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Welcome to the Path to Warren podcast, Number Nine, episode Number nine, where I’m going to be sharing about what life was like as a young boy, being an entrepreneur. And I want to take a second and go back to childhood. It’s funny because I was sitting with my daughter yesterday and she bought a one gallon bottle of glue, this Elmers glue, and she was really excited about making slime. That’s kind of a new crave right now is to make a bunch of slime. And the kids are really going crazy over it. And she wanted to start a business. And she was like, dad, how do I start a business? And my daughter is eight. And so I started to share with her a little bit about how you have supply and demand and got to come up with a price. And it was just great to role play and to be able to share about how when I was a young boy, I would sell lemonade and also POGS…P-O-G-S, also known as milk caps, if you look it up on the Internet. But POGS with their Slammers, I thought they might Lemonade stand if it had pods for sale, would get more attention and get more business from the local kids in the neighborhood. So I also sold Pogs right out in front of my house in Irmo, South Carolina. But when I was about eight years old, I wanted to go fishing all the time. And I had nowhere to buy bait. There was no store that I could walk to because of course, I could not drive. But I needed crickets. I needed to have crickets in order to go fishing all the time. And I could only get my mom or dad to take me out of their way to the bait shop to go to Lake World on the other side of the dam to buy some crickets. But they would only last me like a day or two and they would die. And I’d have to feed them all the time. It was just a hassle to try to go back and forth and try to have bait. But my buddies would come over to want to fish, too. And I was like, well, they don’t have any bait. And if they’re going to buy crickets, they might as well buy crickets from me. So I told the guy at Lake World, I said, hey, let me buy a box of 1,000. So I believe it’s like $30. You can get a box of 1000 crickets. And actually, I had my dad help me. I said, hey, can you help me make a cricket cage? And he’s like, well, you got a cricket cage right here talking about the little one. I said, no, I mean, I want to buy a big cricket cage and get into the cricket business. So sure enough, over the course of a weekend, he helped me knock out cricket cage, a cricket box. It was about two and a half feet, about 4ft, like a big trunk, and it had a hinged door that you could lift up over the top and scoop out your crickets. I was going to be in the cricket business, and sure enough, my buddies would come over and want to buy some crickets, and I’d measure them out like he did at the store, and I’d sell them a couple of crickets for a couple of dollars. It was a neat little business, but it was the whole experience of not being… my dad, not limiting me, and not trying to say, oh, don’t waste your time with that. Nobody’s going to buy your cricket. And I didn’t do the same thing with my daughter yesterday. I didn’t say, nobody’s going to buy your slime. Come on, Maddie, let’s don’t waste our time. No. I said, what price do you have to sell them at to cover your cost? She said, to cover my cost? I said, yeah. How much did this glue cost? How much did this activator cost? How much did the box of Ziploc Baggies cost that you’re going to sell them in? I said, Are you going to sell them in quart size Baggies and sandwich size Baggies in gallon sized bags? And she was like, I don’t know. And I said, Well, let’s talk through it. So how much would a quart size bag of slime cost? She was like, I don’t know. I said, Well, let’s pick a number. $5 sound good? So for $5, somebody’s going to get a quart sized bag of slime. She said, yeah, that sounds good. And I said, well, how many bags of slime can you make from a gallon of glue? She said, I don’t know. Three. I said, okay, so we’re going to sell three bags to your friends and they’re going to give us $5 a piece, right? She’s like, yeah. I said, how much does that mean that you’ll make in revenue? She said, what? I said, what’s? Five times three? So $5 times three people. She said, that’s 15. I said, Good job. So we’ll make $15. And how much does the glue cost? She said, well, this big gallon of glue was $14. I said, okay, how much was the activator? Oh, the activator. That was $6. Okay, that’s 14 + 6 is $20. So $20 in materials, right? She’s like, yeah. How much for Ziploc bags? Well, I don’t know, dad. I’m just going to use your Ziploc bags. No, I said, no, Maddie not using mom and Daddy’s bags. You got to buy your own if you’re going to be trying to make some money on this. So ultimately, we said, $22 would be the cost of material. So, Maddie, we’re going to make all this slime and we’re going to get $15 for it, right? She said, yeah, but how much did it cost us to make it $22? And she kind of paused and I said, maybe we need to go up on the price. Yeah, let’s charge $10, Daddy, let’s start $10. It was amazing. Just to see how her mind went to $10. She got the point. We had to be at $30 in order to make a little money. So all that was just a great little exercise about entrepreneurship to a young eight year old girl that if she makes a little stand, makes the bags of slime, puts it on the street, and sells two to two friends. The best part about it is she wanted mom. She wanted my wife to text all of her friends and tell her daughter selling slime. And I said, no, that’s not how it works, Daddy Why don’t you call them? Why don’t you text all these people and tell them, no, Maddie, you’re going to sell it. I said, Granddaddy didn’t sell my crickets. Granddaddy didn’t sell my shoe shining service. Granddaddy didn’t sell my lawn service. I was talking about my dad. He didn’t go out selling my crickets to my friends or sending out messages that I’m selling crickets in the neighborhood. No way! t was up to me. So she got the message real quick. If she’s going to want to do this, she’s going to have to do the marketing and create a little flyer and figure out a way to get the message out on instant messaging to kids. It was just such a neat experience to talk through all this with her. And she said, dad, how do I start a business? I said, you could start a business right now. It’s that easy. You don’t need any paperwork, you don’t need anything fancy. You’re going to start making slime and selling it. That’s starting a business, Maddie. And I don’t know where that’ll go one day, but to start that for my daughter and start that mindset of covering the cost of materials, making a little money for doing the work, taking the time to do the marketing, and coming up with what to sell and how to sell it, what words to say. All that is just fun to me. And I hope that my daughter can see the excitement that I have for entrepreneurship and making money and coming up with products and services that are of need and fill a demand. So if you have children, don’t squash their dreams and don’t tell them that their ideas are not going to work out. Just play with them a little bit. Take a minute, sit down in the chair, talk it through, sketch it out on paper for them. Show them how you come up with a model that might work. Instead of saying that this idea is just ridiculous, it’ll never go anywhere. I’m excited about this idea that she has. Who knows where it will go. Make your contribution. And thank you for being listening to episode nine. Stay tuned for episode ten. To the Path of Warren. If you enjoyed this podcast. Please hit subscribe. Please share with your friends. Have a great day and make your contribution. Thank you.