What is it that determines ones success in life? In business? Let’s take a look at how a simple lemonade stand can teach you the skills necessary to succeed.

Attitude

You’ve heard it before… Attitude is everything. Well, it certainly can’t hurt. Wouldn’t your rather be running a business with these fun lovers who know how to take a break and have some fun? Or, you can always work with me, the slave-driver

Seriously now, its best to take someone who is in a funk and move them off the front line until their attitude shifts. Or, just send them home. It’s not worth the loss in sales. Your customers’ lives are hectic enough. Wouldn’t you prefer to be around someone who is spreading liquid sunshine? So would your customers.

Teamwork

What a great opportunity to learn how to take turns, share and work together toward a common goal. I watched seven little girls divide up tasks themselves. Each found a way to contribute. One sat behind the lemonade pitcher and poured the lemonade in the cups. Another collected money. Another shouted into the microphone. One held the menu. One held the sign. One wrote on the sidewalk. Another served the cookies. And each provided assistance to the others. Wow, I couldn’t have orchestrated it if you paid me. What made it work? They all shared the same vision and a desire to have fun and make some money. It didn’t matter how they got there and who did what. They shared responsibilities. They kept moving forward to their goal.

What would your business be like if everyone worked like that? What would it take to get there? Can everyone on your team buy into the vision and strive for the goal?

Goal Setting

On Sunday my middle daughter took a break from the lemonade stand to play with a friend who stopped by. She was very disappointed that she wasn’t going to get any money for the time she was away. She immediately said “How much money do I need to make to go to Build-A-Bear Workshop?” When I told her she stayed focused all the rest of the day and never left the stand. Once she had achieved her financial goal (at about 6:30pm) she said “Okay, mom, I’m done. We can close up now”.

Without a goal, she never even would have sat at that lemonade stand. But her sisters were earning money to go to “Build-A-Bear” and heck if she was going to be left behind.

Give yourself something to shoot for. Give yourself a goal. Without a clear picture of where you want to go, you may never get there. but if you know that you want to go to Build-A-Bear tomorrow morning, you’ll walk all the way around the park until you find enough people to buy that lemonade.

I have a friend who excels at Network Marketing. I once asked him what is the key success factor for someone in your business. You know what he said? “Hunger. You’ve got to really want to succeed.” Do you have the hunger? What will it take for you to get it?

I once had the hunger and I achieved great things. Then I lost the hunger and I lost the things. I rediscovered the hunger in a new place. One that is sustainable. Is your hunger sustainable and can it be met while achieving a balanced life?

Life Balance

The second lesson my daughters learned from this is that if you don’t participate, you don’t share in the rewards. You need to contribute and do your share to share in the results. You need to do the activity. When my youngest daughter took a break to run in the sprinkler, she knew full well that she wasn’t going to get paid for the hour she played, and she was okay with that. She had already earned enough to go to “Build-A-Bear” and its was time to play.

As you can see from the video above, a quick run through the sprinkler is refreshes the attitude. Make sure you plan time for replenishing your soul. How can you take a “run through the sprinkler” today?

Activity

If you want to achieve your goals, you have to do the activity. You don’t necessarily have to “work” in terms of putting a lot of labor and pain with it. You can choose to have fun or to be cranky, but you do have to do the steps to sell the lemonade. You will have more fun and more success if you have a good attitude, but without staffing the stand, you won’t sell any lemonade.

My husband has this great quote that he taped to his computer. It says “If all you do is sit around and visualize, the men in white overalls will come and take away your furniture.” I know a lot of personal growth classes teach you just need to visualize, but its only part of the equation. You actually need to do activity to support you vision.

While activity gives you results, it’s activity with a positive attitude that gives you success.

Activity + Positive Attitude = Success!

Have you planned to balance your goals and activities with some attitude refreshing fun? Make room for that creative down time. It’s in those quiet moments that brilliance comes to you.

What are some of your favorite stories of those non-working moments when something brilliant comes to you?

Entrepreneurs During Setup

Lemonade Stand Marketing – The 5Ps

How do the 5Ps of marketing apply to something as simple as a lemonade stand? What lessons are learned that you can apply to grow a large and profitable business?

