Eighteen-year-old Nic Bianchi founded Bianchi Candle Co when he was only twelve years old. His family hails from the village of Grondola in Tuscany, Italy. Nic’s heritage has inspired his six-year-old candle company greatly. Growing up with a love for math and science, Nic has used his passions to formulate, design, and innovate the well-known household item — candles! At a young age, Nic was able to put an immeasurable amount of care into putting together an aesthetically pleasing candle that serves customers scents of the utmost quality. 
Though Bianchi candles are delightful to smell and wonderful to look at, Nic’s product does not rest in its material laurels, but rather in the meaning behind the packaging. Bianchi Candle Co has two separate candle lines, but the most iconic and memorable candles come from the Yes You Candle collection. The Yes You Candle collection’s candles are each named with a virtue, moral, or character trait and packaged with the homerun slogan of “yes you candle.” The names of these candles are Bravery, Warmth, Joy, Gratitude, Kindness, Hope, and Perseverance.
“Yes you candle,” is a play on words. By stating “Yes you can,” the packaging itself brings positivity and motivation into one’s day, but the addition of “dle” brings in the twist that tells potential buyers what product they are in the market to purchase. It is fun, engaging, and very focused on creating positive, feel-good moments for consumers. Bianchi Candle Co’s other candles have themes of supporting freedom, the military, law enforcement, firefighters, and healthcare workers. 
The Bianchi Candle candles and diffusers have simple designs in black and white, intense scents, and are much more expensive. With this wide array of candles and target markets, Bianchi Candle Co always sticks to its roots, keeping the cohesion of this brand quite alive. It was not just a small village in Italy that inspired young Nic, but rather the handcrafted artisanship that Grondola is known for. Due to this generational family devotion to quality and performance, all candles are carefully poured in small batches out of their local factory in Papillion, Nebraska to this day. These all-natural soy wax candles are beautiful to look at, a great pleasure to smell, and burn cleaner for longer.
Author Archive for lindbergmm20
In 2004
, when Ashley Qualls was only fourteen years old, she found herself deeply passionate about graphic design and coding. She grew up in a lower-class household with her single mother and younger sister. However, she was determined that her situation would not define her. She worked hard and created Whateverlife.com, aimed at providing her audience with HTML Tutorials and free MySpace Layouts. Her audience was teenage girls like herself, as she wanted to invoke in others the same passion for graphic design and coding that she had.
Ashley built her website all on her own with no investor, big-wig mentor, or notable source of funds. All she had was her own self-determination. Though she did not have much growing up, the amazing work that she did by herself made her 70,000 dollars in the first month that her website was live. As online foot traffic increased for Ashley, she made modifications to Whateverlife.com that made it possible for viewers to create an account on the website, upload their own projects, and earn reward points that they could use to purchase digital goods for their designs. 
Just shy of her company’s third birthday, Whateverlife.com had already recorded between three and four million page views. Ashley and her customers were not the only ones fixed on the betterment of her business, as an anonymous buyer liked the idea so much that he offered 1,500,000 dollars to purchase the website from her. Just months later, Brad Greenspan, the co-founder of MySpace, was so impressed with her work that he offered an even larger sum of money in exchange for the company, not just one time, but twice. Ashley still determined to grow her website even larger, rejected all offers.
In 2006, after being offered millions of dollars for her online HTML Tutorial and MySpace Layout business and turning it down, Ashley purchased a house for her and her family. Unfortunately, shortly after turning seventeen and becoming a millionaire, Ashley was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that caused her to suffer mass gastrointestinal issues. Her prosperous life went into turmoil, not to mention the loss of her business, house, and unborn child. Even throughout all of this hardship, her entrepreneurial spirit never died, and her determination to succeed never faded. She would not give up. In 2015, Ashley got a job that also vanished like sand between her fingers as she could no longer persist in the work environment with her worsening disease. 
Though Ashley’s disease stunted her ability to do what she wanted, she was reinvigorated with hope when she read an article in The New Yorker by Megan O’ Rourke. This article made her realize that countless other people also struggle with the same disease as she does. This inspired her to create a blog called SickNotDead. SickNotDead, to this day, provides her with a place to advise, support, and create a community for others that suffer in the same way that she does. It is apparent in her motivational writings that now, more than ever, Ashley’s entrepreneurial spirit is alive and thriving. Once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur, and Ashley Qualls is an incredible example of this.
