Jon at Art Of Money came up with the brilliant idea of detailing what he has learned from his different jobs. Since I’ve held the widest assortment of jobs of anyone I know, I figured this would be a fun exercise for my weekend posts.
Before the age of twelve, we lived way out in the country in a small village (of five families). There weren’t many opportunities to earn cash (we did work on a recreational farm which supplied most of our food needs – I even had a few hives of bees that I managed – some kids have kittens as pets, I had bees).
However, one weekend a year, the village hosted a fall fair with attendees coming from up to an hour drive away. My siblings and I worked as garbage clean up (we worked very, very hard all weekend to earn a twenty dollar bill between the four of us, I remember passing that first twenty dollar bill back and forth, it was one of the happiest days of my life).
But the most influential part of the weekend was when we sold excess vegetables at the roadside, mostly to city folks.
What I learned;
Unsold inventory is worthless. We only got paid for the vegetables we sold. Anything left at the end of the weekend went in our stomachs, not in our wallets. Oh, and inventory turns are important. Vegetables spoil.
The customer is always right. One city gal wanted to buy the huge “cucumber” we had for sale. “Sorry ma’am”, I told her, “that’s a zucchini.” “No, little girl,” she insisted in a condescending voice, “that’s a cucumber. I’ll give you $3 for it.” For $3, it’ll be a cucumber. Consider it sold.
Planning is key. In order to have the hot selling vegetables, we had to plant the seeds months in advance.
Be where the customers are. We (actually my youngest siblings) would count cars down different routes, figuring out where the best place was to put our vegetable stand. We could only sell to customers we saw.