Peter Bielagus - Quick Cash for Teens: Be Your Own Boss and Make Big Bucks

BE YOUR OWN BOSS AND
MAKE BIG BUCKS

Peter G. Bielagus

New York / London
www.sterlingpublishing.com

STERLING and the distinctive Sterling logo are registered trademarks of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bielagus, Peter G.

Quick cash for teens : be your own boss and make big bucks /

Peter G. Bielagus.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-4027-6038-9

1. EntrepreneurshipJuvenile literature. 2. Small businessJuvenile literature. 3. Part-time self-employmentJuvenile literature. I. Title.

HD62.5.B52 2009

658.110835dc22

2008042793

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Published by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016

2009 by Peter G. Bielagus

Distributed in Canada by Sterling Publishing

c/o Canadian Manda Group, 165 Dufferin Street

Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6K 3H6

Distributed in the United Kingdom by GMC Distribution Services

Castle Place, 166 High Street, Lewes, East Sussex, England BN7 1XU

Distributed in Australia by Capricorn Link (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

P.O. Box 704, Windsor, NSW 2756, Australia

Manufactured in the United States of America

All rights reserved

Book design and layout by Guenet Abraham

Sterling ISBN 978-1-4027-6038-9

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This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. Neither the Author nor the Publisher is engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If you require legal, accounting, or other expert assistance, you should seek the services of a competent professional. The Author has made every effort to provide accurate Internet addresses at the time of publication. However, Web sites may be taken down and URLs may change after publication without notice. Neither the Author nor the Publisher has any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party Web sites nor their content.

Cha-ching!

You know the sound. The universal signal that easy money has just been made. The question is, have you heard it lately? Are you disappointed with the lack of money in your pocket? Have you thought about getting a job but never gone through with it, because you were told you were too young or because the pay was pathetic and you were asked to work the worst hours (like the Saturday morning shift)? Or can you just not find a job youd enjoy?

If any or all of these problems are up your alley, youve come to the right place. Im here to tell you firsthand that regardless of your age, you DO NOT have to start out by earning minimum wage; you can start right now earning double, triple, even ten times the minimum wage! You DO NOT have to work the worst hours; you can choose your own hours! You DO NOT have to continually reach into your pocket and feel that its empty. You can have all the money you need and work the hours you want to workall while doing something you love. How? You can start your own business.

Hmmm, you say, Me? Start my own biz? I dont know. Can I even do that?

The answer is YES! I started my first business when I was in sixth grade. It was a landscaping company. I started with just one push lawn mower that I rented from my parents. I started mowing one lawn for $100 a week; it took me about six hours to mow the whole lawn. Each time, I spent about $20 in expenses, so for six hours of work I got paid 80 bucks. Thats $13 an hour, more than double the minimum wage. Then I added another lawn for $65 a week, then another one for $45, and another for $35, and one more for $50. Soon this sixth grader was making $300 a week. As my business grew more efficient, I figured out how to do all the lawns in a day and a half and was soon making $25 an hour as a sixth-grade landscaper.

It didnt stop there either. Over the years, I began offering more landscaping services, like leaf raking, planting, and yard cleanup. I soon had a crew of four people working for me. I would charge my customer $25 an hour for each person in my crew who was working (including me). I would pay the workers in my crew $10 an hour (still almost double the minimum wage). So if four of us were working a job, I would charge my customer $100 an hour ($25 per person) and pay out to my crew $30 ($10 an hour for each person working for me). That means I was making $70 an hour before I even reached high school!

When I turned sixteen and got my drivers license, my business continued to grow. My service area expanded because now I could drive to my customers. By the time I was a senior in high school, I was making more part-time than many people were earning full-time!

Keep in mind that I am just one example of a young entrepreneur. My friend Stephen also started a landscaping company while he was in middle school, and by the time he was a senior he had sold his landscaping company for more than $400,000!

How about Omer A., a Web-site developer who made over $40,000 designing Web sites before he was eighteen! Even younger was twelve-year-old Shennendoah Hollsten, who, with her nine-year-old brother, founded a nonprofit corporation, NeuroKids, to teach children about how the human brain works. Shennendoah and her brother have already raised more than $11,000 for charity! Or you can check out www.grandslamgaragesales.com, where 17-year-old Ben Weissenstein has thirty employees and annual revenues of more than $30,000 a year.

You too can do what Stephen, Omer, Ben, Shennendoah, thousands of young entrepreneurs across the country, and I have done. This book will show you step-by-step how to start any business, even if you have no money and no experience. It will also provide more than 100 mini-business plans you can start on as soon as you finish reading this book (you can even start some right in the middle of the book). In addition to these mini-business plans, youll find a complete business plan at the end of the book, so you can learn exactly how to write one. Ive also included some of the most common worksheets that entrepreneurs need to use to plan and organize their business. Youll even find a glossary filled with all the key terms in this book. (By the way, whenever you see a word in bold italics, you can find the definition in the glossary.) Also keep an eye out for boxes with the following icons: