Cameron Johnson definitely showed entrepreneurial qualities since a young age. At age five he started selling vegetables from his family’s garden to neighbors. When he was nine years old, in 1994 he started his first official business: Cheers and Tears, a greeting card company. With Cheers and Tears, by the time he was twelve, he was making 50,000 a year! The same year, Cameron also purchased 30 Ty beanie babies and made a profit of ten times what be bought them for by selling them on eBay.
For his next venture, Johnson used $50,000 of his own money to kickstart My EZ Mail, a confidential email forwarding service. In a few months, MY EZ Mail was making Johnson $3000 in advertising revenue.
Johnson’s next project was called Surfingprizes.com, an advertisement service that put scrolling advertising on top of web browsers. Users of Surfingprizes.com received 20 cents per-hour to have the ads displayed. Referral marketing was used to spread the word; users would get 10% of the revenue generated by each customer they referred to use the service.
Cameron Johnson started all of the companies named above before he was fifteen and was a millionaire before high school! As a twenty-eight year old, Johnson is still up to the same entrepreneurial activity and it doesn’t look like he is going to stop anytime soon. After reading about his story I am sure glad that I save my beanie babies from my childhood!