Jack Parsons started a company called the Big Youth Group, a UK based brand that works to help young people become better through developing skills and learning how to create a personal brand. For a young person in the marketplace today, creating a personal brand, as well as differentiating oneself is vitally important in finding a job, and these are skills that are oftentimes not taught, or they aren’t taught well. Jack saw this gap an decided to fill it himself. His desire to fill this need and to help those who may not be able to help themselves comes from Jack’s own personal experience. He grew up with alcoholism in his home, no college degree, and very little prospects in the current job market, there weren’t any good options for Jack until he was offered a 3 month unpaid internship. Through this, he became frustrated having to place people who weren’t fully qualified for the roles they were placed in inside schools. Rather than wallowing in this dissatisfaction, he chose to create a solution, YourFeed, a platform to find out of work millennials and recruit them for jobs, unfortunately that endeavor wasn’t destined to last very long. After his setback, Jack parsons chose to pivot and launch back into the marketplace with the Big Youth Group. He hopes to be able to develop several similar or spin-off platforms that build off of the mission of Big Youth Group. One of the ways he wants to do this is a virtual youth currency, which allows members to buy things like coffee. In the end Jack wants to help change the attitude of large businesses and how they find new employees as well as to be able to inspire and train youth to be better applicants and to know how to carry themselves in the workplace. Its truly inspiring to see someone take a painful and difficult circumstance from their own life and use it to help improve the lives and wellbeing of those that may be in a similar situation.

Lets take a little trip over to the UK to talk about Grace Beverly. She is a __ London native who wants to find a new way to pursue fitness. Unlike fitness influencers, she isn’t posting workout routines or tips on how to lose weight or build muscle, instead she’s looking to change fitness through the tools that you use. Beverly runs 3 companies, which includes B_ND – which sells gym equipment, Shreddy – a fitness app, and Tala – an ethical athletic wear brand. All of these companies have a few things in common, a strong tie to ethical business practices, and a love for workouts. In addition to having a clear focus for her brands, Beverly has started all her businesses on her own capitol using her large social media following on YouTube and Instagram. Tala was founded as an ethical and affordable brand for fitness lovers who don’t have the budget for most ethical clothing brands, which opens Tala up for picking up customers from a pretty large market, especially when you consider all of the “broke college students” who don’t want to sacrifice their morals to look cute at the gym. As with many companies that are thriving right now, Grace’s companies largely are based in online marketing/sales and online services. In addition to having a company that didn’t have brick and mortar storefronts that had to close down at some point during the past 2 years is a huge asset to her brand and her business practices. Additionally the greater need for online workout material was made glaringly apparent when gyms closed down. In the end, both a strong holding to ethical along with a desire to make ethical brands attainable is hugely admirable in Grace Beverly and her brands.

How serendipitous that a WordPress website about young entrepreneurs could easily contain an article about the man who founded the business himself. He dropped out of the University of Huston, worked for CNET in 2004, which is a year after he started WordPress with Mike Little. At the time he founded WordPress, he was only 19 years old (this was before he dropped out of college). His employment at CNET was largely to encourage him to work on WordPress full time. Now to say that Matt Mullenweg had “tunnel vision” on WordPress would be erroneous, in his time working on the platform he also launched “Ping-O-Matic” which told blog search engines about blog updates. A few years later, he left CNET to focus more on WordPress. While working separate from CNET he also released Akismet and announced that the company Automattic was the company that would now be responsible for WordPress development and releases. WordPress exploded from there, growing faster than anyone could’ve imagined, and only continues to grow to this day. WordPress is home to hundreds of thousands of blogs, and the COVID-19 pandemic only solidified his role as a hugely successful and prominent player in the web-hosting game.

To this day, Matt Mullenweg puts emphasis on the benefit of working from home through his own writing and a TED-Talk he did on the topic. He also puts money towards various charities including a charity designed to bring clean water to Ethiopia and was a major donor to The Bay Lights project. Not only is his drive to finish and improve WordPress admirable, Matt’s ability to keep several “side” projects going at the same time is impressive. Even more impressive when you realize that not only is he able to multitask, he is able to stay involved with external things that will affect WordPress and keep his efforts focused while also branching into a variety of projects.

