Young entrepreneurs use chery blossoms to draw a crowd.

Strolling under the cherry blossoms arching out over Kenwood neighborhood streets in Bethesda on Saturday afternoon, Nadia Green’s thoughts drifted to another kind of promenade.

“I’d like to have a wedding in them,” said Green, 11, an Arlington, Va. resident. Fortunately for her the happy day is far off, because her mother, Barbara Porter, and two other friends mistook “Kenwood” for “Kensington” and arrived a few hours later than they expected.

Thousands of visitors like Green will visit the blossoming cherry trees in the 240-home neighborhood, often to enjoy a different kind of cherry blossom experience from that on display at the Tidal Basin in downtown Washington, D.C., and to escape the throng of tourists there.

One tradition that has sprung up alongside the cherry trees is the spate of tables loaded with drinks and baked treats along the streets, with Kenwood’s younger residents pitching their goods.

Town of Somerset resident Jay Jadeja, 12, and three of his friends set up their lemonade stand at the intersection of Dorset Avenue and the Capital Crescent Trail, near a major ingress and egress of Kenwood at Little Falls Parkway. After about two hours, they had sold about $40 of lemonade, which they proclaimed a good haul.

Asked if they still liked to climb the cherry trees, however, which some residents have said should be prohibited, Jadeja and his friends answered only with bashful smiles.

Further west on Dorset Avenue, young Gwen Lefkowitz was perched alertly in her chair behind a table of $1 lemonade and two-for-a-dollar chocolate chip cookies. At about 11 a.m. she said sales had been brisk, and said she was focused on business and not on pleasure because she wasn’t a big cherry blossom fan.

“I’m not as much of a flower person,” she said. “I’m more of a skater girl.”

Read the full story in Gazette.net

Young entrepreneur, S Tarak al Zubair, with his solar-powered car.

It can carry six passengers at speeds of more than 40kph without ever having to fill up at a petrol station, or even plug into an electric socket.

But perhaps the most impressive thing about this solar-powered, fibreglass car, which went on display at Dubai Mall in April, is the age of the brains behind it: S Tarek al Zubair is just 16, while his cousin, Hamad bin Sulaiman, is two years younger.

The boys, both students at the International School of Arts and Sciences, built the futuristic vehicle for this year’s Young Entrepreneurs Competition.

They and 1,200 other high school and university pupils from across the country have put their business savvy and innovation on display for the past four days, selling everything from cars and custom-made handbags to Braille designs embroidered on coffee mugs and T-shirts.

“God has blessed our country with oil, but we also have sand, hot water, energy from the sun,” said Tarek, who won last year’s competition with a solar-powered mobile phone charger. “We as a country need to become sustainable.”

With his sun-powered car, made with solar panels shipped from Germany, Tarek said he wanted to serve as an example for the country’s leadership.

“Think what that means if two teenagers can make a car run on solar power,” he said.

He plans on giving the prototype vehicle as a gift to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.

Read the full story in The National.

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Young entrepreneur, Jonathan Fischer, demonstrates the Speed Demon.

Jonathan Fischer is just 20, but he’s been working on this gadget since he was 16. Inspired by the tragic death of a Lunenburg teenager in a high-speed auto wreck, he wanted to create a machine that would alert parents whenever a child became too careless behind the wheel.

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Young entrepreneur, Kunal Gupta, founded Impact in 2004

The Impact Entrepreneurship Group is flourishing since the economy soured. Its programs target university and high school students and include a national annual conference, an entrepreneurship week campaign, a leadership summit and a Microcredit Competition that gets underway later this month for which teams of students from 200 high schools receive $100 to launch a business idea and make as much money for charity as possible within a week.

“There’s been a significant increase in interest,” says Kunal Gupta, who founded Impact in 2004 while attending Ontario’s University of Waterloo. “There are opportunities in the market for young entrepreneurs that would not be seen in a good economy.”

Mr. Gupta, who launched Polar Mobile after he graduated, a company that develops a proprietary content and advertising platform for mobile devices, still serves as chairman of Impact’s board and says the breadth of students participating has grown to include those from arts and other studies outside business.

In the past year, Impact — which bills itself as Canada’s largest, non-profit student-run organization — opened offices in Calgary and Vancouver.

The organization has acquired the support and sponsorship of corporate leaders and entrepreneurs who pioneered successful businesses in Canada.

Alex Shipillo of Vancouver, heads Impact’s Microcredit Competition and co-founded Youth Canada to help high school students navigate university scholarship programs. The two groups amalgamated in 2006 to promote entrepreneurship to young Canadians.

“This is the first recession of my lifetime,” says Mr. Shipillo, who plans to start a business after graduating from university. “There’s no longer any guarantee we’ll get a good job after university.”

Ray Cao started EightyTwenty Group, a software company that is poised to double its staff in the coming months. He served a term as president of Impact while studying at University of Waterloo and remembers a survey of high school students Impact conducted to assess their perception of entrepreneurship; 70% responded it was a path of last resort for those who had dropped out of school or failed to find jobs.

“When you’re in high school, a small business does look like the last resort but one of the key reasons is because of the way it’s taught,” Mr. Cao says. “Most teachers have not been entrepreneurs.”

Impact has focused on how it communicates its message to enhance their interest in entrepreneurship and provide hands-on experience. “It’s really about making a paradigm shift,” he says.

Read the full story in The Vancouver Sun.

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Devon Zielinski was one of 60 high school seniors nationwide who received the McKelvey Foundation Entrepreneurial Scholarship last week. The scholars receive $10,000 a year over four years to attend a U.S. college or university.

The New York-based program offers financial aid to young entrepreneurs and first-generation college students.

Zielinski, who has owned Cutting Edge Opportunities Lawn Care for about two years, was one of five Texas seniors to receive the McKelvey award.

“I went numb. I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I was in shock … and then I was super excited.”

The Argyle senior said he will graduate June 3 and will attend Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, where another $40,000 scholarship is waiting for him. He plans to study business. Earlier this year, he was one of 21 state finalists for TCU’s Texas Youth Entrepreneur of the Year Awards.

McKelvey scholarship interviewer Paul Camara called Zielinski “a business-savvy young man who has a very well-defined business plan for growth.”

“For an applicant to have a lawn care business, they must have extraordinary qualities as an entrepreneur and show us that they have taken their business to the next level from mowing lawns in the neighborhood,” Camara wrote in a prepared statement. “Devon was able to show us in the interview that he has very strong entrepreneurial qualities and shows great potential for future success as a business owner.”

Christine McKelvey, foundation president, said more than 1,200 students applied for the award. Of the four years the scholarship has been offered, this was the most competitive, she said, adding that the selected students proved to be lifelong entrepreneurs.

“We’re really looking for people that show that they have the drive and passion to be entrepreneurs,” McKelvey said. “It’s really the individual that we’re looking at.”

Read the full story in the Denton Record-Chronicle

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Young entrepreneurs from Altwood School with their prize-winning jewellery.

Young entrepreneurs from the Royal Borough showed the future is bright for business in the area at the town hall on Wednesday night.

Enterprising students from Altwood School, in Altwood Road, Maidenhead, walked off with the headline gong at the 2009 Young Enterprise North Berkshire Area Final.

They scooped the North Berkshire Award for Best Company, overcoming intense competition from four other schools in the area to win the accolade.

Their Like a Star jewellery business, was considered to be the best overall by three scrutinising judges, who ruled the roost over there business plans, products, trade stands and presentations.

Seven schools and 120 students in the Royal Borough had run 11 companies throughout the year, which was whittled down to five finalists.

Also making the final were Brigidine School, Windsor Boys School, Charters School and Eton College with the range of businesses including tailoring, film screenings, jewellery, accessories and books.

Eddie Pearce, president of Maidenhead District Chamber of Commerce, who was one of the three judges, said he was impressed by all five businesses.

“All the ideas and innovative ideas were fantastic. The standard was better than in previous years and really encouraging to see.”

Source: Maidenhead Advertiser

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Young entrepreneur, Cameron Collings

Cameron Collings is businessman and tech-geek in equal parts. He started his first entrepreneurial venture at 6, selling candy, and built his first computer at 10. Today at 20, he runs a successful web-hosting company.

Collings said he built his first computer at ten and started coding websites since he was 12.

Collings’ business sense must come from his genes; every one of his family members is an entrepreneur of some sort. His father builds hotels in Las Vegas, and is a source of inspiration and motivation for him.

In fact, Collings’s first foray into business was at age six, when he sold candy to people around him. He quickly moved onto bigger things; he raked in $7,000 in the first ten days of his electronics business at age 10.

A part of the growing trend of young entrepreneurs, Collings acquired Host Quack in May 2008 and it has been growing ever since.

The then 19-year-old had just shut down his electronics site and was on the lookout for his next business venture.

“My sister randomly suggested web hosting and told me a little about her provider. So I looked into it,” Collings said.

“I had already had years of experience in networking, system administration, website building, coding, etc… so it sounded great!”

He proceeded to draft a 45 page business plan and structured his business model.

Collings then married his computer skills to his keen business acumen when he purchased the company for $1,200.

He explained his strategy. “I saw HostQuack for sale online and it was a very small company that had everything configured so that would save me time of thinking of a name, building a site, integrating a billing system, etc.”

The young owner of the web-hosting and online company has lots to prove. He has more than a hundred clients from as far away as Saudi Arabia and India.

The company’s edge over its rivals is its commitment to round-the-clock, personalised servicing. Having a competitive price range (plans start from as low as a dollar a month) helps too.

In fact, Collings is proud of his record thus far. While he declines telling his total earnings, he reveals that Host Quack has grown over “14 times its original size” and he manages a staff of ten. All of them work remotely.

The company broke even by its first month, and Collings said: “Every month since I purchased the company  has been better than any previous month.”

Read the full story in The Digital Journal.

Young entrepreneur, Rahim Fazal, sold his first business for $1.5 million while still in high school.

The first keynote speaker at this year’s Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour was Rahim Fazal, a dot-com millionaire. Fazal’s journey from McDonald’s worker to a millionaire caught the attention of students.

“You’ve got to be a bit crazy to become successful,” he said.

That attitude drove him to sell his first business for $1.5 million, when he was still in high school. Fazal earned a Master of Business Arts degree just after completing high school.

Fazal’s business ambitions started early in his hometown of Vancouver and have always involved his best friend, Husein Kaba. The two started off with the smallest of jobs: selling hockey cards at flea markets, helping to set up computers and, one year, a topsoil delivery outfit.

“I’ve always been very entrepreneurial,” says Fazal.

These small projects piqued the two boys’ interest in business and would lay the foundation for much bolder plans in the future.

The first came in 1997 while the two were in high school. They worked at a company called Internet Direct, which provided web connection and hosting. While balancing the rigours of the International Baccalaureate program at school, Fazal worked nights and weekends on the business.

By 1998 their new site, MailBC.com, allowed small businesses to create basic websites and e-mail programs. Started with a $500 investment, within a year it had 25,000 customers. “Eventually it took on a life of its own,” Fazal says.

The demands of the growing business meant Fazal had to carry a cellphone and pager, and was constantly being called out of class to provide customer support. “My teacher actually thought I was a drug dealer,” he says.

Fazal had kept the business a secret from his parents, knowing they would force him to shut it down and concentrate solely on school. When a meeting was called with his parents and teachers to discuss his possible “drug dealing,” Fazal had to pick the lesser of two evils: he pretended he was dealing. The sacrifice meant the business could survive.

In 2000, while still in high school, Fazal and Kaba sold their business for $1.5 million. After losing a second business to the tech crash, the two went to college – and Fazal was granted entry into the MBA program at Ivey without having an undergraduate degree, a rare privilege susally only granted to much older people with many years of business experience.

After completing his MBA, Fazal is once more running a tech business, this time with Noah Horton.

Recognizing an opportunity to help companies improve their online marketing capabilities, Fazal and Horton developed a video technology platform that allows companies to build and easily distribute video campaigns to massive audiences on social networks and across the Web. Involver’s technology gives companies the tools to increase customer engagement by having them physically interact with the video campaign, rather than be passive viewers.

“Our goal was to try to create video that really encouraged participation, by building in a call to action,” says Fazal. Recent Involver clients include Puma, which launched a video campaign during the Olympics to support Jamaican sprinter and gold medalist Usain Bolt, as well as microlending site Kiva.org.

“The true entrepreneur is a doer not a dreamer,” Fazal said, concluding his Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour session.

Source: Inc.com, RahimFazal.com, The Online Reporter

Young entrepreneurs, Carley Polk and Brooke Walz

Governments looking at ways to stimulate the economy could do well by harnessing the business smarts, creativity and enthusiasm of middle school students.

Last week, Port Coquitlam’s Kwayhquitlum school did just that when it held an entrepreneur fair for Grade 6 and 7 students.

Teacher Sam Hauck said 120 students sold products they researched, designed and made during the Young Entrepreneur Show, a program created by PowerPlay Strategies Inc. and sponsored by Westminster Savings Credit Union.

“The big motivation is that the money goes in their pocket at the end of the day,” Hauck said.

But it wasn’t all gravy. Ten per cent of the profits had to be donated to either the SPCA or the Gaby Davis Foundation, charities the students chose as their way of giving back to the community.

The young entrepreneurs also faced some of the debt issues facing many larger corporations, such as the automotive and media industries. Any loans they incurred during manufacturing had to be paid back and students had to have a written agreement spelling out lending terms.

It was an eye-opening project for many students, Hauck said, as they came to grips with the realities of running a business. The students couldn’t just sell anything — they had to do market surveys to find out what products to make, do detailed cost analyses and write business plans.

Source: Tri-City News

Lemonade Day has gained considerable momentum, growing from 2,600 stands in 2007 to 11,200 in 2008 – an impressive 400 percent growth! With significant backing from Imperial Sugar and thousands of other supporters, Lemonade Day 2009 is destined to be even greater this year with an expected 25,000 lemonade stands staffed by as many as 75,000 eager young entrepreneurs.

“Lemonade Day is a recipe for helping kids become more successful in life,”  said Michael Holthouse, co-founder of Prepared 4 Life and the inventor of Lemonade Day. It’s about engaging our entire community to help teach our youth the business skills and character traits they will need to become successful leaders and entrepreneurs. As the old saying goes: when life gives you lemons, make lemonade! We are teaching kids how to make lemonade in more ways than one.”

Holthouse reports that, last year, the combined youth of the Greater Houston community sold over one million cups of lemonade and, with their profits; they contributed more than $200,000 to local charities.

“This is an amazing example of how everyone can get involved – on Lemonade Day everyone has a job: it’s either buying or selling lemonade. With the simple act of purchasing a cup from one of our youth, we are demonstrating that we care about their future,” Holthouse added. “The success of Lemonade Day has caught the attention of many other cities around the nation, so this year we have added two additional cities and plan to add 10 more next year. Our goal is to reach 100 cities over the next five years and train over one million youth in the process.”

Once children are registered, Prepared 4 Life – along with its many partners – provides all young entrepreneurs with free yellow backpacks filled with the educational materials they need to start their own successful lemonade business. The educational process for youth centers on the pairing of the child with a caring adult who serves as a coach to help him or her get the most out of their experience. The backpacks include an Entrepreneur’s Workbook and a Caring Adult Guide with proven step-by-step strategies that make the experience fun and rewarding. Children learn many important life skills including: setting goals, business planning, finding an investor, selecting a site, advertising, purchasing supplies, developing and pricing their products, serving customers, making a profit, basic accounting, opening a bank account, and ultimately giving back to the community. All materials are available in English and Spanish at www.LemonadeDay.org.

Source: PR Newswire

But one eight-year-old from Asheville, N.C., found that there are limits to where you can sell the cookies. Her dream of selling 12,000 boxes of those cookies to send her entire troop to summer camp has been dashed by a technicality that’s left a lot of people scratching their heads.

Earlier this year, Wild Freeborn (yes, that’s her real name) posted a YouTube video, with the help of her dad, with an enthusiastic pitch: “Buy cookies! And they’re yummy!” They set up an online order system where customers in their area could purchase Tagalongs, Thin Mints and Samoas. Within two weeks, 700 orders came in.

But Wild Freeborn’s e-commerce plan hit a major snag. The Girl Scout Cookie Program, which according to Newsweek “bills itself as the largest program to teach entrepreneurship to young girls,” says it prohibits all online sales of its cookies — primarily because of safety reasons. Its guidelines state that Internet use should only be for advertising. “When we sell door to door we always have adults accompanying girls,” Denise Pesich, spokeswoman for Girl Scouts of the USA told the “Today Show.” “In this case, we have a very concerned father overseeing the process, and we know she’s relatively safe. But not in all cases is that true.”

As a result, the Freeborns had to take down their advance-order site and the YouTube video as ordered by the Girl Scouts’ national organization. Bryan Freeborn, chief operating officer of Web-design company Top Floor Studio, says that Girl Scout’s policy sends mixed signals and is confusing. He told Matt Lauer of the “Today Show” last week, “We knew there was a policy that it wasn’t OK, but we thought we were taking orders and promoting the cookies and we seemed to think that was within the spirit of the rules. The whole intent was to help my daughter meet her goals, utilizing up-to-date marketing principles.”

Those principles are something that the Girl Scouts have known and encouraged in recent years – but only to a point. A New York Times article two years ago told the trend of some Girl Scout troops all over the country setting up so-called cookie academies and cookie colleges to teach marketing, selling and business skills to girls 11 and over. One 14-year-old in Chicago used email messages to snag cookie orders, selling 1,510 in 2006.

Seems like Wild Freeborn’s just ahead of her time. She even has a Facebook group with 280 members: “Help one girl sell 12,000 Girl Scout cookies in Asheville!”

Does the current rule go against its mission to encourage Girl Scouts’ entrepreneurial spirit? Or do you think the safety concerns are legitimate and trump marketing online efforts?

Source: Wall St Journal

Ypulse: What are some of the recurring themes you’ve seen among Gen Y entrepreneurs?

