Sabastian Martinez has always enjoyed collecting wacky and brightly colored socks. When he was only five years old, his mother suggested that he should try designing and making his own socks. This fun idea and passion quickly grew into his current and very successful company Are You Kidding. To help direct sales and run the company, Sabastian enlisted the assistance of his older brother, Brandon, and in just one year, the brothers made their first $15,000.  Sabastian is now nine years old, and he said since 2014, revenues have only continued to grow, doubling the first year and tripling the following year.

Sabastian is not only a successful CEO, but he is also a young philanthropist! Instead of pocketing all of the money for himself, Sabastian uses the profits to raise money for a variety of charity organizations that spread awareness for important causes. For example, Are You Kidding has raised thousands of dollars in the past few years for the American Cancer Society and the Live Like Bella Foundation Society. Recently, Sabastian partnered with a charitable company that raises money for art programs for children with severe illnesses by donating 25% of Are You Kidding’s proceeds to the cause. I find Sabastian’s story to be inspirational because he not only used his passion for collecting fun socks to create a successful company, but he is also making a real difference in the world today.

When Sabirul Islam was 13 years old, his cousin, who was a young entrepreneur, offered him a job at his company. However, only a few weeks later, Sabirul was fired. To take matters in his own hands, Sabirul and six of his friends created Veyron Technology at age 14. Veyron Technology is a website design company, and within two weeks, he had made his first $1000. When he was only 17, Sabirul published his first book, The World at Your Feet, in which he provides direction and inspiration to young people hoping to turn their entrepreneurial idea into a reality. Offering his best expertise, Sabirul’s book has sold over 60,000 copies. Additionally, Sabirul created an entrepreneur-themed board game, started a publishing company for hopeful teen authors, and has spoken at nearly a thousand speaking engagements around the world.

Today, Sabirul continues to work on and develop his website, write three more books, and mentor young entrepreneurs. Now, he says his cousin is jealous by Sabirul’s greater success as a young entrepreneur!

Sean Belnick always had a drive to take risks, which he now understands to be his innate entrepreneurialism, and a fascination with selling things on the internet, such as Pokemon cards and other items on eBay. When Sean was 14 years old, he was given the opportunity to observe his step-father work on a business model for his job in the summer, and Sean saw how simple the business model was, so he decided to capitalize on it and begin selling office chairs online. Sean locked himself in his bedroom for three days, started with $500 in advertising, designed his own website, and BizChair.com was born.

Now, BizChair.com has over 75 employees, 25,000 products, and has sold office chairs to companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Abercrombie and Fitch. At just twenty years old, Sean Belnick’s revenues were $38 million.

Sean Belnick added in an interview that he loves being a young boss, and most of his employees think it is “cool” that their boss is in his twenties. Because of his age, the work environment is relaxed, and people feel more comfortable expressing their ideas and opinions in a less intimidating setting which ultimately helps the company grow.

All before the age of 24, Geoff Cook founded a business as a sophomore at Harvard, sold the rights to another company, and invested in and helped start another company that would eventually make him millions of dollars. The best part is that the company that he invested in was started by his sister, Catherine, who at the time was only 14! She drew inspiration from her older brother’s impressive success at such a young age, and the two brainstormed new ideas together over the phone.

The idea for myYearbook came from when Catherine was flipping through her new high school’s yearbook. She was shocked by the amount of people she did not know and the useless information on the pages and thought about putting it all online. After convincing her brother to join in on her idea for a new platform of social media that connected new friends and entertained users for hours, the pair found investors and developers to start their company. Quickly, myYearbook became very successful, and in just a few years, Geoff and Catherine profited over four million dollars. The site’s appeal came from the ability for users to connect and make friendships with people they had never met, and in 2011, myYearbook was one of the 25 most-trafficked websites in the U.S. Also, to reach and understand the needs of her audience, Catherine friended all new people that signed up for the site. The site gives users the ability to play games, take quizzes, and make connections with people they already know or have never met. In 2011, the siblings sold myYearbook for $100 million to Quepasa.

Lasting friendships and even marriages between people that met on the site are just some of the success stories from this form of social media. Despite their already wide success, Geoff and Catherine Cook continue to set goals for their business, which they recently changed the name to MeetMe. They hope to globalize and spread their business across the world.

When fashion-loving friends Emily Matson and Julianne Goldmark were in 8^th grade, the two were searching for stylish hair accessories and ponytail holders like the ones they saw celebrities wearing. However, when they saw they saw the high price of these hair pieces, the young girls went to the local fabric store and decided to make their own unique hair ties. The girls’ hand-made products ranging from on-trend headbands to bows to ponytail holders quickly became a massive hit with their peers. What once was a fun hobby then grew to become a small business operated from a guest bedroom in Julianne’s parents’ house.

As a combination of the names Emily and Julianne, the girls named their growing company Emi-Jay in 2009. Emi-Jay exploded in popularity when they discovered a connection to Chris McMillan, a celebrity stylist. For a movie premiere, his client Jennifer Aniston wore one of Emi-Jay’s simple black hair ties. Shortly after, other major celebrities and fashion companies such as Marie Claire were reaching out to Emi-Jay. In 2015, to match the CEOs’ expanding interests, Matson and Goldmark started a fashion-forward clothing company called Tees by Emi-Jay.

Today, Emi-Jay is a multimillion-dollar company that sells a variety of clothes and accessories, collaborates with widely-successful companies including Nordstrom and Whole Foods, and is represented by famous celebrities such as Gigi Hadid. Emi-Jay also donates 20% of its profits to charity, which is currently Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Emily Matson and Julianne Goldmark, who are now at separate colleges, continue to grow their business, employ dozens of full-time workers, and balance a full class schedule.

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While searching the internet for cheap airline tickets in 2013, travel-lover Scott Keyes found round-trip, nonstop tickets from New York to Milan for only $130. After his first deal, he became obsessed with finding the best prices for international flights and began sharing the airline companies’ cheapest bargains and pricing mistakes with his friends via email. Now, at age 30, Scott never imagined his life as a successful CEO and is amazed by how his small email list became a nearly million-dollar start-up with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

Scott’s Cheap Flights is a website in which travelers enter their email address and receive a free daily email with the best deals on flights all around the world. If customers pay only $39 a year, they become premium members and are able to customize their search. Some of Scott’s most impressive finds were tickets from New York to Paris over Christmas for $280, San Francisco to Melbourne for $421, and Chicago to Tokyo for $424, as each would have regularly cost well over a thousand dollars.

In only a couple of years, Scott’s Cheap Flights grew from 300 subscribers to over 230,000 customers.  To grow his company, Scott has hired four employees to search the internet for special airline deals and “mistake fares”  instead of relying on robots, who often do not catch the diamonds in the rough. Scott hopes to continue to grow his company and help people make dream honeymoons, visiting family across the sea, and exploring the world a reality.

https://scottscheapflights.com/