Switched On
by Alex Almosawi
Zaki Sharp is eleven years old, seventy dollars short of the shoes he wants, and about to discover that the adults around him have been playing a game nobody taught him the rules to.
From the supermarket to the school fair, from a failing lemonade stand to a print shop run by a man who asks better questions than he answers, Zaki is going to learn how the world really works.
What kids take away.
Business Thinking
Supply and demand. Pricing psychology. Why the coffee van beats the lemonade stand.
Money Awareness
Margins, markup, the real cost of things. Maths that matters.
Critical Thinking
Observation. Pattern recognition. Asking the question nobody else asks.
People Dynamics
Said vs did. Trust signals. Why actions speak louder than promises.
The story.
It starts with a pair of shoes. The Vortex 90s. White leather, electric blue soles, $189 at Rebel Sport. Zaki has $120 in birthday money coming. He's $70 short.
A lemonade stand with his best mate Danny makes $14.50 in six hours. That's five percent of minimum wage. The maths don't work. But the questions do.
Then Zaki meets Ray — the owner of a print shop called QuickPrint who does crosswords in blue pen and answers every question with a better one. Ray doesn't teach Zaki anything. He just makes him look.
At the supermarket. At the school cafeteria. At a coffee van that makes $54 in twenty minutes while Zaki's lemonade stand made $14.50 in six hours. Slowly, rule by rule, Zaki starts seeing the game everyone else is playing.
By the time the school fair comes around, Zaki has six rules, a plan that nobody asked for, and something to prove. Not to the teachers. Not to his parents. To himself.
The Playbook: Skin in the Game
Zaki finds $2,000 cash in a bag at a bus stop. He doesn't steal it. He borrows it. And someone is watching.
Book 2 — Coming Soon