Kid Brothers Turn Frozen Treats Into Hot Business

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Greetings and welcome to a brand new week of Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host. So excited to bring you a whole new set of stories this week of all kinds of people doing something interesting, creative, unconventional, all with the goal of investing in themselves through the creation of a money-making project. Yeah, that's right, money-making projects, as we talk about here. Now, I have mentioned before that when I was nine years old or 11 years old, you know, somewhere in that range, my greatest concern in life was playing video games.

So I so admire kids these days who are expressing their creativity in other ways, not that they can't play games too, nothing wrong with that. But I always get excited when I hear stories of kids or anyone who's pretty young, you know, whose peers are usually doing other stuff, but they're focused on trying to start a business. So when I started working on the notes for this story, I thought, oh, this is great. Our listeners are gonna love it. It features three young brothers who create frozen treats to sell at street fairs in Los Angeles.

They don't do this just for spending money or even to save a few hundred bucks for a trip to Disneyland. They're making real money. In a short period of time, in fact, they have made $7,000. This is all just within a couple of months. Friends, listeners, community, we can all learn from the next generation.

They've got something to show us, and I'll do my best to show it to you in this story. It's coming up in just a moment. [Music]

Some kids spend their summer with a break at the beach, but relaxation wasn't what the Akias brothers, 13-year-old Nasi, 11-year-old Judah, and nine-year-old Shiloh had in mind for their summer. The children of a TV and film producer father and an artist's mother, the Los Angeles natives decided they wanted to start a business. This wasn't a huge surprise.

They were taught to think as creators and owners as opposed to employees, and they knew that they'd have their own products in the marketplace one day. In fact, when the idea of starting their business came up in the spring of 2019, the oldest brother, which would be 13-year-old Nasi, had already been putting his talents to use as a guitar-playing street performer, earning tips around the city when he wasn't doing his homework. But now, the brothers wanted to do something bigger, something together. Brainstorming, they had lots of ideas and influences to draw upon. With those parents in the entertainment industry and family from Jamaica and Haiti, they'd also spend a lot of time surrounded by music.

They were drawn to hip hop culture. But authenticity wasn't their only requirement because being full-time middle school students with a tight budget, they had real constraints. They landed on the idea of doing something with food, some kind of delicious snack. But what would they do? How would they get the money?

How would they make it work? Well, that's why you're listening to Silence of School, because I'm gonna tell you. First, the product. Like most kids, the Akias brothers love treats. But their diet, influenced by their parents, of course, is much healthier and more full of real ingredients than most of their friends.

They wanted to make something that they would love and something they'd be happy to share. Disrupting the normal junk food snacks that are targeted to kids and young adults was also a must. The brothers soon zeroed in on making a frozen treat. Everyone they knew loved frozen treats and they sell year-round in California. Their brainstorming led to an idea for jiggy pops, all natural vegan ice pops.

The name comes from the term jiggy, which in hip hop means cool or fly. Working together, they used trial and error to create five original recipes. The process took about three months. In the meantime, they outlined more ideas and began to get their $700 in startup capital together. They received an investment of a couple hundred dollars from their dad, but the rest came from Nasi, who invested money from his street performer profits.

They used that money for supplies and ingredients and also for their first small rolling vendor cart. Soon, their home kitchen became a center of jiggy pop manufacturing. The boys' parents didn't mind as long as that process included cleanup. As they worked to produce their pops, the brothers took marketing seriously. This meant clever branding and strategic promotion.

These self-confident young entrepreneurs don't believe that scientific arguments or as they call it the tree hugger approach works on younger folks. You can't just say, "Hey, this is good for you. "You should like it." Most people agree that healthy eating is better for your body and the world, but this knowledge doesn't always drive people to make aligned decisions. So from the beginning, they worked to create something that kids and young adults would want to be part of, not just as a treat, but also an experience. And in June 2019, the Akias brothers took 100 jiggy pops and their vending cart to a street fair in the LA area with flavors like Blackberry Gordy, inspired by the legendary founder of Motown Records, as well as other lyric-inspired flavors, including Tropic Like It's Hot and Georgia Peach on My Mind.

Their love of music and hip hop culture was evident throughout. And like a platinum record, the jiggy pops were a hit, selling out quickly. The boys were ecstatic and immediately worked to set up their next event. In the first month, the brothers earned a cool $1,600 in profit. They've since continued to build from there, but not everything has gone perfectly.

Sales weren't as strong on their second outing, which meant wasted inventory. This was a reality check for the young entrepreneurs. But even as the novelty of their first day in business wore off, they were undeterred. They knew they had to become better salesmen. Instead of just waiting for the customers to come to them, they realized they had to walk around, engage people in conversation, and refine their pitch.

The jiggy pop team learned from their early setbacks and the future looks icy bright. In fact, jiggy pop has already earned profits of $7,000 in the first three months of business. They've got big plans for the future, starting with dropping out of middle school to run the business full-time. Oh, wait, actually, that's not correct. I just added that in.

Okay, they're gonna stay in school, but produce year-round sales events. The focus is on vending opportunities that connect with their core values, events centered on hip hop, health and wellness, and community building. They also pop up on random inner city street corners, as it's their goal to make healthy, frozen treats accessible to all. More long-term, the brothers want to strategically scale their company with the goal of eventually securing an international partner to take the jiggy pop brand global. [Music]

Well, long live jiggy pop.

This is just so cool. I hope I get a chance to check it out myself at some point. And this episode also reminds me a bit of our friend Carolyn Phillips, who started a business called Alchemy Pops in the Dallas, Fort Worth area. In fact, I think we had a recent listener or featured case study update from her in one of the weekly recaps. But that was episode 341.

Nonprofit employee sells 25,000 gourmet ice pops. Her business is really growing as well. So maybe she's got the Texas market covered while jiggy pop is representing the West Coast. It was also when working on that first episode that I learned that popsicle, the word popsicle is a trademarked term, which is owned by Unilever, apparently. So I always thought popsicle was a generic term, but this is why everybody calls them ice pops or something else because you can't say popsicle.

Anyway, I love what they're doing. I wish them every success and hopefully we'll have an update from them at some point in the future. Listeners, I hope you enjoyed this episode at least as much as I enjoyed making it. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. To find the show notes for today's episode, just go to sidehustleschool.com/1031.

We also wanna encourage you to check out the jiggy pop Instagram, which of course we will link up from there. And I will be back tomorrow. Much more is coming up. I'm so excited to be able to make these programs for you. Gonna sign off now for the day.

My name is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]

- From the Onward Project.