Summer Job Selling Berries - Laptop or Bust ep2
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
3,866 words · ~19 min read
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On this episode of Laptop or Bust, we find out how much we can make by picking
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and selling organic blueberries. So, choosing a berry farm, there's really
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only a few factors that you need to bear in mind. Quality of the berries, whether
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they allow you pick, if there's some kind of a gimmick. For example, NS, the
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berry farm that we're at today, has organic blueberries. So, we can put
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organic on our signs. And finally, pricing is of course going to be a major
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factor if you are planning to resell them and try and make a profit. Other
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than that, in terms of supplies, we've got our own boxes because most upix will
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allow you to buy carriers for your berries, but they're going to be more
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expensive. We've got some tape to make our boxes not have holes in them. some
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sunscreen and some nitrial gloves so that we're not putting our grubby
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fingers that we put up our butts all over the berries before we I don't think
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that's a thing. Why are you putting your finger up your butt? How do you How else
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Evaluate your washer routine? How else do you keep it in there? Intel's Skull
1:04
Canyon Nook features a sixth generation Core i7 processor and Thunderbolt 3.
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Learn more at the link in the video description. Okay,
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so I wanted to take boxes out into the field. Not a thing, apparently. Buckets.
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Got it. They're useful for more than just ice cream. Off we
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go. Okay. Well, that's about an hour of picking then. How'd you do? Uh.
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Oh, that's actually really close. Pretty similar. All right. I don't know. I
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think you beat me by a little bit. Yours looks a little bit more filled in. Yeah, but my corners are empty. Let's see.
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Let's see. There's only one way to know for sure. Let's go. Yes, they do. Yep.
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You bet. Wow. Not bad. 22 lb. So, 19 minus three
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for the box. So, 19 lb. 19 lb. All right. I'm guessing yours is 25.
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No way. 23.2. I won by 1.2 lb. That's I
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knew it was closer than you thought it was. Okay. So, I got 20 20.2 lb. So, we
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got 39 lb between the two of us with an
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hour of picking. So, if we were here, and that
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includes the the inefficiencies of us
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just starting to learn and all that kind of stuff cuz we're both going faster near the end. 39 lb. So, if we were here
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for 4 hours, we should end up with somewhere in the neighborhood of about
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160 lbs. And if you started with like a
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full day of picking, got a whole bunch of stock, and then just did like 4 hours
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every day after that or something with half selling, then you could optimize
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how much you need to pick versus how much you know you can sell. Very
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interesting. Okay. Well, let's take our hall and let's uh let's go sell it.
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Cool. So, while we built our model around us picking the berries at the
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beginning of the day and then going and selling them, there are some other options here. In fact, when some of my
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family members found out that I was going to a berry farm today, they said,
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"Oh, hey, can you get £10 for me,£10 for me, and I found myself picking up
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actually a lot more berries than I needed to sell at the side of the road today." So canvasing your neighborhood
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for pre-orders might be an interesting way to A never have any overstock even
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though your margins are lower and B not even necessarily have to pick because as
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long as you can book orders at a price that's higher than what you pay for the
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prepicked ones. In our case it's two bucks per pound if we pick them or 250
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per pound if we just buy them already picked then you're still making money
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either way. I got to say, one of the coolest things about this has been
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learning about jobs that never would
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have even occurred to me if I wasn't sitting in a boardroom going like, "What
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are odd jobs you could do?" Like, if you needed to make some cash in the summer,
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I like it. So, what we're working on right now is how to sell the 100
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freaking pounds of blueberries that we
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have to get rid of in the next about 3 to 4 hours. So, we're going to create
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ourselves some uh some signage and let's
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see who can make the best most eye-catching sign. I brought these.
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Are you going to put them on a sign? No, I'm going to put them on my feet. So, I'm like tie dyed and pink and we'll be
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like, "Okay." Yeah. Sorry. Okay, let's
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do it. All right. What? We only have markers. Uh oh. We
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can have anything we want. Where's all the other stuff? Well, I don't know
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where we keep it. We have markers for now.
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Okay. I like your uh I like your thinking with the uh doubling up on the
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on the sign.
