More and more kids and young people from Generation Z are willing to go beyond traditional part-time jobs to earn their own pocket money.
Why walk your neighbours’ dogs or sit with their children when you can work remotely or start your own business?
Simple one-time jobs can sponsor a weekend visit to McDonald’s and a movie. Yet, they will not help you develop unique skills or earn more money over time.
Learning how to start a business as a kid, on the other hand, can be a life-changing experience opening new life opportunities. With that being said, this bold move requires a good knowledge of the challenges you can encounter and the resources you need to assemble to maximise your chances of success.
In this article, we will analyse what a kid entrepreneur should know to start a lucrative business.
Sort Out the Legal Stuff
In most countries including the UK, business licenses are only granted to persons being at least 18 years old.
While a kid entrepreneur can be the true mastermind behind a successful company, they still need their parent or other adult person to establish and run it.
Requirements may vary substantially depending on a certain industry and sector. For example, a fast-food business or a grocery may demand extensive food certification while medical startups can only be established by persons with specialised education in a certain field.
On the contrary, a company selling custom T-shirts or other handmade accessories can probably get away with a usual limited company license or a sole trader license.
Make sure that you investigate all legal stuff involved in your future business. There are few things more frustrating than losing your dream company due to legal hassles.
Create 3-5 Ideas
Many kid entrepreneurs make the mistake of focusing on one ‘dream business’ right from the start.
This may not be the best option until you perform a rigorous market analysis (more on this later).
Going back and forth multiple times is a time waster.
Create 3-5 business ideas right away and analyse all of them afterwards.
If something does not work on paper or fails when you attempt to implement your plans in practice, you can always switch to Plan B.
This way, you do not get excessively attached to a single problematic idea you do not want to discard due to the lack of alternatives.
Create a Business Plan
This one is simple. If you want to drive to another town, you need to calculate the distance, know your car’s average fuel consumption, and make sure that you have enough cash to cover your fuel costs.
Skip this step, and you will find yourself in the middle of nowhere with an empty tank and no money to refill it.
The same applies to any business.
Run all calculations for each of your 3-5 ideas and see which one can potentially bring more money. Record all potential costs and add a leeway for emergencies. If this is your first business, increase this margin of error at least twofold.
A good way to get the hand of business planning is to experiment with several business kit for kids products.
They can usually be bought in a variety of options to help you test different scenarios and see whether your skills in this sphere need to be improved.
Identify Your Skill and Resource Gaps
In some cases, you can find that your dream business may require more skill or resources than you presently possess.
This is fine since many entrepreneurs use borrowed funds or rely on the expertise of their partners and employees.
However, make sure that your skill and resource gap is not extreme. If some sphere seems completely new to you, lucrative business ideas in it might not work well.
Your lack of knowledge and expertise may be blinding you to some inherent problems and limitations. Keep this in mind and focus on the businesses for kids that can be started with your current resources and skills.
You can always take a bank loan or get some expert consultations later.
Start Small
This advice continues the previous one.
If your experience is limited, you should not try to compete with large companies right away.
A small T-shirt design business or similar businesses kids can start can be run by most novice entrepreneurs if they do not skip the business plan creation step.
It is also easy to close such companies with minimal losses if something goes terribly wrong.
While their dreams can be big, kids need some time to grow. This also relates to their entrepreneurial skills.
Kid businesses that make money usually rely on strong expertise in a certain area and many months of learning and thoughtful experimentation.
There is nothing wrong with spending more time on educational materials or business planning. You can always remove the training wheels later when you feel more confident.
Set Your First Development Goals
While this may sound counter-intuitive, you should thoroughly test your business ideas in practice before writing business expansion plans.
If everything goes fine and your company demonstrates reasonable profits over time, you can set your first development goals.
They may include hiring a couple of workers to help you or purchasing some additional equipment. Do not make the mistake of making this step early on.
Expansions of your business must be fuelled by your real profits.
Kid businesses that make money always make sure that they can succeed without substantial external help.
If your kids business does not generate profits, you should optimise it first.
Otherwise, you can get ‘more of the same thing’ while also becoming indebted to banks or investors.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.