Teenagers across the country will have the opportunity next week to network with some of the nations most experienced entrepreneurs.
“Why Entrepreneurship Now – A Virtual Event for America’s Teens” will run from 3 to 4 p.m. May 27 on the Microsoft Teams Live platform,.
Expect Ayden Lally, 16, of Cary to log on. He has been balancing homework with his business ideas for years.
“At 9 or 10, I started washing cars and powerwashing driveways,” he said. He then advanced his cash flow by reselling products on Amazon.
“I sold computers and Kindles. Probably, in that first time, in under a month, I did over $3,000 in sales when I was 10 or 11,” he said.
In his teens, Ayden added Christmas light installation to his portfolio of services.
“I had to hire crews, train the crews after that. The most important thing and the main learning experience was probably generating leads through different social media platforms,” he said.
Ayden says he did $50,000 in sales in under two months and was inspired to learn more about media marketing and business consulting.
Brian Hamilton, founder of the Brian Hamilton Foundation, has a similar story.
“Entrepreneurship changed my whole world,” he says. “I want to teach people how to do it because it’s not that hard.”
Hamilton is passionate about inspiring teens to become job creators.
“Over the last 50 to 60 years, we’ve gone from about 25% of people who have owned their own businesses to today 9%,” he said.
In effort to reverse that trend, Hamilton among the organizers of the upcoming virtual webinar event for teens.
His advice to teens: “Start small and learn. That’s how this whole economic system runs. You look at the free enterprise system, capitalism. It’s all based upon that person that goes out and tries.”
The teen virtual summit is a partnership between Junior Achievement USA, the Brian Hamilton Foundation and the Mark Cuban Foundation.
