Colette Young is just starting her education at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, but by some standards, she’s already an old hand at the rag trade. Now 18, Young was just 14 when she founded L’Colette Boutique, a women’s clothing store in her hometown of Tulsa, Okla. Because she was a minor, her mother, Chae Young, had to put all the loans, permits, bills and taxes in her own name, but the institute freshman, whose official title is creative director, is responsible for everything from store design and fashion decisions to financing, marketing and advertising. (Her mother’s title is active professional CEO; they’re in the process of making Colette a legal partner.)
Since opening the shop, they have turned a profit, the young entrepreneur says. “The store does contribute to the household income,” she says. “A lot of our profits we put back into the business for renovations, but the rest of the money goes to either savings or disposable income. I’m thrilled to be able to contribute.”
Not all of the youthful business owners profiled here are focused just on the family finances. Some were simply lured to the business world because it seemed like fun.But like Colette Young, many are finding an additional benefit to pursuing their small-business dreams: With the economy spiraling downward, these startups have become a way to stay occupied, make some money and help their families at the same time.
Four years ago, when he was just 9, Jason O’Neill of Temecula, Calif., came up with a simple idea to sell at a local crafts fair: colorful, buglike pencil toppers that would make schoolwork a bit more fun.
Little did he know that people were going to like his products — which come in eight colors and perch on the eraser end of pencils — as much as he did. But they do, and now Jason is the CEO of Pencil Bugs Plus, selling his wares on his Web site and shipping them internationally.
“His business is profitable — otherwise we wouldn’t spend as much time with it as we do,” says his mother, Nancy O’Neill. “He’s certainly not making millions or even close yet, but he’s on his way, and we’re always coming up with new marketing ideas to expand and working on getting his Pencil Bugs mass-produced.”
The young toy mogul — who donates some of his income to charity and socks away the rest for college — now also has a Pencil Bug-related board game, and a video game is in the works. Last year, Forbes.com placed him on its list of 10 role models 18 and under.
Chase Abrams started taking college classes at the same time he was in high school.The next thing he knew, he was attending two graduations. Abrams was involved in the Accelerated College Enrollment and Pre-Accelerated College Enrollment program (ACE-PACE) at Cal Sate Los Angeles.”It’s for people who just want to get their feet wet and take a couple college classes, and I ended up doing the extreme,” Abrams said. He graduated May 29 from Sierra Canyon High School. He graduated Saturday from Cal State LA with a bachelor’s degree. Abrams was a Radio, TV and Film major, but he also exceled at time management. His typical day began at 5 a.m. with a workout at the gym.6:30 a.m. – 7:30 a.m.: Take sister to Calabasas.
7:30 a.m. – 8 a.m.: Drive to Chatsworth
8 a.m. to 3 p.m.: Attend high school classes
3:30 p.m. to 4:45 p.m.: Football practice
The next thing he knew, he was attending two graduations.Abrams was involved in the Accelerated College Enrollment and Pre-Accelerated College Enrollment program (ACE-PACE) at Cal Sate Los Angeles.”It’s for people who just want to get their feet wet and take a couple college classes, and I ended up doing the extreme,” Abrams said. He graduated May 29 from Sierra Canyon High School. He graduated Saturday from Cal State LA with a bachelor’s degree.Abrams was a Radio, TV and Film major, but he also exceled at time management. His typical day began at 5 a.m. with a workout at the gym.
6:30 a.m. – 7:30 a.m.: Take sister to Calabasas.
7:30 a.m. – 8 a.m.: Drive to Chatsworth
8 a.m. to 3 p.m.: Attend high school classes
3:30 p.m. to 4:45 p.m.: Football practice
“Then, I’d go all the way from 4:45 without a shower to Cal State LA,” Abrams said.He finished his college classes at 10 p.m. Abrams used one weekend day to study. He spent the other weekend day with friends.”I still had the full high school experience all around,” he said. “I went to prom, had a girlfriend for 2 1/2 years.”If the radio-TV-film thing doesn’t work out, Abrams said he plans to return to school for pre-med studies.
