In 2009, 4-year-old Mikaila Ulmer found her great-grandmother’s lemonade recipe. Among the ingredients of this lemonade recipe was honey. This presented an issue. Within the past two weeks, Mikaila was stung twice by bees and now was deathly afraid of them. Wanting to help her overcome her rising fear, Mikaila’s parents suggested studying bees to better understand all that they do for the environment. After some research, Mikaila was inspired to make lemonade from her great-grandmother’s recipe, set up a lemonade stand outside her house, and give 10 percent of the profits to organizations that protect honeybees. Soon enough, a pizza shop wanted Mikaila to supply them with her lemonade. The business only continued to grow. Quickly, Mikaila realized she could not do this alone. She enlisted the help of her parents, who both have business school degrees, to create a logo, get into a manufacturer, and be placed in more stores. Mikaila explains, “We’re considered co-CEOs, because I make decisions that my parents wouldn’t make, and my parents make decisions that I wouldn’t make.” At the beginning of 2015, 9-year-old Mikaila won the contract to supply Whole Foods Market. Later in 2015, she made a tv appearance on Shark Tank and persuaded Daymond John, boss of clothing firm FUBU, to invest $60,000. 2 Years later a group of former and current football players invested $800,000. Business continues to grow, and Mikaila continues to receive awards for young entrepreneurship. She now dreams of starting additional businesses. “I want to start new companies – to me having one company gets boring sometimes,” she states. The story of Mikaila Ulmer is inspiring by displaying not only finding a passion and making a business out of it, but also overcoming fear and capitalizing on it. Her story also shows how important it is to realize we cannot create business alone. From the help of her parents to the funds of football players, Mikaila realized she needed help and guidance. Because of her boldness in seeking help, her business took off and became highly successful.
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Discovering his grandma’s recipes for jams, 14-year-old Fraser Doherty found himself a new hobby. Fraser began making jams and selling them throughout his neighborhood in Edinburgh, Scotland. After receiving positive feedback from his neighbors, Fraser decided to set up a stand at Edinburgh’s Farmers Market. His then business model involved him biking to customers to fulfill and deliver orders. However, demand quickly picked up. He started receiving more orders than he could handle with his minimal jam production in his parents’ kitchen and bike delivery. So, at the age of 16, Fraser made the decision to leave school and focus on his jams full time. He made a few changes to the recipes, making his jams only from fruit and fruit juice, and titled his business SuperJam. To increase production, Fraser rented out a factory for a few days each month. Sales continued to grow. Then, in early 2007, a high-end supermarket in the U.K. by the name of Waitrose approached Fraser with a proposition to sell SuperJam’s products in their stores. Within months Fraser had SuperJam’s products in 184 different Waitrose stores, only growing his business more. With ever growing demand, Fraser continued to expand his business. He borrowed 5,000 pounds to fund more factory time. 5 years later, Fraser launched SuperJam’s products in Korea and Japan where one million worth of merchandise was sold within an hour on a Korean shopping network. In 2019, Fraser sold his five-millionth jar of jam. In addition to his main company SuperJam, Fraser launched a second company in 2008 called SuperJam Tea Parties. Many parties have been hosted through SuperJam Tea Parties for elderly people who are alone or in nursing homes in Scotland and Wales. Fraser explains, “Guests often cry at the end of the afternoon since they’ve had so much fun.” With live music, dancing, and drinks, the parties have attracted as many as 500 guests. From hobby to business, Fraser Doherty remained passionate about his product and created value through it. From the adjacent possible (the combination of his grandma’s recipes and ingredients) to slow hunches (Fraser’s initial hunch to make jams as well as Waitrose for seeing the potential of the product), SuperJam’s story is one of amazing entrepreneurship.
At the age of 3 and a half, Ryan Hickman saw a problem and decided to act on it. Ryan realized he was bothered by seeing bottles and cans lying on the ground. So, he started in his own household. Ryan collected his family’s recyclables and then went with his father to a local recycling center. From this one haul, Ryan received 5 dollars and an unforgettable experience. “I just loved it… And I just wanted to keep doing it and doing it and doing it, because it was fun, and it was helping the environment,” Ryan later explains on an interview. One haul was not enough for young Ryan. In addition to his family’s recyclables, he began to also collect his neighbor’s recyclables, going around his neighborhood with a bag attached to his bike. At the age of only 3 and a half, Ryan was, by all intents and purposes, running his own business! His business, Ryan’s Recycling Company, began making Ryan a celebrity as he was recognized by CNN Kid Wonder and invited to appear on shows like “Ellen” and “Today.” With his growing fame, Ryan decided to create a digital presence and sell T-shirts on his website that had “Make the Sea Trash Free” printed on them. All his profits, both from selling T-shirts and his recycling company, go directly to the rescue organization Pacific Marine Mammal Center. Ryan’s Recycling Company raised over 14,000 dollars and recycled 1.5 million cans and bottles by 2022. Alongside his for-profit business, Ryan founded a nonprofit entitled “Project 3R” with an intent to educate about and create awareness for the importance of recycling. Through seeing a problem that he cared about and acting on it by building two companies, Ryan Hickman showed excellent entrepreneurial thinking, even at the age of 3 and a half!
At the age of six, young Cory Nieves set out to buy his mom a car. “I was tired of taking the bus, and I wanted to help my mom” Cory explains. The issue? Cars are expensive. So, Cory thought up a plan. Throughout his neighborhood, Cory began to sell Swiss Miss hot chocolate for $1 a cup. While selling these cups of hot chocolate, Cory noticed an opportunity and decided to pivot: cookies. Three months went by, and there before Cory was a cookie made from a recipe he and his mom worked hard to perfect. He bit into it, and in his mind, it was the perfect chocolate chip cookie. He was not alone in thinking his cookies were perfect; they were a hit! Deciding it was time to expand beyond his neighborhood, Cory went out to events and pitched his cookies to potential customers. His business only grew as time went on. After making an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, demand for Cory’s cookies flooded in. The business, at the time only Cory and his mom, had to grow to keep up. The business was incorporated into an LLC corporation, an e-commerce website was created and launched, and more “cookie helpers” were hired. Soon enough, Cory’s cookies were being shipped all over the country. The story of Mr. Cory’s Cookies is an inspiring example of bootstrapping and thinking as an entrepreneur. From having an idea, to experimenting in his kitchen, to creating a flourishing business, Cory displays entrepreneurial thinking in how he was able to see a problem, find a solution, pivot in his solution, and remain flexible allowing growth with rising demand.