“One dollar! One dollar!” exclaims my daughter as she tries to sell her wares to my staff from the shop set her grandma gave her today.
She must have learned selling from Ryan’s Toy Review. Either that, or one dollar is too cheap a price for legitimate wares.
Another Mommy asked how to teach kids entrepreneurship a few days before.
My father was an entrepreneur.
My mother was an entrepreneur.
And I later grew up to be an entrepreneur as well.
I don’t really remember my parents actively teaching me how to be an entrepreneur.
So how the heck did I turn out to be one?
It’s the Littlest Most Mundane Details
My father used to teach me about entrepreneurship without me knowing it.
We would go to a restaurant, and we would analyze if this restaurant was profitable or not.
“How many staff are there at the store?” he would ask.
“There’s ten,” I’d answer. And would proceed to count them one by one.
“Good,” he would reply. “If each employee cost php 13,500, how much would the total labor cost be?”
“₱13,500 times ten is php ₱135,000.” The middle school me would answer, pleased that my multiplication tables can now be used.
He continues to ask, “Let’s say rent and overhead which includes electricity is php 60,000, how much is the total cost of running this business?”
“₱135,000 plus ₱60,000 equals php 195,000.” I would answer. This is easier math.
“So let’s say cost of doing business is rounded up to php200,000, how many meals do you need to sell to break even?” He asked.
“What do you mean?” I asked, now confused.
“Okay, how much is the price per meal?” He would then ask.
“It’s php 100,” I would answer. “And there’s four of us so that’s php 400 for our table, more or less.”
“Now, if the cost of the food is php 30 per order, that means per meal has php 70 of profit,” he concludes. “If you make php 70 per meal, how many meals do you sell to break even?”
Ahhhhhh…. see the point?
“Cost of business is php 200,000. Divide php 200,000 by php 70 profit per meal, how many meals is that?” He asked.
“2858 meals!” I excitedly answer.
“Now divide 2858 meals by 30 days, how many meals must be sold per day to break even?”
“95 to 96 meals a day, daddy,” I answered.
“Or 50 meals per lunch and dinner,” he would say. “Or around 10 to 15 tables per meal hour. Look around you. Is this restaurant full? How many diners are here on a weekday lunch?”
There was only 4 tables dining. Two had two people, one was a sole diner and there was us, 4 on a table — or 7 people in total.
“The restaurant isnt making money,” he concluded. “It will close down in a few months unless they change something. Anything.”
“How sure are you, daddy?” I asked.
“Do the math,” he said. “And you will know.”
Sure enough, the business DID close down.
It was tragic to see.
I am sure that the owners were well intentioned and had high hopes and dreams when they opened the store, but you can’t fight against the tide if the numbers were against you.
And that was how my dad taught me about entrepreneurship.
Not by reading a book or taking a class.
But by analyzing every business that we come in.
Every single day.
My daughter is only 3 and there’s still more to teach her.
Right now, she’s just selling things for one dollar. Tomorrow, hopefully she’ll be selling more at a profit.
Teaching about entrepreneurship is like building the pink towerZ
You talk to her everday about the most mundane things, and build it up, until years later, without her really knowing it, she inevitably becomes an entrepreneur.
Because this was what her parents did.
Because this was something you guys talked about every day.
I talked about the Big Bad Wolf Booksale the other day. We were all having a ball scouring through rows and rows of books. My 2 year old daughter kept on putting books to the pushcart while my poor mother and her yaya was putting them back.
I had a small realisation: While we were so excited in finding good books for my daughter, her yaya was bored. Real bored.
This was so different during the Toy Sale when she was also scouring through the different offerings in the hopes of buying her 7 year old daughter the latest Barbie or teddy bear at discounted prizes. During the Toy Sale, she was even more excited than us, and even borrowed money just to do her purchase.
I realized how our priorities are different. Yaya was so gungho in buying her daughter the latest toys and gadgets. I pour the same amount of energies to buying books for my daughter.
Here is her bookcase months ago. She has a lot mote books now. Daughter is super spoiled when it comes to books.
I think it’s these little details that make big differences in a child’s brain. While one cannot control a child’s intelligence or personality too much (we can blame genetics for that), we can however guide our child to what we think is the right direction.
For me, it’s teaching my toddler a love of learning and reading. It’s to appreciate storytelling, expand her imagination, and for her to know that when it comes to books, her Mommy’s purse is open.
My daughter can identify letters from the age of 2. She can count from one to 20. Her vocabulary has expanded. I have her school to thank for that.
