Ten Successful Businesses Started Before Leaving School
Just had a brilliant business idea from a young lady still in primary school. She already earnt $11 over the weekend and is hungry to make more money to make life easier for Mum.
My first business was age 10, selling tea and biscuits to visitors to our family home which also happened to be the birthplace of a famous Elizabethan explorer. There was plenty of “traffic” or customers ready to buy. And who can resist a ten year old little girl, on a summer afternoon, offering a cup of tea?
I carefully chose the cheapest biscuits – sorry, didn’t know anything about gluten free then – and the lowest cost tea and sugar. Milk was from the farm’s bulk tank (raw – shock horror! Illegal now, I think). The margin was pretty good. No overheads. Thanks Mum for the use of the kitchen; don’t think I broke too many teacups.
We didn’t have pocket money in my family which was a good thing – prompted entrepreneurialism. Nothing was impossible or out of reach: “We’ll just have to work a little bit harder” was the motto when planning anything from a new car to an overseas holiday. That’s still true.
Here’s some great advice from other businesspeople still in school from Shopify, the best online shopping platform in the world.