There are a few things you can’t help but admire about kids who achieve success the old-fashioned way: hard work. Jaden Smith would've made it on this list, but then we saw After Earth. Most of these kids weren’t born into money or privilege, and didn’t have endorsement deals lined up around the block. What they did have, though, was an idea, and a determination to see it become a reality.
 |
| "And what have I done with my life so far?" |
5. Fraser Doherty: Grammy’s Jam
Fraser Doherty began at the age of 14 (when I realised that girls aren't so gross anymore), using his grandmother’s recipes to make homemade jam,
which he then sold to his neighbors in Edinburgh, Scotland. By 16 (when I stumbled upon first base), he’d created a huge demand for the stuff by tweaking the recipes on his own and calling it “SuperJam.” Business picked up so well that he dropped out of school to work full time, and he was soon after approached by a reputable supermarket chain in the UK in 2007, who offered to stock his product in all 184 of its stores. Taking out a loan worth around $9,000 from a local bank, Doherty used the money to cover expenses, including more factory time to increase production. And in 2009, with the help of his supermarket chain connection and the addition of Asda Wal-Mart as a stocking client, Fraser hit $1.2 million in sales (at his age my allowance was raised up to fifty whole dollars). He also published a book called “The Superjam Cookbook,”
available for sale through Amazon.
“I can’t be preoccupied with the money,” he says. “I make jam because it’s what I love to do. Success is pretty sweet too.”
 |
| It could've been me. Blast you teenage hormones! |
4. Ashley Qualls: Layout Loot
In 2004, 14-year-old Ashley Qualls launched WhateverLife.com as a means to show off her design work after a few YEARS of studying HTML (which doesn't stand for 'He's Totally My Lifeline'. We're talking Hyper Text Markup Language). Her site had virtually no traffic until she began offering free custom Myspace layouts
to fellow classmates. By 2005, with only word of mouth for advertising, her site began to explode with visitors seeking cool designs to personalize their social network page. That was when she joined Google’s Adsense program, which supplied ads to her site and paid her a share of
the click revenue.
With site traffic now buzzing, she began accepting offers from various companies to advertise their products or services on her site in exchange for payment. An undisclosed bidder even offered to buy out her site in 2005, for a reported $1.5 million and the car of her choice (not to exceed $100,000). She turned it down (because at fifteen she had more resolve than Donald Trump), opting instead to continue running the site she had started on a total expenditure of $8 for the domain name. WhateverLife.com now plays host to an estimated seven million visitors per month and continues to earn Ashley millions in advertising loot. She bought her own $250,000 home in Southgate, Michigan in 2006 (At 16).
 |
| So be a good sport and allow your teenage daughter unlimited access to the internet...who knows? |
3. Cameron Johnson: Greeting Card Green
When Cameron Johnson’s parents asked him to design invitations for an upcoming holiday party they were having, he probably had no idea just how far it would take him. Impressed with the results of his work, people around the neighborhood began offering him money for other designing jobs. By age 11, he had banked several thousand dollars in revenue with “Cheers And Tears,” his own custom line of greeting cards. (Finally. An eleven-year-old who can make something that isn't crap we have to pretend to like in order to protect their self-esteem).
 |
| "That's great, sweetie! Somebody's gonna grow up to be an artist" |
Determined to keep the ball rolling on a good business sense, he took the money he made from the greeting cards and formed his first online business, SurfingPrizes.com. The site, a pay-per-ad toolbar service, paid off big to the tune of
$300,000–400,000 per month. Before he even graduated from high school, Cameron had amassed a net worth in combined assets
estimated at $1 million. Cameron went on to sell the company name and software at age 19, but held onto the customer database he’d built up, leaving business options open to himself for the future.
2. Nick D’Aloisio: Smartphone Smackaroos
Seventeen-year-old Nick D’Aloisio set the Internet wires abuzz when it was announced that a smartphone app he created in his spare time had been bought by Yahoo at the purchase price of a
whopping $30 million. The Wimbledon school student
TAUGHT HIMSELF how to code at the age of 12—a skill that paid off when he finally created the news app that grabbed Yahoo’s attention. Nicks says he has plans to invest the money he earned from the sale and offers
the following advice for other aspiring developers: “If you have a good idea, or you think there’s a gap in the market, just go out and launch it because there are investors across the world right now looking for companies to invest in.”
 |
| We salute you |
1. John Koon: Fashion Financier
John Koon is the quintessential American entrepreneur. Opening the first-ever auto parts businesses in New York City, he began making millions in profit at the age of 16 with Extreme Performance Motorsports, a company that became one of the main suppliers for MTV’s hit reality show
Pimp My Ride. Not wanting to limit himself to the auto circuit, he decided to give fashion a try and soon launched a clothing company alongside rapper Young Jeezy. Koon earned himself an astounding $40 million in the process and is reportedly on the fast track to
becoming a billionaire. His latest expansion involves the first-ever Asian streetwear couture, a company that specializes in Japanese denim, rare indigo dyes, and cutting-edge secret wash
formulas for clothing.
 |
| Look out CK, JK is in the building |
Comments
Post a Comment