Starters and starting up
I’m always looking for ways to get my kids involved with my law practice. They’re young and show no interest, but I think it’s important and maybe nothing comes of it at I least tried! There are a lot of skills developed when starting a business in general and a law firm in particular. It’s a learning process.
Having no precedent to work with, I came up with the idea of teaching the kids about starting a business by baking sourdough bread.
I have no baking skills, but I got interested in the idea when a client said that she wanted to gift her sourdough starter in her will. Turns out the yeast lasts for ages and only requires flour and water to germinate. You have to get the conditions right and you have to discard a lot of the initial mixture. But over time the bacteria in the environment will ferment and grow.
I was trying to impress upon my kids that much of your initial attempts will end up in the food garbage. But the each day you feed the remaining yeast mixture and eventually it becomes stronger. Starting a business is very much like this. Only a little bit of yeast is required to make a whole loaf of bread, but it’s essential and unique – just like you are in small business.
To be honest, much of this went over their heads. The bread tasted good at least!
