How To Teach Entrepreneurship to Children (Age 6-7)

Sabi shows up on new year morning. Today, she is trying to stick a banner on the tree to attract customers.

Sabi considered pitching Kunzum, a bookstore that she frequents. She made her pitch. However, despite multiple attempts, she was unable to meet with the store’s owner, leading her to abandon this idea.

The Canadian Consulate in Chandigarh contracted Humane Club and Global Shapers Gurugram to organize events to showcase diverse career options for female students attending government-run schools.

I gave a subsequent contract to Sabi to supply 160 Snug Monster bookmarks, one for each student as part of the merchandise that would be provided to each student. Completing this sizable order within a tight schedule required discipline and meticulous planning on Sabi’s part.

Learning: This order came through mother’s company. This experience taught Sabi the benefits of bulk orders. She now had to figure out how to get bulk orders.

Sabi introduced new designs today. The designs are refreshingly different. She is hoping that her old customers will repeat purchase from her. Additionally, these designs should allow her to charge a premium.

As it turned out, customers were willing to buy these new designs for ₹20 each. The new designs were interesting enough to convince existing customers to purchase a new Snug. Additionally, previously customers were buying only one bookmark. Now that there are so many different designs, customers are open to buy multiple bookmarks!

As the next step in her entrepreneurship journey, she considered writing down her learnings about Indic religions and sell a book. We bought a scrapbook and helped her produce one polished copy. She was extremely proud.

Conclusion: It took her 3-4 weeks to produce one copy. She realized that there was no way she can mass-produce these books manually. So she dropped the idea of selling the book.

Carnatic Cafe, one of our favorite local restaurants serves ice cream in coconut shells. Sabi had been collecting and saving these shells! One day, she decided to carve them into wall-hangings. For the next few weeks, she carved them into “Monkey Masks.”

Conclusion: She concluded that sourcing enough coconut shells would be a challenge. She cannot keep ordering ice cream to get raw material. Additionally, carving the eyes and nose took her almost 6-8 hours. Finally, there isn’t much utility of the mask.

Sabi used toilet paper rolls to make an innovative product. She tied one end with a balloon, made a lid, and filled it with torn colorful paper. She would then sneak up behind her mother, pull the balloon, and release it. A loud sound would follow, and paper bits would pop out like a confetti blast.

Conclusion: She knew that the family won’t generate a consistent supply of toilet paper rolls. Her plan was to go around asking neighbors for used toilet rolls. Eventually, she dropped the plan due to hygiene concerns.

Sabi has always been interested in pottery. As Snug Monsters progressed, one of the new product ideas that she proposed was selling pottery that she would build. Hence, we took her to Tugbug Studio in Delhi to get her to try her hand at pottery.

Conclusion: After a ₹600-per-hour session, she managed to make two tiny pots. It was good fun, however, she realized that she couldn’t mass-produce these as she could the bookmarks.

Last year, Sabi decided that she can start selling vegetables as part of Snug Monsters. We let her try! She planted tomatoes, onions, and potatoes and took care of the plants for 5-6 months! She finally harvested in mid 2023.

Conclusion: Eventually, she realized that she won’t be able to bulk grow vegetables in her balcony. Nonetheless, we had amazing fresh vegetables for salad. 🙂

Harvest 1: February 1-20, 2023

Harvest 2: March 31, 2023

Harvest 3: April 2, 2023

Harvest 4: May 25, 2023

Three days ago, we decided to make our own Basil Tea at home. We spent the rest of the day cleaning around 1.5 kilos of fresh Tulsi leaves, removing the stems. and steaming the leaves for 30-40 seconds in a rice cooker.

Steaming halts the oxidation process, thus preserving the leaves’ green color, rich flavor, and high antioxidant content. Finally, we laid out the leaves to dry.

Three days later, we had ~150 grams of dried Tulsi tea leaves.

To test out the Basil tea leaves she dried, Sabi hosted a tea ceremony for us. The brewed tea turned out to be extremely fragrant but subtle in its flavor. Most importantly, this tea was caffeine-free and thus child-friendly.

