There are two lemonade stands.  The first has a couple kids giving you some warm lemon koolaid and charge you a buck for it.  The second stand is much better.

The other stand is different. The lemonade is free, but there’s a big tip jar. When you pull up, the owner of the stand beams as only a proud eleven year old girl can beam. She takes her time and reaches into a pail filled with ice and lemons. She pulls out a lemon. Slices it. Then she squeezes it with a clever little hand juicer.

You will have to check out the article at Seth Godin’s blog, “The lesson from two lemonaid stands”

One stand focuses on a real quality product, while the other goes for a quantity.  Considering how much time I spent with my kool-aid stands when I was a kid, it’s interesting to think about what if this was the business model.  My friend and I were very good at driving quantity, but looking back on it we could have done more.

Even if we didn’t adopt the free/tipped model, there were certainly improvements that could have been made.  It is weird to think about just how many things were done wrong in our many campaigns.  For example, why were we advertising our low price and then lowering it?  Does anybody really care if your koolaid is twenty cents or ten cents?  If they are going to stop, then they will stop.

Oh well, it doesn’t do any good to point out flaws in a 9 year old’s business plan from years ago.  Kids are trying to make some money, not get a masters in marketing.  Something about the innocence of the whole thing really does help to sell a lot of that sugary water.