As I mentioned in my previous post “Lemonade Stand Marketing – Location, Location, Location!“, my kids put up a lemonade stand last weekend during the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival and here are the lessons learned that I think can be applied to your business too!

The Product:

In our case defining the product was simple. It was lemonade. But you know, there are different kinds of lemonade. Did the kids need to differentiate their product? Nope. Let’s think back to who the best customer was. It was someone walking away from a hot, sweaty, over-crowded festival full of overpriced, under-portioned food. What were the key elements the target customer was interested in? That’s right, it had to be cold and refreshing.

Do you think they cared what color it was? Do you think they cared about the brand? Do you think they cared whether it was sugar-free?

Not at all. Cold and refreshing were the desired characteristics.

The Price:

After attending a crowded festival where a bottle of water sold for $2 and a snow cone for $4, how much do you think the lemonade stand customer was willing to spend? The girls set the price at $0.50 for an 8 oz. cup. This was seen as a bargain by the customers. It was a great value compared to what they were used to. Such a value that they often gave more in tip than they paid for the product itself. And they did so happily!

What can you do in your business to inspire your customer to pay you more than you ask?

The Place:

We already talked about this in the previous article. A simple lemonade stand across from a crowded festival brought in the traffic needed to reap solid financial rewards. OK, so it was a not-so-simple lemonade stand since the mom, that’s me, is an entrepreneur with lots of supplies. So they did have a nice white pop-up tent to help provide shade. Okay, now the designer in me is taking over…It was used to not only provide shade but to create a focal point and define the space, thus drawing extra attention to the stand.

The Promotion:

The kids really took off with this and had a blast. They made a sign on hot pink fluorescent paper. Then the girls found themselves some sidewalk chalk and made arrows and signs all over the sidewalk. The menu was prominently displayed on the sidewalk. Then they got a paper and pencil and made a menu. They approached everyone on the street (it was hard to get past them) and took their order.

Another technique used to grab attention was the spider man microphone. You know, the kind of toy microphone that simply magnifies your voice using no batteries. Shouting “Ice Cold Lemonade!” into the microphone was the most successful sales technique of the day to drive sales. Fortunately, no dress-up costumes were required to grab the attention of passerbys.

The Upsell:

I’m adding the upsell information in here with promotion, but it also entails the other Ps inlcuding product and price. You see, the girls didn’t just sell lemonade, they had add-ons, loss-leaders and upsells. Yes, and they didn’t even know it! They started with lemonade for $0.50 and then offered cookies/brownies for $0.25. Now how many people do you know these days that walk around with change in their pocket smaller than $1? Not many! So if you are whipping out a $1 bill to buy a $0.50 glass of lemonade, and there are $0.25 cookies next to them, are you going to want that extra $0.50 back or are you going to buy a cookies too? And do you really want the quarter in change or are you going to leave it as a tip?

Now, they got really tricky here by offering free water to dogs. it was a kind gesture, because, you know, it was a really hot day. Well, it just so happened that one of the daddies jokingly suggested that they sell dog buscuits for a quarter too, and well, out came the dog buscuits! Now we had our official loss-leader, free dog water, with the dog buscuit upsell. Whalla! Who kinew selling lemonade was such a sophisticated endeavour?

The People:

Who do you think was more successful selling lemonade: seven little girls all bouncy and smiley or a sedentary mom and dad? When the kids took a break, so did sales. Just goes to show that sometimes your team members are the key to your success. If all else fail in your business, I suggest exploiting the cuteness factor of a little girl’s smile.

Now, for those of us who hate planning, do you think taking a step back and applying the 5Ps of marketing might give you some insight on how to improve your business?

Next up: Lessons from the Lemonade Stand: Life Skills.

Do you remember the basic business lessons learned as a kid? How can something as simple as a lemonade stand teach the business essentials to grow a large and profitable business? Let’s find out…

This past weekend was the annual Colorado Dragon Boat Festival which takes place in the park across from my house. It’s two days of racing dragon boats down a course, with hundreds of teams participating. It has also turned into the largest Asian culture festival in Colorado. Over 100,000 people attend the 2-day event.

