Recently, my company had a working retreat, where we come together, reflect on the year and try to work on things to make the company better moving forward.
We do this annually and we try to have a theme for each year to make it more meaningful.
This year was to automate and scale.
What can we do to automate more and scale processes so that we save time and optimise for success moving forward?
It was a thoughtful exercise that required a lot more brain cells than we imagined.
If you like to know what we came up with, comment in the post and may do a post to share more.
Anyways, we have a strong team of multi-talented interns this year and we decided to put them to the test!
Turns out our interns are all geniuses with academic accolades that would put us all to shame.
Sure being book smart is great, but will it translate to making money in the real world?
That is what we wanted to know.
So we decided to play a simple game.
We gave them half a day and $100 cold, hard cash.
The goal was to make profit.
Any amount.
They just have to return the $100 and not do anything illegal.
Any profit they make, they keep.
Sounds simple right?
Easier said than done.
Before I share the results, I want to say that if this sounded familiar, it is from an article I read about where Stanford students made $650 from $5 their professor gave them.
How did the winner do it?
They decided that instead of selling services, trading time for money, they opportunitized the presentation slot they were supposed to give in front of all the other students.
They sold that 3 minutes presentation slot to recruiters for $650.
So back to my 2 teams of interns.
Team A specialised.
They decided to double down and sell Christmas e-cards online.
They even designed the card themselves and got a bunch of friends to buy!
Team B diversified.
They dabbled in crypto, went door to door to sell physical labor like cleaning services and buying coffee.
Sweat work but it pays well.
Team B eked out a little more than Team A and they won.
They even got to take whatever Team A made.
Devious.
What did we learn?
A few things.
Making money from nothing is the greatest feeling ever.
There is no such thing as a bad strategy, unless you get caught up in overthinking and get paralysed.
If you are looking at a longer time horizon, selling digital goods online is scalable and more profitable.
In the short run, manual labor and services is your best bet.
Whatever you do, be creative and be bold.
Early or late, no bird ever survived without getting out of the nest.
And safe to say, we humans are always bounded by the rules we are given.
I am curious as to what results I would have gotten if I increased the stakes from $100 to $10,000.
Do you agree that making money from nothing is the greatest feeling ever?
If you enjoyed this, connect with me.
-
#startups #business #startupx #growth #success #socialmedia #culture #entrepreneurship #strategy #makemoney #money #startingup #interns #powerofcreativity #profits #teamculture #teambonding
