These elementary students were taught a hard lesson about big brother government overreaching. But they made me proud.
Earlier this week I took off half a day this morning to chaperone my son’s elementary class at “BizTown,” a mock city that has jobs, inventory, business loans, and payroll. So grateful for these moments. When I first started my business 15 years ago, it was days like today that I planted those seeds for. I remember telling myself, “grind it out now so you don’t have to later.”
Well, I still grind just as hard now as back then but I have freedom of time to choose when that grind is.
The first pic was early AM before the kids rolled in.
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And when they came in they rocked it.
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- The student Mayor opened the town for business
- The CEO of our gas station applied for a business loan
- CFO created and submitted a purchase order for inventory (chips and drinks)
- Once loan was approved, CFO printed and signed checks for all five employees (students)
- Another business received our purchase order and delivered it to us
- Sales Managers discussed how much to mark up the prices
The facility recommended prices for our food and drinks start at $1 a unit. My hustlers wanted to do $6.
Told them that’s cool, but they also have to consider customers and what’s a fair deal. They humbly lowered price to $4. 😆
Man, they crushed it. They had lines and lines of customers.
Their loan that was to be paid off by end of day was paid off before the half-way mark. They excitedly congratulated each other and talked about the net profit beyond their gross earned after the loan was paid.
True to real life, the government (an employee at the kids museum BizTown?) creeped in saying, “you’re doing great, but maybe you should lower your prices?”
I know they had the best of intentions, but I was torn. The kids were gouging a bit, but it was their call. They decided amongst themselves and I wasn’t about to override their consensus.
This was also the point of the whole experience, to help students understand supply and demand. Some students didn’t like the price and walked away, as they were free to do so. Others came back when they realized they were low on funds and questioned the price afterwards. And to the team’s credit, they decided to offer discounts on repeat customers.
But the store of kids I watched over made me proud. After the employee suggested lowering the prices, one said “But no one is saying no to the price and they still want it, so we shouldn’t change it!”
Glad that these little entrepreneurs stood strong with their democratic decision.
