Biz Lab Live! Episode 3

Sam.

Hello, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist, leadership coach. I am here with.

David Fryman for lawyer for startups and entrepreneurs. I remember what I do. Promise.

And Tyler Cook for marketing stuff.

We're having. We're having a fun, technologically sound day. We went live and I think my button got clipped, so like double. So our original live is like 4. 4 seconds. So here we are, live number two. Live number two. So if you haven't been to the show before, this is Biz Lab live, where we basically pick a business idea out of this jar. We don't know what we're gonna get. And real time, we just come up with a business plan and a strategy and a to scale and to start and to protect ourselves legally and to market it and to get clients. And sometimes we know what we're talking about and sometimes we have absolutely no experience with the topic that we're talking about and you just don't know what you're going to get. And it's pretty obvious when we're talking out of our ass. Okay, guys, you want to blow on the jar? Fairy Godmother Dust startup.

That's what it was.

I still need a bigger jar. Can't actually fit my hand in here. I got two.

Hold on.

All right, are you ready? This is great for you guys with kids. We got lemonade stand.

Oh, all right. We're building a lemonade stand.

The lemonade stand.

Lemonade stand.

Oh, man. Did you guys ever have a lemonade.

Stand when you did not actually as a kid?

No, no.

I sold chocolates for various things, but did not actually do a lemonade stand.

Tyler, how about you?

We, you know, me and my siblings, we did a couple of them, but I don't ever remember them being that successful. Mostly. Mostly because of where I lived, like where we had it. There wasn't very much traffic, like, so we would sit out there and like two cars would go by. So it was never worth it. Yep.

Yeah, I think. I don't know if we have lemonade. I remember selling cookies. I remember getting excited and like wanting to bake. And I'm sure I spent way more money on my parents ingredients or using up my parents ingredients. Then we actually made selling cookies.

Now when you were selling these cookies, was it very similar to like the lemonade stand? Like did you have, you know, the car table at the side of the road with like the just big sheet of paper or whatever? Yeah, y.

Yeah, it's hard because I don't really remember my childhood. Like I Remember snippets, But I don't really remember all of it. I don't know what happened.

Katie, I think you touched on a really important thing in business, which is there's a huge, huge advantage of running your business with somebody else paying the costs.

Right.

That is a great advantage in business. It's hard to do, but if you can move all your costs off somebody else and just keep the profit, you've really had a gold mine, practically. It's tough. But if you're a kid and you're really cute and your parents like you.

Right.

You know, we're designing a lemonade stand. So, you know, I'd encourage you to really milk your parents for everything. It's going to give you a huge leg up.

Well, okay, so here, let's talk about. The actual problem here is that parents like a. Yes. They want their children to be entrepreneurial and to learn how to make money and to, you know, feel proud of something. And also, like, it can get expensive footing the bill for some of this stuff. Right. Like, it would almost make sense to have like a lemonade stand in a box where things are delivered to you once a month so that you can go out and do your lemonade stand and actually do the accounting so that it works out financially.

Then franchise.

Yeah, but it would be like, it would be like a, like, you know, those chef boxes that you get where you get all the ingredients, but you also, you might get like a starter kit. Right. And so, and it gives you some tips. Like find a well trafficked area. Like go at prime time during the day when it's hot and people, people are thirsty. You know, go to places, go to areas where people like, want a snack or want something to drink, like maybe in front of a dispensary. Who knows?

Are you hungry?

I love, I love all the stories of the girl stick, the girl Scouts who like set up selling box of cookies to all these super stoned pot smokers. Yeah.

So funny. Yeah. You could also do like a little bit running trails, parks.

Yeah. Yep. But it, you know, like the things that you need to supply yourself are a table, maybe it comes with like a little box for, for giving change. You could even have a little square reader.

Yeah.

If you take credit cards.

Venmo.

Venmo. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it would almost. You could, you could have it set up. So like there's an app for kids they could have on their little tablet where they get to like keep track of all the money that they're making. How many lemonades they sell. And it could be this like this whole learning experience experience where they get to like figure out the math from the back end and see how much money they're making, what percentage profit they're making. And their parents get to really guide them through this entrepreneurial experience.

So can we design this? Can we? Instead of the actual stand, let's design franchise. I'm using franchise here. But yeah, we, we're gonna provide lemonade stands to kids. Lemonade stand. And we have economies of scale now because we're not buying ingredients, you know, as a one off. So we get to do it at scale.

Yep.

So we get good. A better deal with our suppliers.

