Author Archive for murphybm1

Two Lessons

Posted by murphybm1 
· Wednesday, December 5th, 2018 
· No Comments

Lisa Song Sutton is a beauty queen, model, and entrepreneur. In 2014, she was crowned Miss Nevada and spent the year traveling, attending red carpet events, conducting photo shoots, and volunteering at charities. During her reign, she needed to step back from her three already successful businesses: Sin City Cupcakes, Liquid &Lace, and Elite Homes US. She said that although she was disappointed that she had to take the necessary time off, she used her experience as Miss Nevada to catapult her businesses. The lessons she learned from her time as a pageant queen proved to be valuable in the business world as well as in pageantry.

Sutton unapologetically stated that networking and branding herself were two great achievements that contributed toward her immense success. In order to create an extensive and diverse network, she attended many events in her community. She talked with people, asked their opinions, handed out business cards, and spread the word about her personal entrepreneurial ventures. This eventually led to a stimulation in her three businesses because she was creating the opportunity to spread the word among her community. Sutton also used branding as a way to expand her businesses. She created a brand for her businesses by first creating a brand for herself. In order to do this, she thought about how she wanted her community to perceive her and what points she wanted to get across when she spoke to people. Branding herself and her businesses as successful, dependable, and honest was an effective way to entice people to become customers or future customers.

These two lessons are simple, but valuable. Network and brand yourself. By taking these two steps, Lisa Song Sutton was able to increase her customers and ultimately revenue within just a year. This beauty queen is inspiring and successful and one who we can learn from.

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Corporate Beekeeping

Posted by murphybm1 
· Sunday, November 11th, 2018 
· 4 Comments

Leigh-Kathryn Bonner is a 25 year old entrepreneur who loves bees. Yes, you read that correctly. Bees. She is a fourth generation beekeeper who grew up on a farm in North Carolina. While she was in college, she was unsure about whether she wanted to continue her family’s business or pursue a different career. However, one day while she was studying abroad, she read an article about the decline in bee populations. She was astonished that this was a problem that affected not only her own country, but the whole world as well. She realized that she wanted to be a part of a solution that saved bees all across the world, while continuing her family’s legacy.

Bonner was able to take her family’s beehive business to the next level by creating Bee Downtown. Bee Downtown is a company that installs beehives on the grounds of large corporate headquarters. Its mission is to help save honeybee populations which ultimately helps agriculture. For example, Burt’s Bees, Chick-Fil-A, and Delta are among the many companies that have already signed up to contribute to this mission. Each company that partners with Bee Downtown will host numerous beehives on the properties of their headquarters locations. They will host these hives without doing any of the hard work that normally comes with beekeeping. Instead, Bee Downtown will train each company’s employees to maintain the hives as part of a corporate perk. This corporate perk has not only shown to raise morale of employees, it also helps to foster an environment that promotes social impact within companies.

According to Bonner, surveys have shown that 85% of employees who work at companies that have partnered with Bee Downtown have said that the hives have caused them to feel proud of the companies they work for. Another 95% have said that beekeeping was their favorite employee engagement activity each year. Bonner has successfully found a way to make a profit while also providing a way for people to become involved with a sustainability initiative.

Leigh-Kathryn Bonner is an inspiring millennial entrepreneur. She incorporated her background, passion, and talents into a sustainable business that encouraged social impact. If other millennials looked to Bonner as an example of a successful entrepreneur, they would be inspired by her story and may even want to turn their own passions into a business. I believe that with Bonner’s ambition and work ethic, she will be able to expand Bee Downtown all across the globe.

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Categories : Agriculture, Sustainable, Women Entrepreneurs, Youngest Entrepreneurs
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Clean Eating Alice

Posted by murphybm1 
· Monday, November 5th, 2018 
· 3 Comments

Often, when people think of personal trainers, they think of big, bulky men who eat enormous amounts of protein and only wear sleeveless shirts. Alice Liveing, however, does not fit that stereotype. Alice Liveing, instead, is a girl who used to describe herself as a “junk food addict.” After years of unhealthy eating habits, acne-prone skin, and low confidence, she decided that it was time to make a change. She started to change her eating habits by only eating healthy or “clean” foods. She would post all of her meals onto her Instagram page in order to keep herself accountable. On top of this, she started to workout regularly and posted her progress to her Instagram account as well.

