686. Why Do Lemonade Stands Need Protecting? The Fight for Kids’ First Businesses

Hi everybody, and welcome to another episode of The Way the World Works, a Tuttle Twins podcast. Today I'm really excited. I mean, I'm excited every time I get to talk to you guys, but today I'm really excited because we have something that is a really important issue for me, and I know it's a big issue for everyone at the Tuttle Twins and probably all of you.

But when I think of summertime, the first thing that pops in my head are lemonade stands. Because kids, especially if they are in school or, you know, public school where they go all day, I know a lot of our listeners are in homeschool or do homeschool or other innovative schools, but summertime is a time when kids are free to be entrepreneurs. You have all this time.

And so you'll walk down your street or sometimes even just driving through the neighborhood and you'll see these lemonade stands. And I never did one when I was little, which I was always so bummed about, but I love watching kids be entrepreneurs. I will stop every time I see a lemonade stand.

I will stop and I will buy one. Sometimes I don't always drink them. Sometimes I don't always drink them.

There's a lot of sugar in some of them, but I love the effort and I love when kids are finding ways to learn everything they can about entrepreneurship. So this is something people do every summer. But this year, one of my very good old friends from the Ron Paul days back in 2008, 2012 posted something really, really interesting on her Facebook page, and I want to read it to you and we'll put it up on the screen as well.

So my friend Whitney, she says, there's lemonade stand drama in our HOA and I'm here for it. Our HOA banned lemonade stands in common areas, but allows them on private property. I actually don't think this is unreasonable, but I love a good protest.

Our neighborhood is full of young entrepreneurs, especially during the summer. We get knocks and cards from young kids, often lawn services, trash can cleaning, car washing, and yes, a few lemonade stands here and there, but the moms aren't having it. The ban.

She's talking about the moms are not having the ban on lemonade stands. They're up in arms in the Facebook group and the HOA meetings. One mom is organizing the world record for the most lemonade stands on HOA property.

Another mom started a contest for the young entrepreneurs to prepare and present their business plan. One mom even created a free lemonade stand in protest with adult lemonade by request. Another mom is sharing, ready for this, the Tuttle Twins food truck fiasco.

And one young, young entrepreneur started a lemonade delivery service on his dirt bike. I love this so, so much. I love a little, a little good protest for the right reason.

But before I get into this and lemonade stand bans and how I feel about this great post and thank you, Whitney, so much for letting me share it. I want to talk about HOAs because this is kind of a hot topic. So we've talked a lot on past episodes about how the best way to make rules and laws or to have them be one consensual, you have to agree to them.

But also we have to make them in the smallest communities as possible. You know, when you make rules as a family, everybody gets a say, even though, as I've mentioned before, parents, you guys get to be benevolent dictators because that's different than a government organization. But you know, city rules, like if you want to get to the heart of where the laws that dictate your day to day happen, it's the city council meetings.

It's you know, your neighborhood meetings. So an HOA is a very small community governing body, we'll call it. But there's a catch.

It's not a government organization. It's a private organization. And usually when we talk about things like that, I say like, this is great.

We want it to be private. We want it to be all consensual. But HOAs have some other issues and that is that they happen to be some of the worst regulations ever.

So HOAs, when you buy a home or when your parents buy a home, a lot of neighborhoods have home owners associations, that's HOAs, where they get to dictate certain laws and or rules. And some of them are kind of weird, right? Some of them are like, you can't paint your house bright pink. And that's because everybody in the neighborhood owns their house and houses are investments.

So someday if you sell your house, you want that house to be worth as much money as you can get out of it. You want your property values to be good. And if your next door neighbor has a house and their lawn is kept nicely and it's a nice normal color, and then you, their neighbor, has a hot pink house and your lawn is out of control, it looks like it might be a jungle out there, that might affect somebody not wanting to buy their house next door, right? So there's all these rules.

There's also rules about chickens. So a lot of places that don't allow backyard chickens, a lot of those rules are made within the HOA. So there's good and bad things, right? Because for one thing, it is private.

We love that. We love a good consensual, you know, private form of government. But there's a lot of overly strict, you know, we used to talk about the word like Karens, like people who would call the police or, or report people for doing things and HOAs, you do get a lot of that.

Now I want to also point out something that my friend Whitney pointed out that I think is, is very important to say. And that is, you know, this HOA only banned lemonade stands in common areas. So they didn't say you couldn't do it on your porch or in your garage or outside of your house.

And I do think that's important. I think Whitney had a great point. I'm putting to my phone.

I don't know why I'm putting here. But she had a good point when she's saying that's actually pretty reasonable. And it is, I agree with her.

That is pretty reasonable. But we also have this issue of why are they doing it? And I think one of the most important things we can do always is question rules and question laws, no matter who is making them to say, okay, but why does this happen? Why are we doing this? To what end? As I like to say. So in this instance, I don't know that she gave me a reason or gave us a reason when she posted that, but I do love the mom's responses.

I especially loved that they threw in a Tuttle Twins book, the food truck fiasco, which is kind of the situation I HOAs, but about these barriers to businesses, because there's this war on lemonade stands. And this has been going on for, it's been at least 10 years, because I remember back in 2011, 2012, which may have been before some of you were born, which makes me feel very, very old. But I remember there was this John Stossel video, and he is very good at making these, you know, five minute videos that really explain things well.