Donna Fenn: I think there are several recurring themes and Upstarts is organized around eight of them. This generation of entrepreneurs is fundamentally different from their older counterparts. Their use of technology is very important, of course, and that’s the first thing that people typically mention about them. But I think that misses the most important point about this generation, which is that they are, first and foremost, highly collaborative – I call them “Extreme Collaborators.” They’re accustomed to team work and I see that in the way they start and grow their companies. It isn’t just that they tend to start companies with partners, but also that they draw upon a huge pool of resources that just weren’t available to older entrepreneurs – college professors who teach entrepreneurship courses (a relatively new phenomenon), parents who are supportive of their entrepreneurial ventures, older entrepreneurs who are willing to mentor and sometimes invest in them. So these resources are readily available and Gen Y entrepreneurs are eager to use them. They’re not afraid to say “I don’t know how to do this; help me.” I think that previous generations prized the romantic image of the “lone wolf entrepreneur.” But the world has changed and Gen Y intuitively understands the power of collaboration and collective knowledge. And yes, they know how to use technology to harness that power. But it’s important to remember that technology is a tool.

YP: How will the economic downturn affect existing and future millennial-run startups?

DF: We’ve seen increases in business startups during the last two recessions and I think this recession will be no exception. In light of massive corporate layoffs, not to mention decreasing levels of trust in large corporations, I think we may see a record number of startups in the coming months. And I think Millennials will lead the way. Because they’re young and relatively unburdened by the financial obligations of their parents’ generation, they’re great at bootstrapping. They don’t mind eating Top Ramen and sleeping on a futon at the office. Recession startups are typically bootstrapped startups, and not companies that need significant amounts of investment capital right out of the starting gate. I don’t think capital has completely dried up, but it’s wildly difficult to get in the current economic environment.

As for existing millennial run companies, I do think that they have a remarkable ability to be agile and flexible and to react quickly to market changes. Their expertise with technology allows them to operate leanly and efficiently. That’s all critically important when money is tight. But in the final analysis, they’re in the same boat as everyone else. They’ll need to find creative ways to cut back expenses, create value for their customers, and differentiate themselves in the marketplace. If they can do that while their competitors are going under, they’ll be well-positioned for success when the economy recovers.

YP: How do Gen Y entrepreneurs differ from entrepreneurs from previous generations?

DF:I think it all starts with, as I mentioned above, collaboration and their use of technology. But there are other notable differences. I’ve noticed that GenY entrepreneurs are more likely to have some sort of social mission right out the gate. Like Tom Szaky, they’re “Social Capitalists.” While older entrepreneurs tend to wait until their companies are established and profitable, young entrepreneurs often want to make a commitment to a social mission right away. For instance, Happy Baby Food pledges to feed a child in Malawi for a day for every package sold. This generation wants to change the world and they’re using entrepreneurship to do it.

Also, I think Gen Y really understands the power of brands and is creating some memorable ones, sometimes in industries that we don’t think of “brandable.” Yes, we’ve got The Hundreds and Johnny Cupcakes – fabulous GenY brands. But there’s also Sittercity, a brilliantly branded web-based company that matches babysitters with families; and Meathead Movers, which uses its employees – mostly college athletes – to distinguish its company from its many competitors.

Gen Y entrepreneurs are also what I call “Workplace Renegades.” Typically, they reject traditional, hierarchical workplaces in favor of more participative, flexible, meritocratic corporate cultures. That doesn’t mean people don’t work hard at their companies; in fact work and life appear to be a kind of 24-7 mash up. They’re treating their employees the way they want to be treated: they’re training them; they’re making the office fun and engaging; they’re providing frequent feedback and meaningful incentives. Frankly, I think Gen Y entrepreneurs and employees are giving us all a new definition of work.

Read the full interview on YPulse.

Robert is in seventh grade at Calkins Road Middle School. When he was a sixth-grader and Ann Shelp was his math teacher, he created a project for her class, a board game designed to teach and reinforce basic math skills. Grid Greed — “an exciting game to sharpen your mathematical skills” — was born.

The teacher was impressed and encouraged Robert to think about marketing the game. Thanks to the Young Entrepreneurs Academy, the young man is on his way to doing precisely that.

One of the neat things about Grid Greed is that it’s more than a teaching tool for children. It could prove useful for geezers (the term will suit me sooner than I’d like) who need mental exercises to retain an alert mind. In fact, Robert has tried it on a much older friend, a retired business executive with whom he regularly plays chess.

Next up, Robert will use the money he won at UR to have 100 copies of the board game produced, and then he’ll begin marketing it to schools and retirement communities in the Rochester area.

Young Mr. Moon wasn’t the only winner at Thursday’s program. Eighteen other presenters — some individuals, some teams — received at least $500 each in cash and services.

The Young Entrepreneurs Academy is a nine-month program at UR (there also are Rochester-area YEA programs at SUNY Geneseo and in the Greece and Victor school districts) that helps students in grades 6 through 12 create their own business. At the weekly three-hour sessions, students learn from guest speakers and business mentors and visit local workplaces. Participants in this year’s class at UR come from both city and suburban schools.

It’s impressive how many businesses, government agencies and nonprofits recognize that nurturing a future generation of business leaders is a smart thing to do.

Young entrepreneur Ben Behrouzi

The moment Behnam Behrouzi saw his first computer as a teenager, he was hooked.

Then he heard descriptions of the “Information Superhighway,” and he became a dreamer.

“The ideas just began to click the moment I was introduced to the Internet,” said Behrouzi, who lives in Danville. “I dug into all the possibilities that surrounded it right away, and I loved it.”

Now 28, Behrouzi has started over 20 businesses. His latest venture, Pleasanton-based DotNext, helps create Internet companies.

“There are still a tremendous number of ideas out there that need to be developed,” he said. “My job is to help turn the best ones into something people will use.”

The search engine LeapFish is a recent creation to come out of DotNext.

Some people think Leapfish is an attempt to sink Google, the leading search engine, but Behrouzi insists that’s not the case. The note, “It’s OK, you’re not cheating on Google,” tries to underline Behrouzi’s point.

“I’m not naive in that I think people are going to drop Google,” he said. “It’s just some people are going to like what LeapFish has to offer better.”

The purpose of LeapFish is to serve as a one-stop site where people can be exposed to not only the sites a Google, Yahoo or MSN might find, but also images, videos, news and blogs they might not know are out there.

“If a person searches for a celebrity on LeapFish, they might find a video on them that they normally wouldn’t have seen,” he said.Behrouzi has helped build more than 20 Internet companies. Besides LeapFish, others include Reply.com and iMotors.

For Behrouzi, being the head of a successful company in the Bay Area is a remarkable story. Especially when he considers the path taken to get there.

Born in Iran, Behrouzi and his family were forced out of the country because of “vicious” religious persecution when he was about 4.

“If I hadn’t left, I wouldn’t have had much of an opportunity to get higher in my life,” he said. “Life would have been made very difficult for me.”

Smuggled at night, he traveled for several days through the desert to Pakistan.

“We could hear gunshots everywhere,” he said. “It was an ugly period in my life, but we got through it.”

After about a year in Pakistan, they found people they knew from Alaska, and when he was 6, the family came to the United States. Eventually, they came to California and settled in Modesto.

Then, his life changed at about 15, when he was exposed to the Internet.

Instead of paper routes or working for a small business, Behrouzi immediately looked for an opportunity to make money through the Web.

“I just knew that I wanted to start a business that people would want,” he said.

His first Web-based endeavor was an online coupon business he ran from a modem in his bedroom. It was a simple concept where businesses signed up and could put menus, graphics and coupons online.

Often Behrouzi would go to school in a coat and tie so he could set up meetings with businesses during lunch.

“I tried to look as spiffy as I could so I could pull off 17 or 18, even though I was 15 or 16,” he said.

Behrouzi moved to San Ramon his senior year in high school and went to UC Davis, where he started to create companies such as Reply.

“I would start up one company, and then another idea would come up, and I’d start another,” he said. “I enjoyed the sense that I was building things.”

Behrouzi won’t disclose his net worth, but he says he put $2 million of his own money into the launch of DotNext.

Behrouzi realizes his life’s path hasn’t been conventional. But he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’ve had my successes and I’ve had my failures, but you need both of those to keep your life in forward motion,” he said. “I guess that’s what makes me a serial entrepreneur.”

Read the full story in Inside Bay Area

Young entrepreneur Ryan Smith

An area artist is making a name for himself as he shares his craft with people around the community.

From an idea to a sketch on a piece of paper, his work has gone from coast to coast.  This young entrepreneur is working well beyond his years.

Ryan Smith is still in high school.  Despite the economy, more young artists are taking a chance with their work and finding success along the way.

Smith is making a living from right inside his own apartment.

“I kind of wanted to shake things up and break the mold,” he said.

Smith, 18, is a senior at Hillcrest and trying to finish high school — all while running a business he started two years ago.

“I didn’t want to be the average kid anymore.  Because, I really didn’t find anything impressive about being the average kid that does everything by the book,” said Smith.

Smith’s clothing line uses his own trade mark design and is now being sold in a handful of states.

“But I didn’t get into the clothing line for the money.  I’ve actually released a hat before, I actually didn’t really make money off of it, but when I get people saying ‘oh, I saw this kid wearing your trucker hat,’ it was, that was worth it,” he said.

Leaders with the Springfield Regional Arts Council says local artist, like Smith are getting younger and younger.

“Young people aren’t as inhibited, especially if they haven’t been at home.  They are more adventurous.  I would say, they’re more daring and they don’t have the inhibition an older person has, the fear of failure, and the fear of success.  They don’t have that yet so, they’re willing to just go out there and do it,” said Sandra CH Smith, executive director of the Springfield Regional Arts Council.

In recent years, the council has beefed up its programs just to help young artist express themselves while helping them with their studies.

“The arts help kids with Math, English, Science because it opens that side of the brain and so the kids do better on their math tests — if they have an art class of some sort,” he said.

Through his company’s website, Smith says he gets a lot of requests for not only his clothes, but his other work.

He draws, paints, shoots video and is a photographer.  So he stays pretty busy.  If you would like to check out his work just head over to www.rottix.com

When Smith graduates from high school, he eventually wants to move his business out of his apartment and into a real studio where he can have more space to create his clothes and other art work.

Source: Ozarks First

Young entrepreneurs Annaka Roscoe, Justin Lenehan, Maggie Abbott and Molly Bowes.

Annaka Roscoe stands with her homemade picture frames, Justin Lenehan poses with his treasure boxes, Maggie Abbott holds her creation of flip flop hooks and Molly Bowes presents her original idea of a Swail.

PHOTO BY LAUREN KENNEDY

Nine year-old Madie Parker shows off her dog treats that she made on her own.

PHOTO BY LAUREN KENNEDY

Lukas Calhoun flies his homemade wooden airplane

PHOTO BY LAUREN KENNEDY

He’s getting his money’s worth. David McLean supports young entrepreneurs and buys a dragster from Lukas Calhoun.

These are a few of the creative products that the youngsters in Grades 3 to 5 came up with during a March Break camp for young entrepreneurs run by Enterprise Carleton.

Molly Bowes was one of the many budding future business owners at the Woodstock Farm Market on Friday morning. She was attempting to sell her original idea, called a Swail to potential customers.

“A Swail is a stuffed animal that I made up. I just thought of the idea one day and thought it was a good one,” said Bowes.

From stuffed animals to dog treats that even humans can eat, these kids thought of it all.

Young entrepreneur Madie Parker

Nine-year-old Madie Parker came up with the idea of dog treats for dogs of all sizes, and if a customer wanted, they could take the hand-painted box the treats came in with them … for a price of course.

“I got a dog treat cookbook and thought that maybe not very many people would know how to make dog treats, so I decided to try it out, ” said Parker. “And even people can eat them because I made them with all natural ingredients.”

Katie Goodine is the youth officer for Enterprise Carleton and couldn’t help but have a smile on her face as she watched the youngsters sell their products to customers.

This is the second time that Goodine has been involved in this type of camp such as this and says she would love to continue with programs such as this.

“It’s been a great week with lots of hard work and fun and it makes it all worth while when the kids come here today and put what they learned into practice,” she said.

Goodine partnered with Joanne Boone, the community co-ordinator for Southern Carleton Elementary School and together they made the camp a great learning experience for the kids.

“The kids learn a lot about business skills like how to run their own business, know how to write a business plan. They met with a loan officer, and took out loans in order to start up their businesses and also learned about profit and loss and how to deal with customers,” said Boone. “Something like this gives them good people skills and gives them a spot to have a creativity outlet, which is huge.”

Young entrepreneur Lukas Calhoun

Lukas Calhoun is the proud creator of what he deems a “one of a kind dragster.”

“I got the model from a kit and the dragsters can even move on their own, it’s a special feature,” said Calhoun.

Not only did Calhoun says he was having fun he really enjoyed selling his product to customers.

“It’s a great time,” he said.

Goodine hopes that when the camp is all said and done, that the kids will be able to take some of the skills that they learned and hang onto them for life.

“I’m hoping that the entrepreneurial experience sticks with them and they can take that away with them,” she said.

She explained that a lot of the kids had the experience of making their own products before and gave the example of one girl who made jewelry before and decided to stick with that and sell her jewelry as a product.

“I hope that now that they realize how easy it is to make their own products, they’ll be able to take that away with them,” said Goodine.

Both Goodine and Boone agree that while the week with the kids has been exhausting, it was all worth it to see them come out on top of the business world and showcase their talents.

Source: Bugle Observer

Described as “totally unique”, the collection made between 1990 and 1999 included posters, Happy Meal boxes and toys, as well as limited edition cups and shop-front displays that were never available to the public.

Last night bidders from across the world battled for parts of the 5,000-piece coveted collection – believed to be the largest of its kind in the UK – in a sale at Unique Auctions in Lincoln.

The grand total raised by the auction came in at £8,130, with lots going to buyers from the UK, Germany, and America.

The cash has been pocketed by 11-year-old Luke Underwood, from South Clifton, on the Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire border, who has been the proud owner of the collection for four years.

He said he was sad to let go of the hoard but was looking forward to his next big buy.

Luke said: “I didn’t really want to sell it but now I’m planning on saving the money so I can buy something else like this and make some money.

“I want to be a businessman when I’m older. I like going to car boot sales with my dad and buying things then selling them for more.”

Source: This Is Nottingham

The 16-year-old entrepreneur came up with the concept while waiting for 15 minutes in the icy cold, only to discover that he had missed the bus. “There has to be a better way to go about it,” he thought to himself.

On a recent evening in February, Forkosh presented the Bus Alert! working prototype that he built himself to a panel of judges at the first annual Gryfe-Levy Student Entrepreneur of the Year Award. The competition was held at Touro College’s Graduate School of Business in Lower Manhattan and sponsored by Touro’s Lander College for Men division.

The Bus Alert! business plan won Forkosh the grand prize of $1,500, beating out 14 other finalists from eight yeshiva high schools in the New York metropolitan area.

Forkosh, a full-time student who moonlights as a mechanics, robotics and electronics consultant and has won several robot design contest, “blew everybody away,” says Larry Bellman, director of Touro College’s Entrepreneurial Institute, and organizer of this event. “The market is potentially awesome. He had all kinds of statistics. He’s a future business person who is destined to be very successful.”

Second prize ($1,000) went to Joseph Benun, a junior at Yeshiva of Flatbush who wants to open a chain of vegetarian restaurants known as The VeggieBar. Yaacov Sclusselberg and Michael Saltzman, both seniors at Rambam, came in third with their idea for a medical alert watch called LifeBand that monitors a person’s pulse and blood pressure.

Source: Jewish Week

Successful young hotshots from all over the UK flew in to share their stories and offer tips on becoming a business success to the 15-26-year olds from local schools, colleges and universities.

Speakers included, Tre Azam, the controversial star of BBC’s The Apprentice, who was joined by top teenage author and blogger jellyellie, Dragon’s Den success story Imran Hakim whose iTeddy has made him a recognised face, and Scotland’s entrepreneur of the year Mick Jackson.

Antony Hutton, who went from winning reality TV show Big Brother to now working on the launch of his own chain of hairdressers in the North-east, and Ajaz Ahmed, founder of Freeserve, also spoke.

Tre told the summit: “I walked into the Job Centre and said I was a young entrepreneur who had once been a millionaire, and a job that would get me £40,000 or so would do. Once she’d stopped laughing, she said ‘you might have been a millionaire but you’ve barely passed your A levels – where are you going to find a job like that?’

“I’d never been interested in learning until that point, but on that day I enrolled on a training course. Now, I see the value of learning.”

Entrepreneurs’ Forum chief executive Carole Beverley said: “I was overwhelmed that we attracted over 1,300 young people. It just goes to show that the entrepreneurial spark is alive in this region.”

Headlined by the Entrepreneurs’ Forum, Cloud 9 was supported by regional development agency One North East, The Prince’s Trust, Make Your Mark, Young Enterprise North East, RTC North, Big Ideas Youth Challenge and North East Enterprise Bond.

Source: Evening Gazette

Young entrepreneur Dana Laurie presents her business plan.

The nonprofit National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship hosted 23 aspiring entrepreneurs from around the country at its 6th Youth Entrepreneurship Expo in New York, in partnership with the Goldman Sachs Foundation. The high school students have crafted their business plans over months of business camps and competitions.

One of the winners, Dana Laurie, is launching an organic cosmetics line called Purus Cosmetics. She already has a product demo and plans to turn it into a real business. Laurie hails from Bayside, Queens, and won most innovative business idea, most promising concept, and best overall presentation and business plan.

This isn’t just feel-good stuff. One NFTE veteran, Jasmine Lawrence, has a thriving hair care line that’s sold in Wal-Mart. She started when she was 13; by last year, at age 17, Lawrence had sales over $1 million. She’s been a finalist for our Best Young Entrepreneurs two years running. So clearly, successful businesses can grow out of high school business plans.

More of NFTE’s winners:

Florian Koenigsberger, FloC: Urban graphic t-shirts
New York
Awards: Best Marketing Materials, Best Overall Communication, Best Sales Strategy, Best Elevator Pitch

Crystal Harper, Island Treats: Snacks with a Caribbean twist
Brooklyn, New York
Award: Best Competitive Advantage

Raquel Escobar and Irwin Tejeda, Realist Grocery Shopping: Grocery delivery Service
Brooklyn, New York and Bronx, New York
Award: Most Civic-Minded Business

Melanie Arroyo, Darius Grayer, Angel Howard, Daja Jones and Gloria Santos
Business: Tasty’s, Healthy sweet treats for diabetics
Monroe, NJ; Kansas City, MO; Newark, NJ; and Los Angeles
Award: Best Booth Display

Read the full story in Business Week.

