Running a Children’s Business Fair called BizKidz

Want a way to teach young people how to think like an entrepreneur while having fun and an impact on your local community?  Then create a BizKidz (Children’s Business Fair) of your own!  Let’s chat about it. 

Transcript

0:00

Hey guys, I’m Brooks and I Mandee. So we’re husband and wife, entrepreneurs and we believe that life and business are a giant adventure and we want to live it with you guys. So let’s get to it.

0:24

Mandee, welcome back today. How are you doing? I’m doing well. I guess I go well, thank you how you go. Are you going? That’s like a that’s like a New Zealand or Ozzy thing. I think like, we’re not there as 10 years ago, man, I’m back in back in Kiwi world when I was living in New Zealand like, hey, again. They said, they said sweet as sweet as yeah, sweet like as like as sweet as you could be like, oh, that’s cool. As big as it was a weird thing. It’s just like, a thing they do. It’s a kiwi thing. Yeah, so sweet. All right today, and I’ve got sidetracked already. Today we’re going to talk about we’re gonna talk about business.

1:00

Kids,

1:01

What is biscuits? What is biz? Exactly? So we’re gonna talk about so an event that we produced. So we’re going to talk about the event itself, like what it is what we learn from it, and maybe even encourage people to produce their own their own biscuits now, we called it biscuits. That’s a name that we came up with. We designed a logo and developed branding for it, but biz kids is basically a, I mean, do you wanna say, Sure, it’s a children’s business fair. There you go. So children, we picked an age range between seven and 13. But really, it went from like, yeah, we adjusted that to like five to 16. But um, but yeah, so they had an opportunity to create a product and come to the actual fair, the greater goal state greater. Yep. And sell their product to fairgoers. So, but you don’t have to do it at a fair do it anywhere. Do you want?

2:00

Tell them what gave you the inspiration yeah so the year before so I guess in the previous year you and I went to an event that’s kind of in our area but across the bay so we live on Mobile Bay and across the bay we heard of this event we’re like oh this young entrepreneurs event this this business they’re like what is this and I said can we go nearly Yeah, and we went over there and oh my gosh, like and I know I tell everyone this but like you make fun of me for how frugal I am. Yeah, you can’t get any dollar bills out of me or whatever. But what was I doing there? We were making it rain given all the kids all your money all the kids all my money. It was so much fun. We were buying decorated plates and cookies and popcorn and bookmarks. And I’m just thinking in my head like yeah, stuff that we were buying there was like there was a girl selling she made leashes for dogs. Yeah, yeah, like dog collar. We didn’t get a collar we didn’t get we got some from her. I’m assuming or do we? I guess we bought some from everybody. But we thought at that time we bought all Yeah, but all kinds of

3:00

Yeah it was super cool really cool we got to know the organizer that event and I actually we actually had coffee after that at some point and talked about you know the event she gave me all this feedback and said you know like we won’t we won’t do this ever my bill so the our company the mobile rundown wanted to launch are in right now she there’s this company if you want to look this up if you’re interested in producing one because you should because the kids are our future kids are insanely creative. Kids just need an outlet and an educational realm to kind of like experience this stuff to make a product to have somewhere to try this stuff like there’s this organization called actin AC t o n. And um, they are kind of the original producers of this children’s business fair. They also have like this, like small kind of MBA school or something. But I think they’re in Texas if I remember correctly, but they give people that want to produce they’re in children’s business fairs actually give

4:00

You can apply to be a part of them and they will give you like a website, like a login. So you can actually use the website portal in order to create your business fair website. And so we did that. So we linked from our own media website, the medical rundown. And then when someone was ready to apply, they clicked over to the acting website and that’s where they filled out their information what their product was. That’s where they paid us the registration fee. That’s where they did all those things. And so check out act and SOCOM props to them. They were a great

4:37

a great tool and helping us get our kids excuse me, biz kids, our children’s business fair launched. So and for me, one of the one of the key things that made this event

4:54

I don’t want to say work but what turned it in my opinion from like a small scale event into something that has

5:00

Potential to be really large was the partnership that so this is kind of a key takeaway for anyone. So we created a partnership with the greater Gulf State Fair. Right. So they allowed us to come into their facility where there would be thousands of fairgoers. Right. So this is like built in, I would call like a built in audience, like built in shoppers, so we didn’t have to worry as much about marketing the fair. We had to market to partners, so sponsors to help us like raise funds to help produce it. And then also to find the young entrepreneurs we had to market and find those people. But the people the shoppers were mostly built in with the fairgoers, right. So if we didn’t have that, that would have been another part of our puzzle of marketing, trying to get people to come and shop these kids. Of course their parents would be their friends, and things like that, but whenever you don’t have a built in shopper, base of

6:00

Thousands of people come in through you have to make sure they get there or the kids, you know, have kind of made their products for no good reason. So, yeah, it was a fantastic partnership. Well, it’s a great partnership. And so it wasn’t thousands of people it was probably more like hundreds that came through. But here’s what happened originally. We were going to be outside, which honestly was great. And we were excited about it. There’s we’re going to create this outdoor market. Well, the day before our business fair, the fair had to shut down because we had tornadoes in our community. Like it’s the first time they’ve ever I think if I remember correctly, the first time they’ve ever had to fully shut down the fair on opening day or something. Yeah, be open. So we made this historic.

