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Straightforward, friendly FREE advice to help you get started with your first business idea.

Written especially for the
teenage entrepreneur.

Hey, I’m aiming this page at every teenage entrepreneur. People who think it might be cool and exciting to have their own businesses.

Although things have changed a bit since I was at school way back in the 1970’s, most of the time, the careers department and your teachers seem to aim you more at ending up “getting a job” than creating something on your own and being a teenage entrepreneur.

For some people that’s fine, but for others, it’s a ton more fun to try to do something on your own to make some money.

By the time I was 18 or so, I was well on the way to creating my own business. I wanted to do something in rock music as a living, and after playing in some bands, wound up setting up as a rock music teacher at home. The rest - as the saying goes - is history, and I ended up with over 60 different rockschools in a big franchise network. I was classed as a young entrepreneur. You can learn what a franchise is by clicking this franchise your business link (LINK) if you want.

Even in the early days of my music teaching business, I was earning more money than most of my friends who had boring jobs.

These days, the word for people who want to start up a business on their own is “entrepreneur”, and it’s for people like this that I’ve set up this website for. Especially the teenage entrepreneur.

How you could start as a teenage entrepreneur

When you first start thinking about the idea of becoming a teenage entrepreneur, I reckon the best thing to do is come up with some things that you could do and jot them down on a bit of paper.

The sort of things you come up with all ought to be cheap or free to get started - because I bet you haven’t got much money, especially if you’re still at school!

What's an investor and what do they do?

Later, when your business starts to be a bit successful then maybe some members of your family might start to help you to do even better out by giving you some money. This is called “investing”. Investors are handy not only for the teenage entrepreneur, but for every young entrepreneur just starting up.

The idea is that they give you some money to help you advertise more, or buy things to sell at a profit, and later, when you’ve made enough, then you give it back to them, together with a bit more, which is called “interest”.

This is basically the way that banks work, and later on, you’ll be able to set up a bank account and borrow money from a bank in the same sort of way. Understanding how a bank works is essential for the teenage entrepreneur, but ou can worry about that a bit later.

How do bank accounts work and do I need one?

A bank account is a place where you put your money. You can pay money in at the bank counter, and you can take money out. You can also buy things using checks or plastic cards in shops.

If, as a teenage entrepreneur, you spend more money than you put into the bank, then you “go into the red”. Sometimes a bank will give you permission to do this a bit, and they will give you something called an “overdraft”.

But the whole thing about running a business as a teenage entrepreneur, is that you need to try to get more money coming in through what you sell, called “sales” than money going out - called “costs”. The difference between your sales and costs - the amount you have left is called your “profit”. It’s pretty simple really.

A bank give you a bit of paper called a “statement” every so often that shows you how much has gone into the bank in sales and how much has come out in costs.

It’s a good idea for you to also write this down at home as you make money and spend money, so that before the bank statement arrives, you’ll know what your “financial position” actually is.

If you’re lucky enough to have borrowed some money from a family member to get started as a teenage entrepreneur, then you might not have a bank account at first, so you will have to write down your sales and costs yourself.

Then you can show this regularly to your family member (or “investor”). They’ll be keen to see how you’re getting on, and appreciate this. It will also help you to be able to work out how and when you can pay them their money back with some interest (a bit extra).

If you start to make a profit, then it’s a good idea, I think, to pay a little bit of money back regularly. If you borrowed money from a bank, then you’d have to do that.

Ideas for starting your business

I think now you’d agree that it’s best to try to think of something that doesn’t cost much to start. This is because, the less costs you have, the easier it is to create a profit.

I think it’s best to start off by thinking about things that you’re good at, or could easily do. Sometime a teenage entrepreneur might start off by offering “services” to other people like friends and family members.

Services are where you do a job in return for some money, as opposed to selling an actual item. Some services that you might be able to offer as a young entrepreneur in business might be...

Car cleaningYou could start with the family car.

Gardening jobsThings that are easy for you to do but boring and time consuming for adults, like sweeping leaves, mowing a lawn, clearing rubbish away and so on are good way to earn some money.

Write down some business ideas

Get a pen and a bit of paper and write down a list of services that you might be able to offer.

What’s the difference between selling a service and a product

Services are a good way to start as a young entrepreneur, because you don’t have to buy much at all - if anything - to get started.

The other way to make money is to sell items, just like a shop does. Let’s have a look at what to do if you want to consider this sort of thing to start your teenage entrepreneur career.

