Teenagers Business Guide – 10 Tips For Success From A Teen Entrepreneur

Most entrepreneurs have plenty of life and startup experiences to draw on, that work to inspire their own small business ideas and help them achieve personal finance success. That’s why it’s a bit surprising to find a highly successful teenage serial entrepreneur. 

However, there are a ton of up-and-coming entrepreneurs emerging in the younger generations, proving that a young person can achieve a great business idea even without a ton of experience. 

Born in August 2000, Brendan Cox is a young entrepreneur and the founder of Cox Visuals as well as several other businesses.

This article shares vital teenagers business tips by Cox on how to become a successful entrepreneur. If you are a teenage entrepreneur, you’ll find great value from these tips that can help all young adults achieve their business goals.

1. Take Action Now

It doesn’t matter whether you think your business plan is perfect. Your ideas are not likely to see the light of day if you wait until they are faultless before you execute them. 

Spending months tweaking every single detail of your business doesn’t help any intending entrepreneur, no matter their age. 

Here’s the thing; talk is cheap. Just about anyone can talk about what they intend to do and how great their idea will be when it finally kicks off. All that talk without action is a colossal waste of your time.

Instead of spending time talking about a potential small business or product idea, define exactly what you want to do and find out exactly how you’re going to make it happen before you tell everyone your plans.

If you forget everything else, remember this first teenager’s business tip: take action now and learn as you go. There will always be stumbling blocks, but you’ll eventually figure it out and build a successful business. 

2. Build a Business Around Your Passion

Here’s a common mistake many people – both young and old – make. They start businesses with only one goal in mind, and that’s to make money. 

Of course, you want to make a good profit when you start a business! Nobody wants to work for minimum wage forever. But you will lose steam fast if your only purpose is to rake in cash. 

One of the biggest advantages of being a teen entrepreneur is that your life doesn’t hinge on the success of your business.

If you’re a high school student or college student, you can make your business idea secondary, and not something all your finances hinge upon.

If things don’t work out as you want, you have enough time to tweak things using lessons learned or even start another business entirely. 

For this reason, find something you love doing and create a business around it. even outside of the scope of entrepreneurship, today’s teens should first discover their passion before turning it into a job. This way, even if you encounter problems down the line, your passion for that thing will keep you going. 

3. Be Realistic with Your Goals

Goal setting is a highly talked about topic, and for good reason. You can’t know how your business is performing without goals.

However, it is rather easy to set unrealistic goals, especially if you’ve not done some soul-searching to find out your skills, abilities, and weaknesses. 

Setting realistic goals doesn’t mean aiming for the ordinary. Set challenging goals but make sure they are accomplishable, so you don’t set yourself up for failure from the start. 

4. Failure is Normal

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The next teenagers business tip is something most people don’t like to talk or think about, especially when they plan to start a business. But run from it as much as you want, failure is a necessary part of success, and it is not restricted to the business world. 

Truth is, nothing is appealing about failure – it sucks, plain and simple. But you must be ready for it. When it happens (it eventually does) you shouldn’t keep your down or give up on your dreams. Instead, learn quickly from your failure and use it to motivate yourself to succeed as you come up with your next great idea.

5. Be Prepared to Learn

No one knows everything, not even the most successful people in the world. As a teenager, you must be ready for a life-long learning process if you want to be hugely successful. 

Nothing stays constant. Holding on to something that worked a few months back might be a huge mistake because of the rapid rate of change in the modern world. 

For this reason, teens who plan to become entrepreneurs must be willing to listen to advice and suggestions, regardless of what they know. That’s the surest way to continue expanding and adjusting your business to suit current trends.

6. Build Your Network

No one ever succeeds in business alone. Connections are indispensable if you want to have any semblance of success in the business world. 

The secret to accomplishing things you know little to nothing about is to build a network of people who can do everything related to your goals. That way, you have someone in your network for just about anything you want to be done. 

Here’s an important teenagers business tip to always remember: who you know in the business world is more important than what you know.

7. Be Willing to Re-Invest

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Many businesses enter their comfort zone as soon as they start making steady revenue. If you want to break your records and do better, your best bet would be to re-invest in yourself and your business.

While there’s nothing wrong with wanting to make good money, re-investing in your business will ensure continuous growth, even beyond your initial dream for your company. 

8. Understand the Value of Competition

Another vital teenager business lesson is to use your competitors as motivation to make your company better.

Keep in mind that your focus should be on your company and not your job market competitors. That’s another way of saying you shouldn’t be obsessed with the success of others while losing sight of your goals.

9. Don’t Ignore Social Media

As a teen entrepreneur in a modern world, your business is nearly non-existent if it doesn’t have any online presence. 

Millions of users spend significant hours on different social media platforms. That’s your cue to leverage this powerful and effective tool to position your business and brand right in front of them. 

10. Believe in Yourself

All your business ideas will flop if you do not believe in yourself. That’s because you will continue to second-guess your business decisions and that is not likely to get you far. 

The truth is you’re going to make mistakes when you run a business – there’s just no way around it. But it is pointless doubting yourself because you took a few wrong turns. 

The good news is that you can retrace your steps and learn from your mistakes, instead of beating yourself up and telling yourself you won’t succeed.

Featured image source: Pixabay