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An event designed to showcase the entrepreneurial visions of children ages 5 – 13.

October 9th, 2010
10:00AM – 12:00PM
At the historic Pease Mansion, 1606 Niles Rd, Austin, 78703.
Directions

Apply for a booth!

View more photos from the 2009 Children's Business Fair

 

Entrepreneur Success Stories

Mary Beth, Blake and Taylor have each been successful at a young age with their own business. We hope their stories inspire you.

Mary Beth

In the fifth grade, Mary Beth and her mother attended a cooking class. "We had a lot of fun," she recalls, "and the experience inspired me to start experimenting with different cookie recipes on the weekends when I had some free time. I found that I really liked baking and it became something of a hobby."

After baking cookies for family dinners and class parties to "great reviews," Mary Beth and a friend decided that instead of baby-sitting, they would work together to sell cookies to families, friends and neighbors.

Once word got out about her business, Mary Beth began to receive requests for ten or twelve dozen cookies at a time for parties and other events. Today Mary Beth's business operates year-round. Besides baking requests for certain holidays, she also accepts special requests for cookies of various shapes, colors and sizes, often for birthdays or Bat Mitzvahs.

"After all these years, I've learned how to make things run more smoothly and efficiently. Having my own business has really been wonderful, and it's taught me a lot of important lessons. And as far as work goes, there is nothing else I'd rather be doing."

Blake

When he was eleven years old and looking for a way to make money, most adults Blake spoke with suggested he could mow yards or sell magazines. Thinking that both of those ideas seemed like a lot of hard physical work without much financial reward, Blake started thinking about other income opportunities.

"One day my mother asked me to clean out the garage," Blake recalls. "She wanted to get rid of everything. I realized I could take pictures of the stuff that was to be thrown away, list it on Ebay and make some money."

After a successful sale, he saw the potential to make more money so he created a flyer offering to pick up unwanted items from garages and haul it away for free. Blake hired his best friend to put the fliers on cars in parking lots of high-tech companies and waited for the phone to ring. Once customers began to call, Blake also paid his friend's 16 year-old brother to drive around and pick up all the unwanted goods. He took the pictures, wrote the descriptions for Ebay and ended up making over $35,000 that summer.

Once school resumed that fall, Blake discovered that he didn't really have the time to devote himself to running the business. So he turned the business over to his friends to run with the agreement that they would pay him a percentage of the profits. He put together a business plan and sold his idea as a franchise opportunity to twelve different children for a $500 franchise fee, giving each of them a blueprint to follow, including sample descriptions of various items and instructions on how to make the photos look better. Blake also made a percentage of everything they sold.

"In total, I made in excess of $76,000 before shutting everything down. The most important thing I learned was it was better to have a bunch of people working for you than trying to do it all by yourself."

Taylor

At the age of nine, Taylor began disassembling her grandmother's old costume jewelry. Little did she know that after restringing the beads on dental floss to make necklaces, she would soon have her own profitable business and see her unique designs in specialty stores across the south.

"I knew that Taylor's designs were special when people would stop me around town and ask where I'd bought my jewelry," said Taylor's mother, Dana. "From there, Taylor began bringing a shoebox full of jewelry to her younger brother's little league games and mothers would wipe her out."

Looking for a more appropriate venue to market Taylor's jewelry, a friend of Dana's offered to debut Taylor's jewelry at one of her local art shows. Unfortunately, Taylor could not attend the show because of school, but came home to find out that she'd sold out of most of her jewelry in one day.

"I like to make all kinds of semi-precious necklaces, bracelets and earrings, but precious stones are my favorite to work with," Taylor says of her craft. "I am glad that people like my jewelry and it's fun to see people I don't even know wearing it."

 

Why have a Children's Business Fair?

We want every child exposed to the joy of making something with his or her own hands, selling it (safely) to someone they do not know and ending up with extra spending money in their pocket.

We believe these three accomplishments will spark the entrepreneurial spirit in children, and become the first steps on an entrepreneurial Hero's Journey.

The Three Magic Seeds, By Jeff Sandefer:

Read More Here.