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life. It looks like a mask. Like a carnival mask. Look at
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that. Attempt two for a
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bee. It just looks like a different type of
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crap. It doesn't look that
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bad. There's just a a butt and a mask
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and then other letters. Well, that sucked a lot. Okay.
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Well, listen up. Here's the story about
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a little guy that lives in the blueberry
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world. I am running out of
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ink. So, I uh had kind of a panic moment
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when I realized I didn't really think about what direction my arrow was going
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to point. And I think it's okay because if I stand kind of that direction from
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the thing and I go like this, then we're good. As long as you're pointing towards
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a driveway entrance, which I think there is one on each side. So, it doesn't
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really Okay. All right. Well, then in that case, we're good. Let's go.
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Actually, I'm going to get a clown wig. Yeah. Let's see if there's anything
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else in the costume uh costume bin.
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I think that guy looked at us. We just set up wherever. First things first, we
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have a table. We borrowed this from our neighbor. It'll be helpful. You can put
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berries on it. You can put your bags on it. You can do whatever else there. And
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then we have chairs because it's going to be a long day. A canopy for shade is
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going to be a huge plus if you're going to be out there for hours at a time.
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Protection for both you and your uh
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berries. That's a tree. Uh that's okay. I think you can kind of you can kind of
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scooch probably around it a little. One cannot raise the roof until one has a
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roof. So there's velcro on the post.
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We've got bags cuz we want to sell them in bags, not little tray things cuz the
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tray things cost more. We have little tray things to display
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the berries so that our table looks nice. We have cool little chalky sign
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boards to be like, "Ah, 2 lb cost this
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much or whatever else." We have a digital kitchen
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scale for weighing out our pounds of berries.
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Vinyl gloves so we can look like we're being all hygienic and stuff.
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What do you mean look like? We used gloves while we fixed them.
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We have measuring spoons. I don't think we need those. Those were for the lemonade that we decided not to sell.
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You could still Are you drinking it with your hand? Oh, I guess. Oh, and we have
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a tablecloth. That's cute. A couple things we sort of forgot were a cash
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box and uh some change because people
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are unlikely to show up with exact change. So, so that's a thing. Okay. I
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didn't want our blueberries to bake in the sun there. So, we've pulled them
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into the shade, opening up the doors, making sure that they're not uh, you
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know, going to be soft by the time we give them to anyone.
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We We should still We should do 1.25 lbs is five bucks. If people really It's not
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going to be 1.25 anymore. You just Yeah, it will be. No, no, you had done the math wrong. Um Oh, I did. Yeah, you're
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right. I did 5. If they have exact change, they can buy however much they want. We don't care. And we can put it
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in a bag then. So, I'm pre-making a few bags. So, I'm pre-making some bags. I'm
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pre-making some 1.25 25 lb bags. We're going to have some one lb bags, but
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those are going to be hidden somewhere else. So, the reason for that is we ran
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into some pricing difficulties in that we don't have change. So, we have to
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sell 1.25 lbs at $5 in order for us to
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have any hope of giving people change to avoid a trip to the bank for a bunch of
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quarters. Do you guys want some blueberries? Maybe. It's $3.99 a pound. It's $4.
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$3.99 a pound. All right. So, here's what we have for
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change. That's like, can you not put
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money all over the merchandise? I am going to go put up the signs and uh
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let's see if we can start bringing in some customers here. I don't know how
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visible this is. Okay, so here we go. I'm going to go
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be one of those dancing sign people. Never done that before. A lot of people
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turn here. A lot of people turn and go up 184th
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Street instead of going through on 60th Avenue. Maybe if I positioned myself a
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little smarter, I could take advantage of people coming up here as
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well. Oh no, they're honking at me. Wow,
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I'm already humiliated and it's only been 3 minutes.