Yeah, I like that. Yeah. So I mean, you know, like the minute made lemonade that comes frozen.

Yeah.

I mean you could sell it, you could ship that with dry ice, Right?

Okay, let's say probably.

Probably. Or you could just give them the raw ingredients, like a bottle of lemon juice.

You sell the wrong ingredients and some.

Water and it gives them instructions like put two cups of lemon juice and you know, one cup of this, whatever. I don't really know.

Do the raw ingredients because then you have the, you can put organic on all of your marketing.

Right.

Who doesn't like that?

Yeah, love that, love that.

Also what you can do is instead of shipping it directly because people are buying it online anyway. It's not like people are going to a store to buy this. You can maybe facilitate, you know, have your suppliers so like, you know, you get like a list of links directly. But so this way it's not your supplier shipping it to you and then you shipping it out. I would just go direct from your suppliers with whatever bulk pricing that you can negotiate.

Right. Well, I mean you could also go through schools and community centers and you could have a percentage of the profit via fundraiser for the school or the community center. You know, so like, you know how kids are always like selling shit to people for other wrapping paper. And you have magazines, we have the book fairs and you know, chocolates, whatever. I don't know, I think that's a pretty good idea.

That's a really good idea. Because now it's not just about the bottom line profit.

I have to be honest, I was not confident when we pulled this. I was like, we might need to pull another.

Well, so the other thing, the other thing you could do is because I, I would say say that if you're kind of giving them this box that says here's everything you're going to need to be successful, you could also have different versions of that where one is more of a blank slate. Right. I'm just thinking if you had, like, a little stand, and in that little stand, there was, like, a little banner that you could put up on top, it could be, you know, kind of a fun. More fun activity for the parents and kids to actually design the banner versus hey, you're not very creative. We'll just give you a banner that's.

Kind of already done.

So you can kind of sell different subscription boxes based off of what they want their experience to be like too. Right.

Well, have you ever seen, like, that plastic. I'm sure you guys have kids, so, like, that plastic banner material, but it's also dry erase.

Yeah.

So you give them, like, a whole bunch of dry erase markers that they could do, and they could really change what they sell every single weekend, you know?

Oh, you know what? Okay, can we. Can we broaden this up from just lemonade stands, to be honest?

Yeah.

So what if we just did, like, you know, kid, kids sales topics.

Yeah.

Because one of the. So my. My son is in kindergarten right now. He's in kindergarten, right. And just yesterday he came home and he was adamant, like, absolutely ad adamant that we had to put Starbursts in with his lunch. And I was like, like, you don't really even love Starbursts that much. Like, why are you so concerned that we pack you Starbursts in with your lunch? And he's like, well, this other girl, she brought, like, a big bag, and she just, like, shared with everybody, and it was awesome. And I want to share. And so I was like, okay. Like, that's super sweet. Like, let's, Let's. I will pack you Starburst so you can share. And then the other day was like, parents lunch day or grandparents lunch day. So I went to lunch with my son, and he had Starburst, and he went around to a few different classmates and handed them out. But what I was also thinking is I was like, maybe we should go to Costco, buy some suckers.

Right?

Buy some lollipops, and you just sell them for, like, 25 cents a piece during lunch. Right. I mean, theoretically, we could have this subscription box where every month we deliver you a box of lollipops. Right? And here's our suggestion on what you should sell this for. And you work a game plan out with your kid to sell that item. And every month it could be something different. You could do suckers, you could do lollipops, you could. Or cookies, you could do lemonade. Right?

Yeah. And you could do like energy bars. You could do like stuff for kids that play sports. Little like, like energy juice packs.

Yeah, so. So my kid already, already does this. She's second grade. She takes stuff that we buy in bulk from Costco, like lollipops, whatever, and then trades them in school that she just stuffs into her bag when no one's paying attention. So. Yeah, but you know, we can really turn this into a, a profitable enterprise here.

Yeah.

But the best part is it doesn't have to be profitable. Meaning the one time my kids actually did, they were selling, it was. Might have been lemonade, but brownies or whatever it was. The thing that struck me as most interesting is when you tell them they actually have to make change.

Right, Right.

And so now it's about teaching them math, is about teaching them sales. Someone walks by, how do you approach them? You're not gonna yell at somebody, hey, buy my stuff. Right. You're gonna have to have a conversation. You're gonna have to be charming and you're gonna have to, to figure out the kind of. Right. So I'm thinking as a parent, I could care less if my, if the project was literally profitable. Right. When you're selling a business in a box, Right. That style of business, the most challenging thing is that you don't want to kind of promise profit, but you want to create something that's going to be profitable for your own customers. Right?