Why is this information important to a child’s lemonade stand you ask? You could say Location, Location, Location; but I call it Traffic, Traffic, Traffic! The business location is important, but the key characteristic of the location is the amount of traffic of targeted customers that location brings. In our case, with 90 degree heat and 100,000 potential thirsty customers we put up the lemonade stand and invited some friends over to help run the store. So what happened?

Timing! Business success is all about timing. Do people drink lemonade in the morning? Not really. Do they drink it while they are on their way to the festival? No, because they just left home and are still refreshed from the air-conditioned car. When do they drink lemonade? On the way home from the overcrowded, sizzling hot, sunny festival.

Get in front of the customer when they are ready to buy!

So what time do you think the kids reaped the most reward for their efforts? That’s right, from 2-5pm; the hottest time of the day. When the girls put up the stand at 2pm, there were people standing in line while they were setting up! How’s that for a booming business!

Now, the girls took this one step further. They actually noticed that their were a lot of people with dogs passing by. One girl said, “We need free water for the dogs!” And so it was. The dog water was put out and then when the girls saw someone with a dog they enticed them over with the promise of free dog water. Now how can you pass up seven super cute 5, 7 & 9 years old girls with ice-cold lemonade and fresh water for your dog? That’s what I call knowing your customer and targeting their needs!

Are you applying these principles in your business? Have you identified the best traffic-getting location, timing and needs of your customer? Do you know how to get in front of them when they are ready to buy? How have you made timing, location and customer segmentation work for you?

Next up, Lessons from the Lemonade Stand: The 5Ps of Marketing.

Closing the Gap: How to Define you Business Model

When you know what you are good at and what you are not good at, and then you know what you love and want your life to be like (which is often the opposite of what you don’t want it to be like), then look at what you like about where you are and what you don’t like and plot a course to get to your ideal lifestyle.

Once I knew that I wanted to work from home around the hours of my childrens’ school, and I didn’t want to deal with furniture suppliers, but I did love solving problems and marketing, I was able to move forward.

In my case continuing with the business model I had created was no longer viable. Could I have changed the model and brought it back to an internet only business? Yes, but then I would still have to deal with the manufacturing of custom furniture which would not be in line with my passions or strengths. In my case, there was only one decision.

You want to think about how you might get from where you are to where you want to go. Take some time to think about how you might “close the gap”. Don’t pressure yourself to have all the answers right away. Sometimes they are obvious and sometimes they are not. It may take time for the answers to reveal themselves. It may be expedited by having someone who is not so close to the situation, like a business adviser or coach, take a look and make suggestions.

Let me give you some examples of how you can “Close the Gap”.

Let’s say you are passionate about flowers. You are thinking about opening a florist. Can you get to a 6-figure income as a florist? Well, probably, but you may have to open multiple florist shops and you may have to supply weddings or businesses. A single retail floral shop will probably not get you to that 6-figure goal. You will need to achieve a large volume of sales to reach that income goal.

Now let’s say you want to get to 7-figures or more. Can you do it with a floral shop or chain of floral shops? It’s not likely. In order to achieve that goal, you are going to have to look at business models that affect the entire industry. Think of FTD. Remember how they linked all the independent florists together so that you can buy flowers from your local store and then a store located somewhere else would deliver those flowers for you?

Another example is 1-800-flowers.com. They were one of the first to take the floral business to the internet on a national basis. There are other examples. There are people who changed the way flowers were grown and shipped to florist at a wholesale level. This is another example of a company that improved inefficiencies in their industry and improved the economies of scale to reach huge income levels.

Building a 7, 8 or 9-figure business isn’t for everyone.

You will notice in none of the floral business models I just mentioned will the founder be hands-on dealing with flowers on a day-to-day basis. You will be a business person running a business and will need to have or develop the skills to do that.

If you can combine your passion with your business skills to achieve the dream, GREAT! Most of the rest of us might have to make adjusts to our business model, learn new skills, or pick a different industry altogether. It just depends on where you are starting and where you want to go.

Exercise: Close the gap

Here are some questions you will want to ask yourself to help you close the gap.

• Does your current business allow you to utilize your strengths and reduce your weaknesses (perhaps even outsourcing the work you don’t like or do well)?

