Posts Tagged ‘Teens’

Reporter-News:

On a warm Wednesday morning, David Dantzler pulls out a couple of pages of meticulously written charts that detail just how many eggs his 36 chickens have produced.

For about nine months now, David, 13, has commanded the clucking crowd, selling their eggs as part of his own in-home business.

Later, as he reaches in to extract one of the brown-speckled bundles from beneath one of his flock in the gloom of the family’s chicken house, where the birds are tucked in safely at night, he displays his still-warm prize proudly.

So far, he hasn’t become rich. Expenses — about $50 a month — often eat into his profits. The family also keeps about two dozen of the eggs a week for themselves.

But even if his venture hasn’t turned to pure gold (at $3 a dozen), he said he’s having fun working with, and learning about, the animals under his care.

And the 13-year-old has had to learn plenty of grown-up lessons about running a small business — supply and demand, the effects of the seasonal demand and production, and just how much a hungry brood of hens can eat.

Photo by Reporter-News.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

AOL Small Business:

Having your cake and eating it, too, used to be the hallmark of success, but as Jessica Cervantes has learned, it’s even better if you just sell it instead.

Cervantes, 19, didn’t plan on becoming an entrepreneur; she wanted to be a doctor. But she was enrolled in a business academy at John A. Ferguson High School in her Miami, Florida, where they had an entrepreneurship project.

She was required to create a business, and one thing led to another, and next thing she knew, she had entered a business plan in the annual Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE)’s National Business Plan Competition. She won $10,000 to go toward getting her business off the ground.

That business is Popsy Cakes, which is also the name of her product. It’s a cupcake attached to a cookie stick. “At first, I just wanted to bake cupcakes,” says Cervantes, “but there are a lot of cupcake bakeries out there and realized the competition would be immense.

So I thought if I could bring some new twist to cupcakes, and better the product and make it more convenient, then I would be all set.”

Photo by Popsy Cakes.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

The Miami Herald:

Patrick Brown’s fledgling, home-based company Finovation Inc. makes a handful of simple, useful products for the niche market of offshore fishermen.

His three innovations — the kite thong, the bait bridle and the “gimbalok” — are in about a dozen tackle shops between Melbourne and the Keys, with their popularity quickly growing by word of mouth.

But it’s only a part-time job for this 2008 Barry University graduate, who works at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School’s experimental fish hatchery and plans to pursue a master’s degree in marine affairs this fall.

Brown and his father and brother came up with a three-way Dacron framework with a bridle that can be adjusted to the size of the balloon and configured to make the kite fly at a certain attitude. Barrel swivels fit over the kite spars to keep them in place. No duct tape is needed.

They sell for about $16 apiece at shops such as Capt. Harry’s and Crook & Crook.

Photo by Finovation Inc..

From Business Opportunities Weblog.