the lemonade principal.

I have now planned and facilitated two separate trainings on financial management and business skills. I am qualified to do these kinds of trainings? Not really. Do I fake it? So well.

At the first training, I thought I would start off with a personal story. Since I do not really have any business experience. I thought back to what I could use. My best example was a lemonade stand.

If you lived near 58th and Webster about fifteen years ago, you may have seen my lemonade stand. I like to think it was the best on the block. Caitlin and I always borrowed frozen Minute Maid lemonade from my freezer, mixed it with water and ice, and sat outside waiting for the dog walkers and babysitters to stop by and buy or icy cold, 25 cent drink (I do not think we ever paid back this loan but when I used the story as a learning example, we of course reimbursed my mom the two dollars for the initial investment). We had pretty good success. I even remember one guy stopped in his car and paid us ten bucks, and he only wanted one cup.

Anyway, we always ran into a bit of trouble when my Dad came home from work. With the information that I never paid back the initial investment, maybe his free cups of lemonade were justified, but I always felt like I was wasting good product on a non-paying customer.

This was a perfect example for the Mozambican students in my lessons. Mozambique is a very community-based society. You help your neighbors out. If I cannot afford to pay you for my onions, you might let me have them on credit. You usually will never see that credit repaid. But then you will go and buy tomatoes in the same way.

While this is a good system if you are bartering, if you are really trying to run a business and make profits, this is a losing system. In our sessions we talked about ways around this, and decided it was best, since it is almost unavoidable, to decide on a certain amount of product or service that can be given out for free each month. Once this amount is reached, you must start saying “no” to people who want something on “good faith.”

As we discussed what I now call the “lemonade principal” one of the students raised his hand. He said that he had never even considered the option of saying no to people, but now that he knows that is what he should do, he thinks he may start turning a profit. He explained that as a community leader (most of the students in the class are pastors or other church leaders), people often come to him and ask to borrow money or products and then at the end of the month he has very little to show for his work. He had never thought about how a business is different from a charity and that he must conduct his work in his business differently from his work in his church.

It was after this converstaion the I realized this group may need more than just financial management training, they may need professionalism lessons. Professionalism is something we learn in the states at a young age. We know how we should dress for a job interview and how to address collegues and the importance of networking.

So, with that in mind, my second training focused a lot on these skills. We talked about the importance of publicity, of timeliness, and about why a variety of products is necessary. During the seminar we had talked about how customer loyalty works. I am a perfect example for this, as I have clear and known favorites in the market whom I always patronize. These ladies know me and always give me a good deal. Even if I am not buying anything, they greet me by name and ask how I am doing.

Mama Mequilina, who runs a clothes selling business in the market explained that she appreciated me talking about being nice to customers because it had always bothered her when people would come to her stall and try on all kinds of things and then not buy anything. She said, honestly, that she was often very rude if someone did this because, justifiable so, it was so annoying to wait on someone so long to have them not buy anything. She had never thought about the possibility of them coming back to buy something later on.

I suppose that also fits within the lemonade principal. If I had been rude to my dad when he asked, and sometimes just took, free lemonade, he may not have referred the neighbors to my lemonade stand.

You never know when a customer is a potential regular, and you never know when someone might come back and hand you a ten dollar bill.

What is weird is that no one has yet opened a lemonade stand in town.

I made it pretty clear how delicious it is on a hot day.