Did you know a world record was set this week in entrepreneurship? A sixth grader in Oklahoma sold 18,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies as part of the annual nationwide campaign. I heard the story on the news and it reminded me of a statistic I heard a few years back that 80% of female business owners sold Girl Scout cookies. Whether you think the relationship is causal (selling cookies ignited a passion for business in these women) or selective (women business owners come from families that sign their daughters up for Girl Scouts), its still pretty impressive. Either way, it got me to thinking about how valuable the lessons learned at such a young age could be. While I don’t believe the desire and ability to be an entrepreneur is innate, I do believe that exposure to business fundamentals and smart risk taking early on make for better business owners in the future. That exposure can come in many forms, for m and my siblings, it was being raised by entrepreneurial parents.
But what if you never sold Girl Scout cookies?
Its never too late to start your own lemonade stand.
Nothing can replace the lessons learned by putting yourself at risk. The key is to doing it in a way that motivates you to success, but minimizes the consequences (ie, doesn’t require you to quit your day job). Its easy to come up with an idea and rule it out because its not big enough or because it doesn’t scale, but unless you want to quit your job and go all in, it doesn’t have to. The problem with ideas that are scalable, in my opinion, is that they typically require you to put it all on the line and go for broke. Big ideas usually have a narrow window of opportunity based on timing, the commitment required from you, capital intensity or a host of other reasons that give big ideas big price tags.
An essay from Paul Graham comes to mind. In it, he shares that the most frequent advice he gives to the entrepreneurs is to “do things that don’t scale.” Kind of weird advice to give an internet startup, but he goes on to explain how rare it is for a brilliant idea to be scalable at inception. “[S]tartups take off because the founders make them take off,” in his own words. When you first start out, its ok for the idea to be small. If the idea begins to gather traction, shift focus to providing the service or product in a way that makes sense for a broader customer base.