And I think they are actually appropriate for families, but I would encourage parents to watch it first, just to make sure. But he did one on lemonade stands, and he was showing like what it took to actually do it legally. And it was like permits and like these processes.

And when you're a kid, I mean, I'm impatient as an adult, but as a kid, you don't have that time. And even though one reason I like lemonade stands, or they're preparing you for your future and what awaits, and that is going to be a lot of bureaucracy, unfortunately, I think for kids, we should be encouraging them to do this. It should be as easy as possible.

And these laws like trying to make a kid get a permit or a food handlers permit or all this to to sell lemonade is so silly. And you hear a lot of people who argue for these permitting laws saying, yes, but, you know, people are going to drink this lemonade. And what if it's not made in sanitary conditions? You know, what if somebody gets sick? And a few things to this one, I think, as entrepreneurs, as entrepreneurs, as I like to call you guys, you should be testing and you should make sure you're washing your hands and doing things.

But as adults, I think we should also realize that when we are buying lemonade from kids, it might not be the highest quality that we will ever have or what we have options for in the market. But that's kind of not the point, though, again, kids, entrepreneurship is doing what you need to do to make a quality product that people like. So I think that reasoning is kind of silly.

And the craziest thing is there have been people, these neighborhood Karen's who call the police on kids and have them get tickets. And I know we there's we have to say like, well, they're just doing their job. That's what they're called to do.

I would like to think that police officers would kind of let it slide. But sometimes when people keep calling them, they have this obligation to do something because they're sick of people calling them. But the whole thing is silly because at the end of the day, it comes down to these silly laws that were passed to stop entrepreneurship.

And the lemonade stand is one of the most important things a kid can do. It's how you learn how to make a product, get product feedback. So maybe someone thinks like, oh, you put too much sugar in that lemonade and you can take that and say, all right, let's do a little bit less this time.

Working with siblings, even maybe it's your siblings or your neighborhood friends. You can figure out how difficult it is to work with them or also this thing called specialization and division of labor, which is very important in the economic world. Maybe you have one friend or one sibling that has just perfected the recipe.

They are so good at it. So that's like their job. That's their special job.

And maybe you're really good at talking to customers. Maybe that's just where you thrive. And so you're at the front of the booth and maybe your other friend or sibling is really good with money.

And so they're going to take the money and maybe keep it in a box. So nowadays, I know a lot of lemonade stands that I've purchased from use Venmo, which I'm always very happy about because who has money anymore? In fact, maybe you can be real innovative and maybe you can take Bitcoin. Maybe you can be a renegade in your neighborhood.

But so there's all these things that you get to learn. You get to learn about running a business. And I think that is just one of the most important things because and I believe Connor and I have talked about this before.

You know, when you're an adult and you start a business, there's a lot of risks because you have to put up the capital, the money to start it. You have to risk that maybe it's not going to work out and you could lose a lot. In fact, many entrepreneurs, many successful entrepreneurs had to lose a lot of money beforehand.

You guys are perfect. You're a young woman. I'm perfect, but you're in a perfect situation because you're not paying rent.

I don't think so. You're not paying rent. You don't have bills.

So you are able to start this business without the risks that you're going to have when you're later or when you're older. And I think when that happens, you're actually more inclined to take the risks when you're older because you've already done it. You've already kind of learned like I can do this or you've learned some skills.

So I think the lemonade stand is just one of the most important things you can do. And maybe it's not a lemonade stand. Maybe you make some baked goods, some cupcakes.

I am more like, well, I always buy the lemonade, but I would pay top dollar if I saw some kids selling cupcakes in my neighborhood because I have a pretty bad sweet tooth. But the point is, lemonade stands and any of these, you know, garage sales, whatever you're doing in your neighborhood should be encouraged. They should be propped up as something that really helps children get ahead of life and just makes the community, I think, a more vibrant, exciting place.

Again, I do agree with my friend Whitney that even though we love to see these moms getting so excited and standing up for entrepreneurship, the rules the HOA made probably weren't as bad as they could have been. They didn't outright ban lemonade stands. That would be different.

But before we wrap up here, I want to share some really great books. The first one is not technically a Tettletwins book, but it's Connor written by Connor Boyack, who, of course, wrote the Tettletwins series, created the Tettletwins series. And that is Lessons from a Lemonade Stand.

And it's going to go over that. And it's like an unconventional guide to government. And it's talking about this.

The ban on lemonade stands, the crackdown on this. And I think it's so fun. I read this.

Goodness, it's been almost eight years now, again, probably before some of you were born. And then, of course, the books that the or the book that the mother that my friend was talking about in the HOA was talking about. And that is Tettletwins and the Food Truck Fiasco, which I think really sums up this whole situation.

So, yeah, please get those books, read them with your kids and make a lemonade stand this summer. Do something. Again, it could be baked goods.

It could be something. Get involved in your neighborhood. Teach kids about entrepreneurship.

Maybe if there's somebody who owns a business in your neighborhood, that could be a really fun way to have some lectures, talk to them, maybe give the give the kids some advice. But I just think it's such a fun part of life. And I always have a big smile on my face when I see a lemonade stand in the neighborhood.

So we will leave it there. Please, as always, don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast and share with your friends. And until next time, we will talk to you later.