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• Does your business model support your lifestyle goals? If not, are you familiar with one that will?

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• Are their changes you can make to your current business that will bring you inline with your passion and lifestyle goals?

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Identifying the Gap: The Entrepreneur’s Dream

In the previous posts we addressed how to identify your entrepreneurial passion and your desired lifestyle. We also took a look at the things which you are not good at and don’t want to to.

The next step is for you as the entrepreneur to identify the gap between where you are now and where you want to be. To do that you need to identify your starting point.

Let’s take an inventory of where you are now. And then we will discuss how to close that gap altogether.

• What does your lifestyle look like today?

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• What is not working for you in your current lifestyle?

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• What do you love about your current lifestyle?

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• What does your business look like today?

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• What is not working for you in your business?

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• What do love about your business?

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What I found in doing this analysis is that I loved being a business owner and I loved marketing including all tasks and strategic thinking associated with it. I did not love the hours and schedule required in a retail store. I did not like shipping furniture, working with manufacturers of custom furniture, and some of the customer service issues that came along with the previous challenges. I love design and strategy. I love solving problems. I loved owning my choices.

What’s working for you? What’s not working for you?

The next step is “Closing the Gap”.

Visualize Your Lifestyle

As an entrepreneur, you have the ability to create any lifestyle you want. Are you living that life now? Most people just start doing and don’t think about where they want to go.

Do you know what your dream day looks like in perfect detail?

Have you spent time really thinking about it?

If you could choose to spend your time any way you wish, how would it be spent?

Here is an exercise that can put you in the space where you can allow your dream lifestyle to come to you.

Exercise: Lifestyle Visualization

EMC-Perfect-Day
LISTEN to this VISUALIZATION exercise now.

Exercise: Define the Lifestyle of Your Dreams

Now think about your perfect day.

• Would you like everyday to be like that?

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• What would you like to have the same?

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• What would you like to be different?

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I want you to think about how you can incorporate elements of this dream day into your daily life.

• How does this impact your current lifestyle?

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• What changes do you need to make in your business to make your daily life accommodate your dream lifestyle?

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• Write down your dream lifestyle?

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In doing these exercises I realized that my perfect day was waking up and taking care of my kids, sending them off to school, then coming back home and working on something I was passionate about that helped others. I wanted something to stimulate my brain that would enable me to transform the lives of the people I cared about.

I also wanted to be free to pick my kids up from school and spend afternoons and evenings with them and my husband. I wanted relaxed weekends with the family. I wanted the time and money to travel for vacations. I wanted to live in a friendly environment with loving supportive neighbors who had children for my kids to play with. I want my kids getting the best education available and I want them to learn to pursue their dreams. I want not to think about money. I want to make a difference in the world and use my unique abilities as best I can. And this is what I want for others.

While this was my dream lifestyle, this is not where I was 18 months ago. I owned a retail store that was open 6 days a week from 10am to 6pm. And this was reduced hours. Before that we had been open 7 days a week, from 10am to 8pm.

Because of this schedule, I needed a live-in childcare to help care for my children (who were not school age). My husband and I tag-teamed the remaining childcare hours, were balancing that with work at the store. While one was home with the kids, the other was working.

Weekends away were not existent. Actually, we went a year without a weekend together as a family.

Exhaustion and stress ruled our lives. We were miserable.

I’d say that’s a pretty obvious difference between where we were and where we wanted to be. Needless to say, the store had to go.

Not all situations are as obvious as that. Though, as obvious as it was, it still took us nearly a year to close out that business and get back on track to fulfilling our life vision.

What is your vision? Please share it with me below. I’d love to hear what your dreams are.

As an entrepreneur, you can create any lifestyle you want for yourself and your family. It all starts with your dream. You can create, choose or tailor your business to accommodate your vision for your life. You start by figuring out what you are good at and then use those passions to fulfill your life purpose to help others.

After you identify your skills, you then need to identify what you want to avoid doing. You need to know what you are NOT good at and should NOT be spending your time on. These are things you either don’t want in your business or elements that you can outsource. When I worked at Microsoft we tended to outsource anything that was not a core business function. If the need for the service may be short-lived, it was outsourced.

