I opened my first lemonade stand on the corner of Bored Street and Want-Money-For-Ice-Cream Avenue one summer afternoon in 2010, under the shade of an oak tree.

A simple lemonade stand became my gateway drug to entrepreneurship.

But this drug has taught me a lot.

#1 Marketing is Everything and Can 10x Your Profit

After running a lemonade stand a few times during the summer and revenue plateauing, I realized I needed to shake things up a bit. Doing the same old thing would only produce the same old results.

So one day, in addition to selling homemade lemonade, my partner and I decided to sell homemade chocolate chip cookies. ’Cause who didn’t want a little snack with their drink?

So the next day, we took our profits, purchased chocolate chip cookie supplies, and got to baking.

The lemonade and chocolate chip cookie combo sold great, as long as we were able to prevent the chocolate chips from melting in the summer heat.

But it wasn’t enough. We needed to take our business to the next level.

I kid you not, I remember it clear as day-

I was thinking about a book my grandma used to read me called The Doorbell Rang, a children’s book about a grandma bringing homemade cookies to her grandchildren and all their friends.

And then it hit me.

The next day, I begged my business partner’s dad to drive us to Party City. There, we bought gray hair spray, fake glasses, and aprons.

We went home, tied our hair into grandma-style low buns, and spray-painted our hair gray. Adorned in aprons and big round glasses, we were officially known as Grandma’s Homemade Lemonade & Fresh Baked Cookies (trademark pending).

The marketing scheme nearly tripled our profits in one day.

Lesson Learned: There’s inspiration all around you for how to make your business stand out. Dig into old memories or traditions you had with family and friends. Scour the internet. Have regular brainstorming sessions with other creatives. Your marketing can 10x your business if used creatively and efficiently. Who wouldn’t want to buy lemonade from 10 year olds dressed as grandmas?

#2 Your Business Can Live Off Referrals if Done Right

After the success of my seasonal business- the lemonade stand- I wanted to take a newfound passion and turn it into an all-year-round side gig.

I had a baking business from the ages of 13 to 15 and made homemade and hand-decorated cakes and cupcakes for birthdays and baby showers.

I spent many-a-weekend practicing my craft, learning different techniques, and recruiting my dad as my taste tester.

My first client was my aunt and she commissioned me to make a ‘smash cake’ for my one-year-old cousin.

From there, my business grew from word of mouth and referrals only. No marketing, no social media, no paid ads.

My entire business was run and sustained through the positive experience my clients not only had with me but with the end product.

Lesson Learned: Never underestimate the power of word-of-mouth. It’s the number one most effective marketing strategy. The experience your client has with your business and product should be the most important factor of consideration. Referrals are powerful. So ask your clients to give you some. And remind them to a tell a friend or two about what you’re doing.

#3 Think Outside the Box to Promote Your Work

My cake decorating business was booming but as I walked the hallways of my crowded middle school, I realized I walked the ground of the largest untapped market every day; hormonal teenagers bored at school.

I decided all my classmates needed a sugar high, but how would I market and sell my cupcakes at school without getting in trouble?

As I tried to brainstorm ways to tap into this market, it hit me in my 8th-period science class.

You see, this was the class everyone was excited to go to because they knew they could spend the period just hanging out.

It was the last period of the day, and everyone was checked out, especially the teacher. The teacher always looked for any excuse to do anything but science during this period.

Ah, good ol’ public school.

I decided one day to challenge my two best friends in the class to a cupcake-baking competition. The science teacher would be the judge and spend the period taste-testing our cupcakes and ranking them based on taste, creativity, and execution.

And hey, technically baking is a science. There are chemical reactions in the baking process and you have to use the scientific method to perfect your recipes.

Needless to say, it was an easy pitch, and the date of the competition was set for Friday.

I decided to pull out all the stops for this competition and go with an original recipe. I settled on an Oreo cupcake where I baked a whole Oreo in with the chocolate cupcake batter and iced it with Oreo buttercream.

I perfected the recipe, taste-tested it on my parents, and even created a decoration to adorn my masterpiece.

Friday came along, and my competition ended up using a box cake mix and didn’t decorate their cupcake. I already had a competitive advantage.

Then it came down to the tasting. My teacher sat at his desk at the front of the room and he blind-tasted our creations in front of the whole class.

Long story short, I ended up winning the competition.

Then came to class the next day with a cupcake order form for my classmates.

New market, unlocked.

Lesson Learned: When promoting your work or marketing a business, there are endless ways to successfully grab the attention of your audience or market and make them want to purchase from you. It could be having a public contest to show consumers why and how you’re better than competitors. It could be creating and hosting an annual vendors market at your college to not only promote your small business but also the small businesses of other students on campus (I did this, too). It could be creating an exclusive club that your clients or customers are a part of that makes other people want to be a part of it too. Keep all options available and brainstorm the craziest ideas you can think of. Because who knows, maybe it’s not so crazy after all and will lead to a new market of customers.

#4 Understand the Emotional Implications of Your Actions

I’ve made mistakes in business. And I’m sure I’ll make more.

Although I could’ve gone without having to live through this experience, it’s a choice I made and I had to deal with the consequences.

Let me take you back.

I opened an Etsy shop back in 2020 with a partner.

I opened it because I was bored (which seems to be a pattern) and had a lot of time on my hands since the COVID-19 pandemic had just started. I integrated a partner to be able to have more capital to invest in the company.

After four months of running the business together, my partner decided to leave.

I saw it coming and wasn’t too disappointed (she was planning a wedding at the time and needed to shift her focus to everything that came along with getting married).

Immediately after our Zoom call discussing her payout and the logistics of what steps would need to be taken in order to close out this chapter for her, I hopped on the Instagram page for the business and removed all traces of her.

I deleted her introduction post as co-founder. Removed her personal account from the bio. Unfollowed her. All the things.

I don’t really know what possessed me to do this. Or, I don’t remember all these years later, but it clearly was an impulsive decision that I had not thoroughly thought through.

A few months later my ex-business partner and I were talking and she mentioned how my removing her publicly from the company, like she never existed in the first place, really hurt her.

I had never considered the emotional implications of doing that. I just thought it was logical- she was no longer part of the company, so she should be removed.

By removing her from the only public-facing part of the company, I wasn’t saying “She decided she didn’t have the time to run the business anymore and wanted to focus on other things so she left in an honorable way”

I was saying “Her contribution, financially and otherwise, the past four months have meant nothing. Her name and reputation for this business means nothing. She can’t claim this business as any of her personal doing whatsoever.”

Lesson Learned: There are emotional implications for almost every decision we make and action we take. And if it’s not an emotional implication for ourselves personally, then it might be for someone else. Think long and hard about what your actions explicitly and implicitly say.

#5 Use Your Business for the Greater Good

There are many perks to owning your own business.

One of them is using your business for the greater good.

Sure, your business is already helping your clients directly. But how can you help even more people?

Don’t just view your business as a way to make money. View it as a way to give back.

Even if your business isn’t profitable (yet), use your skills, talents, or time to contribute to the greater good of society.

Go a step beyond the inherent value your business provides.

Challenge yourself to give more than you take.

In the words of the great Macklemore,

“So when I leave here on this earth, did I take more than I gave? Did I look out for the people, or did I do it all for fame?” -Glorious by Macklemore featuring Skylar Grey