Apr
2015
I am an entrepreneur at heart. I believe I always have been, as does my beloved mother. She claims that as early as about five years old, I was in the business of trying to make money or cultivating benefit where an opportunity or niche would emerge. She has told us countless stories many of which I have forgotten the of, but many of them included a punch line about my trying to sell my toys to the kindergarten teachers since it seemed as though there were not enough toys in the establishment, consequently requiring sharing. Be frank, that is just genius! I wish I had done some saving. , if I had been this entire time, I might have been able to buy one of those properties for sale in Boardwalk Meander Estate!
By the sound of it, as I got older so did my ideas mature and expand. Between the ages of eight to ten, I became somewhat of a mobile market manager at my elementary school. Feeling aggrieved by what I interpreted to be tyrannical withholding of pocket money funds by my parental unit, I decided to take matters into my own hustling hands. We had a close family friend that used to help my grandmother look after us when we were at her house, as my grandmother would travel quite a bit as result of work. She could possibly be one of the best bakers I have ever known. A very long story short, I would take some of the baked goods and sell them to my peers at school. The cookies, biscuits, breads and cakes were so delicious that some students stops going to the school kiosk altogether and began buying lunch from me. The boarding school students were my largest market as they didn’t have much access to home cooked/baked goods. A few teachers even purchased from me, albeit discretely, while simultaneously explaining to me why what Im doing is technically illegal.
In seventh and eighth grade, at age thirteen and fifteen respectively, I began to push the envelope quite a bit. With no constant and consistent access to quality-baked goods, I had no alternative but to redesign my niche. At my new school, you could only buy food with a $5, $10 or $20 lunch card that you could acquire at the front desk. My mother had no problem buying it on my behalf. That posed a problem of course. Once you had the lunch card, you could no longer use that $5, $10 or $20 dollars on anything else but food from my school! I needed (wanted) money to use elsewhere. So I would sell my lunch card and keep the $20. Before you judge me as amoral, I also used to the $20 for things like transportation, stationary, sports equipment, all of which my mother subsequently did not need to buy. Moreover, I begin to play black jack to replace the lunch money. Ok, that takes me back to amorality – but it was only for $1 a game!
Moving on, I will explain why I am telling you this. It was all business. I did not know it then, but that was the beginning of my ventures into the business world. I wish then that I knew about concepts I revel in now, such as branding, brand culture, consumer communication and culture. I could have been huge! Now that I do know, I will tell you, not about it per say, but where you can get help to find out about it.
If you reside in one of the lovely homes in Boardwalk Meander Estate, you are a petty minutes drive from Netstreet Digital and Yes Please Design Studio. Netstreet “is a brand design agency that helps lifestyle inspired companies engage consumers and communicate brand culture,” while, Yes Please is a small studio which specializes in branding, corporate identity, web design, illustration and photography – all of which are for the purposes of expanding markets and market niches. If you are an entrepreneur already then I suppose this may be rather rudimentary information for you. However, if you are looking for both a new home and a new business, perhaps this is where you will want to look first.
I can think of few things more important for a family than a safe and comfortable home and even few things more consequential for a business than a strong brand identity and meticulous communication!
Just a quick question: How much would you pay for a sugar cookie?
