When Life Gives You Lemonade, Drink It

Future Fortune 500 Company

I love supporting small local businesses. The really small and really local ones. There's nothing better than the smile on a child's face when you buy a cup of his rancid lemonade and give him what he knows is way more than twenty five cents (although he's not sure how much) and then you tell him to keep the change. The smile, no doubt, is some combination of relief at not having to do the math and elation at earning some coin.

Lately, I have become fascinated by the notion of entrepreneurial spirit. I've become, in some ways, an accidental student of the ones who make it big. I have learned a lot in my short foray into the world of business acumen, most notably that merely going on line to have thousands of cheap business cards printed up does not automatically lead to a pot of gold. Or even a small Tupperware container of aluminum alloy. Apparently there's some financing and a little bit of marketing involved. You can dream big all you want, but livin' the big dream requires a bit more ingenuity than a stack of two by nothing cards.

Knowing myself pretty well -- and my lifelong tendency to sit back and hope good things will somehow come my way -- I have balked when well meaning friends suggest I advertise, promote, put myself out there. My business ideas have been plentiful, but few have come to fruition. I decided recently it would take less drive and ingenuity to simply look for a job rather than start my own gig from scratch. Drafting several versions of a resume was time consuming, but dispensing them with a mere click of a mouse was far easier than building a business from the bottom up. Why reinvent the wheel when there are already so many of them spinning out there, and you never even have to lick a stamp?

All good, until rejection starts rolling in. Flat out lack of interest in your piece of paper is one thing; the realization that they met you and somebody else and actually wanted the somebody else more is utterly demoralizing, no matter how many rationalizations you come up with to assuage your ego. I am at the very beginning of the process and I am already considering throwing in the towel. I have taken to  counting imminent rejections -- those inevitable turn downs I assume are about to come my way when a prospective employer fails to respond with great love and enthusiasm (or at all) within two minutes -- as official nays. I have worked myself into a frenzy of dejection, wondering why I even bother.

I confessed this to a teenager I know yesterday. (I am being vague because I have promised this particular teenager I would not write about her anymore; she seems to think I exaggerate.) Anyway, I told this person I was feeling like a bit of a fraud. For years, I have encouraged my children to make the effort, to stay with it, not to give up even when the going gets tough. I have quoted all the quotes about not letting failure get you down. Yet even the slightest disappointment gets to me these days, and I just want to crawl under the covers, stop trying. If I don't put myself out there, I may not find anything, but at least I won't get rejected. I poured it out, told this teenager I either needed a therapist or a good smacking around.

She provided both. After giving me a gentle whack on the side of the head -- with an option for more if I thought it necessary -- she offered up her own hard earned wisdom (and here, I may be paraphrasing but in no way exaggerating): In my experience, not trying lands you in an even bigger shit hole. 

This seventeen year old may have been raised by a blithering idiot, but she certainly has a few things figured out. I thought about the lemonade entrepreneurs in the neighborhood. Not only the novices at the end of my street who are probably still trying to figure out how much extra coin they got from me, but the diehards a few blocks away who have been out on their corner almost every day this summer, rain or shine. They shout as you go by, sometimes chase your car. The wise seventeen year old quoted earlier has admitted to purchasing many lemonades from these kids this summer. She admires their determination and, on a hot day, the stuff tastes pretty good.

The other day, one of the diehards ran after me as I rode by on my bike. Thirsty? Thirsty? Thirsty? I kept pedaling as his shouts faded to a whisper. I wasn't thirsty, and had no money on me anyway, but I felt kind of bad about not stopping. For his effort alone, he deserved better than the sight of my back speeding away from him. He's made of strong stuff, though, and I have no doubt he will be out again, chasing people's backs, not giving up on a sale. I will stop next time, if only to ask him how he does it.

Years ago, I used to joke with a friend at work about how nobody ever came up to us with a pat on the back and a hearty atta girl (or atta boy). A few years of raising kids made that workplace seem like a hotbed of positive reinforcement; job hunting at fifty-three makes just about everything else seem like a warm embrace, a virtual lifetime's worth of atta girls. But I will force myself to crawl out from under the covers and keep at it, if only because I have no desire to end up in a bigger shit hole.