In the survey, visitors to the site were asked what they would do if they spotted a great item at the mall that they couldn’t afford. More than half of respondents aged 29 or younger (54 percent) said they would put aside money each month until they had the full amount to buy the item. An even greater majority of kids aged 17 or younger (57 percent) agreed, saying they would save. In comparison, only 42 percent of adults aged 30 and above said they would save in advance.

“Kids today could become the most money smart generation since the 1940s,” said Meridee Maynard, financial literacy expert and senior vice president, Northwestern Mutual. “April is Financial Literacy Month, and like no other time in recent history, kids and parents alike recognize the importance of managing money. We learn money habits during childhood, and in these challenging economic times, kids are learning why saving can be sweeter and safer than paying with plastic.”

History shows that challenging times can affect personal saving behavior. In the early 1940s, during the Great Depression and World War II, the U.S. personal saving rate soared above 25 percent1. From 2005 to early 2008, that rate hovered between zero and one percent, and even became negative for one quarter (Americans spent more than they earned). But in mid-2008, the savings rate spiked, jumping to over three percent by year-end. And in January 2009, the savings rate jumped to five percent, the highest rate in 14 years.

Kids More Cautious with Credit Cards

The new poll results also indicated that kids are more cautious and measured when it comes to using credit cards. Only seven percent of people aged 29 or younger said they would use a credit card to purchase an item that they couldn’t afford. Of those 17 or younger, six percent indicated they would pay with plastic. In contrast, 13 percent of adults aged 30 and above said they would “charge it” and figure out a way to pay off the debt at a later date.

“If the current generation of young people pays close attention to the downsides of debt, the lessons learned from this recession could provide dividends for a lifetime,” said Maynard. “Low savings rates and high debt helped contribute to the financial challenges we’re seeing today. This financial environment offers engaging opportunities to teach kids about how money works and how to manage it wisely.”

Testing IQ to Avoid the Credit Card Trap

Kids can test their borrowing brainpower by taking the Credit Card IQ quiz on themint.org. Seven questions help to identify their knowledge of credit, and areas for improvement.

Maynard has five credit card tips for parents to share with their children:

1. Pay in full, on time, every month. Always pay off the balance monthly and avoid charging more than you can pay off monthly. Late penalties are costly, and some companies increase the interest rate after one or two payments are overdue.

2. Be aware of rates and fees. Credit card companies often offer low introductory rates to attract new customers. These rates typically last for only a few months and then jump as high as 20 percent. Also be aware of extra fees associated with pre-paid cards, such as activation, maintenance and late fees.

3. Don’t exceed your credit limit. This helps avoid penalties and ensures that you will have credit available in the event of a true emergency.

4. Protect your history. As soon as you start using a card, the payments – whether paid on time, late or not at all – become part of your credit history, which can affect your ability to rent an apartment, get a job, or buy a car or a house. Bad marks stay on a cardholder’s credit record even if the bill is paid later, so make sure to keep it clean.

5. Review your statements. Immediately inform the credit card company of any errors on the monthly statement.

Jacob Nyenhuis was 18 when he died in a Sept. 24, 2006, traffic accident while traveling from his St. Simons Island home to the University of Georgia during a heavy rainstorm.

The UGa freshman, who at age 15 already had turned successful real estate deals, dreamed of building a company focused on “compassionate service,” said his parents, Michael and Sandy Nyenhuis.

Although devastated, his parents and his sister, Raleigh, were determined that his spirit and dreams live on. Two months after he died, they established The J9 Foundation, a nonprofit charitable organization that provides scholarships, training and opportunities to mentor.

The foundation’s mission is to inspire a global movement of “compassionate entrepreneurs, those who utilize their God-given gifts to improve their own lives and the lives of others,” Michael Nyenhuis said.

“This isn’t charity,” he said. “This is an investment in a successful business idea. It’s a partnership about the power of business to transform lives and communities.”

By investing in the future of people a half- world away, some Glynn Academy students are banking on the ideals of a young entrepreneur who believed business should be about making someone else’s life better.

Members of the high school’s Future Business Leaders of America, Phi Beta Lambda chapter, are investing $500 in a small shop that provides basic groceries and household items for residents of several rural villages in western Kenya.

In return, the 68-student club will own 15 percent of the business run by a 24-year-old woman working to help her community rise from poverty to become economically self-sufficient.

The business students are participating in the J9 program established to honor Jacob Nyenhuis.

Michael Nyenhuis is president of Brunswick-based MAP International, a nonprofit relief and development agency. The foundation isn’t affiliated with MAP, but its humanitarian work inspired Jacob Nyenhuis and helped shape his vision of what he wanted to do with his life.

He accompanied his father to Kenya and South America, where MAP provides medicines and other relief to people living in the world’s most impoverished communities. Kenya was his son’s favorite place, Nyenhuis said.

“Jacob was very deeply touched by the poverty he saw, but also the joy he saw in the people he met in Kenya,” Nyenhuis said. “Jacob once said there were not enough good people making a lot of money and sharing it. He wanted to have a big company and make a lot of money, but he wanted to share the money, not hoard it.”

Through the foundation and its partner, Nairobi-based Community Aid International, the FBLA chapter is investing in a shop run by Carolyne Kbaka in the Ajigo Marketplace in Kenya’s Bondo District on the shore of Lake Victoria. The district is one of the poorest areas in Kenya.

Equivalent to about 35,000 Kenyan shillings, the students’ investment will buy five bags of sugar, seven bags of wheat, six cartons of cooking fat and five bales of salt for Kbaka’s store.

The students chose the business after analyzing business plans including financial data submitted by Kbaka and two others seeking investment capital through the program. They also focused on details from the entrepreneurs about how their business will benefit their community.

FBLA chapter members discussed the applications for 90 minutes before unanimously deciding to invest in Kbaka’s shop.

“We looked at how she’s excelled in her business so far. We also looked at how, by helping her business, she will be able to help other businesses and the people who come to her shop,” said chapter reporter Whitney Baker, 18, a senior planning a career in corporate law.

They also considered Kbaka’s situation as a wife and mother of two young children working to succeed in a society where women traditionally have had few business opportunities, said chapter President Ashley Washington, also an 18-year-old senior.

“I felt she needed a little more help than the two men who applied. I also think her willingness to give up 15 percent of her business was really nice, especially since the others were offering 8 percent and 10 percent,” said Washington, who is considering a career in fashion or public relations.

The students are getting real-world experience as venture capitalists to go along with their business studies in the classroom. The chapter will receive a portion of Kbaka’s profit, which it will re-invest in future businesses through the program, said Glenn Etheridge, business teacher and chapter adviser.

Etheridge said the students will get quarterly reports from Kbaka. He also hopes they can talk directly to her at some point, said Etheridge, who was one of Jacob Nyenhuis’ teachers.

A few weeks after his son’s death, Michael Nyenhuis stood by his grave, alone in his grief.

“I was thinking, ‘What am I going to do now? What would Jacob have done?’ Then it came to me, ‘Make Jacob’s dream a reality.’ I think God gave me the idea to start Jacob’s foundation,” he said.

Michael and Sandy Nyenhuis, a teacher and private tutor, have dedicated the foundation to their son’s business sense, his compassionate heart and his unwavering desire, as he once told a friend, “to do something every day to make someone else’s life a little better,” his father said.

Its name, “J9,” is shorthand for his name: the J from Jacob and 9 from Nyenhuis, which is pronounced “Nine-hice.” The teen had planned to use that name for his future real estate development company.

The business club students took up Jacob Nyenhuis’ mission this year as part of a pilot program that, if successful, could be expanded to Brunswick High School and other FBLA chapters nationwide.

Source: Jacksonville News

Young entrepreneur Raquel Fuentes, 16, fries up her specialty called "empanadillas", a Puerto Rican dish, in her aunt's kitchen in Cleveland.

As a student in the E-City entrepreneurial program last school year, Cleveland’s Raquel Fuentes had to open and run her own business. The 16-year-old SuccessTech Academy junior created Comida Sabrosa, which translates into “tasty food.” Having learned to cook from her grandmother, she brought in samples of her signature dish, empanadillas, for her classmates and teachers. They loved them, and began buying them — lots of them — for $2 each. Soon, she was spending hours in her kitchen, in addition to keeping up with the schoolwork needed to stay an honor student. A year later, she has saved a decent chunk of money for college, where she hopes to eventually study law. She recently answered a few questions from PDQ’s John Campanelli.
What exactly are empanadillas?

Empanadillas are beef turnovers. They’re usually made with ground beef cooked with sofrito, which is a mixture of different seasoning that a lot of Hispanics use in their cooking. Then the beef is put into a dough, which is fried.

How healthful are they?

If you’re on a diet, I’d stay away from them. (laughing) That’s what makes them so good. They are very, very, very fattening.
How many have you cooked up at one time?

About 120.
How long does it take?

It takes a long time. When I first started, I was in the kitchen all the time. It takes a good two to three to 3½ hours, depending on whether my mom and sister want to help.
Do you pay them?

They get empanadillas. As long as they get one, they’re happy. I tried to charge my mom, but she wasn’t having it. (laughing)
What’s the key to making a good empanadilla?

I think the meat you use, and how you cook them. I hate greasy empanadillas. I’ve been to other Hispanic restaurants and I’ve had the empanadillas they’ve made and I hate how they’re greasy and nobody took the time to cook them the right way. Mine are not greasy.
What has running your own business taught you about life?

It’s taught me a lot. It’s taught me that either you’re going to be your own boss and make your own money or you’re going to spend the rest of your life working for somebody else. And that education is the only way out.
What kind of law do you want to specialize in?

Either criminal justice or women’s rights.
Why those?

I just feel like women are looked at like they’re secondary, even though we’re in the 21st century. A woman police officer isn’t looked at the same as a man police officer. I don’t think that’s right. A woman running for president, not a lot of people agreed with that. Which I don’t think is fair. It should all be equal.
Have you ever thought about a career in politics?

I could see myself doing it one day, but I’m not 100 percent sure. … In April we have class elections and I plan on running for senior class president.
Have you started your campaign?

I put the word out there to my class. Everybody knows I’m going to run but I won’t start campaigning until April. I can’t officially put up posters or anything until April.
Are you going to exchange empanadillas for votes?

I actually didn’t think about that. (laughing) That’s a good idea.

Raquel Fuentes’ Beef and Cheese Empanadillas

Sofrito
1 chopped onion
1 chopped green pepper
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 teaspoons adobo seasoning
1 cup cilantro
1 clove chopped garlic
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Dough (see cook’s notes)

3 cups flour
10 tablespoons shortening
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sugar
½ cup milk
½ cup water

Cook’s note: To save time, you can also use a store-bought dough such as Goya Discos.

Filling

½ pound ground beef
2 cups sofrito
1 tablespoon shredded cheddar cheese per empanadilla

Grind sofrito ingredients in a food processor.

In a large skillet, brown and drain ground beef. Mix in sofrito.

Sift flour into a bowl, and add salt and sugar. With knife, cut shortening into mix. Add liquids and beat until a soft dough is formed. Sprinkle some flour on the working area. Roll the dough thinly and cut into circles 3 to 4 inches across.

In a deep frying pan, heat 2-inch-deep vegetable oil. Place 1½ tablespoons of beef filling and cheese in the center of each circle. Fold the circle in half and press edges with a fork.

Drop empanadillas into heated oil and fry on each side until brown.

Source: The Plain Dealer

Young Entrepreneur Blaine Mickens

Six Northeast Ohio teen entrepreneurs were profiled in “Who’s Your Boss?”, a new production developed by WEAO Channel 49.

It aired at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 21.

Adult host Jeff Blanchard works for each young entrepreneur at jobs such as painting homes, sewing fur costumes and more.

The following teens were featured:

• Adrian Lindsey, 17, a senior at Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy in Stow and resident of Akron. Adrian created All-Net Sak, a nylon basketball carrier.

• Blaine Mickens, an 18-year-old Clevelander who is a recent graduate of Whitney Young High School in Cleveland. Mickens owns a landscaping and residential painting company.

• Jake Penwell, 19, of Shelby, is a freshman at Xavier University in Cincinnati. He runs disc jockey company.

• Naomi and Noemi Romero, 16-year-old twins and seniors at John Hay High School in Cleveland, own their own fur-suit business.

• Jaizhou Yang, 17, a senior at University School in Hunting Valley and resident of Beachwood, wants to capitalize on video game trends by holding and promoting video game tournaments.

Image: Peggy Turbutt/The Plain Dealer

Young entrepreneur, Tanner Strunz

Two Wisconsin high school seniors have been named “Young Entrepreneurs of the Year” by the Department of Commerce and the Department of Public Instruction. The pair, Caleb Taplin of Ellsworth High School and Tanner Strunz of Brodhead High School, were recognized during National Entrepreneurship Week USA, February 21 – 28, 2009.

“I am delighted to announce the winners of this honor,” said Commerce Secretary Richard J. Leinenkugel. “Caleb and Tanner are both great examples of Wisconsin’s best and brightest young entrepreneurial spirit. Wisconsin’s economic future depends on the discipline and desire that these young entrepreneurs possess.”

“As Caleb and Tanner know, successful entrepreneurs use 21st century skills like self-direction, financial literacy, communication, and creativity,” said State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster. “Congratulations to our 2009 Young Entrepreneurs for developing abilities that will continue to contribute to their own well-being and that of our society, for years to come.”

Taplin, of Ellsworth, is involved in the design of a line of clothing in operating Clarity Clothing. Strunz, of Brodhead, is the owner of Strunz Lawn Care, which provides lawn care, snow plowing and tree removal. They will each receive a recognition plaque signed by Governor Jim Doyle, as well as a free business counseling session through a Wisconsin Small Business Development Center near them, and an opportunity to receive business mentorship.

Strunz, who is now a 17-year-old owner of his own business, was a bored kid in the summer of 2006. “My uncle asked me if I’d like to mow his lawn to make some money. I used a push mower and made a little cash and I liked it.”

By the next summer, he had six yards to mow and decided to add snow removal for all of those clients. Last year he took steps to grow his business. “I decided I needed to get my name out there. Dad said he sees other lawn care businesses with sweatshirts and T-shirts, so I had some of those made and got business cards and did some advertising,” he said.

His clientele more than doubled and he added some commercial clients, including a local bank and car dealership with 2 acres in need of snow clearing. He also added several clients over the state line into Illinois. One of those homes is in a gated community where he’s meeting with management and may add five to eight yards to his to-do list.

Tanner said he’s done most of the work himself to this point, just hiring a few friends to help out when he wanted a vacation. But with the work he’s lined up for next year, he plans on taking on an employee, one of his best friends who has done some work with him in the past.

When he started Strunz Lawn Care, he drove to his clients’ homes on the lawn tractor, towing his push mower on a small custom trailer, since he didn’t have his driver’s license. Now he can drive his pickup truck and tow the new lawn tractor he purchased.

Read the full story in Wisfarmer.

The Young Entrepreneurs Academy that this 17-year-old junior is participating in after school is giving her a taste of the business world.

Whether or not there’s the next Bill Gates among them doesn’t seem to matter.

“Be proud of what it is you are doing. Have that passion,” said art teacher Nancee Sanders, who is helping run the academy.

Plenty of enthusiasm was evident at the first of these weekly Tuesday sessions. The group also meets every other Thursday after school for field trips or to hear presentations from members of the local business community.

Sanders told how, when she was 8 growing up in Livingston County, she ventured into the business world, selling coffee and cake to ice fishermen on Conesus Lake.

Many of the students came to the class with ideas of what they wanted to accomplish.

“I want to make jewelry from recycled materials,” said Ricca Prasad, a 17-year-old junior from Victor.

Money made from the sale of this jewelry, Prasad went on to explain, could help survivors of the genocide in Darfur. She said she would work through an international group.

At least several of the students have already dabbled in the business world.

Ninth-grader Ford Filer fixes computers and, in case anyone wonders if he’s too young to do the job, he has his own business card: “Ford Filer, F2 Technical Solutions.”

The 14-year-old wants to form a “geek squad,” offering computer services cheaper than his grown-up competitors.

Meanwhile, Billy Boyce, a 17-year-old senior from Farmington, is eager to help his dad expand the family’s farm.

Source: Democrat and Chronicle

Young Australian entrepreneur, Jemma Nicoll.

“Money making doesn’t all come at once, you’ve got to love what you do – so a recession won’t stop me from working,” says 17-year-old Jemma Nicoll who started Inspire Dance Academy at the age of 16.

Alana Maybus started an online gift store when she was 10 “just for something to do”. She now has customers across Australia.

Growing up in rural Victoria, Alana Maybus, 12, started her business to squash boredom and in the process kick-started her career.

Her business Alana Designs sells handmade jewellery, T-shirts, and gift cards online – “products for girls made by girls”.

“I have orders from mums who don’t know what to buy for their daughters, and also from people my own age,” says Alana. “All my friends think it’s really cool.”

And 16-year-old Mathew Carpenter might be studying for the HSC, but that hasn’t stopped him from starting his own consumer electronics business.

They are among a driven group of young Australians setting up their own businesses before they hit the big 2-0.

And they have one response to those hit by the financial crisis: harden up.

“You have to be ruthless in business – but that would be the same even if we weren’t facing a recession,” says 19-year-old Nick Ferguson who started Sustain Fitness at the age of 17.

Their hot tip: start a business now.

Read more in Perth Now.

Lachy currently runs two businesses: book review web site, Uncoverr.com and blog XHTML/CSS service, PSDtoWordPress.com. Lachy calls himself a web developer who started off as an XHTML/CSS coder three or four years ago.

What is the startup story behind your business? When did it start?

I started when I was 10 or 11, I think. My granddad taught me HTML and I became quite good; I learned about CSS on W3Schools and then I wanted to find out how to make my site live. I found out about free hosts and learned from there.

I started off taking client work and converting PSDs to XHTML/CSS. I made quite a bit of money and so started other sites, sold them, and moved on. Now my two main projects are Uncoverr.com which SitePoint has been nice enough to sponsor, and PSDtoWordPress.com.

Your parents — how do they feel about having a 14-year-old entrepreneur in the house?

Heh, they’re fine about it. It was a bit of trouble convincing them to let me use their PayPal account at first, but then my mum registered one in her name that I can use myself. They leave me to it; I guess to them it’s just like me having a part-time job.

With school and social life, you must be busy. What does an average day (during school term) consist of?