To be honest, I realised yaya doesn’t read. During her spare time, she listens to music, check Facebook or call her relatives. Consequently her daughter most likely doesn’t like to read too… not if her toys and gadgets are available.
I want my children to read. I want them to love the written world. I want them to go bonkers on booksales over toy fairs. I want them to treasure studying. That’s why I invest in books. In early learning. This is the difference upbringing makes.
These are the little things that make me happy. It also made me realize that parents must do our part to ensure our kids love to learn, and the way we do it is to expose them as much as possible to books and learning at a young age, so that they will welcome these tools with love as they grow up.
So how about you? Will you invest in a new ipad for your kids? Or books? Hope it’s the latter, because a love for the written word is one of the best things we can teach our child.
A sales staff in Manila earns minimum wage. Currently, the price is Php 491/day (USD 10.00), and the number goes up a little every year.
Its a thankless job — standing up for 8 hours straight with 3 breaks (one for lunch, and two for snacks), selling to random customers in the mall. Time-in is at 10:00am when the mall opens, and ends at 7:00pm if you’re in the opening shift. If you’re at the closing shift, working hours is at 12:00pm to 9:00 pm.
Work is usually 6 days a week, with rest days only from Mondays to Thursdays. There are no rest days during holidays or the weekend, since the malls are packed with people then. Hence, even during Christmas time when everyone has the day off to spend it with their families, you’re still in the mall, working and selling because Christmas is the peak selling season of the year.
Coca-cola got this correct when they released this ad last December 2016:
To be honest, aside from our Overseas Foreign Workers (OFWs), I view retail sales staff as our country’s heroes.
They are the oil that greases the domestic market, and have relatively shielded our country from multiple global financial crises. Even when everything fails, there’s always the sweet air-conditioned mall to hang out in, enjoying the free air conditioning, and reveling at beautiful items you’ll eventually buy after paydays.
This makes a retail sales staff in the mall the perfect job for my daughter when she grows up.
For one, a job in the mall teaches my child about the value of money.
It’s easy for a child to feel entitled nowadays. Since both parents usually work, we overcompensate our absence by showering our children with gifts and nice things. Consequently, children never learn the value of money. They think money grow on trees, and money is easy to earn.
Numerous articles have come out on recent years on just how spoiled and arrogant children have become. And I honestly believe that merely giving your children money and not teaching them how to earn it, is one of the best ways to destroy the next generation.
Well, at minimum wages, children can learn the value of money.
They learn that Php 491/day does not get you too far. It’s enough for a movie ticket and a snack, but that’s it. It doesn’t buy you any nice toy, and if you buy a toy, then where else will you get money to eat or sleep?
By having them work in the mall, they realize that money is not easy to earn.
That Php 491.00 is equivalent to 8 hours of standing up, and multiple disappointments in selling. It’s shivering in the air-conditioned room as you watch people pass your storefront, while you call out repeatedly until one of them stops and actually looks at your item.
Two, working at the mall teaches them humility.
Working in the front-line is a great equalizer. When you’re selling to a customer, they don’t care how big your house is, how impressive your car is, or how much money you have in the bank account.
They only care about how good is your product, and how well you can pitch your product to them. If you cannot sell your product at its own merits, and can’t do any sales talk, then they won’t buy from you.
At the end of the day, customers buy from the sales staff. Sure, they like the product, but the sales staff herself is a big part of the equation.
Unlike other jobs, you can’t brag what your position is, or how much money you have. In fact, the more arrogant a sales staff is, the more people won’t buy. Because who wants to buy from a bonafide asshole?
That’s why being a sales staff is a great equalizer. You have to go down to people’s level in order to sell to them. You have to be humble and let them have their way, in order for them to buy your stuff.
Remember, you’re the sales staff and they’re the customer, so you have to be humble and let customers be mostly right for them to make the sale.
Three, working in the mall teaches you about people. How to deal with them, and how to read them.
Being a retail staff, you cannot judge a book by its cover. You have to treat every customer whom you entertain well, regardless on how they look.
Because you can’t judge a book by its cover.
For example, some of our richest customers are those who are dressed simply, wear Crocs, and talk very courteously. They’re the ones whose wallet are filled with 1000 Php bills cash, or have Platinum credit cards.
There are also customers who look rich. They’re draped with the shiniest jewelry, wear the strongest perfumes and carry the most logo-laden designer bags.
But bewarned, do NOT be fooled to giving them credit because they have a huge amount of debt on their credit cards, and they’re living off from borrowing other people’s money to fund their excesses.
