Reluctant Entrepreneur

Evan is in an entrepreneurship club at school, but not very willingly. He could have gone to school after care or to come sit in class at the club's weekly meetings where I volunteer. He chose the club. Our teacher, Amber, has done an amazing job. And we have kick-ass speakers / mentors who come to the meetings and share their stories and inspire the kids. Here's Leslie chatting with the kids. 

But Evan insists that he's not learned one thing at the club.

For the business fair, Evan reluctantly decided to run an arcade game. He asked me to help him cut a circular hole in a large piece of cardboard he found in the garage. His plan: for $1 you get three shots at putting the soccer ball through the hole. He called his business "GOAl!l!l". Besides, he had a soccer game right after the fair, and this way he figured he would already be dressed and ready for soccer.

Evan said he wanted to give 10% of sales to a charity because that could be an incentive for parents to cough up the money for their kids. He picked Project Schoolhouse - a small organization that does very meaningful work in rural Nicaragua. I have dragged Evan to two or three meetings with them  when I didn't want to hire a sitter or leave him home alone. I was surprised to see that he actually was listening to what we were discussing.

Evan's enterprise was a success. He hired Vivian to help him. He stood out in front and explained his game to would-be customers and had over $100 in sales. But he still insisted that he didn't learn anything from the class.

This evening we were driving to his very last soccer practice for this season. At the stop light at Koenig and Grover they are demolishing the old Howdy Honda dealership. There was a temporary chain-link fence around the whole thing. Evan read a sign on the fence - something like the one on this stock image I borrowed from their facebook page.

He: "Wow - why would anyone rent a fence?"
Me: "I guess so that the construction company doesn't have to deal with it"
He: "But why doesn't the construction company provide this service?"
Me: "May be it isn't a part of their core value"
He: "Besides, the fence company gets free advertising on each fence"

[pause]

He: "I mean - look at their business - they are actually getting paid to advertise their own service"

[longer pause]

Me: "So you didn't learn anything at the Entrepreneurship Club?"
He: "A little"