This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Welcome back to Side Hustle School, as we kick off a new month. Well, it's day two of a new month, episode 2,863. It's your host, Chris Guillebeau, here. And I love today's question. It comes to us from North Carolina.
Laura is a mom of two kids, and these kids are eager to start their own businesses. Isn't that awesome? That's exciting. If you have teens or pre-teens or if you have teens or pre-teens in your extended family, I've got some nephews and nieces who are kind of diving into this world. It's really fun to kind of see it through their eyes.
So this episode might be helpful if you're in that situation or if you know somebody. Let's talk about some business ideas for teens and pre-teens. I'll give you a few different options, and mostly I'll explain how to guide kids in starting and managing their own ventures without overwhelming them because, of course, we want them to take the initiative. So there might be something that we can be helpful with as adults, but it's so much more effective and empowering when they figure out some things on their own. So let's talk about that all in a short, quick episode.
Detailed question from Laura and my answer after this shout out to our sponsor. Hi, Chris. This is Laura from Verlay, North Carolina. My kids who are 12 and 15 have been showing interest in starting their own small businesses. I love that they're interested and excited about entrepreneurship, but I'm not sure what kind of ideas are realistic and manageable for their age.
What are some good business ideas for teens and pre-teens? Also, how can I guide them in getting started and managing these ventures without overwhelming them? All right, let's talk about a couple of different things here. Laura, thank you for bringing this up. We often have a lot of young listeners, some teens and pre-teens out there.
So if that's you, good job. There's something you can do no matter your age, no matter your experience. And so a lot of the different side hustle ideas that we've talked about, a lot of them can work for teens or pre-teens, especially any kind of online business. If you are selling something, if you are developing a service, but it could also be something like pet setting or dog walking, you can sign up for Rover, Rover.com, yard work, lawn care, handmade crafts or art. These are kind of classic side hustles, pre-internet, except for the Rover.com.
But you know what I mean, things that you can do that can be sold either online or offline. But for all those tech savvy teens out there, I think maybe that's what we want to focus on because there's a growing market for digital services. And if you know about design, if you know about social media, sometimes teens and pre-teens are much better at social media than older generations. Also reselling or flipping. So for kids with an eye for bargains, reselling items can be exciting.
You can start with a pretty small budget, less than $100. They can buy items at garage sales, thrift stores, even online marketplaces, and then resell them for a profit. So there's lots of different things, of course. And as for getting kids started without feeling overwhelmed, well, I think it's helpful to teach some basic skills, like use this opportunity to teach them about budgeting, customer service, using different online platforms, but also maybe setting some clear goals. Like what is a clear goal?
Getting my first sale, setting up my online platform on Etsy or eBay or some other website. Could be getting my first client if you're trying to do that. And then mostly I think it's important to encourage kids to make decisions on their own, let them make some of those choices as to what they would like to do, give them some options, but let them make the choice that's going to help them build confidence and learn from their experiences. I'd love to hear actually from some more kids and teens that are doing this. We haven't featured too many of them recently, so let's do that.
Let me know if that's you, sidehustleschool.com. I'm on social media most days as well. I'll continue to feature listener stories, along with updates from other listeners as they launch and grow their projects. Thank you so much for being out there. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is Side Hustle School.