They may also be the baddest bitches on the planet. Meaning, it’s hard to sell to them. They make impossible demands, ask for the steepest discounts, and then lash out at you for the smallest mistakes.
So yes, working in the mall exposes you to all kinds of people. The good, the bad and they ugly. And given that you still have to sell, regardless on how bad customers can be, you still keep your charming smile on and carry on the day.
Four, you learn to have more personality. And to sell yourself and to talk better.
That is why she needs to build up her intelligence and her charm.
And the best place to do that is in sales.
Sales teaches you to look presentable.
No matter how bad you look, there’s always makeup to accentuate your features. Many of our sales staff looked like factory workers when they start with us, but look a lot more impressive after working with us.
That’s the power of makeup.
What’s more, you have to develop a personality in sales. Because at the end of the day, customers buy from YOU, the sales staff.
How many people have bought just because the sales person was great? LOTS.
That’s why, as a sales staff, you need to be confident, polite, intelligent, flexible, and persuasive. You need to convince people to buy your product. You need to show them they need it. You need to demonstrate the products on its merits, let them try the product, and then help them make a good purchasing decision.
Now who wouldn’t want their kid to learn such positive traits?
Five, working as a retail staff teaches you about the beauty of monotonous work.
Thanks to technology and gadgets, which by the way make great alternative babysitters, our children are now more fidgety and are always on the lookout for exciting stimuli. For them, a day of doing nothing, is boring, and they’re in the search for adventure in the form of violent video games and colorful youtube videos.
I’m against the excessive use of technology in raising kids. I think technology brings out the worst in children, and left in their own devices (pun intended), our children become addicted to such digital heroin and grow up to be less functioning adults.
Working as a retail staff teaches about the beauty of being bored.
Because when you are standing there for 8 hours and waiting for the next customer, you can’t text or use Facebook. You have to be fixing your displays, updating your records, or filing your documents. And after doing so, you can be calling out for customers to stop and look at your products.
The work is admittedly monotonous and boring. But then again, most work is monotonous and boring.
My secretary updates our sales ledger and files office documents. In the afternoon, she falls in line and deposits checks during her bank run.
My office staff encodes data onto our inventory system the entire day.
My inventory girl helps me prepare goods for pricing and delivery. After which, she stores some of them in our vault for replenishment, which she encodes onto a delivery receipt to give to our area supervisor.
Work is and an be boring. But that’s what jobs are — no matter how exciting jobs are in the beginning, they later on become monotonous and boring. Because you’re already used to the grind and do things automatically.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I think being good at what you do and doing repetitive but accurate work is a great way to get promoted.
Life is not about jumping from one exciting job to the next. It’s not about changing boyfriends as you change your underwear. The best things in life are often times the most comfortable of things.
And working at a retail sales job can teach my daughter just that — being content in the monotony and looking for the positives even when you are bored.
Lastly, working at a retail sales job teaches you how to be detail-oriented, and how to logically make and file all paperworks.
You can’t be careless if you’re a retail sales job. Once the item is delivered to the store, the inventory is now under your responsibility, and you are charged when anything gets lost.
Hence, you have to take care of inventory and make sure nothing goes missing, lest you be charged.
You also need to properly do your paperworks.
If you sold an item for Php 500, you better make sure your sales receipt reflects Php 500 lest you be accused of stealing. How many sales staff has been fired because they wrote down the wrong amounts in sales invoices?
You cannot be disorganized when you’re in sales. In fact, you have to be very organized. All your paperworks must be in order, your store front be neat and tidy, and your products displayed beautifully.
If you can’t be organized, you can’t be in sales.
In summary, there are a gazillion reason why I’d want my daughter to be in retail sales.
Of course, that doesn’t mean she has to do retail sales for the rest of her life. In fact, if all goes well, she may one day manage a retail brand or two when she gets older. But the fact of the matter is, it’s hard to manage if you yourself don’t know from the grassroots level what your customers want, how to sell your product carefully, and how to deal with your staff.
Working as a sales staff is the first step in learning all of that.
“But mom! I’m your daughter!” she might wail. “Why can’t I be a manager or something?”
For one, your people have to respect you first before they work for you. They need to know you’re smart, experienced, and will do the right thing. When you manage people, you just don’t give them a livelihood. They entrust their future to you as well.
That is why it’s critical for my daughter to learn how to follow, before learning how to lead. She needs to earn my people’s respect first, before she can lead over them.
That’s still 18 or more years away, but a mother can wish. In the end, even if my business folds up, I’d still want my daughter to start in retail sales before venturing in anything else. The lessons she will learn are priceless and will be there for her for the rest of her life.
