5 Recommendations for Starting Your Own Student Business
by Brian Acord
I have been involved in entrepreneurial activity all my life. I grew up in several family-run companies and started a handful of businesses before graduating from high school. I have started several businesses as an adult and run a consulting firm that deals specifically with startups. I have taught entrepreneurism in elementary, jr. high, high school, and college and run a non-profit that teaches entrepreneurship to teenagers. Through it all, I have seen hundreds of startups and attempted startups. While I am aware of no cookie cutter approach to success, I have developed the following five recommendations for starting your own successful business as a teenager.
- Keep it as simple as possible. Your business idea may not be a completely new idea. Great! It will more than likely be a service based business like cleaning, landscaping, delivery, babysitting, etc. Excellent! These businesses are simple to start, easy to understand, and are great ways to learn the ins and outs of starting and running a business.
- Don’t worry about finding investors…you won’t need any. If you can’t come up with an idea that you can start for under $100 you are making things too complicated (see recommendation #1).
- Get paying clients today. Don’t forget that the underlying goal for every for-profit venture is to provide a product or service and get paid for it. It is too easy to get sidetracked with creating a cool logo, developing a fancy website, or writing a comprehensive business plan. Successful entrepreneurs understand exactly how their business makes money and they are able to focus the majority of their efforts appropriately.
- Be an entrepreneur. Teenagers who want to start their own business must have the entrepreneurial drive to bear the burden and take the project to the next step. No excuses. This is where most entrepreneurs fail as entrepreneurs. They simply don’t push their business hard enough. Every person you meet should know about your company. You must be able to ask for business and push a little harder to get the sale done. Successful student entrepreneurs understand the difference between “Can I mow your lawn?” and “What time on Saturday would be best?”.
- Pick a business that really interests you. Startups require a lot of hard work and sacrifice. Seventeen-year old Blake Caldwell spends thirty hours a week growing his business and has not only run Krazybone Industries for two years without pay, he has invested thousands of dollars of his own money into building his website at www.krazyboneindustries.com. If he weren’t passionate about his product and thoroughly involved in his industry, he wouldn’t have been able to commit himself to his business like he needed to in order to succeed.
In summary, I’d like to provide a brief example of these five principles in action by using a real example with PencilBugs. Jason is twelve years old. He started a business two years ago by creating cute little toppings for standard pencils. He makes the products himself and does not have a physical storefront or long-term supplier agreement. His sales model is simple. He sets up shop on a table in front of the local grocery store. He spends an average of 20-30 hours a week growing his business. Once he was successful with the basic concept of his business he expanded by building a basic website and extended his brand via t-shirts and was seen recently on the TV game show 1 vs. 100. In his own words “I’ll admit there have been many times that I’ve wanted to quit. It’s not always fun…I’ve been able to have a lot of fun experiences from my business and have made quite a bit of money too.”
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