a business is a tradeoff. Or is it?
In normal times, the biggest item in the “cons” column of the entrepreneurial life is something called “opportunity cost.” Merriam-Webster defines opportunity cost this way:
Sure, entrepreneurship is fun. Sometimes, flashy. And occasionally, lucrative. But the time and attention given to starting your own business takes time away from guaranteed income through other means. But this summer, the opportunity cost may not be a factor, after all.
If part-time jobs aren’t anywhere to be seen, there’s only one thing left to do: turn that idea into reality. Put your lawn-mowing, app-developing, jewelry-making, gadget-inventing skills to use.
How, you ask? You’ve come to the right place. Our collection of resources is waiting for you:
Lemonade and summertime: the inseparable duo has been quenching our thirst for millennia. Historians tell us that the sweet-and-sour beverage was invented by the Egyptians in 500 AD, though it wasn’t called lemonade at first. Its name was qatarmizat, a simple concoction of lemon juice and sugar.
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As for when tiny tycoons began selling the drinks streetside for some extra dough – that’s debatable. What isn’t? Lemonade stands are a fixture of childhood. And as with most things we hold dear, they aren’t always a cakewalk.
The Case of Unlawful Lemonade
If selling lemonade sounds like the most innocent of entrepreneurial endeavors, think again. In 2017, a five-year-old was found by officers to have committed a heinous crime: selling lemonade. Lacking a permit, the British Biz Kid was presented with a £150 fine before packing up her things and heading home. A similar saga unfolded two years before in Texas, when sisters Andria and Zoey Green set up a stand to raise $100 for a trip to the amusement park. Their endeavor was shuttered within an hour, quickly drawing the ire of reasonable people everywhere.
So common are the citrus curmudgeons that Country Time Lemonade established a legal defense fund to fight for their rights. Country Time Legal-Ade offers Biz Kids up to $300 in reimbursement for permits or legal fines. Their larger goal? Changing the laws altogether.
One state has stepped up already: Texas. Governor Gregg Abbott signed a bill into law last year that would allow Texan Biz Kids to operate lemonade stands in full legal authority.
Lemonade in the Age of Coronavirus
COVID-19 hasn’t stopped the entrepreneurial dreams of young people from putting out their own citrussy shingle, but it has brought some concerns. Adaptable Biz Kids have been seen offering hand sanitizer to customers while donning a mask and serving up sanitary cups of summertime.
Those who prefer not to take a risk have another option: digital ‘ade. Our Dollar-a-Glass game is free, virtual, and requires so mask at all.
As for the real stuff, the moms and dads behind Lemonade Day are rethinking their annual celebration for the age of quarantine, promising to do something they do best: turn lemons into lemonade.
As summer officially begins, it seems that any joys the season typically brings have been canceled or closed. Pools? Closed. Camp? Canceled. Plans? Scrapped.
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But what if we told you there was a place that was open for business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? One where masks weren’t even needed, everything was free, and your wildest dreams were granted?
It exists. It’s called the imagination. And this summer, it’s more important than ever.
Fighting Imagination’s Kryptonite
Despite what you may have heard, the place where we defy gravity, design mansions, and dine with celebrities is alive and well. For most of us, it’s just gone dormant – for one rectangular, pocket-sized reason. Before phones saturated every moment of free time, we had something called idle time.
Waiting in line at the grocery store, commuting to work on the bus, and lying in bed before falling asleep, our minds were once left with nothing else to focus on. In those spaces, our brains would leap into problem-solving mode, creatively devising solutions to puzzles large and small.
As quoted in Inc. Magazine, “Numerous studies and much accepted wisdom suggest that time spent doing nothing, being bored, is beneficial for sparking and sustaining creativity.” Any guesses as to what the magazine ascribes to our lost, well, boredom? You guessed it: “With our iPhone in hand – or any smartphone, really – our minds, always engaged, always fixed on that tiny screen, may simply never get bored. And our creativity suffers.”
The Key to Stimulating Your Imagination? Nothing.
As famed broadcaster Walter Cronkite was nearing the end of his life, a reported named Peggy Noonan asked him what he did for fun. After all, he was one of the most successful journalists in the history of the world. His answer? “I like to go home and stare at the wall.” Noonan took his advice and wrote about the practice in an article years later: “If I just sit back and stare at the wall—and this is a good thing to do, for you’ll see a crack that reminds you of a stream that reminds you of a river that reminds you of a steamer that reminds you of a picture you saw when you were five—the reverie is soon interrupted by the rattle and hum, by the beeps and bings and buzzes. The fax, the computer, the call from the carpool.”
So what’s the key to diving into our imagination? Turning off everything else and allowing the ideas to flow. Silence your phone, put it in another room, and set a timer. 30 minutes, perhaps. Lay in the grass or sit in a chair with a pad of paper. Let your imagination run wild. The likes and comments will be waiting for you when you get back.