I’ll wake up at 7.00 a.m. and leave for school by 8.00 a.m. After school I usually play sport for a couple of hours, and then relax until dinner time.

Then, once I’ve had dinner, I’ll usually do two hours of work, as well as chat to my friends over Instant Message and on Facebook.

Read the full interview from The Sitepoint Tribune.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Young entrepreneurs from Kustomize sell their wares.

Young entrepreneurs from Chace Community School were using their best sales pitches on shoppers at Spitalfield Market on Friday as part of a national competition.

The group of pupils have set up a company, Kustomize, and were given the opportunity to trade for a day at the famous market.

Kustomize were up against nine other London schools taking part in the Young Enterprise London Inner City Young Entrepreneurs’ Competition. A total of 40 schools are competing.

With the support of their teachers and business volunteers from local communities, the pupils learn through hands on experience what it takes to be an entrepreneur and how to run their own company.

The students elect a board of directors, raise share capital, market, finance and then sell their product and services in their communities.

The sponsors, Deutsche Bank and the London Chamber of Commerce, sent representatives to judge the traders in three categories, along with the Spitalfields market manager.

Kustomize did not win any prizes but the team have the chance to try again at another competition next month.

Charity Young Enterprise London is the UK’s largest organisation promoting entrepreneurship to young people in schools throughout the capital.

Source: The Enfield Independent

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Young entrepreneurs learning business skills from Girls' Biz.

Girls’ Biz teaches girls what it takes to become an entrepreneur — an experience that provides a number of lessons along the way.

Seven girls are involved in the organization, which guides them through choosing a company name, selecting products, marketing them, handling the revenues and choosing a charity to receive some of the money. The girls also learn about various careers and at the end of the yearlong program, they will take a trip with the money they earned.

Michelle Morency, a sixth-grader at O’Keeffe Middle School, said she liked her networking experiences with the Madison chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners, which is a sponsor of Girls’ Biz.

“They were surprised you know all this stuff about business,” she said. “I think running your own business would be fun.”

Alexis Johnson, a sixth-grader at Sennett Middle School, said this year the girls chose the name, YES, which stands for Young Entrepreneurs Succeed.

Girls’ Biz targets girls in grades six through eight, especially minority girls. It was started in 1996 by a committee of Wisconsin Women Entrepreneurs, the predecessor of the Madison chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners.

The Girl Scouts of Black Hawk Council is a co-sponsor and the girls meet at the council office as Troop 1099, a special troop that revolves around the entrepreneurial activity.

While some of the girls already have an entrepreneurial streak, they start with basically no business knowledge, said director Sally Hestad.

“It is a pretty ambitious program,” she said. “They learn about planning and they learn about bringing an idea into reality.”

This year they are selling spice blends from White Jasmine of Madison, chocolate sauce from Gail Ambrosius Chocolatier of Madison and soap, lip balm and lotion from LuSa Organics of Viroqua. Recently, they also made special gift tags for Valentine’s Day. They feature a replica of an old key and messages like “key to my heart” and “key to joy, peace and happiness.”

The girls have sold their items in a variety of venues and learned tough lessons about sales as they watched people take their samples but not purchase. That was particularly difficult for the girls who felt they spent a lot of time on preparations and thought everyone should be buying.

They also learned how expenses reduce profits, said Bailey Bennett, a Sennett sixth-grader.

So far they have grossed about $3,900 while expenses, which include unsold items, total about $2,900.

Source: Wisconsin State Journal

The Young Enterprise trade fair, held in The Shires shopping centre in Trowbridge, was hailed a great success by organisers.

The teams of students from schools including St Augustine’s Catholic College in Trowbridge and George Ward School in Melksham have created their own companies with marketable products which they were able to sell to members of the public over the weekend.

The Young Enterprise initiative will see all the teams compete in an area final at Devizes Town Hall on May 5 and the winning team will go on to the county finals where they will compete against others in Wiltshire.

The winner of the county final will go on to the south west regional finals and the successful team will then compete nationally.

Ian Storey, a member of the Young Enterprise board for central Wiltshire, was at Saturday’s event.

He said: “It went down very well. One woman, who had been a pupil at George Ward School stopped to tell us she wished there had been something like this when she was a pupil.”

Although all the teams will compete in the areas finals, the overall winner of the trade fair was Entree from St Augustine’s, who make and sell shaped and engraved signs.

Mr Storey said one woman, who said she owned several guest houses, stopped and bought several signs on the day.

Entree also secured the under 16s title, while the over 16s winners were Thread Shed, from George Ward, who make personalised British made garments, while Clix, also from George Ward, won the Labyrinth Service Excellence Cup.

Mr Storey said: “The standard of the pupils’ presentations at Saturday’s fair was extremely high and the judges found it very difficult indeed to pick a winner, but the winners have to be chosen.

“Everyone enjoyed taking part and some of the teams managed to sell quite a considerable amounts of goods, which gives them a lot of satisfaction.”

Source: The Wiltshire Times

Young entrepreneurs making their mark with a tenner.

Entrepreneurial school students are getting a leg up with the relaunch of the Make Your Mark with a Tenner campaign.

The national enterprise competition, which will loan 20,000 young people £10 each, was launched outside the Bank of England in blizzard-like conditions last week. Attendants included Michelle Dewberry, former winner of The Apprentice.

Oli Barrett, entrepreneur and founder of Make Your Mark with a Tenner, said: “As the snow falls over Britain, I’m expecting a flurry of activity from everyone taking part in Make Your Mark with a Tenner. If I was starting today, I’d be wondering how I could save time and energy by running errands through the snow.  On a lighter note, I might be tempted to set up a snowball equivalent of a coconut shy and charge players 50p a time to win something!”

The competition challenges participants to make as much profit and social impact as they can in just one month with their £10 loan. Once the students have repaid their loan, they can choose to re-invest any profits into their business idea, give them to a good cause, or just keep them for their own use.

The competition is supported by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) and funded by entrepreneurs Peter Jones and Michael and Xochi Birch, the founders of social networking site Bebo.

Source: Startups.co.uk

Pupils at Lincoln Minster School have set up their own firm called Bubble.

Their product range includes scented soaps, stress balls, wheat and lavender infused neck warmers and relaxation CDs.

The company was one of seven which set out their wares in Lincoln’s Waterside Shopping Centre on Saturday during the Young Enterprise Trade Fair.

“We all sat down to decide what products we’d like to sell and as we had exams coming up we thought products to relieve stress would sell well,” said pupil Ben Matthews (17).

“There is stress in everyone’s lives whether you’re at school or at work.

“We were amazed when we sold out of neck warmers and stress balls at the Christmas Market.”

The fair offered the companies a real taste of the challenges of selling goods to the public.

“We’ve discovered that there is a fine line between badgering people and allowing them to browse,” Ben said.

Deputy Mayor and Mayoress of Lincoln, David and Sandra Gratrick, officially opened the fair, which forms part of the Young Enterprise experience of year 11 and 12 pupils running real companies for the academic year.

During the year the businesses compete in area finals, with the aims of reaching the county, regional and ultimately the national finals.

Source: The Lincolnshire Echo

Avril Pevers, Orla Hurley, TV3 broadcaster Collette Fitzpatrick and Amy Culloty at the Young Entrepreneurs Programme Business Boot Camp.

Some 650 young people heard from leading Irish business figures at the second annual Young Entrepreneur Programme Business Boot Camp.

The boot camp is spearheaded by businessman Jerry Kennelly, the founder of Stockbyte, the Institute of Technology Tralee and Shannon Development.

The students from senior cycle secondary schools and the Institute of Technology will present their business ideas over the coming months, with help from local business people, to win a trip to San Francisco and Silicon Valley along with their teacher.

Cathal O’Connell, founder of Paddy Wagon tours and owner of Paddy’s Palace Hostels, said his business was thriving, up by 20 per cent in January alone.

“When you have a recession and no job, you may as well backpack around the world,” he said.

Hotels were cutting rates to lower than a hostel could afford but he was staying ahead by offering free bus rides from Dublin airport or a free extra night. “Do something different – that’s the main thing,” Mr O’Connell said.

When he started out he found his idea for bus tours was dismissed .“In the good times the investor should be cautious and go for it when people are scared,” he said.

In an interview on stage with TV3’s Collette Fitzpatrick, managing director of The Irish Times Ltd, Maeve Donovan, said the biggest transformation in the newspaper industry had been the internet. The Irish Times was one of the first newspapers in Europe to go online, she said. While there had been concern that online publication would kill circulation, it could actually drive circulation, because the paper reached a wider audience.

Essentially, The Irish Times was about being an honest, reliable and trusted news resource for its community in an age where news came from myriad resources.

One of the keys to success was not so much inspiration as hard work and application, Ms Donovan advised.

“The more doors you knock on, the more product you will sell,” she said.

“Time ends all recessions,” she reminded the young audience.

Read the full story in The Irish Times.

In the past seven years, the 20-year-old twin brothers – both juniors at the University of Illinois – have formed more than a dozen such ventures, with products ranging from online music to sports apparel to parking-place reservations.

“Since I was very young, I’ve been passionate about starting something from nothing,” said Ryan Clark, who’s enrolled in the UI’s Hoeft Technology & Management Program with his brother.

So far, the Clarks’ most successful enterprise has probably been 247mixtapes.com, a site that enables access to “mix tapes,” music compilations released to promote artists before their albums are in wide distribution. That site gets 55,000 to 60,000 unique users a month, Ryan Clark said.

Another popular business, started while the brothers were still in high school, is Ludakicks.com. Ryan Clark described it as a footwear and apparel “superstore” with 50,000 products available. It’s an “affiliate transfer” Web site for shoebuy.com, Ashton Clark said.

The brothers also launched AlphaPMS.com, which promotes the AlphaPMS project management system, and they have two other Web-based ventures in the pipeline.

Ryan Clark said he and Ashton started Ludakicks when they were about 16. It had an 800 phone number so customers could chat in real time with staff members, he said.

When the brothers decided to come to the UI from Flossmoor, they changed the structure of Ludakicks because it took 10 to 12 hours a day to run the Web site, he said.

“Coming in as freshmen, we decided we needed to focus on school,” he said.

Still, operating the businesses requires a juggling act.

“It takes a lot of time management skills,” Ryan Clark said.

“If one of the Web sites is down, we’re notified by text message or phone calls. We step out, fix the issue, then come back. We pretty much just do what needs to be done, no matter what it is.”

Today the business is just the two brothers, along with Web designers and programmers who do contract work for them.

Rhiannon Clifton, assistant director of the UI’s Technology Entrepreneur Center, said she’s seen several students with one or two Web-based businesses, but never as many ventures as the Clarks have.

“It seems they have a new idea they execute every few months,” she said. “The sites certainly keep them busy. One of these days they’ll have a major hit.”

Ashton Clark said both brothers come up with business ideas, with Ryan dreaming up AlphaPMS and Ashton originating the ticketing system idea.

Ryan tends to handle marketing, online collaborations and partnerships with other companies, Ashton Clark said. Meanwhile, he concentrates on adding new features to the Web sites, automating them and making them more user-friendly.

Read the full story in The Chigaco Tribune.

Image: Brennan Cauron, The Daily Illini

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Young entrepreneur, Gerald Roseman.

For most 12-year-old boys a bit of an adventure might involve staying at a friend’s home or a camping trip with the Scouts.

Not for Gerald Roseman. His idea of an adventure is to embark on a pre-secondary school gap year that has already involved bear-watching in Canada and trips to the great cultural capitals of Europe.

Gerald also intends to visit Russia, Germany, Italy, France, Nepal and Bhutan before starting senior school in September.

And, just in case he finds time weighing heavily on his hands, he can always put in a few extra hours crafting necklaces, brooches and cufflinks for his  jewellery business. Gerald has already repaid the 500 pounds of start-up capital he borrowed from his parents, and is happily pocketing his profits.

He said: ‘I’ve been incredibly lucky to have a gap year so young. My favourite places so far have been Prague, because of all the history in the buildings, and Canada, with its wide open spaces.

‘It is such a modern country in comparison to ours. Over there, they think a building is old if it is more than 15 years old.’

Gerald’s gap year, accompanied by his parents Caroline and Joe, became possible after he was moved ahead a year in his prep school.

He then passed the entrance exam to £5,899-a-term Malvern College but because of his age was advised by the school to wait until September so he could start aged 13 like the rest of his peers.

Mrs Roseman, 42, of Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire, said: ‘I wouldn’t have been comfortable with Gerald starting school early as going in at the same age as his peers is important.”

Read the full story in The Daily Mail.

Watch the BBC News story on video.

Happy travels, Gerald – and may your business ventures thrive and grow!

Six aspiring young entrepreneurs – all Grade 10 learners at Elkanah High School in Sunningdale – have successfully conquered the first of five figurative mountains on their way to self-sufficiency.

Tamara Delle Donne, Mikal van Dyk, Kieran Mulligan, Jarrod Eder, Megan Castle and Jason van Wyk recently received their Mountain One Award at a special BBN breakfast meeting.

The “Yes I Can” entrepreneur development system has been designed to make it fun and exciting for young people as they work towards becoming a business entrepreneur.

The goal is to mobilise the business community to give guidance and support to the learners from the day they start scaling the first mountain until they enter the world of business after completing their education.

“If we were to measure entrepreneur development as an indicator of our country’s ability to create jobs, South Africa would rank very low – in fact, near last – in the world,” says Joe Cook, the inspired leader of this project.

Ten years ago, while involved in a church outreach in Du Noon, he realised that they were raising expectations they could not meet.

“There were just pockets of success. We needed to mobilise the whole community.”

Joe started the Blaauwberg Business Network, but it was the youth and the fact that 80 per cent of young people between 15 and 35 years are unemployed in this country that kept him awake at night.

“They lack adult guidance and leadership. We are looking to build bridges of goodwill, understanding and support, but they will have to walk over it.”

Read the full story in The Tygerburger.

Read the full story in the Fort Francis Times.

The six students were recognized for their keen financial know-how and entrepreneurial spirit in starting and operating their own businesses. The SC Council on Economic Education (SCCEE) and Merrill Lynch established the award in 2004. Each student was interviewed about their businesses on the ETV Stock Market Program, which is broadcast on closed circuit to schools statewide. In addition, the winners will be honored this May at SCCEE’s annual awards luncheon and receive a $200 cash prize.

“The Merrill Lynch Young Entrepreneurs are good role models who have figured out how to put honest money into their pockets” said SCCEE President Helen Meyers. “And through the ETV program, they share ideas with other students on how to start and run a business, how to keep track of inventory, and how to know if they are making a profit—skills they’ll need to become business owners, workers and investors.”

Corey Benson, D.W. Daniel High School (Pickens School District)
Corey takes aerial photographs of local construction projects and for individual homeowners. During a three-month period, he sold more than $900 in photos which allowed him to improve his company, “Out of the Blue Aerial Photography,” by upgrading equipment and going on more photo-taking flights. He uses his profits to pay for his weekly flying lessons, working toward his career goal of being a pilot.

Flint Holbrook, Clover High School (York School District 3)
Interested in the development of biodiesel fuel, Flint built the equipment required for its production then made his own fuel. He used his knowledge to produce a DVD on biodiesel fuel for a public relations company in Charlotte where he serves as a consultant discussing the production of biodiesel fuel with interested clients. Flint has been featured on the RFD TV Satellite Network and has talked on the topic of alternative fuel production at conferences in South Carolina and Georgia. He is currently president of the SC FFA Association.

Tevin Prescott, Hartsville High School (Darlington School District)
Tevin sells Otis Spunkmeyer cookies after school at his parents’ business in Hartsville and on weekends at the Florence flea market. He started his successful cookie business when he was only five years old. He is one of the Spunkmeyer company’s premier salesmen. Due to his success, the company covers the cost of the oven he leases and doesn’t charge him for the cookie dough he orders because he always requests the maximum quantity and never fails to sell out of his tasty product.

Elizabeth Thompson, Ballentine Elementary (Lexington School District 5)
This budding entrepreneur sells her handmade jewelry—bracelets, earrings and necklaces. Elizabeth calls her business “Glamorous Jewelry.”  Her sales are primarily through the Ballentine Elementary School store, “School Tools,” and she gives a percentage of her profits to the school. In an interview in “The State,” Elizabeth said, “I’m learning a lot about the economy and financial businesses.”

Shelby and Taylor Willoughby, Summerville High School (Dorchester School District 2)
Out of their backyard, the twin sisters buy and sell chicken, duck and quail eggs. The girls raise different breeds of chickens. Shelby told a newspaper reporter, “We have international chickens—Chinese, Dutch, Polish, English, Belgian.” In addition, the sisters raise bantam chickens to show at local competitions, and auction, sell or trade their fowl at local small animal auctions and shows.

Young Entrepreneurs Camp attendees.

The Upload young entrepreneurs camp held in the Glasshouse Mountains in January was the perfect kick up the rear Sarah Moran needed to get her business idea going.

She spent the week with 15 other participants aged between 16 and 25 out the back of Beerwah at the camp, run by education and training provider Edgeware.

The aim was to arm young entrepreneurs with hard business skills as well as softer creative skills to innovate, run an ethical business and build relationships.

“I know my business can work but I needed an ignition point, so I’ve made this experience that for me,” Sarah said.

“I’ve had my thoughts on paper, but now I’ve internalised it more and I can leave Upload knowing what I’m doing beyond having just a plan.

“My ultimate goal is to create TV that wouldn’t normally have a market, for niche markets around the world and tapping into the revenue potential of that.”

Some of the more unconventional items on the camp program involved daily yoga sessions and creating a 3-D business model out of factory offcuts.

“It’s a way of thinking about elements of business in a different way and engaging a different part of your brain,” Edgeware’s Michael Doneman said.

“You can see relationships between these elements that wouldn’t be visible in a two-dimensional business plan on the page. And it’s fun.”

Edgies, as the participants are known, then present their model to the group to hone their pitching and presentation skills.

“I have gone to conferences and written everything all down madly on paper and I have so many pieces of paper that don’t get actioned because I don’t feel it,” Sarah said.

“But to have to cut and stick a 3-D business plan and investing my thought process into it is a holistic experience.

“It’s also great to have this opportunity as a young person.

“We do face a lot of discrimination and there is such a high percentage of start-ups that fail, so it’s good to know that there are 15 other Edgies all starting out. It’s good to have a community of other people in the same boat and, with the internet, I won’t lose that support group.”