How does this translate to your dream lifestyle? You want to build a business that utilizes your passions while minimizing your weaknesses and gives you the lifestyle of your dreams.

So, what is your ideal lifestyle?

Identify your desired lifestyle.

You need to take some time to define the lifestyle you want for yourself. As an entrepreneur you can choose how many hours you want to work or how many days of the week. You can choose what income level you want. You can choose who you want to work with. You can work alone or you can have employees. It’s all up to you.

I have some friends that take one weekend a year alone without the kids to get away, reconnect and set their goals as a couple for the following year. It is at this time that they reevaluate where they are and where they want to go. Then every month they take one afternoon to check in and evaluate where they are. And every week, they share their goals for that week.

How’s it working?

Well, they are on their 3^rd million in income and they aren’t even 40 yet. They have 2 very successful businesses and they work from home. They have 3 young children and they have the time they want to spend with them.

Unlike my friends, I don’t have the opportunity to leave my kids with family for the weekend while I escape for some goal setting time. However, I was able to book a weekend at my brother-in-law’s cabin in the mountains where my kids could run around in the fields while my husband and I reconnected on our vision and life’s purpose, both alone and together.

The point is to make the time to connect with your life vision and make corrections to your course to keep you on the right track.

17 Ways to Determine What You Should NOT be Doing as an Entrepreneur!

Exercise: Identify what you don’t want.

Part of living your passion and fulfilling your life’s purpose is to know what you do NOT like doing and are NOT good at. You want to identify your weaknesses, things you avoid and things you dislike so as to prevent you from draining your energy.

Let me give you an example. I discovered that I really did love the process of marketing. Now how do I turn that into a business that fulfills my life purpose? Well, I knew I didn’t want to ship products anymore, at least not durable goods. I didn’t want a lot of logistics. I didn’t want shipping damage, manufacturing delays and extensive customer service. I just wanted to focus on marketing and idea creation. Knowing what I didn’t want to do helped me to focus in on a business model that fit me best.

Now’s the time to make a list of everything you don’t like to do and are not good at. This next exercise is going to be the opposite of the last one you did. Again, don’t analyze, just dump out your thoughts and keep moving.

The answers to these questions will give you a clear idea of what areas of your business you will want to outsource or automate so as to minimize your involvement with them. Remember, our goal is to keep you focused on your passion. In order to do this you need to know what activities zap your energy.

• Think about the activities that you are NOT good at. Write them down.

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• What skills do you NOT have?

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• What are your weaknesses?

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• What tasks do you avoid?

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• What characteristics would your friends, family and colleagues use to describe your faults or weaknesses?

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• What do you hate to do? What makes you sad or frustrated? What causes you stress?

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• What do NOT like to do for play or leisure? What about that do you NOT enjoy?

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• What do you NOT like to read about?

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• What have you secretly hoped would never happen?

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• If you could avoid one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?

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• What would you never do, even if you got paid millions of dollars for it?

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• When you have spare time, what do you avoid?

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• What do you not like to talk about?

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• What do you hate doing for others?

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• At the end of your life, what would be the one thing you never want to have done?

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• Who do you NOT want to help, enable, or reach?

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• What five life experiences have given you the least sense of fulfillment or growth?

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Now that you know what you are good at and what you want to avoid, how can you use those passions to fulfill your life purpose as an entrepreneur? What is the business that utilizes your passions while minimizing your weaknesses? Are you able to outsource these items to someone else, like a virtual assistant?

18 Ways to Identify Your Life’s Passion

Follow Your Passion

Everyone has a passion, it’s just a matter of whether you have allowed yourself to find it, live it, and believe it. I have a friend, we’ll call him Jim. But Jim has been struggling and depressed for the 10 years I’ve known him. He is convinced that he has no passion. I know he’s wrong.

You see, Jim has a passion for perfection, structure, order, and timeliness. He enjoys travel and companionship. He has a strong attention to detail, is respectful and prompt. He is kind, reliable and loyal. No, Jim is NOT a dog. But, Jim thinks he lacks passion in his life because he doesn’t have a hobby he loves.

Passion isn’t just about hobbies. It’s about acknowledging what your strengths and weaknesses are and embracing them. As I tell my children, we are all given different gifts, each and every one of us. Our purpose is to figure out what they are and share them with the world.