Homeless Student Heads to Harvard
(June 23) — Peers called Khadijah Williams the “Harvard girl,” or “smart girl” who enrolled at their Los Angeles high school just 18 months ago, but she never told them of the struggles behind her success: She was homeless.
Williams, 18, graduated fourth in her high school class with a GPA just under 4.0. It’s an amazing feat considering she spent the bulk of her life on the street. She, her mother Chantwuan Williams and younger sister Jeanine Williams have been moving in and out of homeless shelters throughout California for years, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Khadijah recognized her gift for learning as early as age 9, when she placed in the 99th percentile on state exams. She was soon designated a gifted student.
Her elementary educational path became rocky shortly thereafter because of constant uprooting stemming from her mother’s money woes. She failed to complete the fourth, fifth and eighth grades; skipped the sixth and split seventh between Los Angeles and San Diego. In total, she attended 12 schools over 12 years.
Khadijah’s intelligence extends beyond the classroom. Her years spent surviving pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers taught her how to avoid bad habits and seek mentors, counselors and programs to help her reach her goals.
James and Patricia London became involved with Khadijah through one of those initiatives, South Central Scholars. After her mother and sister vanished from the homeless shelter where they were staying, the Londons opened their hilltop home to a lonely Khadijah for the remainder of her 12th grade year.
James, an orthopedic surgeon, and Patricia, a nurse, helped Khadijah with the essays for her college applications, according to the Los Angeles Times. They also taught her valuable life skills like money management, table manners and grooming.
Her Harvard recruiter, Julie Hilden, said she was impressed with her scholastic performance and knew she was a top candidate. The challenge for the Ivy League school is to create a support network of faculty, counselors and a host family that will all help foster her growth.
“I strongly recommended her,” Hilden told the newspaper. “I told them, ‘If you don’t take her, you might be missing out on the next Michelle Obama. Don’t make this mistake.’ “
After only seeing her mother sporadically during the last six months before her high school graduation, Khadijah found her and her sister at a storage facility in South Central L.A. where they last stored their belongings.
The “Harvard girl” modeled her hunter green graduation cap and gown and practiced switching the tassel for her fractured family.
“Look at you,” her mother said. “You’re really going to Harvard, huh?”
“Yeah,” she said, pausing. “I’m going to Harvard.”
Chloe Spencer is a 17 year old blogger who has been blogging about the hugely popular kids site Neopets for over two years. Some pages of her blog, NeopetsFanatic.com, sport more than 5000 comments. Chloe monetizes her page 1 Google rankings and 11,000 daily pageviews into cold hard cash with Google AdSense. She’s a busy girl and only blogs once or twice a month, but still she makes between $10 and $40 per day — money while she sleeps! Early this year, Chloe launched her newest blog, QuizFanatic.com, full of personality tests for teenage girls, such as “How Boy Crazy Are You?”
Chloe has spoken at BlogHer, SMX West, Ypulse and DMA08. She has presented a science experiment live on Denver’s 9News to an estimated 1.2 million viewers. She also appeared on the Bay Area’s ABC7 News as part of their coverage of the BlogHer conference. Chloe is an aspiring documentary filmmaker who lived in New Zealand for eight years, returning to Wisconsin last year, where she resides with her parents and two sisters.
In 2002 Robb McMahan’s wife Lisa, an enthusiastic cook, prepared one of her signature Thanksgiving Day dinners. Like many kitchen floors, the McMahans’ floor was beautiful to look at but uncomfortable to stand on for any length of time.
By the time dinner was ready, Lisa’s legs and lower back hurt so much she hardly enjoyed the meal. They agreed that a solution had to be found.
Robb and Lisa went in search of a kitchen mat she could stand on while preparing meals to help her avoid fatigue or discomfort.
Much to their surprise they found many floor mats, but none that would really address Lisa’s needs.
After many late nights and hundreds of prototypes Robb finally hit paydirt, which led him into the anti-fatigue mat business.
His first mats went on sale in 2005. He had addressed an important ingredient for entrepreneurial success: Create meaningful solutions to improve the lives of others.