Mr Doneman said the group featured representation from Townsville, Rockhampton, the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane.

“The sort of person who becomes an entrepreneur is a bit weird and they aren’t satisfied to work for other people,” he said.

“They don’t fit into conventional paradigms…they are square pegs that don’t fit in round holes.”

Source: The Sunshine Coast Daily

Young Entrepreneur, Will Perkins.

While most teenagers are trying to stay out late or take the car out, 16-year-old Will Perkins is trying to incorporate his business.

“That would be something that we would have to do with him,” said Will’s mother Tammy Perkins. “At each step of the way, we have had to talk through the dangers involved and the risk.”

Perkins launched his web hosting site, host-monkey.com on the first of the year. Offering web hosting from as little as $2.95 per month, it looks set to take a bite out of the hosting market, especially for cash-strapped internet start-up entrepreneurs – people whose challenges Will can well understand.

This site  is just one of several the Brandon High School junior has started, including click2bepaid.com, which he sold close to a year ago.

Young entrepreneurs like Perkins may find some resistance because of their age, but that hard work could pay off.

“We don’t know how to scout for enterprising and successful business people the way we know how to scout for basketball players,” said lawyer Brent Britton, who specializes in business and technology. He says parents need to read documents, monitor communication and sign contracts for underage kids.

“Whether your child is a budding entrepreneur or not, you have to be careful,” he says. But encourages parents to nurture their child’s ideas.

Who knows, they may change the world.

Source: Tampa Bay S10

But now the 19-year-old entrepreneur — proud and motivated, with a couple of business awards under his belt — has more than 100 clients and is one of a local incubator’s first success stories.

Glasser began shooting senior pictures for individuals his junior year in high school and began growing a more diverse client base his senior year. Now, going into his fourth semester at the University of Mary, he contracts with a marketing firm for commercial work, has a strong client base and an eye on developing his business into an agency for photographers with the same values as his own: quality, creativity, personality. Those values just happen to be his business tagline, too.

Glasser is one of Bismarck’s IDEA Center’s first clients; he’s now benefitting from partnerships earned through the center’s networking opportunities and will soon benefit from having his own office space within the center’s new building.

The IDEA Center was born out of a business professor’s desire to expand opportunities for his students, as well as a local business owner’s drive for area economic development through fostering entreprenuership. The two — Karel Sovak with University of Mary and Dewey Tietz of Cross Country Courier — came together to create an environment for growth.

The center is meant as a place for a budding entrepreneur or even an established business owner to go to hash out plans, ideas, or to seek resources for help starting or growing. Students from the University of Mary — and potentially other institutions, said director Julie Kuennen — are the labor, getting hands-on experience executing business plans, creating marketing strategies, competitive analysis and other necessary action items presented and accepted to the board of directors.

Read the full story in The Bismarck Tribune.

Young Entrepreneur, Ben Gulak, with the Uno.

After a family holiday to China, where he saw first-hand the horrible pollution caused by traditional motorised transport, 17-year-old Ben Gulak decided that he could design something better.

Many students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology look forward to the day they’ll make headlines with an extraordinary invention. But Ben Gulak, now a 19-year-old freshman, looks back. He’s the inventor of the Uno, an electric motorcycle that has its two wheels side by side instead of fore and aft, balances using a computer and gyroscope, and maneuvers with a shift of the rider’s body forward, back or sideways.

Mr. Gulak, from a suburb of Toronto, began pursuing the concept two years ago after returning from a family trip to smog-choked China and seeing streets clogged with sputtering motorbikes. Battery power would avoid pollution, and the small size would allow the cycle to negotiate crowded streets — and even to be carted up to an apartment.

He retreated to the machine shop in his house assembled with gear he inherited from his grandfather and, initially for a science fair, began assembling a prototype from conventional motorcycle parts. The project, he says, allowed him to “mesh two passions” — engineering and motorcycles. As he describes it, the early effort — replete with burning motors — resembled the scenes in the movie “Iron Man” when a rocket-propelled suit goes out of control. Mr. Gulak got help from a robotics engineer, Trevor Blackwell, and added systems that stabilize the vehicle.

Since then, he has won a heap of accolades — Popular Science chose the bike as one of the top 10 inventions of the year and featured it on the cover; Mr. Gulak made an appearance on “The Tonight Show” — as well as the interest of investors.

But for now he’s seeking international patents, and dealing with exams.

Source: The New York Times

Young entrepreneur, fashion designer Kira Plastinina.

When Kira Plastinina was just fourteen years old, she launched her own fashion label.

While it helps to have a wealthy benefactor to finance the opening of retail stores, Kira’s business has to stand on its own two feet. While Kira’s 70 Russian outlets are going great guns, Daddy just pulled the plug on her US chain, because it wasn’t profitable.

KP Fashion Co., the company set up by the father of 16-year-old Russian fashion designer Kira Plastinina to sell her clothes in the U.S., filed for bankruptcy seven months after opening its first store.

Los Angeles-based KP Fashion sought protection from creditors while it liquidates. The company, which said last month it would close almost all of its 12 stores, listed $9.7 million in assets and $54.4 million in debt in papers filed Dec. 31 in U.S. Bankruptcy court in Manhattan.

Bloomberg

Plastinina, whose hot-pink signature logo features two hearts, has been photographed with the hotel heiress Paris Hilton. Her company offered jeans, t-shirts, dresses, pants, shoes and accessories.

The first U.S. Kira Plastinina outlet opened in Manhattan in May 2008 and the chain had 12 stores in the New York and Los Angeles areas, with another two ready to open.

Besides the stores in Russia, there are 10 outlets in Ukraine and five in Kazakhstan. Kira’s empire may not have established a strong foothold in the US market, but its future seems assured in Eastern Europe.

Young entrepreneur, Rob Denomme

Seasoned entrepreneurs who have weathered an economic downturn may be more apt to concern about the detrimental impact current market forces could have on business.

But many of their younger — and arguably more naive — counterparts seem imbued with a sense of invincibility that typifies their age demographic.

While sales may be slower, young entrepreneurs relatively new to running a business have no precedent to measure against economic forecasts of doom and gloom.

They might also be able to troubleshoot problems more creatively because of a general lack of inhibition.

Rob Denomme has been running a custom wine cellar business, Winnipeg-based Genuwine Cellars Inc., for 13 years and is undaunted by the prevailing prognosis that a recession is imminent.

At the age of 17, Mr. Denomme and a friend who has carpentry skills launched the company. It counts celebrities, sports personalities and leading corporate executives among a largely American clientele list.

“We have seen a little bit of a slowdown and it’s the first time in our history we’ve not seen our sales skyrocket,” the 2007 Business Development Bank of Canada’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year for Manitoba says, referring to business since global markets began to plunge earlier this year.

“Our sales this year will still be more than last year.”

Mr. Denomme has no formal business training and has expanded his company, particularly during its formative years, solely by word of mouth.

He says his most tumultuous experience as a proprietor came several years ago when he decided to lay off a half a dozen people from a staff of nearly 50, because they didn’t exemplify dedication to the company mission.

“We always felt we needed every warm body,” he says. “But after that, we were able to do more with less people. I was shocked to realize that.”

He says he tries to learn vicariously through the experience of others. “I’ve never seen bad times but from what I’ve seen, it’s taught me to plan for the future even though I haven’t had to learn the hard way,” he says.

“The thought of having to sell your home to make ends meet, that scares the heck out of me.”

Genuwine Cellars recently opened a manufacturing facility in Nicaragua, and Mr. Denomme has no doubt the current downturn is just a blip on the radar of an otherwise resilient market.

“I think it will be quiet holiday season but that things will jump back to where they were and grow even more so,” he says without hesitation.

“You’ve got to keep a positive attitude.”

Read the full story in The Financial Post.

Who are young entrepreneurs? They range from an elementary school student operating a successful lemonade stand on a hot summer afternoon, to a recent graduate who starts a new venture or begins to revitalize an existing business. Young entrepreneurs exhibit a passion to create. When channeled and combined with entrepreneurial education and real world experience, they can found businesses with significant wealth and job creation potential. Engaging, equipping and supporting young entrepreneurs are keys to long-term vitality and sustainability of rural communities.

Understanding characteristics of young entrepreneurs is important because entrepreneurial youth often do not come to mind when we think about young people in our community. Instead, we might name the student body president, the star football or volleyball player, or the honor roll student. While some of these young people may be entrepreneurial, there is another group of youth that is less visible so you need to seek them out.

Why don’t these young people come to mind? They may spend their free time in Dad’s shop inventing or in Mom’s craft room creating, so they are “invisible” to you. They may work in their parents’ business after school because they enjoy it, or they may be busy operating their lawn care or Web design business. Young entrepreneurs enjoy the creative process so much that, while others are focused on sports and extracurricular activities, young entrepreneurs are focused on their business dreams.

Entrepreneurial youth may appear introverted because they know they are wired differently than their peers and, at this age, fitting in is a big deal. Remember, in the adult population, only one in 10 Americans is an entrepreneur. The percentage may be higher among young people, but they are still a minority among their classmates.

This article is an excerpt from “Energizing Young Entrepreneurs in Rural Communities” written by Craig Schroeder, Lisa Heinert, Lisa Bauer, Deborah Markley and Karen Dabson.

Young Entrepreneurs - Wayne Ramwell, Kevin Yap, Muhammed Saleen, Kaif Hussain and Mohtasham Qureshi

A TEAM of budding entrepreneurs are aiming to take the bite out of the credit crunch for young people.

Former Manchester Academy pupils Wayne Ramwell, 16, Kaif Hussein, 17, Kevin Yap, 16 and Muhammed Saleem, 16, have just published a guide to managing money for teenagers.

Easy Money was written as part of a Young Enterprise scheme at their old school,.

And, in keeping with its message of spending and saving wisely, the finance-savvy foursome are investing the proceeds to fund their university careers.

Easy Money was inspired by a news article that claimed more than half of all teenagers have been in debt by the age of 18. The boys received help and funding from professional mentors, but researched the content and structure of the book themselves.

To date, 500 copies of the book, which is packed full of tips on everything from employment contracts, to mortgages and ISAs, have been sold.

Read the full story in The Manchester Evening News.

“The rest is history,” says Blaine, who’s now the owner of Estate Groomers, a landscaping business, and Young Picasso Painting, a residential painting company. He has five employees and plenty of big plans. Best of all, the 2008 grad of Whitney Young High School is only 18. He recently chatted with PDQ’s John Campanelli.

When did you realize that you were an entrepreneur?

It might have been second or third grade. My mother bought me a whole lot of pencils for school. I had an abundance of pencils. And I really didn’t use pencils. I was mainly a pen person. Everybody kept asking me. “Can I use a pencil?” “Can I use a pencil?” “Can I use a pencil?” When my friends asked me, I gave them to them. Then some other people asked, and I said, “Give me 10 cents.” I think that’s when it all started. I racked up a lot of money.

Is it a problem being younger than a lot of your employees; do they call you “sir”?

No, they call me Blaine. I try to keep it as informal as possible. I want everybody to be relaxed. My whole thing is, age should not be a factor as long as everybody is making money and getting the job done.

Has your age ever been a problem?

The only problem I really ran into was that I employed my brother. It was like double-edged sword. I was his younger brother and his boss. Sometimes we argue, because we’re only a year apart. It’s not acceptable on the job. At the house when we’re at home, it’s no problem. But on the job I told him we couldn’t go through that, so I actually had to fire him.

You fired your brother?

He told my mother and everything [laughing]. I eventually hired him back. I did it mainly for the theatrics of the whole situation.

Do you think he has more respect for you now?

No, not yet [laughing].

How has running businesses helped you in other parts of your life?

It gave me a lot of responsibility: Being responsible for cutting people checks and making sure the job is on schedule. It helped shape my leadership skills and helped give me a perception on life where I don’t think of everything as a consumer. I understand business.

Read the rest of the interview in the Cleveland Society News.

Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman recognized the recipients and presented them with $1,000 cash awards to use as educational scholarships or donations to charities of their choice.

Among the recipients was a young entrepreneur with a social entrepreneurial bent.

A sophomore at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, 20-year-old Daniel Kent has been active in Student Council, and he co-founded the Rufus M. Jones Institute for Leadership. He has interned at the White House and Community Development Law Center.

When he was a 14-year-old middle schooler in Carmel, Kent founded Net Literacy, a nonprofit created to increase computer access to all. He funded the organization with $4,000 he had saved to buy a car. Five years later, Net Literacy had attracted more than $1 million in grants and in-kind donations, increased computer access to more than 90,000 individuals, refurbished thousands of computers, and engaged more than 1,000 student volunteers. It has expanded into dozens of Hoosier communities and helped 90,000 Hoosiers cross the digital divide. Kent recruited U.S. Senators Bayh and Lugar to serve as honorary co-chairs, and successfully lobbied to pass Indiana’s Net Literacy Resolution.

Kent has served on local and national youth boards, including the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, America’s Promise Alliance, the U.S. Public Service Academy and Do Something, Inc. He has received numerous awards, including being twice named a National Point of Light honoree. He is donating his $1,000 award to the Net Literacy Project.

Young Entrepreneur, Joseph Pascaretta

Lots of people start careers at a tender age, but few were as young as Joseph Pascaretta.

Pascaretta, a 20-year-old entrepreneur from Rochester Hills, started his first company when he was still in middle school, nearly 10 years ago.

“My business partner and I were 11. We both wanted to be pilots, and we used to take pictures of airplanes and post statistics on the Internet. We got a lot of responses,” says Pascaretta.

The next step came when he was at the house of a school friend, whose family happened to own a construction business, he says. “I told them I could build a Web site for the business. At first it was something of a joke because I was just a kid. But it turned out great,” he says.

So he and his partner, Aaron Dowen, also 20, of Shelby Township, launched a Web site design business, which became the foundation for the holding company that now includes three distinct businesses, including the original Web site design business, an architectural landscape business and a third business, which now handles IT services for a growing roster of clients.

The businesses are able to take care of both the inside and the outside of clients’ businesses, he says.

Alps Technology International has 107 employees, including seven in Europe and Australia, as well as sales of more than $5 million.

Read the full story in the Oakland Press.

Many people have wrongly classified Millennials and other young professionals as lazy and self-centered, but I believe this stereotype results from this generation defining success differently than previous generations.

Unlike their predecessors, this group has been taught to push the envelope and not simply define success as receiving the golden watch after 25 plus years of service at a company. Millennials have watched their parents work 9-5 each day, only to be later downsized and out of work 20 years into their careers, and as a result, young professionals have expanded their definition of success to places outside of work.

A young professional’s accomplishments in their career are only a small piece of the total picture, which now encompasses personal growth, constant learning, a strong family life, and a sense of accomplishment when everything is said and done. Millennials want to blaze their own path and most especially control their own destiny. As Mr. Michael Malone writes in his article “The Next American Frontier” (Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2008), the Millennials have become a generation of entrepreneurs.

For the first time in American history, according to Mr. Malone, 18 to 24 year olds are starting companies at a faster rate than 35-44 year olds. I think this fact demonstrates how wrong the general perception of Millennials is. Young professionals are not lazy, they are trail blazers, and they are innovators in its purist form: entrepreneurs. Mr. Malone has finally given voice to what this generation wants: that it is ok to want more, to look to new horizons, to constantly expand your knowledge base to stay competitive, and to say no to the regular corporate job.

Read the rest of this blog post at BrettHummel.com.

The younger generations are different, sure – but then, were the workaholic, emotionally repressed men who were raised in the 50s and 60s really happy? And do the Gen X women trying to do a full-time corporate job and provide decent parenting to their kids really believe we have cracked the happiness code?

I know, for me, that being in control of how I spend my time is thre single greatest factor in my happiness. An extra $50,000 per year (which I could earn if I wanted to work that hard) wouldn’t compensate for the relationships that would have to go on the back burner while I worked.

The only work I am prepared to do these days is work that sets up more passive income, or work that I find intrinsically fulfilling, like teaching, counselling and coaching – and even that I limit very strictly.

I can absolutely sympathise with any young person who decides that they won’t play the corporate game – and I don’t think that makes them lazy or unmotivated!

I remember my first employer telling me that if I was only willing to work 10 hours a day then I obviously wasn’t ambitious. Fortunately, I had the nerve to walk away from someone who was not only a workaholic, but a pusher.

Time will tell.

For now, we look at the Millennials, and we hear them described:

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

Quote originally from Socrates (469 BC -399 BC)

The more things change, the more they stat the same …

The year 12 students from Katherine Lady Berkeley School, in Wotton-under-Edge, have taken part in a Young Enterprise scheme that encourages young people to set up and run their own business.

Friends Neil Pande, 16, Jack Allsopp, 16 and Nathan Giles, 17, got together to launch JNN Mobile Disco and they have already have some great success.

“We’re all really excited about running our own enterprise. I love music and have been the DJ at a number of friends’ parties in the past,” said Neil, from Wotton-under-Edge.

“But now we have invested in some serious sound and lighting equipment. The effect is awesome.”

The trio have bought all the latest DJ equipment including strobe lights, smoke machine and multi-coloured disco lights. They had a successful first event providing a children’s disco for birthday girl Jo Mackie, from Wickwar who said the disco was the best she had ever had.

Their next planned event is an adult disco and the company will then be organising Christmas parties for their fellow students at school.

The Young Enterprise scheme, which is the UK’s leading business and enterprise education charity, is a competition and the most successful businesses will get to compete in the national finals.

Nathan, from Berkeley, said “Our aim is to win the regional finals if possible and go on to the nationals. To do that we need loads of bookings for discos, birthday parties, Christmas and New Year parties.”

Source: The Gazette

So-called millennials, born between mid 1970s and 1990s, have received a radically different message–one captured in part by President-elect Barack Obama’s stance on the benefits of “spreading the wealth around.”

The oft-raised question–and it’s a big one for the U.S.–is whether millennials (also known as “The Everybody Gets A Trophy” generation) have been so coddled, so inoculated against insults and injury, that they are now too, well, soft to achieve entrepreneurial success.

I admit I harbor some concerns about the country’s evolving entrepreneurial ego. Joseph Schumpeter, the famous economist who coined the term “creative destruction” and likened entrepreneurs to nothing less than “heroic” innovators, believed that self-made men and women possessed a “rugged individualism” and a “will to conquer”–not exactly millennial DNA.

