I’m 14, and looking to be financially independent as soon as possible. I know what it sounds like “just another kid wanting to be rich blah blah” but what makes me different is I try. So far, I’ve had 4 businesses and around 500$ in revenue. What I’m asking for is, the best tips and the best things I could do to improve, move forward and be financially independent. What would you recommend for me? Serious answers only.
Help me set up for success
byu/tanshersgamingps4 inEntrepreneur
Posted by tanshersgamingps4
6 Comments
I’m not sure what country you are in and it might be a little early in your schooling – but one of the best things I did in High School was the co-op program.
You basically are working a job in an industry you are interested in for school credits.
I learned a crazy amount, and made awesome connections.
Some of those will even turn into jobs.
Outside of that, I was running small side hustles in school from early on, so you are on the right track.
With your age, it’s probably limited but getting a job is important – there are skills you NEED to learn (along with both good and bad lessons) on how others run their businesses.
If you can’t get a job, try to learn a trade or skill that you can eventually have someone pay you for – whether that’s digital like coding, design etc, or physical like landscaping etc.
Lots of door to door stuff you can do as well, rake the yard, shovel snow, water pressure cleaning etc
My suggestion is to focus on hustling rather than fixating on making millions. Anticipate that you’ll encounter setbacks multiple times, and it’s when you persist through these losses without giving up that you’ll truly shine and become the greatest of all time.
Hello 👋,
Invest, learn what people want, learn how things work, think about sustainability, think about best business practices, and optimize, aim to help people.
Some weird mechanic, instead of a think tank, if you have friends, a crap talk tank where you individuals dig into each other, the most personal asinine things people don’t say to one another casually. It helps you desensitize yourself to poor treatments, understand criticism vs projection, and overall turn into a psychological monster and may have an added bonus “attraction” wise.(practice composure in every other social setting)
At your age I was still playing with toys.
Just keep going, you are on the right track.
Oh, and never stop learning.
Learn how an industry works by getting a job in it, gain experience and on the side setup everything you want and at that point it’s best to go off on your own.
The three reasons why most businesses fail is cash flow problems, poor interpersonal skills and bad marketing.
If your school has an accounting course as a math option, take it. Otherwise, there are a bunch of basic accounting courses on YouTube. Accounting is it’s own language. You want to learn that language. Since you are building small businesses now, start using Excel to track your income and expense. Include in your spreadsheet everything you are spending money on. My daughter did this and discovered that one of the reasons why she was broke is that she was spending 500 dollars a year on take away coffee.
You are very likely going to spend the rest of your life promoting your business. If you can take some public speaking or acting classes that will help you a lot. Once you turn 18, join toastmasters. Get good at public speaking.
Learn marketing. In fact, if you can put that 500 dollars into the online course “business made simple university” you are far more likely to succeed, if you, unlike me, have the discipline to do the work on an online course.