Ben Stern has had an entrepreneurial mind for much of his life. Starting in middle school, when he realized the school he went to was using the faces of their students to sell baked goods and coffee without any financial return to the students. When he saw this, Ben realized that using smiling young faces was, in fact, a great way to market a product and he used his own money to buy wholesale coffee which he resold to neighbors and friends, donating some of the proceeds to a good cause. This was just the beginning for this innovative young mind.  In 9th grade, ben watched a documentary about plastics and how they impact our environment which sparked the idea for Nohbo. Nohbo is a plastic free pod packaged personal care products. Ben wanted to find a way to cut down on the hundreds of billions of personal care packaging that is thrown away every year. Attempting to reduce these plastics which can take hundreds of years to break down in landfills to help protect our environment is a noble goal. Another noteworthy thing about Ben’s company is their transparency. If you look on their website, you can find information ranging from their technology, to where they get each part of their product. I personally really appreciate that not only is there a tangible social good to Nohbo, but there is honesty and integrity in product development and distribution.

Inspired by a connection she had with students regardless of their language barrier, 22 year old Bonnie Chiu started thinking about a way to use the universality of photos to empower women all over the world. Taking the plunge before she had any major backing, Bonnie started by simply posting on Facebook. No backers to speak of, on international women’s day, she posted the picture she took of the students who inspired her and shared a few articles on her feed. Further delving into the practicality and logistics of her idea, she began thinking of how to best bring the universal language of photography to those who it might not be accessible to. It began with teaching foreign workers in Hong Kong about photography, which then helped Bonnie find a more niche need and to pivot her idea. Bonnie learned that she needed to pivot how she would carry out her mission to be the most successful. She noticed a gap, an opening for her to fill. “Old school” point and shoot cameras were being discarded for DSLR cameras or simply using your phone’s camera. Bonnie realized that this was the perfect way for her to further her mission of sharing photography with those with whom its not always accessible. Especially in countries or places where reading and writing aren’t necessarily taught how to read or write, access to photography is a wonderful way to facilitate connection between women without written words. Its truly inspiring to see not only how a simple interaction with a group of girls in another country could inspire someone to seek to make an impact, and seeing Bonnie see a greater need and pivoting to meet it is a great application of an entrepreneurial thought process and the development of a business, product, or social endeavor.

Fast food and meal delivery services have become a very well accepted part of life in 21^st century America. While many Americans rely on fast food when they don’t have time to stop and cook, its really not a healthy long-term option, this was the realization that Laureen Asseo came to when caring for her father. Laureen’s father was an entrepreneur himself and always encouraged her in her ideas for business endeavors. She was on the path to open a sustainable fashion brand after getting out of school where she was studying fashion and design when her father became ill and Laureen had to take time at home to help care for him. Looking at the serious health issues that her father had begun to develop due to life-long unhealthy eating habits, Laureen decided that something needed to change. While acknowledging the business often required to keep relevant in the fast-paced world of today and how impractical it is for many workers to stop and cook healthy foods for themselves, Laureen came up with the idea for a healthy organic food delivery service to offer up an option that isn’t deep fried for American workers.

Thus, Fresh n’ Lean began. At the beginning it was just Laureen, her family, and some close friends investing in her business that started with just Laureen cooking and delivering healthy ready-made meals to her customers. As time went, people caught on to the idea of having fresh healthy food to fuel them in school or the workplace. Rather than becoming focused more on revenue than staying true to the heart of her business, Laureen has stayed on only offering healthy and organic foods showing a truly admirable integrity in her business and just how much she truly believes in the work that she does.

Laureen is a wonderful example of starting a business enterprise from the ground up and sticking true to what you believe in through the development of your brand. It is inspiring to see a young person making an effort to create an opportunity for healthy life choices to be more readily accessible for the average person. While she may not be inventing an entirely new market, nor is she “reinventing the wheel,” so to speak, Laureen has made a positive impact that has the ability to improve the health of many people with just a small change to the existing market. Clearly showing that you don’t have to come up with something “big” to have a real and meaningful impact on the world around you.