The idea is quite simple. You buy some stuff at a low price (in business this is called a “trade price”), and then you persuade people (“customers”) to buy the items from you at a higher price (a “retail price”).

The difference between what you buy the item for and what you sell it for, is your profit. The bigger your profit, the successful a business is.

Sometimes there will also be a few extra costs to take off your profits though, like the money it cost to let people know you have the product available (known as “advertising”).

If you sell actual stuff, read this...

As a teenage entrepreneur, if you start a business selling products instead of services, then you’ll more likely need some money right at the beginning, because you’ll have to buy your trade price items (known as your “stock”), before you can sell them!

You’ll also have to find somewhere to store the items before they are sold. In business, this is called a “warehouse” - because another word for stock is “wares” - you are selling your wares.

If you decide to trade in small items, then you might be able to store them in your room, and for some bigger ones, perhaps you can persuade your parents to let you use part of the garage in the house where you live?

You do need to consider these things carefully before you decide on trading stock as a young entrepreneur.

The other important thing you need to think more carefully about when trading stock as opposed to services, is how much you can sell the stock for.

How to make money selling stuff

For the biggest profits, then there needs to be a big difference between your trade price and your retail price.

As a teenage entrepreneur, I think it’s a good idea to try to always make at least 50% difference between what you buy for and what you sell your stock for. Some young entrepreneurs think this should be 100%.

So, here’s a financial example. If you buy something to sell for $10 then you should put it up for sale for at least $15. That’s a 50% “profit margin”. In business this is often called the “mark-up”.

If we were going for the 100% mark-up, we’d buy a stock item for $10 and put it up for sale for $20.

This gives you the chance of a good profit and also leaves you some money to be able to spend on telling your customers that you have the item available for them to buy - advertising it.

Getting customers

However good an idea you come up with as a teenage entrepreneur, your business will only work if you get customers to buy your service or product from you.

So, every time you come up with a business idea, like that car cleaning one, or that bit of gardening that I came up with as examples (and I’m sure you’ve already thought of some much better ones), you have to think of how you can let people know about it BEFORE you decide to do it.

If you don’t do that, then you could spend ages setting up a business that doesn’t make you any money - and that’s not what being a successful teenage entrepreneur is all about.

It’s even more important if you are going to buy and sell products as a teenage entrepreneur. This is because you will have to buy things to sell first, and this will cost you money and be a “risk”, before you have sold them.

When you’re In business as a young entrepreneur, you do have to take risks like this, but you need to make the risk as small as possible. You can do that by trying to make sure that you have the best chance of selling the stock quickly at a good mark-up to customers.

How much will people pay for something?

Whether you sell a product or a service, one of the most important things to try to find out early on, is how much you could charge for something. You could start to do this by asking family and friends and seeing what they say.

Some might say a high amount, some might say a lower amount. The more people you ask, the better. I think it’s a good idea to then set-up your price as being somewhere in the middle.

In bigger business, this is taken very seriously indeed, and is called “market research”.

As a teenage entrepreneur, you need to take it seriously too. If you are buying stock, then it’s a good idea to work backwards.

First of all, do you market research and find out how much your customers are prepared to pay. This enables you to set your selling price.

Remember that you’ll need to have a mark-up of at least 50% - 100% would be even better.

Let’s make up an example. Suppose that you find out that your customers will be happy to pay $20 for something.

Buying stuff to sell

To get your mark-up right, you need to go an talk to the person you are planning to buy your stock from (in business this is called the “supplier”), and try to buy it for a low price.

The most that you could pay for an item would be $15 - this would give you the chance of a 50% mark-up. However, ideally, you’d like a 100% mark-up, and so when you go to see your supplier, you need to have in mind that you’d like to buy the stock item for just $10.

This sort of thing is important if you want to make a success of being a teenage entrepreneur.

Getting stuff cheap

It’s a good idea to be prepared to argue a bit to try to get a good price. In business this is called “negotiating”. As a young entrepreneur, you need to get good at it!

Often a supplier will be willing to negotiate a bit, and so it’s usually not a good idea to take the first price that he or she mentions.

There are some things that you can say and do to help to get a better price in situations like this.

First of all, you could offer to buy more than one item of the stock - usually an entrepreneur will buy multiple items of the same thing.