Right.

You don't have to do that.

Right.

We're selling an experience dressed up in a business. So from a marketing perspective, we're touting. Not exactly. Look how you can. You can retire early and quit your full time job by just lemonade out of your driveway. It'd be great if that works. But really the pitch is going to be give your child an introduction to entrepreneurship, Teach them arithmetic, teach them sales. How do you have a conversation? You turn it into an educational program.

Yeah.

And you turn into like a full experience. You can maybe you can have a leaderboard, you can have a portal where they can interact with each other and these kids can meet each other. You can run competitions. Yeah, there's a lot here.

Yeah.

Well, I'm dying over here. The reason I'm dying is because I'm envisioning David in his own episode of Breaking Bad where he has networked with kids across multiple school districts. They all come to his house every Saturday morning to pick up the goods. And he has assigned territories. It's amazing.

Oh my God, I want to do this.

Knuckles and like, and then he has like little film crew and every little like mini episode that he does for social media describes the thing that he's absolutely never going to do. And then by the end of the episode, he's humbling. Far, far worse.

It's going to end with this dystopian future where these like 10 year olds are walking around with baseball bats, breaking kneecaps or getting into their territory. It's. This can go badly.

At some point a pizza ends up on a roof. We don't know how. Yeah, well, what I love about, what I love about this idea is that yes, like, this can be entrepreneurial, but it could also be a help to parents because I know after Christmas most parents are like, we have way too much stuff.

Yeah.

And getting rid of kids toys is really, really difficult because the kids don't really want to let it go, so. And of course, Hanukkah also anytime where kids are getting mass amounts of presents, Right. You know, and also spring cleaning, you know, so you could set them up with like everything that they would need to host their own little tag sale that like a. Not an estate sale. What's the word? A garage sale.

Yeah, yeah.

But the kids get to go through and say, oh, you know, this stuffed dinosaur I don't use anymore, I bet I could sell it for this many dollars, you know, and then they can go and they can kind of track like how, how good they were at pricing stuff and what sold and what didn't.

Yeah, yeah, I think, I think a good piece of this. You know, David, I think you'd mentioned having some sort of app. I mean, version one of this, it could be just a very simple Google spreadsheet, Right. That already has the math done. Where? Okay, this month it's. It's suckers, right? So you just enter in how much it cost you for the suckers and then you can play with the numbers and say, okay, you know, Harvey, if you sold these for 25 cents apiece and you sold all of them, this is how much money you would make versus if you gave them away for free to your friends, this is how much money you would make. Right. Like they can kind of illustrate those different things and how they update and stuff, stuff like that. That'd be interesting.

You have different versions for grade levels. You know what I mean? Like you have a 6 year old and a 10 year old might be interested, but in different ways you can kind of track that you can have premium features in your app. Right.

I'm sorry, I'm just Imagining what the teenagers are selling to each other. I don't think they're selling candy to each other.

Yeah. Advertising campaign.

I was. I was a goody two shoes and call in high school, but, you know, I know everyone else wasn't.

There's some. What are you talking about?

Marketing campaign. I was like, do you want to learn how to sell Pokemon cards? Sign up right here. We'll provide you with the raw materials step by step guide. And for our premium package, you get a consultation with our general counsel. But what you could do, for example, is charge for. Let's say. Let's say one, we partner with Katie McManus for holistic selling adapted to kids selling lemonade. And so in addition to getting the materials, you can also purchase access to a course that will guide you in various versions for age appropriateness on how to handle a sales call. Meaning somebody shows up at your.

No, no. I have the best idea because. Okay, this is my favorite thing to do with kids when they have to raise money for something around the fall. Have you ever sold Halloween insurance?

No.

So I came up with this. I think I came up with this. I think I did. Anyway, so.

Yes, children around Halloween. Is this what we're about to hear?

So you come up with three different policies. You come up with like, the pumpkin policy, the ghost policy, and the ghoul policy. Right? And the pumpkin policy covers basic things like someone came over and knocked over your decorations or they did some light TPing. The. The Ghost policy covers more serious things like silly string attacks and like, more extensive TPing. And then the ghoul one covers a game. Right? So if anyone does any of those things to your house on Halloween night, the person who sold this policy to you will go and help clean it up.

Is that thing.

