One of the things I do is coach high school entrepreneurs for a nonprofit called Believe In A Dream. You might not expect them to be as well prepared in the early stages of building a business as “adult” entrepreneurs. You would be WRONG.
Here are a few examples where some young entrepreneurs naturally had VERY SOLID starts to their business - doing things that many adult entrepreneurs take months or years to learn.
Be True To Your Brand
The young man in the photo above is from Amp Lab in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Amp Lab is a studio school where innovation and entrepreneurship are threaded through everything the students do and experience. Sometimes, they develop their own businesses. This entrepreneur is building an anime-inspired apparel brand. When he pitched, he was wearing his product. That’s the way to represent (and demo at the same time).
Be True To Your Art
The young man above is working on a design on his tablet. We were getting ready to talk, but I didn’t want to interrupt him as he designed. It’s his art. You can tell that he loves making art (he didn’t want to stop designing). I tell every art-related entrepreneur to keep the focus on their art - never to let their venture just become routine manufacturing. I know that if that happens, they will lose interest and quit.
Today I was at another Northeast Indiana school, Garrett High School, talking to some young ladies starting a pottery business. As I started to tell them about keeping their art at the forefront, they interrupted me to tell ME how they were putting art first and product second (well, a close second). Fewer products and fewer designs a first, working on artistically “perfecting” a few designs rather than just cranking out volume. I loved hearing that!
Start Something
How many dreamers have you met who talk about business ideas, but don’t pull the trigger? There’s always a way to get started. You may start small while working your way up to your big vision.
Another Garrett High School student I had previously talked with, Grant, stopped me this morning to show me how he had started. He is planning to build a business helping people live healthy and avoid Metabolic Syndrome. He knows that will entail some medical related higher education. But, instead of waiting until he is done with college and grad school, he is starting now. He already knows more about Metabolic Syndrome than most of us. Since he JUST started, he published one post out on his Substack - it explains the basics of metabolic health for novices like me. More posts to follow. I subscribed - you should, too. P.S be healthy!
Learn From Your Target Market
OK, so this post was definitely inspired by students I talked with at Garrett High school over the past two days. My target market, LOL. Here’s another cool story.
How many times have you seen newbie entrepreneurs survey their friends, family, and colleagues to get “feedback” about their business idea? Often times, none of those people are actually in the newbie’s target market.
One young lady I talked with is building a travel app for exchange students, particularly those who are visiting new countries (like her, by the way). She showed me her market research results. She had feedback from exchange students from over eight different countries! The exact people who were her target market - and a wide variety of them. Awesome!
How many times have you seen newbie entrepreneurs ask “survey” participants only about the features the newbie cares about? “Do you like ‘xyz’? Yes or no.”
This young lady had asked open ended questions of all her survey respondents. She was able to show me a list of the travel app needs / features they said (unprompted) that they wanted. Plus, now she knows the language they use to describe those needs and features! Brilliant!
That’s all for today. As I catch other young entrepreneurs instinctively doing other cool things, I’ll write more! Thanks for reading!