The supplier recognizes this, and will sometimes give a “quantity discount”. The more you buy, the cheaper each item is, and thus, the bigger your mark-up and potential profits.

You need to be careful though, because the more items you buy, the more you have to pay out, and you have to be sure that you can sell them. This is where business risk comes into things again.

It’s actually all good fun, and the more you get used to buying and selling as a teenage entrepreneur, the more you’ll start to be able to predict exactly what is best to do. It’s exciting.

Giving back stuff you don’t sell

The other thing to try to get your supplier to agree to, that could reduce your business risk, is for them to say that, if you don’t manage to sell the items, then, as long as they’re still in perfect unused condition then, within a specific length of time, you hand them back to the supplier and get a refund. This is known in business as “sale or return”.

If a suppler does agree to this then, usually, the price will be a bit higher, so you have to watch your profit margins. There’s no point in reducing your risk but not making any mark-up or profits on things you sell.

Start with swaps

A good way to start as a teenage entrepreneur without even using money is to do some swaps. Maybe there’s something you’ve got that you don’t want anymore, and something that you’re friend has got that he or she doesn’t want anymore, but you’d LOVE to have.

If that’s the case, then you could just make a swap.

Swapping is how business works. You have something that someone really wants and is valuable to them. You agree to swap it for some money. If you think about it like this, you can see that swapping is good training for starting in business as a young entrepreneur.

Sometimes, you’ll need to find ways to tell the other person what you have available to swap, and that’s what advertising is all about too.

Fitting it all into your life

If you want to become a young entrepreneur and learn to build successful businesses, then right from the start, you need to treat your business activities quite seriously. This means spending plenty of time on them.

When I work with adult entrepreneurs, I tell them that there are several things that they need to have.

The first is lots of time to spend on their businesses. If you don’t spend much time on them, then they are likely to not be very successful, or even fail completely.

Not only could you end up not making any money, you could also end up actually losing some. Maybe, for example, you’ve bought some stock that no-one has bought.

You need to think about some of the other things that you like to do, like hanging out with friends, playing computer games, doing sport and so on, and figure out how much time you need to devote to your teenage entrepreneur activities as well, to fit it all into your life.

You might have to cut down on some of the other things that you do, to be able to fit your business in!

I think it’s a good idea to agree to spend a certain amount of hours on your business every week and stick to that.

Planning your business

What you’re really doing when you start to think like this is “business planning”. To be a successful young entrepreneur, or teenage entrepreneur, then you really need to have a sort of plan for your business. Things that you need to think about are:

Setting aside a certain amount of time for it.

Deciding what to sell and how to sell it.

Deciding what to charge.

Deciding on a mark-up.

Setting aside how much money you need for advertising and actually working out what advertising you will need to do.

Working out how much you’d like to make as a profit - basically, how much you want to sell to be pleased with your efforts - and by what date you’ll have done that.

I’ve written a page on entrepreneurbeginner.com that goes into loads more detail about planning. More about planning a business I know that planning seems quite boring and it’s more fun to just get on with stuff - I used to be like that - but if you have a good plan, then there’s something to follow, and it makes it easier to know how well you’re doing, and what you should be doing.

It also makes the precious time you have decided to set aside to work on your business each week much more productive, because you tend to know what to do next.

It’s a bit like a school timetable really, that tells you what lessons you have to go to, when they start and finish, and what classroom they are in.

Without a plan like that, you’d never remember what you were supposed to be doing, or where you were supposed to be and when.

Another example of a sort of plan that you might already have come across that’s probably been useful, is a homework timetable. That reminds you of what you’re supposed to do and when something is due in.

Promoting and advertising your new business

As a teenage entrepreneur, one good way to let people know that you have something to sell, is simply to talk to people about it. Tell your friends, and encourage them to tell as many other people as they can. They’ll probably think you’re pretty cool running your own business, and will probably want to tell people about it anyway!

The more people you can talk to about your business, the more it gets known about - and this sort of promotion doesn’t actually cost you anything.

Sometimes you might find that people you talk to might like a favour in return of some sort. Well, this is usually fine too, see what you can do to return the favor (but don’t get forced into doing anything that you don’t want to do by anyone!).

In business, this sort of chatting to people is called “networking.”

Explaining your business to people

When you become a teenage entrepreneur you will need to practice being able to tell people about what you’re doing in just a few sentences. Even your best friends will probably get bored if you go on and on about your business. And it’s even worse if they don’t understand what you’re on about, especially if you’re encouraging them to go and tell other people about it and network for you. It would be hopeless if they explained it other people all wrong!

