Chapter 42: Not the leader

Jeffrey watched as his two friends were excited to work on their portion of the project and seeing their excitement. Jeffrey did his best and tried to join in.

"So is there anything I can do?", Jeffrey asked.

Samantha quite excited in the topic mentioned, "Since you're usually early before school starts, How about you see if you can talk to the yearbook and journalism clubs to get them to talk about your Oobleck project"

"Yeah sure, I'll figure that out", Jeffrey made a note about it.

Jeffrey's mind was still on seeing $600 in $20 bills. However, he moved on since his friends weren't as interested in the topic as he was.

One thing Jeffrey did know however, was that being a boss meant keeping people happy and paying them money. Jeffrey knew he was failing at the first one, Samantha and Preston were doing a good job, but at the very least he could do the second one.

Splitting the cash with change, Jeffrey grabbed 3 $10 bills and 3 $20 bills and laid them out on the table. He then headed to his parents room and reached into the filing cabinet.

"Awesome", Jeffrey thought to himself.

His Dad's large stack of business envelopes he got from Costco was still in a giant box sitting there. Jeffrey grabbed two envelopes and a felt tip pen. With a personal stamp he made while he was bored watching a film in social studies class, he stamped the Slime Factory Logo on the envelopes.

In his best handwriting, he wrote the names

"Preston Liu" and "Samantha Crutchfield". Under that he wrote, "for being a Science Project member."

Heading back downstairs he placed the money in the envelope, making one for himself and licked the inside crease. He then sealed up the three envelopes and decided to give each of them one later.

The rest of the day consisted on batching 5 large batches of Oobleck and slime, using up all the glue and food coloring supplies in his house and talking about their next recipes and experiments.

"So I have two Oobleck and slime recipes I call 'Art Projects'", Jeffrey explained one of his specialties and the things he prepared before hand.

"One's a little more expensive requiring clear Elmer's glue or glitter glue and some gold leaf. We can use other glitters and sparkles, but gold leaf paper and flakes look the best. I call it Art slime", Jeffrey explained.

"The other is a Foamy Oobleck, the texture makes a nice and pleasant sound and it's fun to play with", Jeffrey talked about his second invention.

Jeffrey demonstrated it so they could reproduce more of it at their own houses. Jeffrey still had a decent amount of supplies from the last time he went to the art supply store.

"So you guys can experiment a little, but try not to mix the glow-in-the-dark and Perfume slime recipes. The baking soda, liquid starch, saline solution, and borax are four separate recipes", Jeffrey mentioned.

"OK, so that's going to be another $200 dollars in supplies", Jeffrey said to himself.

"I need to save $350 dollars, of which about $200 will probably go to taxes and the rest we might need to use to find someone to help with that", Jeffrey did some calculations.

"I spent $100 on personal items, another $150 that I owe for the first patch of supplies", Jeffrey continued.

"Why does it seem like I suddenly have no money? I have $800 in front of me, but it looks like I have no savings at all!", Jeffrey was concerned.

The one thing Jeffrey knew however was that he was going to have to be transparent, since he was holding all the money. If anything went wrong, Preston and Samantha were going to find out that the $800 that they had in cash had suddenly disappeared. He did not want to be the person that angered some of the smartest kids in the school.

At the very least, he had paid their salaries. So he had properly paid them, but Jeffrey was a little worried on how to continue and what to do if they asked for more. It seems like no amount of money was enough.

Usually $20 was the amount they'd make after 3 months of chores, so Jeffrey wasn't concerned yet. However he also didn't want to be stingy. He was going to have to figure out ways to pay his friends, without actually paying them money and spending too much.

"Haah, the only way I dig myself out of this hole is probably to make more money. I'll have to consider raising the prices of Oobleck. But if I do that people will probably get made at us and call our slime factory projects cheap sakes and complain to their parents or teachers"

Jeffrey wanted to raise the price to $30 and he was also going to have to figure out a way to make everyone happy in the process.

"Lottery, special pricing, discounts?", Jeffrey asked himself.

"I'm just going to tell everyone we're taking a break from selling more. Since we have school to focus on, but if they really want some we can sell it for $30 I guess", thought Jeffrey.

Jeffrey knew about hunger marketing, but he didn't really have enough power or energy to manage such a style. He was basically riding on hype right now, and he was operating in his own backyard so if anything happened he was on the hook.

A clever rabbit may have three burrows, but it doesn't help when the burrow it leads to is his own school. Bad news travels just as quickly, if not quicker than their recent good fortunes, so it was best to explore success and try to sustain it for as long as possible.

Anyway, enough with the business and marketing analogies, Jeffrey continued doing his best making jar after jar of Oobleck. The nice thing was that it was fun and soft to play with and relieved stress.