She was able to quickly shed two dress sizes, going from a 12 to an 8, by simply changing her diet and exercise routine. It was not long before people started to notice and admire her progress. Through her Instagram, they were able to track her journey and use it as encouragement to fuel their own. She quickly gained 636,000 followers on this social media platform, catapulting her entrepreneurial and fitness career.

She capitalized on her newly found fame in order to launch her own personal training and fitness business. She has also written 3 books, one of which is the famous: The Body Bible. By the age of 24, Liveing has been able to build a successful career, not only as a personal trainer, but also as a business woman and entrepreneur. She used the resources at her disposal to grow and market her business as much as she possibly could.

Alice Liveing is a terrific example of a young entrepreneur because she adapted her business model to fit the needs of other young people. She used social media to reach other millennials in order to better advertise to the market she was familiar with. This shows the importance of pivoting your ideas and adapting your businesses to align with your target market. I am inspired by Alice Liveing and would like to take a similar approach to marketing with my future business.

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Categories : Athletics, Fitness, Health, Women Entrepreneurs, Youngest Entrepreneurs
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Brother-Sister Pair Create Multi-Million Dollar Online Yearbook

Posted by murphybm1 
· Sunday, October 14th, 2018 
· 4 Comments

Who knew that a pair of brother-sister millennial entrepreneurs could create a multi-million dollar business by the ripe ages of 14 and 25? Geoff and Catherine Cook of New Hope, Pennsylvania, built a website called MyYearbook from the ground up – and they did this while Catherine was still in high school. In 2002, when their family decided to make the move to New Hope, Catherine was extremely interested in making new friends at her new high school. One day, she was flipping through the pages of her yearbook when she realized that this was not the most efficient way to make new friends. She thought if only there was an online yearbook where she could reach out to people who did not already know her, but who were interested in making new friends as well. She brought the idea up to her already successful brother who had recently graduated from Harvard and had sold a few of his own companies, and he jumped right on board. He invested a whopping $250,000 and stepped in as CEO. These siblings launched what would become one of the nation’s most-trafficked websites from the comfort of their parents’ home. Within the first week of its launch, 400 users had already signed up and were avidly using the site. After reaching out to investors and focusing on branding their company as “MySpace for high school”, Catherine and Geoff were able to hire a team of engineers to expand their company even further. In 2011, MyYearBook merged with Quespasa – a $100 million deal – that allowed them to reach an even larger Brazilian and Mexican audience, with the new name of: MeetMe. Through this deal, they were able to take their website worldwide and affect millions of people around the globe.

Catherine and Geoff Cook are exemplary millennial entrepreneurs because they started with a simple idea, and through hard work and dedication, they were able to create a world-wide business out of their parents’ home. They were motivated and dedicated, a combination that would drive them to succeed and achieve even more than they could have imagined. Catherine had a vision and at the age of 14 was able to pursue her dreams by pushing every limit and overcoming every stereotype that tried to hinder her. She did not allow her age to stop her, nor did she allow the opinions of others at her new school to impede her goals. She simply worked countless hours, contacted the right people, and most importantly never gave up.

I believe Catherine and Geoff’s story is inspiring and can teach many lessons. Their passion and persistence led them to astounding success and drove them to continually innovate their idea. Catherine talked to other students every day while Geoff networked online to truly see what others though of their site. They constantly critiqued, tweaked, and pivoted their idea based on their target audience’s desires so that MyYearbook became one of the most popular social networking sites in the world.
This has taught me the importance of continuous improvement. I believe that products and ideas can always be improved. As society changes and technology, stereotypes, and expectations change along with it, companies need to constantly develop their products. Even a successful product can always be improved because improvement leads to more success. This is a concept that I intend to bring into the products and businesses that I create both now and in the future.

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Categories : Academia, App, Business, College, Communication, Creating, Education, Great Ideas, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Online Companies, Social Media, Technology, Websites, Women Entrepreneurs, Youngest Entrepreneurs
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A Jewelry Empire At The Age Of 16 – Post #2

Posted by murphybm1 
· Tuesday, September 25th, 2018 
· 1 Comment

Amanda Thomas is a young entrepreneur who turned her dreams into a reality. In 2005, at the ripe age of 16, she created her own jewelry line called, “Luv Aj”. Jewelry had always been a passion for Amanda. During her teen years, she would return home from school each day and create new designs. One day, she saw an opportunity to turn her after school hobby into a business. By utilizing digital sites like Shopify and Instagram, Thomas was able to not only sell her creations, but also find creative ways to market them.