So, think about what you do, and see if you can explain it to someone in just a few sentences.

Pretend that you’re on a mobile phone and you have just two minutes before the battery goes dead, to explain your business to your friend who is on the other end of the line. Can you do it?

Probably not straight off. So, spend some time practicing what to say. Once you’ve explained what you do a few times in exactly the same way, it will get easier.

To be a good teenage entrepreneur you need to be enthusiastic and clear. People like enthusiasm - especially older people!

Business cards

A good low-cost way of helping people that you speak to remember what you’re doing, is to hand out little cards, called “business cards”.

These can have the name of your business on them, a bit about what you do, and sometimes a short slogan. Follow this link for a company who can make these for you cheaply (LINK COMING SOON)

For example, like I said earlier, I used to run a business teaching people to play rock music. I called it “Clive’s Music Room” and had a slogan saying “the easy way to play”.

Making up a business name and a logo

It’s a good idea to develop a “business logo”, which is something that helps to get your business remembered - think of how many shops and products have logos associated with them.

I’ve written some advice on doing these sorts of things on a different page of entrepreneurbeginner.com. You can get to it from here entrepreneur beginner business tips page Having a good speech ready to explain your business and also some business cards to hand out, will help you to be taken more seriously as a teenage entrepreneur by people - especially older people who might be able to help you or be useful.

Getting taken seriously by adults

It’s quite hard being taken seriously when you’re young, isn’t it? So you’ll need all the help you can get. It’s great fun building a successful business and proving older people wrong - people who said it couldn’t be done. I did that.

But don’t get big-headed. No-one like a bighead. I bet you’ve come across some of those at school. They get on your nerves and usually you want to keep out of their way, don’t you think?

Once you’ve got started as a teenage entrepreneur, you might want to think about doing some advertising in local papers and so on. I’ve written a bit about that sort of thing too, and you can find some stuff to help you here (you'll need to scroll down the page a bit)... Marketing help and ideas

Make a business out of your hobby

Above all else, try to make being a teenage entrepreneur FUN! After all, that’s what life should be all about - and if you can make money doing something that’s fun, then you’ll always have a generally nice time.

Try to use your hobbies and interests to make a business from. It’s good to do something that you know about, and already enjoy. Hobbies can often be made into businesses by the young entrepreneur.

My hobby way playing guitar, and I made a big business out of teaching others to do it in the end. It’s made millions of dollars now.

Buying stuff to help your business get going - my recommendations

I’ve got tons of advice and help for you here at entrepreneurbeginner.com and I hope you enjoy reading it. Most of the other pages are written for older people, but I think you’ll get the idea of what I’m on about. Ask a parent to explain anything that doesn’t make sense.

Sometimes, here and there on this website, I recommend things like software programs, books or places to get more information or to learn more. These can cost some money, but I think the things are well worth it. Usually I've personally tested them out.

Speak to your parents about buying them and see what they say.

If you don’t understand something, always ask

There will be other times when, as a teenage entrepreneur, you need some outside help from others too. Don’t ever be afraid to ask for it. Everyone needs help sometimes, and it’s better to ask someone than do it wrong.

It’s just like school - if you don’t understand the homework, then it’s best to ask the teacher for more information than spend ages doing it all wrong and getting a rubbish mark at the end of it.

Don’t be afraid to fail. All entrepreneurs do that sometimes.

My final bit of advice is to not be afraid of failure. As a teenage entrepreneur, you won’t always succeed with all your business ideas. Sometimes, however hard you seem to try, things won’t work out. The secret is to learn from your mistakes and try something else straightaway!

More than anything, I hope that you’ll have a go at being a teenage entrepreneur. The world needs people like you to dream up exciting businesses and do new things.

I hope too, that you’ll find my website helpful as you get started. I’ve tried to write things in a simple, honest and friendly way that’s easy to understand.

Do have a good look around some of the other pages of entrepreneurbeginner.com. I think you’ll find them useful, and they will make even more sense now that you’ve got through all this one.

Good luck with your business ideas and remember entrepreneurbeginner.com is always here to help and support you as you develop as a teenage entrepreneur.

Here’s to your success!

Clive Brooks

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Straightforward, friendly FREE advice to help you get started with your first business idea. Written especially for theteenage entrepreneur.