AuthorSharon Eden-Smith (@sharonedensmith) is the entrepreneur who established Eden-Smith Music. She will be posting blog articles about the business of... ![]()
Growing up in California, my family would take a yearly weekend trip to Nevada. My angel investor parents would give my sibling and I money for the arcade and carnival games. They expected a full account of their return on investment (ROI) at the end of every day. We learned, early on, that we were allowed to keep any funds at the end of the trip that was not spent. This meant that our angel investors were giving us a weekend wage for having fun.
This wage, however, was dependent upon the amount of money that we spent. If we spent it all, we would earn no wage. Here is the kicker! We were expected to spend some money or we had to give back the entire angel investment at the end of the weekend, also equaling a zero wage. Our money management for game playing became strategic, as did our overall game playing. We discovered that entering into a weekend business partnership was conducive to both our daily accountability and to the wage generation produced at the end of the weekend. The pinnacle of our weekend financial business strategy partnerships was reached when we were in university. On one of these weekend family excursions, my sibling and I had reached maximum ROI within 2 hours of game play. This meant that we each had a black garbage bag full of stuffed toys, some high scores on arcade games and half of our daily allotted money left. We wandered around the second floor carnival games area trying to figure out what we were going to do for the remaining couple of hours before meeting up with our parents. That was when we spotted the Frog Catapult Game. The object of the game was to use a rubber mallet, hit one end of a catapult and launch a silicone frog up into the air. The frog would then land in one of a number of different colored cups. The size of the prize, or no prize at all, was dependent upon the color of cup in which the frog landed. This game had catapults mounted to 3 of the 4 sides. The 4th side did not have any catapults because it was pushed up against the rail that opened up to the casino on the first floor below. We began to analyze the game by watching others play. We noticed tensile strengths of catapult springs, shimmies in how each catapult was mounted, differences in frog velocities produced by player sizes and mallet hits, frog masses, frog drag, etc. The list of items that we analyzed took close to the full 2 hours that we had left. We narrowed down our decision for game play to 2 catapults and played a couple of games. Once we had done this, we knew which catapult to use for the final game. We also decided that my sibling was going to be the player. We stepped up to our chosen catapult and each paid half of the money for the final game. We positioned the frog on the catapult in the way that we had discussed. This was to decrease the drag caused by the arms and legs of the frog. My sibling grabbed the mallet with both hands, swung it and came down with full force on the opposite end of the catapult. The frog was launched into the air, sailed over all the cups, cleared the rail with ease, and after reaching its maximum height, began to descend into the casino below. We had accomplished our goal! Our frog landed in the aisle between the slot machines on the first floor. My sibling earned a stuffed prize because the attendant had never seen anyone do that before. My entrepreneurial journey is the Frog Catapult Game. I may invent my own game with my own rules or I may play an existing game and change the rules. Either way, my frog will sail over all the cups, clear the rail and land on the casino floor below. Why? That is where the real prize is!
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AuthorSharon Eden-Smith (@sharonedensmith) is the entrepreneur who established Eden-Smith Music. She will be posting blog articles about the business of... @edensmithmusic
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November 2019
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