6:46

You know, I guess record or something with the local fair. Well, the next morning was also insane rain until right at like, right it right at really the loading time where the kids were supposed to come and set up

7:00

Yeah, and everyone showed up everyone except for I think one. So we had like 20 or so booths give or take or whatever. Um, and they were all there. And so what happened is we move them inside. So from the outdoor market because it was raining, we made the decision that morning with the fair director, they allowed us to move inside with where all the other vendors that are set up for like, 10 days were right in, I think that was a game changer. In my opinion. It was really cool. I think it gave the kids a better experience because they were like, among the other total integration, right? I mean, everyone that comes in the fair walks through this area of all these vendors, and they’re not all like selling stuff. Some of them are just educational or whatever, just like things for you to look at. But everyone goes through there. And so I think it gave our kids the sense of man, I’m a part of this thing and there’s these other vendors and I mean, I felt like that like for the kids. Right? You know, right?

8:01

And you and I 100% this time did buy something from every kid yeah we I flippin enjoyed it yeah so that’s great why I had a superman glitter tattoo that was on my arm for like a week because yeah avoid the area of where it was I didn’t want to wash actually yeah that was really good body glue so this young girl use body glue it was like a stencil she put it on Ask me what colors I wanted she put the glitter in the correct spots like where I wanted it and then she like peeled this thing off. Yeah, I kept it for like a week it was it was all we got marshmallows shooter gun was awesome.

8:37

More cookies than I can count we got snacks which is a which is like an official business now dude still selling stuff right now. So snacks are you get you went down? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, good Macs and socks combined. So you get like say you get a pair of socks and they have the Skittles

8:57

Logo and everything on them. You also get a

9:00

Pack of Skittles with them. Are they? I think she had, or he had Doritos and charms and all kinds of things. So um, yeah, that was your favorite for sure. Man snacks. It was cool. Um, anyway, so we could go on and on about what there was, but kids are creative. Yeah, you know, you know what, you know, made me have a tier of happiness in my eye. There was a after it was all over. One of the kids turned in their income statement to me. Yeah. And I thought that was like the coolest thing ever. Yeah, with their parents, they sat down. And they wrote out like, okay, here’s my entry fee. Here’s my total cost of goods. But my cost of goods at this show for what I specifically sold was x, right? Therefore, like, because they had inventory leftover, right? So overall, that child wasn’t like wasn’t profitable, but from that one show. Yeah, based on the cost of goods there. Yeah, child was profitable. I think made like $14 and 63 cents or something, if I remember correctly, and the um, but what’s your

10:00

Cool is and I got to tell kids like hey cool now if you didn’t sell everything and you like you broke even at the show like some of the other kids I mean Oh, we got some like

10:09

cards which are really cool like and crafted are the cards for like, thank you thank you car like it well Happy birthday, something like that. And so that young lady like broke even at the show, well that but then she had like 30 cards or something left ever and I was like cool. Now you have all these cards, this is nothing but profit. So the next time you sell these now you’re profitable right now. And it was just really a really cool experience. It’s really fun. It makes us feel really good. We were excited to have a few partners that helped us you know, put it on

10:45

in the sense of you know, sponsorship dollars that allowed us to like get t shirts for the kids and we got handcrafted shopping bags and some signage and got to you know, do some good promotion right for the event and so, um, the board of directors for the fair loved it

11:00

Yeah, everyone loved it. And you know, they’re all they we’ve already had kind of a conversation. They’re like, hopefully you guys are gonna, you’ll come back next year and we said, yep, absolutely, yeah. So we will be planning an annual event for big kids for sure. What I would like to do is actually increase education for the kids and I don’t know how to do that yet. If it’s in the form of some simple videos or having like an entrepreneur, getting them to gather and come and connect before the event that would be great and just allowing you know, some entrepreneurs to like to talk with them and just talk through some concepts and ideas and just let them all mingle and connect with each other. I think that would be really neat and kind of you know, we can involve some other organizations in town that that are based around those topics.

11:46

But the kids learned a lot we learned a lot overall insanely successful with that, and we I think would

11:54

Would push you advise you and encourage you

12:00

Encouraging definitely encourage you to maybe produce and put on an event like this in your community, right? It’s one of the, I guess, if you do if you don’t, you don’t have to do t shirts and bags and those kinds of things unless you get a sponsor for your event, but it’s one of those things where you can literally put something together at a local park or something like that, and just have the kids come out and bring a table and bring their own tent. It doesn’t have to cost it doesn’t you don’t have to come out of pocket much at all to make this event happen. So and there’s always businesses in your community who want to support young entrepreneurs, so you can reach out to them for sponsorship dollars, but, um, but yeah, yeah, but so I guess to couple that I would, I would say a definite strategy would be to not completely go it alone. You may be the organizer, but if you can find the right partner that’s on board with you. That is a facility that does have people at some event if you can, I think if you can find a way to couple with that you

13:00

Really, really hedge your bets and,

13:02

And make it much easier on yourself to produce.

13:07

So well Cool. Well guys, thanks for joining us go out and launch your own children’s business fair and we will connect with you next time.

13:27

Hey guys, thanks for hanging out with us. We’d love for you to share it with a friend review it and don’t hesitate to reach out and say hello. You can connect with us and see the resources that we talked about destroyed the box with.us that’s www.destroytheboxwith.us.