It all began in Golden, Colorado when R.J. Duarte was eight years old and started cutting grass for his family and neighbors. It was at a young age that Duarte first learned the value of hard work and the power that determination has to fuel success. Work ethic is one of the most effective qualities to have within any workplace, and Duarte embodies this trait. In 2008, Duarte used his ambitions alone to create a small business for himself that he could use to make money in preparation
he knew was already full of success and was efficiently bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Green Worx’s business was booming while he was in high school and there was no reason, not even college, for him to throw it all away. With this, he went to work reframing his business model and projecting future growth inclusive of some model changes. He repositioned his goals for Green Worx and turned a high-volume, small-client business into a premium landscaping-and-maintenance company that would pose more of a risk, but allowed for the potential of a much higher reward.
He made the right decision in doing this, and today Green Worx operates four trucks and a peak-season crew of a dozen-plus people. When Duarte made the big decision to stick with Green Worx and skip out on college, people questioned him extensively. They always ask, even to this day, “How’s college going R.J.?” and he just tells them the truth. He is a hardworking person who gives jobs to other hard-working people. This sort of question has R.J. saying, “They [society] want(s) to hear about your degree, not your company.” An important question to consider is this: What is more valuable in life, having a piece of paper recognizing four years of effort you put into it, or, a lifetime of hard work and dedication to the success and growth of a business that you have poured your heart into? Well, both are valuable, but one is entrepreneurial, the other, not so much.
R.J. is not only a man of notable work ethic and ambition but an entrepreneur.
He took a risk, he innovated the process in which Green Worx landscaping does their job, he continues to grow in annual revenue, and he undertakes challenges. R.J. proves that you can very well make $750,000.00 a year on ambition, determination, and work ethic alone, any college degree aside. Entrepreneurs are people who undertake challenges as a means to a successful end, and R.J. Duarte undertook.
In this current age of technology and social-consciousness we see a new demand among children and adults of generation z wanting to make a positive social impact in some way with every purchase they make. Whether it is being environmentally sustainable, supporting a cause, or donating to a mission, every purchase needs to mean something. As a young person, Sofia Overton saw a vacancy in the market, along with a pain people were feeling within her own community. Sofia was only eleven years old when she started her company called Wise Pocket Products.
Her goal was to make life a bit easier for active children, just like herself. One day she observed her cousin put her phone into her boot because the leggings she was wearing were not conducive to storing cell phones. Not having a pocket to put your phone in is always a struggle so she framed this as a problem and grew determined to solve it. Gears began to turn and she soon went to work on a pocket that would be located towards the top part of the sock that was the right size and secure enough to effectively hold any cell phone comfortably. It was then that the Wise Pocket design was conceived and she went to work manufacturing and marketing her product. Though it was the cell phone that Sofia designed the pocket for, she quickly found that since her target market was primarily active kids, that both inhalers and epi-pens could also be safely and securely carried in the Wise Pocket.
She did not stop innovating at the sock-pocket technology, but has also innovated her unique Wise Pocket design into leggings to solve the original problem that her cousin faced.
Though safety, security, and style are the themes of Wise Pocket Products, Sofia has made redemption a major factor of her company. She found that in her school district alone, there are six-hundred and twenty seven homeless children. This saddened her so much that she, once again, innovated a solution to fix this deprivation in her community. For every pair of socks sold, the buyer makes a small positive impact in the life of a child in need. Sofia makes sure that with each purchase of a pair of Wise Pocket Socks that the Wise Movement is serving those suffering homelessness and need across the globe. She truly believes that warm feet equal warm hearts, and every child shall experience that. As a young entrepreneur, Sofia saw a problem, framed it out, implemented redemptive qualities, innovated a solution, marketed the solution, generated revenue, and to this day continues to bring warm feet and warm hearts to children in need. She continues to fight for those suffering homelessness while supporting herself with her own God-given entrepreneurial spirit.
Visit https://wisepocketproducts.com/ for more information!
Ever wonder when large clunky plastic containers of bathroom hygiene products will be a thing of the past? Nohbo, or NO-Hair-BOttles, has answered this question with, “right now!” Benjamin Stern thought up the innovative idea of Nohbo in his ninth grade biology class and ran with it. At the young age of fourteen, Benjamin watched a documentary about the plastic-bottling industry and how much plastic truly ends up in your bathroom garbage each year, rather than being recycled. He took it upon himself from that day forward to come up with an eco-friendly solution to the limitless plastic waste. His goal was to blend the innovative concept of detergent pods with every-day bathroom products such as shampoo, body wash, and shaving cream. Young Benjamin’s solution was the prototype he created that was a dissolvable ball of product inside of a biodegradable wrapper. He saw the problem of plastic waste in single-use products being mass produced and eradicated this unnecessary abundance with his waste-less product called Nohbo Drops. This product was just the beginning because it soon launched him all the way to the hit TV Show, “Shark Tank.” It was here where he struck an impressive deal with Mark Cuban for $100,000 with a 25% equity stake in his business. Success was bound to happen.