Peppa Pig burst into existence last May 2004. Peppa spoke in a British English accent and the show revolves around her adventures with her family and friends.
According to experts, there is a proof that shows an increased inadversarial, snide, questioning, confrontating, and disrespectful behavior in children which results from watching cartoons such as Peppa Pig. Peppa is downright rude and her parents allow her get away with murder. There is an episode where Peppa and her brother George refused to tidy their room, but then their parents made it into a game. When they finished, the brats trashed the room again, laughing arrogantly.
My niece is 2.5 years old and loves Peppa Pig.
She watches Peppa Pig in two languages, English and Mandarin. She is also ill-mannered, answers back to her parents, and very adversarial. She hates sharing and almost tried to strangle my 1-year old daughter when we went together on vacation.
I wonder if Peppa Pig had anything to do with it?
To be honest, I have yet to watch the show.
For one, we have a relatively strict no-gadget policy and have yet to expose our daughter fully to the wonders of iPads and the Internet.
Hence, without exposure, our daughter is mostly ignorant of the evils of the Internet. She is only 13 months old after all, a bit too young for technology in my opinion.
In contrast, I have bought her a lot of books from the Internet. My husband shakes his head on his crazy wife who have bought complete books of the Berenstain Bears and Dr. Seuss. “She doesn’t even know how to read yet,” he said.
“That’s okay,” I replied. “She’ll learn. And when she does, she’ll have books to read.”
Two, I do not want to expose my child to shows I have yet to censor.
I think it’s easy for parents to just give a tablet to a baby just to shut them up. For many of my friends, their kids started watching Youtube videos when they were merely a few months old. My nephew-in-law Saren will hem and haw until you give him an iPad while he eats. If he does not have an iPad, he will not sit down and eat.
For me, there is no replacement for face-to-face interaction. I honestly don’t think gadgets make the best mommies. In fact, I agree with this New York Post article that states that gadgets are digital heroin and make kids zombies.
“But they keep my child quiet!” other parents insist. “I get to do my chores and leave them in peace. Anyway, they are watching educational videos.”
Have you ever taken away a gadget from a child?
Like seriously, have you seen how adversarial they become when you take away a phone or iPad? While their eyes are glued to the screen, they look like sweet little zombies. But once you remove their ipads, it’s as if they turn into Baby Hydes, wailing and lashing out as if the end is here.
Then what do you do? Return the iPad to them?
Three, I don’t feel comfortable exposing my child to any possible role model who answers back.
While I do believe that we should build our child’s confidence and encourage them to speak up, I also believe that there’s a line of a child speaking his mind and sharing his opinion and defying his/her parents.
It’s okay for a child to give his/her opinion. It’s okay for him/her to question his/her parents. But at the end of the day, they need to follow.
Case in point, a child is walking towards a busy street.
“NO!” you shout at your child. Because you are afraid they might get into an accident. Because you can see the dangerous traffic, and you know it’s possible your child may get hit.
If your child is trained well, he/she will stop. Mommy’s rules are law, and today is no exception.
But if your child is used to defying you, he/she will ignore you and continue on. And he/she will get hurt in the process. And other people may also get hurt because of your child.
That’s the danger of giving a child free rein. They are children. You are still their parents. Not their friends. So it’s better to act like it.
I guess that’s why my dad refused to let me watch The Simpsons until I graduated college. Which is funny because The Simpsons became social satire which correctly predicted Trump’s win as POTUS.
But looking back, Bart was truly a bad influence.
He disrespected his parents, fought with his sister, and created trouble wherever he went. His father Homer was a deadbeat who didn’t result to much. And while Lisa was a better role model, she wasn’t enough to save the show’s moral code.
After college, I did start to watch The Simpsons. The show was still funny and entertaining, but I am thankful that I started watching the show after I’ve reached a lever of maturity and intelligence. I think my parents saved themselves from a lot of pain by picking and choosing the shows that I watched before letting me watch them.
“But that’s censorship!” other parents will say. “These shows have already been approved by experts before showing to kids. If they were evil, they would not show it?”
Oh really? They were properly vetted by the experts? Did you double check that these shows were studied carefully before they were aired?
I’m sorry — it’s my kid, and I want to make sure that what they are watching are truly healthy and good for them. And if that means watching the show beside your child as they watch it, then so be it.
And if that doesn’t make me a cool mom, then so be it.
I don’t need to be a cool mom in order to be a good mom.
How about you? How do you pick and choose the programs your children watch?
tinainmanilasitebackup.wordpress.com 