Well, I did this. I did this. And I made so much money for this program that I was raising money for in school. What I went around and I was like, do you want some Halloween insurance? And my neighbors were like, what is Halloween insurance? I was like, let me tell you. And I went through. And I'm like, you know, if any of those things happen, happen, I will come. You. Your. My number is on the back of the certificate. And you print out these, like, funny certificates that, like, you know, are, like, a good job trying. And. Yeah, so after. And we both signed it, you know, you. It's like a contract. And I will. I will come and clean up after. But this could be the thing that all kids across in this program get to go and sell in October. Is Halloween insurance.

That would be pretty good.

And then you get to teach them about selling it.

So this is really a. Educational program about entrepreneurship. Yeah, that's the branding.

Yeah.

Various ways to teach kids about business, which is, I mean, student loans is in the news, alternative careers, people rethinking whether they need college education or four year college, people looking for alternatives. And we're going to fit right into that.

Yeah. Huh.

So the pitch is get your kids. Teach your kids the basics of entrepreneurship in a fun and entertaining way with a way for them to network with each other and meet other kids around the country. All right, how do we want to market this? Tyler.

You'Re nailing it.

You're nailing it.

I mean, you nailed the value prop, right? The one thing that I would take a step further is making sure that you're connecting it to the benefits for the child. Right. Like, I mean, you and me, David, as parents, when we're thinking about one, the type of person that we want our kids to be, but then also, like, you know, I want to teach my kids certain skills so that they can go out and be a valuable member of society.

Right.

Like that they can do lots of things and they have the freedom to do what they kind of want to do. And so you can kind of position this way, this, of, hey, by, by learning these skills here. Your kid is never going to be the one that gets bullied. Right. Or if they are getting bullied, they'll know how to stand up for themselves.

Right.

They'll be, they'll be the ones that are kind of the leaders of their group because they have these skills instead of following everybody else. Right. So it's not that they're gonna be popular. It's. They're gonna have a good amount of character development and they're gonna kind of have that solid foundation that will just like, drastically, well, hopefully drastically impact their life in a positive way.

Right, right, right. Well, and let's talk about, you know, the people who are going through high school, going through college, entering the job market. Now, they don't like, and I'm making a gross generalization, but there's so many after school activities and extracurriculars and like, extra that they have to do to get into the right college. Right. That they don't have time to get a job, they don't have time to work to get that experience. So they're literally entering the workforce at 21, 22. They don't have any experience in any of this stuff. And yet, I know it sounds silly but doing something like this early on would at least give them some general understandings as to how businesses work and see what it takes. I. I have some friends who own a shop. It's really. If you ever go to Cape Cod and you're in Harwich Fork Murphy's General Store, they have the most fun merchandise in there and, like, great souvenir stuff. Anyway, they have a really hard time finding staff in the summer that know how to, like, sell and. And be engaging and keep an eye on merchandise and make sure no one's shoplifting. But this kind of experience, doing something like this, would really teach those skills.

Yeah. You know, I had awesome parents. I'm going to preface this in case one of them ever watched this. Like, I had awesome parents. Like, 100% awesome parents.

One.

One thing that I, in my opinion, my parents did not do very well is, is talk about finances. Like, even. Even to this day, my. My dad is really not. Not secretive, but he just holds financial data very, very close to his chest. He's never told me how much he makes every month. He's never told me, like, any of his investment strategies. Although I wouldn't be surprised if they're, like, closet millionaires, to be honest. Right. Like, just with my dad, he's an electrical engineer. He knows where every penny has gone that he's ever spent since he was, like, three.

But.

But with that, I developed some really bad financial habits. I mean, they. They taught me how to balance a checkbook, but who balances their checkbook now? You know, like, you don't necessarily really need to, but starting my own business and things, like, I had to learn how to read a profit and loss statement. Like, I had to learn all of these financial things where, if I was able to sit down with Harvey, like, it's because it impacted my life so negatively. One of the things that I'm very passionate about is making sure that Harvey understands, you know, here's the money that comes in, right? Here's where that money goes, and this is how much you have left over. It sounds really simple, but, like, I'm turning 30 this month. It wasn't until I was, like, 27 that I realized, oh, you know, I'm just paying my minimum balance on my credit card, but my interest is outweighing my minimum balance.

Right.

That's why I haven't been able to pay this down. I was freaking 27 before that clicked. This subscription box really could solve some of those things really, really early on where those things click up, oh, this cost Me this much. This, this is how much money I have available. If I do these actions, I can get this much money back and then I can reinvest that or have freedom to spend in other areas.