The years following this were big for Benjamin Stern, he not only had Mark Cuban on his side, but he had money and mentorship to aid his growth. On many accounts this young man has found himself deeply appreciative of the amazing business people and scientists that he is surrounded by. They have helped him avoid countless mistakes. In the past three years, Stern graduated high school, raised over three million dollars in business financing, and his Nohbo Drops have been bustling off of the shelves. Though Ben Stern has seen success on all levels, he has hit some pretty significant roadblocks along the way. The most major of the many was the “structurally instability” that the dry dehydrated product form caused within the biodegradable wrappers. This problem was fixed by filling the wrappers with a gel based product which not only worked better and was easier to ship out, but also cut the production cost to a third of what it had been.
These eco-friendly drops of personal-care products are making Ben Stern a successful young entrepreneur, and they are making the abundance of single use plastic bottles, (that are overused in hotel chains especially,) a thing of the past. These Nohbo Drops melt in your hands once in contact with water and leave no plastic waste to discard following their use. As this environmentally aware entrepreneur has made clear, they [Nohbo] “are a mission driven research and development company founded on the premise of eradicating unnecessary single use plastic bottles in areas where there truly is no need for them.”
From inspiration to innovation, Benjamin Stern has found a problem and solved it. Today, he continues to work hard behind the scenes at Nohbo. If only he had known that one spark in his mind during a ninth-grade biology class would lead to the prosperity he lives in today. It took only his pursuance of one single idea to inspire a whole generation of young men and women to find problems in the world and try to solve them just like he did. He has not only thought like an entrepreneur, but he has innovated an old commodity like one too.
For More Information On Nohbo Visit: https://nohbo.com/
It all began when four-year-old Mikaila Ulmer was stung by a bee twice in only one week. Naturally, she grew scared of bees, only until she realized how useful and crucial they were to the prosperity of human life and health. She learned about the amazing things bees do for our ecosystem. Once she was inspired by the bees, she was determined to somehow raise money to help save them and promote a boisterous population of bees around the globe. Shortly after she was stung she was encouraged by her family to create a product for two children’s business competitions. They were the Acton Children’s Business Fair and the Austin Lemonade Day. That same year she received a cookbook from her Great Granny Helen which inside included a very special homemade flaxseed lemonade recipe. As a young, talented innovator, Mikaila was prompted to think about how she could bring her newfound passion for bees and business together with her Great Granny’s iconic lemonade recipe. A lightbulb went off in her head. She thought up a plan to use honey from bees in a lemonade recipe that made the taste of that famous sweet summer drink more natural and enjoyable for consumers. At that point she began calling her lemonade brand, “Be Sweet Lemonade,” but due to copyright issues, changed it to “Me & the Bees Lemonade.” The goal of Mikaila’s business is to donate a percentage of the profits to local and international organizations that fight for the growth of the honeybee population worldwide. This young-innovator is now a 15-year-old entrepreneur who has grown her small, humble, Austin, Texas ideas into a profitable venture that has grown by over five hundred percent in just ten years. Her success does not stop there, she even appeared on the hit TV Show of entrepreneurs, Shark Tank in 2015, striking an impressive sixty-thousand-dollar investment from the famous shark, Daymond John. Even now “Me & the Bees Lemonade” is flying off the shelves of Whole Foods Market, The Fresh Market, H-E-B, World Market, and many other stores and sales venues across the state of Texas. Today, Mikaila is a known social entrepreneur, author, public speaker, social media presence, and a hard-working high school student. She is determined to grow her business, continue to raise awareness about the importance of bees, and bring delight to lemonade consumers. More than anything, Mikaila wants to teach everybody how to save the bees, and how to promote the prosperity of their kind. She went even further than just “Me & the Bees,” and established The Healthy Hive Foundation, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit that has the mission to save all bees through educating people of all ages and fields about bees, donating to bee researchers, and protecting the resources bees need to survive and thrive. She serves as an inspiration to young people by influencing them to become social entrepreneurs, just like herself. She turned her dreams into reality through innovation and social entrepreneurship. As always, we need more young women entrepreneurs like Mikaila Ulmer in the world. Take risks, you might just prosper more than you would have ever imagined you could.