(YoungBiz.com)
- American teens believe in business. In fact, a Gallup survey reports
that 70 percent of American teens would like to own a business.
What are they doing about it? They're entering college programs on
entrepreneurship by the droves, for one thing. But a growing number of
these entrepreneurial-minded teens ('treps, as they call
themselves) aren't willing to wait. They're starting businesses now,
while they're still in high school--or even junior high.
Traveling
Fast
Take
17-year-old Matt Chaifetz in Manhasset, New York. On the phone, he
sounds like any other high school student in America. But he travels to
Puerto Rico regularly on business, takes awesome vacations most of us
only dream about, and recently appeared on Business Week TV to discuss
his award-winning travel business, Innovative Travel Concepts (ITC).
ITC is a travel booking
service that Chaifetz started when he
was 13. His clients are travel agents across the United States who use
his booking service to make travel arrangements for their own clients.
ITC also makes things easier for travel agents by providing
record-keeping, handling commissions, filing reports and offering
access to reservation networks. Currently, Chaifetz has about 500
clients and does about $1 million in sales per year.
Average
Income for Teens
Matt
ranked No. 6 last year in the annual YoungBiz 100 list of top teen
entrepreneurs in the United States. This report, posted on www.youngbiz.com,
indicates that the top 10 winners in 2001 earned more than $5.5 million
combined in annual profit, which is an average income of $550,000. The
other 90 winners earned an average annual profit of $17,389--which
means they earned about $23.13 for every hour they worked at their
business ventures.
So what are the most
profitable businesses for young
entrepreneurs? According to the YoungBiz 100, tech businesses rule.
More than 33 percent of the top 100 'treps sell computer hardware or
software, design Web sites or are involved in selling products over the
Internet.
The second most
profitable segment of business for teens is
what YoungBiz calls "infotainment." This includes youth like Andrew
Schneider in Tomball, Texas, who got interested in doing magic shows
when he was in grade school. Today he performs up to seven times a week
and earns about $6,000 per month.
Chris Short, owner of
C.S. International in Cave Creek,
Arizona, is an example of the "info" side of the infotainment division.
When he and his younger sister Jennifer were in junior high, they
started a neighborhood circular called The Rancho Review to advertise
their Red Cross-certified babysitting skills. Jennifer stayed with the
babysitting, but Chris, now 19, went on to develop several other papers
and a printing business. Last year, his billing rate for printing
services was $65 an hour. "I think I do pretty well for my age," he
says.
You're the
Boss!
So
is it all about money? Or is there more to it? The Gallup survey says
youth entrepreneurship is more about being independent. Of the students
surveyed, 73 percent listed their number-one reason for wanting to be
an entrepreneur as "to be my own boss." Kelvis Patrick, 15, a winner in
the food division of the YoungBiz 100, is a good example. He says, "I
knew I never wanted to work for anyone, so I needed to start my own
business."
Whitney Smith, 13, owner
of Whitney's Event Planning in
Chicago, agrees. "I worked at two candy stores, and they told me when
to come in and how much I could make," she says. "I would rather start
my own business. I want to be the boss, say what I'm going to do and
determine how much I'm going to make--without limits."
'Treps
Make a Difference
A majority of the teens
interviewed for
the YoungBiz 100 said that success can't be measured by money alone.
And Gallup reported that nearly 70 percent of the students interested
in business wanted to give back to the community that supports their
ventures.
Pankaj Arora, an
18-year-old in Rochester, Minnesota, says he
founded his tech biz (known as paWare) in the true spirit of
entrepreneurship. Says Arora, "I had two main objectives: to help
people by giving them desired products and services, and to have fun
doing what I like to do." What more could there be?