Right. Well, Tyler, I mean, it sounds like it's going to start off with like small, little, like lemonade stands and little business too. But it can evolve as kids grow older into a financial literacy program, you know, where they're, they're taught exactly how money works, exactly how credit works. Yeah, but it's made fun in a way that, like, is engaging and they actually want to interact. Like maybe there's like a board game or, or a video game that goes with it that teaches these things and.

And maybe kids become passionate enough that they actually start their own thing. I don't know who posted this a while ago, but I had a good laugh about it where this family has a. They have their kids run it, but the parents are obviously involved. It's a, it's one of those, like, giant inflatable companies.

I saw that. I saw that. Yes.

The son just like read through the financials and ordered a new, like, bounce.

House on his own thousand dollars, like, grabbed his parents credit card. So, so just. Okay. Tyler and I are having like an inside joke moment. Okay. So the, the parents bought a bounce house for the kids. And the kids basically had to manage renting it out every weekend. So they would get phone calls, they would register, they would, you know, put it in the reservation book. They would coordinate with the parents to go and deliver it and pump it up and then go and shut it down and bring it back. They would deal with any maintenance, so any holes that happen, they patch them and blah, blah, blah, blah. And it was so successful and they made so much money that one of the kids realized, okay, well, another bounce house is just a thousand dollars more and we have like $2,000 in the bank and we can make this much more money every month if we just bought another bounce house. So he just grabbed his, his dad's credit card and purchased it and doubled the business. By the way, the point I made.

Earlier, which is that if you can get someone else to put the costs of your business, you will make a fortune.

Full circle.

Oh, man. I mean, the ultimate obm.

What?

Yeah. Right. Right. I think so. We have a marketing plan. We have a content plan, like the product developed. We basically know our partners that we're. We're going through. I also think that we could partner up with banks so that they could like, do a special, like, walkthrough bank account for these little businesses by these or sponsor.

Like we could have, for example, we could have our app interface with a bank, can pitch it to banks and offer them exclusivity, which will help us too, on the back end. Go to a bank and say, you know, give us some cut of something.

Right.

And in exchange, you get access to this entire user base. All these kids are going to be opening up accounts.

Right.

I can tell you, Kit, I opened up a bank account for my daughter because she actually made a counteroffer to the Tooth Fairy. It's one of my proudest moments. She got $2 from the tooth Fairy. She rejected it and she demanded $100 because. Because she's amazing and she brushes her teeth and her hair is great. She had a whole list. She wrote a letter to the Tooth Fairy for her counteroffer of $100. To get that letter, obviously I have to give her $100. Right. Because, like, she negotiated with a tooth fairy. But, you know, she has open a bank account and she was, like, enthralled and she. Now she wants to know how can she get money in her bank account.

Right.

Money in. And so, you know, go through the. Go through the really basics that would appeal to a kid like my daughter.

Oh, yeah. But the other cool thing about this is banks are going to see that they're like, cool. We're going to have a lifelong client.

Yeah.

Like that kid who opens a bank account with us. They're going to have good feelings towards us. We're going to be the first lender they approach. If they are, you know, getting a car loan, if they are getting a home loan. All these things.

I would say I have just. I mean, for my business, I opened up an account with a bank when I started my business. But my personal banking, I have the same bank account I had as a child that was retitled in my name when I turned 18, I guess, but it was open for me as a kid. That's the only account I've ever used. I have no, the. The inertia. You would need to, like, change your personal banking, you know. Yeah. Chase got a lifelong client. You know, unless they, like, you know, do something really terrible, there's going to be a huge burden for me to leave them for my personal accounting. And you. If the whole pitch is teach your kids entrepreneurship, one thing they're all going to do is open bank accounts. I would think banks would love that.

Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah. I think this is a great idea.

I think this is epic.

Yeah.

If anyone in the comments wants to run with this idea, I'm happy to consult on this.

Well, you know, you could do, like, a quarterly box. You can have your setup box. It has, like, all the stuff for the stand and the sign and. And all the things. And you could also do quarterly boxes. So, like, every quarter, you're getting something seasonal. Right. Because lemonade in January when it's really cold out. Not the best chocolate in.

In. In January. It would be lemonade in July. Yeah.

Yeah. I. Yeah, I. I wish I had time to actually do this.

I know. Now with Girl Scouts, huh? Why not? They're already selling cookies. Why don't you teach them how to do it? And then, you know, troops.

Troops.

They have troops.

Yeah. Yeah, sure.