He knew that if his wife had needed an anti-fatigue mat, there had to be many folks out there who suffered while standing in the kitchen for long periods of time. Thus GelPro.com was born
With limited financial resources to work with, Robb turned to the Internet to help him build an infrastructure to reach his market.
Once he built his website he started reaching out in every possible direction to build his company. To reach his market he used Search Engine Optimization, Google pay-per click, and blogs.
After graduating from high school in 2000 John Earle went to college just for a few weeks. After he dropped out of college he started a pin business making random designs and selling them at hardcore shows and shops. Johnny even had a small group of kids that would buy pins from him wholesale and sell them at their schools. He had a database of shops that sold his pins. In addition to the pins, Johnny worked once or twice a week at a silk screening shop, as well at Newbury Comics. Almost every day when he went to work, John was given a different completely random nicknames. “Johnny Appleseed”, “Johnny Coffeecakes”, “Johnny Cupcakes”, “Johnny Pancakes”, etc… While working at the silk screening shop making t-shirts for the metal hardcore band he use to be in (On Broken Wings). He decided to make a few shirts that said “Johnny Cupcakes” on them for the fun of it.
Rap-Up was founded by Devin Lazerine when he was 15 years old as an after-school hobby; the magazine was an online compendium of hip hop news, gossip and top-ten music lists.After listening to the song “Insane in the Brain” by Cypress Hill at the age of 10, he wanted to be in the music industry but “wasn’t able to sing or rap, so that wasn’t an option”.Several days after launching the website, Devin decided to pitch the idea of a magazine to select publishers; the next day, a publisher from H&S Media expressed interest in the concept.Devin worked with his brother Cameron to create the magazine, and decided it would be for a young audience,in particular the 14 to 28 demographic. The magazine’s first issue was published by H&S Media in 2001; however, the company went bankrupt shortly after publishing the first issue, which sold 200,000 copies.Rap-Up was resurrected in 2003 by Total Media Group as an insert in the magazine Urban Teen Scene. The insert attracted media attention—mainly because of the brothers’ age and race—in USA Today and The Los Angeles Times.
The brothers began working on a third issue in 2004, without the backing of a publishing company. The largest advertisers were ring tone providers, while others included the Navy, clothing labels, videogames, Sony,Black Entertainment Television and Reebok. The editorials were written by 10 journalism students,and the photos were contributed by publicists. Art director Ian Lynam, who designed the magazine, sent everything online from Japan.The issue was released in March 2005, and cost $35,000 to produce. It featured singer Chingy on the cover, and 80,000 copies were distributed around the world.Beginning with the eleventh issue, which was published in summer 2008, Lynam redesigned the magazine’s cover and contents. The main reason for the redesign was the change from a younger target audience to an older and more sophisticated one. Lynam felt the facelift “imbue[d] it with a more demure and cosmopolitan aesthetic.”
The magazine is not audited, and is sold in more than 20 countries. In the U.S., the magazine is sold by Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, Borders Group and Tower Records. Devin calls Rap-Up “a magazine for Generation Y by Generation Y”. He serves as a writer, publisher and editor in chief, and oversees editorial content and advertising sales. Cameron works as publisher and assistant editor, and is in charge of printing, production, distribution and shipping of the magazine.In 2008, the magazine released a handbook entitled, Rap-Up: The Ultimate Guide to Hip-Hop and R&B, which was published by Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group. The book chronicles the history of hip hop, and features a foreword by rapper T.I.- (source: wikipedia.org)
Hey! bloggers, this weblog, “Writer”, is basically to inform( and give my opinion) on Life, Movies, Books, News etc. Also, to post riveting stories that viewers (like you) might not heard of. So read, watch, and comment on the “Writer”. I also want to advice that my posting on successful individuals isn’t to say that money is everything(because it’s not), it’s more to show you that if you work hard in anything and have faith, things would turn out alright.
UPDATE: at http://mauthor.weebly.com/, A new post at ”blog zone” titled “A simple idea: snap caps”. check it out!!!!!
p.s. for those having problem viewing “blog zone”, the problem has been fixed.
