Future Business Owners of America

This is Melody. (I made that up but she looks like a Melody, right?) While on a work errand yesterday, I passed her selling cookies outside of her building. Obviously, I HAD to stop. First of all, so cute. Melody is so cute. Okay, second of all, she's a genius business woman and I respect the hell out of a smart mini lady. But, before I go any further, I must digress... One summer when I was about nine, my best friend Ashley and I set up a lemonade stand outside of the pool because we discerned that it was the area with the highest traffic flow in the neighborhood. Which was true, it was. We also not only sold lemonade, we sold popsicles too. (Flavor Ices, the cheap kind) It was our genius business strategy and lemme tell you, the Flavor Ices REALLY brought in some hard core revenue. We knew what we were doing. The lemonade went for 25 cents and the popsicles for 50. We made bank that summer which was a major monetary improvement for me and my business ventures. The summer before I had attempted selling rocks I'd found in my neighbor's backyard that I thought looked cool. Rock collecting was pretty in at the time and I thought I'd try my hand in the biz. For some reason though, my rocks (aka broken granite and pebbles) weren't really hot sellers. Maybe if I'd had some gemstones... Annnnnyway, when I saw this little lady yesterday, I recognized a kindred spirit. She's cashing in on so many of her advantages here. 1. Prime real estate. She recognizes how great it is to live with her parents on the Upper West Side, not pay rent and run a successful business. Do you know how many people walk past her cookie stand a day? Probably, about a million. She must be saving like crazy! 2. She's super cute and rockin' that and 3. Being tuned into New York's obsession with quality food, Melody claims to offer "fresh baked" goods. She knows though, that in this world of misleading food labels, "fresh baked" does not necessarily have to mean "homemade" per say. But, it damn sure draws people over to your cookie stand and Melody knows that and she doesn't care. Melody don't care if her Thin Mints are truly fresh or not (yeah, that was a Honey Badger reference). No way. She's reeled you in and now you HAVE to buy her cookies. Because really, what kind of jerk wouldn't buy a cookie from a baby? Even if she is charging $1.00 for two Thin Mints. Yes, Melody's charging $1.00, A WHOLE DOLLAR, for two Girl Scout cookies..."fresh baked"...I don't think so, Melody. But, to her genius credit, they were cold Thin Mints and that is AWESOME and I pretty much forgot that I thought I was going to be eating a homemade cookie. I even gave her an extra dollar. It's that darn cuteness, even poor people like me will throw in an extra buck for it. So, watch out for Melody everyone, she's smart, she's crafty, she's selling cold Thin Mints and she's probably going to be President some day. I'm dropping off my resume with her tomorrow. I bet she never tried selling rocks.