The Sneaky Entrepreneur

I picked Bean and Gracie up from their aftercare program yesterday afternoon and one of the teachers pulled me aside.

“Um…  Mrs. Brown… Michael has been making rainbow loom bracelets for all the kids here lately…”

“Oh, yeah,” I said proudly.  “He has been taking orders right and left!”

“Yes, well…  He can’t sell them here anymore.”

“I’m sorry, what?” I asked.

“He’s been selling them to the kids and we… well… he just can’t do that here anymore.”

I had to bite my tongue to keep from cursing out Chris right there in the middle of the elementary homework room.  Because this is all his fault.

For several months now, Bean has been taking orders on these bracelets he has been making for kids.  He has pages and pages of his and Gracie’s friend’s names with the colors they want in their bracelets.  He was doing so great and I thought it was really cute how intent he was on making them for all his buddies.  But then Chris watched this documentary on Warren Buffett and how he used to sell anything he could as a kid and that’s how he started becoming fixated with compounding interest.

So, Chris tells Bean about compounding interest and about the cost of doing business and profit margins and all this junk and finally they settled on the value of a bracelet being $1.

“Now, when your friends place an order, you just tell them it costs a dollar,” Chris advised.

I wasn’t really paying too much attention to this because what were the chances this elaborate little business scheme would really go anywhere, but I do remember throwing out a motherly, “I don’t think this is a good idea,” somewhere along the way.

And, basically, that was all Chris or I ever heard of it again.  Bean never mentioned it again.  But it turns out, he has been selling these bracelets for the past three weeks and making quite a bit of money.

When I got the kids to the car after I picked them up that day, I said to Bean, “Sorry, dude.  You can’t sell those anymore.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said happily.  “But I can still sell them at school and that’s where I make most of my money.  I made $10 from one of Gracie’s friends today!”

“$10?!?!” I squealed.  “How in the world did you get $10 for a bracelet?!?!”

“That’s all the money she had,” Gracie chimed in.  “And Bean didn’t have any change for her.”

“Yeah,” Bean said, proudly.  “I made $5 off another kid for the same reason!”

WHAT THE HECK?!?!

“Okay, #1, you have to stop selling bracelets at school.  #2, you have to give those kids back their money.  #3, Gracie, you have to stop selling for Bean.”

Naturally, Bean was devastated.  I mean, who can blame him?  He was now about to lose $15 profit from one week.  Even a third grader knows that will kill his P&L.

So, Chris gets home from work yesterday and I told him what had happened and I threw in a good, “I told you so” for measure.  He sat there for a minute, taking in the racquet that our eight-year-old had created.  Without saying a word to me, he walked straight up to Bean’s room, threw open the door and announced, “You need to carry change with you from now on, dude.”

*eye roll*