Not that millennials are damaged goods. Corporate recruiters drool over them for their ability to adapt and fit into bureaucratic enterprises. Overachieving, nobody-tells-me-what-to-do entrepreneurial types don’t go so gently into that good night.

These ambitious, 21-year-old twin sisters, Nicole and Ashley Russo, opened up their corporation – Sorelle Gamelle – meaning twin sisters in Italian, at the age of 16, and have now expanded to two locations – Houma and Baton Rouge.

“We were inspired to open the store when we were 16,” said Nicole Russo. “We used to have to go to New Orleans to shop for shoes, but we eventually got tired of there being no place in Houma to go shopping for reasonable shoes that young girls could afford.”

This propelled the two young ladies to fill this lacking niche. The determined Russo sisters created a business plan, which they then presented to their parents, who were so excited about the idea that they helped in funding the store.

“I’m not going to lie,” said Ashley Russo, who works daily while also going to college. “It’s tough running two stores.”

Nicole Russo, who also is a full-time student as well as a cheerleader, also stays very busy, but she “wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“If you have an idea, go for it,” Ashley Russo advises other young entrepreneurs. “Be positive and follow your heart. If you really want it bad enough, it will happen.”

These sorelle gamelles have a solid desire for running their business, and are assured that this is what they want to do long-term. Their strong, selling sense will propel them into the next phase of their production goals.

“We do have plans for expanding the business,” said Nicole Russo, “and hope to expand soon.”

Source: Tiger Weekly

Students from five elementary schools in Surrey (Simon Cunningham, Don Christian, Kirkbride, Green Timbers, Martha Jane Norris) have been having fun exploring the world of business by participating in PowerPlay Young Entrepreneurs. Using fun games and exciting real-life activities, this innovative six week program teaches youth in grades four through eight how to prepare business plans, develop and advertise their own products, and finally showcase their achievements and make sales at a dynamic event called the Young Entrepreneur Show. By donating a portion of their earnings to a worthy cause students also learn the importance of social responsibility.

“Westminster Savings is committed to helping youth prepare for the future,” says Nicole Eich, the credit union’s Community Relations/Foundation Officer. “We are proud to offer PowerPlay Young Entrepreneurs to local schools through our Youth in Action initiative.

It’s a program that shows young people how to set goals, seek imaginative solutions, and take ownership of their success. They learn to believe in themselves and develop practical skills that will support them throughout their lives.” Eich hopes that the experiences of these enterprising students will inspire other youth to take action. Success stories will be available at www.wscu.com starting in January 2009.

MJ Norris Elementary teacher Glenda Scott is impressed with her students’ motivation and ability to stay on task as they complete a variety of planning activities. They had fun conducting market research surveys and using the results to polish their product ideas.

Linda Phan of Kirkbride Elementary is also thrilled with the engagement level of her class. She says her students are very excited because they have the power to make decisions. In addition to designing their own products, the young entrepreneurs are responsible for developing their own marketing strategies. One of her students tapped into his creativity by making a runway on which to display his airplane product.

From handmade journals and picture frames to dreamcatchers, puppy pillows and seasonally themed cards and decorations, the upcoming Young Entrepreneur Shows will have something for everyone.

Source: The Surrey Leader

For the15 years that Rasaq has lived on earth, he has done so without using his legs. This disability denied him the opportunity of enjoying the benefits of life like his other siblings. He is the only child of his family who was denied formal education.

Rather than take to begging, he chose to develop himself in a vocation. As a young boy, he developed a flair for shoe making. He would mend shoes for neighbours and family. This flair was further enhanced and Rasaq began to fabricate shoes as well. He has no formal training in the art.

All the while, he worked from home. One of his neighbours, Mrs. Bukola Adebisi, who had always been impressed by Rasaq’s ingenuity, found him a place somewhere close to a market place. It was a small piece of land littered with refuse. Rasaq saw the place, cleared off the refuse and started his trade there. He saved enough money and erected a wooden structure, which now serves as his cobbling shop.

Eventually, the market fee collectors started demanding a fee of N10, 000 per year for using the shop. Having paid the first instalment with a loan he obtained from his father, Rasaq has borne subsequent charges ever since. Today, the young entrepreneur at 15 has four apprentices working under him. His is a story of a cripple that has refused to be disabled. Razaq made the best out of his disability.

This year, Razaq was awarded third place in the inaugural Indomie Heroes Awards.

He was flown to Abuja in a flight; he now has a wheel chair courtesy of Dufil Prima and he was lodged in a prestigious hotel alongside his father. And to cap it all, he was sitting on the same stage that Presidents, Ministers and other important dignitaries have stood. He got a cash prize of N500, 000, which he said he would use to expand his shoe making business.

Read the full story in the Lagos Daily Independent.

Carey, 17, of Bridgewater is the creator of http://stepoutofthesilence.org, a forum for teenagers with any kind of mental-heath issues. Her efforts are one reason why Caitlyn was honored on Dec. 8 as the Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the Somerset County Business Partnership Awards ceremony.

Dianne Durland, who headed the Somerset County Business Partnership Selection Committee, said the Young Entrepreneur Award is modeled after the Rotary Club, since the recipient also wins a scholarship.

“The Rotary motto is “Service above self.’ (Carey) brought that out more than the other participants,” said Durland, a vice president at Community First Bank in Franklin (Somerset).

Durland said that while there were many motivated entrepreneur applicants – including landscapers, jewelry makers and chefs – Carey’s idea was unique and she is a one-woman operation.

Read the full story at MyCentralJersey.com.

These two student entrepreneurs, along with 22 others like them from the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia, showcased their companies and networked their businesses to the D.C. area business community during The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship’s Youth Showcase, held at the National Building Museum on Tuesday, December 9th from 6:00 – 8:30 pm.

The event highlighted the achievement of these student entrepreneurs who have created businesses focusing on a wide range of products and services, from dog clothing items to local artists’ CDs, painting services, lunch boxes, and more. With the holiday season rapidly approaching, the event also provided a venue for these entrepreneurs to sell their wares in time for gift-giving.

“Most children start out selling something — lemonade, cookies or candy for themselves or for non-profit groups. These student entrepreneurs have taken their childhood fascination in business ownership miles further than that,” said Amy Rosen, President & CEO of NFTE. “They have shown determination as only an entrepreneur can by voluntarily completing the NFTE training program. Some have also completed our summer BizCamp program, which teaches them how to write and present a business plan,” Rosen added.

Read the full story in The Earth Times.

Raised in the impoverished South side of Chicago, Dr. Gray defied the odds and became a self-made millionaire by the age of 14. At the age of 21, he received an Honorary Doctorate degree of Humane Letters from Allen University.

In his rise from poverty to national and international prominence as an entrepreneurial icon and pre-eminent power speaker, Dr. Gray has inspired millions around the world. At the age of 24, he has achieved more than many achieve in a lifetime.

Since his first interview at 11 years old on KVBC Channel 3, Gray has become a celebrity, featured in thousands of print, magazine, radio and television media including The NBC reality show Starting Over, 20/20, Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight, The Montel Williams Show, Oprah & Friends, Tom Joyner Show, The Michael Baisden Show, The Tavis Smiley Show, CNBC, BET, NBC, FOX, CBS, NPR, Ebony, Jet, Essence, Upscale, Black MBA, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.

He was also featured as one of the Dream Team Financial Experts for “O” The Oprah Magazine in March 2008 issue. He is also a syndicated columnist with the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) federation of 200 weekly newspapers reaching more than 15 million readers.

Gray began his entrepreneurial, personal and civic development at six years old selling home-made body lotion and his own hand-painted rocks as book-ends door-to-door. At age seven, he was carrying business cards reading “21st Century CEO.”

At eight, Gray became co-founder of Urban Neighborhood Enterprise Economic Club (U.N.E.E.C.) on Chicago’s South side. U.N.E.E.C. was the forerunner of New Early Entrepreneur Wonders (NE2W), the flagship organization he opened on Wall Street. NE2W enlisted, educated and engaged “at-risk” youth by creating and developing legal ways for them to acquire additional income. Gray is the youngest person to have an office on Wall Street.

Between the ages of 12 and 16 years old, Gray founded and operated business ventures that included KIDZTEL pre-paid phone cards, the One Stop Mail Boxes & More franchise and The Teenscope “Youth AM/FM” interactive teen talk show, Gray was also Executive Producer of a comedy show on the Las Vegas Strip and owner of Farr-Out Foods, “Way-Out Food with a Twist,” aimed at young people with the company’s first Strawberry-Vanilla syrup product. Farr-Out Foods generated orders exceeding $1.5 million.

As a pre-teen, Gray reached 12 million listeners and viewers every Saturday night as co-host of “Backstage Live,” a syndicated television and radio simulcast in Las Vegas. Gray’s inspirational spirit and grounded personality sparked speaking requests from organizations around the country.

Gray’s sense of social responsibility motivated him to create the non-profit organization, The Farrah Gray Foundation. Among other programs and initiatives, his foundation provides scholarship & grant assistance for students from at-risk backgrounds to attend HBCU’s (Historically Black Colleges and Universities). The Farrah Gray Foundation is also in partnership with the Kauffman Foundation, launching entrepreneurship programs in inner-city schools across the country.

Gray’s work did not remain under the radar-screen for long. He soon then became the youngest member of the Board of Advisors for the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. He was also given a three-year term on the Board of Directors of United Way of Southern Nevada at the age of 15.

From writing her first product reviews as a teen, Tina Wells progressed almost immediately to running a marketing agency, which specializes in reaching the notoriously difficult-to-pin-down teen girl market.

Tina, a Lancaster native, began writing product reviews at age 16 and formed Buzz Marketing Group in 1996. Her company has received recognition throughout the region, and she was named Young Entrepreneur of the Year by the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce.

Now 28, Tina is interviewed as an expert by publications around the world.

What was the first step in forming your company?

For me, it was sitting down and thinking about what services I wanted to offer. I knew I wanted to be a liaison between young people and companies that target them.

How is the economic slowdown affecting business?

We haven’t seen it yet, and I think it’s because we’re more of an alternative marketing solution. Viral marketing and grassroots marketing are cheaper alternatives to traditional marketing, and I definitely feel like that part of our business is strong.

Read the full story in the Philadelphia Metro.

The project is a partnership between Community Futures, Career Transition for Youth, the Northern Alberta Development Council and the school.

“We’re moving forward with it,” said principal Wanda Gerard, adding the program began as a pilot project last year, but she hopes it will become permanent.

“This program here really fits in nicely with the apprenticeship program and gives the students an opportunity to explore some business ideas which would be directly related to their apprenticeship program.”

Under the program, students learn the basics of business by researching and pitching business ideas. After pitching their ideas, students begin course work which involves support from mentors and local businesses. Students receive one-on-one assistance and guidance with business advice, business and financial plan development and marketing plan development. When students are finished the module requirements, they can apply to Community Futures for the start-up loan.

“We had an incredible interest in it last year,” said Gerard, noting 40 students participated in the program last year. “I would definitely say we have been able to maintain the interest here.”

Read the full story in the Grande Prairie Daily Heral Tribune.

Sentiv was founded by Marius Juhl Klausen, Roy Lambrecht Lemminger, and Søren Aamand of Egtved, Denmark.

Designed by Sentiv’s founders when they were still in school, the company’s first product, a patch that allows people with skin allergies to wear perfume, secured Klausen, Lemminger, and Aamand $300,000 in financing from Nordic venture capitalist firm Østjysk Innovation.

The premise is simple: Users dab their favorite perfume on the patch, remove the protective cover from the adhesive side (similar to a Band-Aid) and apply the patch. Scent is exuded without touching sensitive skin.

Sentiv says there’s a large potential market: Lemminger figures about 4% of the Danish population now suffers from perfume allergy, a number that has doubled in the past 10 years and that bodes well for international distribution, too. Sentiv is currently in clinical trials, with an estimated 2,000 prototypes expected to be ready in the near future.

Camilla Ljunggren

Although Camilla Ljunggren from Stockholm is only 25 years old, she’s been in business for almost ten years. The Swedish entrepreneur got her start in 1999 when she created her first product, a plastic hanger that attaches to surfaces and can hold anything from dish towels to kitchen knives.

The success of the “Pluring”—it now comes in four models—led Ljunggren to open her own manufacturing plant, which now helps design and create prototypes for other small companies looking to launch their own products.

About 18 months ago, Ljunggren sold the fast-growing business to an outsider investor, although she still holds a seat on the board and is involved in day-to-day operations. Now, along with Pluring, she also runs Bumblebee, a business consultancy, and is chief executive of a recruitment-focused Swedish non-profit.

David Garbera, Michael Jones, and Benn Jessney

To succeed in business, you don’t have to invent a flashy new product or design the latest hot gadget. For the founders of KH Smilers, a business selling plants and hanging baskets in Hull, in northern Britain, the simple proposition is focusing on top-quality horticultural products that its clients want to buy.

Started in October 2004, when Garbera, Jones, and Jessney were still in school, KH Smilers has grown exponentially in a short time and now provides table decorations for corporate events all over the country. This year, the company expects to grow 50,000 bedding plants, compared to just 3,000 in 2004. The founders also are planning to buy another greenhouse that could allow them to grown tens of thousands of extra plants—proving that sometimes the best business plans are the simplest.

John Dorst

Like many successful entrepreneurs, Dorst started early. At the age of 13, he was already creating e-commerce sites for friends of the family, and by the time he was 18, he had nine employees.

Living in Kapelle, Netherlands, Dorst runs Dorst Communications. In his latest business endeavor, Dorst provides marketing and printing services for predominantly small and midsize businesses in the Netherlands. Half of his revenues come from creating Web sites and intranets for companies that can’t afford to do it themselves, while the other 50% originates from the production of corporate magazines, business cards, and other printed material.

Erik Fjellborg

Erik Fjellborg from Stockholm, Sweden, started his business, Calnet, at age 17.

The best business ideas are born of necessity. For Erik Fjellborg, inspiration came when he was 17 years old, flipping burgers at a McDonald’s in Sweden. Fjellborg realized there wasn’t a good system in place to find employees when the fast-food joint was short-staffed. So to fix the problem, he created a Web-based application that lets employees interact with each other to fill gaps in the rotation, even before managers know there’s a problem. The program caught on, and 83,000 McDonald’s employees in four European countries were soon using Fjellborg’s Quinyx FlexForce. To expand the business, Fjellborg recently sold a stake in his business to Swedish software and consulting firm UCMS Group, which hopes to introduce the application to a global audience.

While gaining trust is never easy, Burns notes that because entrepreneurship has become so popular with young people in recent years, clients may be more accustomed to doing business with younger business owners. “I believe the total framework for doing business with all ages is a lot easier today than it was before, but you still have to overcome the hurdles of people taking you seriously,” he says. “Your performance [overcomes] their lack of trust in doing business with you.”

To up your credibility quotient, Burns suggests networking with business leaders in your community and industry to learn and share knowledge. “You get into the mix and just sound smarter,” he says. “You can accelerate your learning.”

Dan goes into meetings knowing that often people are surprised by his age—but he goes in confidently, armed with knowledge of his industry. “Anytime you’re trying to build trust with someone, the key is to be honest with them,” says Dan, whose company expects sales of $5 million this year. “Normally there’s a bit of hesitancy in the handshake, but within a minute or two, I’m able to create a rapport just by the honesty, openness and knowledge I’ve built in the industry.”

Read the full story in The US News.

As part of UK Enterprise week, six teams of year 10 and 11 pupils from schools across the borough pitted their wits against each other to devise ideas for the future of the Leyland attraction.

Now in its fourth year the ‘Schools Enterprise Challenge’, organised by the Business Venture Group in partnership with South Ribble Borough Council, provides young people with the opportunity to experience the world of business and the many different considerations involved.

Each team was set a task to devise a business plan as part of which they were required to consider finance, staffing, marketing, planning, the law, competition and profitability.

Any viable ideas that the teams generated could one day be implemented at the British Commercial Museum, with the pupils themselves involved in the planning process.

Experts from South Ribble Borough Council, Business Venture Group, Sharp Marketing, the British Commercial Vehicle Museum, Barclays Bank and Clever Cloggs bookkeeping training were on hand to provide advice and support to each team.

Once each team had decided upon a strategy they had to prepare a business plan and then pitch their ideas to the panel of experts in a ‘Dragon’s Den’ type scenario.

The experts then had to decide whether they were ‘in’ or ‘out’ in terms of supporting the proposed business strategy.

The overall winners were ‘Then and Now’ from Walton-le-Dale Arts College and High School who impressed the panel with their presentation skills and innovative ideas.

Ideas suggested on the day included creating a mural on the wall adjacent to King Street, introducing interactive electronic displays of working engines and having a driving simulator which would give visitors to the museum the chance to experience what it is like to drive a vehicle from the past.

Read the full story in The Leyland Guardian.

Bill Gates is introduced as a young computer programmer from Seattle whose brilliance and ambition outshine the brilliance and ambition of the thousands of other young programmers. But then Gladwell takes us back to Seattle, and we discover that Gates’s high school happened to have a computer club when almost no other high schools did. He then lucked into the opportunity to use the computers at the University of Washington, for hours on end. By the time he turned 20, he had spent well more than 10,000 hours as a programmer.

At the end of this revisionist tale, Gladwell asks Gates himself how many other teenagers in the world had as much experience as he had by the early 1970s. “If there were 50 in the world, I’d be stunned,” Gates says. “I had a better exposure to software development at a young age than I think anyone did in that period of time, and all because of an incredibly lucky series of events.” Gates’s talent and drive were surely unusual. But Gladwell suggests that his opportunities may have been even more so.

“We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that 13-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur,” he writes at the end. “But that’s the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one 13-year-old unlimited access to a time-sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today?”

Read the full book review in The New York Times.

Alexander Niles and his guitar.

Alexander Niles, 14, a high school freshman in Miami with dreams of making it big as a musician, is young to be focused on making a living. But he has already become an entrepreneur.

It all began by accident, he said. He was late in handing in his choices for elective classes and landed in a course on business. For an assignment to write a business plan, he turned to his passion, guitars, and decided to create a business building custom guitars for other people, something he had already done for himself.

After refining his idea in class, Mr. Niles entered his business plan into a local competition sponsored by the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship and captured the grand prize for South Florida, which allowed him to compete in a national competition in New York this fall.