All right. Troops. So, I mean, you know, troops. Would. Could. Could. We could sell a group package for hills.

That. That movie about the Beverly Hills Girl Scouts troop. Yeah, sorry, I was thinking through that.

Confirming that we're using the right nomenclature. Yeah. So, you know, we can sell a group package, and that would be. We would have affiliate programs with coaches like Katie. It would teach you some videos on this.

Yep.

And. And that could be a premium service. Right. So many parents might just want this stuff to run it. And we can have various levels.

The app. I think the app could also be on a small, like, nominal subscription.

Right.

You know, $3 a month or something.

Right.

You know, so at least pays for itself and pays for the engineer that runs it.

Right. And access to a leaderboard and access to, you know, various challenges. There can be like, you know, challenges. We can drop.

Like a back to school, a back to school challenge, a holiday challenge. There could be, or, you know, there's.

Like, a precedent setting a heat wave in Central California. You can drop a challenge of, you know, help. Help your neighbors stay cool. Do you know? And.

No, I don't know. I don't know. I feel like there's some liability in sending kids out into 114 degree heat.

Oh, yeah. You know what? That's.

We do it all the time in Arizona. What are you talking about?

Dry heat.

It's a dry heat. Oh, man. Guys, I think. I think we got it.

We're gonna do this.

Yeah, I want to do it.

This is why, you know.

You know, what we need is.

We need.

We need, like, another team.

Yeah.

Listen to these conversations. Put together all the parts that we would need.

Yeah.

And we, you know, we obviously pay them for our time. Time. And they're working.

You'd be the best way to set, I think, to Set this up. What type of company do us three need to create? Is it like a holding company that then we could have somebody that is interested in this coming like eventual company or whatever.

Adventure lab.

We need something like a venture lab where we employ staff that's like oh. Working with these ideas and testing them and running trials and then when there's. We hit a jackpot, we spin it off to a new company.

Oh, oh, oh.

Yeah.

This is the idea. This is the idea. In springtime what we do is we send them those little cups, the little like cardboard cups and they have to get the dirt but they plant seeds and they get to sell plants. Plants to plant later in the spring in their parents gardens or in people's gardens.

Yes, you got it.

That is what they sell in the, in the springtime.

Yeah, well, so I mean there's, there's lots of different things that they could sell. I mean if, if we wanted to take it even a step further, I mean theoretically you could also do sports equipment. Right? I mean that one would be a little harder because it's a little bit more niche. But yeah, plants.

I mean so from a marketing perspective, I'm curious how, how broad can the niche be before we start working against ourselves?

Yeah, yeah. I mean so here's from a marketing perspective, but also more the operationally it's.

Basically the same business. I'm just curious because you know, everyone that all the conventional wisdom around, at least what I'm hearing from, you know, the marketing that's addressed to laypeople is that like over a niche. You know, don't be afraid of being so extremely specific. Don't worry about turning off anyone else. And I'm curious if you know, so obviously lemonade is the most niche you can get. Expand to other food issues, expand to other. Fundamentally the business is buying things for cheap, turning them into something and selling them for more money. That's like, you know, the basic business model. Are we an education company? Are we a lemonade stand facilitation company? How do you, how do you sell that?

I think we're an education company and I think there are a few different things that we offer. But I think one of the cool ways that we can get leads online is we can have like a little mini quick quiz. Tell us about what your kids interests are. You know, do they really like plants and outdoors? Do they really like connecting with people? Do they really enjoy helping people? You know, and so there's a little quiz and of course like to see the results they give their Name and their email and then they're like, oh cool. You know, based on the results, like oh cool. Your parent, your kids really like connecting with folks, meeting new people. The lemonade stick stand option is going to be great for you. Oh, your kid's quieter and likes nature. Cool. Like what about the plant selling model or whatever, you know, or do you want to get them out of there and. But it enters them into the sequence. So where you can, you know, do some email marketing to them, right. Tyler, Tyler's specialty and, and really just introduce it to them. Because I know I don't have kids, but I have, I know people who have kids like you guys. You know, if your kid's really shy and you want them to feel more comfortable socially, you know, something like this could really get them out of their, like out of their corner and interacting with people in a different way.

The.

So also the other thing is, so kind of, this thought is kind of twofold, right? The first thing is the, the products that we are asking somebody to sell need to be, need to attract masses, right? Like we're where you're basically teaching somebody to buy, buy something in bulk and resell it for a markup to make your profit, right? So that's where lemonade comes in and different drinks like that, like hot, hot chocolate, I mean, right. Afternoon coffee, sit outside somebody's office, you know, wait for everybody to leave or whatever. Candy bars, baked goods, things like that, those are, those are low cost. You can buy them in bulk, but you can distribute them to the masses.