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You know what's funny about uh this
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episode is that because we have inventory, if we don't sell it, we're
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actually just out like $300 of
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berries. Not insignificant. We're getting
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blueberries. You know you want them. People are reading the sign. I'm
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definitely getting their attention. So, does one of the recurring
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themes of these laptop or bus videos become Lionus failure
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montages? Maybe I should have a price advertised. Maybe that's what I'm
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missing cuz our pricing is competitive. But, uh, no one's ever actually getting
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in there to look at it. There's a ghost cop car that's like parked on the street
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there. Hopefully just doing cell phone checks, but he could be staring at
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me. Oh, I saw them. They thought about it. Oh, I think I might have drawn one
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in. So, that would be one in the first 6
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minutes. No, they're just getting
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gas. Are we really sitting at zero
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customers for the first 10 minutes here? Oh, I thought I saw someone at the
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table, but it was Ed. So freaking the guy who stopped for
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Luke wanted 250 a pound. I mean we
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brought them all the way
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here called to say that the bumper is still around you. Yeah, I know. Okay. He
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said that Ivonne called to say that the
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cop is still around and apparently watching me. They pretend they can't see
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me. I am the lowest of the low. Hello. They are technically not certified
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organic. The farm that we picked them at said that they were organic. That's
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whatever. This is five bucks.
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So, we got our first sale. They were a little uh weird about the cameras, which
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is probably expected, but yeah, that went pretty easy. I was happy we had the
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pre-made bags because she said she would buy whatever, and it hap just so
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happened that our pre-made bag was 1.25 lb. So, we got five bucks instead of
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four bucks. So, that's good. I'm going to keep the 1.25 lb bags promptly
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displayed. From talking to berry farms, people are
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doing this. People are finding a way to buy the berries wholesale and sell them
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at berry stands on the side of the
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road. But the issue that I'm seeing is startup
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cost. Establishing yourself as a known provider of berries is going to take a
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significant amount of time. the place where you sell
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them probably affects your success a lot. We're in kind of a farming
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community here in Langley, so that guy expecting 250 a pound
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pricing, there'll probably be a fair bit of that. But price doesn't seem like the
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only or maybe even a major problem because we can't even get anyone to pull
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over. Startup overhead includes a food service
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license, a vendor license, as well as
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some kind of an agreement with an establishment that will let you sell there. So, the Clover Hill Market was
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nice enough to let us do this for one day, but I think if we were to try to do
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it on an ongoing basis, we would either have to play our students saving up for
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a laptop card pretty hard or we would have to compensate them in some
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way, adding still higher margin
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requirements to an already difficult business.
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My turn. Yeah, your turn. Let's wait till this light turns red. I mean, I'd
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say I'd say I have a deep concern about there not being anyone manning the booth
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for all the customers right now, but uh it doesn't appear to be an
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issue. I've shared any insight that I can think of as I go about why this
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might not be working or things that we could do better. Feel free to do the
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same.
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Do you want the hat? You're covering it up to the side
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anyway. I know, but to keep the sun off.
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Oh, it's actually pretty nice.
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Do you want the wig, too? No.
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Sign tricks. What
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up? Almost broke the arrow. Yeah. Go buy some
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berries. When ghosts just be like, "Yay,
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berries." Spin move. Reverse spin move.
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Drop the sign. Raise the sign. Twirl the
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sign. Twirl the sign. Other way. Flip it over. Twirl it around. Berries. Buy
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someing berries. Do you want me to verify for you on the scale? Oh, no. I
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Okay. I look honest with my shirt here. Honest.
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There you are. And thank you, ma'am.
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Pleasure doing business with you. What we're actually making is a video about
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different ways that students can make money in the summer. So, we're not
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students, but we're trying different business models for one day each and
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then evaluating sort of how the numbers work out and making a a recommendation
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based on that. So far, website or what? Um, YouTube uh YouTube.com/linustips.
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Okay. The sort of theme. Anyway, sorry. Would you like some blueberries? I would
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love some. Wonderful. So, it's four bucks a pound, which we found was about
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$150 a pound cheaper than any of the supermarkets. Okay. And they are they're
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not certified organic. That's yucky. But
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they're from NS Farms in Kquitlam. And it is an organic farm. We know the
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owner. All that's on the up and up. You'll take one. Wonderful. And I
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actually do have change for you. Would you like me to validate? Okay. Oh, you
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want you want£5? Okay. You will have to give me one moment. Uh, let me think for
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a second. expecting that one. No, no, I wasn't. Um, but what I can do is I can
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use our already counted. So, here, let's
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just do a quick validation so that I know that I'm not ripping you off what
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our weight is here. No, that's 5 lbs. You want Sorry, did you say how much you want? 5 lbs. Yeah. Good. Okay, then
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that's what this is. And I will start to put that into bags for you. Oh, boy. How
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about if I give you this first? Yes. And then I'll help you hold the bag. That would be wonderful. And we have more
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bags than that if it comes to that. Uh,
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Yeah, we um you know, we're we're trying our best to sort of model it in a way
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that will be easy for people to replicate if it turns out to be
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successful. So, we were thinking you can save some cost by using paper bags and
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recycle the bags. It's all very friendly. So, we use reusable containers
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to pick them, all that kind of stuff. So, we're just Perfect.
