By Srabon Nath
Entrepreneurship is usually not something that a young child would talk about or plan to do. It’s thought that it is meant for people who are much older and mature. However, setting up small businesses or managing them when you are in middle school or high school not only gives you a little extra money, but also provides valuable experience for the future. This experience can range from figuring out what you want to do when you are older to learning strategies to helping your business grow.
The idea of starting a business may sound daunting to children, but obviously it doesn’t have to be anything big or risky. Starting a business can be as simple as opening a lemonade stand or selling chocolate to your friends. However, from my experience, it is best to start small and gather your profits to expand it. Since I was part of starting a business for my robotics club, I have seen that this strategy works great. Our robotics business started with selling coffee for 2 dollars in the morning. While we didn’t get much profit or customers, we were able to gather some money whilst getting the word out to others. Soon, we started selling hot chocolate and tea as well. We saw that hot chocolate received a lot of positive feedback and deduced that people were more willing to buy sweeter drinks. Upon taking some suggestions we started to sell boba as well. This was because we learned that boba was very popular and sought out after. We sold it for a cheaper price of only 4 dollars. We started from normal boba tea to selling a multitude of different flavors and also increased the price to 5 dollars. Basically this experience taught me that gradually increasing the diversity of your business will allow you to make small adjustments and you will be able to manage your business effectively. Also, one should always look at the feedback of the customers and look at what the trend is to figure out what to sell.
Running a small business will be greatly beneficial to a child. They will have something productive to do and also have many opportunities open up to them.