The price for his guitars starts at about $2,000, and he expects to make a profit of around $700 a guitar. So far, he has made four, including one for a former instructor, Alex Fox, a flamenco guitarist who has endorsed Mr. Niles’s company. Mr. Niles has set up a Web site, but he does not plan to start filling orders until he has lined up other endorsements, finished his YouTube video and started establishing his brand through an advertising campaign.

Though Mr. Niles has years of school ahead of him, he said he planned to tend to both his music and his business along the way.

Read the full story in The New York Times.

Natalie, after all, was the target market for Jessica’s frosted cupcakes on an edible cookie stick — and she was cute to boot.

Jessica turned the camera on her cousin and told Natalie to take just one bite of a Popsy Cake, then smile and look at the camera. It didn’t work. Natalie wouldn’t stop eating the Popsy Cakes, and it took a baker’s dozen takes to get it shot right.

EATING THE PROFITS

When it was over, Natalie had consumed 10 Popsy Cakes, which sell for $3 each. ‘I told her, `Stop. You’re making me lose profit,’ ” Jessica recalls.

But that was hardly a major setback for the budding Popsy Cake enterprise. In October Jessica won first place at the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship’s National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge in New York City. Now, with $10,000 in prize money to help expand her business, she hopes there is a country with kids who are as hungry for Popsy Cakes as Natalie was.

Jessica invented Popsy Cakes while taking an NFTE class at John A. Ferguson High School, where she is a senior enrolled in the school’s business academy curriculum. In 11th grade, she took ”Introduction to Entrepreneurship,” one of several courses NFTE sponsors in high schools around the country.

When asked to come up with a product as homework, Jessica came up with Popsy Cakes. ”I’ve always liked to do baking, and I’ve always wanted to own my own business,” she says.

After doing some research about kids’ snacks online, she learned that the most common complaints were that they were sticky and messy. That was her inspiration for her cupcakes on a stick.

Over the past year and a half she’s refined the idea. “One of the biggest obstacles I faced was making the product. It sounded easy, but at first the cake tasted horrible. Then the cookie sticks would break.”

Today Jessica makes an assortment of themed Popsy Cakes, including versions for Halloween and birthdays, and sells them for $30 a dozen.

Read the full story in the Miami Herald.

Talia Leman, an Iowa teen, got her feet wet in philanthropy after Hurricane Katrina. At age 10, she started a project called TLC – trick or treat for the levee catastrophe. She wrote a news release on lined paper and sent it to TV stations, urging kids to ask for loose change on Halloween as well as candy. With the help of an adult friend who set up a website, she connected with children in 4,000 school districts across the United States. They raised $10 million, what ABC News said was equal to the giving power of the top five US corporations.

That experience led Talia to create RandomKid, which supports children in the US and elsewhere in carrying out their own project ideas. “When I speak at schools, kids often come up and say, ‘I have this great idea. How can I make it happen?’ ” says Talia, the nonprofit’s CEO. RandomKid has worked with children in 50 states and 20 countries.

Last month, they held an Internet video conference involving schools in five states with the South African entrepreneur who developed the “playpump” system to provide safe water to rural communities. The students had raised enough funds for their second pump. Hearing that, “entrepreneur Trevor Field said he knew of a community in Malawi that desperately needed one, and he’d get moving on it right away,” says Anne Ginther, RandomKid’s president.

On Nov. 13, Talia was recognized for her efforts with an award from World of Children (WOC), which sponsors what some call the Nobel prize for children.

“Talia is being recognized as a changemaker because she has put together a new cohort of philanthropists – some 600 kids across the US and the world,” says Harry Leibowitz, WOC founder. “What she’s doing has sustainability.”

Source: CS Monitor

Katie Simon works on a Minga banner

The very rich and the very famous capture the headlines for their charitable giving. But another group of avid philanthropists is also leaving its mark. Young people from grade school on are engaged as never before in making a direct difference in the world. They are donating via the Internet to favorite projects overseas, creating their own nonprofits to pursue social causes, and becoming grantmakers on foundation boards to foster change in their home communities.

“It has become a value for young people to be personally involved,” says Claire Gaudiani of the Heyman Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising at New York University. “Many have seen first-hand where the needs are and what a difference individual citizens can make.”

Some youths have gained that awareness from volunteer activities. Many have seen celebrities take up worthy causes. Others have traveled with their families and encountered the challenges many children face in other countries.

Katie Simon, a teenager from Newton, Mass., says a lengthy family trip in the developing world when she was in second grade first opened her eyes. Then, when she heard two years ago about the child sex trade in some of those places, she knew she needed to do something.

“I learned about a rehabilitation center for children in the Philippines and talked with friends about raising $5,000 in a yard sale,” says the 16-year-old. “People thought that was impossible, but we raised $6,500!”

Thrilled with their success, Katie founded an organization, Minga (mingagroup.org), to educate others about the scourge of child sex trafficking and to raise funds to fight it. (Minga is a word in Quechua, a native language of South America, which means “the coming together of a community to work for a common good.”)

So far, Minga has raised $40,000, the rehab center has been completed, and the group is working with other partners in Guatemala, Thailand, and Boston.

Katie spends between 20 and 30 hours a week in the work, and says it’s well worth it: “I’ve discovered my own power to change the world, and have connected to some awesome people. I’ve seen the good side of everybody – it’s amazing.”

Last month, Katie won a Global Action Award given to young leaders by the international relief group Mercy Corps.

Three teams of New York State high school students, coming from Watertown, Carthage and Copenhagen, showed off their business plans at Jefferson Community College Friday.

The teams are the finalists in a business concepts competition.

Students say they haven’t been deterred by what they’ve heard about the economy.

They say the timing for starting a small business could be just right for them.

“When people such as myself are coming out of college, the job market is going to be a lot greater because the economy is going to be a lot stronger,” said WHS senior Alicia Uhlein.

The winning team was awarded $1,000, with second place earning $500 and third place receiving $250.

The winners:

1st place: Watertown High School with a presentation for a party favor business

2nd place: Carthage High School with a presentation for a computer design business

3rd place: Copenhagen High School with a presentation for a computer repair business

Source: Fox News

Dr Steven Berglas

“Let me show you the future.”

Every entrepreneur believes that one day he or she will be able to make this statement. The goal of my new column, Head Coach, is to explain why this is so; what drives entrepreneurs to dream that particular dream; what psychological hurdles stand in the way; and, with any luck, how to clear them.

My fascination with entrepreneurs and what makes them tick began 20 years ago after reading a quote from Abraham Zalenik, a psychoanalyst and a former professor at Harvard Business School: “To understand the entrepreneur, you first have to understand the psychology of the juvenile delinquent.”

Not long after, I began hosting forums for business groups like the Young President’s Organization. Since then, I have consulted for and coached scores of entrepreneurs whose most compelling dream was to create a better future. My columns will draw upon these experiences, as well as the work spent building the course, “Entpreneurial Psychology,” that I taught at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.

Two decades later, I can tell you that Zalenik had it right–to a point. Entrepreneurs do often behave like “acting-out” youths. But whereas juvenile delinquents tend to have little capacity for empathy and altruism, entrepreneurs also tend to be hard-wired for philanthropy.

No two entrepreneurs are exactly the same, of course. Some come from loving families; others have survived abusive ones. Some are married, others staunchly single. Some are brilliant students, others incorrigible cut-ups. At bottom, however, all have a healthy tolerance for risk, an addiction to change and challenge, and strong views on what matters most in life. Hint: It’s not piles of money.

Read the full story in Forbes Magazine.

Renuka Sena

“Youths today are more creative, innovative and business savvy, making them a valuable asset in the increasingly competitive global marketplace,” said Sunitha Janamohanan, arts manager of the British Council.

“Now is the time for creative industries to flourish and encourage young, creative minds to venture into business. While young entrepreneurs have a lot to offer in terms of ideas and creations, they need to know how to protect themselves while marketing those ideas,” said Renuka Sena.

Renuka, an entrepreneur, was actively involved in the starting up of various companies after graduating from King’s College London with a Master’s Degree in Intellectual Property (IP).

As the deputy president of non-profit organisation Technopreneurs Association of Malaysia (TeAM), Renuka spends most of her time helping and nurturing budding entrepreneurs.
“Ordinary people often have extraordinary ideas, but dreams have no financial value,” said Renuka, who is also the director of Mindvault, a successful local IP consultancy which she built from scratch.

“Put your ideas into a tangible form, whether it’s a song, book, or artwork. Document each stage of its conceptualisation as evidence of how your idea evolved. You can’t look at a familiar design on a billboard and yell: ‘Hey, I designed that months ago for a class!’ in the middle of the street and expect people to believe you. After all, without any evidence, it’s hard to prove who thought of what and when,” said the bubbly entrepreneur.

Don’t let her relaxed demeanour and engaging smile fool you. Renuka may be petite in size, but her vast knowledge of IP makes her a formidable figure to parties who have any intention of exploiting the creativity of young people.

“As an entrepreneur, I know how it feels to have a dream you strongly believe in. I’m passionate about my work at Mindvault because we’re slowly educating more small businesses about their rights in IP through seminars and clinics.

“TeAM, on the other hand, is a channel for small companies to talk to government bodies about grants. Large companies are well-looked after, but the ‘small boys’ sometimes go unheard. TeAM gives them a voice, as the voices of many are louder than the voice of one.”

According to Renuka, the IP field in Malaysia took off in the last five years. While there is a growing awareness on the importance of IP, many businesses still lack the necessary knowledge.

“If, for instance, a band composed a song together, who’d own the completed song? Can a member sell the song without the consent of the rest of the band? How do the band members protect their interests when they approach record companies?”

Read the full story in the New Straits Times.

Young entrepreneurs selling T-shirts

Eighth-graders at Adm. Richard E. Byrd Middle School in Winchester, Virginia have created a T-shirt business for their Future Business Leaders of America club.

“We worked as a class to design the shirt,” said student Damian Berdecia. “It was fun.”

The middle school students received some guidance from three Sherando High School students who have been visiting Byrd once a week recently.

Their visits were assignments for the high school’s Distributive Education Clubs of America.

On Wednesday, the middle and high school students worked together to distribute the nearly 20 T-shirts that had been ordered by Byrd students.

“I didn’t expect them to sell that many,” said Sherando junior Maegan Songer, 16, who helped to collect money and hand out shirts during the middle school’s lunch periods.

The T-shirts, which sold for $12 each, proved popular with outgoing eighth-graders who will leave Byrd in the spring and prepare to attend high school.

Read the full story in the Winchester Star.

Miles Templeman, Director General of the Institute of Directors, comments: “Today’s generation of young entrepreneurs will be the movers and shakers leading the business of tomorrow. Enterprising Young Brits is a showcase of the brightest and best young talent in the UK – and I’m delighted to offer my support to the 2008 competition.”

The competition is run by the national Make Your Mark campaign, the coordinators of Enterprise Week which this year has gone global as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week (17-23 November).

Scott Cain, Deputy Chief Executive of the Make Your Mark campaign, comments: “The ability to spot opportunities, overcome challenges and implement ideas is more important and urgent than ever in the current global economic climate. Enterprising Young Brits always unearths some fantastically inspiring stories of young people who are turning their ideas into reality. Some are focused on making a profit, others on benefitting their community – and in many cases doing both. I can’t wait to find out who our finalists will be this time around.”

There are five different categories for 2009’s Enterprising Young Brits awards:

* Business Entrepreneur: For enterprising individuals who have started their own business, large or small

* Social & community: For ventures combining the principles of a successful business with an emphasis on the social and environmental benefits it can provide

* Teen: For anybody aged 13-19 who is making their idea happen

* Creative: For enterprising individuals, businesses and endeavours that show creative flair or that are based in the creative industries

* Going global: For businesses that are successfully operating in the UK and abroad

Read the full story in the Exmouth Herald.

Go to www.makeyourmark.org.uk/youngbrits to download an entry form. The deadline for entries is on the 27 February 2009.

The event at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre, will usher in the Global Entrepreneurship Week, which will end with a grand bash for the youth on Saturday at the Nyayo National Stadium. The concept is aimed at supporting young entrepreneurs. The event will take place in more than 60 countries.

In Kenya, it will be co-ordinated by the Sacoma Centre for business enterprises, which says it hopes to create 10,000 new jobs for the youth by the end of the one-week event.

“We are working with partners who are willing to support the youth in various ways like training, mentorship and start up capital. In the end, we hope this will enable young people to create their own businesses and employ people,” said Ms Peres Ochieng’, CEO of Sacoma.

Other events lined up for the week include business ideas competition and campaigns for new policies geared at improving business environment for young people.

The organisers expect thousands of youths from different parts of the country to participate. Mr Chris Spavin, the International Campaigns executive for the programme, is expected to jet in Friday in time for the Saturday event.

Spavin had lauded the idea as revolutionary to help the youth in developing countries take charge of their own destiny.

“It aims to inspire a movement of people and stakeholders to celebrate and engage in enterprising ideas and make them happen,” said Spavin. 

The idea was first mooted in the UK, with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown acting as patron of one of the founder organisations.

Enterprise Week 2008, which took place from November 17-23, saw thousands of activities run by organisations across the UK aimed at encouraging people to unlock their enterprising talent. Last year saw more than 5,000 events and half a million people take part.

For the first time the week has expanded in 2008 to become part of Global Enterprise Week – the first worldwide celebration of enterprise aimed at young people.

Paul Lucken, LSC spokesman, said: “There is an ever growing need in the current climate to give young people the skills to spot opportunities, overcome challenges and implement ideas.

“If young people are encouraged and given the right opportunity to develop their entrepreneurial spirit, then in time this will be of huge value to the economy.

“You do not need to be a straight ‘A’ student or follow traditional academic routes to be entrepreneurial, however, building new skills and developing learning are extremely valuable for success.” “Options to continue developing skills has never been so varied, whether it’s work-based learning in the form of an apprenticeship or staying on in further education.

“Enterprise Week focuses on recognising and building these skills and is a fantastic and fun starting point to bolster young people’s confidence and ambition to be enterprising.”

Read the full story in Devon 24

When Juliun Kinsey was nearing the end of his freshman year at Santa Fe High School, he realized he did not apply himself like he should have to get the most out of his potential.

“I recognized that on my own, and I knew I needed to do something about it,” said Juliun, 17, and a senior at what is now the Professional Academies Magnet at Loften High School.

“My mother (Janet Kinsey) and I decided it would be best for me to switch schools, and I began my 10th grade year at Loften High School.” Juliun’s father is Jim Kinsey and he has four siblings.

Since that time, Juliun has distinguished himself not only as a first-rate student, but also as a strong leader. His legacy as a young entrepreneur will soon be on display when the school opens its school store in early October.

“The store will look like a college coffee shop,” said the school’s principal, Dr. Chet Sanders, adding that students will help name the store. “We will sell books, music, school supplies and clothes. We will be definitely selling academy shirts because all students must wear academy shirts.”

Juliun developed the business plan for the store, and he has received global, state and local recognition for his efforts. As a 15-year-old sophomore in Loften’s marketing education program, Juliun was one of only 30 students worldwide to be named Young Entrepreneur of the Year by the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship for developing the plan.

Read the full story in the Gainesville Guardian.

Children will have an opportunity to get a loan, create a product, do market research and sell their goods for a profit.

Enterprise Charlotte is holding the camp for youngsters aged nine to 12 at the Community Building Development Corporation.

Stacey MacLean, youth economic development officer with Enterprise Charlotte, said because the children are not old enough to work it is the perfect age to get them interested in creating a business and making their own money.

“In this county there are a lot of aging entrepreneurs, so there is a great opportunity coming up for them in the next 10 years,” said MacLean.

“The point is to teach the youth of Charlotte County about entrepreneurship to introduce them to the possibility of owning their own business as an alternative to working for other people. “¦ Some kids don’t even know what entrepreneurship is.”

MacLean said 10 of the 15 spots have already been filled. She said many of the children are returnees while others are the children of teachers and entrepreneurs, and the friends of youngsters that attended last year.

“They are thinking, ‘Wow, I can make money on my own,’ ” said MacLean. “Their money comes from their folks, so to learn how to make their own money is an interesting topic for them.”

During the first day of the camp, the young entrepreneurs will get a tour of a local radio station and record a commercial. On the second day, they will look through books with potential products and try their hand at making products such as stress balls and candles.

On the third day of the camp, the youth will finalize their product plans and hit the streets to do market research by asking people questions such as how much they would pay for the product and what colour they would want it in. At the end of the day, the children will visit the Community Building Development Corporation to get a $20 loan. On the fourth day, they will have their materials and will make their products.

The products at last year’s camp included purses out of sheets of foam and pipe cleaners.

On Friday, Aug. 15, the children will be at the St. Stephen Market from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. selling their items – and hoping to pay back their loan and turn a profit.

Source: Telegraph-Journal

Instructor Karla Kyle, who teaches business classes in the Harris-Lake Park schools, said the program is offered to middle school students “because this is the age where they start thinking about their careers as they create a business plan for their dream business and execute that plan.”

The institute started Monday and runs through Friday.

This “is a great opportunity because it gets them to think about options. This will also help students select classes that will help them in their career choice.”

Each of the eight students has a great idea for a business, Kyle added. And according to counselor Donalle Rodas, the students will compete to earn cash awards of up to $100.

Ryan Clark, of Okoboji, will need more than the top prize to get his venture started. Clark plans to open a hotel with a lot of recreational facilities on the West Coast. Clark expects the course will teach him “more about being an entrepreneur and what it’s about.”

Spencer’s Taylor Rouse, who plans to study veterinary medicine, wants to develop a pet day care service. The eighth-grader said being with animals doesn’t feel like work. “It’s just fun. And there aren’t a lot of people doing small-animal day care.”

Spirit Lake eighth-grader Cale Schmidt admits he’s a dreamer and has several ideas for video games. “I’m the kind of guy that likes to invent and sell things.” He said his ideas come from dreaming. “Sometimes I’m not the best listener.”

But Schmidt’s institute project is not technological. It’s a restaurant offering freshly cooked, healthful choices, “so people don’t have to be worried about what they’re eating.” His influence is his mom, who makes a lot of salads for dinner, he said. “And we’re water drinkers.”

Candace Brazel, who’s in the Talented and Gifted program at Laurens-Marathon Middle School, is another potential veterinarian who wants to open a place where teenagers can “hang out and be off the streets and not getting into bad habits.” She believes food and beverage sales could support her business.

