Raising Entrepreneurs

Eight-year-old Nzinga Ajamu has her very own jewelry-making business.

“I discovered my passion for making jewelry during my jewelry-making class in school,” she told the Daily News in Memphis, referring to a cultural arts curriculum course she took last year. “I enjoyed making jewelry so much that I asked my parents to buy beads for me so I could make more jewelry. Also, I made a necklace, bracelet and ponytail holder to wear to school. … When I would go places people would compliment me on my jewelry and they would say, ‘Where’d you get that jewelry?’ and I’d say, ‘I made it,’ and they could not believe that I made it.”

Nzinga’s creations were so attractive that people asked her to make jewellery for them as well, and before long she has a thriving business.

Nzinga comes up with the designs for the jewelry – sometimes, she said, the ideas come at night while she sleeps. She also sets her own prices and keeps up with all the orders.

“It’s her company and she handles everything herself,” Veda said. “And we do everything we can to keep it that way.”

But school always comes first, Nzinga’s mother, Veda, told the Daily News.

Education, Nzinga’s parents are teaching her, is the foundation to achieving the high goals the girl has set for herself. Nzinga doesn’t see Queen Nzinga’s Creations as just a fly-by-night business. This is just the beginning for what she hopes to achieve as a “grown-up.”

Already, Nzinga is envisioning having her own retail space to run her business, and developing a broader market and a larger production capability.

Meanwhile, she markets her creations through her website, www.nzingascreations.com.

Shonika Proctor, teen business coach, shares her knowledge of ways for kids to make money, even when they are under 16.

Po’ No Mo’

5 Tips on How Youth Under Age 16 Can Make Money

In his internationally best-selling book Reallionaire: Nine Steps to Becoming Rich from the Inside Out, Dr. Farrah Gray, a self-made millionaire by age 14, discusses how, in one of the first of his many business ventures, he painted rocks and sold them as door stops door-to-door for $1.50 each when he was only 9 years old.

Despite common misconception, you do not have to have money to make money. All you need is a great idea and a persistent willingness to put that great idea into action. Here are 5 ways you can make money in the 21^st century, even if you’re not yet 16 (or 14, for that matter), and even if you don’t have a dime to your name.

1. Competitions: Enter business plan competitions such as the ones offered by NFTE.com and BlackEnterprise.com. All sorts of contests and competitions exist for young budding entrepreneurs, and the cash or scholarship prizes you may receive are only half the benefit. The other half is the name recognition you can carry with you into your burgeoning business life as being the chosen winner amongst all the many entrants in such illustrious, business-related competitions.
2. Advertising: Seek sponsors and advertisers for your product or service. For example, sell advertising space on the flyers, postcards, and - yes - websites you put out there to promote your own business. The advertising funds you generate will pay for the production, printing, distribution, etc. of your own promotions, essentially making it free advertising for you!
3. Sharing Your Experience: It doesn’t matter how young you are. We all have expertise in something, even if that something is simply being ourselves. We’ve all lived unique lives and we all have an important story to tell. Get the word out about your endeavors by writing articles on the subject for your local newspapers. Write about the subject of your business. Write about your own experiences starting a business. Usually small local newspapers are looking for filler content. With just a single publication credit, you will instantly start to become known as an expert at whatever you do. You may even get paid a few dollars or more for your efforts, though that isn’t the point. The point is to get more free advertising for your business by writing about what you know best - you and all that you are up to.
4. Technology Training and Consulting: Put that way it sounds so lofty and complex, but it isn’t. As a member of the younger generation, you have natural abilities to work with computers that may seem like nothing but second nature to you but are a hot and valuable commodity to people of older generations who didn’t grow up with all this newfangled technology in their homes. You’d be surprised how many people older than you don’t know how to make a web page (or maybe you wouldn’t be surprised). The point is, even if you can do it in your sleep, there are people who will pay you big bucks to teach them how to do it, or more - do it for them. YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and all the other social networking and bookmarking sites as well as blogs, newsletters, and ezines are the new media. And guess who the experts are in this new media? That’s right - you are! And as a related bonus tip, you can even offer a free course for small business-people at your local library on the importance of having online presence, and then at the end of the class offer to sell your expertise to build their pages. Give them a discount if they order your services on that day.
5. Odd Jobs: This is one suggestion that never goes out of style. Random odd jobs like cutting grass, raking leaves, dog walking, shoveling show etc. may not be the most exotic, novel, or interesting forms of making money. But they’ve been around forever for a very good reason - because they work. This type of work may not be directly related to your business or business idea, but you can take heart that the entire time you’re toiling away at some seemingly boring task for some extra ducats, what you’re really doing is serving a much higher purpose - raising valuable funds for your business’s success.

Tired of being po’? Of course you are! Well, get over it - literally! Because you can easily be po’ no mo’. All it takes is a little innovation and a willingness to make it work. Problems equal opportunities. Be resourceful and creative. Make money by solving problems that exist around you, and before you know it you’ll have solved the problem of being poor and well on the way to your well-deserved riches.

