Mikaila Ulmer - Bee Fearless: Dream Like a Kid

Introduction

When I was four and a half years old, I got my first bee sting. Ouch! I dont know if youve ever been stung by a bee, but it hurts. My parents put a little aloe on it, and the pain eventually went away. Then, a week later, I got stung again! I didnt know what was going on, but I decided I was never going outside again, because I was afraid if I did, Id get stung by another bee. My parents said, You cant stay inside forever. Instead of fearing the bees, my parents encouraged me to find out more about them and why they sting. I learned that bees sting when theyre scared, and theyre trying to protect themselves against big creatures like four-year-old girls. But I learned something elsemore than just about bee stings. The bees were in trouble: They were disappearing at an alarming rate, and they needed our help. I didnt quite understand the full story at that age, but I decided to set up a lemonade stand outside my house to raise money to protect the bees. I got a little creative and decided to sweeten my lemonade with honey, since bees make honey.

Within a few years, I was bottling my lemonade and selling it in a few stores in Austin, Texas, where I live. A few more years later, my lemonade stand, along with my mission to save the bees, had grown into a multimillion-dollar social enterprise. Now my lemonade is available nationwide in over 1,500 stores. Since starting my company in 2009, Ive sold over 1.2 million bottles of lemonade. In that time, I have saved an estimated 800,000 bees, with a target of saving an additional 400,000 bees by the end of 2020. Thats a lot of happy bees!

I want to share with you my story of how my simple lemonade stand grew into a successful national business.

This book is about more than just how I built a lemonade company and why you should save the bees. Its about how to gain the confidence to build a business from the ground up, to take on a problem in our society, to get in front of people and advocate for what you believe in. To be charitable in action, not just talk. Its about how to be a beautifully mindful entrepreneur.

Ive learned the things that make a great entrepreneur are qualities that come naturally to kids. We dream big. We dont see obstacles, but we do see opportunity. We dream about things that dont even exist yet. And we believe in the future. Kids are quite possibly the biggest dreamers of all. We jump out of bed in the morning and have the wildest ideas. We grab our notebooks, write them down, and figure out how to make them real. If you come up with a good idea and work hard, you can be successful. Thats what our parents tell us. Thats what our teachers tell us. And so thats what we tell ourselves.

We believe in the impossible. We see possibilities where adults see problems. Like a lot of dreams, I didnt see mine coming. I didnt have any experience running a beverage company; neither did my parents or my two brothersmy older brother, Khalil, and my younger brother, Jacob. But I did know that I wanted to protect the bees from going extinct through my lemonade stand, and I was going to make it happen.

Heres where it gets a little scary: How do you learn to run a business? Its not just talking about passion and creativity and dreams. Its about real things like the markets and banks, buyers and sellers, investors and debt, marketing and brandingin other words, theres a whole lot more to running a business than I ever thought. And it gets even scarier. Its also about making really big decisions and taking risks.

But heres where its not scary: If you say to yourself, How hard is it to start a business? Your answer should always be, Starting a business is not hard when youre having fun. Then ask, Why am I starting a business? Your answer should be, Because I believe it will make the world better. So why not start now?

My goal for this book is to show you how. I truly believe there is no age restriction for who can impact the world in positive ways. Even kids can solve all sorts of very big problems. And with the power of technology that generations before us invented, our generation and future generations have more opportunities than ever to research, learn, connect, and spread our messages and our missions around the world.

When youre having fun, learning something new, and doing something for the right reasons, youre being creative and meeting people and putting your energy to good use. Nothing can stop you when youre doing something you love.

So why am I, a fifteen-year-old girl from Austin, Texas, writing a book about business? Because I know that if we all go out in this world looking together at the possibilities of things rather than just the problems, our future will be a whole lot brighter by the time were the average age of a CEO.

So...

Lets bgin!

A lot of people ask me how I started my business. Did you just decide to set up a lemonade stand? The answer is yes, I did just decide to set up a lemonade stand, but a lot of steps came before that.