Right.

The second piece of this needs to be depending on the age group, it has to be very easy for parents to also implement, right? Like I'm not sending my 5 year old door to door right now. He's gonna get distracted, he's gonna get lost and I'm gonna have no idea where he is.

So it's worth pointing out that you, your first concern of your 5 year old was that he was gonna get distracted, which is amazing. I'm just gonna leave that there. Keep going. I'm sorry. He's gonna, out there.

Yeah, he's gonna forget what he's supposed to be doing and eating all of the candy bars halfway down our driveway. But so like those types of things, it needs to be something that the parents can easily interact with and also easily do. Obviously if we were focusing on 15 year olds, 16 year olds, those older age groups, they have a bit more freedom to kind of go out and do things on their own. But for the younger kids, it needs to Be easy. Right. It can't be difficult. It needs to be something that the parents can do, kind of facilitate without taking loads and loads of their time.

Right.

And so those two things. Yes. We're an agent. I would say that we're an education company. The products that we're selling need to be easy.

Right, Right. Yeah.

So that would be my criteria on. Okay. You know, for the April box. What is the April box that we are shipping out to everybody? Can it be sold to the masses, essentially? Right. And can parents easily interact with their children with this?

Right.

If it passes those two things, I'd say go ahead.

Right.

Yeah.

Cool. I think, I think we've covered it. Everyone. Yeah.

Yeah. And we got it.

Yeah. Cool. If anyone wants to be the person to put all this together, we're happy to partner with you.

Or if anybody knows somebody who's already doing this. I'd be curious to know if there is any companies that are doing.

Right.

If anybody knows of any company doing anything similar. Post it in the comments. Hit up Katie. Hit up me. Hit up David. I'd be, I'd be very interested to sit down and talk with this company and kind of see what their experience has been, because this is very exciting.

Exciting.

This is good stuff.

I know. I, I, like I said, I was kind of skeptical when we pulled this. I didn't think we'd come up with much, but here we are. Well, and let's talk about the math. We haven't talked about the math. How much is this money is this business making? Right.

Yeah.

So depending, I mean, I think, I think the initial box, depending on, I think you have to have the stand kind of mass produced. So it's a big investment up front. But if you're selling it, I don't know, like $200 to, like, get all of the beginning materials. And then I don't know, like, depending on how often they get a box, like $30 a box.

Right.

And then it's just negotiating how. How expensive.

The nice part about this business is that it's, it's relatively easy. Well, simple. Not easy, but relatively simple to scale because once you have the basic structure of the business and you have the numbers that work, you can just do more of it.

Right.

And as you market, you know, you're, you're selling, you're selling more. Hopefully you can sell directly from your vendors. So it's not like you buy lots of lemonade ingredients. Then you have to, like, receive and repackage and reship. I don't know, practically if that's an option. But that's something I would think about, right?

Yeah. I mean, you'd have to. You'd have to figure out different distribution centers and where you're shipping things from and so on, so forth. You could also start regionally. You don't necessarily have to go the whole us.

Right.

You can start one in one portion and then just kind of expand out. Yeah, yeah.

And we can start with just a lemonade stand and then maybe introduce an app, maybe introduce affiliate partnerships. I would imagine that various brands might be interested in giving us a break in exchange for being able to use their logo, their name, their taglines. So if I'm, you know, a organic, healthy alternative to lemonade.

Right.

I might see this as an opportunity to get in the minds of a generation of kids that are going to associate this great experience with their brand.

Right.

And it might be worth it for me as a. As a. As a food brand. I might seriously discount the product to get that. And that's where the profit comes in on the other side, right?

Yeah. Company sponsorships. I mean, I think even eventually you could get companies to pay you to be a part of it. Right. Be featured in that month's box or have that sponsorship with. With X Company. Obviously you'd want. Need a. A, not a small number of people paying for the subscription box to make it worth it. But yeah, I think company sponsorships, things like that would be. Would be epic.

Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Okay, well, if we ever have a lot of time on our hands, let's do this. Everyone who's watching, sorry for the technological difficulties. I hope this has been entertaining and you've learned lots about how you would start a business like this. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach.

I'm David Freyman, attorney for startups and entrepreneurs.

