Young Entrepreneurs “Dream Like a Teen”
Teach them well and let them lead the way
By Katherine McNevins, Fri., Oct. 9, 2020
If there's anything we need right now, it's a little hope for the future. Saturday's "Dream Like a Teen" virtual roundtable offered plenty of it.
Whole Kids Foundation's Tristana Pirkl hosted "Best of Austin" winner Mikaila Ulmer, whom you may know from her lemonade brand, Me & the Bees (fka BeeSweet), in a discussion with three other young entrepreneurs to inspire and educate young people interested in their own business ventures. Me & the Bees started when Ulmer was only 4 years old and had been stung twice by bees, and her parents wanted young Mikaila to learn about bees to quell her fear. Fear became fascination as she learned how crucial bees are to the ecosystem, and drove her passion to educate others and save the bees. That coincided with her great-granny Helen passing along a cookbook with a flaxseed lemonade recipe, to which Mikaila added a twist of honey. Ulmer started out with youth business competitions Austin Lemonade Day and Acton Children's Business Fair as a kindergartner and was featured on Shark Tank, and the business began to grow as local shops signed on to distribute the product. Now you can find her lemonade on grocery store shelves all over town.
"Dream Like a Teen" included two young entrepreneurs from the Minneapolis area, Michael Vang of Roots for the Home Team and Elicia Powell of Green Garden Bakery. Both ventures focus on healthy food, with Roots offering unique, nourishing salads and Green Garden providing veggie-based desserts like jalapeño chocolate chip cookies and green tomato cakes. Laura Martinez represented Philadelphia's Rebel Ventures, whose goal is creating healthy food for schools, and their Rebel Crumbles is a complete nutritious breakfast in a bar that's distributed in stores and schools all over the Philly area.
When asked if financial resources are crucial to starting a business, all agreed that intangible assets like passion, drive, and focus were most important. Ulmer pointed out that there are abundant free resources online, such as graphic design programs and informational YouTube videos, and she provided a portion of her new book, Bee Fearless: Dream Like a Kid, via email to every participant.
A common theme was resilience, which is another thing we could all use nowadays. Vang's Roots for the Home Team pivoted during the pandemic from stadium concession sales to providing their salads to essential workers so that busy medical staff could grab a quick, nutritious meal, and Martinez's Rebel Ventures began developing online resources to help families create healthy, delicious meals at home.
When asked what adults could do to help, the advice was to view kids as individuals and take them seriously. If your child approaches you with an idea, don't dismiss it out of hand; do research with them. Adults are encouraged to do presentations or mentorships with youth organizations and simply support youth-run endeavors with donations or by purchasing the product.
It was inspiring to hear from a panel of articulate, passionate young people who are working toward a mission of giving back to their communities. With young leaders like these panelists, we can be confident that our world that feels like it's falling apart sometimes will actually be just fine.
