I only remember a handful of the Christmas presents I received as a young boy (not too long ago :)). One of the surprise presents I received one Christmas morning when I was 14 was a Prince August Soldier Making Kit. There were four moulds in the kit. Two for infantry, one for cavalry and one for a cannon. To make the pieces you melted lead and poured into the rubber moulds which were clamped together.

It didn’t take me long to use up the lead that was supplied. Luckily at the time my Father had a roll of lead that would have been used in construction work. Having an endless free supply of raw material I decided to go into business for myself. I don’t know if it was my idea or if someone suggested it, but I began my first self employed venture.

I had the product. I set the price at 10p for infantry pieces, 15p for cavalry (you got a horse) and 20p for a cannon (the wheels worked). The place where I sold them was in the small sweet shop we had attached to the pub. The promotion was via a large A3 size poster I made saying ‘Create Your Own Battles, Recreate History’.

I was never really into playing with small toy soldiers myself, but I knew others who were. So it was worth a try. I sold the lead pieces unpainted. It was too time consuming to hand paint each individual piece. Anyway “who was I to choose the colour of your army? You’ll have much more fun painting them yourself”.

As is always the case, there were a couple of casual buyers and a couple of fervent collectors. Although I didn’t know what it was called at the time, Pareto’s Principle (the 80-20 rule) was certainly in place. I rewarded the big spenders by keeping the best unblemished pieces for them. Money given for sweets was being diverted into unique handmade collectibles and miniature armies were growing under beds in the village.

I was rolling in the dough, fast cars, loose women, exotic holidays……well, maybe not. I was ok at saving, helped in no small part by the fact I lived over a sweet shop! I’m not exactly sure why I stopped selling the soldiers. Maybe the buyers found some new craze. Maybe the moulds were on the verge of disintegrating from constant exposure to molten lead. Maybe I just got fed up of it and wanted something new. Probably a combination of all of the above. Anyhow a new opportunity presented itself.

A farmer who drank in our pub had some baby pigs (bonhams) for sale for £25.  The sow had a litter of around 10-12 bonhams. I did the maths. 10 bonhams at £25 each was equal to 2,500 lead soldiers at 10p each.

I was going to go into pig breeding!

But that’s a post for another day. I guess the idea of this post is to encourage the buying of gifts that encourage kids to create something, to make something, to build something, to bring out their imagination. Encourage them to start their own little micro enterprise. Let them learn, let them succeed, let them fail, just let them at it.

Have you any memories of presents that brought out the best in you or that taught you a lesson?

The Greenhouse Incubator in Limerick was set up in February by Evert Bopp in response to the closure of the Dell factory. It offers an innovative opportunity for new start ups to get off the ground without getting bogged down in red tape and bureaucracy.

From the site; -“The GreenHouse has been started up now to combat the ongoing economic downturn. While there are a number of admirable government initiatives going on, the only real way for the economy to recover is by an increase of private sector activity. The recent and future redundancies by large, small & medium sized companies create a huge pool of talent. With the right guidance & support a percentage of these people are perfect candidates for developing their own ventures.”

TalentTank.ie is an exciting initiative linking employers and employees in a new and different way that can only be of benefit to everyone. I’ll allow them explain:– “Talent Tank is a website that provides Individuals and Employers the platform on which to have a direct influence on the speed in which we recover from the recession. The concept is simple, talented Individuals offer their skills and experience for free, for a couple of hours or days and Employers avail of this free skills offer.” You can read the press release here.

As we have recently embarked on a new publication and can do with all the help we can get I registered on the site and posted my details. I received a reply fairly quickly from John Jennings who offered to produce a video advert for us. A couple of emails were sent over and back, with good suggestions from John (as I didn’t really have any plan as to what I wanted) the finished product is below. It won’t have the same viral effect as Susan Boyle’s now famous video but I do quiet like it and found John great to work with.

Swop-o-nomics.com offers the chance to barter for products and services. Personally I love this way of doing business and have been known to swap advertising for a TV, photography sessions, IT support, general labour, diving gear and other things I can’t think of right now. I think it makes great sense as the cost of supplying a product or service is less than what someone would pay to buy it from you. Both parties forgo the profit on the transaction and the only cost is your time or the wholesale value of the goods. Although the market value of the goods should be used as the ‘exchange rate’. We all need different goods and services over time and it’s great to see this site up and running. You can read their press release here.