The unique aspect of Thomas’ business venture was how she capitalized on social media as a marketing tool even before the idea became popular. She was able to see the advantages of using social media as a vehicle to spread her message before most people were able to see them. This was due to her entrepreneurial mindset. Her open and creative mindset allowed her to identify problems before anyone else could and find solutions to those problems that ultimately benefited consumers. Thomas was able to use sites like Instagram to communicate with famous influencers who would then be able to share her products with their already established fan bases. A few of these celebrities included Beyoncé, Gigi Hadid, and Emily Ratajkowski.

Through these well thought out and developed marketing tactics, Thomas was able to expand her jewelry business to boutiques across the nation. She was recently added to Forbes ’30 Under 30’ list at the age of 26.

The most inspiring part about Amanda Thomas’ story is the fact that she was bold enough to act on her idea. She easily could have created her own jewelry line and only have sold it to her friends and family, but she was bolder than that. She not only took the risk of creating a Shopify account, but she also took the risk of reaching out to celebrities. This tactic clearly paid off as her business took off and she created a jewelry empire.

1 Comment
Categories : Apparel/Accessories, Blog, Creating, eCommerce, Fashion, Jewelry, Millennial Entrepreneurs, Online Companies
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Kylie Jenner: Soon-To-Be World’s Youngest, Self-Made Billionaire

Posted by murphybm1 
· Sunday, September 16th, 2018 
· 4 Comments

Kardashian. This is the name that with one utterance, can spark debate in almost any room. This one simple name divides Americans and causes them to either rave with admiration or mock with scorn and disdain.

The name, “Kardashian” was made famous by the Los Angeles, “it” family when they started their reality television show: Keeping Up With The Kardashians in 2007. The show features a day in the life of the Kardashian-Jenner family and the exhilarating drama these socialites encounter.

The youngest member of the KJ clan is Kylie Jenner who is quickly emerging her entrepreneurial career at the age of 20 years old. Kylie has premiered on the show many times over the last 11 years and has gained an enormous amount of fame and a fan base of over 150 million because of it. Regardless of what people may think of Kylie and her family, she has utilized the exposure from the show to propel her career and to become the youngest, most successful, self-made entrepreneur in the world.

In 2015, Kylie launched her own line of cosmetics: Kylie Cosmetics. She started this entrepreneurial venture because she had a passion for makeup, because she saw an unmet need in the market, and because she realized she had the opportunity to leverage a huge platform from her already established reputation. She understood her target market and she sought to please them.

Kylie did not just blindly enter into the cosmetics world. She strategically planned for years before she actually launched her first line of lipsticks. She discovered a niche in the cosmetic market, and through understanding her target customers, she branded herself by focusing on that one specific area.

According to Elle magazine, Kylie Cosmetics sold out of all 6 lipsticks in the first 10 minutes of their release. 15 days later, when the lipsticks were restocked, all 6 sold out in the first two minutes. Whether or not this “shortage” was intentional, many believe this rush to purchase Kylie’s line was due to her marketing genius.

She not only stimulated anticipation for the release of her new line through her multiple social media platforms, she also kept in constant communication with her fans, letting them know when the lipsticks would be restocked and where they would be able find them. She also showed a considerable amount of public relations expertise by encouraging her fans not to buy from outside vendors who purchased the lipsticks for their original price of $29 and marked them up to as much as $225 on sites like eBay. In July of 2018, Forbes estimated her company at nearly $900 million. Over the next year, Kylie is expected to become the youngest self-made billionaire ever.

Kylie Jenner displays an immense amount of ambition, motivation, and persistence – traits that are necessary for any entrepreneur looking to start a business. Many may attribute her success to her family’s already established fame and reputation, but the bottom line is that she is an inspiring, young entrepreneur who has strategically used the resources at her disposal to create a cosmetic empire.

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Categories : Beauty, Blog, Business, Celebrities, Fashion, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Women Entrepreneurs, Youngest Entrepreneurs
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