In the next batch, we tried simmering the basil tea leaves in boiling water. This batch, when mixed with honey, produced an extremely strong, flavorful tea.

We purchased ₹1000 worth of basil, which arrived a few days later.

We spent the subsequent days quickly cleaning, de-stemming, steaming, and drying the leaves. Our entire house began to smell like basil. This work had to be done in a time-bound fashion so the leaves retain their freshness.

The next problem was where to buy 50 gram air-tight boxes to package all of these dried leaves for sales. We contacted vendors on Indiamart.com and eventually selected a Ghaziabad based vendor who sold us 100 boxes for ₹3500, including shipping.

Measuring the dried leaves and packing the boxes introduced Sabi to how to use weighing machines. She eventually carefully measured and packed all the tea into 33 tea boxes!

Eager to test out whether customers will buy Tea, Sabi decided to setup her shop on Saturday morning itself. She ended up selling 3 boxes along with her usual Snug Monster Bookmarks. This boosted her weekly earnings from ₹600 per week to ₹1050!

Based on these insights, we changed the packaging.

Buoyed by the success, we returned to the park the following day, ready to sell more ₹200 tea boxes. However, this time, security guards approached Sabi’s stall and asked her to leave. Sabi was shocked!

The guards, and later the park authorities, explained to us that they had been monitoring Sabi for the past 1.5 years. Until now, she had only been selling products priced between ₹1 and ₹10. Now that she had products worth ₹200, they considered her an official street hawker, as hawking was banned in the park.

We had to dismantle the shop immediately. A group of regular customers came to Sabi’s aid and protested the decision, but the park authorities were adamant. If she wanted to sell, she would have to do it outside the park, where all the other street hawkers—coconut sellers, ice cream stalls, and those selling chips and water—had set up their shops.

Sabi was extremely disappointed and nearly burst into tears.

Today, Sabi decided to return to our regular park and set up shop in the parking area next to the coconut vendor. She chose to wear the badge of “street hawker” proudly!

She had not showed up to her shop for over a month now. And in the first few minutes of setting up this shop, this happened 👇

As it turned out, she ended up achieving two days’ worth of sales in one day. The footfall was much higher, and customers had a greater intent to purchase as they left the park after their exercise. She ultimately sold out all Basil Tea Boxes.

• Sabi gifted two boxes of tea to her Karate Teachers. One box she kept for herself.
• This left her with 30 boxes.
• She made ~₹2700 after deducting cost of fresh leaves and tin boxes.

Although this was a major disruption, she successfully navigated through it.

There are travel restrictions in Delhi due to the upcoming G20 summit. Hence the foot fall at the park was drastically lower than usual. But what is important is that Sabi showed up and kept the shop open!

Today, we woke up late and hurriedly prepared ourselves. Just as we started the car, Sabi realized she had forgotten to bring disposable cups. It turns out that most customers who purchase Snug Monster Tea like to sample it first, and without disposable cups, they wouldn’t be able to do so. She quickly went back upstairs, found the cups, and returned to the car. By the time we had set up the shop, foot traffic had decreased significantly. Eventually, she sold only ₹720 worth of product today.

Sabi had a busy morning filled with lots of interesting talks with customers! Once again, she sold out all the Basil Tea boxes. Overall she sold product worth ₹620/-.

Today was extra special at the shop because besides selling the usual bookmarks and Basil Tea, Sabi brought some work-in-progress products to get early opinions from people.

Next weekend, Sabi is planning to sell 6 models of ISRO rockets and satellites that she’s been working on for many weeks. A big takeaway from today’s interaction with customers was that people are really curious about the technical details of the rockets.

So, including some info cards and videos alongside the 3D models might be a cool idea. The park where the shop is located often gets visits from government officials, and many of them showed interest in the rocket models today.

This feedback was awesome for Sabi, and now she has some good ideas to make her rocket and satellite models even more interesting for next weekend!

Meanwhile, a fresh batch of Basil Tea Leaves is drying, and with a bit of luck, they’ll be ready for the upcoming weekend.