Jordan and Brandon’s main goal is to encourage youth though their products and upcoming book. We sat down with these two highly motivated, school-age business owners to learn more about their story and keys to success.”
Jordan Williams and Brandon Iverson are successful teen entrepreneurs. The duo started their first business at age 10. Jordan and Brandon now own Making Money For Teens, a teen financial education company. The Making Money For Teens CD series teaches youth about money management and other financial topics such as stocks, mutual funds, option trading, marketing and more. Jordan and Brandon visit various schools and youth programs to educate teens about what they’ve learned in their few years of experience. They have been featured on Good Day Atlanta, Biz Kids (PBS), Atlanta Business Radio and elsewhere. Jordan and Brandon’s main goal is to encourage youth through their products and upcoming book.
Why did you decide to start a business at such a young age? We decided to start a business at the age of 10 because we didn’t want to settle for the weekly allowance we earned. We both earned $10 a week from doing chores around the house and would never have the money to buy the things we wanted. As kids, we would always ask for the new game or new iPod that was out, but our parents couldn’t always buy the items we wanted. After following our parent’s example in entrepreneurship, we started reading books and began researching and brainstorming ideas until we started a company together called Kids Toys, Inc. We started selling used toys and games to our friends and to the school and helped us get our feet wet in entrepreneurship.
What goals do you have for your business? Some of our goals include increasing our advertising efforts and creating more publicity. We have been speaking to youth groups and organizations, we have been featured on television shows, and have been doing interviews on different radio stations. Also, we are finishing writing a book together and have been working on licensing our company.
What are the challenges you currently face? One challenge we currently face in our company is managing our time. We both manage our time well, but as we are booking more and more events, it can be hard to manage school, sports and a business. We both maintain an all A’s average and can be difficult managing other things with business.
What are your successes so far? One of our greatest successes was being featured on Good Day Atlanta. It was a great first step for advertising the company to the masses. We also enjoyed being featured on the PBS show Biz Kids. It was a great experience for us individually and for the company. We have also been interviewed on Atlanta Business Radio X twice and other radio shows. And, we’ve been able to speak to schools and youth entrepreneurship programs such as TiE Atlanta and Youth Leadership Dekalb Career Fair.
What are your dreams as young entrepreneurs? As young entrepreneurs our main dream is to be successful business owners later on in life. We want to learn as much as we can while we are young so that we can be ready to lead our companies to success in the future. We look forward to using the skills we have learned now to create a company that will grow to be at the top of its industry. Through our businesses, we hope that we inspire and motivate other teens.
Who has helped you the most in getting started? Our parents have played a huge part in our business success. For the past few years, Brandon and I have looked up to our parents and followed their example. They took the time to educate and develop us to be successful. Our parents support all our business endeavors and encourage us to keep working hard to achieve our goals. Without them and everyone else who has supported us, our company wouldn’t be where it is now.
You have done one of the first things you need to do to be successful—reach out to others who have already traveled the road to business success. What advice do you think would be most helpful from our readers who have already become successful business owners? We always love getting advice from successful business owners that can help us successfully market and build our business. Consulting the best entrepreneurs is a great way for us to learn from their experiences. Advice that helps us promote our business and reach more customers is very useful for us. Our goal is to meet more business owners with knowledge that can help us expand and publicize our company.
Anything else you would like to add? Our main message to teens is that they are never too young to start being successful. We teach that you should not let anyone doubt you because of your age. We want them to realize that if they put hard work and commitment into what they do, success is always the result.