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We're trying different things. We're not experts at this. That's kind of the point.
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It's a middle-aged white. Oh, there's someone at this booth. Go, go quick.
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Blueberries. Hello, sir.
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Dang it. My sign is broken.
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So, these are five bucks even, so they're easier for change, which is why we've done 125. Get to my sign. My
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wonderful sign. Cool.
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Awesome. Thank you very much. All right,
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so we've divided them up into easier quantities. So one one uh 1.25 lbs is
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five bucks. Okay.
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Perfect. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Have a good day.
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We just sit here and eat. Maybe you buy a bag. Then you can sit
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here and eat from the bag. Let's buy some. Okay. Uh she said last as in me.
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Oh, I see. It's the Royal Wii.
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So, each one of those is 1.25 lbs. And
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how much is that? That's five bucks. Five bucks? Yep.
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See, she said it so loud because it was just such a great price. It's expensive.
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Yeah.
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You should get your taxi driver to get some blueberries. I would highly
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recommend it. Although there is some added cost of the taxi. They're they're
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pretty good value. Blueberries. They're
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wonderful. They're blue. So, I tell you
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what, we're actually packing it in for the day. Take another one. A Are you
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sure? Yeah. Yeah. We won't be able to do anything with at least some of this
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inventory. So, thank you very much. Yeah. Enjoy. Thank you.
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You're welcome, Blueberry. Oh, no. Not you. See, seenor. Hey, you have any
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penis whistle? Are you I'm the biggest fan. I trust me, I have much bigger fans
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than you. You couldn't weigh more than like 75 lbs. Those are good berries. Uh
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yeah, some of them. All right. This is about 11 12 lb. So, okay. Uh let's see.
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Uh don't pes don't haggle with me. No.
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Enjoy. They got money for you. I don't Oh, did you give it to them?
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Oh, wow. I see how it is. All right. Well, that's only 20. Hey. Hey. Your
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your kid learned from the best. That's Yeah, that's uh 20 pesos.
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How much for the wig? The wig's not for sale, my friend. This has got my DNA on
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it. You could make another Linus.
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All right. Thanks, guys. Good night, you guys. So, an interesting thought we have
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about our neighbor at the office, Steve, dropping by to buy a 10 lb flat of
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berries off me, not to mention my two family members, each of which want 10
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lbs of berries, is that taking
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pre-orders and selling at a lower margin
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but a higher volume to friends and family may be either a a way to get the
20:09
business kickarted or b just plain more
20:13
viable than the side of the road method via which We made very little over the
20:20
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21:02
Pokémon Go anymore. At least that is if you buy one. If you just look at the
21:06
link, that won't help. So, laptop or
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bust? That is the question. And I think the only way to answer it is to show you
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guys the spoils and the other spoils.
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Yeah. Uh we have a lot of blueberries left and we kind of need to sell way
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more than we actually did. The the spoils having cash in your hand isn't as
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great as it originally sounds. Uh we would have had to sell at a rate of
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what, like four or five the times the amount that we actually did. Yeah. In
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order for us to make this feasible, we'd have had to sell a lot more blueberries.
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Um, we have to account for the very high startup cost. I think there is a
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potential model in here. If you can find enough people to pre-order from you,
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like our neighbor Steve did, you would have to do a higher volume at a reduced
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margin, which in a nutshell is the
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produce business. Yeah. And like you need a car and you need it almost every
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day, if not every two or three days. Uh, you have to have quite a bit of upfront
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cost for the berries themselves. Yes. if you're picking it, but they're still not
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that cheap and you have to buy them like every couple
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days. So, could you make money like
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this? The answer is yes. But laptop or
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bust, I'm giving this one a thumbs down. Yeah, there's better things you could
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do.