How To Start A Sweet Factory: Imagined By 90 School Children

"Never work with children" goes the saying. Well, last Friday I faced my fear and worked with ninety 7-8 year olds talking about starting a business.

I kept it light.

You know, lots of colourful pictures to keep them engaged.

A few cute animals to keep them amused.

But one clear message.

YOU. CAN. DO. IT.

As part their annual Aspiration Day series, the school invites parents in to talk to the kids about careers and this year they had professional boxers, therapists, teachers, robot engineers, deep sea engineers and Jude Terry , the first female Admiral in British Royal Navy history.

No pressure then 😨

To start, I talked about what I dreamt of being when I was a kid, including being a teacher (homeschooling during lockdown put a stop to that aspiration!)

Then I talked about what it takes to start something from nothing.

In the second part of the session we setup a fictitious business - our own sweet factory.

Together we came up with the name Sugar Rush Ltd (apologies in advance for any copyright infringement - it's not a real business) 🍭🍬

After much debate, we settled on boiled sour sweets - flavours included:

• Caramel and chocolate 🤢
• Peaches and custard 😋
• Lemon and lime 😝

We needed to differentiate our product flavours enough to be known, keep the product line focused (we can't afford to make lots of different types of sweet) and make sure we could make some money.

Then, we put our math skills to the test.

We'd buy a machine for £100 and ingredients for £20. With that we'd make 1000 sweets and sell them in bags of 10 for 50p each. Then we calculated how many batches we'd need to make to start turning a profit.

Finally, we figured out where we should promote our sweets. We decided TV adverts were too expensive 💰 but Kids YouTube advertising on Minecraft videos would be much more cost effective and targeted.

You get the idea!

Probably not the healthiest examples but what surprised me most was how entrepreneurial these children were - it absolutely stunned me.

The were buzzing with ideas and suggestions.

They know no limits.

Their enthusiasm is infectious.

When I challenged them on their ideas, they bounced back with another one.

Nothing stopped them.

Limitless.

What blew me away the most was the picture below 👇🏼.

During the 45 minute session, one of the children quietly scribbled away and created this business plan for her 'cafe'. I could have cried. Several things I love:

😊 She's the boss and her parents will be her employees

🍺 She listed beer alongside pasta, bread and cookies

☕ She thought about equipment needed - cash register and tip jar 😍

🍰 Cake had the most focus - she's talking my language!

📝 She made a plan!

There's not one subject at primary school that children won't apply to starting and running a business...

• Maths = Accounting
• Art/Design = Creative thinking
• English = Marketing
• PSHE = Personal wellbeing and growth mindset
• I could go on...

We put all the subjects to the test with Sugar Rush Ltd and had a lot of fun whilst doing it. Slides below :-)