Katie Evans, of Laurens, wants to use her dancing experience to open a dance studio. Just entering her first year of high school, Evans said she has learned that rejection is part of being an entrepreneur.

After working on her middle school yearbook, Caitlyn Heuton, of Laurens, is thinking about opening a photo studio.

The rejection Evans noted becomes relief, Heuton learned, when someone finally says yes. “Failure happens a lot. And you just have to keep dealing with it and trying.”

At 5 feet 7-3/4 inches tall, Regan Grossnickle, of rural Laurens, wants to design and sell jeans and accessories for other tall girls. Grossnickle said the class speakers urged the students not to give up on their dreams just because they fail one time.

Spencer ninth-grader Abigail Wallace said she has already learned that “sometimes failure is a good thing if we learn from it.”

Source: Sioux City Journal

“Right children, today you’re going to learn how to earn your first million by starting a successful business. Open your textbooks and turn to page 42…”

If only it were that simple.

For the last 11 years, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer, now as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has talked of Britain’s need to become a post-industrial “knowledge economy” – no longer a nation of shopkeepers or manufacturers, but a nation of entrepreneurs trading on ideas.

With China and India churning out four million of eager and ambitious graduates each year, Britain cannot afford to think that old industries and old ideas will keep the UK economy ticking, Mr Brown has said.

So schools and colleges have been encouraged to talk of entrepreneurship as a career choice; universities have been given financial aid to work with industry and turn academic research into spin-out companies or saleable consultancy and expertise.

There is some evidence to suggest Mr Brown is right to focus on education.

Take the Sunday Times’ Fast Track 100, the league of fastest growing private companies in the UK.

Excluding tech companies, 70pc of the Fast Track are companies founded by graduates.

Look at the league of fastest growing tech companies, and the proportion founded by graduates rises to 84pc.

But does this mean entrepreneurship can be taught?

Would the founders of seven out of ten fast track companies have made their mark without letters after their name?

After all, Richard Branson was 16 years old when he set up a his first business, a student magazine, and Sir Alan Sugar was selling aerials and electrical goods from the back of a van having left school at the same age.

James Brown, partner at Grant Thornton in East Anglia, said: “I think that to be an entrepreneur there are certain inherent qualities you have got to have. Yes, they can be developed, mentored – even trained – but you have got to have a belief and confidence that drives the ability to make decisions quickly.

“Entrepreneurs are people who see an opportunity and go for it.

“But to be an entrepreneur, you also have to have an ability to sell – if not the product, the idea.

“Who is better at selling? People with charisma, people who can build rapport. Richard Branson isn’t the same character as Alan Sugar, but they’ve both have got an element of chutzpah. “You’ve got to have an element of charisma, that’s part of being a risk-taker and someone who will make a snap decision and pursue it.

“Can you train someone to be an entrepreneur? Only if they have some of the inherent characteristics already. You can’t train them from scratch, but you can develop them.”

Mr Brown suggested a series of common character traits shared by successful entrepreneurs: self belief, an appetite for risk-taking, a nimbleness of thought and action, a strategic vision rather than short-term view.

But he added that entrepreneurs tend to have a restless intellect that thrives on new challenges and a resilience and self-belief when times are tough. The most successful are able to surround themselves with the right team.

“It’s debatable whether, like some great sportsmen, it’s best not to train them for fear of changing what makes them different,” Mr Brown added.

The challenge then is to create a permissive culture in which people feel free to take entrepreneurial risks, set up a business that has a risk of failure but even greater hope of success… like the United States.

Certainly the representation of entrepreneurs in British popular culture is evolving. Where once we saw the spivs and wheeler dealers Private Walker of Dad’s Army, Arthur Daley and Del Boy, we now see the wealthy “investor angels” of Dragon’s Den and the cut-throat competition to be Sir Alan Sugar’s apprentice.

Read the full story in The Business.

At our August Capital event last week, I met 15 year old Daniel Brusilovsky for the first time. While I had come across a few videos on the web detailing this young man’s enthusiasm and eagerness to succeed in the tech space, I was still taken aback by just how bright the kid is. He seems to know everyone, and a quick glance at his Twitter account shows he gets around too, with recent visits to Twitter, Apple, and the TechCrunch ranch – all without a drivers’ license.

Today Daniel is launching his first startup. The site is Teens In Tech, a community for teenagers interested in producing and sharing new media content in a safe environment. The site launches today in a very limited private alpha, with plans to expand to a public beta by the end of the year.

Brusilovsky says that while there are a number of sites that allow teens to post their content, they don’t make it easy for users to get started. To try to remedy this, Teens In Tech has a simple 3-step signup process, after which users will be given their own subdomain, WordPress blog, and 100MB of storage (the last figure can be easily changed depending on user needs). Users are also given access to a Teens in Tech forum, where they can go to ask questions about new media, or anything else they may have on their mind.

From a technical standpoint Teens In Tech will be fighting an uphill battle. The site is using Dreamhost, a cheap service that most companies wouldn’t go near with a ten foot stick, as its storage provider. And to be perfectly honest, it doesn’t seem like there’s much new code behind Teens in Tech – the backend is a mostly standard Wordpress multi-user install, similar to what runs on the commercial Wordpress.com site. Brusilovsky says that his team has made some adjustments and that the front page will display dynamic member updates, but for the most part, it seems like a few experienced developers could replicate the site in a week or less.

That said, Teens In Tech may appeal to a niche community of tweens and teens who aren’t satisfied by the plethora of other blogging services already available. Brusilovsky has amassed an impressive list of supporters, with a board of advisers that includes Robert Scoble and Loic Le Meur. And the site is still relatively early in development – given enough resources, I wouldn’t be surprised if Daniel manages to pull this thing off.

Source: Washington Post

Youngsters ages 6-12 in West Lafayette, Indiana, will learn more than how to sell lemonade during a three-day entrepreneurship program at the Purdue Research Park.

The 20 young participants will tour the park, learn what it means to be an entrepreneur, work with a “Robosapians,” study aerial imaging and visit a manufacturing facility. The three-day program is part of the Just Us Entrepreneurs program jointly offered by the Purdue Research Park and Nancy Justice, owner of Just Us Kids daycare center, which is based in the park.

* Monday ( Aug. 4 ), Purdue Technology Center, 3000 Kent Ave., large conference room. From 1:45-3 p.m. students will “Meet the Robosapians” with Susan Manahan, assistant director of diversity for the Purdue College of Technology. Students will “program” three different Robosapians to dance, move and pick up items.

* Tuesday ( Aug. 5 ), Purdue Technology Center, 3000 Kent Ave., large conference room. A 3 p.m. presentation from Sean Henady of Aerial Imaging. Henady will explain what aerial imaging is and then demonstrate the technology by flying above the park in his helicopter and taking a photo of the students standing below.

* Thursday ( Aug. 7 ), Chao Center, 3070 Kent Ave. From 1:30-2:30 p.m. students will tour the Chao Center and learn how manufacturing takes place.

The 725-acre Purdue Research Park ( http://www.purdueresearchpark.com ) has the largest university-affiliated business incubation complex in the country. The park is home to more than 140 companies. About 90 of these firms are technology-related and another 39 are incubator businesses. The park was ranked No. 1 in 2004 for university- affiliated research parks and received the 2005 Outstanding Commercialization Award, both from the Association of University Research Parks. The park’s companies also have received numerous recognitions, including a 2006 MIRA Award: Innovation of the Year for Purdue Research Park/Quadraspec Inc. and a 2005 CoreNet Global Innovators Award finalist. The Purdue Research Park is part of the Purdue Research Foundation, a private, nonprofit foundation created to assist Purdue University in the area of economic development. In addition to the Purdue Research Park in West Lafayette, the foundation has established or is currently constructing technology parks in other locations around Indiana including Merrillville, New Albany and Indianapolis.

Source: Newswire

Blue Sipral Ear Rings by Erin, Young Enrepreneur

An enterprising high school junior has launched her own line of handcrafted jewelry, using recently-acquired web design skills and a totally-online marketing plan.

An enterprising high school junior has launched her own line of  handcrafted jewelry, using recently-acquired web design skills and a totally-online marketing plan.   The young entrepreneur is hoping to use the proceeds of her micro-enterprise to beef up her college fund.

Jewelry Designs by Erin is the work of 16-year-old Erin of Massachusetts.

After a basic high school course in HTML programming, Erin launched her website, http://www.jewelrydesignsbyerin.com,  on August 1, 2008.  The site features her handmade pierced and clip earrings in many colors and styles, and is geared toward the tastes of women of all ages.

Erin hopes to expand the site to include her beautiful handpainted gift boxes, as well as special lines of earrings and other accessories for each season of the year, particularly the Christmas holidays.

Source: PRWeb

The 17-year-old just started his own summer landscaping company and he’s doing well– both with the number of clients and the amount of money he is earning.

“I have been doing quite well for myself, way more than I could at my age working for someone else,” said the young entrepreneur.

It’s not only about the money, said Cole, who is entering Grade 12 at Nicholson Catholic College this fall.

“It’s been a great learning experience and working for myself has taught me a lot of things,” he said. “It has definitely taught me what the real world is like and how hard you have to work to succeed.”

Cole credits the Summer Company entrepreneur program funded by the provincial government and co-ordinated locally by Enterprise Quinte for giving him a head start in the business world.

“Without the $1,500 they gave me at the start, I’m not sure I would be at the point of success where I am,” he said. “And without the continuing mentoring classes and meetings, I don’t feel I would be as successful as I am now.”

Summer Company provides full-time students ages 15 to 29 with hands-on business training, mentoring and awards of up to $3,000 to help start up and run their own summer business.

Successful students are selected through a competitive process which required them to have a good idea for a business and prepare a detailed business plan.

They receive $1,500 at the beginning of the program to help with start-up costs and another $1,500 on the successful completion. In between, they have to undergo a minimum 12 hours of business training from mentors who are successful business people.

More than 350 students from across the province were accepted into Ontario’s 2008 Summer Company program.

Cole is among eight students from the Prince Edward-Hastings riding involved in the Summer Company program.

Leona Dombrowsky, the riding’s Liberal MPP, said young entrepreneurs selected for this year’s program will benefit greatly from the funding and mentorship they will receive through the program.

“The program will allow them to develop and apply fundamental business skills that will last a lifetime,” she said.

Lisa Price, program co-ordinator for Enterprise Quinte, said there are 12 students from the entire Quinte region — which extends beyond the provincial riding — participating in the Summer Company program.

Last summer, there were eight students involved from the Quinte region; in past summers, there have been as many as 18 operating summer companies.

Examples of companies this summer include personal home-fitness, child care, lawn maintenance, web design, video production, custom T-shirts and photography/specialty cards.

“There is a wide range of interesting summer companies. All the companies are successful and they’re all generating sales,” Price said.

One student is running his own high definition video production company.

“He owns all his own equipment and that’s rare because it allows him to keep his costs down.”

Price also singled out Cole for his landscaping business.

“He is well-rounded with the dealings of his business and doesn’t neglect any area of his operation. He is very conscious of his clients and seeing to their needs,” said Price.

Cole, meanwhile, said he knew he wanted to work for himself “and be my own boss.”

Being in business for himself has also taught him an important lesson.

“It’s a lot more work than you expect. When you come home, the job is not done. You still have to do all your book work and contacting clients.”

Why a landscaping company?

“I grew up doing this type of work around my house. I liked it and I enjoyed doing it,” he said. “Besides, I love being and working outdoors.”

Through Cole’s Landscaping Services, he provides lawn cutting, grub control, lawn repair and shrub and tree care services.

“I also build fences if people want because I’ve had lots of experience with that. I also build sheds and lay bricks around gardens. One of my specialties is natural stone walkways.”

Cole started May 31, handing out flyers and going door-to-door to acquire a client base. His business got a boost when he was asked by Nicholson principal Joan MacDonald to provide a quote to do some lawn maintenance work at the high school.

“I gave her a quote that she was pleased with. And I’m still maintaining some of the gardens at the school,” he said with a smile.

Nicholson is one of his 11 clients — the rest are homeowners.

“I got so busy that I was booked ahead of time. But I still have room to accept more business if they call me at 613-968-2861,” he said.

Cole plans to grow his landscaping business even after he returns to class in September.

He already has clients lined up to carry out lawn repairs and re-seeding during the fall and plans to do snow removal in the winter.

“Last winter, I did some snow removal for people, but that was by hand. This year, I hope to acquire a snowblower,” he said.

Cole will continue with the business next spring and summer and plans on taking some college business courses after he graduates next June.

“My career goal is to run a successful business of my own,” he said.

Source: The Belleville Intelligencer

Jason O

On Monday, I announced the winners of the Cash-Smart Kids competition. Today, I have an update from one of the winners, Jason O’Neill, on what he has been doing since the story which won him the competition – and boy, has he been busy!

Here’s the interview …

So, Jason, how is your business going now?

• Continue with the manufacturing search and hopefully find the right company to manufacture my Pencil Bugs.
• Keep submitting my manuscript to publishers.  I know one will be interested.
• Work on writing the next book in the series.
• Speak at more schools and organizations.
• Work on some of my other projects like my Pencil Bugs board game and video game.  I would love to talk with anyone who is a game designer.  I have the whole game concept drawn out but really can’t try it unless it’s in a program.
• I’m going to start my own blog very soon.

• Get an adult’s help because it’s really hard to do everything yourself, especially when as a kid, we still need to go to school as our first job.  Plus, a kid can’t do the legal things.
• If you have an idea, at least give it a try.  You just never know if it will be the next big thing.  I was recently quoted in an interview saying, “You can’t get anywhere by sitting on your idea.”
• Don’t give up.  Understand it’s not always going to be fun and easy but if you keep trying, you’ll be amazed at what might happen.
• Being an entrepreneur isn’t always about the money.  Sometimes the best opportunities and experiences have nothing to do with sales.
• If you are making money, remember to give back to the community.   Pick a charity that you know can directly help other people in some way.  There are a lot to choose from.

In true democratic style, we have one girl and one boy, one video and one HubPages entry, one online and one offline business, and lots of praise for the quality of all the entrants.

So, without further ado, please step forward and take a bow – Rhiannon Leetham and Jason O’Neill!

Here is Rhiannon’s winning entry:

Rhiannon Leetham is a Cash-Smart Kid!

And here is Jason’s winning entry:

Young Entrepreneur – Jason O’Neill. Click here to read the full entry.

And here’s what judge, Peter Economy had to say (after complaining that he was only allowed to pick TWO winners).

If I am to select only two of the entrants, my choices are Rhiannon
(LOVE her video and idea) and Jason (he’s doing GREAT, is getting good
visibility, and likely has some excellent insights for our readers).

Congratulations to both winners, and to all the entrants – well done!

Just because you don’t have the deep pockets or stellar grades it takes to get into top tier schools doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy some of the same resources these establishments offer. Through open courseware programs, you can access course materials from a wide range of top universities. Whether you decide to take these courses on your own time or just skim through the information, we’ve compiled a list of 100 places to start looking for great business and entrepreneurship information.

See the list of Ivy League and Entrepreneurship Courses available online for free.

Here are the three things I would tell my children if I only
had 30 seconds left to say anything to them to help them
with their future.

(As a matter of fact I say these things to them every night
when I kiss them goodnight.)

1. I love you sweetheart with all my heart.

2. You are my favourite, girl/boy in the whole world.
(I have one of each, very convienent! ;o)

3. You can do anything you want. If you think you can do it,
you are right. If you think you can’t you are right!

What three things would YOU say to YOUR own children or loved
ones if you only had 30 seconds left?

Post them below, share them with us all.

Here’s to your Massive Success!

Cheers…Amanda van der Gulik…Excited Life Enthusiast!
www.TeachingChildrenAboutMoney.com
www.CreateYourOwnMindMovie.com
www.FunCakeDecoratingIdeas.com

P.S. Time is running out…

30, 29, 28, 27, 26…

Don’t waste it!

I have recently been contacted by Chad Moutray of the US Small Business Administration. He has been running a longitudinal study of a group of Baccalaureate graduates from 1993, and he was kind enough to share his findings with me.

You can read the whole paper here – Baccaluareate Education And The Employment Decision: Self-Employment And The Class Of 1993.

There were a couple of findings which I thought were interesting.

The first was that the choice of major was related to the chances of an individual being self-employed later in life. Those who majored in education, engineering, math and science were more likely to be employees, while those who majored in social science were more likely to be self-employed. The question remains whether personality and preferences cause both the choice of major and the choice of employment style, or whether taking certain majors leads individuals to “run on rails” as employees because those industries are less conducive to entrepreneurialism.

The second interesting observation was that the self-employed tend to fall into two groups with regard to income – either they earn less than $20,000 a year, or they earn more than $100,000 per year. There are a few in the mid-range, but compared with employees, who earn up to $60,000 per year in the not-for-profit sector, or between $60,000 and $90,000 in the for-profit sector, the mid-range incomes are under-represented in the self-employed group.

One possible explanation for this income distribution is that different individuals have different motivations for becoming self-employed. Some become self-employed to escape the income limitiation imposed by being an employee, while others become self-employed in order to have flexible working conditions, work from home, work part-time, work in an area they enjoy, or to have more personal autonomy than an employee can possibly attain.

Some parents in our program focus on income potential when teaching their kids about money and business. This study shows that many individuals are choosing self-employment for reasons other than generating large incomes. Take the time to find out what motivates your child, rather than imposing financial motivations by default.

After all, I would rather be the parent of a happy entrepreneur who earns $15,000 a year, than a miserable corporate suit who earns $90,000 a year. Wouldn’t you?

The entrepreneurship forum was attended by nearly 500 student ambassadors from around the world, taking part in a week-long educational program, July 25 to August 2, which focuses on key areas including business, government, international affairs, education, science and technology, and media. The forum explores key issues and opportunities for youth entrepreneurship and includes interactive panel discussions with successful young entrepreneurs to provide mentoring, guidance and experience.

“The SBA is privileged to participate for our third year with the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership as it celebrates 50 years of notable service,” said Acting Administrator Jovita Carranza. “HOBY recognizes the value of reaching out to students early, and SBA helps to nurture the entrepreneurial development in young people that provides positive resources that can impact their homes, schools and communities.”

Read the full press release at The Earth Times.