What’s your life’s purpose?

Your life’s purpose may not be just about following your hobby. Perhaps it is about finding a task or activity that utilizes your unique gifts to the best of your ability. When you are doing the things you are good at and that come naturally to you, you will feel energized and rejuvenated doing them. When you use these skills to help others to further their dreams, it is then that you are living your life’s purpose.

Exercise: How do we find our passion and purpose?

There’s no way around it. To find out your passion and purpose, you’re going to have to do some exercises. The following are some questions that will help you to identify these things. You will need to look back at your life and experiences and search for activities that you loved or were good at. You will need to do a brain dump. Don’t spend a lot of time evaluating your answers. Just write each thought down and then move on to the next thought.

• Think about the activities that you are really, really good at. Write them down. Have you won awards?

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• What skills do you have?

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• What are your strengths?

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• What characteristics would your friends, family and colleagues use to describe you?

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• What do you love to do? What brings you joy, happiness or satisfaction? What excites you?

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• What do you do for play, leisure, enjoyment? What is it about that you enjoy?

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• What do you read about?

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• What have you secretly dreamed of?

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• If you could do one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?

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• What would you do, even if you never got paid for it?

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• When you have spare time, what do you like to do?

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• What are you willing to spend 10,000 during until you perfect it?

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• What one subject can you enjoy talking about for many hours?

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• Which of your hobbies could involve working a lot with other people?

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• What do you most enjoy doing for others?

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• At the end of your life, what would be the one thing you want to be most happy about having done or having been?

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• Who do you most want to help, enable, or reach?

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• What five life experiences gave you a sense of fulfillment or growth?

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How to Find your Entrepreneurial Passion

You went into business for yourself so you could do what you love and live in your passion. Have you found the demands of running a business take you away from that? Are you spending all your time searching for customers?

I know, because I followed mine, or did I?

While my business career was in marketing, my passion and escape from the world was interior design. I was obsessed. I had every magazine and book I could get a hold of. You know how they say go back to your childhood and think about what you dreamed about?

Well, when I was a kid I would rearrange my room incessantly. I was the only kids I knew with wallpaper on the ceiling (thanks mom for supporting my creative side).  It was lime-green and blue patchwork. We made a quilt for my bed to match.

In high school, I studied architectural drawing with the hopes of becoming an architect. I loved designing the floor plans of buildings, and picking out the finishes. What I didn’t like was calculating the size and number of beams required to hold up the roof.

The next thing I know I was in college studying optical engineering. In my junior and senior year, when things got tough I used to dream about dropping out and being a fashion designer.

When I bought my first house, I could not stop remodeling, decorating and landscaping. I was an addict. I enrolled in Interior Design classes and eventually, decided to follow my obsession.

I decided to merge my passion for interior design with my experience in Internet marketing. Sounds like a match made in heaven, right? Wrong!

You see, other than the occasional trip to shop for inventory, I rarely got to do any “design”. All my time was spent running the business and getting customers.

So what was my passion?

When I closed my home furnishings business I once again reevaluated my true passion. I knew I didn’t love all aspects of running the business. I loved designing the interiors, the creativity of solving the customer’s problem in a visual way.

I asked my self how interior design related to marketing. Why was I so convinced that interior design was my life purpose?

I discovered that interior design followed the same mechanics of marketing. With both you have a customer and you need to assess their needs. Then you need to find a way to meet their needs, solve their problems and transform their lives. The difference is that interior design is done in a three-dimensional visual way.

The discovery of this correlation gave me the permission I needed to delve back into marketing with no regrets. It shares similar tasks to interior design. You have a customer who has a need. You have constraints. You need to solve a problem. (Actually, its very similar to engineering as well). I’ve started to do it in a visual way as I can now map out visually for each customer what is and what is not working for them and where the holes are.

What I’m suggesting is that have you looked at your passion from the perspective of the tasks involved? How does it relate to other things you are very good at?

I know marketing is my passion because I can sit for hours all day, everyday without leaving my desk, and still feel energized when I get up. Can you say that?

If not, then what is your passion? Do you know? Do you know how to find out?