Photo by Hannah Stelzl
I am focused on entrepreneurship! When my wife and I first started homeschooling our children we caught the vision for a different kind of education. One that would build the not-so-academic side of those we are raising, but still equip them with the essential reading, writing, and arithmetic skills needed to succeed.
My schooling history has made me more risk adverse than I’d like. It’s taken me twenty-five years to unlearn the principles of:
- Mastering the No. 2 Pencil
- Only submitting what was asked for
- Never thinking outside the box – putting away all creativity
- Thinking that wisdom is somehow related to memorizing a certain number of biology terms
(and the list goes on)…
Photo by Hannah Stelzl
With this in mind, my kids are working on businesses – all the time, thinking about how to create new opportunities, serving the basic needs of those around us, establishing value, setting fees, and selling. This year marks another year of Sarah’s annual Valentine’s Day Cookie bake. This year she sold over 200 cookies by cold calling with a compelling message. Some even gave additional money or donated without accepting cookies! Of course she had help from Tiny-Tim who enjoys cooking (and perhaps even more, eating the left overs.)
Through this project we’ve studied how to discover a new opportunity, how to avoid working at McDonalds for mininum wage, how to sell to strangers (cold calling), how to develop a message that sells,…but also, how to count the cost of goods sold (COGS), the difference between sales, gross profit, net profit, and losses due to wrong or canceled orders. Fortunately we have not had to deal with customer service issues on this particular project, but we’ve covered that in other projects, and hope to minimize this in the future.
Photo by Hannah Stelzl
What are you doing today to extend beyond what you learned in school – to think creatively, and to find business opportunities where there don’t seem to be any?
© 2011, David Stelzl
