The Rise of Gen Z Entrepreneurship in the Digital Age
[Music]
this past
june i visited my grandparents for the
day at their lakeside cottage
knowing my grandmother prefers lunch at
four in the afternoon
i brought everything i needed to be able
to crochet for a couple hours before
meal time
and while crochet is a hobby it’s also
the focus of my online arts business
purple pear purple pear offers crochet
pet look-alike plushies among other
serotonin-inducing creations
started when i was 14 it has since grown
to 6 400 plus social media followers
over 500 sales and consistent
four-figure months
in fact just a week before this visit i
just hired my first part-time employee
to help me keep up with the demand at
the time of this visit i had a queue of
50 orders with an august deadline
so my fingers were moving at lightning
speed
i was escaping the summer heat in the
living room when with my grandmother
when she responded that she hoped i was
still being a teenager
when i asked what she meant by that she
explained that she felt that sometimes i
dedicated too much time to purple pear
and not enough time to the
quintessential teenage
experience i knew she was concerned when
she said that sometimes she wished
i would decline a visit with her my
grandmother
to hang out with my teenage friends even
my grandmother wants me to get out more
i mean i get where she’s coming from
after all
the stereotypical teenager perpetuated
by the current media
is lazy and entitled seriously just
check out these facebook
memes i think you get the point
sometimes it can feel like gin z
teenagers today
are trapped in a lose-lose situation
if i want to stay at home and act like a
responsible adult
then i’m missing out on the teen
experience
conversely if i want to go out and text
some friends
instead of doing my homework suddenly i
spend too much time on my phone
speaking of phones being the first
generation to grow up with the internet
gen z lives wildly different lives than
any previous generation
we got our first phones in middle school
and we’ve occupied social media for a
big part of our lives
typically viewed as a negative growing
up in the online space
has equipped gen z with the skills to
become young leaders
right from our phones
when i first started purple pear i was
14 years old
and a freshman in high school crochet
was a hobby that soon consumed my life
in the best way possible
i brought my yarn everywhere to parties
appointments and even school
before long friends and family started
expressing interest in my creations
and i found i enjoyed other people
cherishing my stuff
almost as much as i enjoyed making it
and so by spring of 2018
i decided to monetize this passion
all i had was some yarn some hooks
and my phone and it turns out that was
all i needed
having managed a personal instagram
account since sixth grade
i knew the ins and outs of the app so it
was super quick and simple to set up a
second account purely for business
after growing my business’s social media
presence on instagram and later twitter
i could directly communicate with
customers and take custom orders just by
unlocking my phone
the powerful reached social media has
enabled me to ship out products to all
50 states
and three continents without even
leaving my house to market
i use my tablet to build and manage my
website through which i now sell the
majority of my inventory
i am literally running my business from
my phone
and as you can see out of my home
similarly in june 2020 i launched my
online jewelry brand autonomy jewels
in its first month autonomy jules
generated 300
in revenue and now has a 200 growth rate
all it took for me to make money was
internet access and some jewelry
no longer do entrepreneurs have to
invest thousands of dollars into a brick
and mortar shop
or travel all over the world pitching
their products
the face of entrepreneurship is changing
and the key
is social media
many of you are familiar with the
popular chinese app tick tock
a social media platform where consumers
can share short 15 second videos with
their audiences and build a following
sixty percent of tick tock users belong
to gin z
and the app is filled with young
teenagers promoting their small
businesses
one of these teenagers monica silva
started promoting her lip gloss brand
audacity cosmetics on tick tock in the
fall of 2019 when she was 17 years old
after producing videos consistently and
using her platform to scale her customer
base
audacity cosmetics had amassed over half
a million tick tock followers
by july of 2020 now
monica’s lip gloss launches sell out in
minutes and her business has generated
enough revenue to pay off her first year
of college in full
monica is another example of a gen z
teenager using her experience having
grown up in the online space
to her entrepreneurial advantage i don’t
have a business degree and neither does
monica
yet we’ve both jump started our careers
and scaled our businesses to generate
high demand
and consistent income a 2014 study from
the consultancy sparks and honey
found that 72 percent of high school
students wanted to start a business
if you’re a high school student and you
want to start a business
now is the time now more than ever there
are less and less constraints
for young entrepreneurs all you need to
start
is your phone internet access
and some self-initiative
now running a business means money is
inevitable part
and i’m lucky to be making enough to
sustain my boba tea addiction
this holiday season purple pear is
projected to gross two thousand dollars
a month
however to quote mark twain the
dictionary is the only place
where success comes before work
monica silva’s first lip gloss brand
launch did not sell out in minutes
purple pair made a whopping total of 32
dollars in april of 2019.
in fact it took me almost two whole
years to start making more than a
hundred dollars a month consistently
within my business
unless you’re already famous your
business is probably not going to blow
up overnight
and that’s completely okay you have to
be in it for the thrill of running your
own company
and although it sounds cliche do what
you love
and i promise the money will follow
being a teenager and ceo of two small
e-commerce businesses can be like living
a double life
you have to go to school and take
classes then come home and balance
homework with business work
as a small business owner you’re
responsible for managing all aspects of
your business
including but not limited to social
media
engagement product photography creation
customer service shipping packaging etc
it can get really overwhelming and in
fact last christmas
i had to refund 20 crochet orders
because i underestimated the academic
commitments of junior year
however i’ve not trade any of it for the
world the best teacher is experience
and being a business owner at such a
young age has quit me with skills that i
will use the rest of my life
not only are there hard practical skills
such as budgeting an income or building
a website
but also softer skills like learning how
to appropriately present myself online
and being comfortable talking to
strangers on a variety of virtual
platforms
overall my confidence has skyrocketed as
i’ve taken on these responsibilities and
reaped the rewards of my hard work
it makes me so happy when other teens
say i’ve inspired them to pursue their
own entrepreneurial passions
it’s crazy to imagine but teens today
have the potential to make waves
in all corners of the world
because the truth is you need it have
gone to business school
or even be out of middle school yet to
dip your toes into the world of business
not anymore at least gen z the first
generation
born with the internet at its fingertips
is making big moves
we are destroying all misconceptions
about age and education when it comes to
starting businesses
and being successful with our phones we
can tap into an entire world
of free resources limitless media and
millions of customers
with some self-initiative gen z is
proving that not all teenagers are lazy
and entitled
ceos inventors and activists are
becoming younger than ever
and our generation is harnessing the
power of social media
to pursue our passions and make positive
differences
so the next time you see one of those
terribly disparaging facebook memes
i urge you to consider it with a grain
of salt
leaving dirty dishes by the sink might
be typical teenage behavior
but now so is changing the world
thank you