Thursday, April 15, 2010

And THAT kid's an Entrepreneur!

There's a child in our family, who we will call Isaac. Isaac's mother lost her cell phone last week. She looked high, she looked low- no phone.

"I'll give you two dollars to find your mother's phone", Tony volunteered.

"Two dollars?!" said Isaac with indignation. "Five."

 This eight year old apparently knows the cost of a Happy Meal.

It was then that I knew what I had to do.

"I'll give you ten."
"Ten? I can find it for ten."
"I thought so."

No stone was left unturned. No bed unchecked. No couch cushions not flipped.
When those efforts didn't produce, he left the house- I mistakenly thought he'd given up.

"It was in the car!"
"Here's your ten spot."
"THANKS! Hey- can someone take me to the mall?"
"No."
"How about Dollar General?"
"No."

The thing about Isaac is, though I love him to death, he's a difficult child.
He's always taking issue with nearly everything you say, doesn't follow rules much, unless there's a very stiff form of punishment- "Don't make me call your father", gets bored easily, and has his own ideas about how life should flow.

I used to tell him a few years ago, "My, my. For someone who was pooping on themselves not that long ago, you sure are opinionated, kid."

Also, the public school which he attends (Entrepreneur Chick has the dimmest view of pubic schools imaginable) tested him recently, and Isaac was found to be incredibly intelligent, so much so, that they immediately called his mother to report the findings.

Perhaps you would surmise from this story that Isaac is merely motivated by sheer greed.

I do not think so.

Isaac is motivated by "value" and putting a price on what he brings to the table.

As our good entrepreneurial and highly successful friend, Mike, said to us last month;
"You're entrepreneurs. If you just want to make a living, get a job."

Isaac is going to last about ten minutes in a job, and I sincerely hope he figures out that he, like me, is entirely unemployable.
Let's just save all the future bosses out there a lot of trouble.


Actually, he had much more than ten dollars to spend in that he made a deal with the neighbor boy next door.

I know this because our earlier conversation went like this-

"Can you activate my credit card?"
"Credit card?"
"Yeah."
"Let me see what you've got."

Isaac proudly hands me a twenty dollar gift card from the credit card section of his wallet.

"You don't have to activate this. You just go in there and make a purchase and hand them this card."
"Oooooh."
"How'd you get this?"
"I told William he could ride my bike anytime he wanted."
"Ah. Okay. But did you put an expiration date on that?"
"Oh. I didn't think of that! Thanks!"

Now I feel a bit bad for not taking him to the mall.



3 comments:

  1. He'll always know when to ask for a raise, won't he?

    Great story...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, that kid is definitely of your bloodline!!!! LOL

    ReplyDelete
  3. Neat! :) I like it. And I think that Macaulay Culkin could teach this kid a thing or two about business and economics as well. :)

    ReplyDelete