Tyler Cook, marketing guru, guy expert, whatever you want to say. Special email marketing, helping people grow.

And this is Biz Lab Live, where we come up with a very random business idea every other week. So thank you so much for joining. We'll see you again in two weeks on Thursday at 7pm and if you have any ideas or any business types that you would like for us to add to the jar.

Yeah, drop in the comments.

Drop it in the comments. DM me. We'd be happy to add it to our list. Anyway, have a great Thursday, everyone, and we'll talk to you soon. And we're gonna do music out. Okay, cool.

That was awesome. That was really great.

And I know it went through.

Yeah, it did go through. I checked.

Yeah.

What's interesting is the LinkedIn user comes as a LinkedIn user, but I could see his name when I went to the actual LinkedIn to watch it.

That's. Yeah, it's. It's their privacy setting for right outside.

Right.

I don't know.

It's weird, I gotta say, the one time where, like, I've been envious of my client is I have a client who. This is his. His adventure lab. His entire business is. He has a team, and he just, like, comes up with ideas like this, and he has, like, a team that, you know, goes to town, puts it together, puts together a business. It's a lot of upfront capital because, like, there's no underlying business. It's just like, I have a bunch of ideas, there's some synergies. Bring a bunch of smart people together, and then when they hit a jackpot, you spin it off, you keep a cut of the business, and they go on their merry way. They do it again. Yeah.

I mean, David, this is why I play the lottery. What do you think I'm gonna do when I win the lottery? I'm gonna do that.

This is your year in a zoo.

Yeah.

Why do you have to wait to win the lottery?

Huh?

Why do you have to wait to win the lottery?

Well, the upfront capital investors. Yeah, it's true.

If you sell it well enough, you.

Get people to pay for it using other people's money.

Other people's money. That's what my venture is going to be called. Other people's money.

There we go. It's almost like there's an entire industry about getting other people to pay for your ventures. Why do they call it venture capital?

Oh, good point. Good point. Okay. Oh, my gosh.

Okay. I vaguely remember it was a Shark Tank episode. It wasn't this idea, but it was. It was something similar. I have to, like, rack my. My memory here, but I. I vaguely remember that there was, like, it was something about educating kids. I don't remember exactly what it was for, but it had this feel.

Right.

It's a cool idea.

I mean, so, you know what's interesting is I know that Gary Vaynerchuk does something with lemonade stands. Either he runs, like, a yearly competition with lemonade stands, or there's. There's. I don't remember exactly how Gary Vaynerchuk is tied to this, but he. There's lots of interviews where he's like, the lemonade stand that I had as a kid, like, is what got me very Excited about entrepreneurship. So he, like, he's very, very passionate about lemonade stands. So there's got to be some sort of competition. I'd be shocked if there's also not a lemonade stand company already that is selling something like this.

Right.

Keep in mind, something in almost every, like, example of a unicorn that just took the world by storm, it's almost always the case. They weren't first.

Right.

They weren't the first idea. They were the first ones that, like, figured out how to put it all together and just launch it in a way and make money in a way that nobody was able to put together before. It's usually. Usually the idea is out there. Right. Because if it's a really good idea, somebody's gonna be thinking about this, and the. The spoils go to, you know, the people who can really put it together.

Right. Right.

So since we all have a ton.

Of free time, this is why vampires need to be real. Because then we.

So if I had a superpower superhero, I would want. I want to be Captain Sleep, or Captain doesn't need to sleep.

Yeah.

I feel like I could just fully.

Resting, like, without sleep. For the rest of your life.

Yeah, that's what I mean. I don't want. I. I don't want to actually not sleep because I love sleep.

Right.

I want to not need it.

Right. Yep. Well, I know. Speaking of sleep, I bet Tyler has to get going for the baby and to hopefully get some shut eye for himself. So two weeks, same time?

Yep.

Yeah.

Good.

Okay, cool. I'll see you guys.

Website.

Wait, let me pull up my calendar here.

Okay.

Because two weeks. Oh, yeah. Okay, that's perfect.

Wait, hold on. I'm looking. I closed out all my windows because I didn't want to get pop ups. That would distract me.

Right.

I was just making sure that it wasn't my birthday because my birthday is in two weeks, so.

Oh, when's your birthday?

The 23rd, so it'll be the next day.

Oh, okay, 22nd. Yes. Yes. You should already have an invite from me.

Good.

We're good, right? Okay, beautiful.

I just got a reminder that I'm 57 minutes late for Biz Labs live.

All right, guys. See you later.