Shonika Proctor, aka the Nika’Nator, is a youth and teen entrepreneur coach. She helps aspiring and emerging young entrepreneurs to demolish drama and build dreams. www.renegadeceos.com.

There are many ways for kids to make money, and in the past we have listed quite a few. Today, we are going to take one of the ways for kids to make money that is often overlooked, and really break it down, so you can see the great possibilities that are available.

When looking for ways for kids to make money, we often focus on the obvious things, like babysitting, paper routes, lemonade stands, and yard work.

However, one of the best ways for kids to make money is as a consultant.

How can this be? Don’t consultants get paid for their expert knowledge and experience? How could kids possibly make money as consultants?

Technology.

Of course, there are adults around who are techno-boffins and have every latest gadget the moment it hits the market.

But there are many, many more adults who look at the array of electronic appliances they are expected to manage and wonder how they got into this mess!

There is an old joke about the number of video recorders which sit there flashing 00.00.00, because their owners never figured out how to set the time. These days, it is DVD players, but the flashing zeroes are still flashing.

Now that digital cameras have really taken hold, there is a generation of grandparents longing to hold pictures of their grandchildren as cardboard rectangles in their wallets, looking at paper clips in their email inboxes, and sometimes not even knowing how to view the images on the screen!

There is a definite business opportunity for a young entrepreneur right there - just printing out the photos (or even taking them to a photo shop to print them from a flash disk). But you can always add value by adjusting the size, cropping the images, adding labels, removing red-eye, and other valuable services.

Then there is scanning in old family photos to make slide shows on digital video, complete with sound-tracks. Young entrepreneur Andrew Napier has a thriving business doing just this.

If you think about it, kids spend a lot more time on computers than most adults, and even at an early age they can readily be described as “experts” in the programs and web sites they use regularly.

This expertise is valuable, and can be turned into one of the best ways for kids to make money, because it is a new market with growing demand, and can form the basis for an adult-level business as the kids grow up.

Photos: fllickrized, johnb2008

Molin Upper Elementary School Principal Dave Archambault asked faculty and the business community a simple question: “What happens when you inspire more than 75 fifth-grade students to create an invention or new business idea?”

On Friday, Archambault was pleased with the answer.

“This is great — we have a lot of great ideas,” Archambault said.

From eyeglasses fitted with windshield wipers to clear one’s view in a rainstorm to a “sweet flavored gum” that was claimed to have the ability to bring about world peace, the second annual Young Entrepreneurs Contest showcased students’ creativity.

The contest, sponsored by the Newburyport Education and Business Coalition as well as teachers Ellie Bailey, Mary Ann Daley and Carol Snow, included special exercises for students to go along with teaching students about business and sociology.

David Strand, president and owner of Strand Marketing, was brought into the Molin School to assist in creating and presenting the ideas that inspired entrepreneurship and encourage fifth-graders to come up with their own ideas about business.

Read the rest of the story in The Newburyport News.

I love hearing about initiatives such as these.

Gradually, ever so gradually, the traditional education system is being infiltrated by little bursts of entrepreneurial spirit.

These kids participated in simulations, where some of them played the role of bankers, some the rols of suppliers, and others represented retailers. Once a supplier had “won” the business of a retailer, the young retail entrepreneurs then had to persuade the bankers to finance their purchase of the stock.

These simulations are a fantastic way to provide kids with a solid learning experience when it comes to business concepts. We encourage the families in our Cash-Smart Kids program to engage their kids with “mini” business situations and simulations whenever possible.

Kids are remarkably creative - I loved the description of one young inventor’s product, the “my-Cod”. This fish-shaped contraption would allow swimmers to listen to their iPods through a swimming “fish” broadcasting when placed in a swimming pool.

I really think that one would be a goer!

One of the great ways for kids to make money is through busking. Of course, it goes with out saying that you need to make sure that the parents know where the kids are, and what they are doing, and that the situation is safe.

There are lots of safe and pleasant places to be busking, but sometimes people ask me whether it is a “real” money-making idea, or just a bit of fun to do one or twice and then forget about it.

I will say this - it’s not for everyone. If you can’t play an instrument, and have a singing voice that sounds like someone strangling a swan, then you are not likely to get far as a busker. However, for those who do have some talent, busking is a great start to an entertainment business.

I would like you all to meet Declan Galbraith, as he explains how he made 200 pounds the first time he tried busking, and where that busking led (yes, he’s just nine years old in this interview).

Declan is now sixteen, his voice has broken, and he is well on the way to global stardom as he works his way through a million-pound, three-record deal with EMI.

Here’s what he looks and sounds like today.

He has already made the transition that plagues many young male singers - the whole breaking-of-the-voice drama - and come out the other side still glowing.

My daughters are all besotted, and that can only be a good sign, since they are smack dab in his target demographic. His choice of songs to cover gets the parents in, too, I have to say!

He has learned how to play guitar and piano now, and is starting to write his own songs - another sticky step for former child singers. See what you think of this song, off his latest album, which he wrote himself.

My prediction is that he will continue to go from strength to strength.