News about teens suddenly becoming entrepreneurs and earning large sums of money has been popping up left and right. In this digital age, teens have an unlimited resource of information and opportunity. You don’t have to wait until you reach adulthood to start your own business and make some money. You can start as a young teenager. Given that, here are some of the tips for teens to become the next money-making entrepreneur.
1. Know Yourself
As one of the most popular and greatest philosophers once said, “Know Thyself.” Before embarking or taking steps externally, you need to look first within yourself. Gauge yourself first and get a good grip on who you are as a person.
If you’re not sure where to start, you can ask yourself these questions as a guide:
- What are my skills and talents?
- What are the things that I like and don’t like to do?
- What are the things that interest me?
- What are my hobbies? Can I turn this into something I can make money from?
- Can I juggle both priorities and responsibilities of school together with business?
- Do I have time for this?
- Do I have enough funding for this? Where can I get my funding?
- Do I have space to conduct business matters?
Another method you can use to do this is finding your ikigai, which is means “reason for being.” This is the point where what you’re good at, what you love, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for the meet. The intersection among those things will help you find a reason for being and can be used as a guide for your foundations on your road to entrepreneurship.
Having a clear vision of who you are and what your niche is will serve as a good foundation when you start thinking about what kind of entrepreneur you want to be. The best side hustles for teens will depend on what your skills and hobbies are. This step will set the tone throughout your journey into becoming an entrepreneur.
Related: 8 Best Side Hustles for Teenagers Online
2. Pick Your Niche
Once you have a list of your skills, talents, hobbies, and interests, find your niche. Look for a balance or common factor between the four. After that, think of ways on how you can monetize it as a product, service, and eventually, a business.
Just to give you a better picture, here’s an example. If one of your interests is food and you also love baking, then one of the niches that you could go into is becoming a baker. As an entrepreneur, you can monetize your skill of and love for baking by selling pastries, cookies, or cakes. By doing this, you are using your skills and doing something you love while making money out of it.
This is just one of the examples. The possibilities are limitless depending on your own skills, talents, likes, and dislikes. So, take some time to ruminate on the list of hobbies, skills, and interests. Then, find a common factor between them and think of ways on how you can sell it.
3. Read Up
In life, whether you’re a teenager or an adult, you should never stop learning. The keys to becoming an entrepreneur at an early age are resilience and knowledge. Knowledge and skill set will be your best friend when it comes to entrepreneurship. At an early age, teens can absorb more knowledge than adults. Therefore, at this point in your life, you need to read up on topics that interest you and the industry where you plan on starting your business.
Once you’ve narrowed down the skills and hobbies you want to use for your business, read up on it and gain as much knowledge as you can. On top of that, read about business management, finance, and entrepreneurship. Learn how people in the same age range started their business. Know how the big shots such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs started from the ground up.
With the digital age, you can get your hands on all the materials you need. Books and videos on these matters are all easily available online. Rather than having a problem finding information, there’s now an abundance of information within your reach. Take advantage of it and learn as much as you can.
4. Join Networking Sessions
The startup community is very open to teenagers who are making their way into becoming entrepreneurs. Because of this, they usually organize a number of events where successful entrepreneurs can talk about their experiences. After these events, there are typically some networking sessions where everyone can get to know each other and talk about their work.
Joining networking sessions can prove to be very useful for you. This way, you can get to talk to people who’ve actually been where you are right now. You’ll be able to hear stories about their experiences and how they started out. From there, you can also take the opportunity to ask all the questions you have as you embark on your journey as a new entrepreneur.
5. Validate Your Ideas
An idea is just an idea before it’s implemented. Before putting your money and going all-in for your idea, try to test out your products or services first. This is where the idea of an MVP, or a minimum viable product, comes into the picture. MVPs are the simplest or prototype version of your product or service that people can try out.
Going back to the example of becoming a baker and baking pastries, you can start experimenting with recipes. Once you have a constant recipe that you can easily work with, you can try baking and letting other people try it first. Begin with your family and friends, and then slowly expand your circle.
Let people who are not your friends or family try your product as well for free. Then, ask them about their opinion on the product. This way, you’ll be able to find out what you need to improve on. You can call this period a soft launch, so people know that this isn’t the final product yet.
6. Don’t Give Up
After knowledge, the next crucial thing you need is resilience. There’s a 99 percent chance that your first idea won’t necessarily be a success. However, that doesn’t mean you’re a failure or that you should start giving up.
It’s normal for the first idea to not work—you just need to keep trying and trying again. In most cases, a business isn’t profitable for the first 3 years. Just keep on improving your product and find ways until you get your time in the spotlight. It’s just like experimenting on the right recipe before you can get that winning taste.
7. Plan Out Funding Requirements
All these ideas are for nothing if you don’t have the capital to turn them into reality. First, come up with a business plan and set a target amount of capital you’ll need to start the business. So, to become the next money-making entrepreneur, you need to plan out ways on how you’ll achieve the level of capital you need.
The easiest way to get funding support for your business is to ask your family members and relatives for some seed money. This way, you won’t need to pay interest. Moreover, it’s easier to ask for capital from your family and relatives. It will also be easier to ask for extensions if you can’t pay them back just yet. There are still a lot of ways, even for a teenager, to gain capital, which doesn’t include asking your parents for money.
On the other hand, you can also come up with your own fund-raising ideas. You can start selling old clothes you no longer use to raise a part of your capital. In addition, you can also offer tutoring or babysitting services around the area until you hit your target capital.
8. Let Your Parents Know
Before all this, make sure that your parents know about it. Being in school while building your own business can be a very difficult undertaking, and you can’t do it alone. Help from your parents will be very critical at this point. Thus, it’s essential that you give them a heads up so they can support you in every way they can to make sure your plans are successful.
If you look into how other teens did it, you’ll see that their parents played an important role in their success as well. Don’t be afraid to ask for help because you’ll definitely need all the help you can get.
Conclusion
Reaching the point of becoming an entrepreneur at a very young age is not something that happens overnight. You still need to take the necessary preparatory steps to reach that summit. The process can be quite long and difficult, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. By following these tips, you’ll be on the right track towards becoming the next money-making entrepreneur. Good luck!
